Van-go, 4 days 3 countries

A friend asked me to help bring their van from Serbia to Italy, lots of driving, all expenses paid and hooking up with friends all along the way- I did not need to think about it and was glad I didn’t.

Croatia-Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia-Italy, 1600 km of public transport and van driving. I would have driven it all the way to Spain had I been asked to.

A shot from the train to Zagreb, a lovely sunny/misty morning

Belgrade by night, did not have much time ot look around as we had a connection to catch but definitely will be back.

Mike singing to some friends in the city

Me on the camper in front of a old water tower in Vukovar that was a victim of the Serb/Croat war

Drivin’, not the fastest prettyiest thing in the world, actually we nicknamed it “the ugly date” but it was fun to drive for two days, would not buy it as my legs had a hard time under it and the colunm shift gave me a bruse from shifting into fourth banging into my knee.

Mike and I stopping at a local tavern in Slovenia for home made beer, not the most tasty, rather sweet and murky, but heck was it strong! timer shot.

Wanna live in that? a uniquely hideous flat in Trieste most of the first floors are way off the ground and all the view is just other flats.

It seems every hill in northern Italy has a castle on it, this was a rather nice one with the houses and vinyards below

Psychiatric Colors

I just got back from a trip with some of our other volunteers to the island of Rab. We conducted a project there for the well known psychiatric hospital there of a mural on one of there walls.

We spent two nights there with them, slept in their ward and got a look at what it is like for so many people there. Some lost businesses, were homeless and so got depressed and were sent there others were junkies, street fighters and alcohol or war veterans all put together in a ward with 73 others…and five of us.

The mural project was nice as it was for the elderly who can not wonder the property as they are too old, have Alzheimers and/or medicated to find their way back to the right building so they have a closed in concrete area between two buildings for them to roam in the fresh air in.

The staff were wonderful to us but also let us see and experience (though for sure sheltered version) of life inside, we talked to many of the patients in our “addictions” ward and were able to provide them at least a few minutes of company and encouragement, some of them even helped us with the painting of the mural and their friendship and stories we will never forget. The included a man from Mali Losinj with shrapnel in his head from the war that is to risky to remove that effects his brain negatively. A first-time mother who is 5 months pregnant who had problems with drinking and had a bad road accident leaving her in a coma for two days, thankfully her and the baby are fine now and she will have the baby in Split where her husband is waiting for her. These are just two of the nearly 500 people in this institution, and only one in four large places like this in Croatia.

The weather and the wall were not ideal for painting but we did our best in spite and did all we could in the short time we had. One volunteer that came with us was Andrea a hydro engineer from Italy who came to help us during half of his holiday time off to do this with us and went beyond to make sure the whole garden was clean as well. In the evening we sang songs in the TV room with some of the people we met, long days but it was an amazing experience for all of us. To see pictures of this project you can visit our Italian blog (sorry it is only in Italian) but the pictures are self explanatory. http://perunmondomigliore.wordpress.com/

Faceing the book

Finally got on facebook.com, what a tool it is for finding everyone, been on MySpace for years but never really found old friends. Been spending time finding friends, getting accepted and going through their friends to see if we know more of the same people and repeating this over and over. Kids I used to look after are adults, bikers, fighter pilots, parents, secretaries, lawyers and many more. going though their pics too shows how much time has passed, many of my teen buddies have up and coming teenagers, ex-GF’s were the hardest or girls I had teen crushes on all married and with kids, but that is life, we grow up and life takes us in different ways and places.

Face the book, take a look and enjoy this medium to connect with others you’d never meet again if it were not for this way!

Web Wrap

Well been busy and been sick, and more busy catching up and then sick again. Thought I’d do something different this time as I have not been taking pics to post some great ones I’ve seen on the news wires lately, enjoy!

Oh bummer – Three weeks on the job and looking tired, this great AP pic shows how much the stress on that job is. Still no big recovery bill passed, his buddies not nominated for tax problems, sure not what he thought it was going to be like riding off on his white horse into the sunset waving his magic wand of “change”. My bet is he’ll be gray haired before years out.

