I don't know the story behind this photo essay. A friend sent it to me. I colorized it. The soldiers are giving the little pig Kagor, a sweet red wine. The auto-translation from the Russian wikipedia reads thusly:

Kagor (from the French. Cahors), a sweet wine, cooked red varieties of grapes, cultivated near the town of Cahors, partial fermentation or deliver content and then adding alcohol.
They differ spify temno-rubinovoy colour, the completeness, soft, velvety, fine cocoa-chocolate tones in taste and bouquet.  These are prepared in many wine regions. The main characteristic of this type of cooking wine-cooking. 

They differ spify temno-rubinovoy colour? I like that.

 

Beyond that, I know only that I look at this sequence of photos several times a day. I hope you will find as much pleasure in looking at it as I do.

 

BTW, did I mention that I have launched the first social networking site for pot-bellied pigs?

Yoshi's These Little Pigs Website. 

 

I still have to pretty it up, but if you know a pig, or an animal that likes pigs, please direct said beast to  These Little Pigs so they can make some new friends!

 

And, let us drink a toast, at last, to the brave little pig the commies shot into space. 

The Montgomery Block one month after the Earthquake and Fire of 1906.

The Bank Exchange sits behind locked iron doors at the corner. A.P. Giannini's Bank of Italy, which was to change its name to the Bank of America and eventually become the world's largest, then occupied offices to the right.

The following comes to us from the Transamerica Corporation and the California Historical Society, from a booklet originally entitled
"Secrets of Pisco Punch Revealed: Being a true account of the recovery of San Francisco's Long Lost Favorite of Favorites," by William Bronson.

In the post Gold Rush days, a bar was a very important place. 

And the Bank Exchange was one of the most important drinking  establishments in San Francisco. Located in the Montgomery and Washington Streets corner of the famed Montgomery Block, the Bank Exchange was the place leading bankers met to transact business in the absence of an official stock exchange. Its proximity to the waterfront attracted the leaders of commerce, and from the first day the Bank Exchange’s swinging doors opened in 1853, the leading sea captains, miners, lawyers and politicians came to discuss affairs of the day, while partaking of liquid refreshments. 

No history of the social life of San Francisco would be complete without mention of the Bank Exchange, a barroom that opened in 1854, survived the Earthquake and Fire of 1906, and continued to thrive with everwidening fame until its doors were closed forever by Prohibition. 

The principal foundation for its renown was Pisco Punch, a mixture  which, it was said, went down like nectar and came back with the kick of a Missouri mule. Another description is credited to Oliver Perry Stidger who for many years managed the affairs of the Montgomery Block, that fabled building in which the Bank Exchange was located. He likened Pisco Punch to the scimitar of Harroun whose edge was so fine that after a slash a man walked on unaware that his head had been severed from his body until his knees gave way and he fell to the ground dead. 

1. Wash dishes
2. Finish setting up music studio, power supply from Mike, sample disks for emu sampler
3. Get vacuum-forming machine for chess pieces
4. Get supply of materials for new series (A Love Supreme wall hangings) of artwork
5. Make Tangerine Sky business cards for the big do up in wine country this week
6. Make list of people I owe money to, will be able to clear up soon.
7. Get a wife, or 2 or 3 girlfriends, or a bunch of groupies
8. Stop eating alone so much. Have dinner parties or dates. Need new place settings and silverware.
9. Make some pasta to go with braised short-ribs & veggies
10. Finish four or five half-finished pieces for Sun Pop Blue before starting new ones. but post every day.
11. Decide what to do about fourth piece of "seasons" cd ... record new bird sounds ...
12. Find a DAT machine to transfer old music tapes to hard-drive
13. Hit gym 4 times a week
14. Set up G3 mac and go thru all old floppies & zip disks ... old music files to export to gen midi, & hopefully, Flapping in pagemaker to import into InDesign to make pdf ...
15. Look into finding illustrator to make graphic novel of Flapping. 
16. Finish Last Unforetold Man vocal cd: backing vocals, harmonies, string part for Take Me Down & Maia, get Angie into studio for Pop Down the Years, get some help arranging that one, also.
17. Silk-screened covers for Flapping. Mini-cd with "lost" songs ...
18. Shoot "Serge" modular synth videos - put up on YouTube, send to synth blogs. Post "flight of the atom bee," Flapping edit
19. Begin intense targetted promotion of limited edition Flapping
20. Do Year-in-the-Life-of-a-Winery & vintage spanking postcards book proposals
21. Pick up new cologne - Dolce & Gabbana this time
22. Help Nate develop new products for www.myhoneybun.com ... find real marketing person.
23. Wash dishes right now.
24. Steam-clean carpets.
25. Get a house-cleaning service. 
26. Take care of free-lance clients.
27. Raise rates. 
28. Focus on living life in the slow lane 
29. Develope multi-level marketing scheme for the Ché brand ...
30. Wash dishes immediately
    
31. Continue research regarding this wrong dimension thing we seem to be caught up in.
32. Book some live shows or, failing that, do some open mic's
33. Wash dishes.
    

