No Confidence/None Of The Above

Shut up, be happy.
Obey all orders
without question.
The happiness
you have demanded
is now mandatory.
--Jello Biafra




There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.
--Herman Melville
(from Moby Dick)

Don't Worry About The Government

Talking Heads


Don't Worry About the Government

$1200 Space Program

Hubble's Greatest Hits

a quartet from

Hubble's Greatest Hits



Tarantula Nebula


Ghost Head Nebula


Flocculent Spiral


A Rose Made of Galaxies

Chronological Harryhausen Creature List

Ray Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator. He created a brand of stop-motion model animation known as Dynamation. Here's a compilation of every animated creature in his feature films, presented in chronological order .

Thoreau On Clouds

The drifting white downy clouds are to the landsman what sails on the sea are to him that dwells by the shore,--objects of a large, diffusive interest. When the laborer lies on the grass or in the shade for rest, they do not much tax or weary his attention. They are unobtrusive. I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one’s eyes ache. They are the flitting sails in that ocean whose bound no man has visited. They are like all great themes, always at hand to be considered, or they float over us unregarded. Far away they float in the serene sky, the most inoffensive of objects, or, near and low, they smite us with their lightnings and deafen us with their thunder. There are many mare’s-tails to-day, if that is the name. What would a man learn by watching the clouds? The objects which go over our heads unobserved are vast and indefinite.
Even those clouds which have the most distinct and interesting outlines are commonly below the zenith, somewhat low in the heavens, and seen on one side. They are among the most glorious objects in nature. A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers, a sea without sails. Some days we have the mackerel fleet. But our devilishly industrious laborers rarely lie in the shade. How much better if they were to take their nooning like the Italians, relax and expand and never do any work in the middle of the day, enjoy a little Sabbath in the middle of the day.
--Henry David Thoreau
(journal entry for June 24, 1852)

Bodies Upon The Gears

There is a time when the operation
of the machine becomes so odious---
makes you so sick at heart---
that you can't take part.
You can't even passively take part.
And you've got to put your bodies
upon the gears and upon the wheels,
upon the levers, upon all the apparatus,
and you've got to make it stop.
And you've got to indicate
to the people who run it,
to the people who own it,
that unless you're free,
the machine will be prevented
from working at all.
--Mario Savio