A New Machine

The words you are reading were written on my new machine.  My new machine is silver and black and is filled with GBs and USBs and F-whatnots.  We (me and my machine) seem to be getting along fairly well thus far.

I have been feeding my machine old backup files and smarter-than-me photographs and allowing my 40 pounds of housecat to shed all over the keyboard.

Now to upload: Welcome! 

--Mitchell Hegman

Calm

Something, aside from becoming increasingly uglier, is happening to me as I grow older. The thing I am talking about is NOT freaking-out about bad stuff when it occurs in my life.

I give you (the possibly inane) example of being confronted yesterday with a totally dead computer. Back in "the day" such a loss would have launched me into total panic. I might have thrown my mouse to the floor after a few fruitless attempts at bringing the screen to life. At a minimum, I would have yelled curses at the nearest lamp or doorway. Instead, I simply sat back and said to myself: "Self, this is not particularly good."

The loss of my machine is a big deal. Without my computer and access to my previous work, I had to force closed (temporarily) my entire business since my work is steeped in creating documents, Power Point presentations, and the production of online training.   Furthermore, I needed to immediately expend the better part of $1,000.00 on hardware and software to assure I can get busy again before the end of this week.

I remained utterly calm throughout an entire day of running my machine about to see what might be done. I had to find someone able to quickly retrieve my most recent data. I had to purchase (locally) the required hardware and software.

At the end of the day, I thought about my calm reactions and behavior as I sipped on a glass of Scotch and watched the sun drop into a snowstorm. I wondered if my behavior in the face of this adversity might be attributed to my finally learning to accept and reason through troubles or if, perhaps, I just don't give a damn anymore.

I am all over the latter answer on this one.

--Mitchell Hegman

Two Horses

My laptop computer crashed yesterday afternoon, leaving me with need to be innovative in my efforts to post a blog. I shall spare you the details on how I finally managed a blog (this post took me hours) and simply inform you that I am posting a photograph that I captured about ten years ago while driving through a storm about a mile from my house.

--Mitchell Hegman

Other Considerations

Today we shall consider the bigfoot hunter from Oregon who lugs his entire set of drums out into the deep forests and plays the hell out of them for hours, sometimes for days.  The bigfoot hunter has reasoned that one day he will attract the full attention of a bigfoot that will turn the tables and seek to investigate him.

I must admit, his plan seems as solid as any other.

--Mitchell Hegman

Like Hanged Men (An Example)

Like hanged men, we left our prepositional phrases dangling there.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Human Christmas Tree

Yesterday, one of my sisters and I drove to Butte to visit another sister and her family.  The highway was covered with snowpack and ice for the entire way there, but once in Butte I had a great time visiting with everyone—especially my nephew’s young girls.

At some point early in the morning, the girls decided that I should be a human Christmas tree.  Posted today is a photograph of how I look as a Christmas tree (which is first-cousin to looking like an Algerian Shriner) and a photograph of the girls with their parents.

--Mitchell Hegman

My Christmas Eve with Leo

Last night I broke a tradition that extends back to the early 1980’s.  That tradition is driving into town to spend Christmas Eve with my friend Bill and Kim and dozens of stoppers-bye touring the luminaries in their neighborhood.  I was actually pulling my shoes on to go there when the power dropped from my house and left me in the cerulean blue of first darkness caught in a sudden snowstorm.

The house fell into perfect silence.

My friend Leo turned 87 a few months ago.  He presently lives all alone just below me on a slope overlooking the lake.  He is mostly confined to a chair in his living room, attended by all manner of electric gadgets.  Worried that he might be without power for an extended time, I used my twice-as-smarter-than-me-phone to call in the power outage and then to call off my trip into town.

I had to pull the emergency release on my garage door before I could lift the door and back out into the dizzying swirls of snow.  I drove the short distance down to Leo’s place.

I need to express this right now: I had a great Christmas Eve with Leo.

We sat together in total darkness for about two hours, talking about our lives.  He loved his wife and he loved my wife.  I loved my wife and I loved his wife.  He told me he was born on an Indian Reservation in eastern Montana and told me he could recall, as a boy, thinking the age of fifteen was old and hoping he would someday be that old.

“I wish I could be that old again,” he said.

