Puccini doesn’t like to be photographed.

I mentioned that I got a re-issue of a Kate Bush CD yesterday. It’s remastered and has some bonus tracks (that I kind of wish had been left in the archives).

There’s a track called ‘The Big Sky.’ It’s basically Kate talking about looking at clouds in the sky, playing around with what they might look like, with interludes such as “…and we pause for a jet.” All of this is intended to show how someone, presumably a lover, ‘never understood me/you never really tried.’

I can relate. Some of the things the clouds look like: ‘That cloud looks like Ireland/C’mon blow it a kiss/That cloud says ‘Noah,/build me an ark!”

I’m looking out my window, and that cloud, that cloud looks like oppression. It’s a sky full of cotton batting. It’s oatmeal. It’s all frame with no picture. All wall with no door. A sky full of smoke from a candle that was just extinguished. The dance of the cottage cheese.

Why does the Boost page contain suck?

I went to the U district to get some pizza and lo and behold, right across the street Tower Records was going out of business. 30% off.

Yay. And… Crap.

So now I have some semi-rare XTC (the Japanese import round-cut ‘Big Express’) and a new copy of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love.’ So it’s Linn Drum night at Chez Homer (dated drum machine humor).

Some kind person has created a web site about their travels to the National Trails and National Grasslands.

It’s a ‘Great Plains adventure guide.’

I was most interested in the Comanche National Grasslands, in south-east Colorado. Of course, I won’t be visiting in June… more like early December.

But anyway… The National Grasslands have been an interest of mine, because they represent the very tail end of an ecological catastrophe and subsequent mitigation that happened in living memory. I have half a mind to research and write about it. (Timothy Egan beat me to it.)

So the interesting thing to me about the trails-and-grasslands travelogue site is something that’s apparently lost on its author: The trails (Santa Fe, Oregon, California, Pony Express) are the cause and the National Grasslands are the cure. The trails brought the settlers who ended up creating the dust bowl. Government programs had to be enacted in order to preserve what remained and to mitigate. And finally the Grasslands were created to maintain some native topsoil and biodiversity amidst the ploughed fields.

(And also: The History Of The Postcard)

Via Bruce Sterling:

Warning Signs For Tomorrow.

Also Saturn in eclipse, taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The one that they risked life on Earth to hurl into space.

Thenarrator wrote a thing where postcards figure prominently.

I’ve been thinking about postcards, and business cards, too. They’re a sort of semi-personal proxy for real human contact. A letter would be more personal, but a postcard will do, especially since travel is usually a busy time. Business cards are items you want someone to find in their coat pocket in a couple of weeks.

I got some miniature business cards from Moo, who link up with flickr and let you make customized biz cards based on your flickr photos. They had a freebie deal where you could get a pack of 10 cards for free through September.

The cards are cute. The images I selected ended up being printed rather dark. Flickr does a bad job of color management, so this is to be expected if not desired.

Now I have to find some recipients for these biz cards.

And as far as postcards go:

I’m thinking about doing a postcard exchange. You send me a postcard, I forward it to someone else. But I don’t just forward it, I forward it from some town somewhere on the way between here and Texas before Christmas. You get a postcard back, eventually, from someone you’re not sure who it is, and with a postmark from somewhere in the Great American West.

If enough people are interested, I’ll get a post box and we’ll get it rolling. It can be as anonymous as you want.

The War Of The Words, a look at the 101st Fighting Keyboarders.

Olbermann dissects the corpse of habeus corpus.

Don’t worry. It’s funny.