I suspect that Pee Wee Herman would LOVE this yard!

This remarkable yard is on the north side of Highway 60 several miles due east of Tampa. I love checking it out on the way back from visiting my Mom and Dad, Jack and Sue Starnes in Okeechobee, Florida. I have a feeling that this person would like my livingroom. Enjoy, John

A Wonderful Visual Affirmation I've Had on My Livingroom Wall for Years Now

Not long after I moved into my "Old Man House" here in south Tampa, and began tripping out the livingroom walls with mirror shards, I saw this image in a magazine, a full page ad for something I don't remember. But both the warmly endearing image, and its uplifting powerful message snared my heart immediately. I cut it out and slipped it into a dumpster-dived frame, and for years now it has inspired me from its spot on the right side of the livingroom entrance into my kitchen. I so admire whoever conceived this ad as, for me, it is moving on so many levels.

enjoy, John

Solar Generated Hydrogen for Fuel Cell Cars

I have dreamed of fuel cell cars since the 1980s, and Honda now leases the stunning 'Clarity'. This Honda-developed home hydrogen system negates the need to build a huge new hydrogen infrastructure...and it runs off of sunlight! John

http://www.leftlanenews.com/honda-develops-next-generation-solar-hydrogen-station.html

An Illegal War is State Terrorism

It sickens me no end that war criminal and mass murderer George Bush, instead of facing justice for violating the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions by deceiving his own countrymen into "supporting" an illegal immoral NEEDLESS war that has cost the lives of 4,700 U.S. troops and 1.3 MILLION Iraqis while savaging the U.S. Treasury, he instead gets a taxpayer-subsidized pension and health care plan the rest of us could never dream of. And his British partner in crime, Tony Blair, gets similar coddling and is awarded incredibly high paying corporate positions. This article addresses Blair's war crimes. I hope I live to see both blood stained sociopaths face justice for the vast scale of their crimes against humanity, shackled and in orange jump suits. The memory of cocky, self-satisfied Bush in his butch little flight suit on that aircraft carrier makes me as livid and disgusted as on that day.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24527.htm

Remarkable Male Torsos

I thought I'd share with straight women and gay men who might visit my blog one of my decadent weaknesses....defined, lean, muscular male torsos from my vast collection. Enjoy! John

Feathered dinosaurs from Chinese quarries

More and more remarkably preserved fossil "feathered dinosaurs" are being found in fine-grained shale. The time line for the fossils, the traits of the skeletons and exquisitely preserved feathers seem to prove the well thought out and researched hypothesis that birds evolved from bipedal raptor dinosaurs. Anyone who has looked closely at the scaled T. Rex-like feet of a chicken and reflected on that, plus that reptiles and birds lay eggs and are the ONLY creatures on Earth with a cloaca vs. anas and urethra, would not be surprised by this conclusion. I have now seen two hour long specials detailing some of these astonishing feathered dinosaur fossils, plus the amazing discovery of SOFT TISSUE in a T. rex leg bone fossil whose DNA very closely resembled that of chickens and ostriches. Here is an article about one of these many exciting finds. As a life long lover of dinosaurs and prehistory in general, I am thrilled to see and learn about these incredible discoveries!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/sep/24/dinosaur-fossil-discovery-china

Giant Crystal Cave in Mexico

About a year ago I channel surfed onto this Nat Geo special about this amazing huge cave filled with astonishing gypsum crystals, some over 35 FEET long, dwarfing people exploring the cave. Here is a link to a Nat Geo page with clickable photos on the left.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/photogalleries/giant-crystals-cave/index.html

'Heart of Glass' video

I'd forgotten JUST how much I loved this song when it came out (I was a true disco slut in the 70s!) until I stumbled on this great video. Enjoy, John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU_4-5RaxU&NR=1

Bette Davis Eyes

I went mental over that song when it came out in the early 80s, and so was delighted to find this wonderfully executed video tonight all these years later. Enjoy, John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPOIS5taqA8

'Love is Like Oxygen'

What a flash back for me, I loved that song that year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3T6UqaJMgY

And we think we have problems.......