We talked about how my Uncle Nick was his best friend, about my cousins, how proud he is of his own sons and his daughter, his grandchildren—though he gives every generation hell.  We talked about everything you might imagine.

The lights eventually blossomed from darkness all round us.  We celebrated with a verbal “thanks” to the linemen out there.  I made sure all of the electronics (and in particular the television) were in working order.  “Well,” I said as I stood by his door to drive back to the light of my own house, “Merry Christmas, Leo!"

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

--Mitchell Hegman

An English Man wakes from a Coma Speaking French and Convinced he is Matthew McConaughey

I will admit to mistakenly thinking I was good-looking—this occurred only one time and was the direct result of drinking tequila.  Interestingly enough, tequila is also responsible for the huge blank space in my memory where the better part of two days should belong.

No recollections at all.  Nada.

I am now convinced that tequila is a gateway drug.  What I mean by that is: tequila is the very gate to hell.

As bad as all of the above sounds, imagine yourself waking one day speaking a foreign language and convinced you have become a famous movie actor.  That is exactly what happened to Rory Curtis, a 25 year old Englishman from Worcester.

Mr. Curtis landed in a coma following a nasty car crash on a rainy highway.  Rescue workers required the better part of an hour just to extricate him from the wreckage.  Rory, among other damages, suffered from internal injuries that left blood leaking into his brain.  Doctors and nurses worked for six solid days to save his life.  Rory remained comatose for the entire six days.

When Rory Curtis finally came about again, he was speaking rather fluent French, a language he studied a little back in high school, and he was convinced that he was Matthew McConaughey, the famously handsome actor.  While there is a somewhat tenuous connection to speaking French, the leap to thinking he was Matthew McConaughey is curious for Mr. Curtis—not that he is particularly bad-looking—but Matthew McConaughey is godlike.

Rory more or less drifted in and out of thinking he was Matthew McConaughey and struggled a bit with many normal activities at first.   After months of treatment and re-training as a barber, Rory Curtis settled back into his normal life again.

When submitted to traumatic experiences such as car crashes and tequila, the human brain will perform peculiarly.  I often wonder which of these experiences, if either, is responsible for the whacky behavior of Gary Busey and wonder when he will recover.

Posted is a photo of Rory Curtis.

--Mitchell Hegman

Desktop Stickman

If the video posted fails to launch, please click on this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLNTeJaP0VQ

--Mitchell Hegman

The Angel of Death

I know that I annoy some people.  I purposely annoy my sister by producing weird accents and teasing her about her inability to talk without throwing her hands all over the place in accompanying gestures.  My daughter had a stock response for most everything I said to her during her teen years.  The exact phrase was this: “Stop being so annoying!”

Luckily, I never annoyed Daniela Poggiali.  Poggiali typically killed anyone who annoyed her.  She has been dubbed “The Angel of Death” by the Italian press.  The “angel” part of this moniker is a result of her rather striking beauty.

Daniela, age 42, worked as a nurse at a hospital in Lugo, Italy, until her arrest for the deaths of dozens of patients under her care.  By some estimates she may be responsible for as many as 90 deaths.  She is believed to have poisoned her patients with potassium chloride.  At times, Poggiali took selfies while posed with some of her deceased victims.  Police discovered the images on her phone.  In a few images, Daniela Poggiala is seen with a broad smile—sometimes giving a thumbs-up sign—while leaning over her recently departed patients.

Mrs. Poggiali behaved quite calmly, if not coldly, during her arrest and has remained chillingly composed ever since.  She has also been flooded with fan mail and marriage proposals.

As near as anyone can determine Daniela Paggiali killed her patients because either they or some of their family members annoyed her.  She was not opposed to stealing her patients personal items, prescription drugs, or money.

Some of her coworkers were suspicious about the number of deaths while Daniela was on duty.  The death rate was about twice that of normal during those times when Daniela Paggiali was on shift.  Three of her patients died under suspicious circumstances in just one day.

Posted are photographs of Daniela Paggiali gleaned from the internet.

 

--Mitchell Hegman

Shopping Carts

On Friday I shared a sweet moment with a couple that I would gauge as something near my age.  The unique part of this is that none of us spoke a single word.

