I was forced into this...

Have you heard of Asperatus clouds? I can't find much information about them, perhaps due to their being new, or maybe just a lack of recognization... anyhow, apparently "[t]he Cloud Appreciation Society ("There's a Cloud Appreciation Society?") is trying to get the Royal Meteorological Society to recognize a new form of cloud." Asperatus, "Latin for ‘roughened up’, like a choppy sea." Seriously, there is a great paucity of information about them, is one to believe they just go by a different name AND that the whole Cloud Appreciation Society has never heard of them before, hence their creating a name for them? Whence come the asperatus?


"We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues."
- Wallace Stevens
I could never agree more. Clouds have furthered my knowledge of aesthetics, relaxation, self-formation, generation of meaning, impermanence and transformation, non-duality, breathing, appreciation for darkness, ad nauseam; what water was to Bruce Lee clouds have been to me.


If only the The Cloud Harp were still operating to provide a rendition of Asperatus formations. "The Cloud Harp. The transposition of a natural phenomenon into music. The melodies and sounds are determined by factors such as cloud height, density, structure, luminosity, and meteorological conditions." I don't doubt it'd sound more agreeable than falling stock charts fed into Microsoft's Songsmith.


These are beyond beautiful, but who knows, perhaps they signify the coming of Gozer...

Have you ever known somebody who has removed a tick from their penis (and in particular the mushroom head)?
If never before, now you do. I'll spare you some details of the encounter...
At first it felt to be a painful scab, but knowing otherwise (he's treated quite nicely, these days), I had to take a closer look. However, being neither a yogic master nor Ron Jeremy, and with poor eyesight to boot, not much could be seen. Took the camera out, zoomed in as much as possible (wow, first time I've pointed a camera at it), the screen showing all kinds of blurriness. Experience informing me this to be rather tiny for penile a scab, with there being little causation for one to be there in the first place, in addition to a small dislike for ticks, I plucked at it cautiously, not unlike one first picking up a guitar. No feel good! Despite the unpleasantries of all this, what was probably a tick had to go, and off it came. Onto my nail now, it remained motionless. I'd removed wood ticks before, but never a deer tick, and sadly had to see one for the first time manifest on my johnson. Time will tell if there's a rash or the appearance of bruising (another form of cocktusion? [the first one beknownst to me being a mushroom shaped bruise from a cock slap]), possible indicators of Lyme -- but even if so, I'll still be thankful that such would be the first malformity of the spoken of member.

A dream perhaps three weeks ago:

Someone entrusted some items unto me, to deliver to someone else. I went walking, through the rain, and ended up in a big store. Spoke to a friend there, whom said I must stick around to see his co-worker Wally (or maybe it was Walter). Wal(?) never showed up, so this friend did an impersonation of him, and his voice rumbled like an old southern black man's, joyous in recollection of a sad story from the past. Then I was gone.

Up in a kitchen I arrived, or was, my grandmother standing by a cutting board, with some pig skin laid out next to it. I set my backpack upon the counter, said there was some thing(s) for her, then looked inside the part where I normally carry my water bottle. There was a white rabbit's hind end sticking out, I pulled, and it gave resistance; its teeth sunken into the skull of a pig that was further in there. Suddenly feelings of neglect and negligence of duty overwhelmed me, apologies streamed out of my mouth, unaware of how the delivery of a live animal could have been so forgotten. Eventually the rabbit was detached from the pig, then the pig was set back in the pouch, upon such grams asked if there were more, so in I peered. There were five in all (including the one placed back in there), but now two of them (again, including the one just placed inside by myself) looked immensely sick and rotten, rotting, deathly, one of which had a bump on its head. I looked to grams, distressed, then back inside, the bump on the one caved inward, then pus-blood flowed forth and down, and more blood came from elsewhere inside. That moment, sheer absolute horror was all I knew.

