You see, this set is a bad mother--
(Shut your mouth)
But I'm talkin' about 94 Score
(Then we can dig it)

Admit it, you were thinking the same thing… and you’ve seen this set the same way since it came out. 1994 Score is a bad mother: it’s strong in the right places, it makes risky moves and they work, it’s classy and suave and no one understands it but its woman (I guess “its collectors” would be more appropriate). If this were 1994 and you lived in a magical world where baseball cards came alive, you definitely didn’t want to run into Score down a dark alley. Unless your name was Fleer or SP, it would beat your ass every time.

It would do this in a number of ways, least of all with its silent-but-deadly, take-no-prisoners blue border. It’s almost impossible to believe that the same company responsible for 1992 Score created this set only two years later. Where the former was card design in puberty—an experimentation of ugly gradients and bright colors—’94 was understated and mature. Look no further than ’93 Score for the initial design shift towards sophistication, and though it’s not a popular set with collectors, that set did most of the heavy lifting for the brand’s later editions, ’94 included.

Also, where ’92 was bloated (893 base cards), ’94 was lean (660 base cards). Granted, we probably should give 1992’s set a pass on its massive checklist, as it was produced a year or so before it became industry custom to strip subsets from base sets and upgrade them into inserts, a practice Score started in 1993. By 1994, formerly traditional base set highlights like Dream Team and The Franchise (represented in ’94 as Gold Stars) had been sequestered to life as hard-to-find inserts, cutting down on the number of base set subsets. The strategy worked. In 1992 it was fun to get a Dream Teamer in your pack. By 1994, getting one was the best thing to happen all week (and yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s how sad my social life was as a 15-year-old).

But this set didn’t just beat you with a flawless base set or good-looking inserts. It beat you with a classy parallel. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: I do hate parallels. But we’re talking about 1994 here, fool, the year the parallel came of age. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if news came out that 1994 Gold Rush was hand-crafted by dwarves burrowed deep beneath the Misty Mountains. Seriously, I think Heaven is missing a baseball card-related angel: Gold Rush is the most perfect parallel set ever created.

And as if that weren’t enough for you, if by some fluke you were still conscious after this pummeling, Score would send you to the hospital with its version of the right-arm wind-up, left-arm knockout. I’m speaking of course of Rookie/Traded.

Sure, it included the awesome Alex Rodriguez rookie “Call Up” redemption card, but the real scene-stealer here was the R/T base card design. It looked, in a word, terrible (though putrid, ugly, forgettable and shitty also fit the bill). But that wasn’t the point. The point was that the cards didn’t look like the regular set.

Thinking forward once again, Score took the opportunity Rookie/Traded created and not only debuted a new company logo but debuted a new card design, one that would—with a few tweaks here and there—carry over into their 1995 product. It was an ingenious move. The set itself, besides the hard-to-find Rodriguez insert, was weak and forgettable. But the idea that it could be an extension of the regular set and be some kind of live testing ground for future sets, well, that’s pretty powerful.

Just a little clip I found on YouTube showing a white lined sphinx moth flying and feeding. You can see why it's called a Hummingbird Moth.



It's just getting dark here now, and I figured since we had so many moths last night, I might see some on our honeysuckle plants. I was not disappointed. Unfortunately, I don't think I could take a video in the fast fading light. Thank goodness for YouTube.

Some porch light visitors, fancied up a little in Photoshop

Remember the other week, when I saw 3 sphinx moths on my porch, and thought it was special?
Well, Michael came home from Jessi's house late last night after I was already in bed, and he had to wake me up to ask, "Guess how many sphinx moths are on the porch?!"

"Three?" I guessed, supposing history might be repeating itself.

"Six!" he corrected.

I think I started to go back to sleep, but then he came back to my bedroom door and said, "Aren't you going to come and see them?"

Well, Michael doesn't often become enthused about bug stuff, so I hauled myself out of bed and let him point out all the moths. Squinting beneath the porch light, we counted not six, but seven. This was apparently interesting enough for even the reclusive Brice to come and have a look. It was nice. The boys were laughing and cussing good naturedly as the big moths flew around our heads, and I found a black widow spider on our front door and slapped it with a nearby garden clog.

Eventually we went back inside, and I went back to bed. Jerry managed to sleep through the whole thing.

I didn't take pictures at the time, because the moths were flying around quite a bit, and there's no way I could have gotten all 7 in one shot, but here's one representative who was still on the porch this morning.

The blistering hot weather we had over the weekend seemed to bring out lots of bugs in the evening. I saw a couple of new things that were attracted to the porch light.


