A. For friends, I want to share this recording of a story about mini-marshmallows (it's a 12 MB download, so be sure to right-click and choose Save As...) I told a couple weeks ago. If you listen, I'd love to hear your comments. (And if you know Sonic Youth, PLEASE make sure they get a chance to hear it.) Another comment for clarity: The example I provided about the bowling ball and attributing the strength of the atomic connection to strong and weak nuclear forces -- that should actually be attributed to the gravitational force. Heh.

B. An unbelievably candid and deep movie that I saw last summer at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly called Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, written and produced by Katrina Browne, a graduate of Pacific School of Religion, about her family's participation in the African slave trade.

C. Some advice from Kurt Vonnegut in Bagombo Snuffbox about writing short stories (I'm adding this here mainly for myself):

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

lyrics: no time for lyrics. must go to bed

colors: no time for colors. must go to bed.

mood: no time for mood. must go to bed.

chant/prayer/mantra: must.... go..... to ..... bed.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

p.s. - Albert Hofmann, the chemist who invented LSD, died at age 102.

Labels: anti-oppression, audio, paradigm shift, parousia, writing