is entropy finite?

Why should I be forced to sit around waiting for protons to decay? For entropy to destroy my living room? For my hair to get messed up again? For the great caterpillars of the earth to come out from their secret mines, devouring every thing in sight and leaving in their wake a silky web of entropy? Tell me this, space tyrant, demon consort, "thing" that sits at the end of time waiting for reality to munch itself into a vortex of black holes and subatomic particles: if times arrow is clinically reversed, does that mean order increases with every possible transaction, or at least, Gibbs free energy is reduced every time I refuse a stick of gum or throw a meter in the backwards parking meter. This is happening right now, I can tell. Another copy of me is rushing backward in time to that parking meter I leaned against, high on LSD, in the wake of a rainstorm, as a nice lady needed to use it. She was actually disgusted with the hippies on the street. There was a newspaper vendor playing Indian music and this happens just before, or just after, that parking meter, depending upon the entropy thing. Is there a finite amount of disorder? Is entropy finite? Does that mean that the universe will "finish" itself some day?

left him for dead

A crazy person attacked me today. Accused me of being a Satanic Motherfucker. Beat him senseless. Left him for dead. OK...maybe I escaped his, surprisingly strong, grasp and backed away from his insults. Called cops. Got the fucker arrested. Note to self, a random crazy person is MUCH stronger than I generally assume him/her to be.

Goodbye Mathemetician

Mathemetician uncle. I am sorry I did not go fishing with you, five years ago I was tired from a road trip and you were a lot to handle one on one. A genius. A giant. A speaker of fifteen languages. A topologist. An expert in set theory. I could not work my way through the abstracts of your papers, in fact, the titles were a mystery to me. You travelled the world. You grew up on a ranch and branded cattle. You smoked menthol cigarettes, and I like to think that somehow, in another cosmos parallel to this one, an undying aspect of you is still sitting at the Satire, in Denver, with a menthol cigarette in one hand and a self-satisfied grin on its face. Your face. Jack, I will miss you.

the dark espresso of aether

Late August again, frogs in the trees, katydids too, gryllus on the ground, click click click chirrrrrip chirrrrup chirp chirp some more, overlapping cries of wanton passion, they make the darkness deep and this moment meaningful. They all are. The moments. The insects. There is no way to save them, the crickets will soon be gone, their eggs under the soil the frogs overwintering somewhere soft and muddy. August slides into September, the smell of new textbooks and the sudden appearance of friends, from every corner of the Earth, with stories to tell of time misspent, drugs done, lovers conquered, pets fed. Life, like the foam on a cappuccino so insubstantial so translucent over wonderful power in the deep. These moments I can almost, abetted by the crickets, see through the foam, to the black, the endless espresso dark spine of the universe that unites us all in caffeine, like cave fish, like black monkeys, like deep sea fish...

Why We Fight

We fight because we have forgotten not to. We fight because we drink coffee. We fight because the bastards are stupid and we can see through their schemes. We fight because they can make us loose but we can make it so they cannot win. We fight because we like it. We fight because the anger keeps us alive. We fight because we can make it difficult for everyone. We fight because of love. We fight because of hatred. We fight over ideas. We fight over beliefs. We fight for some kind of vision. We fight because the struggle between us and them is eternal. We fight because Giordani Bruno burned at the stake and we fight because a million others have stood up to dictators. We fight because their Jesus is bullshit. We fight because our president is a fool. We fight because the world is wasting its resources. We fight because humanity needs us. We fight because humanity can endure, somehow, whether we win or not. We fight because winning means everything for the future. We fight because we can raise hell.

Every Person in the MIdwest Should Be Forced to Eat Burgers at Kumas Corner: A Culinary Review by Psyko Butcher

If you do not eat here on at least a semi-regular basis, you will be killed.