Road plow – This 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe, ever seen a front like that? I’ve taken pics at old car shows before including a 1939 Tata with three headlights, but this one man! Was one of the fastest cars in the world at the time but looks like it has a snow plow in front that is not the standard for speed aerodynamic, but i guess it worked, wonder what the mileage was. I’d love to have been there in those days and see all these innovative ideas sprawling the roads, today mass produced cars are all same-ish, and no radical new ideas or looks.

OK, a wide angle Fisheye lens makes it even wider, but fascinating! Other great pics from AP can be seen here.

Senate Saints? – It seems that new thing for press photog to take pics up-angle of Senators delivering speeches and press briefings under the dome of Capital Hill. Poor Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has to deliver bad news, but this is not the angle for him, he looks like a Dr. Seuss character already and the press takes pics of him with a “halo”? Is the country in such bad shape they have to keep peoples moral high with subliminal hints like this that they are elevated above us?

Cheeky butt- A Celebes Crested Macaque, how can we be realted?

Ghost Town

This is a fantastic movie! At first you say “not another Ghost movie”, but right away you see it opens up very different and keeps you guessing and hollering the whole time. Staring Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Tea Leoni, the last two are great actors but I’d never heard of Ricky Gervais before but seems to have had a long career in writing/producing TV shows and a standup comedian, he really brings something new to the story, a role they might have casted Huge Grant in as a awkward Brit, but would not have been as funny and witty, as the big guy really plays both who he is to start and who he becomes so well, they are so opposite yet so him. Great movie, I’m not going to give away more of the plot, very worth watching, meaningful, light and one of those movies like “Stranger then Fiction” that do not get a lot of promotion but are well worth the time and well written and acted.

GURU – Distortion Religion – Album Review

Loud is the first thing that comes to mind after recherchéing violently a few times on my eardrums, tympanic membrane and auditory nerve! Thankfully I got warning of this from Steve’s blog, I had to turn my sound on player to 43% just to listen to it on headphones, just to make it listenable, on a boom box it might heighten the experience but on a headset it makes a big difference in volume to other studio tracks. Once you have them on your mp3 player you might have to dive for the volume every time one of these songs come on when you add it to your playlist on shuffle if  you value your eardrums and want them to last at least the complete length of the album and beyond. Hard music is cool, being hard of hearing is just stupid! Don’t try to be cool and play it on full volume with headphones.

On the music side it is just an onslaught of vibes and beats that get you from invoking the matrix “Red Pill” parallel to the acid rock parody of Mary’s little lamb with “Mary’s little Lie” both to show our life is different from the world and why. It’s no-non-sense sound like it’s cover delivers and is something different yet again, but what we have come to expect from a project that includes Steve McNair.

@#@#(Explicit) the System (not read, at number, at number – ha)  is a rally call to do what the title suggests unabashedly as God’s called out ecclesia and leads the way with the thumping beats and screams to I’m loving to hate you/For the stench that you breathe and lies you conceive /My total rejection/Of the promise you gave to the lives you enslave/No time for discretion/I curse every mention of the system that make you want to storm the gates of hell that seep inside all of us with acceptance of worldly ways. This song works the conviction to the heart while the wiggles out of every bone in your body. The despairing tunes of “Reason With Myself” hopefully is a view of someone lost in the world, interesting tune but for those not familiar with Seattle’s 90’s music scene it might just seem like an off key dirge to more “cultured” ears.

Overall there is nothing exceptionally deep or profound, no huge dedication calls on this short album, but that is grunge/acid rock, and it is good they did not try to over spiritualize this style of music as its lyrics structure simply is not made for it. It is an arousing call to get off your ass and scream, shout and revolute, and I can see this being a wonderful addition to times when you just want to mosh with your friends at a party or heck even scream out in the car when stuck in traffic.

Downloading it from Steve’s blog (God told Lot to pinch His tits? maybe in the STEM bible -ha) gives you a lot of little extras that you will not get if you just download from The-Glitch or other sites, including a little explanation, news of future projects and all the lyrics, God bless you Steve, Shun and Taka, your our 6 great song Guru’s!

Change – Can we believe him?

I watched the inauguration yesterday over the internet as ABC News had a live free feed of the events. Firstly I have to say, it is a big event, I do not think he will be able to fix things much better then anyone else, he is no Messiah, he is clever but that an’t good enough with the mess we’re in. His speech was very Utopian, grandiose and polished, he never seemed to even look at the prompter, but clever words never fixed anything.

