Etched upon a celestial canvas
A wisp of blue forever alters
Shaded dreams of landscape’s adornment
Reflecting pink upon clouds’ glare
Patched with sundown’s orange cast
Glimmering stars beyond eagles’ air
Flicker hints of Luna’s inception
Fantasy ere latent illusions
Abandoned but for idea’s form
Hibernating lives of lost privy
Scripted astride, heart’s pounding eye
Forsaken by memories lost yearn
Of sorrowful repine, life’s eluded murmur
Hidden beneath a mournful moment.

“You know those times when you really want to lite a fire under someone’s ass to get them moving. They just keep procrastinating.”
Bunny Got Blog

A recent addition to my favorite blog list, Bunny Got Blog, is not about Bugs Bunny. It’s about life, told from a woman’s perspective, for anyone interested in her perceptions on a variety of subjects. Some include Dirty Laundry, Health, Recipes, Taking Care Of Business and Relationships. A perceptive exploration of the notions of a modern world for a twenty first century woman, also kin to my perspective of curiosity and its impact on provoking thought. Drawing attention to things that may elude most because of daily routine of distractions. It’s far less important to secure someone’s agreement then simply to motivate them to think.

Bunny Got Blog never suggests that her way is the only way. She shares her life and relationship honestly, what works, what doesn’t work for her and in so doing encourages others to realize that they too can find their own way. About today’s woman she says, “it doesn’t really matter where you come from, all that matters is making a commitment to yourself to gain the growth of experience and knowledge while you are still young and unattached.” Wise advice for men as well as women, and a testament that procrastination is indigenous to both sexes.

Bunny Got Blog, highly recommended for today’s woman, and man.

Although not well versed in the Bible except the comic book and cinematic versions, to me, its words have always seemed less important than the imagery they conveyed. Parables of morality and its counter balance, immorality.

Many stories begin with an ordinary person who faces unanticipated challenges that test faith and self-confidence to inspire action or foster procrastination, either elevating them to another level or down into a fiery abyss of ignorant redundancy, perhaps evil. An example of the struggle between our dual nature.

Courage is more about acting in the presence of fear or the unknown without being paralyzed, rather than moving with certainty. Add hope and we have the basis of myth.

Tales, all of which describing a string of tests of human nature and personal morality ingrained within fundamental values, evolved individually and culturally. A Shakespeare play, ornately written with the tribulations of characters facing desperate odds or nature’s folly, also plagued with personal flaws, struggling, the hand of destiny divinely inspired to an unknown fate while providing a co-measured sense of what all people can identify with and relate in their own lives.

“Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your sub-vocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents,
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.”

Ode To Spot

Lt. Commander Data
Stardate: 46164.2
Author, Clay Dole

Perhaps an over the top description of Felis Catus, but it’s never the less consoling to know that cats will be held with the same fascination and reverence in the Twenty Fourth Century as they have been throughout history, giving a unique poignancy to The Sureflap Microchip Cat Flap “that recognizes an ID chip implanted in your cat allowing you to keep track of him/her and making unwanted animals a thing of the past. No need for a collar or tag which can get lost or even worse. The microchip can be safely and painlessly implanted under the skin between the shoulder blades by your local vet.” Each microchip is numbered, and placed in a computer database and easily retrievable along with your address. Then if your pet gets disoriented, any vet equipped as a homing center can scan the animal, identify the number on the chip and voila, your precious is returned to you, safe and sound.

Perhaps in the future, a transporter device will be developed and your very special puddy cat will simply materialize back home, however for now the operation of the SureFlap couldn’t be simpler. “Once the unit is installed, mounted on any doorway and the batteries installed, the flap can be put into learn mode. The next time your cat passes through, the unique ID code of its chip is put into memory then unlocks whenever your cat wants to come into the house. Multiple cats are no problem. Up to 32 cats can be programmed into the flap at the same time.” This also allows you to determine the parentage of any unexpected kittens from the next generation, probably by one of the 31 other cats by providing DNA to create your very own computer feline database.

There is also a manual lock, while in vet mode, “allowing your cat to enter the house and keeps him inside if he tries to escape for the next trip to the vet. An ingenious product available only in The United Kingdom and selected by UK’s leading Micro-chipping organization, AnimalCare, “the very first Identachip to be launched in the UK’s proud technological history. Over two million animals have benefited from secure identification.”

No price is mentioned, possibly a tribute to the Twenty Fourth Century - a place where money doesn’t exist in what appears to be a socialistic classless society without poverty. A time when the stock market or banks do not exist, having been abolished and everyone is free to pursue their Utopian dream. Even synthetic persons are allowed to have cats as their beloved pet.