This bright little banded cucumber never stopped moving, but I got one good shot.



I really liked this snazzy little bug. I don't remember seeing one like it before. After much searching on BugGuide, I think it's Closterocoris amoenus.





This bug looks similar, but not quite as distinctly patterned as the one above. I wonder if it might be the opposite sex of the first one, or maybe there is some variation within the species.


And here, this afternoon, I saw another one on one of my mini-roses.

Earlier today, over at Examiner.com, I posted about this age-old question. I also created an easy-to-read flowchart on how to determine value. Of course it was not easy to read. Therefore I'm posting it here. It will open bigger if you click on it.

By 1990, Donruss and the other baseball card companies were beginning to understand that their industry was in a very different place from as little as three years before. Following the initial across-the-board quality of Upper Deck, the others suddenly found their market shares smaller. In order to stay competitive, they had to find the intersection between maintaining a traditional set and adapting to the competition with bells and whistles.

From what I can tell, Donruss’ idea of “bells and whistles” was to go red. Eye-catching, hellfire, mid-life crisis, love-it-or-hate-it red. That’s not to say their strategy didn’t work. I, for one, was both shocked and pleased to see them shake their black and blue funk (every year’s design from 1985 to 1989 had either been black or blue). The new color, coupled with the risk-taking cursive signature player name on the front, helped the set stand out in the crowd.

They made two other significant changes from the previous year. First, they put together a fantastic checklist with Diamond Kings you wanted, an intriguing “insert set” (MVPs), kick-ass ‘King of Kings’ and ‘5,000 Ks’ Nolan Ryan cards and one of the strongest Rated Rookie classes in years. Second, they let the presses fly without bothering to hire proofreaders.

Obviously that claim isn’t true, but consider the circumstances: just a year before, one of their competitors (Fleer) grabbed endless headlines after one of its cards (Billy Ripken) featured an obscenity. In order to prolong the news (or simply because they didn’t know how best to handle the situation), Fleer corrected the card not once but four different times throughout the season, resulting in five available versions of the card and guaranteeing a hard-to-find, highly collectible product.

Granted, it’s hard to monitor quality on every single card of a set, but 1990 Donruss featured eight error cards, with two of those being high-profile Nolan Ryan cards and one coming in the insert set (Glavine for Smoltz). Makes you wonder about motive.

Like other strong Donruss sets, in order for it to be truly great there had to be rookie balance over the entire checklist. This was certainly the case for 1990. Donruss had a track record of including great Rated Rookies since Bill Madden put together the first on-card-denoted subset back in 1984, but ran into trouble sometimes when it came to seeding rookies into the rest of the checklist. No such problem in 1990. With eleven desirable Rated Rookies (the most since 1987), the set found balance with rookies of Sosa, Larry Walker, Bernie Williams, John Olerud, David Justice, John Wetteland and flameouts like Junior Felix, Dwight Smith and Jerome Walton.

Yes, the base set lacked a Frank Thomas rookie (and so did the boxed Best of AL and end of year Rookies sets), but in this instance (unlike with 1990 Bowman or Fleer) it didn’t matter. Bowman nor Fleer had Rated Rookies to divert the attention away from the glaring Thomas omission.

Regardless, despite its overall quality and the changes the company made for 1990, this set finds Donruss at a crossroads. Yes, it has a checklist with more than a few highlights. Yes, it has the company’s third foray into insert cards. And yes, it was done with an eye-catching palette. But with the introduction of Leaf as a premium brand, created to compete and out-do Upper Deck on its own level, 1990 was the first year Donruss was the other brand for the company.

You know, it’s funny, but some companies seem to be able to cope year to year; their releases make sense as a cohesive whole. On the surface, this seems to be the case with Donruss (at least in terms of design). But if we dig a little deeper and examine the sets they released from 1990 through 1992—the first three in their role as secondary brand—the company seemed to go a few steps forward in 1990 (clearly their best set of the early Nineties, and their best since 1987) and then two or three giant leaps backward the next two years (crap in ’91 and more of the same for ’92).

It’s as if Donruss simply didn’t know what to do with the brand now that it was number two. Two series? Full color fronts and backs? Save rookies for an insert set? Did anybody even notice? Or care? Despite creating a great set for 1990, it was the beginning of a sad period for the brand.

Over the past month I watched Seasons 1 & 2 of The Wire. It's a good show, though not as good as the hype would suggest and certainly not as good as The Sopranos. Anyway, this morning I found this link from Kottke.org.



