Muffin Bottoms [not] Just another WordPress weblog

06/14/2010

Open Letter To NLON CG About BP Disaster Recovery

Filed under: Academic,Humor,Mundane Or Sublime — admin @ 11:49 am

Hi there,
Could you pass this along to NLON Coast Guard, or perhaps get me the address for the suggestions? My idea is to dump many sunflower seeds onto the biggest pudding textures of the oil on the surface of the water. They’re likely to soak up not just the surface oils but also soak up a whole bunch from underneath until  complete saturation.

Then use technologies you already have to scoop up tons of the filled up sunflower seeds.

And lastly you cold-press the little buggers like they were so many olives and the juice you’ll have will be a new invention of bio-diesel you’ll have helped me invent. A hybrid half “dino-diesel” half veggie oil that won’t blow up engines, never needs a preheat, and doesn’t pollute too much.

Trademark it before me just because I’m middle-class and I’ll kick your ass.

J/K, you can have it Pro-Bono as my next gift to society.

Sincerely,
Marco

06/12/2010

Quoting Woody Guthrie

Filed under: Academic,Mundane Or Sublime,Music and Stuff — admin @ 3:35 pm
I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good.
I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose.
Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing.
Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly
or too this or too that.
Songs that run you down or poke fun at you
on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air
and my last drop of blood.
I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world
and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops,
no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built,
I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself
and in your work.
And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part
by all sorts of folks just about like you. 

- Woody Guthrie

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_9895127

Woody (I Hate A Song) by atizine

05/24/2010

A Walking On Obit About A Dear Old Friend’s Daughter

Filed under: Mundane Or Sublime,News — admin @ 2:10 am

Last October I wrote about someone I know who passed on.

Tribal Elder and Medicine Person, Oliver Sounsoci.

I was looking him up on the net just now to retell a story I know about him to a friend of mine and I see that his daughter Mary passed away last month. I met her but didn’t know her really really well. but I knew Oliver really well. I’ll reprint the obit I read on the internet here too, and then I’ll retell my story.

So here I will retell my story about Mary’s father Oliver. I was at an 8door sweat near Omaha NE around 1994.  Oliver Saunsoci was leading it. It was 8 doors because a friend was over who had kicked diabetes a long time ago but had started drinking heavily again and was terrified his diabetes might come back if he keeps drinking and eating and stuff. So Oliver was healing him from that and any of us who wanted to could be in the first 4 doors and any others we wanted.

Afterwards we were all eating with him and his family, including Moves Camps from both sides of the Canadian border. It was a great day. I had my 64 Epiphone Caballero out and was singing folksongs and my wacky punkrock stuff with a crowd of mostly the little kids around me. At one point Oliver came up and said, “hey, mind if I play some songs too? I haven’t played guitar in a while.”

Of course I said sure.

He proceeded to play 20 minutes or so of jazz, Flamenco, and bluesy stuff that would knock both your socks off and everything else you might have on.

“Wow, you really haven’t been playing for a long time? I’m impressed.”

He explained that a long time ago Jose Feliciano came to him for help weaning himself off Ultra-Lente insulin and taking back his life. Sometimes he donated money to Oliver’s family, and sometimes he just taught him guitar lessons. That’s how Oliver learned so many great styles to weave into something phenomenal he can play whenever he wants to, even many years after not playing at all!

Now here’s the story I want to tell you.

Why hasn’t he played any guitar for the past 3 or 4 years?

That man saw a kid who was getting really good at guitar and was taking lessons by just going and learning and didn’t have a guitar at home to practice with. So he did what any man would do. (well, any man worth his salt dammit!) He handed the kid his very expensive guitar and said to use it for his lessons. And he never asked for it back. Three years later, he still hadn’t gotten around to getting another guitar, and he told us owning a new one was just less important than helping people with alcohol and illness, and making sure the children get everything they need.

05/20/2010

We’re Not Really That Stupid; Are We?

Filed under: Academic,Mundane Or Sublime,News — admin @ 9:33 am

Are we?

