Terminator in the Woods

Trophies of his victims. Sick stuff man.

White Forest

I worry about the birds out in the forest. What do they do? How do they stay warm? Poor little birds.

All the poor little creatures out in the snow.

Orbital

It's an orbit joke - right? Say hey have you heard of the rogue captured? Jah, it's a shame.

Foreign Dispatch

You can see where totems got their inspiration in the mirror form of still lakes and sea shores. When the water is as glass, reflecting everything above, like the green here of Summer, near full Moon, the full skeletal reproduction is seen by all, and copied by most - why not? Success is leached.

If you only knew

Vader couldn't do the Force lightning, for obvious reasons. The same reason Vader was a slave to the Emperor - with but a thought, the Emperor could crush Vader's suit, killing him instantly. That's why he must obey his Master.

Happy Tree Paints

Yes, in this alternate Universe - one of many - Happy Tree paints Bob Ross, soothingly.

Where's your Global Warming now?

Snow Demon

Of course, as soon as it gets cold or snows in the Winter, your witty Wingnut will mockingly ask "What happened to Global Warming"? I tell them that Snow Demon is unpredictable and easily offended. And boy has he been offended this Winter!

Portland ME after 30 plus inches in early February.

Skiing to work! Up here in Gondolin it started snowing in early December and hasn't really stopped. Producing scenes like:

Redshirt photos. So yeah, funny story - Global Warming can cause all kinds of different weather conditions, including increased snowfall amounts. Warming temperatures worldwide will cause more extreme variations of weather in different locales, but yes, there could be far more snow in certain areas because of GW. Good luck trying to explain this to Mr. Wingnut. But then, maybe I will. Tomorrow.

Until then, pray with me to the Snow Demon to accept our offerings and mercifully stop sending snow. My back beseeches you!

Screaming Trees

All things fade in time. You, me, Rome, Earth, the Sun, the Milky Way, the entire Universe, some trillion trillion years from now. Not my fault, nor my picture. Lovely though, is it not? The power of entropy?

An abandoned factory in Japan, nature reclaiming the space. As entropy is nature, all order will be deconstructed, torn down, eaten up, broken into pieces and spread all about. Entropy is the way of things. All our deeds are but acts holding back the tide, so ever briefly.

Our end is inevitable. The only true questions are when and how. Probably asteroid, sometime in the future. But there's so many other options! Nuclear bombs, earthquakes, global warming, solar radiation, magnetic shift, name your apocalypse, and you'll find the likelihood is not insignificant. Ignore the possibility we do at our own peril. Life is fragile, we exist on the surface of a reality of harshness. Prepare yeself, mortal!

Fryeburg Fair

Ayuh. At the Fair. The Oxen Pull was pahticularly excitin'. The weather was wicked nice let me tell you. Indian Summer they call it.

Click for big. All identities protected. Except for Joe Bolf. Both pics redshirt represented.

Too Late

Unless everything falls apart, we'll not be agrarian again. Urbanity is humanity's future, whether here on Earth or elsewhere. Get used to it, or get weeded out of of the gene pool. The future demands folks willing to be crowded.

You can't see the stars in the city. But that's OK - we have drones.

Magazine subscriptions

That's some serious spreadsheet. Lots of data. Jealous? Curious? You should be - what could be so interesting that requires so many pages?

Muhammad is a long time Elle subscriber and as such he's up to date on current trends and knows confidence comes from the inside, as well as beauty.

In the latest issue, IW focuses on Poplar, the hip, "it" wood. 

Mechanical Spider Cars of the South

Imagine, if you will, a reality where dinosaurs were not wiped out by a terrible asteroid, but instead continued to prosper and evolve. After millions of years, one species got real smart, real fast, and then turned this world  - and space itself! - into their Kingdom, and all other creatures mere subordinates. Continue imagining, if you're still willing, that at the heights of their glory and power they became arrogant and crass, stupid drunk on their power, and they wiped themselves out. Alas!

