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Much of the northeast is digging out from a massive blizzard; a real blizzard with thunder, lightning, 60 mph wind gusts, lions, tigers, snow plow operators who are charging $250 cash for 7 minutes work and no reporting to the IRS, power outages, tidal flooding, ghosts( I saw a woman’s footprints in the snow but no woman. The footprints were headed towards this nearby castle at Pedyston Crag) speculative prices on white bread and 1% milk and endless local television reports emanating from abandoned train stations(perhaps reporters enjoy the desolation of a train station; no annoying civilians making funny faces in camera view) The all time state record for a snowfall was set at the Jersey shore in Brick(a town)(34 inches) and Belmar(the home of my meditative ocean jetty) had almost 31 inches. Jersey shore was epicenter. What does it mean? Will the prices of vinegar and French fries, frozen custard or a tilt-a-whirl ride on the boardwalk at Point Pleasant go up after Memorial Day since the shore was epicenter? With all the snow at the shore, it’ll be weeks before I can rest my weary mind and backside on the jetty at Belmar.
Several times during the night/height of the storm, I went outside, ‘brundled’ up(Seth Brundle was the ‘Fly’ character in the movie). I exchanged bodies with a snowflake; after all, no two flakes are alike (hard to believe). Look at me mom (today’s her birthday), “I’m flying.” Under a street light I sailed, carefree, cold and calculating(wanting to rest at the very top of a six foot drift off to the side, so no one would shovel or plow me the next day) What a world of snow, free form design, virginal mother nature and purist silence. I stayed the whole night on top of a drift, sparkling in the light beams from a street lamp, wishing and hoping we could skip the year 2012 and go right to 2013. I was luckier than Seth Brundle, “The Fly.”(Jeff Goldblum). He stayed an insect; I reverted back from a snowflake to human form so I could shovel those same family flakes that I was once part of. I Remember Mama and the original movie ‘The Fly.’ Talk about terror and lasting images. When Vincent Price deposits a boulder on the human faced squeaky voiced fly, pleading for help, I was and still am devastated. There are a lot of voices at holiday time calling out for help but mostly unheard.
I took a train from New Brunswick into Penn Station / Madison Square Garden with my son last night to see Rutgers play North Carolina; plenty of homeless people sleeping on floors and sidewalks, on top of flattened cardboard boxes or on the top step of a house of worship, doors closed(after hours). Sometimes hustle and bustle forced stepping over or near these human beings. I thought curious; for one brief moment all of us passed the birth canal, equally without access to cell phones, bottle of merlot, meth, Mercedes, Manolos’, Master-card, moon beams, or motivation. For that one brief shining moment we were all the same homo sapien.
Laurel & Hardy from 'March of the Wooden Soldiers'
I lucked out this holiday season. Yippee!(who says this anymore. It worked when I was a kid getting a chance to watch the ‘Lone Ranger’ without my mother making me dry the dishes and miss the show) I got a chance to see ‘The March of the Wooden Soldiers’ twice; once on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Good old Channel 11 came to the rescue. A bowl of oatmeal with raisins and chopped almonds(for ambience) both days stimulated my amygdala etc.(Scientists have discovered that the amygdala, a small almond shaped structure deep within the temporal lobe, is important to a rich and varied social life among humans. “Primates who live in larger social groups have a larger amygdala, even when controlling for overall brain size and body size”, says Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University) What if the writer of the screenplay for ‘March of the Wooden Soldiers’ was genetically related to Nostradamus? I don’t know why I watch the movie every year. Tradition? Tevye? I can’t play the piano or a fiddle. It saddens me; basically every actor in that 1934 vintage movie is probably gone yet they still haunt me. So the oatmeal made me observe obscure detail this year. I like Toyland; there’s a certain esprit de corps. The king is jolly, rotund, self serving and reminds me of a certain sub-set of folks here in Jersey that gather around a few days before the first Tuesday in November. I like Little Bo Peep; for the most part pretty conscientious about her sheep. It