booze, sun, and philosophy

ok, so it was gonna be "booze, drugs, and philosophy", but the druggiest it got was tylenol extra strength. oh, and there was pot.
went camping this may long weekend, same bat-place as last year, but in my fuzzy recollections there was a lake, not a river. well, this year it was a river :)
the boyz improved on their last year's hot tub design, and instead of digging a hole in the ground and lining it with a tarp they just bought a ginormous inflatamable pool. and used a bigger pipe to make the heating coil with. but only one pump. there was some fancy hydraulics in the plans, but i dont rem why it ultimately wouldnt work, or what the hell it was to actually do in the first place, although it kinda looked like they wanted to suck the water directly out of the river thru these pipes instead of using buckets. or actually just big coolers, or bins of some sort.
by evening the thing got hot enough that it was still comfortable when it started to rain. when it started getting colder somebody brought a tarp and we just pulled it over ourselves and the pool. it was awrite :)
oh the fond memories - passing the bottle of vodka around, followed by the chaser cup... being slammed into the pool from behind and hurting some chix legs with my jaw. i think nothing happened to me because i was so drunk :) and i got back at the dork that pushed me in by dragging him into the pool when he got near enough :)
nobody got my new favourite joke of "whats blue and doesnt fit anymore?" though... :(
and nobody liked my tunage, like "rubber bullets", by 10cc apparently.
oh well.
had some cool wondrous moments. i hatched a theory on my buddy that sounded something like "a high incidence of stupid but good looking chix in a society may be advantageous to said society by way of lowering the average level of sexual frustration and aggression of intelligent but aggressive males, thereby promoting cooperation as opposed to competition." sounds chauvinistic, but it was funny at the time :)
then i really got to wunderin', and started wondering why the earth's magnetic polarity keeps shifting and even reversing. i believe that the earth's overall polarity is the sum effect of the polarities of all the magnetic particles in earth, but my questions was: what makes all those particles face the way they face? what about other planets' magnetic fields - are they aligned with ours? or is every body independent? i guess i should look for the answers online...
another thunk i had was "why are there so many relatively small rocks in the world?" when big earthquakes happen, do they make the bedrock brake into all these small crumbs? or are there first huge rocks and then the elements break them down over eons? i start feeling impatient when i consider that to be the case. that would just take too long.

trying to pack for camping, but its midnight, i'm kinda tired, and theres still a bit to do. i had dreams of doing something different while camping this time - why go to all this trouble, drive so far into "wilderness", just to sit in one spot and get loaded, recover till noon next day, then repeat. twice. i mean, i think i tend to try and take some of this nature in a wee bit, but this time i wanted to do a little project - maybe build a raft out of whatever is available, or like a shack. but building a raft then trying to take it to the other shore of the lake, or to an island - that would rawk! :)
but i havent done my research, got no plan, so i guess we'll really have to try and improvise - big time. too late to grab a cordless drill from work and some big screws. but i wonder if i could find some big nails at my 'rents tomorrow morning... and a hammer. no - a hatchet would be more useful :) hmm, a couple more minutes pondering this and i will have a plan! :D but its supposed to rain a bit all day tomorrow. well, hope all the peeps already there have put up a tarp so we can have a fire... on which i can roast these kick-ass cheddar+jalapeno smokies i got today! :) man, havent had those in years... good times :)
talked to mr. mo for a bit today. the dude's got some interesting things to say sometimes. i thought he was from kenya so i asked him - yes he was. so i told him how i know this chick who went down to kenya to volunteer at a countryside orphanage for a bit, and then she's planning to make her way down to south africa. mr. mo said that apparently there's lots of volunteers and people like that in kenya, and quite a few english teachers, etc, but he said that a lot of them are "fubus". waza? "cia" he says. whaa???
turns out that kenya is quite the melting pot, with many different peoples, and among them refugees, as well as "terrorists" (he used the "finger quotation marks") and other people who are hiding out for some reason or another. and so there's apparently a bit of an intelligence agent community present, mostly to gather info. right away i thought of Interzone out of the movie "Naked Lunch", which i've vowed to one day actually buy and watch for a third time , but sober for a change. so far i think i quite like it :) i found out recently that it was made by the same guy that did "eXistenZ" or whatev the spelling, which i bought long ago but only recently finally watched. what a psychedelic dude - really funky shit. i think its david cronenberg.
so anyways, it was pretty cool to hear a bit of an opinion on africa from someone from there - i guess the word would be a "native". apparently theres quite an ethnic indian population in kenya, but apparently the perception of them by the black population is that they're not hard workers and all they do is talk about people behind their backs. but other than that, mr. mo says that people in east africa are generally friendly and welcoming. but the further north and west you go in africa, the worse the people get. apparently the people in northern sudan think themselves to be arabs and therefore superior to the non-arab population. cool to hear interesting little bits of info, even if it is somebody's opinion - right or wrong.
ok, its a quarter after 1 am - better finish packing and get to bed :)

