Call from the Grave - Bathory

this pretty much sums everything up

Red Barchetta by Rush

Can you believe I still remember all the lyrics to this prog rock epic, but don't know a single children's lullaby? She goes to sleep faster if I humm Geddy Lee's bass lines.

First 'Rule' Of Evolution Suggests That Life Is Destined To Become More Complex

First 'Rule' Of Evolution Suggests That Life Is Destined To Become More Complex

intelligent life in the cosmos

a molecular automaton. a gene's way of making copies of itself whose only true goal is to also make copies of itself, and so on and so forth, we are connected under the skin in ways we can scarcely comprehend. the oneness of life is an inevitable product of evolution and descent from a common ancestor, because we were all one together at some time in the past, against all the others not like us and extinct now, till the first living organism on earth, one of many competing origins to be sure, one design among many but even those a mere drop in the bucket against the myriad possibilities doomed to fail early on as the pieces sorted themselves out. there are only so many ways to build a replicator out nothing, except a young planet with carbon compounds and a newly birthed core belching compounds and seeking to insulate itself from the angry cosmos. these replicators early on and until now in fact, had no idea of exactly what they were doing, a trait which no doubt suited them to advantage, because it still seems that life's tentative consciousness of its own existence seems a mere epiphenomenon in the search for widely distributed berries, a desire for a better hand axe, and a conviction that plenty of clever talk and opportunities to laugh will land a mate and in and of itself make a replicator a better replicator. if healthy brains are an indication of a good replicator, perhaps because the empower the bearer to build a barbed-wire fence or dig row after row of trenches for irrigation, feats equally wonderful as the first good hand axe, we might share brothers and sisters out there in the cosmos after all, because sexual selection is such a common phenomenon out here on this planet that it seems inevitable to be repeated out there, ad nausem, with forked tongues on alien beings and strange sounds filling pale blue methane atmospheres as lovers cry to exchange genes and build the next generation and so on and so on through every galaxy in the hubble field, though perhaps just once per galaxy still an amazing number of times, out there.

halloween with Insect

a scarecrow stalking out there, the shadow man, the thing that comes for children in their sleep. this time of year the living scarecrows and boogimen get up earlier and move about with abandon...halloween is coming and they long to fatten up for the big day. the same is probably true for those malicious house spirits that come out of corners to kick young children in the shins, and run-of-the-mill spooky bats and kittens, both amped up on the promise of landing in a young child[s hair and becoming tangled, or crossing and recrossing some kindergarteners path, dooming him to a virtual lifetime of hard luck.

Note on our species

The sad fact of the matter is that Homo sapiens, as a species, is dwarfed in significance compared to the hydra creatures in the Andromeda galaxy, with their millions of years of advanced civilization, or the confronting lobes, whose existence depends on an array of intelligent host species who have been domesticated. Ultimately, our best hope resides in the possibility that we will give birth to an advanced machine civilization.
There have been eras in our history when this planet was notable in its creatures, and I suppose this is one of them, however. We are destined to be so brief, not like the dinosaurs or the ammonites, and few of us are likely to fossilize.

A Goblin Speaks

First of all, let me introduce myself as a goblin. My name is Zog. I am a red goblin. There are black goblins and orange goblins and green goblins too, and swamp goblins, and bogomils too. Hobgoblins are goblins too, I suppose. We red goblins is a little smarter than most of the other kinds, i suppose, and maybe we is the smallest too. People that walk around in the sun all day, men and elves and persons like that, thinks goblins are bad. We are not bad. We do what is in our nature, same as them. We steal from the two legged ones that build houses up there in the valleys and the plains, because that is what goblins do. If they did not like it they should not live there, above where we choose to live. We got there first.
People up there say we set traps for them and steal their children to live among our own. I suppose this is true. We set out traps because we like trapping and once again, if you do not like being trapped by goblins, you should stay away from goblins. We steal their children because they leave them where we can get to them and besides, some of them should learn our ways. What the surface dwellers do not know is that we send those children, as adults, go back among men and walk among them. We have our spies, same as anyone else, same as the elves and faeries. What the surface dwellers do not know is how many a beautiful young girl among them is charmed by a goblin friend and lead away to live with us willingly. They say the really wise among us, the tallest and the prettiest, have human blood, but i believe otherwise. Most goblins is ugly to surface dwellers and to be perfectly frank most surface dwellers is ugly to goblins. The flesh is so pale and fat up there, the living too easy, the teeth in the mouth lacking any sort of point and the nose a mere button on the face. There are a few of you that are beautiful to us though, and there are a few of us, usually kings and queens, that are beautiful to you, surface dwellers.
Most goblins is not that smart compared to dwarves or elves and such, but our smartest are even smarter than theirs. Goblin swords are second to those made by dwarves, and are better than eleven swords any day. Even elves know this. Goblin machines is as good as dwarf ones, and last longer. Nobody ever asks us how this happens, but the fact of the matter is that a few of us is very smart and those same goblins is usually stronger than the others too so as not to get bullied to death before realizing their true potential.
Goblins like to live under the ground, in caves, but we also live in tunnels we dig, and in houses we construct of stones, under dead forests and in places where the sun do not shine too much. We eat bread and meat, same as you, surface dweller, but spiders and mushrooms too and we farm the last two things underground for soup and such things.
Every kind of goblin has a king, or a queen, or both, and sometimes the goblins fight. Usually we do not though because usually we is in service of some kind of foreman; a dark lord of a god that lives at night or maybe an older dragon or some such creatures as i cannot name. It was us and the orcs that fought the elves and men in middle earth, yes, but the tales you read do not dwell so much on the many times we won, rather than lost. It is true that we hate gnomes but the gnomes started it by hating us and the same goes for dwarves too. We would hate elves too but they is too snooty to even notice us so we think little of them and spend our nights thinking of ways to trap gnomes and rid the land of them.
If there was one think i could say to a human, at least one of the humans that live on the surface and not the eyeless kind we have down here in the caves, it would be to give us a little respect and maybe leave a beer or two out unopened at night, because if you leave us a beer we will not steal your children or set fire to your house, and if you leaves us some food too we will take it as rent for that patch of surface you live on, above us, and we might even get used to you being up there and leave you alone.