Chili Colorado Recipe

Take 10 dried chiles (anchos, pasillas, guajillos, or any combination of) and remove the stems and seeds. Look for chiles that are soft and pliable, like a raisin. If they are brittle, they are old and will be flavorless.
Cover chiles with 3 cups of boiling chicken stock and let them soak for about 30 minutes until they are plump and tender. Put the chiles and all of the soaking liquid into a blender and purée until very smooth.
Cut 2 pounds of boneless pork shoulder into ½” pieces, season with salt and pepper, and brown the meat in a large, heavy pot over medium-high heat with a little bit of vegetable oil. Chop up a bunch of garlic (about 6 garlic cloves) and throw it in the pot along with two bay leaves, a tablespoon of ground cumin, and a couple of teaspoons of chopped fresh sage and chopped fresh oregano. Stir that around for about a minute, or until very fragrant. Add in 5 cups of chicken stock and simmer uncovered for about an hour. Then, stir in the chile purée and simmer for another 45 minutes until the meat is very tender and the sauce is a thick, mahogany-red color. Season with additional salt and pepper.  Serve with fresh flour tortillas and beans and rice.

The Oregon Coast

The Oregon Coast - A Winter Odyssey from Uncage the Soul Productions on Vimeo.

Take an awe-inspiring winter odyssey along all 363 miles of Oregon’s public coast where waves thunder onto the shore, crabbing is at its peak, and a rainbow welcomes the calm after the storm.

Like Snow - Wendell Berry

LIKE SNOW 
Suppose we did our work like the snow, quietly, quietly. leaving nothing out. —Wendell Berry

The Real YOU is the Whole Universe -Alan Watts

"The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around. The real deep down YOU is the Whole Universe. And It's doing... Your living organism and all its behavior, it's expressing it as a singer sings a song... You are something that the Whole Universe is doing, in the same way that a wave is something that the Whole Ocean is doing..."

Lucy's Famous Squash Soup

Lucy's Famous Squash Soup

1 acorn or butternut squash
1 Large potato diced
1 onion chopped
1 lb Italian sausage (turkey sausage or ground turkey with Italian Spices and red pepper flakes)
2 pints of Chicken Broth
1 bunch of kale, cut the spines out and chop.
 Butter/salt /pepper
Cut acorn squash in cubes and roast at 400F with 4 cloves garlic for 45 minutes.
Fry up sausage or turkey with spices.  Remove
In same large pot, fry onions and potatoes with butter;  stir often do not brown.
Blend chicken stock and squash in blender until smooth.
When the potatoes are al dente add the chicken stock and squash mixture.
Add cooked sausage.
Bring everything to boil, simmer about 20 minutes.
Add kale, simmer about 15 more minutes.
Salt and pepper to taste and serve.

The Universe in a Glass of Wine (Richard Feynman

A poet once said, “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” We will probably never know in what sense he said that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look in glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth’s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let us give one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

The One Simple Truth We All Need to Know

Watch the entire movie below:

Snowdonia Bluehue

Bluehue from natasha brooks on Vimeo.

A short film about the joys of year round naked swimming in the mountain lakes of Snowdonia, N.Wales. Filmed, produced and swam by Natasha Brooks

Under Pressure Lakes and Oceans

No Small Talk

Life's biggest secrets

There's no solving it, and there's nothing to solve.

Ayub Ogada - Kothbiro

Hah
Haye haye haye haye haye haye
Auma be uwinja
Kothbiro
Keluru dhok e dala
Auma be uwinja
Kothbiro
Keluru dhok e dala
Hah
Haye haye haye haye haye haye
Auma be uwinja
Kothbiro
Keluru dhok e dala
Auma be uwinja
Kothbiro
Keluru dhok e dala
Hah
Haye haye haye haye haye haye
Hah
Haye haye haye haye haye haye
Yaye to nyithingo gi
Un koro un utimuru nade
Kothbiro
Keluru dhok e dala
Hah
Haye haye haye haye haye haye

Kothbiro - rain is coming
Auma do you hear what I say
The rain is on it's way
Return our cattle home
Yaye the children
What is it that you think you do?
The rain is on it's way 
Return our cattle home...

