Hello! Welcome to Alt.Christie.com

Happy New Year and welcome to 2009. Time flies when you're having fun, don't it? The Ox (also sometimes called the Buffalo, or the Cow) is not one for creativity, this is a year for Responsibility and for taking charge of that which might be loose and flakey. The motto is "no work no pay!" this year. So get off yer lazy duff and do something effective! my horoscope book comments: the Ox walks softly, and carried a Big Stick. Get it together!

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --- C.S. Lewis

• Remember God created the world, but the Devil is the one keeping it active' Bob Dylan

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About me: right now my serious projects are books on The Moody Blues and Skateboards (not in the same book tho).

If you are an artist who would be interested in either of these projects, or just want to shoot the breeze about it, email me at [email protected].

• When the Court is arrayed in Splendor
• The fields are full of weeds
• And the graneries are bare........... (lao Tze)

The Strange Times--  The term "Strange Times" was apparently first used by Marcia Clarke during the OJ Simpson trial. Clarke is a serious fan of Jim Morrison, who coined the phrase "Strange Days" and named an album that, by the doors. I think it's a great idea for a newsletter, which I suppose this is (I only update about once a year at New Year). Mostly these are links I think are important, or which really gave me a chuckle, over the last year.

I'm not sure how many of these links are good. I'm too lazy to check them! (but I did clean off a few which a year ago were wonderful and now I don't care about).

• The ISS is up there you know. That is, the International Space Station. You can see this, very very very easily. It looks like a very birhgt airplane going over head. Click on http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=United+States OR try out this link. www.spaceref.com
• QUILTS: one of my favorite hobbies! >>>>CLICK HERE<<< for one of my favorites. This was done by my Great-grandmother. Or you can go to my favorite quilting store, where I used to work www.pacificfabrics.com
• My class reunion site FUHS Indians!
• Blog Page index (for those concerned about keeping up on my doings............. it's all here, including my Moody Blues reviews)
• An even better place to find out about the Moody Blues >>>>click here<<<<< (The Blue Pages)
• This is a friend of mine's website. A very good friend :) http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/Stephan/GokouSplash.htm
• Things that help me be a teacher www.geocities.com/mizschultz
• Happy Jack's USS Ronquil link http://ussronquil.com/Index2/index2.htm
• Doggie Links: My dogs (well, some of them) AND http://www.readingwithrover.org this is a local reading program which shows incredible promise, and goes along with doggie stuff.
• This is someone I keep going back to over the years, time and again. I had the priviledge of meeting the Old Man when I was barely out of diapers, at Taliesn West in Arizona. Frank Lloyd Wright http://www.franklloydwright.org/
• www.yancancook.com
• http://www.muscogeenation-nsn.gov. This is a link to my own tribal group in Oklahoma. We also have branches of our Nation in Alabama (the Porsh Creeks) and in Florida. Apparently the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood, FL is run by the Seminole, who are also part of our Nation.
• This is one funny story about a mean cat: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23365034-details/Meet+Grumpy+-+the+nastiest+cat+on+earth/article.do
• The link is to a photography journal of the story of two cockatoos, one domestic and one wild. The female has a bad wing and cannot fly and she is courted by a wild male. He manages to get her cage open and the relationship continues from there. They even raise a family. These are some wonderful photos and a an absolutely amazing love story......... http://www.juliusbergh.com/cocky/
• The Prisoner: Patrick McGoohan came up with a very wacky television series in the summer of 1967, which may explain why the lid blew off things that summer! Anyway, his art was a spin off of reality, a professor named Phil Zimbardo was doing his Prison studies at Stanford University in the same time frame. http://www.lucifereffect.com. The work is ongoing in our society at large, the latest chapter was written at Abu Grabe in Iraq. Here is a bit about McGoohan's show too: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/tv/the-prisoner/part1
• http://www.slate.com/id/2179180/ this is very interesting in a geeky way, about how we can spy on each other on the Internet.
• http://museums.ncl.ac.uk/archive/mithras/text.htm something on Mithras
• www.godchecker.com this is a really cute site for those into mythology

• Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity--copped off the Interent http://www.startrek.com  How could we ever forget Star Trek, even though it's been off the air for many years? Click on Mr. Spock to go directly to Star Trek nirvana. Without a doubt Mr. Data is everyone's favorite character, because frankly there's a litle Robot in all of us. For his Magnus Opus, "Ode to Spot", click the link! Felis cattus poem http://www.sherylfranklin.com/odespot.html

• And here's a fun thing! Best animal web on line www.sandiegozoo.org, or go to their apecam and check out our cousins: http://www.sandiegozoo.org/videos/index.html

• this is a shot of my own little water garden. Notice the spikes: the white stripes around the edge are upholstery strips. I put these in to discourage cats and raccoons, and so far it has worked like a charm :) Baaad ol' coons.......   PS the fish eat any mosquitos that live in the pond.

  Several of my friends are into water gardens, so check out a couple of these links or supplies: www.aquadesigns.com and www.junglelabs.com AND monroewatergardens.com Mosquito Remedy : Pass this on to anyone who likes sitting out in the evening or when they're having a cook out. So you don't like those pesky mosquitoes, especially now that they have the potential to carry the West Nile Virus? Put some water in a white dinner plate and add a couple drops of Lemon Fresh Joy dish detergent. Set the dish on your porch, patio, or other outdoor area. Not sure what attracts them, the lemon smell, the white plate color, or what, but mosquitoes flock to it, and drop dead shortly after drinking the Lemon Fresh Joy/water mixture, and usually within about 10 feet of the plate. http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/backyard/projects/projects.html these are wonderful ideas for making your own back yard a wildlife paradise.

    

• Down in Portland, Oregon, there are some really nice brew-pubs, all hippy-fied and fun, and "there they serve a beer so brown the Man in the Moon himself came down one night to drink his fill." Good food too: www.mcmenamins.com

  Everybody’s got a laughing place! --B’re Rabbit

  Some jokes and animations, both fair and foul:

  www.CowAbduction.com

  www.PlanetInNeed.com

  http://whyatt.com.au

  http://www.elfmovie.com/swf/snowball_fight/index.html

In the center, that's the Ra III, a duplicate of the two ships which sailed from Egypt to South America: this is something I'm really into now, Thor Heyerdahl and his Diffusionism Theories. He puts forth the proposition that there were ancient Southern Hemisphere ocean migrations from Egypt to Peru (Ra Expeditions), and then from Peru to the Polynesian Islands (Kon Tiki, Aku Aku). This is a shot of Lake Titicaca in the Andes Happy Jack and Tilly took. Happy Jack says he saw a catamaran, a double reed boat sailing out there! The locals are very cool folks, he met the guys (Indians) who made this. (Happy Jack and Tilly also went to Norway some years ago and saw the original Kon Tiki where it rests in a museum). If this interests you, check Discover Magazine, Jan 2005 pg. 47.