Berkeley Tree Sitter Not Discouraged, Changes Tactic

BERKELEY, CA-Last week the Berkeley resident and longtime environmental activist known as  
Pinecone left her roost high in the Cal Oak Grove after nearly ten months of her arbor dwelling protest.
“When I left my mother womb [tree], I did not see it as defeat. I felt my earth song [protest] had
fulfilled what I set out to do. It was the right time to come down.”
Pinecone was greeted with a smattering of applause from the gathered crowd of jobless
vagrants who counted themselves her supporters. She was immediately biked to the Berkeley Bowl
where she bought organic sunflower seeds.
Pinecone then shifted tactic slightly as she home invaded a Claremont residence and held the family’s attic as a geographic hostage or, as Pinecone calls it, “Initiated a love/symbiot sensuality expression of universal heart.”
The home’s residents, the Reinholdt family calls it “a stinky sqatter who’s squatting in our crawl space.”
One of Pinecone’s supporters who blogs under the name KucinichLuva wrote on the blog
www.LimbsOfLove.net,
“This Attic Protest is the next logical step. Anyone can tell you residential single family structures are the equivalent of nature’s Professor Moriarti. By taking a stand against single family households in middle upper class America, Pinecone will save untold numbers of unnecessary toilet flushes.”
Pinecone added herself in a press release that was handed through a heating vent in the Reinholdt’s second floor ceiling, “Stop urinating in the toilet. Piss in the sink and then the next time you do your full body Dr. Bronner’s body wash with a natural sponge in your sink, you can wash down whatever urine is still there. P.S. Please send up vegetarian pizza, water, and cannabis.”
As of earlier this morning, the Reinholdts have still refused to allow Pinecone’s followers to give her food and water and Humbolt County Purple Daze.
“We invited her to come down and share some of our cassarole, but she’s vegan and told us we were fascists. And then she threw the contents of her bedpan at us.”
In response to Pinecone’s Attic Protest, Chevron executives have said they’ll consider
shutting down. Said an anonymous Chevron boardmember, “In light of Pinecone’s suggestions, we think its just the right thing.”

 

Little Michael Jackson and Me

I believe an ethically sound person would be offended by this video. But truthfully, I have the ethical sensibilities of a cucumber and this video sure feels like fun.

 

World News: Homicidal Chimp At Large After Daring Escape

The MindFlowers editorial staff didn’t (and couldn’t) make this up. Here’s the article from
www.azcentral.com

LOS ANGELES - A 42-year-old chimpanzee who is toilet-trained and can eat with a knife and fork is believed to be at large in a Southern California forest after escaping his cage.

A weekend search in the San Bernardino National Forest 50 miles east of Los Angeles came up empty.

“I yelled his name out for hours, for hours, with no one else around. Nothing. Not even a hoot,” said LaDonna Davis, who owns Moe with husband St. James Davis.

St. James Davis brought Moe home from Tanzania in 1967 after the baby primate lost his mother to poachers. He and his wife treated Moe as their surrogate son, toilet-training him, teaching him to eat with a knife and fork and letting him sleep in their bed and watch TV.

But local authorities didn’t view Moe in the same light. For years, the Davises waged a legal battle to keep Moe in their home.

They finally lost in 1999 when Moe bit part of a woman’s finger off when she inserted her hand in his cage. The Davises said he mistook her red-painted fingernail for his favorite licorice. The incident also came after Moe mauled a police officer’s hand.

Over the Davises’ protests, Moe was taken to an animal sanctuary. But in 2005, when they took a cake to celebrate Moe’s birthday with him, the couple was viciously attacked by two other chimpanzees who had escaped their cages.

The chimps nearly killed St. James Davis, chewing off his nose, testicles and foot and biting off chunks of his buttocks and legs, before the sanctuary owner shot the animals to death.

“He’s a very personable, sweet, nice chimp,” McCasland said. “He’s not going to be aggressive unless he’s provoked.”

The couple, who have no children, broke down in tears at a press conference in Los Angeles.

“What am I going to do?” sobbed LaDonna Davis.

“He meant the world to us,” said St. James Davis. “He was the best man at my wedding.”

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2008/07/01/20080701chimpescape01-odd.html

 

Movie Reviews: 2008 Summer Thus Far

Wanted: A confused pile of filth that sets action movies back twelve years. Of all the violence that occurs in the film, the most painful thing to watch is Angelina Jolie. A non-actor whose acting prowess is about as strong as her 80 pound scarecrow body, she fits perfectly into a movie like ‘Wanted’. For, this movie is not about acting, storytelling, or even attention gathering. It is a perfect “non-film”. It is the corn flakes in the meat loaf of summer movies-pure filler that is just there. The disgust that it displays for its viewers, (”I was once normal and pathetic like you” says a voice over to the audience) it shows for the medium of movie making. Muddled and without vision or creativity or even the effort to ‘phone it in’, this is a creative endeavor similar to a drunk 15 year-old spray painting “Megaballs” on a Burger King’s dumpster.

Indiana Jones and The George Lucas Shitball:  I’ve seen Indiana Jones’ last installment twice now and I had really hoped that the second viewing would prove me wrong in my initial judgment that it was as exciting as a toupe colored insane asylum’s bathroom. Instead I found that whatever fun I had imaged in the first viewing was really just a reaction to eating my Peanut M&M’s too fast. Rule #1: George Lucas is about as cool as Condie Rice’s war planning parties, and Rule #2: Steven Spielberg should be freed from his “Best Friends Forever” pledge he made with Lucas at summer camp.