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~ Anais Nin

Wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili.
– Alleged last words of Kit Carson

There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.
- Gilles Deleuze

When you feel there is a hole in you, and act (it is hardly always the case when one is aware of such acting, or even of such feeling) as if it (the hole) is the whole (i.e. inescapable, all consuming) of you, it will never suffice to fill it (be this filling much of one or many things), it must be healed. To fill it, this is only distraction, a vacuum, a black hole; one cannot clean the oceans cup by cup, no matter what with; the source(s) of poison(ing) must be found. Change diet, or more cavities surely are on the way. Awareness is key, and distraction/deception tugs in opposition to that (just as justice often sits in opposition to understanding). Why must we deceive ourselves, with mental sleight of hand? what makes it easier to ignore such poisoning? There are automatic conditioned responses (e.g. thoughts), -- that one needn't reflect, just know otherwise (they are called thoughts, a noun, static, not thinking, the verb, which has been done in the past in this instance. Thought of this variety is not reflection, but condition [a conditioning having already taken place to bypass/override thinking/reflection]). Knowledge without reflection, and you call this truth? What you call your truth I call self-deception. Go against your side, briefly, consider antinomian thought, if but for a moment. I write to ears, but do they hear through all the distraction?
Do you hear that? Surely, it calls again, it beckons, always. Go, go back. It sounds now, that you must return. Follow the noise, and there, there is your breadcrumb trail. Me? I will wander on. That is my destiny, my destination.

"That's not what that word means", he says to me.
"Well shit, that's what I mean when I say that word." At least that's the best response I can think of.
I mean, you mean to tell me that what I, an individual, mean, is separate from what a word actually means? (i.e. subsume/submit into the larger whole. dissent not. do not [as in never] create your own meanings! worship stasis and the status quo [step ye not out of line, wait until that use has become standardized before saying it as so], that is, until specialists legitimize such change. Could this be called ex-determination ? [rhymes with extermination...] ex-determination meaning
1. a. determined by one outside of yourself, especially specialists.
    b. waiting for another to present the options or categories from which to choose.
2. using a very small amount of your brain capacity, not doing yourself or your mind justice, seeing as it is capable of so much more: she did not do herself justice, that is, she was unjust to herself, and awaited others to enact justice for her, this is but one way in which ex-determination played out on her.
3. laziness in responsibility of choice.
4. giving up choices to the larger whole, to the one [e.g. unity], in effect becoming possessed by the need for others to decide and change things for you.
)
My question is, how does something like this effect the rise (allowance?) of an authoritarian state, both in its populace, and in its rulers? How does our society stand up? Which direction is it moving?

People speak of freedom and diversity, but then are mean to you about your misspellings, missayings, tell you to stick to the same grammar as them, one that some dudes they've never met codified. Yeah, that's diversity and freedom alright. As if that word has always meant that thing, and only that thing always. What's that that Nietzsche said? Oh yeah, "Everything the philosopher has said about man is, however, at bottom no more than a testimony as to the man of a very limited period of time." And I'll add 'geography' to that one (only because so many think that time and space are separate [what the shit is with that anyways? I thought it was time-space, yet time is the fourth dimension, and space is the first three? yay for old box categories, the unbending ones, x and y axis]). Extrapolate that to language if you will (if you can). The map is not the motherfucking territory, people. The world changes, and to have a signifier that doesn't change, how is there truth in this abstraction? how much truth?

~

On another note, I swear off something.

Financial crisis topples Iceland government
Iceland’s government collapsed on Monday following political turmoil prompted by the global financial crisis.

~

Whatever it means, and whatever it was, that was not America, and will not be. This nation is too damned great, dammit. Power grids may get overburdened, collapse, and string others along. Economic systems are not power grids.

But really, what does it mean when a government topples, is collapsed?

I've overheard and had conversations with people about the economy being shit, going further to shit, some having said we were not headed for a recession, now seeing that we are in one that it'll get better, whatever.

I'm not arguing one way or the other (I know my stance, and don't care to change anybody's mind for one, and I think if any of you reading this have read what has been written here in the past, you know my feelings on such anyhow), yet, at the same time as not wanting to debate about the state of matters,
I ask (as has been asked a million times before myself), what about this collapsing discriminating parasitic competitive abusive destructive rapacious controlling dominating enslaving monotonous flattening tunnel-visioned life-hating system makes you want to save it? -- Not a rhetorical question.

If I could do any one thing...