Bruegel’s two monkeys

This is what I see in my dreams about final exams:
two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill,
the sky behind them flutters,
the sea is taking its bath.

The exam is the history of Mankind.

I stammer and hedge.

One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain,
the other seems to be dreaming away —
but when it’s clear I don’t know what to say
he prompts me with a gentle
clinking of his chain.


Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012): Bruegel’s Two Monkeys , translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh in Szymborska: View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (1995)

Reclaim Your Mind

Catalysts to say what has never been said, to see what has never been seen. To draw, paint, sing, sculpt, dance and act what has never before been done. To push the envelope of creativity and language and whats really important is, I call it, the felt presence of direct experience which is a fancy term which just simply means we have to stop consuming our culture. We have to create culture.

Don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time, where you are now, is the most immediate sector of your universe and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, you are disempowered. You are giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media, so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y or something. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking.

That is all cultural diversion and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, and your fears... and we are told no, we're unimportant, we're peripheral, "get a degree", "get a job", get a this, get a that, and then you're a player. You don't even want to play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world. Where is that at?

   --Terence McKenna--

Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing

Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing

1. Listen to the birds.
That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.

2. Your guitar is not really a guitar Your guitar is a divining rod.
Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.

3. Practice in front of a bush
Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush dosen't shake, eat another piece of bread.

4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.

5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out
If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.

6. Never point your guitar at anyone
Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.

7. Always carry a church key
That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty-making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.

8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument
You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.

9. Keep your guitar in a dark place
When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.

10. You gotta have a hood for your engine
Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.

Surprised? Pt II

I wrote this post in 2008 and nothing has changed.

Reading the about the latest mass murder, the killing spree and Northern Illinois University yesterday, I am struck by how surprised the media makes out everyone to be about how this could happen. People, you better get used to it. It's going to become a very common occurence.
There are a certain percentage of people with faulty brain wiring. Bipolars, sociopaths, pedophiles, or people who just enjoy killing or hurting others. That percentage probably stays fairly steady. So why the increase in these kind of incidents?
Easy. The world population continues to GROW at a steady rate.
The world population:

1961......3 billion
1974......4 billion
1987......5 billion
1999......6 billion
2011......7 billion (projected)
2024......8 billion (projected)
2042......9 billion (projected)

So even as the percentage of defectively brain wired people stays the same, the ABSOLUTE numbers of these people increase significantly. And they are in closer and closer contact with the rest of us. So more opportunity for adverse contacts.

So get used to events of this type. They will happen more and more frequently in the future.

Stages by Hermann Hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slave of permanence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

"Stages" by Hermann Hesse

Plan de Vida

Radiohead - Scotch Mist

A film with Radiohead in it made for New Year's Eve, 2007. Features every song on their new album IN RAINBOWS

Weird Fishes-Arpeggi Bodysnatchers Jigsaw falling Into Place Faust Arp 15 Steps Videotape Reckoner House Of Cards All I Need Nude

Lyrical Medicine Chest

Lyrical Medicine Chest (Full) from 60.46 Productions on Vimeo.

Three stories reflecting on love and loss are connected through an autobus traveling from country to city.
A young man falls in love,
two lovers confront their dwindling relationship,
and a jaded musician rediscovers himself in a small town.
Adapted from Doctor Erich Kästner's Lyrical Medicine Chest, these vignettes, entitled "Sample of Eternal Love," "Relevant Romance," and "Nocturnal Recipe for City Dwellers," are translated here for the first time in English.
Winner of PBS' Reel 13 competition and selected by Anthology Film Archives NYC.

Iggy Pop on BBC Radio 6 5/4/2014 In Praise of Beauty

Iggy Pop on 6 Music 2014-05-04 In Praise of Beauty by Core News Uploads on Mixcloud

Iggy is a DJ. A wonderful and eclectic weekly radio show on BBC Radio 6. This week's theme is Beauty.

Kristin Diable Iko Iko

Kristin Diable's "Iko Iko"! from kristin diable on Vimeo.


Happy Mardi Gras from New Orleans.

We Were Never Born

WE WERE NEVER BORN from Dosnoventa on Vimeo.


"I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree on a cold winter day. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space, but the emptiness of space will never crumble away because it was never born." Jack Kerouac