Over 300 dead from weather related actions… Tornado times.  I feel for you, hang tough.  It’s only the end of April and that many dead.  The deadliest summer from tornados was like three twenty something in the late seventies, and here we are at 300 today….  The sun is out today, this is good.  Hang Tough Alabama.

I went back and fourth with it. My hot mint tea bag, squeezed slightly… Placed on my left, then my right, closed eye. A total of five minutes maybe, until the dense wet tea leaves lost their thermal powers. Couple sip of tea during the whole deal. Minty happy eye lids. Check it.

here are a small number of things rattling around the head at the moment.  I just pulled the Wire season 4, disc three out of the mailbox.  Ole Netflix, but there is no race to that.  Not really going to talk about the Wire, and whatnot.  Just that i’m moving towards that direction after this type out.

Keep it Movin’ off of Midnight Marauders has been making the rounds in my head as well, a few snippets from that Tribe Called Quest album have taken root again.  Bought a cd used from Permanent Records on Chicago ave during a taco run.  I think I may have brought that part up before, but anyways…. That intro bump off that song has been several soundtracks of random ass folks during my last week.  They talk, that bumps.. at just the right level, the beat below the voice (only because this is in my head, beat over vocals all day in any recording session type fun) They see me nod, and maybe think, i’m for sure down with their plan for dinner.  It has been nice.

Walking around Norwegian Hospital yesterday, on the north side of the building. I was looking up, into the third floor bank of windows from left to right.  There were 4 big rectangles of window to look into, the lights were on in the room, a bright white blast backlit the long arms.   There were these  really cool robotic looking arms, two visible “joints” about 6′L x 6″D.  I was looking up like, “damn honda factory up in these four rooms”  After that first look at these rooms, I thought about hospital rooms in general, and hallways and elevators.  I thought about Carle Hospital in Urbana.  Uncle J, Doug.  The different moments I felt in those rooms, the knowing goodbye, as well as the hopeful goodbyes.  Both with the same vibe in the end.  Love.  Then I got to thinking about the daily operation of hospitals, the endlessness of what they are.  There is the full range of life and death in them daily, and all things between, the saving, the good recoveries, the amazing turn around. Yeah, stuff like that.  Hospitals don’t creep my out, I think I use to say that about them.  But having have thought about it a bit here, now….. i think they are what they are.  Accepting that is a big step into not freaking out.  Whose freaking out?

oh, and yeah… this is not any kind of sports blog or any kind of blog for that matter.  It is space.

speaking of space.  Cortez the Killer, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, peeping a live cut at the moment.  Very nice…

PBS doc on this eve, Gordon Quinn i believe.  What a great bit of human interaction.  It seemed to take me to a place where I started thinking about human genome mapping, mapping in the sense of following the migratory splits of humans after leaving Africa.  I would love to see where my peoples really came from.  I got the ol’ Black and White, with a loss of records of any kind on my Black side.  White side is a bit mutted up. All love.  I love how we are all related, dna wise.   And on top of that, the whole regions of the world where we have ancestors who lived there for long long stretches of time.  Central Asia, Europe, crossing frozen land masses and heading all the way down to the tip of South America.  Some rocked old school nautical skills and made it to Australia.  We humans are pretty fucking dope.  But that dopeness sure loses its luster when we act a damn fool.  War, Religious back and fourth, so called Cultural truths.  Whateves, rock it lovely.  I”m going to try.   The nuns in the Gordon Quinn documentary were basically going around, in Chicago back in the diz, (yeah diz not day) they walked up to people, and just asked “are you happy?”,  they were engaging and super interested in what people had to say, coaxing out the real answers these random people were secretly wanting to share.  I found it amazing.  That is what I was really trying to get at this eve.  Genome mapping and such, is also the bomb.  Though there is that whole government keeping dna samples of as many of us as they can.

