Grandpa thinks my face is cozy :)

bluprint:

This Landsat image of 3 October 2011 shows the Mississippi River Delta, where the largest river in the United States empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
 
In this false-colour image, land vegetation appears pink, while the sediment in the surrounding waters are bright blue and green. The delta is known as the ‘bird-foot’ delta because of the shape created by the channels extending outward.

The size of the Mississippi River Delta built over millions of years owing to sediment deposition. The tons of sediment carried by the river system created the wetlands in southern Louisiana, which are home to many endangered species and help to protect the mainland from hurricane winds by acting like speed bumps.

Over the last several decades, however, the delta’s sediment load has been drastically reduced by natural and man-made factors. Extensive oil and gas extraction causes the subsidence of the delta and wetlands, and rising sea levels increase erosion as the fresh water vegetation dies due to the influx of salt water.

Currently, a chunk of land the size of a football field is lost about every half an hour.

bluprint:

This Landsat image of 3 October 2011 shows the Mississippi River Delta, where the largest river in the United States empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
 
In this false-colour image, land vegetation appears pink, while the sediment in the surrounding waters are bright blue and green. The delta is known as the ‘bird-foot’ delta because of the shape created by the channels extending outward.

The size of the Mississippi River Delta built over millions of years owing to sediment deposition. The tons of sediment carried by the river system created the wetlands in southern Louisiana, which are home to many endangered species and help to protect the mainland from hurricane winds by acting like speed bumps.

Over the last several decades, however, the delta’s sediment load has been drastically reduced by natural and man-made factors. Extensive oil and gas extraction causes the subsidence of the delta and wetlands, and rising sea levels increase erosion as the fresh water vegetation dies due to the influx of salt water.

Currently, a chunk of land the size of a football field is lost about every half an hour.

ofsmokyburgundy:

Kermit the Frog dressed as Mal from Firefly. KERMIT THE FROG DRESSED AS MAL.

I need this. I so need this. Ahem. My birthday is in 14 days… ahem.

I’ve been wanting to get my thoughts out since Tuesday. As I mentioned earlier, my Grandmother’s sister passed away. I had been somewhat close to her as a child, she had been a lunch lady at my elementary school so I got to see her quite a bit. She was always at my Grandmother’s house, and the three of us would often play card games or they would sit and cut coupons while I “wrote” their shopping list, which was really just a lot of scribble that I was very proud of. Naturally as we all got older and involved with other things, we saw less of each other but I never stopped thinking that Aunt Trudy was a really cool lady.

The last time most of us saw her was back in December for my family’s tree lighting. She wasn’t feeling well but nothing was going to keep her from this party. She came outside with all of us to decorate the tree and instead of going back inside when it was done, she stood around with us as we sang some very tone deaf and drunken Christmas carols. We had a lot of fun.

Death has always been a huge source of anxiety for me, which only became worse when I stopped buying into the church ( and religion in general). At least when I was a practicing Christian I had Heaven to look forward to, when all that stopped all I had to look forward to was a hole in the ground. It’s an extremely depressing realization if you go about it the wrong way, and I was.  Death became a constant thought in my mind. What happens when you die? ( other than you’re body shutting down) How can I no longer exist?  How can I enjoy my life when I could be dead any minute? How can we experience all that life has to offer only to have it ripped away from us through death? To me it seemed like a very cruel and unnecessary part of the human experience.

It just so happened, that I started reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle a few weeks ago, and it has caused me to rethink the way I view the world, and life in general. He suggests that we are more than a body, more than the thoughts in our head, more than our memories and more than a product of  past events that have happened to us. He suggests that we are conscious Presence. It’s a very hippy, new agey idea and I would have laughed at this a month ago, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make sense to me now.

I think this was why I was, for the most part OK with the news of Aunt Trudy’s passing. Why my initial thought was that the energy that had fueled her body was now out in world. Her body was no longer functional, but the life that had been within her was still here, had been here and will always be here. This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel sadness for my family and for the woman we all loved. But I do feel peace among that sadness. 

During the funeral mass, her daughter was giving the eulogy and she would finish every statement with ” Can you feel it? Can you feel the void left in our hearts?” and all I kept thinking was ” No, I feel the presence of life.”  And I really did. I became aware of the beating of my heart, the sounds of my family breathing and crying, the pulse of Ben’s hand against mine as he held it, the warmth of my tears sliding across my skin. At the cemetery, I closed my eyes during the service because I wanted to be apart of what was going on instead of reacting to it, I tuned out the priest and focused instead on the birds chirping in the trees around us, the breeze blowing through, the infant behind me giggling, the helicopters flying to the Air Show that we were all supposed to be at instead of the cemetery. I found myself wondering if this was what Jesus meant when he talked about “eternal life”. That it had nothing to do with going to some white light heavenly place, and everything to do with the present moment we found ourselves in where life was still going on. Life is eternal because life is always present. 

n-a-s-a:

Sky Panorama Over Lake Salda

Credit & Copyright: Tunç Tezel (TWAN)

rejectfairytales:

readyplayerone:

Hey Tumblr, we’re giving away 24 signed copies of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and all you need to do to enter is reblog this post. 