the life quaquatic

we watched "The Life Aquatic" recently. it wasnt really all that, but it's got its points. i really like the locations, like in "The Royal Tennenbaums" by the same director. i think i've noticed the dude often sets the camera either somewhat low, or in some other way tries to include all of a room/space in the screen, with some really cool floor shots, cool looking lobbies, hallways, alleys, etc. and i dont know what it is, but it seems the picture is often crisper than in other movies. hehe - i wouldnt make a very good movie critic :) i've never particularly liked bill murray because his face seems expressionless most of the time, but i guess thats what he gets hired for - some people must like that i guess. he's much more alive behind the scenes in "the making of". there's a bunch of cool things in this movie, and i think its the unexpected stuff in it - like the pace or mood of the movie is pretty chill, but then there's these gunfight scenes - pretty cool. and the music is priceless - like the soundtrack is this cheap 80's synth tunage - pretty sweet :) another part of the soundtack is having this black dude, who later on i found is the brazillian musician seu jorge, singing acoustic adaptations of david bowie songs in portuguese. i like the sound of portuguese - it used to sound russian to me, and there's something about portuguese-language music that's unique, but i guess i dont know enough about music to really analyse it. actually, probably most of the examples i can think of are brazillian, so maybe i just like brazillian music. acoustic music especially, i think. i thought seu jorge sang/played out of tune sometimes, and maybe he did and they still put it in the movie, or maybe i heard wrong, but some other times i really liked what he did. i think he gave these classic songs a new, more sentimental sound, and it really fit well. supposedly his portuguese lyrics arent really that good, but to someone who doesnt understand, its just got this cool sound to it :) it seems like most people end up liking his version of "Life on Mars?" and something else - i was just taken in by the life on mars so much that i dont know what else i might have liked. plus the dude's deep, black voice, probably seasoned by what seems like chain-smoking, makes the tunes sound so much better! i never really got into bowie's whiny bits. anywho, looks like seu jorge is coming to town in june, so i'm pretty psyched and am gonna try to get some tickets :)

i havent posted forever, and just felt like doing it again after reading other ppl's blogs for a while. i keep seeing evidence of me being much more into "intake" of the world around me rather than any kind of creative activity.
phx is asleep - i presume. she's been having lots of trouble sleeping again recently. i still wanted to look at mortgage rates out there, and answer a buddy's email, thanking him for all the info on buying a place. and i wanted to answer my bro's email he sent me - 2 emails actually - but only pics in them. he went to azerbaijan again to visit his wife - they seem happy :) i'm worrying a bit about him - he was never into any kinds of drugs, but it seems since he moved across the mountains he's experienced some substances that i never have and would be reluctant to because, well, people turn into junkies and die from them. i dont know how much he liked those things, how much if at all he still does them, how much he's educated himself about them. maybe i should send him a couple links to erowid.org.
when he was in town a few days ago because he had a lay-over here on his way to azerbaijan, he mentioned something about how he felt all excited but like speedy, licking his gums as if he just snorted. this was relating to his general state of excitation about the trip, but the question keeps gnawing at me - why the fuck would he know that? it doesnt completely consume me, but it keeps popping up. i guess it bugs me enough, because last night i had a dream where he was telling me all about G. he used to know nothing about drugs, and he didnt care about them at all. if he were only the type to educate himself about this kinda shit. if he was getting into psychedelics, i wouldnt bat an eye, maybe i'd smile. people dont die off that. dont become junkies. dont spend big money on it. they usually have enriching experiences. at worst, they become burnouts after years and years of really beating their brains. people on uppers keep chasing the fleeting high, run outta money, steal, fuck up their bodies, probably eventually die. people on downers keep trying to get a little better every time, ruining their life and the lives of those around them in the process. until they OD.
maybe i'm seeing all black because its late at night. but i sure hope my little bro doesnt fuck it up for himself...