I would take every last leader in the world who has ever caused another harm, file them into a gigantic theater, and force them to watch Hook and then Fern Gully. And every last bit of them.
On acid. Or mushrooms.
Sure they could feast on fresh foods, tea wine beer whatever, scrumptious berries and refreshing vegetables, and other things that were becoming weeded out, closer to extinction, whatever, but not their normal fare.
Those that thereafter didn't become more caring, less discriminating, and more appreciative of other lives, I would shoot them. Repeatedly. Then burn their bodies. I'd like to say I'd feast on them, but I hear human isn't supposed to be the greatest thing to eat (unless it's vagina, then it's at the top of my list).

When will double standards be done away with?

The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous. An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, ( Read more... )

Believe that's from Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine', found quote via this link. Also read on Carolyn Baker's page, Obama Revitalizes Disaster Capitalism: The Shock Doctrine Receives A Make-Over, which is a-ok.

Obama may be better suited to whatever tasks may lie ahead than that older fuck and that hot ass bitch, but that's hardly a reason to not hold a flame to his (or anybody else's) ass to do the things he said he would, and hardly a reason to not be fucking ready to skewer them and hold them both A) accountable and B) over a bonfire, and dine upon their cracklings, for being traitors to humanity (yes I know it's yet to be displayed, time will tell). Already I've seen a number of people that voted for Obama (you know, the mascot of their party), and upon seeing him become president elect, pretty much stop caring because of a belief in their party's infallibility and therefore that everything will like be alright, man. I think it is quite important that the more liberal news sources to not become like what Fox News was for George W. Bush, blindly following because he was on their side. Fuck false dichotomies, fuck this whole progressive good, conservative bad us/them bullshit (bushit! ha ha...). Two sides of the same coin. Wait no, just kidding, as I'm sure he'll never sell himself to corporate power in the slightest. Nor has he ever.

"WIBDI: What If Bush Did It?"

This user-friendly analytical tool provides a quick and easy way of determining the value of any given policy while correcting one's perception for partisan bias. Simply take a particular action or proposal and submit it to the WIBDI test: If Bush did this, would you think it was OK? Or would you condemn it as the act of a warmonger, or a tyrant, or a corrupt corporate tool, etc.? The just-concluded campaign has already shown us how our hordes of our quondam dissidents have signally failed this test, excusing, countenancing, defending or even embracing the actions and positions enumerated below by Chris Hedges:

"Sen. Barack Obama’s vote to renew the Patriot Act, his votes to continue to fund the Iraq war, his backing of the FISA Reform Act, his craven courting of the Israeli lobby, his support of the death penalty, his refusal to champion universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans, his call to increase troop levels and expand the war in Afghanistan, his failure to call for a reduction in the bloated and wasteful defense spending and his lobbying for the huge taxpayer swindle known as the bailout..."

That article ends with "In measuring and judging the operations of power, we must judge an action or policy for what it is, in reality, and for what it does, to actual living human beings, and not for who has ordered it."

There is also a great documentary on the RNC and DNC protests, and police brutality against protesters at both of these. It is called Ground Noise & Static, put out by Submedia.tv (you know, those that also put out the great ITEOTWAWKIAIFF, It's the End of the World as We know it and I feel fine).

It is not so simple as saying that politicians will just do bad/evil/harmful/corrupt things, which is not entirely the case; to say that they will act politically may be spot on, however. But it does nobody any good to believe that all anybody is capable of is good. A belief that all that another is capable of is good is an open invitation for them to do everything but that, too.

bitches_tyrone now knows that it's easier to go from doin' it to puking, than from puking back to doin' it. Particularly the second time. Stomach can handle whiskey drink and swigs of tequila alright, but get them stirring... oh boy! At least there was no slipping butt naked in the bathroom and knocking shit all onto the floor from above the back of the toilet. Right.

i want to speak of how awesome i feel, but can't really think of why i feel so.
the more i learn, the less capable i am of getting thoughts out to others. this bothers me not at all.

i do not feel that those in possession of esoteric knowledge (some may call this gnosis) are elitist for their refusal to speak of what they know. some knowledges can only be conveyed through a vocabulary of experience. i cannot simply say the word 'pain' or the word 'love' and have you feel (know) those things. knowledge without feeling? perhaps a knowledge damaged enough it ignores emotion, feeling... all feeling is knowing, how much knowledge is feeling?

