February 2012
5 posts
The Alignment Test
Chaotic-Good
66% Good, 64% Chaotic
Plane of Existence: Arborea, “Arvandor, Olympus, Olympian Glades”. Notable Inhabitants: Titans & gods of Greek mythology; Eladrin. Examples of Chaotic-Goods (Ethically Chaotic, Morally Good) Tifa Lockheart (FFVII) Captain Kirk Robin Hood Thomas Jefferson Oscar Wilde Peregrin Took Jim Hawkins Austin Powers Walt Whitman Zorro Han...
The new science of our cross-wired senses →
By COURTNEY HUMPHRIES l The Boston Globe Dec. 11, 2011
Yes, your ears can change what you taste. What discoveries about cross-sensory perception are revealing about the brain.
The senses have always been our portals into the outer world. We have the classic five that Aristotle talked about — sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — plus more recently recognized senses of balance, ...
Kuala Lumpur, your eardrums are not safe
(first published on flightplansg.wordpress.com - my new vehicle for happy nonsense)
It’s like being swallowed by a whale, motorcycling down the throbbing morass that is Kuala Lumpur’s highways, byways and no-bloody-ways. Maniacal scooters that make our taxi drivers look like road-safety poster boys, the city heat that liquidates your eyeballs, that distinct chance of you being shat...
January 2012
6 posts
“I dont want to ride over any 3-foot downed trees, just wanna be able to climb some hills, cross some streams, basically Jeep roads, wherever a car and street bike cannot go. And the Versys can do that…”
- JakeSabre
Ride North 2011: 9-28 Dec
(finally, the trip report)
4 regular joes and one scruffy jane, getting by in the 9-to-5 trenches with the same brutal bosses as anyone else. No fancy gear, no classy uniforms and no bullshit - just a shared, unreasonable hunger for journeys in the saddle… and maybe some fried tarantulas? Only two of us had ever ridden across onto Thai soil before, but the air in december has a way of...
December 2011
5 posts
two things i will keep close as we all roll into a...
1) the reverential hush that every poetic sunset, decorated night sky and morning birdsong evokes. the day i cease to wonder is the day they bury me. 2) the rigorous honesty and open-heartedness of friends who are more family than they’ll ever know. 2012, lets see you stride in with all the bold swagger of a proud mountain range.
"i looked into the eyes of the world and saw...
for most of dec 2011, i lived out of motorcycle panniers, tracing a winding, varied road across the face of thailand, crossing shortly into myanmar. here are excerpts from short correspondences with T along the way; these are probably the best and most raw logs of the experience:
…
12 dec we rolled into chiangmai by lunch today. weather and traffic have been kind. went straight from...
3 years in the dreaming and 6 months in the planning - tonight at 2200hrs we ride for northern thailand. nearly 8000km, but still only a baby step.
the open road - i will always romanticize it out of proportion, its rough-tough spontaneity, those unreachable horizons, and that machine-and-two-wheels smell of freedom. above all, that sense of an overwhelmingly larger world.
this time i’ve...
2 dec is for those whom we cannot bring back. although we see their faces in the most silent of constellations, and whisper their names into the loudest of winds, they remain memories on the other side of the door.
i’m right here, doing the living for you gabs.
November 2011
22 posts
this morning i suddenly remembered manila. fresh off the plane, i rolled laughing into the streets and piled myself into the back of a random jeepney plying some random (but fixed) route, and you almost laid an egg in panic over where we might possibly land up. i forgot to stop by a money changer before this, and we had nothing but sing dollars and a smile to pay the driver - after we were the...
all you do in 27 years is accumulate time, but in 30 hours you could really grow up.
under the birthing and dying of one brief sun you could learn very quickly the truth about your oldest friends- pain, loss, pride. you could turn to look for the first time into the eyes of your oldest demon and find that you can return the growl and steady that stare.
in our efforts to soften reality’s...
the sky is folded, folded. runes of gently shifting ashen softness, painted by moon.
a forest like this bears a sublime violence in the notes of its song; haunt this path alone and feel cradled and menaced in equal measure.
when you reach the quarry, with torchlight conduct a sweeping orchestra on the lake, her liquid throat. trace the angles of her soaring granite face.
stand very still,...
Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize →
youmightfindyourself:
Only a tiny fraction of the brain is dedicated to conscious behavior. The rest works feverishly behind the scenes regulating everything from breathing to mate selection. In fact, neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine argues that the unconscious workings of the brain are so crucial to everyday functioning that their influence often trumps conscious...
Uncrate: Nomad Motorcycle Tent →
FOR CHRISTMAS, PLEASE
“its like swallowing one of those crazy little peppers, it’s gonna burn and bite all the way down and you’ll think your chest will explode from hurt, but you’ll eventually shit the damn thing out and be right as a new tomorrow,”
he pauses to put a dab of blue on the last cicada,
“thats the idea, at least.”
“it’s an odd purgatory to stand in, between novelty and familiarity.”
– big rabbit
October 2011
9 posts
that traveler’s hat, you wear it to some odd places. old places, in-between places, places that will hold to no frame of reference. you drag your feet through one long restless gathering of all that ever was, shrouding yourself in a cloud of time’s detritus until your mind is eaten alive by apocryphal recollections, or until a manasseh rain deigns to wash clear your vision. you...
“it’s very beautiful over there!”
– Thomas Edison - spoken several days before his death, as he awoke from a nap, gazing upwards, as reported by his physician Dr. Hubert S. Howe, in Thomas A. Edison, Benefactor of Mankind : The Romantic Life Story of the World’s Greatest Inventor (1931) by Francis Trevelyan Miller.
i dont want to have to hear the filthy truth about my childhood heroes, mom.
“hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
– william shakespeare
3 tags
September 2011
17 posts