This image was posted under the heading "Herc's Dream Date". Gus Triandos never got so much love.

These two things don't belong together, and I hope and pray they stay that way....

Definitely check out this link:

Punk Baseball Cards

I'm not quite sure how this eluded me all this time, but there you go.

Waking up in the morning and realising I had not flipped my mortal coil was, you'll appreciate, a relief. However, 10am check-out times are never a thing of beauty. Combined with an overwhelming desire to be on my own alone for just a little while, without having to organise, answer questions, or re-pack my bag in an emergencified state, a 10am check-out time, sans breakfast opportunity, put me

One of my favorite games is called Casting Agent. You choose, based on the photograph on the front of their baseball card, the perfect candidate for each role. This morning the show I’m casting is a cop show I’ve titled “Third Strike.” (I know, it’s a bad title… but good in a late night syndicated cop show kind of way.)

Casting Agent: Cop Show

Title: Third Strike

‘A’ Plot: A heroic police detective screws up on the job and his identical twin (and detective partner) dies in a vat of hot wax (or so he thinks). In the wake of his mistake, the detective leaves the force to become an alcoholic, with a candle phobia. When he returns he asks for a transfer to a new department and lands in Street Crime. He bonds with his new partner, mayhem ensues and he learns that the only way to defeat his personal demons is to pursue elusive criminal masterminds including “Nickel Nip,” whom Detective Malzone figures out is his identical twin, Haddix Malzone (portrayed by Cardinals’ fireballer Harvey Haddix).

‘B’ Plots: The Sarge (Ron Kline) is incompetent and the other detectives are crazy.

Cast:

Street Crime Unit

Frank Malzone as Detective Malzone


Tommy Davis as Detective Davis


George Scott as Detective Scott


Sal Bando as Detective Sal “Loose Cannon” Bando


Ron Kline as The Sarge



Villains

Bobby Thomson as "Bang Bang" in episode Shot In The Park


Wally Moon as "The Professor" in episode Evil has an MA


Moose Skowron as "The Moose" in episode Off Season Hunting


Rocky Bridges as "Chaw" in episode Bad Habits Die Hard


Harvey Haddix as Haddix “Nickel Nip” Malzone
in episodes Brothers in Blood (and Wax), Nickel In Change, Requiem For A Malzone, Family Reunion and Third Strike (Nickel Nipped)

What makes a set truly great? Are there certain things great sets possess that lesser sets do not? If a great set is the product of previous years’ evolution, then shouldn’t earlier years be considered great as well? Just what is it that pushes the great set to a higher plane? I’ve asked myself these questions a number of times while writing this countdown. And while their answers are hard to pin down in the majority of cases (because there are very sets that stand apart from the pack), 1992 Topps is different: There’s more than one thing that elevates it to greatness.

In 1991, Topps debuted gold foil stamping on some of the subset cards in the Bowman set. (Topps also added a small gold foil palm tree accent to a miniscule quantity of its flagship and sent them to troops as part of their Desert Shield distribution program.) Interesting in a footnote kind of way, the gold foil itself didn’t add much to overall card design. If anything, it was a ‘hey, look what we can do’ kind of thing. That changed for 1992, which saw Topps increase its gold foil stamp quotient exponentially, resulting in the Topps Gold base set parallel. Really, there were two parallels—Gold and Gold Winners—but nobody really wanted Gold Winners: they were much easier to find than straight up Gold (this difference could very well have been the first instance of tiered desirability). And though Gold technically wasn’t the first time Topps had done a base set parallel (the Tiffany sets of the 1980s were Topps’ first true parallel sets), it was the first parallel randomly inserted in packs (Topps Tiffany cards had been available only as complete, factory-sealed sets).

In addition to the introduction of widespread gold foil stamping, ’92 Topps saw an increase in quality photography. Unlike Topps photography in the 1980s, (it took the company nine years to reach its zenith in 1988), 1990s Topps photography peaked early. With the introduction of the Stadium Club brand (and by extension officially bringing Kodak into the fold) in 1991, the idea took hold that every card, not just those of stars, could feature nice photos. There were a handful of such ‘cinematic’ cards in the 1991 flagship issue, but 1992 saw 26, certainly a dramatic increase by anyone’s count. In fact, it seems like the Pittsburgh Pirates hired their own private photographer; just about everyone on the team got decked out across their own empty Three Rivers Stadium backdrop.