There is a little store on the corner of Walton and Francisco, it felt packed full of people, but in reality there were only about 6 of us.  Everyone is around the counter pretty much ready to check out, and the nice couple that own the spot were ringing us up in an orderly manner.  All good, The doorway opens right into this cluster of people.  I’m leaving, juice and onion in hand, and the door swings inward, two chill lanky teens roll in.   The larger more blazed of the two says “hot country curls”, I look up mostly because that grouping of words is pretty cool to hear, and that is when I realize he is looking at me, polite grin on his face.  I walked out thinking about Hot Country Curls as I untied Poppy and started toward the park.  I had images of Terrence Howard in Hustle & Flow in my head, but with my face.  The thought of that all didn’t get deep enough for me to get to Pimpin’ and such.  When I was in the park near the smaller lagoons south of Division it fell into my head that I should start putting some things onto this here space.  I’m thinking that it’s just me and the spambots in the comment inbox, so why not free some thoughts.

Oh, and Mercury looks nice right?

I went to sleep listening to the BBC on the radio last night.  Ok, it was NPR app on my phone, whatever.  This is where I got the first word about the earthquake and tsunami that followed, and is still making its move in the oceans and seas.  It was hard to go to sleep after some details snuck into my sleepy head.  The usual wake up right before the alarm thing happened again today, that has changed over some years.  I use to wake up within the minute of my alarm often, this has settled nicely into chill ass several minutes before my alarm is suppose to go off, i’d say a good 10 minutes before lately.  This is good.  I rarely start my days off with the sound of the alarm these days.  These days, who say that?  Who rights that?  Those questions along with Steve Miller’s song Time are now stuck in my head together.  Ok… enough of where that might have been going, I walked my dog, chilled out for about 30 minutes before biking off to work.  It was during those 30 minutes that I started to look through a New York Times gallery of some images from Japan.  CRAZY SHIT.  I was numbly stunned, and went about my day.  I did things, I used my brain, nothing too creative today, so that is not so great, but here I am now.  Almost 13 has past since I saw those images, and read some early damage figures.  I’m sad.   Life is ok on the local front, my world that is close, it goes on, churns and swoons.  But the larger scale effect of resources, population, pollution, weapons, and well… you get the drillio, I could go for days, and even break down things into the minutia utter despair.  The sun was out, and Libya is hot.  I hope tomorrow brings something else.  I mean, i’m suppose to lay my head on my pillow when this Wisconsin effect is shaping up across the country.  A war on us has been unwrapped, out shiny new awareness of the way things are.  There is something beyond that though, one person one vote, and well.. us.  I’m thinking it’s doable, right?

This whirlpool is about the only cool thing to come about with this Earthquake.  And saying that, I’m hoping no one was caught in it, or hurt.  There is a boat visible….

the nearer you destination, the more you slip slidin’ away….

yeah, just like that.  Way to visit homie, so fun, such a great time talking and getting motivated.  I needed that.

The sun that is, don’t it just make you smile.  Both kinds of smile, the one on your face, and the one in your soul.  Nothing left to do but smile smile smile.  Yeah, I snuck in a Grateful Dead lyric, so?  I think I might even wipe all the sludgy salt crap off my bike, I think it deserves a pretty look after being such a boss bike all winter.  Go team no oil!  Speaking of oil, I recently rocked the netflix online deal and peeped the doc called Tapped.  I highly recommend it, very smart, very packed full of information people need to know.  Always knew there was some shady shit going down with the whole bottled water industry, it took this doc to make me think about how I see Poland Springs, Aquafina, and Desani, or is it Dasani?  Regardless, these companies stealthily take water from communities that are being duped.  And not only that, but our tap water is tested way way way more than any bottled water.  And when the bottled water people are having their water tested, it is from their own labs.  You know people don’t police themselves very well, so an industry that charges more per gallon than gasoline, uhm….  yeah, not good.   I’m thankful for my new treadless steel water bottle, fill er up.  Bigger Better Bottle Tax!  States that rock a bottle tax to pay for their recycling programs not only have a steady source of money to help oil the wheels, but they often have 75% returns or higher on their plastic bottles, lots of broke people will get these bottles back into the recycling loop.  Currently, these bottling lobbyist are stopping this from seeming like a good idea, they must have lots of cocaine and prostitutes to convince our bought law makers to not pursue this route.  Shame, for now at least.

