This work of pure comedic genius began as a BBC Radio play by Douglas Adams (who was the first to think to combine science fiction and comedy), the audio of which is presented here: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It became so popular that it became a book then a sequel then a series then a trilogy with additional installments that made calling it a "trilogy" more and more misleading. It is perhaps the single funniest piece of work we have ever heard, a masterpiece.
‘Pregnancy robots’ could give birth to human children in revolutionary breakthrough — and a game-changer for infertile couples. There’s a robot for that.
What a time to be alive. People are marrying AI bots, [having intercourse with sexbots], and now robots might soon be able to [receive seed and get pregnant] carry babies [through gestation].
They'll never dare do this, never put these out. - What if perverts get their hands on robokids?
Now my cheating hubby and I can have kids!
China is reportedly working on designing a bot with an artificial womb — which will receive nutrients through a hose in its abdomen — that will soon be able to carry a fetus for about 10 [lunar] months before giving birth, according to Chosun Biz.
The “pregnancy robot” was conceptualized by Dr. Zhang Qifeng, founder of Kaiwa Technology in Guangzhou, China. If all goes according to plan, the prototype will make its debut next year. More
Too much cornography to blame?
Former Trump Warlord John Bolton targeted by FBI for his disloyalty to the Orange King
One of the sexy readers today just happened to be one of next month's features, Joseph Nicks, a man after the biological and whimsical, the terrestrial and environmental.*
He is currently working on a dictionary of Nickisms, his invented contributions to the English lexicon, like the term chronicide.**
Ron Koertge
Life is but a poem...or novel. (Ron Koertge)
(Poetry Foundation) South Pasadena Poet Laureate Ron Koertge, former PCC professor and current bestselling YA author, then schooled us all on how to present life in the Midwest roundabout the Fifties.
() Poet and young-adult novelist Ron Koertge grew up in rural Olney, Illinois, and received a BA from the University of Illinois and an MA from the University of Arizona.
Is no topic verboten in poetry?
Comfortable in both free verse and received form, Koertge writes poetry marked by irreverent yet compassionate humor and a range of personas and voices. He has published numerous collections of poetry. His novels and novels-in-verse for young readers include the popular Stoner & Spaz.
Koertge’s honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a California Arts Council grant, and inclusion in numerous anthologies such as Best American Poetry, Poetry 180, and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column.
Koertge’s young-adult fiction has won awards from the American Library Association and PEN America. For many years, Koertge taught in the MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults program at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He lives with his wife in South Pasadena, California. More: Poetry Foundation
In the crowd
Other readers were in the house: GT Foster was reading from Warped by War his new collection of poems about being in Thailand during the US War on Vietnam (and Cambodia and Laos), derived from his novel The Boys Are Not Refined (Butt Naked Press). Helena and other Quakers, Toti O'Brien, Barbs Bagwell, and British poet Martin Jago.
Perhaps the highlight of the night was when Mandy Kahn hit below the belt and delivered an exquisite work of poetic art she dubbed "Poo." The audience thought they might have heard "Pooh." But no. It was poo. It was the most provocative of topics covered due not to its candor but its seriousness. To mimic it as to suggest what it was like would be difficult butt not impossible:
(Poetry Foundation) ...in true LA form, enthusiastically live-tweeted by audience member Jenna Elfman, Mandy Kahn has been developing more ideas for poetry installations — an active syllable conservationist; she's now dubbed them "Kahnstallations." She says:
Mandy Kahn, live at the Getty Museum, LA
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to inject some energy into the poetry reading format. Slam poets have found a way to make their readings extremely appealing to wide audiences, as have the spoken word poets, and the avant poetry world seems to be doing lots of format experimentation, too. But I’d like to see mainstream poets find that same wider audience — that audience of fans who aren’t writers themselves. So I’m experimenting. Tonight I’ll be trying out four installations, and at the end of the night I’ll pass out comment cards so audience members can let me know which installations worked best for them. And I’ll keep writing new installations — keep honing — until I find a few that audiences seem to respond to. More
What is "slam" poetry?
SLAM: (Youth Speaks) "Somewhere in America" by Los Angeles Team
Poetry slam is a competitive art event in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience and a panel of judges.
"Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"
By Ron Koertge
Featured poet Ron Koertge, MFA
Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.
It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.
Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.
Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.
Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.
You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
The hominid hand. Its prehensile qualities (due largely to that remarkable opposable thumb) are legendary. It is perhaps the only anatomically advantageous structure this animal possesses. That oft-touted capacious cerebrum seems as often as not to allow itself to swell with a meaningless steam that marginalizes whatever intellectual potential it had in the first place. And with that pushed-in rostrum tucked up under the cranium and bent into an L-shaped labiolingual-laryngeal mess that imparts to this animal the power of speech, well that ability seems rarely to be put to good use.
No, it is the manus hominis that has allowed this species to be so constructive. Of course, as with those other two aforementioned structures, it can be just as adept at wielding weapons as it can tools. And when it is clenched into a fist, it is pretty much useless for anything other than fucking things up.
Though some of them may be infused with a certain degree of anger, none of the poems in this book, for example, could have been written had these fists not managed to come occasionally unclenched. More
*Killing a Homo (as in a Homo sapiens or "Man thinking") is homicide so, naturally, killing time is Chronicide (a Nickism by Joseph Nicks).
Ron Koertge, Mandy Kahn, Joseph Nicks, Steve McQueen (Papillion, 1973); all uncredited poetry by Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly
(Holy Koolaid) It's no secret that there are many versions and denominations of Christianity, but there's one belief that they all have in common. And this verse completely destroys that shared belief.
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Please subscribe to channel: goo.gl/ie3EZh. Thanks so much for ongoing support. Science is greater than Dogma. Dare to be curious, but don't drink the Koolaid!
George Lucas based the Star Wars character Yoda on two Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist rinpoches, the 14th Dalai Lama (with his distinctive ESL syntax and ejaculative pronunciation and peculiar articulation) and one of his seven teachers, Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche (Ven. Serkong).
Okay, there's a similarity there. Call the lawyer.
Buddhists want peace, so Yoda wants peace. And if we can't have actual peace, we at least demand a stop to wars (psychotic state-sponsored overt violence). "Fight war, not wars," as the liberating punk rock lyrics go.
The name "Yoda" was chosen because Lucas envisioned the character as a [wise] "little Dalai Lama," and he wanted him to have an "Eastern-sounding" name [9] (Wiki).
News 19 is North Alabama's news leader, on the cutting edge of all things Hollywood in the Deep South as the CBS affiliate in North Alabama and the Tennessee Valley since Nov. 28, 1963. whnt.com / whntnews19 / whntnews19 / WHNT
What happened on May 4th, 2025?
News 19 North Alabama, May 4, 2025; Good Morning America, ABC News, May 4, 2025; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
The SHOCKING lie behind Israel's claim to the land
(The Sarcastic Skeptic) Sept. 23, 2024: Was the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites (who used to be called the Canaanites) a historical event or just another brutal myth?
This video explores the dark and violent story of the Canaanite genocide as depicted in the Bible and dive into the archeological and historical evidence — or lack thereof — showing that it likely never happened.
Let’s critically examine the biblical narrative promoted by Jews today and debunk this ancient fairytale of divine massacre.
Interested in challenging religious myths with logic and evidence? This video is it. #ConquestOfCanaan #BiblicalHistory #DebunkingReligion #BiblicalMyths #HistoricalAccuracy #Archaeology #Canaan #Genocide #MythBusting
Do what you did to Bart to me, Lisa. I want to be Big Fat Buddha. - His name is Budai, Dad, and he's NOT the Buddha. He is a jolly bodhisattva with a big candy sack . - Ooh, Santa Budai!
Is optimistic nihilism a healthy way of life? In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the original BBC Radio series before the books, there's a very funny scene in an exchange between the human, Arthur Dent, and a stranger on the planet of Magrathea, a mythical planet that builds planets and therefore couldn't possibly exist. But here it is.
The stolen ship, The Heart of Gold, which is powered by the new infinite improbability drive, has found it. (Zaphod Beeblebrox, the president of the galaxy, stole it when he was meant to be launching it so he could carry out this secret plan, which first includes getting here to Magrathea).
The crew has entered and left poor Arthur on the surface, where he runs into the Magrathean Slartibartfast, who builds planets and who made the fjords of Earth. He is now working on Earth Mark II.
