pirates

Hawaii public beach is defined as the sand that doesn't have vegetation on it.

Naturally, beachfront homeowners would like more vegetation growing between their houses and the sand, so that they have more private land. If the greenery gets thick enough, the homeowners can file an application for accretion with the State Surveyor to add the land to their lots.

So what? Well, it leads to something really ugly.

~Surreptitious watering.~

Yes, some crazed-eyed overweight locals in Louis Vuitton sandals have been spotted donning ninja gear and dashing out in the dead of night with hoses to water the beach vegetation.

I believe it's the City & County who recently announced they were instituting a "task force" to patrol the beaches and watch for clandestine irrigation.

the sky is falling

Monday was a holiday, so I was home, and I had the TV on in the background while I was reading. Family Feud came on.

The category was: Things A Chicken Does. 4 answers, total, on the board.

10 adults given 9 tries could not come up with all 4 answers. (Lay an egg, cluck, scratch, peck.)

It is no wonder that people eat factory-farmed eggs--produced by thousands of debeaked chickens kept in the dark in 1-foot square cages in warehouses--when they have become so removed from non-human society that they can't name 4 things done naturally by the birds who produce their daily breakfast food. (I could think of 15 more, just off the top of my head: crow [at least roosters], inspect the ground for insects, regard tall humans warily, brood, roost, fight, smell, shit, preen, molt, display affection, mate, flock, run around, drink water with decorous naivete.)

I'm not building an ark, but signs are fowl for humanity when it has become that detached from nature.

Daily Story #2 (okay, it's a feature-- as long as I keep reading interesting shit)

Note by editor Louis P. Lochner to The Goebbels Diaries:

Xaver Schwartz was one of the oldest of the Nazis, and held the post of treasurer of the Party throughout. He was fond of distributing signed photographs of himself to deserving comrades and visitors.

No sooner had the Nazis come into their own than he "acquired" an estate on one of the enchanting lakes of Upper Bavaria and personally supervised the construction of a sumptuous residence which, it was generally rumored, was to cost 50,000 marks.

He proved such a slave driver, however, that the workers became incensed and one day put up a sign: "Xaver Schwarz! Where did you get the 50,000 marks?"

When Schwarz arrived on the premises he saw the sign and fell into a rage. He telephoned the Gestapo and had Himmler's minions put every worker "through the wringer." But nobody revealed who had painted and put up the sign.

Schwarz then decided to play upon human avarice. He put up a sign of his own: "Five thousand marks' reward to anyone who will reveal the perpetrators of the sign."

The response came promptly the next morning in the form of a new sign: "Xaver Schwarz! Where did you get the 55,000 marks?"

Daily Story. (I may make this a feature.)

This is about the "odd monk" Ikkyu of the Daitokuji and the Tea Master Shuko.

"When Shuko went to study the Zen philosophy under him Ikkyu made tea for him, but when he took the bowl and was going to drink it, Ikkyu knocked it out of his hand with his iron Nyoi sceptre. This was too much for Shuko, who started up from his seat, whereupon Ikkyu shouted out 'Drink it up!' Shuko then saw the point and, quite equal to the occasion, retorted 'Willows are green and flowers red.' 'Good,' said Ikkyu, quite satisfied that the other understood. Which is, being interpreted, things must remain as they are, for the nature of phenomena cannot be changed any more than spilt tea can be drunk."

Cha-No-Yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony
by A.L. Sadler