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Return of the African Killer Bees
For some weird reason, people on the East Coast don’t know about how the bees are vanishing. Not sure what the deal is there, because this kind of shit is all the rage on the West Coast. People, I think, tend to have very different priorities on either side of the country. Lucky for all of us though, scientists are following up on one clue as to what is causing these mysterious vanishings. And no, the bees aren’t simply vacationing somewhere; it may have something to do with a virus.
Speaking of which, I may have contracted a little something myself while traveling and “partying my brains out”. It may just be that everybody smokes constantly back east, but I’ve got a bit of a sore throat and am taking the next few days to just chillax and get back into some kind of normal routine again.
Last night I spent several hours listening to Jason Dove’s new CD. Today I bought a wireless mouse for my laptop because the tips of my fingers keep getting worn down from this stupid trackpad on my laptop. Tomorrow I am going to buy the Loeb (not Lisa) translation of the Odyssey. Shit, the first half is like five hundred pages. Maybe I will just start out with that and work my way up to the second edition. It will be part of my homework for the coming month, either way.
Also today I bought my usual repast of hummus and bananas from Trader Joe’s. The glamour of that diet has worn off a little bit, but the shit still tastes good. This afternoon some time I am going to start putting together a massive flowchart for upcoming projects I need to finish. My good friend John is helping me out with some serious branding and direction issues are far as my writing and “image” are concerned. Feels really good to be getting together some of the serious practical elements for some major thrusts in my professional life. This next month is all about focus. My next big project is all about “DIY Self-Mastery” and applying the big lessons I have learned out here on the West Coast into what might be thought of as a more East Coast-friendly format: minus all the spiritual, occult, etc baggage. I know a lot of this East Coast/West Coast stuff I am harping on here is just an arbitrary dichotomy I have set up for myself. But that’s all good. Gotta create those little mental jigs for yourself sometime in order to gain leverage on your own thought patterns and shift things into the places they need to go.
I had lots of dreams last night about the world ending. I was with my mother and my younger sister. But we were ready for it though. And I was lucky enough to be around a small group of really good people, friends and confidants plucked, apparently, from all eras of my life. We found ways to get by without electricity. In fact, we thrived without it. I remember it all started when my mom and sister and I were driving around in a small car in a city with which I am unfamiliar. My mother cried out, “Look at the sun!” We turned a corner and all of a sudden, I could see it all so clearly: the sun enormous and close-up. So close that I could see the surface of it writhing in an agony of tumultuous flame. And yet it was nighttime somehow. And two moons hung listlessly above it. Panic slowly mounted until suddenly I realized the heat of the sun was turning about like a great dessicating eyeball, catching ablaze buildings and coming gradually near us.
Somewhere along the way though, once we had already happily adapted, and set into our new lifestyle, the authorities began getting things back in order. The world wasn’t over after all. But things had been irrevocably changed. I guess this is some kind of symbolic statement about how I feel right now. Everything is different after only a week away in other environs: a week in which I realized just how far I have come since I came out here like a cloud of killer bees almost two years ago. Maybe the reason people don’t care about the bees dying back east is that they aren’t dying out there. Maybe its just one of those imaginary fixations only people in this dimension know about. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time I had stumbled across something like that. Either way, it’s good to hear those wacky scientists are making progress on figuring it all out. I guess you could say that I am too.
September 6th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Speaking of my plans for world domination, check out my (mostly) new about me page:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/about-me/
May give you some idea of where I am an heading, although this only scratches the surface…
September 6th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
You may have a little competition.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/03/24/we-iz-gonna-take-over-the-wurld/
They have high technology.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/09/...oning-machine-was-suksesful/#comments
And Superheros.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/03/...fyte-4-justis-4-all-catkind/#comments
Don’t click on these links. You’ll be lost to the lolcats world. I didn’t think it could happen to me either.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Awesome new Bad Religion album.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/74l63i
September 7th, 2007 at 2:28 am
you really like screwing with Pinchbeck don’t you? I still haven’t read his book.
September 7th, 2007 at 2:29 am
BTW, you kind of alluded to it in your title, or is it a coincidence?
The killer bees aren’t dying. The are the only ones. you knew that right?