I and the couple entered Costco at the same time and arrived at the lines of shopping carts just as a very old woman selected a cart from one of the three lines.  I freed a cart from the second line of carts just a few seconds before the couple grabbed a cart from the third.  In the meantime, the old woman pushed her cart two steps, dropped her overly large purse inside the cart and, with her head down, began digging through the purse with great earnest—completely unaware that she had blocked me and the couple from pushing away with our own carts.  I stood pinned between the wall and dozens of carts.  The couple stood on the opposite side of the old woman but was blocked from entering the store by a row of carts.

The old woman remained there, blocking us, for a considerable length of time.

Oddly enough, I felt far from frustrated as I watched the old woman.  Out of respect for the woman, and feeling no particular need to hurry, I simply stood there in great amusement.  When I glanced over at the couple, both the man and woman offered broad smiles of mutual understanding.

We happily stood there waiting for the woman to finish fiddling with this or that in her purse before she pushed away, oblivious of us.

Perhaps this is odd, but the highlight of my Friday was right there when that old woman blocked our way.

--Mitchell Hegman

1811

I wake from a dream of riding inside a crowded bus climbing a slanting San Francisco street.  When I glance at my fuzzy digital alarm it reads 1811.

Where in the hell is my : and what kind of time is 1811?

I try to sleep again but my long departed wife starts walking through my thoughts and 20 pounds of housecat begins shredding the carpet at my bedroom door.

It occurs to me that getting old sucks.

I climb from bed and chase all 40 pounds of housecat (two of them) down the hall toward the kitchen.  The cats are silent until they reach the tile floor, which apparently triggers their meowing mechanism.

I feed the cats and then eat an overly-ripe banana that tastes like the chemical scent of cheap laundry detergent.

I sit with my computer on the sofa and press the button that makes it yawn and then sing itself to full life.

I write.

The time is 3:39.

--Mitchell Hegman

You call that a Mouse?

Posted is a photograph of 20 pounds of housecat (Carmel).  I captured the image with my twice-as-smarter-than-me-phone.

--Mitchell Hegman

Machines

If we are all on the road to being replaced by automation and machines, I hope that I am replaced by either a machine that makes women smile or one that staples stuff together.

--Mitchell Hegman

Passing Time

Am I wrong in those times when I find myself passing time by imagining a giant hairball about to devour someone who is explaining (for the eighteenth time) the same unsolvable problem?

Maybe I am.

Would it be better to imagine Salma Hayek disrobing?

--Mitchell Hegman

More Mostly Useless Facts

—Sleep deprived men are more likely to conclude that women want to have sex with them.

—Stories of one needy individual tend to attract more charitable donors than stories of unnamed millions suffering.

—Pouring a handful of salt into a full glass of water will cause the water level to drop rather than overflow.

—Scientists have devised a way to transform peanut butter into diamonds. 

—Texas has put into place laws that allow its residents to cast votes from space.

--Mitchell Hegman

Thanks to:  sotruefacts.com

Basic Flaw

It is difficult to fall in love when you should generally be rising to get there.

--Mitchell Hegman

Into the Black

Yesterday, I drove through a mountain blizzard while listening to the posted song.  I don’t recommend the blizzard, but I do recommend the song.

If the video fails to launch, please click on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSycSBYHitc

--Mitchell Hegman

Frozen Mud Puddles

While out for a walk the day before yesterday, I came across a whole series of frozen mud puddles.  The forms created by ice and the patterns created by tire tracks immediately caught my attention.  I captured some photographs with my twice-as-smarter-than-me-phone and have posted two of them here today.

 

--Mitchell Hegman

Bruce Jenner is not a Regular Guy

Bruce Jenner is not a regular guy.  For one thing, he won a gold medal for the decathlon in the 1976 Summer Olympics.  Following that athletic milestone, he appeared on everyone’s breakfast table as a box of Wheaties.  Bruce Jenner even took up acting.  In 1980 he starred in a movie called Can’t Stop the Music.  He was promptly awarded a Golden Raspberry Award for worst actor of the year.  The movie was awarded a Golden Raspberry for worst picture of 1980.   He took up acting again in 2011 and played a role in the movie Jack and Jill.  That movie was similarly awarded a Golden Raspberry for worst picture.

