Farm News 10-07-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 76°

Barn News

Shotgun has hidden her kittens well, nobody has found them, yet.

Suzette has just two bunnies, one black and one gray. They should have their eyes open before next Sunday. I plan to breed Brindle, the second doe, this week.

The black mother duck should hatch ducklings soon.

No sign of a mate for Lucy.

Note to Readers

A reqder sent a link to me, and I liked what I saw. The artist is Ron Mueck. http://janies-rainy-day.blogspot.com/2007/07/sculptures-by-ron-mueck.html.

Someone sent a link to photos of walls done by a Pacific Rim area architect, I think, walls of green plants, growing in planters molded into the walls. Would you resend that link, please? And I'll start populating the Links page on Geezernet.

GeezerNet.com is completely off-line for repairs. I hope to have it running soon.

$150 per Barrel Oil

Will the commentators of 500 years from now explain the occasionally insane behaviors of the world's only superpower by saying, “They must all have been nuts,”?

If we conduct a 'surgical' bombing of Iran, what will the price of crude oil be one year later? My uneducated guess is that it will go over $150 per barrel. At $80 per barrel, 200,000 barrels of oil is worth 16 billion dollars. Saudi Arabia produces more than 200,000 barrels of oil every day. If oil rises to $100 per barrel, the Saudi daily take will rise to 20 billion dollars.

Many people, including me, suspect that the stories about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were planted by a third party. Many people suspect the Israelis. How about the Saudis? Since the invasion of Iraq the daily income of the Saudis has risen from about 4 billion dollars per day, to 16 billion dollars per day. If the US invades Iran next, it seems almost certain that the Straits of Hormuz would be mined, and the price of oil will fly up to over $100 per barrel.

As Deep Throat said, “Follow the money.”

Was the amount of money diverted into the criminal economy under the Iraq 'Oil for Food' program of a sufficient quantity as to fund the proliferation of planetary wide criminal schemes? Is it too much 'out of James Bond' to consider the possibility that a global criminal organization planted all of the false evidence that President Bush happily believed? And, that criminal organization planted the evidence as part of a job contract for an interested party?

I gotta quit reading spy stories for a while and go back to westerns.

The Left Foot of Jesus

Several years ago I decided to become a sculptor, working with rocks and copper. During this period I found a rock that somewhat resembled a foot. I wrapped a couple of strips of copper around it so that it looked something like a foot wearing a sandal, and called it The Left Foot of Jesus. It wasn't anything special, but I did include it in the works I displayed at my only public showing of my sculpture. The only comments it drew were a few giggles from those who read the title. Later, my brother Ray saw it and asked if he could have it.

Some people think that many members of my family are a bit weird, and I think that Ray is by far the weirdest member of the family. He looks normal, speaks English fluently, and has graduated from college. He held a decent job for the required number of years and is now comfortably retired. In short, at first glance, Ray appears to be normal. However, if you go into a bar with Ray you will notice that within ten minutes of entering the bar the weirdest person in that part of the city will be sitting next to Ray and explaining some very strange alternative view of the universe. Ray has heard thousands of first-person accounts of alien abductions, transubstantiation, conversations with persons long dead, psychokinesis, and similar phenomena; he sits quietly, smiles, listens, and encourages gently. He never ridicules them to their faces, no matter how crazy they may be, and he is genuinely pleased to hear their story. If he offers advice, which he seldom does, the advice usually makes even less sense than did the original story. Ray's core weirdness is that he is a looney magnet.

Ray is the second of us, I am 70 and Ray is now 67. Several weeks ago Ray flew off to Thailand to recover after an amicable, stress-free divorce. So far, nothing weird, right? Well, Ray took with him, in his luggage, The Left Foot of Jesus. Why would he pack a valueless rock with some copper straps attached and haul it to Thailand? Because Ray is very weird. He had no problems with airport security or Thai customs and settled into his hotel room in Bangkok to enjoy his vacation. When he unpacked he took out The Left Foot of Jesus and put it on small table in his room where he could admire it. Then he went on about the business of enjoying a vacation in Thailand.

One night, about a week after he arrived, he was sitting in a bar enjoying a beer and chatting with a pretty young woman he met there. Finally, on some pretext, he asked her if she would like to go up to his room with him. She agreed and up they went, waited while Ray fumbled around with the key, entered his room, and closed the door. As Ray was about to ask her the price for certain services, she spotted The Left Foot of Jesus and asked what it was. “It's The Left Foot of Jesus,” he replied.

The young woman stepped to the small table, dropped to her knees, crossed herself, kissed the rock, twice, crossed herself several more times, and refused to discuss anything else for the rest of the evening. Ray and the young woman did not share enough of a common language to enable a discussion of art and religion, only commercial transactions that result in feeding dollars into the criminal economy; nor was either subject Ray's primary interest for the evening, so, after about an hour of confused chatter, the young woman left. Ray had another beer and went to bed, alone.

Late the next morning there was a gentle knocking on Ray's door accompanied by a female voice speaking in a a language Ray did not understand. Assuming it was the maid service, he growled something back in a language the speaker at the door probably did not understand. Already awake, Ray climbed out of his lonely bed, showered, dressed and prepared to go out for breakfast.

When he opened the door to leave, there stood the young woman from the previous evening, accompanied by several of her friends and family, apparently there to see The Left Foot of Jesus. An older gentleman stepped forward out of the group and stood beside Ray, smiling pleasantly. The visitors stepped into an orderly line, and each took a turn kneeling before the rock, crossing themselves, kissing the rock, crossing themselves again, and then moving aside for the next person. The one who did not join the obeisances stood calmly beside Ray, apparently bemused by the whole affair.

After much animated chatter, Ray decided that they were thanking him for bringing such an object to Bangkok and sharing it with them, and that they would be back the next morning to see it again, with all their friends and family. When they seemed to be assured that he understood their intentions, they trooped out of his room and left to pursue whatever activities they performed during the day.

Finally alone, still without breakfast, Ray picked up the phone a booked a flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to depart that evening. Ray might be weird, but he isn't stupid, and he knows that, in a foreign country, it is unwise to attract attention to one's self.

His trip is off to an auspicious start, I think. He is continuing serenely on his course, offering occasional scenarios to show he still has his wits around him in interesting ways, and providing me with interesting material for Farm News. Perhaps being the Bearer of The Left Foot of Jesus will give him extra spiritual help in exiting Thailand while carrying the Relic, and he will then be able to enter Cambodia without alerting the authorities as to the nature of his burden.

Stay tuned, Ray's Asian Adventures have begun.