OPEN LETTER TO: the New London Day, Governor Rell and really all people inhabiting Mother Earth!

“A modern day island of Dr Moreau……”

–  mdnorwich,

Responding to an article about proposals making Plum Island biocontainment level 5 facility either a public recreation area, or selling off to the highest bidder.

Worse than that, mdnorwich.

That island will NEVER be safe enough for either of those two proposed options. The terns know this, the seagulls know this and ornithologist Helen Hays knows this. I’ve been made fully aware of this and so should you.

But Governor Rell seems to know about as much about this as she did about John Rowland’s shenanigans while she was his assistant.

I’m positive she’s not stupid. So I will suggest she and her crones have been very ill advised on this one.

Here, I have another hairbrained idea to pitch in with that will be so splendid we’ll all die blissfully without even a wimper. And it’ll solve about 5 extra problems, ready? Let’s move Vieques bombing range there. We can blast the thing over and over forcing all the incinerated bones of 40 years worth of anthrax, ebola and madcow diseases right up there into our cloud-cover by the megaton.

Then the next species that gets enough intelligence to study lives that came before them can ask three questions.

1) where did the Anasazi go?
2) how did the Inca disappear?
3) what happened to Jodi Rell and all her american people?

__________________________________________________


[ref]=[http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.med.diseases.lyme/2005-09/msg00122.html]
[ref]=[http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=639]
[ref]=[http://www.aleutmgt.com/AleutWebsite/Projects/PlumIsland/index.html]
Careful with this somewhat more propagandistic link:
[ref]=[http://www.newsmakingnews.com/plumislandnews.htm]
(plenty of good sources listed also, though.)
[ref]=[http://nationalhogfarmer.com/health-diseases/0715-sites-replace-plum-island]
[ref]=[http://www.theday.com/article/20100520/NWS01/100529989]
[ref]=[http://www.theday.com/article/20100518/NWS12/305189897]

05/12/2010

God is good all the time. — Darryl Tonemah

Filed under: Mundane Or Sublime — admin @ 5:38 am

This started out as a message to a friend who just survived a major tornado.

In addition to thoughts and prayers, I’m taking a personal moment to say thanks out loud. Thanks to know you, thanks that you and yours are OK, thanks that I can be part of this entire great mystery. Sometimes I don’t understand a minute of it. I survived a house fire back in Green Bay 2002ish. We’re all standing outside on the next door neighbor’s lawn and a 6 year old I’ll never forget looks up at me and says, “Oh my God Marco, I hope your classical is OK.” She knew how much more important that guitar was to me than my other guitars. She said a mouthful. I’m attached to many things including that ’50s hand made Mexican, etc. But even among those guitars, and everything else I possess, my immediate thought was to look around and see that each and every one of us was relatively OK, and know that that means sooooooooo much more.

Oh, and my corner of the house was just fine. The smoky smells around those guitars are milder than I’d prefer I think. Because if it reeked every time I opened a guitar case, I’d most likely tell this whole story more often!

Wow, why did I wait so long to tell people again? Thanks for being you, Darryl.

I’ll add one other event that blogging this has brought back to me.

I was staying in Corbin Harney’s trailer in Oregon. He was still alive, but living in Nevada or California somewhere doing all the great things he does. I felt honored to be told I can stay at his place as long as I want, just that if he ever needs it I’ll have to use a tent outside of it for him. Of course. Well one of those nights I slept through a very rocky, windy, turbulent storm. I’d burned Sage before I went to bed.

On that land, we always used to wake up with the Sun and sing morning prayers, etc.

Well that morning I was awakened by more than just, “time to get up,” like normal.

“Marco, are you ok?”

Of course I’m fine, I thought. What are they worried about. Maybe I dreamed the whole storm, I remember thinking, and joking that maybe I touched back down at Dorothy’s place in Kansas. Well I didn’t know the half of it!!! I got up, and looked around outside to get in a good space for ceremony; but was given some serious pause around me. A Quonset hut up the hill with a bunch of storage stuff was completely upside down. The huge antique mash tent next to it was blown all around a bit too but intact. The path of destruction turned up dirt, rocks, branches everything in its way as it winded down the hill straight at me where I slept until it got to the stream between the cyclone and me. Well this crooked little dust devil banged a left right at that stream followed it past me until a point where the stream turned and he didn’t where he continued on straight away from there.