Not regular guy stuff there.

More recently, Bruce Jenner has started becoming even less a regular guy by seeming to transform into a frightfully awkward woman.  The weird thing is that he is apparently becoming a woman on purpose.  You cannot predict what famous athletes will do these days.  I suppose that transforming your sex is a far better outlet for the athletic whatever-they-haves than slugging your future wife in the elevator or taking a bunch of drugs that turn your muscles into freakish robots and your brain into so much mush, but that hardly make watching the transformation any easier.

Maybe Bruce Jenner will eventually become a 6’-2” swan and look stunning in a full evening gown.  Perhaps he will star in a movie that harvests an Academy Award.

Again, not regular guy stuff.

As a rule I don’t follow athletics or athletes, but I am rather interested to see how the story of Bruce Jenner develops.  This one might be going places.

Posted is a photograph of Bruce from back in his glory days and two more recent photographs captured by the paparazzi.

 

--Mitchell Hegman

One for the Negative Team

The votes are in.  Miley Cyrus needs to put on some clothes because that shit just ain’t sexy.

--Mitchell Hegman

Age

My body has reached an age at which my limbs often refuse direct orders from my brain and where my unshaven face looks something akin to a junkyard fence plastered with windblown litter.  I sometimes bump into my grade school friends on the street and think, after we part: “They looked like an old person!”

Until my body reminds me of my age by some form of operational glitch or outright failure, I often forget that I am old.  I don’t feel near as old as I considered my grandparents at my age.  Every so often, however, a child is kind enough to remind me of my age.  A few years ago, one of my coworkers brought his young son to work.  As the pair was leaving, the boy glanced up at his father and asked in concern, “Dad, if you come here and work with Mitch, are you gonna start looking old like him?

--Mitchell Hegman

White Trees, Dark Sky

Today, I am posting a photograph of frost-covered trees as seen from my back deck at sunset.

--Mitchell Hegman

Best

Doing what is best for others is normally what is best for you.

--Mitchell Hegman

Tiny Ships

Here, at the pale shoulder of morning,

The final star crossing from darkness to light takes full measure of life.

At first light, mountains tumble into cities that stand upright and shine brightly on one side.

Threads of water begin small but soon stitch themselves into green seas.

In the cities, people gather against colorful reflections.

From the echoes of joined voices tiny ships emerge

And are sent along the blue threads of water

So the men onboard might seek and explore the endless seas.

From darkness into light, from light into darkness,

And from darkness into the light again, the ships sail on,

The men taking measure once

And themselves being measured over and over again.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Suggestion

I woke this morning and immediately got to thinking that we should add a third, capitalized “G” to the word sugGgestion to make it a much bigger deal.

--Mitchell Hegman

Three Notes on Human Health

1.  It is necessary to floss only the teeth you would like to keep.

2.  If you are shaving a part of your body that requires two mirrors and a contorted stance, the use of a straight edge razor is not recommended.

3.  In spite of persistent wives’ tales, laughter is not actually contagious, but gonorrhea is.

--Mitchell Hegman

Dude, Have You Seen My Brains?

Some fairly important people are missing their brains.  While you might guess that I am referencing some of your nearest relatives or perhaps a local employer, I am really talking about the staff at the University of Texas.

Before you start in on any jokes about a Montanan, a Texan, and the Pope entering a gay bar in Missoula, I would like to note that the missing brains are, in crass terms, pickled specimens long preserved in jars of formaldehyde.  The brains in question—something near 100 of them—were being held in storage for Austin State Hospital.  One of the missing brains is thought to be that of Charles Whitman, the so called “clock tower sniper.”  Mr. Whitman killed 16 people and wounded 32 others at the University of Texas in 1966.

While you might be able to explain how your relatives came to be missing their sense of humor or explain how your boss lost all common sense, explaining the loss of dozens of whole pickled brains in jars is a notable mystery.  The missing brains were used for studies by the University of Texas Psychology Department.  Any value placed on the brains, beyond their use in university studies or their use as Halloween backdrops, is uncertain.

You are now welcome to launch into a joke about three men locked in a small room filled with pickled brains: a professor of psychology from Texas, a cowboy from Montana, and surfer from California.  I am favoring a joke about milk cartons with an illustration of the human brain printed on the back and the simple caption: “Missing.”