My Percepto Rating is : 0~

5- Engaging
4- A wonderful compliment to Catbox 360
3- Catnip is to Cats as Marijuana’s to humans
2- Perhaps it can be adapted for children?
1- Peanut, The Three Eyed Cat
0- All this without ever mentioning Star Trek

The year began with a huge task at hand: all I needed was a subject to write about for my doctoral dissertation. Considering several, I dismissed them as too trivial and yet that’s what also made them interesting.

Working with my adviser on appropriate topics, I had always been fascinated by the color green and how it has been portrayed in culture. Green, synonymous with Ireland, St. Patrick, the great and wonderful Oz, and of course The Guardians Of The Universe, bearers of the ring charged with the light of the Green Lantern. Every twenty four hours, the sacred oath was taken to empower the ring with green energy: “In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night, No Evil Shall Escape My Sight! Let Those Who Worship Evils Might, Beware My Power, Green Lanterns Light”. A strong connotation for a color that is also integral to chlorophyll, the substance of all plant life and a logical choice as the template color for my Blog, Eclectic Commons.

It was exposure to gamma radiation that turned Bruce Banner into the incredible hulk, also green, probably based on the assumption that gamma radiation turns things a shade of growani (old English for green), a result of its cellular metamorphosis. A logical scientific explanation considering that the Hulk was originally gray, but Verde serves well, the imagery of a primitive rage as the Hulk searches for self control and redemption, a significant metaphor.

The only thing that made Clark Kent mortal was exposure to the rays of green kryptonite, remnants of a lost world destroyed by a thermonuclear chain reaction and perhaps by the weight of its own karma. Borne to earth in a rocket ship sent by his father Jor-el to a planet with a yellow sun where he would have powers greater than mortal man. Here, the dangerous side of Green is explored as the audience of Smallville watches Clark’s life threatened by the symbol of ultimate destruction and mutation.

So many things are of emerald color. Imagine going into a store with blue money; a sure way to draw the attention of the FBI. Expressions such as “Green with Envy”, or “Green behind the ears” are associated with emotional attributes and experiences often when used in conversation. The list of references is long, a worthy topic for a doctoral dissertation: Interesting, diverse, and imaginative steeped in culture, but I had made up my mind, it would be written on the most fascinating of obscure topics I could imagine: The Japanese Labor Movement during World War II.

At first glance, a dot is small, one dimensional, and round. Nothing more is suggested with the naked eye. Using a microscope reveals a totally different world, every bit as real to whatever or whoever inhabits its space.

Telescopes, when focused on far away objects, magnify what also at first appears as a dot, though larger, reinforcing the notion that whatever it contains is potentially limitless. The reason why it is seen as a dot is because we are too far away to perceive anything more specific with regards to its dimensions.

Perspective, so essential to form, design, structure and art, also becomes the building block of philosophy. Its fundamental notion is: In order to think of something, there has to be someone there to think it in the first place. On the other hand, perhaps a thought created me, to think of it, looking through a telescope and microscope at the same time.

The bed, an important part of existence, is the place to finally surrender consciousness. Trusted, sacred ground, the location where we let our hair down (for those follicle-ly blessed), while exposing the vulnerabilities of the soul as the physical body lays bare in its protected inner sanctum. Life in the horizontal position, at sleep, in thought of possibilities of just about anything imaginable, even an opportunity to formulate some type of celestial conception, perhaps a mathematical construct for an emerging star system that won’t be formed for another ten thousand years. Whatever the case, we spend more than one third of our lives in bed, often doing things that can’t be done while in a vertical position.

One only has to go to the seventh floor of New York’s fabled department store Bloomingdale’s to see the variety of sheets, a minimum 360 stitches, Egyptian cotton, devoted to embellishing your special spot, and all sorts of pillows to lay your weary head or between the legs (at the knee’s) while laying in the fetal position, a recommendation by chiropractors to promote better posture and reduce lower back pain by aligning the spine in a user friendly position.

Now a new twist has been developed for your bed, yet another toy, The Instant Message Receiver Pillow, developed by a student Rebecca Stern of the Parsons School Of Design in New York. “A mid term project, this pillow allows her to receive instant messages while lying comfortably on her bed without the burden of a laptop” or a text message from the still overpriced Apple iPhone with a finger “touch” tone screen. In fact, one of the lights in the built-in three icons will turn blue when a message is sent.

According to Ms Stern, “It’s also called The Chatter Pillow, a MAKE/CRAFT project reported in Weird Gizmo’s that uses the Plushie Message Framework (chat-parsing script to Arduino to wireless module) to send selected instant messages from your computer to the pillow.” She adds, “often times I leave my message client open just to get that ‘emotional check-in’ or other brief snippet from my sweetheart. With the Chatter Pillow, I just alter a few parameters in the script to filter all but three messages from him: ‘xo’, ‘on my way’, and ‘talk to me.’ That way I can be laying on the couch or ready for bed and still ‘get the message’.” I wonder what the “xo” is meant to convey?