Thank you God! Thank you Corbin, thank you Sage, and thank you Darryl for bringing all these memories back to me.

Darryl at CDBaby

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/tonemah

Video which shows the stream and Corbin’s trailer as it sits nowadays

Youtube…

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03/22/2010

Sometimes You War; Sometimes You Dialogue; Sometimes You Do Both.

“Sometimes it’s a good day to die, sometimes it’s a good day to have breakfast.” — Thomas Builds-the-Fire

College teacher Julie Jennings conveys the following breaking news:

“The 3-20-10 Providence Protest has sparked a dialogue with the game’s publisher. The game-maker is starting to consider Native pre-testing of the game. Julie Jennings would like the game-maker to be invited to present to the Rhode Island Indian Council. His letter will be printed soon and he (B. Youse, a corporate owner no doubt) can be reached at byouse@cablespeed.com ”

RE: King Philip’s War role playing game.
Company Name: Multi-man Publishing.

My Opinion:

Awesome. Maybe he’ll allow a hefty portion of the outside panels of the box be words from elders of many tribes saying how they feel and strongly suggesting people learn more about not just Metacomet and Massasoit but find out more about each and every river name and street and town name. Heck there can be explanations that there are always more than one story that make up history at any time, and near the UPC label there could be a coupon for 5 bucks off at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research center. And maybe he’ll give a buck or two from each purchase to children in Haiti and Pine Ridge.

And how about a booklet listing NDN bands, artists, actors, songwriters, movie makers and all kinds of other talented people both contemporary and old.

There should be a separate booklet showing the facts that the original 13 colonies only succeeded in driving England out because native american boys were such skilled harpooners, lancers, swimmers, helmsmen and tacticians.

\

\

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36LO_zmTGOU

/

/

I demand somewhere on the box be placed the quote that almost got John Ledyard jr. kicked out of Dartmouth where he wrote in a bluebook that he felt Uncas should be placed right up there with Darwin or Isaac Newton for his grasp of science, technology tactics and domestic and nation to nation concerns.

OK I better stop ranting or this will get too long. Let me just say that all represents how I feel so far. I don’t want this box to see light of day but if it must, this is some of the treatment I believe it should be given from beginning to end.
http://www.projo.com/news/content/INDIAN_WAR_GAME_03-15-10_46HKPR8_v28.3a62f30.html

01/24/2010

Please Buy My Song “Frybread” And Help Haiti AND Pine Ridge

Filed under: Mundane Or Sublime,Music and Stuff,News — admin @ 12:29 pm

I don’t often ask favors of everyone I’ve ever met; but listen:

Even if I’ve given you a copy of my song “Frybread” for free, or even if you’ve bought it in compilations or on my CD back when I used to promote myself; could you please consider buying it off of the nammys page right now for their .99c price?

http://www.nativeamericanmusicawards.com/musicdownload.cfm
If you do, half of your purchase will help in Haiti and half will go to Pine Ridge as well this winter. The fact that it helps in both regions makes me very happy and my heart smiles so so very much.

Cheers,
marco

12/16/2009

Who Remembers When G-d Supposedly Said He’d Strike Oral Roberts Dead??

Filed under: Academic,Food,Humor,Mundane Or Sublime,OpEd,Tech — admin @ 4:24 am

Who remembers when Oral Roberts said he needed to raise a certain amount of millions or G-d was going to strike him dead?

And Who remembers when he claimed he met G-d near a burning bush and was told he had a stay of execution and had until February instead to raise the last million or two that he was short.

I am not bringing this up just to run a dirty old rotten scoundrel through the mud even more immediately after he actually died.

Mostly I’m bringing it up because you might have forgotten.

I will never judge him, and since I didn’t even send him 35 cents, it was easy to forgive him; but I will never forget.

And I aim to make sure you don’t either.