Any great set has to have a great checklist. The first thing you notice about this set’s checklist is that Topps cemented institutional hero worship upon Nolan Ryan (#1 in 1990, 1991, 1992). Up until that point, the company had bestowed subset hero worship on four players (Babe Ruth in 1962, Hank Aaron in 1974, Pete Rose in 1986 and Ryan in 1990), and institutional hero worship on only one: Ted Williams (#1 in 1954, 1957, 1958). This may seem like a no-brainer on Topps’ part, but remember that while certain checklist numbers through the years may have ‘felt’ like they should have gone hand in hand with certain players (#500 with Mickey Mantle, #600 with Willie Mays, #250 with Stan Musial, #200 with Warren Spahn or Sandy Koufax), very few numbers were given to certain players repeatedly. (As an aside, just wait until the Mickey Mantle estate ends their relationship with Topps: I bet that card #7, their current holy number, will go right back into circulation.)

1992 saw the return of the four-headed rookie card, on hiatus since 1978. It was also the fourth year in a row that draft picks were given their own subset, highlighted by Cliff Floyd, Aaron Sele, Manny Ramirez, Shawn Green, Pokey Reese and Brien Taylor rookies. Record Breakers, All-Star Rookies and All-Stars rounded out the subsets. The All-Stars were especially strong, with seven Hall of Fame caliber players (plus Bonds and Clemens). I think it’s telling that three of the five subsets were rookie-related. Add in a boatload of unmarked rookies and this set is literally crawling with them (110 total for the set). Chalk it up to the Bowman Effect. With Topps establishing the Bowman brand as the legitimate ‘home of the rookie card’ in 1991, the company built off of that assertion in the 1992 Topps flagship by including scores of ‘cup of coffee’ type players, older rookies and career minor leaguers briefly up in the majors. As a result we’re treated to cards of guys like Alonzo Powell, Jose ‘The 700 Year Old Rookie’ Mesa, Bryan Hickerson and John Wehner. For a lot of guys, 1992 Topps would be their only major league card for their career.

In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a bad proposition (What if your only card was in 1988 Donruss?). This set is one of the best-designed sets the company has ever released. You may regard that last sentence as pure hyperbole, but I beg to differ. Let’s break this down. Clean white borders had been a Topps design staple for most of their 40-odd years of producing cards (notable years without continuous white borders: 1962, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1975, 1986, 1987, 1990), so their inclusion in 1992 was no real surprise. If anything, the surprise is how well the borders play off the rest of the card.

On the front, thin lines framed the photo, with one specific to team colors, the other white. Player name and team were set against small team-colored rectangles that filled out along the bottom of the frame, though never touched the white border. The three card front elements (the accent frame and two bottom boxes) each featured a different team color. For the Rangers, the accent frame was in gray, the player name box in red and the team name box in blue. It’s done to complement the photo, and achieves this in striking manner. It’s interesting to note, but nothing besides an odd arm or leg ever touches the surrounding white border. That may not seem like much, but previous years’ design routinely allowed elements to touch or overlap the borders (see 1988, 1985, 1980 and various others).

So while the frame and borders evinced a certain Frank Lloyd Wright sense of design, the real star of the card was the photograph. The photo was given free reign over the frame, giving nearly every subject a larger-than-life, magazine cover presence. In those instances where the player didn’t seem to literally pop off the card, the photograph was interesting enough to make you think they did.

As for the card backs, 1992 was quite possibly, in my estimation, the best-designed Topps back since 1971. ’92 was the first Topps flagship back to feature anything in color, and instead of a meaningless headshot (like Fleer used for its 1991 back), Topps chose a panorama of that player’s home stadium. It was a nice touch; gave the card grounding. Besides, not all of the cards had a photo, only for those players with a few years experience. Most veterans had too many years of service to list everything and include a photo, so when you got one with a photo it seemed special. Out of 792 cards, 595 featured a stadium on its back.

One of the questions I’ve asked myself before ranking a set is whether the set in particular was a product of its time, or a product that helped create its time. In this vein, the innovations put to use in 1992 Topps (gold foil stamping, tiered parallel sets) not only added to the frenzy of card collecting at the time, it laid partial groundwork for the years that followed. Add in its glorious design, killer checklist and stunning photography and not only do you have a great set, you have the best Topps set of the early decade.

from our trip to Joshua Tree

A small moth on the window ledge of the Adobe


Nice bee shot


Just another day at the office for the ants. I was hoping with all the ants, I'd see a horned lizard or 2. No such luck.






Sweet little dove nest in a palm tree






Milkweed bugs

OK, I think that's all the photos of bugs and critters from our trip to Joshua Tree.