--Mitchell Hegman

A Quote

If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.

--Laurence J. Peter

A Flying Boy

Maybe you came from a place where a flying boy is likely Peter Pan.  I, on the other hand, came from a place where a flying boy likely got kicked in the ass by his father or his big brother.

--Mitchell Hegman

I Think She Likes Me

A friend of mine is convinced that he is a major attraction to women.  He is no more attractive to the opposite sex than any other guy with average looks and a pot belly, mind you, but this does little to discourage what we shall call his abundant imagination.  Honestly, he is convinced that every girl he meets is hot for him.  Just to show you what I am mean, I present the following conversation:

Setting: My ladies’ man friend and I are leaving a hardware store.  He has just purchased a small sack of mixed bird seed.

Ladies’ Man (Grinning and swinging his sack of bird seed): Hey, did you notice that girl back there in the store?

Me: Which girl?  There were a bunch of them in the store.

Ladies’ Man: The girl in the bird seed aisle.

Me: Of course I noticed her.  She was nearly standing on my toes.  Why?

Ladies’ Man: She wants me.

Me: Wow.  I did not catch that.

Ladies’ Man (Holding forth the sack of bird seed): Didn’t you notice how she came right up to me and started talking and then helped me pick out this seed?  I think she likes me.

Me: Yeah…I did notice that.  But she is friendly with customers because she works there.  That’s what she is paid to do. She sells bird seed.  I also noticed that the checker gave you proper change.  Does that mean she has the hots for you, too?

Ladies’ Man: Screw you, Mitch.

--Mitchell Hegman

Feels Like -4°

I woke to a temperature of -4° Fahrenheit according to the weather app on my twice-as-smarter-than-me-phone.  When the weather is cold like this, the app also offers the “feels like” temperature based on windchill.  The “feels like” temperature can be dramatically colder than the actual temperature at times.  If you consult a windchill temperature chart, a temperature of -4° will feel like -25° with a sustained wind of 15 miles-per-hour.

This morning feels like -4° due to calm conditions.

Just once, I would like to wake to a -4° temperature that feels like 70°.

--Mitchell Hegman

Where M. C. Escher and I Meet

Nature is by no means opposed to the use of repeating patterns.  The patterns begin small and out of sight as molecular networks and work their way up through crystal caves and ocean waves to reach the repeating patterns of spiral galaxies reaching out far beyond our small blue planet.

My eye is and always has been attracted to patterns.  If you were to browse through a folder of my favorite photographs, you would find more than a few images of patterns I have captured in architecture, in a macro focus, or in natural landscapes.  I particularly enjoy a point of view that transforms patterns into something of an illusion.  In short, I like to do in my photography what M. C. Escher managed in art works.

Escher, a Dutch born graphic artist who died in 1972, greatly inspired me.  As a teenager, I had four posters of his work pinned to the walls of my bedroom.  In my house today, you will find four books filled with panels of his lithographs, woodcuts, and mezzotints.  M. C. Escher’s repeating patterns (tessellations) and explorations of infinity are confounding and beautiful in the same stroke.

Today I am posting two of M. C. Escher’s works and a photograph I captured.  I captured the photograph while visiting a temple in Seoul, South Korea.  The photo is a tight and purposely mis-angled view of the outside beam structure that has been covered with netting to discourage birds.

--Mitchell Hegman

Happy

I have decided to be happy today and I am going to be happy today even if I need to invent a reason to be so.

--Mitchell Hegman

Thanksgiving

The first known American Thanksgiving was held in Plymouth, where the Pilgrims and the Wompanoag gathered in the fall of 1621 to celebrate a year of bountiful harvest.  The feast is known to have consisted of vegetables harvested from the garden, turkey, and five deer provided by the Wompanoag.

I am providing sea salt potato chips today.

You’re welcome.

--Mitchell Hegman
NOTE: Please see yesterday’s blog for a better understanding of the entry posted today.  

An Adult Observation

I had to do a bit of shopping at Costco late yesterday afternoon.  The store was swarmed with people—many purchasing items for their Thanksgiving dinners.  Before I got started with my own list, I stopped at the bathroom.