Surely the most famous of all the Lord’s speaking to Charismatics is the famous, “Oral Roberts Death Threat Prophecy” a preposterous and fabricated supposed “Word from the Lord.” Roberts told his nationwide audience in 1987 that God had threatened to call him home if he couldn’t raise 8 million dollars by his creditor’s deadline. Whether or how that threat might have been carried out the world will never know because Roberts received a last minute reprieve in the form of a large check from a Florida dog track owner, as you remember. Two years later when Roberts was forced to close his massive, multi-million dollar City of Faith Medical Center anyway, in spite of the 8 million dollars, he asked God, “Why?” And Oral Roberts said God spoke to him and God said,

“I had you build the City of Faith large enough to capture the imagination of the entire world, about the merging of My healing streams of Prayer and Medicine. I did not want this revelation localized in Tulsa, however, and the time has come when I want this concept of merging My healing streams to be known to all people and to go into all future generations.” So said God. Roberts said, “It is clearly in my spirit, as I have ever heard Him, the Lord gave me an impression, ‘You and your partners have merged prayer and medicine for the entire world, for the Church World and for all generations.’ And then He said, ‘It is done.’ And then I asked, ‘Is that why after eight years you are having us close the hospital and after eleven years the medical school?’ And God said, ‘Yes, the mission has been accomplished in the same way that after three years of public ministry, my Son said on the cross, Father, it is finished!'”

[ref]=[ http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=2178 ]

11/13/2009

From a Soldier To A Senator

Filed under: Academic,Mundane Or Sublime,News,OpEd — admin @ 4:21 pm

OK, this is mostly an open letter to Senator McCain, but Lieberman and a few other menaces to society should listen up too.

Dear Senator McCain,

I’m addressing this to you but it’s for many others as well.

As a veteran, I’m speaking soldier to soldier to you, but I’m also speaking soldier to civilian to so many other people in your camp who believe we should not give a fair trial to the terror suspects. Lastly, I’m speaking soldier to draft dodger to a few of the remaining people in your camp who feel the way you do.

You think it’s inconceivable? You think these human beings should not be tried in a court of law?

You think it sends a mixed message??? How much clearer can it be Mr McCain.

🙁

Or to quote my very first drill instructor ever, it’s that
simple, private! If freedom is worth fighting for, then it is worth
trying people in our courts of law under the laws that apply to them.
Have you never read up on Alien Tort? Have you never read the Amistad
decision, both majority and minority? Please do. Please get your head
out of your sphincter, stop running for office for a few precious minutes
and for once try to remember what it was like when YOU fought for the due
process you deserved as a citizen of the United States, as a human being
and as a soldier and warrior.

Can you not afford that same inalienable right to your enemies? I bet you
can’t. I can. I have that much confidence.

Or are you perhaps afraid that some of these horrible people will finger
you in their open court cases that you are so desperately and aggressively
blocking!!!

Maybe you had something to hide during 9/11? I’m NOT accusing you, I’m just
asking. Maybe you’re not really on the side against torture afterall. How
can you reconcile being against due process and for human rights?

How can you? Tell me this. I need to know.

10/25/2009

How Much do You Know about the Deer Island Massacre?

Filed under: Academic,Mundane Or Sublime,News — admin @ 3:48 pm

334 years ago this month!!!

At the time of King Phillips war, with slave ships heading to Bermuda from all over New England, while there were many Colonial wars raging on everywhere, almost everyone from the Natick “praying Indian” families were rounded up and forcefully marched to Deer Island where they were surrounded by military in what has come to be considered a concentration camp.

The military goal appears to have been to starve everyone dead over one winter’s time. Elder women went past frostbitten hands to gather quahogs and other coastal creatures in attempts to feed as many children as they could hoping that some would live on.

Miraculously, some did.

Read up; there is so much history in Natick, Cape Cod and Boston Harbor areas from those times!

http://www.millermicro.com/NPI-Bostonia.html

http://www.millermicro.com/natprayind.html

http://www.nipmucnation.org/Deer%20Island%20History.htm

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