still bothers me what Gene Wilder did to a sheep in a Woody Allen movie. Now dig this, remembering the Nostradamus theme. Stannie Dum(Laurel) marries Mister Barnaby in the movie. Eighty-six years later this is the raging debate stateside whether these marriages are legal. And when one of the pigs disappears (and Tom Tom is implicated), Little Bo Peep testifies to the King that “the little pigs are friends of ours.” It means to me they were all vegans in Toyland, living in harmony with the animals, not resorting to eating them but living next door to the three pigs (albeit in smaller row type of huts. discrimination in housing still alive even in Toyland. another sad point). The importance of department of defense type thinking: Toyland is invaded by the Bogeyman. Even Toyland has defenses. A conscripted mouse mans a blimp and drops firecrackers on the Bogeymen (in my college frat house a crazy brother suspended an M80 firecracker in a filled bathtub, exploded it and took out the housemother’s apartment downstairs) The essence and future of defense spending: the March of the Wooden Soldiers. The message: let wooden soldiers (future robotics, rockets etc) do the work and risk their artificial existence. Human life is too precious) I like my oatmeal and jetty for thinking. I wonder about taking the dried oatmeal flakes, finding Jackie Paper and a bic lighter and seeing(after deep inhalations) if I wind up at a dream farmhouse, in Iowa, standing in front a barn and silo(must have a silo) with a pitchfork and a blade of grass stuck between a crack in my front teeth)
A few lines ago I spoke about vegans. I haven’t eaten red meat since 1975. A lot of reasons and no reason. Indeed confusing. I don’t want to get sued by Texas cattlemen after all I’m a homesteader and a netflix rancher here in suburban Monmouth County. I love Texas. But now hear this. A US study found that Neanderthals, prehistoric cousins of humans ate grains and vegetables as well as meat, cooking meat over fire (wow) in the same way us humans have done. However there is a prevailing theory that Neanderthals relied on too much meat which contributed to their extinction around 30,000 years ago. My cholesterol by the way is 111. How do scientists know all this stuff about them? Evidence is found in plaque build-up in fossilized teeth.
I shoveled reluctantly yesterday. The independence of snow plow people. I read an expose this morning by a snow plow operator who made $40,000 here in Jersey during the 1996 blizzard; all un-reported cash income. He went on to say how stressful his job was, the rising and falling of the plow, always careful not to damage. Here’s a great video on you tube that got 1.5 million hits in a few days of the blizzard in NYC and a snow plow, sanitation truck driver and brilliant thinkers. I love dim bulbs. I love people hanging out of windows taking videos. I love New York. I love Reckless Ostrich, the spirit back and well in my vibrations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt_r-jO3lKE
I love future think in medicine. The Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Body and Regenerative Medicine has released a study that may, might, could lead to a cure for cancer. I know what you’re thinking.. There is a molecule in all cancer cells called CD47 that essentially tells the cancer cells not to eat themselves. CD47 is present in other cells in the human body, but not active. An antibody has been discovered that, in short, deadens the CD47 molecule, causing the cancer cells to eat themselves.(With the CD47 molecule disabled, the cancer cells immediately feed on the first food source available…. themselves) I know. I know. I love. I need. I hope. I worry. I absorb as much as I can. Keep shoving stuff (information) into my head. Keep growing my telomeres. Keep taking my cocktail of 35 antioxidants and vitamins for 40 years. Keep thanking the universe for all my gifts. Keep thanking my readership (you all) for bringing way over 4000 people here to this Blog in December. Keep tweaking New Year resolutions. Keep working on a second novel. Keep appreciating my wife and son. That’s all there is. Keep celebrating New Years for another 50 years. Hey everybody. Happy Healthy Wonderful Amazing New Year 2011. I can’t wait for November 11th. I’ll tell you about it during the year.
Favor. If you like the blogs. Share it. Tell more folks about it. Spread the word. It kind of fuels me. Also please check website for novel book trailer etc.
book trailer video(65 seconds):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M