Here's some ruins from their glorious but now departed culture. They liked mechanical spiders, according to scholars.

Also too: Nice pine trees!

Gondolin Water Works

Here's Gondolin, as of May 5, 2012.

That wall with the pine shadow is about 10 feet tall. Protecting against the natural inclination of the mountain, which is to drain right there, and to other side. When I found Gondolin some years back, there was a bog to the back and right of the garage shown above, all due to a drainage pipe further up the hill passing on water from still yet further up the mountain. This bog was relatively new and had just killed most of the pine trees in the vicinity, to my chagrin, for it opened up a gap in my fence of pine and wood. And so with all long term considerations given, this must be addressed by draining the bog. And so I dug (and dug, and dug, and dug...) a stream:

You can see a portion of it in the upper left. Here's a closeup of that stretch:

Not the best picture, and for that I am further chagrined. But you get the drift, I hope? A small channel dug into the ground corralling a previously creeping, spreading flow of water that soaked a large area. Another shot, of the newly dug lower stretch:

I also just cleared the deciduous trees and shrubs to the right, as I am truly gardening the forest, pruning deciduous where I can in favor of conifers. You can see the new leafy trees directly ahead, probably 10-15 years old and grown in since this land was first clear. They claim any new land first, and I wonder how the conifers ever gained a foot hold at all. Fun fact to know and share - the entire conifer family is only approximately 300 million years old.

Anywho, the bog is gone, and the stream is now some 400 feet long, all dug out and waiting to be prettified. The amount of water channeled through this system is incredible, and even more so, I've got projects here in Gondolin to last a lifetime. I envy myself.

As a goodbye, here's an artistic blurry photo of a deciduous bloom, in honor of all its fallen sisters:

Pumpkin Porn

Randy Scarecrow would be an OK band name. Yet, this is not really a scarecrow, right?  But a response to the Internet - make something funny and post it. And glory be unto it!

The Light

We're related to trees, right? As all living things, whether they be animal, plant, or lowly bacteria, are related - just a question of how far back. Plants have gender, have sex, so to speak, reproduce, breathe, drink, eat, sleep, bleed, grow old and die, just like us.

We can't live without sunlight. And not just for the practical reasons, like vitamin D and the psychological effects of lack of light - and yet still not just for all the food and animals we depend on that need light too. But even deeper - we're drawn towards the light at a level so basic as to be chemical.

We are made of light, of energy: E=MC2. And verily, most of the elements that compose our bodies - that compose all of life - were forged directly in a star. We are literally star stuff, as is just about everything on this planet, including the planet itself.

And so - THEORY! - I believe we are subconsciously drawn towards light from the very fabric of our being, and not just at a psychological level (though there's surely that), but at an atomic level. Our atoms came from light, and to light they will one day return, but till then, they yearn. As we yearn.

Also, it feels so good!

Peek-a-WHA?

Could be a girl. Could be a boy. Could be something in between. Gender is fluid in many regards, but no matter what: Everyone needs some love. Right?

Mr. Happy brought balloons

You say it's your birthday? It's Mr. Happy's too. Yeah.

It's always someone's birthday.

Replicated Fractal

Click for really big. The artist is pretty darn cool - check out Vlad, here. Here, you see the fractal nature of trees, and life in general. Life makes a copy of itself, buds it off, which does the same, and so on. Replicating fractals. Every so often, something happens to change the fractal pattern - a mutation - and a different fractal then replicates, until it too undergoes some change, for some reason (could be radiation, starvation, different atmosphere, etc), and this process is, in part, evolution. Life is a fractal chemical process consuming energy in order to replicate itself, generating waste products which in turn contribute to some other process. This of course is the real meaning of life, but, meh. Rather unfulfilling, right?

This fractal replication happens at all scales, from the micro to the macro. You could, in a sense, say it is our reality: Layers of replicated fractals. But that too, doesn't truly speak to our real reality: Layers of illusion generated by our minds.