Love is all you need.

I watched this docu film thing last night, enlighten up, it was really good.  I have been on the fence about which Yoga to get into, and more importantly, why?  I know the benefits, I feel like I see it in the faces and bodies of some of my friends.  There seems to be this over doing it thing going on with Yoga, as the older cooler skate kids once said to Bart Simpson “it smacks of effort”.  In this case, i’m really only talking about the massive amounts of yoga this and yoga that, that seem to be on every block of every transitioning area.  I know the true values of the peace, health, and all that jazz, but power core studio max, the smugness… ah.  Oh well, i’m  still going to give it a whirl.  I’m thinking it might be my early spring giddy up kind of thing.

On another note, go Egyptian People, do your thing! big ups.  I found this really great image on the web of Jack Sikma, any of my homies from Edison Middle School in Champaign might recall the big Jack Sikma love that we used to rock.  It was about gently grabbing someone by the forehead, and saying “SIIIKMAA” as you gently gave a slight push and pull back, think suction cup style.  Yeah, we were troubled youth, looking for inspiration in the form of a Forward from the Seattle Supersonics.   Now that was a team name, Supersonics… poor Seattle, Emerald Lame.

also hot on the funny fucked up tip…

It feels warm today, it’s snowing again, and well, as the title says, there is something different to this snow today.  It’s pretty!  The snow that tagged us over the last week, was pretty as well, but it kind of hurt as well.  60 mile per hour gusts will do that, cause pain that is.  This morning while walking my doggy dog in the park, the snow was more welcoming, it seemed to whisper into my ear, i’m not going to tell you what it said, but it was a nice, and snow did use the phrase “gentle as can be”  I still don’t get that.  But whatever nature says works for me.  She is full of intelligence and love.  I peeped a ted talk today, plastics and it’s toll on the planet and all of us on it.  I’m not going to link that below, you can figure out how to find it if you want, but what I liked most from my early am ted talk was the phrase “Animal Mimicry”.  Basically, use processes already being used by animals to do things like “make something harder”, the speaker use clam shells as an example, and well…. what a bravo point, why use all kinds of giant buildings that burn crazy energy, creates poisons, and kills people with cancers.  Peep the clam.  This might be my battle cry for the day, peep the clam, peep the clam.  Anyway, I think i’m going to have another coffee. ok ok,

This is about what we have today in Chicago.  It’s  still cold, it’s still February for jimminy.    But the sun is out, the days still go, and we all gotta keep moving.  I was having a decent time laughing inside at all of the helpless motorist that had to dig their dino cars out of the snow, then I went to work yesterday and did exactly that… dig.  Still sore, but hey….. mid winter workout, maybe I should get something like that into my daily deal.  The craziest thing to me about this storm, other than the massive amounts of thunder and lightning that came with this snow storm, is the Lake Shore Drive hecticness.  There were people that decided that driving in a blizzard next to a very very tough winter spitting lake was a good idea.   Those folks were literally frozen in place, national lampoon style.  Ok, not really anything national lampoon, I just wanted to work those words in, I like them… NATIONAL LAMPOON, there you go again.  But yeah, people stayed in their cars for up to ten hours waiting for help.  I can’t imagine what I would want to do, leave the car, walk to where?  But yeah, that’s why I ride a bike.  To dangerous to bike… well, I might not be going.

People were coming up with names for this blizzard, like a name is needed… we know it’s kicking our asses right, lets just call it Snow in February in Chicago.   Yeah, it was a large storm, it covered many states at one time, there was the thunder and lightning, the 60 mile per hour gust here in Chicago at least, the wind chill, all that and more.  It’s sucked, but it was fun.  I have been off of my bike for two days now.  I’m about to walk to work, which happens to be where I left my bike two nights ago, but tonight… i’ll be riding home.  At least up to my street.   The main roads are up and going for sure, but 80% of the side streets are still kinda fucked up.  Not bike ready streets for sure.  Luckily my ride is light.  Speaking of  light, i’m off to get into this winter sun, get that vitamin D up.