sometime tomorrow morning i depart from madison for a couple weeks, hopefully after packing up all my stuff, clearing out my room for the dude who's to be residing here next. off to the hometown for a few days, then to lake superior with some cousins and their rents. they'll depart, i'll stay, attending the Lake Superior Traditional Ways Gathering from the 17th to 23rd. then back to madtown for code name 'Riverdance' on the 28th, but that's something else entirely.

i will not be on a lease this year. hopefully much biking and camping, visiting parks, couch surfing, stay with a friend in west africa if the funds are gotten, don't really know what all. there's a room i may rent by the month when need be, that couch surfing won't get too old for others.

but as for now, i gotta get to packing shit and moving it attic-wards, throw some clothing to the curb or box for st. vinny's or similar, eat some mushrooms, grill out, socialize, get toenails painted, hug.
if i have anything of yours in my possession do let me know. or any camping equipment you don't use and want to get rid of, also let me know.

“President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit. As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: 'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter.'"

From here, found via so_very_doomed.

Is it so hard to see that this president does not give a shit about you and I or anybody we know, and never has? And yet he runs this country.
(Into the fucking ground.)
IF he cared about us, wouldn't he care about the land that sustains us? Bah, from what I know of most that read this, you already hate Bush, or,
"hope he falls into a toxic pit
and drowns in it
slowly"
onto another note.

I have absolutely no faith in any system that can get a fuck like that elected, and elected again, with next to no contestation. When it's that fuckwad or another who's "better than [him]" (this, for many, being the only reason they voted for such a chode monster), a douche and a turd, when there's voting fraud, hackable voting machines, restructuring of voter zones, ignoring votes of blacks, even denying some the ability to vote, on and on and on and on. And this is only voting. What about the bills that allow greater surveillance of us citizens, even the candidate claiming to be on the side of Change and citizen power is pro such a bill, the man from WI with a spine supports one who lets his rot.
Cousin J has this to say about Backbone Man: "yeah he is pretty stand up, Obama is the one who voted for it.
Feingold still believes that the democratic party is worth something, that is why he is lame" [emphasis added]

Let me correct one thing said above. I said I had "absolutely no faith", which is true in some sense (in the sense of lacking faith in anything I'd like to see being done politically, environmentally, economically, agriculturally, etc., for example). But in another sense it might be more true instead to say that I have faith that the system will work, but continue working for the most part just as it has in the past, and is doing so now, that it will exploit many, either directly or by ignoring their existence, faith that many people with power have gained such in games of concessions, games which involve trading integrity for influence, games that only The Rich and The Famous the wealthy can "buy in" on (with us playing [being played as] the poker chips), faith that, whether or not it was Mussolini who originally said "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power", that there is some truth to such. John Taylor Gatto has chronicled the dumbing down of Americans, and Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, in his book Propaganda, said "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society." A father of public relations, not to mention influential in advertising. What do you mean our desires are manufactured?
I'm getting off topic here.

Shit like this is all the more reason why I most likely won't be voting in the coming election.
No, I'm not abstaining because of any desire to save my pure virgin cherry. It's been popped.
Some act as if voting will make all the difference in the world. I believe quite the opposite. That people, by believing that putting a check mark (or punching a chad, oof!) on a piece of paper makes a big difference, do not go far enough; many of said people hope to change the world for the better, and at the same time hate their neighbor just for voting for an opposing candidate. This is an act that says to me "I'm willing to give only enough of a say so somebody up there can A) change things, or B) keep things the same, but that's the only effort I'm willing [i.e. required] to put forth. Oh, and you're stupid and voting for the other party, morans." The kind of asshole that expects something from you but would never give one morning to volunteer for Meals on Wheels. It's like the priest that preaches community peace and love, then raises his nose to all those not of [H/h]is denomination. You say "vote for somebody in the system", and I say "I didn't even vote this system into place. Now where's the democracy in that?"