There were a couple of things I couldn't identify. Well, I guess I should say, I haven't really tried to identify them yet. But at this point, I really don't know what they are.

At the Joshua Tree visitor center, on some plants at the beginning of a little trail near the building, there were lots of these fluffy things. Galls? Egg cases? My brain wanted them to be praying mantis egg cases, but there were too many of them all over the plants, and the sizes too varied, from pea-sized to walnut-sized.

Some of them had what appeared to be exoskeletons of tiny insects. Could they have been a parasitic wasp of some kind?



Then there were these mysterious floating eggs in the pond at Barker Dam.



I fished them out for a closer look, but it didn't help. It looks like each enlongated yellow egg has a bunch of tiny round eggs inside. All were suspended in a glear gelatinous fluid, similar to frog eggs.

So I guess I should try to find out what these are sometime.

I ran my second 5k yesterday in 28 minutes 16 seconds, taking almost 2 minutes off my previous 5k time. Considering I was sick the entire previous week, I'm pretty damn happy with that time.

Next time I have to find a 10k as I get ready for the Peachtree Road Race on July 4th...

Having escaped Bombay I'm now in Rishikesh, where this morning I was listening to an old lecture by Jack Kornfield over a second cup of mediocre coffee.

He was discussing the roots of generosity and what that force looks like when turned loose in the greater world. Specifically, he talked about how at its root generosity requires an embrace of all hardships in this world as well as all joys, and it is only through that embrace that we can see and change the greatest of the world's ills. To quote,

"...abundance means the willingness to open to life as it is, to face injustice and suffering. As Martin Luther King (Jr.) wrote, 'We will soon wear you down with our capacity to suffer in the struggle for the rights of others, and with that suffering we will win our freedom and (yours along with it)."

To wear down an oppressor with a capacity to suffer is something worth considering in the context of our current social struggles - from the protests over Tibet, to the war in Iraq and the reality of global warming. The truth of today is that we blame a complacent public, unresponsive governments and a corrupt media system for turning deaf ears to the troubles of the world while each one of us places the preservation of our own comforts and lifestyles before the suffering of the world around us.

Consider the description below of Indian citizens staring down the barrels of British guns during the Quissa Kwani bazaar massacre of the independence movement:

When those in front fell down wounded by the shots, those behind came forward with their chests bared and exposed themselves to the fire, so much so that some people got as many as twenty-one bullet wounds in their bodies, and all the people stood their ground without getting into a panic. . . . The paper of, which represents the official view, itself wrote to the effect that the people came forward one after another to face the firing and when they fell wounded they were dragged back and others came forward to be shot at. This state of things continued from 11 till 5 o'clock in the evening. When the number of corpses became too many, the ambulance cars of the government took them away.

Can we even conceive of such a whole hearted embrace of a cause beyond ourselves?

The fault isn't our own, it simply points to the next great state of embrace required in order to face the problems of a global community and the global solutions we need. The movements led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were ones involving nations and race. The challenges of today - from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the one threatening Iran; to the global issue of climate change - require a new embrace of ourselves first as global citizens and then as citizens of the Earth itself.

Protests of today are seen by the public for what they are, staged events performed for a known audience where all performers - whether activists or police - go home to their televisions and lives after the sun goes down. Our complacency of response is not a social disease. It matches the level of involvement of those who design these displays of non-violence.

We need to understand that in embracing non-violence as our mode of protest, we have abandoned its sibling non-cooperation, and that estrangement is the primary reason for our current failures. At its heart, non-violence smacks of passivity and a passive action can only lead to a passive result. Gandhi himself said that if faced with a decision between passivity and violence he would choose violence every time. Protesting the wrongs of society needs to directly affect the perpetuation of those wrongs. Any action different from that is, by its very nature, passive.

What would happen if the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government in exile, and the 100,000 Tibetans living in India joined with those who remained in their ancestral home to march upon Beijing itself for the opening of the Olympic games? What if, like that sole protester in Tiananmin Square, they put their lives in the way of Chinese police and guns to peacefully assert their rights over what is theirs?

What would happen if those employed by Exxon, BP and Shell walked out together from their well paying jobs to demand that the people who issue their pay cheques also act in accordance with their desire for a safe and healthy planet?

What would happen if those employed by the US State Department and Defense Department left in unison until the government that offers them the security of employment, also offers their children the security of a safe world?

The answer is that these institutions would be brought to their knees within moments, and it is this power that is the right of all people, that is at the heart of Satyagraha, and forms the greatest fear of the powers that be.