Some people say “well is this the anti-Christ?” Steve makes a case (not so watertight), but I have a hard time finding all the dots for that, he is a good speaker, he does have a stern look at times, has a “False Prophet” in new-age liberal Oprah and her show that espouses his ideals in TV sets worldwide, but more then anything I think this is the next piece in the game. Who was he just a few years ago? A community outreach worker paying off his huge collage debts still nearly into his forties, he could have been a big lawyer like he studied for but decided to do community projects (and write books of his life that netted millions once he became known), gets into local and then national Senate and pow! Jumps the line even on Hillary, even they did not know what was coming losing millions of personal money to her campaign trying to beat this new kid on the block. Poor old Bill caught with his pants down again, those behind the scenes people keep pulling the wool over his eyes, they almost passed his job over for Gore with a Monica power-play, then used his old buddy Gore as a smoke screen to get their new dummy cowboy into the job in 2000 and then made him think his wife really had a shot this time, In Israel the Jews have gentile house servants who do things their faith says they can’t do on the sabbath and that looks like Bill much of the time in politics.

Obama has the world in awe now but it will not last long, one comment on Gaza or Iran and the Arab and Muslim world will change their minds, at home he has even a bigger mess with the economy and wars. We will see if he has any “super powers” very fast, if he can make world peace in his first term then I see him breaking the covenant and declaring himself God in the temple in Jerusalem in his second, but the only way that will happen with a US president is for it to be a 51st state, and that seems improbable, but then a black president seemed something we would never see in our lifetimes too till it happened today. We are a long way from that, every president like a soldier looks good going into battle, it is how he fights that makes the difference. Bush might have been a dumb-ass pawn, but I think Obama is just the wise-ass rook setting the stage, getting the crowds, getting some of the house in order with new catch words “unity” and “change” for the big act to come called ” I am God”.

One of the most touching moments in this was seeing those little girls, they are so cute and idealistic, videoing their dads speech with the little digicam and all, reminded me so much of two little girls I know and care about their age. And I got to thinking what in the world they got into by default of who their dad is now, their lives are not theirs, outings and shave-ice on the beach in Hawaii are far off memories. I just had to pray for them, this bad, hard, cruel world will beat them for the rest of their lives, not crime and poverty but even worse, politics, compromise and lobbying and glare of the media and expectations of the world that will make their father into a different person as he becomes the first  “house slave” of the global agenda.

God help us all.

High Stakes, the stakes just get higher

Seems like STEM has landed a first for Family music by scoring a goal in our history for getting a song of his and others apparently written exclusively for the game on Pro Evolution Soccer 2009, a multi-platform computer soccer game like FIFA etc. While it might not make him or the Family a financial power it is helping to get the Word out to a new a different audience we are often not able to reach as they “live and breath” computer games, now they will be doing so to our tunes and especially high stakes that while it has a soccer chant is really much more meaningful and words are about life and overcoming, “high stakes for all our souls”.

Listen to it here on YouTube, I did not inbed it as it slows down my page for those of you who do not have high speed. Worth reading are the comments too that people left there on this YouTube post. Word is going to all the world and even cyber and computer space!

New Year, New Pic

Well every day I wake up and say “this idea or pic would be great for the ol’ blog”, but never get around to doing it, it becomes history faster then ever these days. Here is a pic for all those New Year goals. The past year is all those old houses, yesterday’s success.  The sky is were we still want to go, the plane our dreams and were I want to go.

Writing my Mind

I’ve started to write some of my thoughts and ideas. This project is not like others where I write opinions of views of scenarios but the mental process, struggles and mental “childbearing process” in my head. Might be dark, might be colorful, might be things you never thought of, and it might be things that fly in your head too that you never get around to putting down. My mind of late has been afloat with endless words, thoughts, ideas and observations that I just can’t ignore any more; it’s telling me to write them down, so I am. Not sure if or how you’ll ever see or read them but that is what is happening and one reason (other then a Christmas onslaught push) I do not post much here right now. It might be a flood after New Years or nothing, stay tuned!

Here is one sampling:

Anger to Answers

I was born with an extra dose of aggravation in my blood, I’d think it is hereditary some, yet my Scottish ancestral spirit helper Michael “Mick” McKenzie says “don’t blame it on me”, so I don’t. My father said that we, his sons had…