Archaeologists dig up prehistoric couple:

"Archaeologists working on the eve of Valentine's Day carefully began digging up the bones of a prehistoric couple on Tuesday, hoping to keep their 5,000-year-old embrace undisturbed forever.

The pair, buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago in the late Neolithic period, are believed to be a man and a woman who died young, because their teeth were found intact. Archaeologists have hailed the find, saying that double burials from that period are rare and none have been found in such a touching pose.

The burial was unearthed on the outskirts of Mantua during construction work. The site is 25 miles south of Verona, the city where Shakespeare set the story of 'Romeo and Juliet,' and the discovery fueled musings in the media about prehistoric love.

Menotti also has said there is little doubt the couple's pose was born of a deep love." 

Nothing else matters.

These two ... and you ... make the world go 'round.

Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on this day thirty-nine years ago, by the same forces behind the JFK assassination, and the RFK assassination which would take place about two months after the King killing.

In the illustration below, I was going to put some text above the black-and-white squinty-killer-eyes  ... but really what is there to say? This is what we were and this is what we've become? The killers, the shills, the bagmen, the finks, the marketers and the chumps have done an amazing job over the last 40+ years.

Click Here to go to Part One of November 22, 1963: The Coming of the Great Darkness.

Click Here to go to Part Two of November 22, 1963: The Coming of the Great Darkness.

Dr. Paul Linebarger, aka Cordwainer Smith

Cats, cruelty and children

Idealism and morality in the Instrumentality of Mankind

[I found this article in the WayBack Machine, no current links for attrbution, so my apologies in advance for once again simply repurposing* content I find appropriate and essential for Sun Pop Blue.—kb]

"The Lords of the Instrumentality who are here on Fomalhaut III. There is the Lord Femtiosex, who is just and without pity ... There is the Lady Goroke ... who has shown kindnesses to underpeople, as long as the kindnesses were lawful ones. And there is the Lady Arabella Underwood, whose justice no man can understand." ["The Dead Lady of Clown Town", Cordwainer Smith]

The science-fiction writings of Cordwainer Smith consist of some twenty-odd short stories and two novels, which chart the history of an evolving civilisation over some fifteen thousand years. The history is internally consistent, and each story contributes to a coherent picture of the technological, social and spiritual development of the future described.

In real life, Smith was Dr Paul Linebarger, Professor in Asiatic Studies at Johns Hopkins university and colonel in US military intelligence, accomplished linguist and foreign policy adviser to the state department. His writing style, partly inspired by Chinese narrative techniques, more closely resembles poetry than the conventional dry prose of science-fiction, and his stories are dense with literary and historical references and more or less complex linguistic puns. Running through the entire work is a consistent morality and outlook, whose principal themes recur again and again in stories often written many years apart.

The broad outlines of Smith's future civilisation can be briefly sketched. Travel between the stars and the consequent expansion of human culture through the universe is made possible by the invention of 'planoforming' ships that travel faster than light, and by the development of novel systems to protect their passengers and crew against the dangers of space. In this new interstellar culture, true humans live lives of privileged ease, while work is done by robots and by 'underpeople', animals genetically modified to have near-human intelligence and form. Over it all presides the Instrumentality, a benign but absolute dictatorship composed of a ruling nobility who use their technological and telepathic powers to maintain the status quo and to dispense an abstract and dispassionate justice. It is against this background that the principal themes of Smith's stories - love, courage, cruelty, hope, innocence, belief - are played out.

*Repurposing: dot-com-speak for outright theivery.

 
Claude Michel Celse, Seaside Town, 1948

the reason that I am alive

By Boris Vian

the reason that I am alive
the reason that I am alive
for the tanned leg
of a blonde woman
propped against the wall
beneath the round sun
for the billowing sails
of a sleek schooner
at the mouth of the harbor
the iced coffee sipped through a straw
for the caress of sand
gazing at the watery deeps
turning so blue
descending into the deeps
with the fish
the tranquil fish
they calm the bottom of the ocean
fly above the seaweed hair
like slow birds
like blue birds
the reason that I am alive
because it is beautiful

Translated from the French by Joseph Suglia, corrected by me.