I had forgotten about this amazing handsome man and his resiliency and ability to touch and inspire others, and was glad I was able to find the video that someone e-mailed me years ago. Hard to keep a dry eye! John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQPmY4nIjVE&feature=related

Transparent Bird Bath Sculpture from scavenged materials

When I was an art major in the mid 70's, perhaps my biggest hero was Marcel Duchamp, for many reasons, but especially his use of found objects. Some years ago, I scrounged two VERY heavy panes of thick glass that I could barely get into my minivan. I buried their lower ends in the kitchen garden side by side, then set atop them a plexiglass display tray I had previously dumpster dived. It is about six feet tall, and I love how it shimmers in the bright Florida sunshine, and birds visiting it show up very readily. It has been through several hurricanes...as one approaches I simply take off the water tray. I love the minimalism of this piece, and its spirit reminds me of perhaps my favorite Duchamp sculpture, 'The Large Glass', which I saw years ago at the Whitney Museum in New York and that to this day, gives me goosebumps when I see photos of it and remember the profound impact it had on me in college.

enjoy, John

A remarkable young man

This touching video is a humbling, inspiring and sobering reminder of our gifts and blessings and potentialities waiting to be explored and tapped into. John

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=9xwCG0Ey2Mg

excellent price on CoQ-10

I just stockpiled the vital nutrient CoQ-10 at THE best price I have ever seen from VitaCost, 120 hits of 100 mg. for just $11.88 ordered directly from their site! I am keeping the spares in my freezer. This nutrient, and resveratrol, can be SO expensive...they filled my order quickly so will now keep an eye on VitaCost for a similar deal on resveratrol.

movie 'AVATAR'

I just saw 'Avatar' this afternoon and for me it is simply THE best movie I have EVER seen. I was brought close to tears a few times both by joy and sadness. I feel it is a flawless, wonderfully imaginative masterpiece in all regards. And I agree wholeheartedly with friends and others that it is an eloquent statement on corporatocracy, what was done to the Native Americans and the Iraqi people, and on the root causes of "terrorism" when a people finally fight back against being invaded and displaced and killed and stolen from. Admiration is one of my favorite emotions, and my admiration for James Cameron is boundless. I went there with stellar expectations, and they were surpassed many many times over. The creatures, the scenery, the cool aircraft and that magnificent shuttle, the realism of the skin on the Navis, everything, for me, was executed flawlessly.

Here is the official trailer:

http://www.avatarmovie.com/index.html

What the Space Shuttle might have looked like

I remember in the 1960s and 1970s the debate....would it have retractable jet engines for powered atmospheric flight, would the booster land on a runway or plunge into the ocean for recovery, and more? Some of the design proposals looked very cool.

'Hey Jude'

What a group, what a time in history, what a song, and what a capture of the moment. enjoy, John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg8bUjxYT08

'Being There' movie

I found this clip of the first 8.5 minutes of a drama that was very influential in my young life when I was 27, and that to this day I consider a wonderfully evocative yet minimalist film. It was the last movie that Peter Sellers before he died shortfully thereafter, and I feel is Shirley MacLaine at her very best.
By my early 30s I saw it had been a catalyst for my life focus of the fine arts being eclipsed by the gardening I had done since I grew a blue hyacinth bulb when I was 4, and that its melancholy, piano-based soundtrack helped to push me away from "enjoying" melancholy music and art. If you have not seen this charming, deliciously subtle, romantic comedy that I feel eloquently addresses many aspects of the human condition, treat yourself and rent it for a quiet night when you can get lost in it, with the phone turned off.

Shirley MacLaine's character, Eve, masturbating in an elegant bedroom, with Peter Seller's character, Chauncey Gardener, as he as always gazes at a TV, oblivious to her needs, is a quietly hilarious gem of movie-making.

John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt7-Ra9Gbbo

a nice short montage of brief extracts of stellar scenes from this gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwZzRB461bY&NR=1

Sky Events

I love paying attention to and photographing the sky, noticing unusual plane contrails, sunsets and sunrises, rainbows, planets and the moon, meteorites, and clouds, like the oddly circular "hole punch" clouds I noticed last spring.

News About My New Blogs

So far, both seem well-received and are getting hits daily as I get ready to launch a third and final one about roses...together, the three blogs will let me address and share all my interests in life. I am signed up for Google AdSense, and once I get X-number of hits daily I start getting monthly checks due to the ad banners on the right side of each blog. I also took other advice and linked my long time PayPal account to both blogs so that if so moved, folks can make donations to my efforts using the button at the bottom of the page, and/or purchase seeds, my artwork, etc. So if you are enjoying the blogs I'd love it if you'd send the links to folks, and also become a "follower" of each as I gather that aids my Google AdSense rating too.

Today I got my first sale.....$6.50 from two seed packets offered at the top of the Urban Farming blog. I have one of my Star Trek "altered landscapes" that in the past I've sold via EBay on my Starnesland blog. I am LOVING developing each blog...it reminds me of when I created 'The Garden Doctor' gardening magazine 20 years ago in Denver, but without the backdrop of homesickness for Tampa and financial strife and those LONG winters!

Thanks for your support, and feel free to make suggestions as to what topics you would like to see addressed in each. I expect to launch the roses one very soon.