"Don't panic" (Douglas Adams)
Arthur Dent can't believe his ears, a reference to Earth so far out in space? Earth really is significant and special! But now it's all gone, destroyed by the Vogons.
Arthur, reflecting in this way, asks Slartibartfast a philosophical question about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Slartibartfast gives a very strange answer.
The question runs something like, "What's the meaning of it all?"
Zen Master Bart* or Lisa Simpson? (Matt Groening)
Slartibartfast replies, "I say, 'Hang the sense of it'! I far rather be
happy than right any day."
"And are you?" Arthur interjects with awe.
"No," Slartibartfast laments, "that's where it all falls down of course."
It's a nice philosophy but he -- and one suspects most of us -- can't live up to it. We'd far rather be happy than right, but we are neither happy nor right.
(It sort of gives a boost to those of us who'd far rather be right than happy, though, sadly, we're not right either most of the time, and as for happy? Fuhgeddaboudit.)
So what's the chance any of us are going to pull off this optimistic nihilism?
Optimistic? Okay, if we can manage it or set it as our default option and not worry. Nihilism? Easy, for some of us, all bleak, depressive, laughing at Woody Allen quips at the absurdity of things. WATCH
How to be happy and get saved?
Cosmic Amitabha [God] Buddha
*Does anyone remember that episode of The Simpsonswhen a psychologist decides that Bart is the healthiest person in Springfield? The doctor finds Bart the most "Zen." He's spontaneous, unpremeditated, artless, authentic, speaks his mind. He's so healthy everyone decides to be like him, and Bart hates it. Suddenly his uniqueness is taken away.
These attributes really are aspirations of Zen Buddhism, according to Alan Watts. The reason for it seems rooted in Taoism more than in what the historical Buddha taught. But it all comes down to a great division that occurred in Mahayana Buddhism, the great Tariki versus Jiriki Debate, whether salvation (enlightenment, awakening, spiritual liberation, emancipation, moksha, freedom, nirvana) is to be attained by our power (efforts) or other power (the efforts of something extrinsic), by our force or an outside force).
What patriarchal Mahayana Buddhism needs is a Goddess of Compassion, a Mary: Guanyin
.
The historical Buddha Gautama (Gandhara)
The historical Buddha taught a path of our own efforts, but many later Mahayana Buddhists deviated back to the world-popular path of blind faith, intense devotion, petitioning a higher power to do it for us.
This is never what the Buddha taught, but it makes more philosophical sense: Since we can't by our own power, we need to engage a Higher Power (like Amitabha Buddha, Mother Mary/Bodhisattva of Compassion Kwan Yin, other Cosmic Buddhas, God, or who knows) and hitch our train to that.
Hey, and this tulkubodhisattva?
In Mahayana, everyone will be saved eventually because a great Bodhisattva is going to see to it before attaining buddhahood and his own emancipation.
That's the thinking, Alan Watts explains, and that's why Pure Land Buddhism (Nichiren Shōshū) from Japan and China, Imperial Holy Roman Catholicism, Christianity (Jesus freaks), Islam, some New Age teachings...are all so popular. Will it be us doing or other doing?
It's funny that those who are adamant that some other power must save us still have a lot for us to do, as if we were saving ourselves.
Christians hypocritically say ONLY Jesus saves -- but to be saved, WE have to ask, repent, plead for the Holy Spirit to take possession of us and live our lives for us as the driver, be born again, get on God the Father's good side, pray and petition for His "grace," which is a "gift" that can only be given and never earned -- as if all the behaving and other stuff weren't work and earning it.
Savior? Now younger, nicer, whiter, easier!
Jeesh, what kind of scam? Most will do all that work and still not get it because their efforts weren't good enough. "Works without faith are dead" or something? "Not by thine own works art thou saved"?
Works (intentional karma, deeds) mean nothing? Clearly, they mean something. But Imperial Christianity (Protestant movements and the worldwide Catholic Church) wants to keep everyone in bondage and call that being "saved."
Compassionate Kwan Yin Bodhisattva
When you're up in heaven singing in a heavenly choir praising the Almighty God of the Universe, the great Creator, the doer, maker, thinker, and power of everything for an eternity, then you'll be happy?
No thanks. who wouldn't rather be a Buddhist, Independent, or New Ager to understand and make our own way to freedom and the end of all suffering (nirvana), to enlightenment in this very life and the deathless (amata)?
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