Iron Man and Hulk: Men and violence.

Speed Racer: Actually, probably for all its faults, might be the most fun I’ve had a movie this summer.
Note: ‘fun’ doesn’t mean necessarily ‘good’. I laughed, and the audience I saw it with was all into it, so it was fun.

 

A word about movie audiences: I don’t know what’s happened, but seeing a movie on an opening weekend has become the most traumatic thing I now do. People talking through the entirety of a movie, people screaming at each other, fights nearly breaking out, drunk homeless people talking loudly to the racist and classist delight (which is probably more appropriately self hating unease), people chewing gum loudly, etc.
The experience of being with an audience has proven much more frightful and engaging than the movies themselves. Is this a reaction to the tripe that’s being screened? Are people taking it upon themselves to create and feed of an inhumane and disjointed ’interaction’ with others for the catharsis and emotive stimulus that our modern art cannot provide?
A dark room filled with anonymous people and the ability to hold them as a captive audience brings out some interesting social situations.
Or…I must wonder how much is it a cultural expectation that a movie be watched for what it is? Maybe like a curator at a museum, I’m wanting to enforce an unnatural reaction to a work of art: “No! Don’t touch the statue!” “But it’s pretty to look at, and even better to touch!”
What is art anyway? What is the communal experience of art about? Are we being bound together, all of us, by the experience? Just as I want everything else in my life sanitized and solitary, maybe I’m just expecting that of my filmic viewing. Sheesh. Its getting harder and harder to watch and criticize movies.

 

This Summer’s Number One Jam: Boobs (Titteez) feat. Tit-E-Nast

Yeah I hear there’s a war between nations and generals
but all I wanna do is get a hold of your genitals
Why should we worry about some fabled U-boats
when we got this beautiful vista and ship load of scrots?
The Ottoman Empire is causing grief
now show me what you got goin’ on in those briefs!
A cruise across the Atlantic is soundin’ quite quant,
now don’t mind me as I size up your taint.

I see your scrot is Bic-ed
so let’s get sea sic-ed
Until we gets blowed up
let’s get that chode up
Just because it is now World War One
doesn’t mean that we can’t have some fun!

(folk song break down a la Gordon Lightfoot)
The legend lives on from the British Isles on down
Of the sex cruise they call the Lusitan-y
The sea, it is said, a perfect place for some head
When the skies of Nineteen Fifteen turn gloomy.

With a load of hot chum during World War One
The dress of the Lusitania’s crew was skimpy
That good ship its true had some bones to be chewed
And the deckhands were feelin’ quite squirrelly

The ship was the pride of the American side
more heady than the beer from Wisconsin
And as codpieces go it had bigger than most
With a crew and the Captain well seasoned.

(Back breakin’ beatz)
yeah! If you get a sinking feelin’
itz because I’m going down
if you feel the sea is reeling
itz becuase I’m going down!

Lusitania! Lusitania! (etc, with moans and audio of the Kaiser)

*This song is dedicated in loving memory to the victims of the Lusitania.

 

Video: “Wanamakuka’s Daughter”

This is a beautiful short video poem/documentary.

“Are we a prayer of the wind that the Earth remembers?”

http://www.kishamontgomery.com/digital-media.htm

 

Artists I Like: Justin Richel

You all should know how much I adore colonial-style wigs. In fact, once upon a time I hosted a Wig Party with freshly brewed mead!! But the portraits below aren’t of any old wigs, mind you. These wigs just might save the world!

The artist, Justin Richel, has a lovely and reasonably-priced Etsy shop and I just ordered the mushroom print for my friends Jared and Becky. Don’t tell them; it’s a surprise!

 

Video: Cloud Cult’s Transistor Radio

the into
and yes
no heed

 

My grade school reading level helps me know what’s best for the world.

Now that I have conquered three Tom Clancy novels and “The Life of Pi” (it’s confusing),
I can assure you that I know what’s best for you.

You got a question about gay marriage or abortion?
I’ll be able to reach deep into my 5th grade reading level to really
knock your fucking socks off with erudite insight and worldly wisdom.

You’re not sure how global economics work huh?
Let me tell you all about it.
You’ve got questions about what life’s meaning is?
Let me inform you.

My mom took an online class through a church once
and told me all about it, so I pretty much have a handle on what’s what.

Seriously, I know my shit. I’ve got a well-read issue of
“People” if you don’t believe me.
I just got done reading a synopsis of some book about evolution
on an advertisement display at my local Christian bookstore,
so if you want some knowledge thrown your way, lemme know.

C.S. Lewis is like totally my favorite philosopher and Tim LaHaye is my
favorite theologian.

I receive and sometimes read an email newletter about gay marriage that
uses bright colors and has ‘links’.

You best come correct if you wanna debate me sucka.

I wish people would begin to respect my education which would then allow me to
educate them which would in turn make us both equally fit to almost finish the
“US Weekly” crossword puzzle.

It’s lonely at the top of this ivory tower.
Ryan McGivern

 

A Fountain Penguin

My mother said this reminded her of me!