Enjoy! John

Fireball XL-5

The very creative, pioneering husband and wife team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson created in the 1960s several shows based on marionettes and various vehicles on threads, plus excellent models and special effects long before CGI had been concieved of. The shows were centered around futuristic vehicles, and included 'Supercar', 'Stingray' (a radical submarine), 'Thunderbirds' (a whole fleet of radical planes and spaceships) plus my favorite, 'Fireball XL-5'. Each Saturday morning in 1963, when I was 10, I'd be GLUED to the TV to watch Fireball XL-5's radical boosted horizontal take off from Space City. I virtually worshipped the design of that ship, and to this day think it is a very progressive, creative breakthrough visually. Once in orbit around a planet, the nose cone section, called 'Fireball Junior', could detach and land on the planet, then return to orbit and re-attach to the main fuselage. I think my love of that spaceship set me up to go mental over the Enterprise when 'Star Trek' came out when I was in 8th grade in Homestead, Florida a few years later.

Today I stumbled on a YouTube capture of that exciting intro, plus the end credits....I am pretty sure that the song at the end was a No. 1 pop hit that year. One of these days I am going to have a model of Fireball XL-5. If only I'd kept my Fireball (and Beatles) lunchbox!

enjoy, John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASvBTqfTrzA&feature=related

family photos

A few years ago I picked up my Dad in Okeechobee and drove us down to the Keys to see his now-deceased ailing sister Ola Mae, see other relatives along the way, and once at Key West, to see if we could find the Navy base he served at in 1953, plus the apartment I was a newborn in. We found it! I teased THAT is why I liked The Beatles song Revolution No 9....."number 9, number 9..." I found on that trip in Ola Mae's closet several old family albums that had survived the hurricane, so once back home I scanned tons of pics for me and my family to save and print out.

Here are a few pics of my Mom and Dad as a young couple in the early 1950s, me as a baby, and Dad and I when we found our old apartment on Catherine Street there in Key West.

Futuristic Proposals for Supersonic Transports

Ever since I was 10 in Michigan, I have loved almost anything futuristic looking, especially cars and airplanes, with spaceships and buildings close behind. Here are pics of supersonic transports proposed for actual construction from the 1960s to the present. I'd LOVE to see things like this at airports, or flying overhead as I work in my gardens as it would really make it feel like the 21st century had actually arrived. Enjoy, John.

A remarkable dream I had last night!

Last night I had an astonishingly complex, long, satisfying "adventure" dream that near the end featured TWO breathtaking LENGTHY flying sequences that once again involved me flying with others vs. alone as has been the case my whole life...one flying scene triggered a heartwarming innocent romance with this sweet, handsome shy man initially flying beside me.
The frustration is that when I awoke, lying there dazzled by what my mind had devised for my pleasure while I slept, filled with an urge to share it with friends via an e-mail and maybe a blog post, I realized immediately that the dream was SO long and complex, with multiple plots, subsplots, LOTS of scene changes, set mostly inside a gigantic hotel, sweeping emotions from humor to terror at a horrific murder scene that ended up being comedic Tim Burton style, especially those breathtaking flying scenes over a paradise valley filled with dinosaurs, jungles, glaciers, a hillside party of pretentious ultra-wealthy people and SO much more, I just would not stand a chance of capturing the visual and emotional lushness of the dream.
This dream REALLY makes me wish I had a video cam in my head...it would have made a remarkable full length movie! Maybe all I can do is share what I have, and post this to encourage folks to try that dream recall method my college psyche professor blessed me with in 1976 that I've shared here prior. It seems a selfish waste to not be able to fully share what I saw and experienced last chilly night in my cozy bed with the mattress warmer on.

That scene where me and my friends dove off the roof of that towering hotel and flew as a "flock" down into that breathtakingly beautiful valley below, soaring like swallows to check out the dinosaurs and other stunning sights, fills me with joy to recall as it seemed SO VERY REAL.

Moon Mud

Since when I was ten years old in 1963 I imagined both Moon and Mars colonized by now, I find hope in this new vision of adobe construction.

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/PVAMU_Scientists_Add_Moon_Mud_To_Lunar_Radiation_Shielding_Studies_999.html

Stunning Luxury Concept Cars

The Cadillac Sixteen was unveiled 7 years ago and was showered with universal accolades....and so of course under Rick Wagonner GM did NOT build it, and instead put into production the legendarily ugly Pontiac Aztek. But its grille has influenced current Cadillacs to be sure.

The Lincoln MKR was unveiled a few years ago and it heralded the current renaissance in Lincoln's long-floundering design language with its futurized revisiting of the grille from 1940s era Lincolns. It was fully running, right down to bumper seams. Yet, sadly, Ford/Lincoln did not put it into showrooms.

I hope you enjoy the photos of them both....click on them for high-res photographs of each.