The bathroom bustled at a level comparable to the checkout.  Men were starting to stack up at both the urinals and the sinks.

Thank you for washing, by the way.

When I spotted an open urinal, I walked over and sprayed all over the place, as is my normal habit.

I have been going to the bathroom for as long as I can remember and I have been in countless restrooms.  In all of my time, I have never been witness to anything like what occurred when the man next to me finished his time spraying down the place.

Some men make a pretty big deal of shaking off their little winky.  I have seen guys hopping as they shake.  Some men seem to have a bit of a ping pong match going on down there.  Yesterday, the man next to me went wild when he got to his shaking-the-winky point.  As one of my buddies would describe such an event: “He went about it like a man killing snakes.”

The man started to flail all over the place, almost as if he was warding off a vicious attack from his own feral penis.  If not for chest-high metal dividers between us, I think he might have knocked over at least three other men.  The whole line of men facing the wall at urinals swiveled their heads to see what the hell was going on.

Frankly, I felt a little uncomfortable and exposed.

I quickly finished up, washed my hands, and scurried out to fill my shopping list.  Having witnessed what I did, I thought I deserved a big bag of potato chips.

I purchased two bags.

--Mitchell Hegman

Observation

If ten adults and one child enter and then leave a building, only one person, the child, will recall the number of lights that were hanging from the foyer ceiling and recall where a small tile was missing from the inlaid floor on the landing for the steps.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Death of Romance: Sex and the Angler Fish

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas,” proclaims the voice of thought in T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Throughout the poem, J. Alfred Prufrock expresses intense feelings of inadequacy and sexual frustration.  Notably, the writer of the poem, T.S. Eliot, remained a virgin until the age of twenty-six, at which time he married into his first rather hopeless marriage.

The poem is thought to be somewhat autobiographical.

Sadly, something far more dismal than either Mr. J. Alfred Prufrock or a crab scuttling backward across the sea floor exists in the ocean.  At the bottom—at the very nadir—of all things mannish, we find the male angler fish.

Before I tell you about the male angler fish, I must tell you what a woman once told me as we sat at a party I attended.  I don’t readily recall the details of the party, but I recall that the woman was a freshly, if not bitterly, divorced mother of three small children.  As I sat talking with this woman, she informed me that she was happy to have her three little darlings, but of her husband she said: “he was nothing more than a sperm donor.”

Fact is, the male angler fish is, literally, an onboard sperm donor.

You may recognize the female anglerfish for the widget—something akin to a fishing rod with a lure—they wave about their huge mouth to attract simple-minded prey.  Female angler fish are also full-blown celebrations in ugliness (see the photograph posted with this blog).  Finally, the female is a behemoth relative to her feeble male counterpart.

The mating ritual for angler fish is startlingly simple.  The tiny male (endowed with the largest nostrils in proportion to the head of any other species on the planet) smells and finds a female.  Once the male finds a suitable female, he swims up and bites her, usually on the belly, and refuses to release.

At the very moment the male angler bites into the female, life as a fish effectively ends for the male.  In a literal sense, the male angler fish becomes an appendage on the female angler fish.  The flesh of the male rapidly fuses with that of the female.  His muscles atrophy.  He becomes a sexual parasite, acquiring all sustenance from his female host.  The male fish becomes little more than a permanently attached sperm packet—ready to dispense whenever required.

And for all the women who see hopeful possibilities in this: no.  Elizabeth Taylor tried this at least twice in her life.

--Mitchell Hegman

Thanks to Kip Sullivan for sending me a video that inspired this blog!   (Photo:mynatureplace.org)

Gold

A song and video by Chet Faker:

--Mitchell Hegman

If the video posted fails to launch, please try this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi4pzKvuEQM 

Winter along the Front Range

Yesterday, I drove along the Front Range of the Rockies on my way to Fairfield, Montana, for a business meeting.  Most of the day saw curtains of snow sweeping back and forth across the upright mountains, but the rolling hills, the grassy scarps, and the abutting savannahs remained open to a sky filled with lumbering clouds.