Bray Road and the Beast

Werewolf hunting started slow traffic and no music in the car. Two couples, arranged to be optimal for horror movie scenarios, as evidenced by House of a Thousand Corpses and Kalifornia, among many others, one of the woman was pregnant, adding to the horror possibilities. Soundtrack a disappointment, took the Literature Professor's car and with a car come certain rules, a shame, it had a 6 CD disk changer and Ozzy Osbourne would have hurt nobody. Beloit came easy, only two hours into the driving, shaggy-haired man who teaches school, but under the placid exterior, a beer-drinking badass armed to the hilt and the closest we could get to the Punisher. An old house full of young cats, beer on the side porch, a small city dying of its own obsolescence, a trip to a bar called the mouse, where harsh language is forbidden. I broke the rule, immediately, with the word "Pussy", unable to get it in my head that, when referring to a glass poured half full to avoid intoxication, this is still a bad word. People who believe in bad words puzzle me. Still, at the mouse, a person can be thrown out at the slightest utterance of profanity. What I find vexing, particular, interesting, and indicating a certain degree of hubris on the part of the establishment owners, is that nowhere is there a sign posted indicating "no profanity". Their chicken and dumplings were designed and formulated to nourish the working class it was here I consumed the largest dumpling I have ever seen, in truth, half went uneaten. The badass lives in a green household his bipolar wife home schools their children they fight and stab each other and make up and are genuinely suited for each other. I once saw the badass kill a man with a number two pencil.
Onward, to Whitewater, a bed and breakfast run by old people who do not understand bohemia or goatees but were charmed that there was a wool spinner on the team and somehow forgave me my metaldom. It was so quiet there that a pin dropping to the floor would have elicited numerous comments on timbre and such, and the insect noises on a cool night were virtually deafening. Victorian houses need LSD and windows that open, neither of which we had, but it was my first bed and breakfast since CA and my sisters wedding and it was so restfull I could barely keep from falling asleep as I walked in the door of the place. At night, we pulled ourselves out of dreamspace and horror novels and books about the Amish for a long drive around a swamp looking for a particular place a werewolf may or may not bee. The iconoclast who loves werewolves had a theory that the Bray road beast inhabits swamps, so a scary drive at night was in order. Then sleep. Then wakefullness, and mystery pancakes, and a lovely moment on the front porch, the first indication of autumn coming....then driving, to a flea market and looking at oddities that give places rusticity. Rusticity, for sale everywhere, including a charming sign that featured a curvy woman in a vintage bathing suit, it read "The may look beautiful, but SOMEONE SOMEWHERE is SICK of DEALING with HER SHIT."
Elkhorn. Not as put-together as Whitewater, brimming with a university, or as beat as Beloit, brimming with a university the locals find alienating, a place of farm implements. Nearby Duvalle, a place of Mexican food and cemeteries, our lost Iconoclast, seeking the wolf, never could find her way especially in the presence of a navigator, but we loved the way she would dead end us in cemeteries. Old graves everywhere, stillness. Surrounded by ghosts so palpable they left circus traces everywhere. Note...when searching out werewolves, do not miss an opportunity to be eaten by Zombies. Bray road, finally, after many detours and another visit to a swamp that was not there. nnnnnnnnoooooooooooo.

Death Metal Baby

This one sketches her mother out, but I love it. Ruby Dalia Genevieve Midnight Morel Molumby (the extra middle names are to predispose her to be goth, or artsy, or affected, or confused...why stop at one middle name?) looks very death metal here.

Anguish

Forty Thousand Years in Space

I reposted my crazy magnum opus, Forty Thousand Years in Space, on the molumbia page

Halictids

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These are two halictid bees from Oak Park, IL, taken by my former field assistant, Marcus Thomasson. The one on the top is Laisoglossum sp., a halictid bee which builds nests in underground tunnels, dug in sand. Most species are social, though some are solitary. Females work together to build a nest in spring, and one of them bullies the other into submission. Their offspring are born, destined to be workers, of sorts. Twenty or thirty bees is large for a Laisoglossum colony. The one on the bottom is Sphecodes sp. It is a parasite, laying its eggs in Laisoglossum cells (I do not know how host specific they are, presumably, Evylaeus, Halictus confusus, or anything similar will do). The females emerge in the spring, with the would-be queens of Laisoglossum, and seek unwary hosts.