Our Daily Dead

The theme song of today’s ODDly Departed, Red (Aaron Chwatt) Buttons, could not be more appropriate for current circumstances. Israel and Hezbullah are lighting things up big time (although Israel, if it decides to do so, can definitely really light things up mega big time); the world’s largest collector of Daffy Duck comic books, who can enrich uranium, but can’t feed his people, barely makes 5’6’’ in 4” heels and a pompadour that might harbor small birds, and claims to shoot 35 under par golf (has he been playing with former President Clinton?), is burning a hole in the duodenum of George Bush; it’s business as usual in India—home of the original murder-suicide bomber; and, now you have the Dems saying they are going to take back at least one house of Congress by running on a platform of fiscal responsibility. Strange things are happening indeed. We ODDones are going back to bed and pull the covers over our head. You can read about Red Buttons here. He was a pretty cool guy who made (some of) our parents laugh. He finally got dinner.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: Red (Aaron Chwatt) Buttons, Israel, Hezbullah, Daffy Duck

Dead is David Bright, 49, underseas explorer of the Titanic, ironclad Monitor, and the Andrea Doria. The Andrea Doria sank in 200 feet of water off the coast of Nantucket (rhymes with….er….”bucket” 50 years ago. Bright had been exploring the wreck of the Italian luxury liner. When he surfaced, he experienced a cardiac arrest and died. Bends are suspected, but autopsy is scheduled.

We ODDfellows have just finished T.R.Pearson>’s first non-fiction book, “Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting.” Pearson, whose latest novel, “Glad News of the Natural World” we ODDones enthusiastically ODDly recommend, usually writes of the mythical North Carolina town of Neely; however, his latest book is a hard by turn into a real life character, Will Willis, who solo rafted (a dog, a parrot, and a cunningly carnivorous cat don’t count) across the Atlantic and Pacific. Willis ate strange concoctions of starches, aspirin, and the occasional unlucky fish. He drank sea water, planned poorly, made up sea ditties, treated intermittent strangulated hernias by hauling himself up the main mast of his raft by the feet, and (amazingly, we think) maintainted his sanity. In the course of one crossing, he gutted out a perforated ulcer. How did he eventually die? Read the book.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: David Bright, Titanic, Monitor, Andrea Doria, T.R.Pearson, William Willis

Mystic mushrooms spawn magic event!

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
~~ William Blake

“But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”
~~ Aldous Huxley, “The Doors of Perception”

“Abandoning his body by the gate of dreams, the Spirit beholds in awaking his senses sleeping. Then he takes his own light and returns to his home, this Spirit of golden radiance, the wandering swan everlasting.
Leaving his nest below in charge of the breath of life, the immortals Spirit soars afar from his nest. He moves in all regions whereever he loves, this Spirit of golden radiance, the wandering swan everlasting.
And in the region of dreams, wandering above and below, the Spirit makes for himself innumerable subtle creations. Sometimes he seems to regjoice in the love of fairy beauties, sometimes he laughs or beholds awe-inspiring terrible visions.
People see his field of pleasure; but he can never be seen.
~~The Upanishads

We chased our pleasures here
Dug our treasures there
But can you still recall
The time we cried
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
~~Jim Morrison and The Doors, “Break On Through (To The Other Side)”

And perhaps fitting to all this is word that the Piper at the Gates of Dawn - Syd Barrett - has died. Diehard Pink Floyd fans still insist that the band was never the same without Syd. Now what do we do with our advance tickets for the reunion tour?