Definition:

pain in the abdomen and especially in the stomach; a bellyache

Example:

"... unfortunately I awoke this morning with collywobbles, and had to take a small dose of laudanum with the usual consequences of dry throat, intoxicated legs, partial madness and total imbecility..." — Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Letters, 1890-1894

About the Word:

Etymologist believe that collywobbles most likely has its origin in cholera morbus, the Latin term for the disease cholera (the symptoms of which include severe gastrointestinal disturbance).
How would cholera morbus have shifted into collywobbles? By folk etymology – a process in which speakers make an unfamiliar term sound more familiar. In this case, the transformation was probably influenced by the words colic and wobble.

more power?

Should we be working to stop Google and Facebook from becoming even more powerful?

Well:

If it’s clear that Facebook and Google can’t manage what they already control, why let those corporations own more? America’s antitrust enforcers can impose such a rule almost immediately.
For one thing, there is no doubt these corporations qualify for antitrust regulation. Facebook, for instance, has 77% of mobile social networking traffic in the United States, with just over half of all American adults using Facebook every day.
Nearly all new online advertising spending goes to just Facebook and Google, and those two companies refer over half of all traffic to news websites. In all, Facebook has some 2 billion users around the world.

mind-expander

this thing ::: Seeking the meaning of mind

Haus- Rucker-Co, Mind Expander, 1967 Haus- Rucker-Co's experiment brought new perspectives on the fusion/separation between the body and the space.

go home (kidding)

like homey stuff? This blog about Home is where we put our best design stuff... BOOM

HERE

dancing their vision

Why they’re dancing at the world’s northernmost medieval cathedral
via

BOOM has a folder of crazy stuff

which you will be seeing SLOWLY all next month... some of it will make sense, or maybe not.

A preview:

we are gif-crazy... you do know that, right? BOOM!

that elf

we have a big love for this elf...

what did you expect... it is ELF SEASON... BOOM

8,000-year-old stylized engravings show domesticated dogs

Rock Engravings of Dogs on Leashes Show Pre-Neolithic Good Boys

santa school?

Beach Santa sounds perfectly normal to us... BOOM!

There is even a Santa school... when you get to do fun stuff...

nine word story

here is one of my Mental Midget poems:

you do not know
~~what?~~ what
you do not know

I am ~~abnormal normal~~ not
i break ~~rulers rules~~ apart
i bend ~~spoons minds~~ backwards

hope is ~~skin-thin~~ paper-thin
hope is ~~waterproof tear-proof~~ gone
hope ~~cracks creaks~~ buckles
~~lost all my~~ hope

yup, I am working on a new poetry collection... (c) 2017 LT... BOOM

HONESTY (Preview)

hair swapping?

Hair-swapping may seem a bit strange now, in an age where we can carry basically all of the non-forensic evidence of a relationship—from photos to correspondence to shared transactions—around in our phones. But in the past, and particularly in the Victorian era, swapping hair served as a common sign of affection, a way to literally give a friend, relative, or lover a piece of yourself, and keep a piece of them in turn.

John Keats’s hair, with a note from Leigh Hunt attesting to its provenance. The empty frame probably originally contained a portrait of the poet. Atlas Obscura

VIA

what you looking at?

Stop Making Sense

hurting birds and bees migrations

FOR THE BIRDS Eating even a few pesticide-coated seeds can disorient white-crowned sparrows, new studies suggest.

...new findings add to evidence suggesting that the widely used pesticides, which are chemically similar to nicotine, might be sending ecological ripples beyond the intended targets.
In lab studies, researchers captured wild white-crowned sparrows, Zonotrichia leucophrys, that were migrating north and fed them small doses of imidacloprid for three days — the amount that birds would get from eating a few pesticide-coated wheat seeds. The birds that ate the pesticides lost weight, study coauthor Margaret Eng reported November 15 at the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America.
And when placed in a large, inverted funnel used to study birds’ migratory orientations, the neonic-fed birds tried to fly in directions other than north. Birds that consumed sunflower oil instead showed no ill effects. SOURCE

Art Appreciation: Joseph Beuys

READ

Many years ago, I worked at the Bellevue Art Museum in Bellevue, WA, east of Seattle. I was hired as manager of their two gift shops. They ran a holiday store MY WISH LIST that year - it was overwhelming and crazy busy. Also when I worked at BAM, they ran an exhibit of Joseph Beuys. I never forgot this. It was weird, provocative, startling, unexpected. Go to the link and watch the preview of a new documentary about him and his activism.
This year, I actually got to see a very small exhibit of Beuys at the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art (MASS MOCA). Again, highly unusual.

