My budding efforts to unite small business people and thinkers with moral support brought me friends of a friend over Thanksgiving. Not only did I start learning about a musical instrument such as I've never known, but I found its maker married to someone with a degree in eco-psychology.
There are lots of things said by ignorant people concerning degrees that don't promise money, but there is something to be said about the way we are living and how we will continue to live as our population gains another couple billion in the next four decades or so. Money can be made without any work; money is usually made up of some form of debt. That's the illusion of wealth, the emperor with no clothes. What we need is to be wise. We can seek our own happiness and never find it. We can seek it for others and never lose it.
Where are we headed? By what means do we plan to survive? The choices we make today are critical, because what we cannot conserve is forever lost to future generations. Why take for granted the survival of tomorrow's people? They will already have their hands full learning to get along.
I believe the environment is our primary asset, one that is not compensated for its contribution, one that I dare say many do not consider actually valuable---though taking from it has given us our entire way of life! Our sanity and our environment are tied intimately. When we think of our economy---when we think of our survival---we need to consider what we actually have, and what is the true cost of using it, and for what?
I look forward to talking to my new friend, Kris. Meanwhile...would you take a listen to these instruments her husband makes? C Ryan the Pan Man's Panz 4 urself at Terratonz.com.
A helicopter drops a three meter, 254 kilogram robot into the typhoon-driven waters below. Aboard a small water craft, an engineer watches monitors depicting the robot’s destination: Fukushima Dai-ichi, the nuclear power plant. Another monitor depicts the filtration system of the plant, which the engineer describes as the robot’s entry point. A massive earthquake and tsunami, rivaling that of eleven years before, has shattered the flaming plant facilities. Another monitor depicts the multi-building layout of the plant. Other monitors, according to the sea craft pilot, indicate “Danger Bot” is all systems go.
Danger Bot leaps out of the filtration system pool, then walks through a flaming building. The nine-foot tall droid hunches down, places its hands together to form, with its thumbs and forefingers, a diamond-shape, which it holds at chest level, before tumbling forward. Its roll transports the droid across the floor quickly. Alerted by multiple-monitoring, the droid raises its arm and falls to the side, like a para-trooper’s landing, onto firmer remaining remnants of the smouldering floor---avoiding a collapsing floor.
The heli-copter co-pilot talks about the layout of the control room. The sea craft pilot, referred to as Gorou by the engineer, relates the radiation count. The droid opens a thigh compartment for a replacement battery, intended to restore the plant’s emergency power and withdraw the fission rods, which are over-heating without the plant’s water supply. The archway of the control room entrance suddenly crumbles, as a new quake tremor rattles the entire building.
Danger Bot cradles the falling entrance; the helicopter pilot declares relief, as the emergency response team will need a path clear of debris to follow later. Unfortunately, the replacement battery is crushed. The control panel, meanwhile, calls for a manual over-ride. In its bracing position, Danger Bot’s waldos cannot reach the replacement battery back-up. The fission process reaches critical stage.
Danger Bot speaks aloud: there is only one thing to do. From his station aboard the sea craft, Gorou protests; Danger Bot assures him the over-ride codes that close the robot’s head can, in turn, be over-ridden. Swiftly, a young woman (referred to as “Kacy” by the copter pilot) springs forth from the deconstructed, retracted head of Danger Bot. She detaches an exo-skeleton motor drive battery from her droid, and darts for the control panel. As the building continues to shake, she listens to instructions for the battery container, which she manually replaces. She photographically recalls her study of the sequence to separate the rods, coached by the copter co-pilot, called “Paynter” by the pilot, who he refers to as “sis” while she circles the whirly-bird overhead. Kacey succeeds in re-establishing the emergency power, diverting fission with a flood of cooling waters into the rod chambers.
Further flooding breaks into the chambers. Feeling sick already from the radiation exposure, Kacey resolves to reflect the courage of the Fukushima Fifty, the engineers who risked their lives eleven years before. She returns to Danger Bot. Once inside, she executes a colossal lift, forcing the broken edifice away from the passage outside the control room. The engineer, Ernest Maxwell, cheers as he watches her weld a reinforcement brace to keep up the ceiling. She then leaves through the plant filtration, then pilots Danger Bot out to sea. She receives a distress signal from the sea craft; the tsunami waves force it out to sea. So, the danger does not end---but when the darkest hour cries for a savior, there is Danger Bot.
5:42 am
Copyright 2011 Cecil Disharoon, Jr. Meanwhile, our remaining t-shirts are available at Convention Special Price, for $12 each plus $3.00 for shipping & handling.