September 7th, 2007 at 3:07 am
Dying bees, Daniel Pinchbeck and the east vs. west coast cosmological schism. This blog’s got everything. All you’re missing is dead people…
September 7th, 2007 at 3:58 am
You’re just saying that because you’re a necromancer! Maybe you should become a lifeomancer and start promoting that instead!
I swear I’m not screwing with Pinchbeck. I consider that statement of his to be a full-fledged endorsement!
September 7th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Of course they’re not dying. They are the ones killing all the other bees! It’s all a plot I tell you!
September 7th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Actually they are just having sex with them. It helps them. There was a guy in Arizona that had all the wimpy European bees and then the Africanized bees kept taking over, and now he sells the honey from the killer bees.
I think its a sign that European people are on the way out and being replaced by africanized people. These European bees were all inbred and constantly manipulated. Killer bees do what they want more. But you can still work with them.
September 7th, 2007 at 10:26 am
“gnostic cult leader”? awesome. of course, you realize it’s a cult of one….
September 7th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
The review blurbs on the book jacket of the paperback edition of the comic “Jimmy Corrigan” included some serious burns among the good reviews. Sure endeared me!
September 7th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Be a Killer bee
I wrote this a few months ago. Its kind of disturbing. I was in the midst of my “darkworker polarization” expiriment and really into Nietzsche, but i think there is truth in it.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
No, I think this is honestly racist bullshit. What is at stake here are bees, not black and white people. I understand what you are trying to say, but your analogy is tenuous at best, and offensive at worst. There are much more useful ways of talking about the same thing that aren’t so cartoonish and simplistic.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Ben Mack talks about this somewhere… The point seems to be that you simply have a free endorsement by somebody with some name recognition. It almost doesn’t matter what they say. In fact, if its barbed its even more sticky.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
That makes a lot of sense the more I think about it… Mr. Big Shot may think Mr. Author is an ass, but at least he knows who he is!
In marketing it’s gotta be worth more to be seen as a player than to be liked.
The coup would be to get someone famous so riled up that they bitch about you in unrelated interviews!
Someones like Michael Moore and Bill O’Reilly have sort of a mutually beneficial beef from a marketing point of view.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
This all fits under the rubric of “there’s no such thing as bad press”.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Yeah, nevermind the whole East Coast West Coast beef in nineties hip-hop. How many records did that shit sell?
September 7th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
It may be offensive. But its true. Europe is on the way out. Europe will be muslim in 50 years. Its happening for the same reasons Neitzsche saw in the nineteenth century.
The thing with Nietzsche is that most people don’t understand him and a lot of time has passed since he wrote, but he said a lot of offenseive things. relating his ideas to anything contrmporary will seem really offensive.
These aren’t wild bees that are dying out. They are docile domesticated european honey bees.
I think there theere are all kinds of disturning trends going on in the world portended by this, but its not just the same old thing about the environment. This grip on the world by the anglo Atlantic establishment is slipping. That’s why we had september 11 and that is why we are in Iraq.
But yeah, I am in dangerous territory and being highly speculative and possibly offensive. But I still feel like there is somthing there to discover.
So I apologize.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Thanks for including a pull-quote from me on your about page. That can only be good for my marketing-virgin self!
Lookin’ forward to the day I’ve got close to your number of unique daily hits. If you’re building a Wu Tang Clan, I’d be honored to be part of the set.
Peace.
September 7th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
I live on the East Coast and bees are my friends. We garden organically and I’ve become so at home in my garden that I recognise certain particular butterflies (ie (”the broken tailed pipevine swallowtail”)when she comes, and where she lay lays her eggs, and how much more passionflower vine I am going to have to grow next year to feed them at the larval stage. Even the grasshoppers get my grudging respect and applause for the young speckled hens that dine on them. So maybe that dichotomy doesn’t apply geographically but is rather an urban vs rural vibe.
BTW european honey bees were brought here because they were docile and productive, where Africanized bees are more aggressive and territorial. Worse than Africanized bees are the Varroa mites, and this virus from Australia which seems to be causing CCD- colony collapse disorder. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
September 7th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
LIFOMANCY!!!!