WW: Windcar

(Photo doesn't look it, but this vehicle is really flying. The draught
kite pulls it equally well in all directions, wind direction notwithstanding.)

Rock Groups 2015

Time again for the yearly crop of Awesome Rock Groups Waiting To Happen. Same rules as ever:

• Anybody who wants one of these can have it. There is no trademark, copyright, or grigri on any of them.


• Remember that people often steal my names without telling me, or even waiting for me to think of them. So vet any you want carefully to make sure someone else isn't already that.


• All clients of mine (which you become the moment you assume one of these identities) are entitled to tell everyone that they were named by a Zen hermit monk.

Where a name suggests a possible genre I've included that information as a serving suggestion.

So.


Rock Groups 2015

The Next of Kin

Antofagasta (Spanish rock)

The Blacks (political rap)

Y2K

Massive Transit

Under Where

Взвод

Notochord

Flags of the World

Referendum

Hoe

Fork

Gravesend (English folk rock)

Finisterre (Celtic rock)

Crabapple (American roots rock)

Umlaut (without one; irony-parsing metal group)

Goana (Oz group)

The HouseMartians

Polysynthetic (electronica)

The Caecilian Mafia

Man Ray

Left For Dead

Squeegee

Earthpig

Zoot Suit Riot (hot brass'n'sax swing)

Morticia (emo girl group)

Tucúquere (Andean roots rock)

Chompipe (Guatemalan roots rock)

Zopilote (Mexican roots rock)

Chew

The Axes of Evil

Urban Renewal (Motown revival group)

Kleever

Cheap Meet

Camouflage (alt country)

Whammy Bar

Too Wellington

Back 40 (rockabilly)

Jigsaw

The Virtual Uninhabitants

Bomb Vomit

Gregory Go Boom

Lothar and the Hill People

Tumour Spoon

No Jump Julie (Seattle sound)

Bluegill (country)

Watermelon (psychedelic)

Sundial

Titular Lizard

Biff Blake and the Parasitic WASPs


(Photo courtesy of Kathy Reed and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Ironically good news

(When I was a kid, there were no sea otters on this coast. At all. They'd disappeared completely by the 1920s, relentlessly exterminated to the last individual by trappers. In the 1970s, they came under federal law, and today killing a sea otter, or even possessing so much as a bone, carries a crushing fine and/or ten years in prison. And lo, some days ago I found this on the beach. I'd heard rumours they were out there again. I don't know what killed this one, but it wasn't a trap or a rifle. So as I've often noticed, environmental regulation works. From the bald eagles that have gone from oddity to pest, to oil-free sand, to the now-rarity of dead birds and marine mammals on the tidelands, the beach is visibly better off than it was when I was a boy.)

UPDATE, 9 July 2015: Evidently this is not an isolated incident. Experts don't know why sea otters (and other marine mammals) are washing up on the North Coast in unusual numbers this summer. They first suspected domoic acid, a toxin that builds up in clams this time of year, due to a seasonal algae bloom, but now they seem to have written that off. Nevertheless I've noticed a remarkable number of dead razor clams in the surf of late. And sea otters live on clams. Anyway, the story is here.

Hermitcraft: Beach Peas

We're at the height of beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus) season here at the top of the planet, and that means I'm eating them by the fistful. They're common – in fact, ubiquitous – on my beach, and I gather them up on walks to toss into soups, sauces, and salads, or just shell and eat sur place.

Seeds that can survive five years in seawater have made beach peas native to virtually every shore north of the Equator, and a hearty willingness to grow elsewhere has seen them introduced to many southern ones as well. Their vines and fruit bear a marked resemblance to the domestic sort (Pisum sativum, late L. oleraceus), to which they are closely related. Their flowers too are very like those of garden pea, but striking lavender, blue, or violet. (Sweet pea [L. odoratus] is another close relative.) The pods are generally smaller and heavier than the garden variety, and the peas inside tiny by comparison. These don't reach harvestable size until overripe, and so have the waxy texture and slightly copper-penny taste of past-due garden peas. Not the tender sweetness we associate with their tame cousins, but entirely acceptable. They also have the notable advantage over most wild greens of coming on all summer long, so that the harvest window is months, rather than days.

As a wild food, beach peas catch their due portion of Chicken Little trolling, invoking in this case the spectre of lathyrism. Nervous readers may be assured that the chemical cause of that disease is meagre in beach peas, and leaches readily out in cooking; that you'd have to eat masses of shot-like peas over masses of time to present symptoms; that like scurvy, pellagra, beriberi, and other maladies of nutritional extremity, lathyrism cannot be contracted casually; and finally, that I have eaten these things all my life, both raw and cooked, in conventional quantities, and my butt still works. (See the Wikipedia entry linked above.) Always remember: any food can be proved "poisonous" by a determined crank. If you don't bring some reason to the table, you'll starve to death.

Any road. If you're around beach peas, toss some into something. They make for pleasant collecting, and welcome variety.

WW: Contrail doodle

(Yet another military mystery: what is this plane doing? It continued scribing large stacked squares in front of the naval listening post for some time.)

The Monk's Creed

This is my bowl. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My bowl is my best friend. It is my life. I must accept what falls into it as I must accept what falls into my life.

My bowl, without me, is useless. Without my bowl, I am useless. I must fill my bowl according to the precepts. I must live more compassionately than the unenlightened. I must become enlightened. I will.

My bowl reminds me that what counts in practice is not the candles I light, the lines I chant, nor the smoke I make. I know that it is my acts that count. I will act.

My bowl is sangha, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will carry it like a brother. I will love it new and old, perfect and cracked, full and empty. I will keep my bowl clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will.

By the Dharma, I swear this creed. My bowl and I are sojourners after truth. We are masters of the practice. We are the saviours of my life.

So be it, until all sentient beings are saved and there is no suffering, but peace.

Oorah.

WW: UH-60x Black Hawk

(I see a lot of these here at the beach. I've no idea why, since this is a US Army Black Hawk, rather than the expected Navy SH-60x Sea Hawk. [Aside from colour, the aft wheel -- shifted 13 feet forward in the naval series, to accommodate shipboard landings -- is a dead giveaway].)