(The characters seem to have their own relationships and a bit of history, with other story ideas knocking around already. I wanted to do this realistic science fiction concept that might actually make a difference in the world: my 21st Century "Superman." Gorou is actually competes with Kacey as the pilot of Danger Bot, designed by her grandfather Michio Hatsumi and his father, Icharu Estsuko. It's an artificial intelligence that learns from its human pilots. Still hammering out script!)
Angela Dawn and I are doing well, both working through this day, which ends for her in half an hour, and then we'll pull out the guitar shortly afterwards. WE're grateful for the beautiful gift of life, each other, and the fantastic people we share, in roles great and small.
The gratitude of a homeless man I see most every day warmed my heart, which is glad with friends, hopes, ideas, a modest apartment in a city with the best weather in America, a bed, all the clothes I need, shoes, and a fridge filled with yumminess whenever I pop out to shop. To all who contacted us today, thanks so much; 3,000 miles from our parents and siblings, it's been wonderful to have felt lonely for not half a minute. Thanks especially for the pictures; you know who you are. And what kind I love to see.
I hope you'll think about some of your small business friends, and consider a gift certificate of local services like hair cuts, lawn service, gym memberships and other such American-made efforts. Unless you're reading this overseas, of course. Go ahead and chuckle. I just mean, with all the dollars concentrated on cheap foreign products, you will spend some of your hard-earned holiday dollars with your community.
If you are near Columbus, OH, or want to order online, there's our friend Maria's PM Gallery: http://www.yelp.com/biz/pm-gallery-columbus http://pmgallery.com/index.asp?i=13 "We feature the work of over 300 North American artisans and artists. Blown glass, pottery for daily use or decoration, jewelry, kaleidoscopes, wooden boxes and wooden cutting boards, bell, chimes, outdoor whimsies - all made by hand - all made in the US or Canada.
If you read this and want me to add you, please ask!!!
Sabrina suggested this one: truly unique hand made instruments!!! Have you EVER seen any instrument like that? Curious?
http://www.terratonz.com/ The TerraTonz team thanks you for purchasing our super sonic sacred steel TerraTonguez, TerraPanz and TapTonz. Our artists create each instrument by hand, so no exact duplicates exist. We then post our creations online as well as send some to galleries and art exhibitions. The online store represents all our creations. You may know we are a small business, too.
Meanwhile, our remaining t-shirts are available at Convention Special Price, for $12 each plus $3.00 for shipping & handling.
MORE COMIC CON PICS BELOW!!!
AND!! You can use the button provided; the $15 will cover your postage.
or
While we prepare demos to go gig-shopping again, we have numerous other ideas in the works. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Integr8d-Soul/108962196641 We offer online home concerts, through Ustream (which is free; please tip through Pay Pal!) and Stageit.com We'd love to play for you, personally, or for your party. If you are NOT on the Pacific coast, adjust for time !! We are three hours behind the East Coast, for example. http://www.stageit.com/coast_to_coast_integr8d_soul/integr8d_sound/4531 copy and paste this to see tickets! Welcome to our concert site! It's easier than visiting all four hundred or so houses we invited but it's almost as fun!!!
our welcome video, for new people on Stageit.com, for example
We hope you'll consider buying one of our t-shirts; I look forward to trying to get them into shops. I also hope our ever-delayed website can become a hub for artists and small business links, as well as our own goodies!
First: DNA Comics #1 is ONLINE!!!
You can get D'N'A: The Mountain, plus one each of our two promotional t-shirt designs, for just $23.00 plus shipping and handling. Just write us here or at mkthemurl@gmail.com or hit us up through our Facebook Badge on this page. Tell us the size and address; we can take payments by check, money order, or PayPal online, so let us know your preference---and thanks so much!
Our new ideas for D'n'A: Looking For A Sign have given the story a more dramatic tone in keeping with D'n'A: The Mountain's intimate friendships, and Southern Gothic menace. With Amanda's little devil's arc clear to us now, she apparently sifts through numerous confusing states of existence, believing her frenemy the angel's dead and his human charge apparently out of touch with her own motivations. The rest of the story happens in the "real" world, following Dee Cee and Amanda into new phases of their lives in the aftermath of their shocking encounter with...but pick up D'n'A: The Mountain, or download it through MyEbooks! The story's clearly drawn, told with expression and details all too real.
I really hope we can make it available this year; keep your fingers crossed, and let me know what you think of D'n'A: The Mountain!!! The creation process isn't complete without you. Where the story goes for you, what you take with it, is of great interest to all three of us here at Integr8d Soul.