see below

Thirty years after his death, Joseph Beuys still feels like a visionary and is widely considered one of the most influential artists of his generation. Known for his contributions to the Fluxus movement and his work across diverse media — from happening and performance to sculpture, installation, and graphic art — Beuys’ expanded concept of the role of the artist places him in the middle of socially relevant discourses on media, community, and capital. Using previously untapped visual and audio sources, director Andreas Veiel has created a one-of-a-kind chronicle: Beuys is not a portrait in the traditional sense, but an intimate and in-depth look at a human being, his art and ideas, and the way they have impacted the world. THE FILM

happy wacky christmas

Christmas and Solstice

painted by alex of australia

we really really like this!

Hyperallergic
181 N 11th St, Suite 302
Brooklyn, NY 11211

vanishing wilderness film

I watched this yesterday... I really wanted to learn more about beavers. We have some right here where I live... they are very BUSY... BOOM!

My Name Is Not "Those People"

storytellers

go visit: COOEE ART GALLERY

that bus again! #Martabus

That stupid Marta Bus! #OrangeNation #Cuse @CuseFootball pic.twitter.com/oClHId1GZu
— Bim Joeheim (@CuseForTheWin) November 21, 2017

This is it folks! The battle you’ve been waiting for! Me vs. the @FernbankMuseum’s giganotosaurus!

Chicago vs. Atlanta! Chance the Rapper vs. Killer Mike! O’Hare vs. Hartsfield! Portillo’s vs. The Varsity! B1G vs. SEC! Greg Maddox vs. Greg Madd- MARTA BUS, NO!!! pic.twitter.com/Zlq0dF6Pi3
— It’s SUE! Your Favorite Tyrannosaurus rex 🦖 (@SUEtheTrex) November 22, 2017

@MARTASERVICE has a long history of interrupting important #MomentsInHistory. #Martabus #TheBeatles pic.twitter.com/TK4v3WkTnF
— DroneLife (@LSMJohn) November 21, 2017

@MARTASERVICE has a long history of interrupting important #MomentsInHistory. #Martabus #moonlandings pic.twitter.com/3bo38uP0LZ
— DroneLife (@LSMJohn) November 21, 2017

MARTA Is Laughing With The Rest Of Us After Implosion Snafu

money money money

6 Questions for an Art Historian About Leonardo’s “Salvator Mundi”

David Nolta doesn’t mince words in his assessment of “Salvator Mundi.” “The sale does not necessarily have any more to do with scholarship than the picture has to do with Leonardo,” he explains.

boom towns

I know what you are thinking... BOOM as in a Boom Town! Many victims of these crimes are already members of vulnerable or marginalized groups, including rural women, Indigenous populations, and young people.

Oil, Gas, and Crime: The Dark Side of the Boomtown is the result of about a decade of interest from Ruddell.
READ

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet - Part 1 (Featuring Run the Jewels)

Clint Watts #ShakeUp

A former FBI agent Clint Watts kicked it up even further, saying, “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

here we are...

dignity in dying: Death Doulas

At 80 years old, Farley founded an organization called Doulas to Accompany and Comfort the Dying. The program taught doulas how to listen and relate to the dying person, as well as do more practical things like helping with a living will.

WATCH: http://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/death-doulas-bringing-death-dying-and-grief-out-of-the-shadows-and-into-the-light

AND:

What Does a Death Doula Do?

Houston after Hurricane Harvey - Fault Lines

pick a number

from 1- 50 then do this:

50 Easy Pay it Forward Day Kindness Ideas:

Pay it Backward: buy coffee for the person behind you in line.
Compliment the first three people you talk to today.
Send a positive text message to five different people right now.
Post inspirational sticky notes around your neighborhood, office, school, etc.
Tell someone they dropped a dollar (even though they didn’t). Then give them a dollar.
Donate old towels or blankets to an animal shelter.
Say hi to the person next to you on the elevator.
Surprise a neighbor with freshly baked cookies or treats!
Let someone go in front of you in line who only has a few items.
Leave a gas gift card at a gas pump.
Throw a party to celebrate someone just for being who they are, which is awesome.
Have a LinkedIn account? Write a recommendation for coworker or connection.
Leave quarters at the laundromat.
Encounter someone in customer service who is especially kind? Take an extra five minutes to tell their manager.
Leave unused coupons next to corresponding products in the grocery store.
Leave a note on someone’s car telling them how awesome they parked.
Try to make sure every person in a group conversation feels included.
Write a kind message on your mirror with a dry erase marker for yourself, your significant other or a family member.
Place a positive body image notes in jean pockets at a department store.
Smile at five strangers.
Set an alarm on your phone to go off at three different times during the day. In those moments, do something kind for someone else.
Send a gratitude email to a coworker who deserves more recognition.
Practice self-kindness and spend 30 minutes doing something you love today.
Give away stuff for free on Craig’s List.
Write a gratitude list in the morning and again in the evening.
Know parents who could use a night out? Offer to babysit for free.
Hold up positive signs for traffic or in a park for people exercising outside!
Return shopping carts for people at the grocery store.
Buy a plant. Put it in a terracotta pot. Write positive words that describe a friend on the pot. Give it to that friend!
Write a positive comment on your favorite blog, website, or a friend’s social media account.
Have a clean up party at a beach or park.
While you’re out, compliment a parent on how well-behaved their child is.
Leave a kind server the biggest tip you can afford.
When you’re throwing something away on the street, pick up any litter around you and put that in the trash too.
Pay the toll for the person behind you.
Put 50 paper hearts in a box. On each cutout write something that is special about your partner or a friend. Give them the box and tell them to pull out a heart anytime they need a pick-me-up.
Everyone is important. Learn the names of your office security guard, the person at the front desk and other people you see every day. Greet them by name. Also say “hello” to strangers and smile. These acts of kindness are so easy, and they almost always make people smile.
Write your partner a list of things you love about them.
Purchase extra dog or cat food and bring it to an animal shelter.
Find opportunities to give compliments. It costs nothing, takes no time, and could make someone’s entire day. Don’t just think it. Say it.
Take flowers or treats to the nurses’ station at your nearest hospital.
Keep an extra umbrella at work, so you can lend it out when it rains.
Send a ‘Thank you’ card or note to the officers at your local police or fire station.
Take muffins or cookies to your local librarians.
Run an errand for a family member who is busy.
Leave a box of goodies in your mailbox for your mail carrier.
Tape coins around a playground for kids to find.
Put your phone away while in the company of others.
Email or write to a former teacher who made a difference in your life.
When you hear that discouraging voice in your head, tell yourself something positive — you deserve kindness too!

Top of the Lake 2: BBC Two

My blogger friend FILMMAKER Paul recommends it:

TOP OF THE LAKE 2: CHINA GIRL (2017)
Screened earlier this year on the BBC, the follow-up finds Elizabeth Moss, now back in Sydney, tracking down the killer of an Asian prostitute while battling illegal adoption rings and all manner of sexist-pig-men. Like the original it pulls you in with its richly drawn characters and brilliant cast all committing to the lurid and quirky plotlines. Moss is always reliable and does the brooding, melancholic and troubled cop perfectly, while Nicole Kidman is brilliant as the middle-class academic out of her depth with the emotions of her adopted daughter. The sinister beta-male-nemesis Puss portrayed by David Dencik was a great rendition of spurious masculinity while it was great to see Gwendoline Christie out of her Game of Thrones armour, as a naïve rookie cop assisting Moss’ detective. (Mark: 8.5 out of 11)

Knot you

Scientists are teaming up with Andean locals to solve the enigma of a mysterious form of writing that involves knots:

Discovering a narrative khipu that can be deciphered remains one of the holy grails of South American anthropology. If we could find such an object, we might be able to read how Native South Americans viewed their history and rituals in their own words, opening a window to a new Andean world of literature, history, and the arts.

Ice carousel Finland!

Amber Tamblyn, "Dark Sparkler"

Annie's speech

2017 winner Annie Proulx gave one of the best speeches in recent memory, maybe because her conclusion was so gleefully ironic, and her gloom so well grounded in a year that truly does, on so many levels, suck.