Voting will change some things, yes, but it is for the most part a hands off system, throw in some coins, push the button, sit back and watch, repeat every four years - a vestige of change for a highly-televisioned, pacified and mediated consumer culture, a culture that largely believes if it's not name brand or played on the radio or seen on MTV, that it's worth no consideration; how does somebody like this even consider a third party candidate (and no! I'm not saying this is where any salvation lies!)? Not only do I find most candidates illegitimate potential leaders (the same goes with almost anybody who has the desire to lead), but also the role of president, the government, along with any other body that claims to represent others but somehow always ends up making decisions against the interest of their constituents (all the while claiming a monopoly on legitimacy). Hell, representation I find illegitimate in most cases. Try to represent to me in prose the content of a poem. No thanks. And a politician is supposed to be capable of representing many living people, with their constantly changing minds and desires, who are quite more complex than a poem, which on the other hand has its words etched in stone (well, paper), to never change? I have yet to see a politician nuanced, delicate and fierce enough to do so legitimately.

Represent this to your representatives for me.



Voting: Because sometimes you're choosy when it comes to getting fucked by a fifty-some year old man you've never spoken to.

Me, I'd rather not ever get fucked by someone who doesn't want to hear my voice, ideas and opinions.

the men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin in 2006 to remove the body of a 20-year-old woman killed the week before in a motorcycle crash, police said.
-http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,379223,00.html

Ah, Good Ol' Wisconsin, how I love thee. Found on Rotten News (thanks be to Robin), something I'm disappointed I hadn't known about before.

But what really sold it to me, the first entry on the page at the time, 'Priest Receives Fruit Basket with Aborted Fetus'.

"For us the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electrical waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon."
-Whitehead (1920/2004, 29), found at The Pinocchio Theory

A man influential in the history of process philosophy, formulator of point-free geometry (don't know that I get this one necessarily, and definitely not the equations), also the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which sounds very much like reification (not the Marxian kind). I'd like to read Process and Philosophy, maybe, if my plate weren't filled beyond the point of what could choke a man, and if I needed further arguments from those realms.

Visited the fam this weekend. Sister was celebrating the bday of two of her kids. Her baby's daddy is a fucking negligent putz. At least this time he did some grilling, which is much more productive than I've seen or heard of him ever being. One on one I could maybe get along with him, perhaps even shroom with the fucker some time, but as a partner for my sister and a father to her child, he has been failing miserably as far back as memory extends. Meth heads such as him keep a job only long enough to save enough cash up to pay for their portion of rent, ask the person they're living with (my sis in this case) for their amount to run it to the rental office, then go out, rent a hotel, and lock themselves up in a room or some such and get fucked up until the cash runs dry. Hooray for them.

Also hung out with some friends, had some good times with a sixteen year old chick (nothing illegal) and friend. Smoked a bit, saw a smoking ban go into effect, helped a cousin move out of his house, and drank much while eating little, the first couple days of such hurt, then my body became used to it. Gotta stop that.

Walking along one day, looking about at the ground as I am wont to do, saw a plant I recognized from The Forager's Harvest, said "That's gotta be Lamb's Quarters", and grabbed a leaf, pulled out the book while it was beginning to sprinkle, looked it up, and felt convinced it was so. Still didn't eat it though. Asked a friend for a second opinion, he said "all those plants in there look the same to me", so delayed the consuming of such. Asked someone a little later after a purchase of booze, and got it confirmed.

A couple days later hung out with my father's friend, a man known to me since childhood, Hoss, and walked around out at my father's house a bit and he showed me a few plants before going off to Truck. Finally spotted some variety of Sorrel (tastes great!), ground cherry, spiderwort, yarrow, and a few others that escape recollection now. A little earlier before taking off though, he asked if I'd have interest in going up north with a few others, and be shown old soap-making methods, cordage, brain tanning, plant identification, flintknapping, stone tool making, on and on. Must remember to ask about plant based insect repellents.
Hells yes!
Lock me out and keep your cursed keys of separation.

The last day and some hours have been rocking my balls in so many good ways.

Most recently, I and some friends watched Cool Hand Luke, ate some eggs, took some shots, got sick. I almost got my head puked on. Video hopefully forthcoming.