The Rocky Mountain Front, starting at Wolf Creek and extending to East Glacier, is the very heart of the Montana I love.  I love the remaining open grasslands—now the color of honey where struck by sunlight.  I love watching cloud-shadows rove the uncluttered land like giant beasts.  I love the places where you can see the highway looping off ahead of you for fifteen miles.  I love the sun on my arms when the clouds part.

Today, I am posting photographs from my drive along the mountains.

 

 

--Mitchell Hegman

Mysteries of the World

The world is filled with mysteries that are sometimes afoot and sometimes in the air.

How did the ancient Sumerians have firm knowledge of planets in our solar system that we did not prove in existence until the twentieth century?  How do some cats and dogs find their way back after being lost more than a thousand miles from home?  Where does the white go when snow melts?  How has Donald Trump navigated his entire adult life with his hair looking like that?

Two ongoing mysteries have been fully manifest around me for my entire life.  These two mysteries have always left me baffled.  How have all the contractors and ranchers that I know remained operating when all of them tell me they never make money?

--Mitchell Hegman

Our Mistakes

This is America. We are not content to merely make and then walk away from our mistakes.  We require bigger.  We put forth great effort into layering our mistakes with makeup and then we toss them onto a reality television series that lasts for several years.

 

--Mitchell Hegman

Dimly Arrived

Speaking from a wholly practical point of view, the human brain doesn’t produce enough energy to light a standard 60-watt incandescent lightbulb.  I suspect that is all we need to know for understanding the broken path of human history that delivered us to this day.

 --Mitchell Hegman

Note to my Cats

Carmel and Splash,

I have no immediate plans to kill you with my vacuum cleaner.  There really is no need for you to dash off and hide in a closet when I roll my vacuum out from the utility room.  I would also like to assure you that changing the bedding on my bed is not half as traumatic as you make it to be.

Hope to see you at dinner time!

M

Bryce Canyon, Part II

Today, I am posting two more photographs from Bryce Canyon, Utah.  I love how the morning light played brightly on the rim and formations where I stood as I captured the photographs.

 

 

--Mitchell Hegman

Surely

I woke this morning with my right arm outstretched beside me and my cat resting there with his head in the palm of my hand.  Surely, I thought to myself, this shall be a good day.

--Mitchell Hegman

Magic Mushrooms

At a much younger age I worked at a job that provided me with access to an autoclave large enough to fit the contents of two or three normal-sized dishwashers.  For anyone unfamiliar, autoclaves are vessels used to sterilize such things as medical equipment.  They provide sterilization by subjecting whatever is put inside them to heat and steam under high pressure.

As a bachelor, I was tempted to use the autoclave for my crusty stacks of dishes.

By day, the autoclave was used to kill such things as venereal disease and tuberculosis.  But on at least one after-hours occasion a friend and I used the autoclave to sterilize growth medium for magic mushrooms.  We poured the medium we made into Pyrex cookware (with covers) and sterilized everything before inoculating the medium with the mycelium of Psilocybe cubensis (the stuff that grows into magic mushrooms).

I kept my cookware under my bed and in a few weeks grew a continuous crop of mushrooms.

I enjoyed small quantities of the mushrooms and experienced only mild and rather pleasurable hallucinations.  Once, for example, all of the people dancing on a nightclub floor suddenly assumed the same pattern as some nearby wallpaper as I watched them dancing.

Wow, I thought!  You don’t see that every day.

Just yesterday, I found an article at livescience.com, which revealed some surprising facts about how psilocybin works in the brain.  The compounds of the mushrooms actually increase the level of connectivity in the brain.  In a broad sense the magic mushrooms make your brain hyper-efficient.

When researchers produced MRI connectivity maps for the brains of people under the influence of magic mushrooms they discovered that their brains were synchronizing activities among areas that do not normally connect.

Additionally, the compounds in magic mushrooms appear to decrease activity in the thalamus region of the brain.  The thalamus region acts as something of a traffic cop.  The thalamus keeps thoughts from colliding into senseless puddles and keeps random thoughts from running all over the place and doing such things as convincing your math thoughts to perform a striptease for your building-a-shed-for-the-lawn-mower thoughts.

I don’t know what a math-thought striptease looks like, and I will not tell you that magic mushrooms made me or my friends any smarter, but I may consider volunteering for more research.

--Mitchell Hegman