Red Mosquito

doug rr wrote:burning man brought a smile and laugh to my face...

tragabigzanda wrote:Last night I saw this post on LinkedIn about a guy who needs a living liver transplant. Looked like a great dude, nice family. Due to the donor scoring mechanism, he’ll likely die without a living donor.

Started looking into it and this sense of selfless purpose took over. Within just a few minutes, I was SURE I would be the donor. Was confident my wife would support me, and that my employers would applaud my selflessness.

Began reading about the testing process to make sure you’re a match, and then I was into the insurance details. Goddammit, I was gonna save this guy’s life! And maybe I wouldn’t even tell anyone about it: the ultimate act of sobriety, doing something really kind for someone and expecting nothing in return.

Then I got to the part about the recuperation, and there’s no way my wife could be a solo parent while I’m in a hospital bed a couple states over for up to three weeks.

Quite the wild ride I had there for 20 minutes.

Carl Sandburg wrote:There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

tree_ wrote:yeah if i'm gonna pick somewhere to be a jingo about, I'd say it'd probably have to be USA or Canada. Maybe Iceland. But i"m not very knowledgeable about geopolitics so wuddo i know

tragabigzanda wrote:I generally hate any US-jingoist ideology