I experienced something yesterday that's had me feeling constantly, consistently great. Like a phenomenally beautiful and vibrant sunset with immense clouds in the sky, tripping hella-mad on some syrian rue and fungi, thinking you might die any moment, with no fear in the slightest of such, just gratitude.
It brought me back to some time last August, where I felt quite used, kinda really liked it (in some ways), but there was no continuation of such for whatever reason (actually, lack of reciprocation is the only reason that comes to mind). Not that such ventures wouldn't be undertaken immediately if they were to present themselves this very moment.

Q: What does the number fourteen sound like in French?
A: My favorite thing.
I am such a boy some times.
If only it were all times.

I find little hope for a better future when a world of people continually act as if minor inconveniences were the end of the world, and put them off and ignore them only to have them pile up and multiply, morphing these once minor problems into possibilities of future catastrophes.

The same goes with a world of people that value human wants over the needs of all other nun-human life on this planet. Mindsets of the types that subject all value to human use have little value to me. Value of only these things perceived to be of use to humans is a death call for those that are not of said use, as those other things only take up space for these valued things, and therefore must be done away with. This destroys redundancies, creates homogeneity (it's efficient!), forges weak links in the chains that sustain us, and has already been the end of many a thing. What will stop such from being the end of many of us? I mean, when you poison your waters, desertify your crop land, overfish the oceans, dam up the rivers that fish spawn in, deforest rainforests, pollute the air, start using less efficient fuel methods all the while consuming more and more energy, and on top of that breed like fuck, where can you expect to get?

Many pay lip service to progress, but act as if there's no tomorrow.
Not that there's any contradiction here. Funny thing, though, that those that believe their end is near, and those that believe in the nearness of infinite abundance, both act with this same reckless abandon. But why, when you say the end is nowhere near, yet at the same time see that this infinite abundance seems further and further away, less and less attainable, why continue such beliefs that fly in the face of any and all evidence contrariwise? what is the reason for this? Does not the progression of disaster increase daily?

New Scientist: Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

If crops fail because rain is patchy, build irrigation canals. When they silt up, organise dredging crews. When the bigger crop yields lead to a bigger population, build more canals. When there are too many for ad hoc repairs, install a management bureaucracy, and tax people to pay for it. When they complain, invent tax inspectors and a system to record the sums paid. That much the Sumerians knew.

Diminishing returns

There is, however, a price to be paid. Every extra layer of organisation imposes a cost in terms of energy, the common currency of all human efforts, from building canals to educating scribes. And increasing complexity, Tainter realised, produces diminishing returns. [...] To keep growing, societies must keep solving problems as they arise. Yet each problem solved means more complexity. Success generates a larger population, more kinds of specialists, more resources to manage, more information to juggle - and, ultimately, less bang for your buck.

Now, I for one don't believe that "each problem solved means more complexity", necessarily. But note that such was prefaced by "to keep growing". Increased complexity is necessary inasmuch as a society believes that progress is linked to growth, in fact, growth and progress become intertwined (if not one and the same). And in this same worldview of binary thinking/categorization having prevalence, progress links with forward (and therefore speed, as speed speeds up forward), links with efficiency (but efficiency only in regards to time, energy efficiency is rarely idealized, let alone valued [if you don't have to do the work, how much do you care how hard others have to work to get it done?]).

We are, after all, more advanced than those societies in the past (we passed them by), and to simplify (go backward) would not only be regression, but at the same time an admittance of defeat (and admitting such would mean we were on a wrong course, no, we were right from the get go, and winners, too). All this works much like western medicine often does, by providing a cheap cure rather than remedying the source of the problem; it's not "let's pause for a moment and assess the situation" but instead "we'll find a quick fix for this in the near future when our technologies are better."

How many times have you heard someone equate progress with slowing down, simplifying?
A semi-survivalist'ish friend of my father's says, "don't work hard, work smart." This was regarding going out and hunting big game, or using traps and snares to capture possibly smaller game. The yield on the latter may be less, but is the greater amount more necessary?
I'm reminded of being at a shrine in Japan, and questioning our sensei's friend as to what a post read, "simple is best," she responded. That's stuck with me ever since then.