Here it is in full:

Although this award is for lifetime achievement, I didn’t start writing until I was 58, so if you’ve been thinking about it and putting it off, well…

I thank the National Book Award Foundation, the committees, and the judges for this medal. I was surprised when I learned of it and I’m grateful and honored to receive it and to be here tonight, and I thank my editor Nan Graham, for it is her medal too.

We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds. This is a Kafkaesque time. The television sparkles with images of despicable political louts and sexual harassment reports. We cannot look away from the pictures of furious elements, hurricanes and fires, from the repetitive crowd murders by gunmen burning with rage. We are made more anxious by flickering threats of nuclear war. We observe social media’s manipulation of a credulous population, a population dividing into bitter tribal cultures. We are living through a massive shift from representative democracy to something called viral direct democracy, now cascading over us in a garbage-laden tsunami of raw data. Everything is situational, seesawing between gut-response “likes” or vicious confrontations. For some this is a heady time of brilliant technological innovation that is bringing us into an exciting new world. For others it is the opening of a savagely difficult book without a happy ending.

To me the most distressing circumstance of the new order is the accelerating destruction of the natural world and the dreadful belief that only the human species has the inalienable right to life and God-given permission to take anything it wants from nature, whether mountaintops, wetlands or oil. The ferocious business of stripping the earth of its flora and fauna, of drowning the land in pesticides again may have brought us to a place where no technology can save us. I personally have found an amelioration in becoming involved in citizen science projects. This is something everyone can do.

Every state has marvelous projects of all kinds, from working with fish, with plants, with landscapes, with shore erosions, with water situations.

Yet somehow the old discredited values and longings persist. We still have tender feelings for such outmoded notions as truth, respect for others, personal honor, justice, equitable sharing. We still hope for a happy ending. We still believe that we can save ourselves and our damaged earth—an indescribably difficult task as we discover that the web of life is far more mysteriously complex than we thought and subtly entangled with factors that we cannot even recognize. But we keep on trying, because there’s nothing else to do.

The happy ending still beckons, and it is in hope of grasping it that we go on. The poet Wisława Szymborska caught the writer’s dilemma of choosing between hard realities and the longing for the happy ending. She called it “consolation.” Darwin: They say he read novels to relax, but only certain kinds—nothing that ended unhappily. If he happened on something like that, enraged, he flung the book into the fire. True or not, I’m ready to believe it. Scanning in his mind so many times and places, he’s had enough with dying species, the triumphs of the strong over the weak, the endless struggle to survive, all doomed sooner or later. He’d earned the right to happy ending, at least in fiction, with its micro-scales.

Hence the indispensable silver lining, the lovers reunited, the families reconciled, the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded, fortunes regained, treasures uncovered, stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways, good names restored, greed daunted, old maids married off to worthy parsons, troublemakers banished to other hemispheres, forgers of documents tossed down the stairs, seducers scurried to the altar, orphans sheltered, widows comforted, pride humbled, wounds healed, prodigal sons summoned home, cups of sorrow tossed into the ocean, hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation, general merriment and celebration, and the dog Fido, gone astray in the first chapter, turns up barking gladly in the last. Thank you. VIA

Art Friday: Kameelah Janan Rasheed

art makes you THINK

Rasheed’s latest installation, in the proper direction: forward/ also the ache of (perceived) velocity.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, in the proper direction: forward/ also the ache of (perceived) velocity continues at Printed Matter (231 11th Ave, Chelsea, Manhattan) November 25.

The Last Leonardo da Vinci – Salvator Mundi

otipêyimsiw-iskwêwak kihci-kîsikohk | why a.i. is danger and racist #podcasts

In Season 4, Episode 5 of otipêyimsiw-iskwêwak kihci-kîsikohk, Métis in Space, Molly and Chelsea head to the Generation Energy Conference in Winnipeg to interview Erin Bow (physicist, author, and poet), Dr. Eric Bibeau (Associate Prof of Mechanical Engineering and NSERC/Manitoba Hydro Industrial Research Chair in Alternative Energy), and Dr. John Hepburn (Vice President of Research and International at University Of British Columbia and Vice-President of Research for CIFAR) about the future of energy, dys/utopias, and most importantly, SCIENCE.
Chatting with @erinbowbooks, Dr. John Hepburn, and Dr. Eric Bibeau was super flippin fun! We learned about why AIs are racist, why the grid is a social issue, and why scientists are both bleaker and more hopeful about the future than you might expect.
— Métis In Space (@Metis_In_Space) November 11, 2017