These are not the only possibilities. The solutions for our problems are as limitless as the imaginations of those who conceive of them. However, the common thread is that our actions must match in scope the problems they are meant to solve. Actions must directly affect the problem, those actions must stem from a sense of self and community as large as the challenges they face.

Many will disagree with this, and that is actually a good thing. The difference between the suffering of the world and our resistance in embracing that suffering - that is, to put our own personal safety on the line - defines the growth we need to achieve in order to create the world we desire.

Here's a few Mountain Gorilla related links that have wafted through my inbox recently...

King Kong Lives On

How tourism helps the majestic mountain gorillas of Rwanda and the people who share their habitat
By Julie Davidson

The ultimate patriarch, he eases himself up from buttocks which have flattened their own forest glade and looks at me thoughtfully. On all fours he is the size of a small car. His hands are as big as bolsters, with fingers like black puddings and long, oddly elegant nails. He prods the infant playing between his feet, gives an instructive grunt, and together they join the family. The youngster's mother is nearby, but if she is lost to disease or poachers her child will be raised and protected - defended to the death, if necessary - by his colossal father: King Kong, the man-beast, greatest of the great apes, the beleaguered primate whose identity has evolved over the past century from homicidal monster to gentle giant.

Mobile game to help save embattled gorillas

For mobile users a new mobile game hopes to raise awareness of the plight of the mountain gorilla and funds for their conservation. Silverback takes gamers through eight levels, following the life-span of a gorilla from childhood to adult.

Mountain Gorilla Rally Called Off

CACMS Chairman Surinder Thatthi informed all registered drivers for this year's African Rally Championship that Rwanda Gorilla rally was cancelled out of this year's championship due to lack of available sponsorship.

And for the Western Lowland Gorilla... Ebola Virus Threatens Gorilla With Extinction

If the usual threats of poaching and habitat loss weren't enough, gorillas face the added danger of a deadly disease that has been surging through their ranks.

The highly-infectious Ebola virus has decimated huge swaths of the already diminished western lowland gorilla population.

Audio

DUSK - Focus (Keysound)
HARDROCK SOUL MOVEMENT - Double Def Fresh (Version) (Elite)
2562 - Enforcers (Tectonic)
HELIXIR - Narcotic Dub (7even)
T2X - Trusted (Norman Nodge Mix) (T2X)
ORIGINAL CONCEPT - Gottanotha Funky Break 4-U?Hit It! (Def Jam)
ROOTED - Babylon Boxer (Wonderland)
SARANTIS - Society (Subsonik)
THE KNIGHTS OF THE TURNTABLE - Fresh Mess (Jam... Your Radio) (JDC)
2562 - Basin Dub (Tectonic)
GRIEVOUS ANGEL - Lady Dub (Devotional Dubs)
RUSTIE - Just For Kicks (Inst) (Stuff)
TAPE - Fingers (Hapna)
NICO MULHY - Mothertongue (Pt's 3 & 4, Hress & Monster) (Bedroom Community)
THE ADVISORY CIRCLE - The Old Schoolhouse (Ghost Box)
PHILIP JECK - Chime Again (Touch)
CHRISTOPH HEEMANN - Magnetic Tape Splicing Part 1 (Robot)
PAAVOHARJU - Italialaisella Laivalla (Fonal)
NIC JONES - Ten Thousand Miles (Trailer)
KATH BLOOM & LOREN CONNORS - My Stupid Little Heart (Chapter Music)
PAAVOHARJU - Sumuvirsi (Fonal)
IGOR WAKHEVITCH - Materia Prima (Fractal)
BERNARD SZAJNER - A Kind Of Freedom (Path?Marconi EMI)

THE KNIGHTS OF THE TURNTABLE

Yes, apparently they do.




I found out by accident that my aged ET stickbug likes cheeseweed, a common weed around these parts. I wish I would have found this out sooner. The weeds are past their prime now, and withering in the heat. (90's today)

It might be a little hard to figure out this picture, so I'll explain. This is the egg case I collected from this post. The green stuff is beeswax that I used to attach it to the branch of a plant in my yard. You can see a white cluster of natal skins hanging just to the right of center. This was not a complete hatch-out, but a group. And you can just make out part of the group under the horizontal leaf near the bottom of the picture.


You can click on the picture to enlarge it, but my favorite is really the second picture...



This is the first and last time these babies will be together. They appear to be peering out at the world, (and me) from under the safety of the leaf, maybe deciding amongst themselves who will go first, and what they might do.