We’re going to randomly pick a new winner every weekday until we run out of copies so start reblogging. The first winner gets pulled on Monday morning. Good luck and May the Force be with you. 

Great book, especially if you like 80’s references.

Ben would love this!

early-onset-of-night:

So I’m reading the news, right? And I’m reading along, clicking here and there. I don’t read the paper because that’s so 1990. I want to be hip, like all the kids, so I get everything off the internet. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING: the news, of course, but also tobacco, “hemp” seeds, adult entertainment, clothing, books, yeast for brewing closet hooch, information about unicycles, and the entrance requirements for Clown College.

It’s a wonderful time to be alive.

Anyway, I came across a study, which is no big thing. You see them all the time in the news. Studies work like this: you come up with an agenda, then pay some scientists or researchers or college professors to figure out a way to back it up statistically. You then give it to the news so it can scare us (usually) or hearten us (rarely). Fear reads better and does wonders for ratings, creeping totalitarianism, and many other things.

The study I was reading about was unique, however. It was the most unique study in the history of studies, in fact. It was a study of a study of studies.

Yeah, really.

It was a study done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of a study done by the Pentagon which was a study of the value of doing so many studies. The Pentagon, you see, does a lot of studies, and the generals were all sitting around one day waiting for the manufactured fear to build up so they would “have” to attack Iran or North Korea to “defend our freedom” and one of them said, “Holy beans, we do a lot of studies around here! Maybe we should do a study about that.”

“Yeah,” said another general, “maybe doing so many studies is a waste of money.” And everybody in the room burst out laughing.

So the Pentagon commissioned The Study To Determine If Doing So Many Studies Has Any Value At All Study (TSTDIDSMSHAVAAS). The study began in 2010 and is still underway today. Government studies work a little differently than private sector or political studies. There isn’t an agenda per se that needs to be statistically “proven”. Government studies are done, in every single case, so that bureaucracy has something to do. Bureaucracy, you see, needs to justify its existence so that it can continue being enormously expensive, thereby creating the chronic debt needed by Republicans to justify taking away help and benefits from the poor, women, immigrants, and pretty much everyone else who isn’t a rich white male. The Democrats use it to justify raising taxes, thereby creating the fiction of class war.

So, obviously, this contrived debt we have is very important to everyone.

Recently, the GAO got wind of the Pentagon study and said, “Hey, they’re doing a study of studies over there at the Pentagon. This needs to be studied. By the way, isn’t it about time for another war? We’re all clearly bored out of our minds.”

So the GAO, without even one head shake or a single eye roll, commissioned a study of this study that’s studying studies and a hole was torn in the fabric of universe. At this very moment, reality is deflating like a party balloon.

Seriously, though, this is all actually happening. Here’s a source. Here’s another.

The GAO study determined that the Pentagon’s study of studies was “lacking”.

Lacking what? A point? And if, indeed, that this is true of the study about studies, what about the study about the study about the studies?

My head hurts. I’m going to start drinking now. Goodbye.

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ALL OF YOU 

I can’t deal with all the nit picky, smug, bitchy, catty, obnoxious shit I’ve been reading on here lately.  

What the fuck is wrong with all of you? 

I guarantee you, whatever it is that’s pissing you off and/or offending you is not as serious as you’re letting it be. No. Really, it’s not. Stop finding shit to be angry about, stop finding shit to be sad about, stop finding people to blame and criticize. What good does any of that shit do? Aside from giving you a temporary feeling of self satisfaction that you are “better” than someone else. 

n-a-s-a:

The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI) 

My Great Aunt Trudy passed away this evening and instead of freaking out about it like I always assumed I would because I have major anxiety about death and dying, my immediate thought was her energy is out here now.  Weird and hippieish I know but I felt ok about it. Sad, but ok. Sorta peaceful. 

 Then I spoke to my Grandmother on the phone and she started to cry, a lot. I cannot handle hearing my Grandmother cry because it breaks my heart into a million pieces. I was actually glad that she couldn’t carry on a conversation with me because other than telling her that I loved her and how sorry I was for the loss, I was out of things to say. 

And now I’m out of things to say. 

Today I am fantasizing about being granted a one day murder spree

jenaichin:

“Harley of Hearts” tattoo design (Batman animated series homage) (Taken with instagram)