PODCAST

a.i.

nice robot

we are not afraid of the knit robot... but the snake one... we are TERRIFIED... BOOM

bad robot

all month

pic.twitter.com/DCazYjSUw7
— Laura Grace Weldon (@earnestdrollery) November 16, 2017

I'm in this issue of Be-ZINE

THE BeZINE for November is published - In the four-year history of "The BeZine," this is the most significant edition. All of our concerns - peace, environmental sustainability, human rights, freedom of expression - depend on a more equal distribution of wealth, on making sure no one goes hungry and on breaking-down barriers to employment, healthcare, education and racial and gender equity. - Jamie Dedes
LINK - https://wp.me/p1gLT0-6x3 ...

I would ask contributors to please post the link to the entire edition of the Zine as well as to your own work. This Zine is about more than literarture and art. It's about a social justice mission. ...

Thanks to John Anstie, Corina Ravenscraft, Phillip T. Stephens, Trace Lara Hentz, Sue Dreamwalker, Joe Hesch, Renee Espriu, Evelyn Augusto, bogpan, Paul Brookes, Rob Cullen, R.S. Chappell, Denise Fletcher, Mark Heathcote, Irene Immanuel, Charlie Martin, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Michele Riedele and Michael Odiah for stunning work. Well done. Thanks also for constant support from team members not featured in this issue: Terri Stewart, Michael Dickel, Lana Phillips, Ruth Jewell, Liliana Negoi, Michael Watson Lcmhc, Chrysty Darby Hendrick, Naomi Baltuck, James R. Cowles and Priscilla Galasso.

Again, here's the link to this issue: https://wp.me/p1gLT0-6x3

My prose:
The Arctic
They are going to SHELL it
They are going to EXXON it and BP it
They bought the politicians
They bought the votes
They brought the catastrophe
They brought the end…

ALIEN-LIKE WORM SHOOTS GOOEY WEB

"The proboscis is an infolding of the body wall, and sits in the rhynchocoel when inactive. When muscles in the wall of the rhynchocoel compress the fluid in the rhynchocoel, the pressure makes the proboscis jump inside-out to attack the animal's prey along a canal called the rhynchodeum and through an orifice, the proboscis pore. The proboscis has a muscle which attaches to the back of the rhynchocoel, and which can stretch up to 30 times its inactive length and then retract the proboscis. Some Anopla have branched proboscises which can be described as "a mass of sticky spaghetti". The animal then draws its prey into its mouth... Although most are less than 20 centimetres (7.9 in) long, one specimen has been estimated at 54 metres (177 ft). SOURCE

Meet Banjo, the Avalanche Rescue Dog

Sundance Blog: Meet Banjo, the Avalanche Rescue Dog: Winter storms and the ski season will be here soon, so say hello now to one of your furry heroes-in-waiting, Banjo.

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL: "Good Morning, Pinky"

Living In The Past (1969)

smartphone zombies: think the herd

City officials in Salzburg, Austria, are covering lampposts with airbags because so many so-called ‘smartphone zombies’ are walking into them. The vote was close … a lot of officials thought a better approach would be to let the posts thin the herd.

I watched the Stephen King horror film CELL recently. Are you reading this on your smartphone?
Have you seen it?

We Have Come Back For Our Bodies

Louis Esmé, We Have Come Back For Our Bodies. Original design for GetUP Clothing, Redwire Media.

go look:

Visual Cultures of Indigenous Futurism

and this:

How was your weekend? As eventful as the pig who stole and drank eighteen beers, and then tried to fight a cow? Mine wasn’t, but there’s always next weekend.

waffles

I laughed hard at this movie - it may be ONE of my TOP movies!

2004 . The Ladykillers . Tom Hanks as Professor G.H. Dorr . It's underrated that's for sure.

the anonymous project

Paris-based filmmaker Lee Shulman is on a mission to preserve old photographic negatives and slides from the 60s up to the digital age. Due to the nature of colour photography and the chemicals used on the film when it’s exposed to light, the images will fade away over a period of about 50 years.

With the help of book editor Emmanuelle Halkin, Shulman has salvaged roughly 400,000 Kodacrome-colour slides from flea markets and personal archives. That collection will be further whittled down to a curated selection to be scanned, catalogued and enjoyed for years to come.

Check it out HERE!