An interesting mid term project and an easy way to be touched by one’s love. No Plans for mass production or price have been announced. It is unclear whether Bloomingdale’s plans on selling this product. What grade would you give her for this “stroke” of design genius? Perhaps as interesting as the door “handle” created in the form of a human hand by Naomi Thellier de Poncheville described in my gadget review How To Handle Your Thinga.

My percepto rating is simply “OH” in honor of Bloomingdale’s,

OH BLOOMINGDALE’S, OH BLOOMINGDALE’S
FOREVER MAY YOU BE
YOUR GROUND FLOOR OF PERFUMED SCENTS
IS ENOUGH TO ASPHYXIATE ME

PSD - Parsons School Of Design
LSD - Linen School Of Design
HAN - “Handle”, designed by Naomi Thellier de Poncheville
YYU - Yo Yo University, China
CCNY - The City College Of New York
OH- Bloomingdale’s Department Store (Lexington Ave between 58th and 59th), Midtown East

As Moses led the Hebrews down the path revealed by the parting of the Red Sea, I wonder how the water on either side must have looked.

Perhaps the way Cecil B. DeMille depicted it in his biblical epic film: The Ten Commandments (1956). Walking briskly along the moist seabed littered with gasping fish that sacrificed their lives to point the path to cross. Looking left then right, seeing all the aquatic life floating behind the halted sea walls, alive and held in place, watching all of us passing by, also waiting for it all to be over.

Looking back, seeing the chariots of angry Egyptians following the path into the land between the water, a cloud of dust created by the moving army pressing ever closer. All held by the force and control of the sea, parted according to biblical text, by divine intervention.

Most caught in this situation, especially those faint of heart, would probably have feared that the water would collapse at any time and result in imminent death from its crushing force, the walls rippling its weight, towering all on the path. The sky, dark with low clouds, strong wind, thunder and lightening, blasting above by He who has no name.

Others might recognize the opportunity to transcend personal concerns and strengthen the focus of inner surrender and peace to whatever happens, especially in a chaotic situation such as this, looking forward to becoming one with the sea.

Either way, if you are in the middle of all this, chances are you have no control over the event, nor of the outcome, so why not just relax and enjoy the view, a milieu of turbulent experience while humming a somber tune or a transcendental AUM, perhaps in the presence of a miracle, without ever getting wet.

They screwed up. Nothing they can possibly say will change the facts. Even painting a skunk to look like a squirrel won’t work.

My place of birth, thought to be unusual by most, seemed perfectly ordinary to me, taking place in Central Antarctica during an excavation expedition not far from the South Pole. As I sat drinking a cup of Java at the corner Starbucks, I remembered that the expedition was headed by Fritz, the great great grandson of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen , of the same surname. Fabian, an admirer of Captain James Cook, was approved by Czar Alexander I of Russia to lead that second expedition exploring the southern most continent from 1819-21. A wise choice as a graduate from the Kronstadt naval academy at age 18 who rose quickly to Captain than Admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy.

My mother, the late Gleda Heyworth-Smythe, born in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, was a liberal woman’s rights activist and early birth control advocate, educated in Oceanography from Colombia University. Often arrested by the police for her public protests, she was a descendant from a family of Dutch Aristocrat emigrates who met my father, Terrance Smythe , a Theoretical Biologist from Bristol, England, while in chemistry class at Colombia. They soon fell in love and both applied and were accepted for the expedition, posted on the University bulletin board by Fritz Von Bellingshausen: ” Seeking Scientists to retrace my ancestors circumnavigation of the globe - Three years- Funded by the Von Bellingshausen foundation.”

Mom and Dad were married by uncle Fritzi, also Captain on the vessel, Suvorov III. The ships logs recorded the event. I was conceived during their two year exploration of Antarctica. My birth certificate read Fredrick Fabian Smythe . It was during this expedition that several green inscribed stone tablets near the south pole were found in 1947. I suppose it seemed natural that I would become an Investigative Journalist with an interest in photography, especially when I applied, years later, for a position at the North City Bugle, a newspaper periodical.

Odd occurrences, unexplained curiosities were my interest. Cultural mysteries that defied explanation. This is where it all began, as I started the chronicle of experiences during my career, gazing at the half eaten piece of apple pie that lay before me on the Starbucks counter.

It all started as soon as i began working at the Bugle with my first story, recorded in my journal, “Uncovering The Tail Of Nothing. “It was nothing that was circular, two-sided and dark. One could only describe it as something six meters high that hovered without movement.” This investigation led me to earn the title of the Bugle’s ACE reporter. My career had begun in earnest.