賽德克族青年Umin Basang說，「今天跟朋友談到有關生命的事情，我在回基隆的車上，就突然在想，要是我的生命只有一天，我要留下甚麼給人家記憶，是不是一段話或一段回憶又或者是還有其他甚麼東西.....之前對我來說編織背帶，是一個傳統需要保存的技藝但是突然之間，今天我編了這個的時候，我覺得似乎我可以用這個來說話，來表達我所思念與在乎的東西，在編織的時候我腦袋裡面只有三個東西...家鄉的櫻花、阿公和織布！我是不會幫作品命名的我覺得那很蠢，但是今天我想叫這個背帶叫做櫻花樹下的回憶....」The Sediq, a tribe closely related to our Dayan (Tayal), are also expert weavers. Umin Basang, a young Sediq, wrote, "If I had only one day to live, what would I leave behind to be remembered by? Something I said, or a memory, or something else? Before, weaving straps was for me a traditional art that had to be preserved, but suddenly, today while I was weaving this, I felt that I could use this weaving to speak, to express my thoughts and what I care about. While I was weaving, I had three things in mind: the cherry blossoms at home, my grandfather, and traditional weaving. I don't name my works, I think that's stupid, but today this strap is called Memories under the Cherry Trees."

氣象局宣佈，不再做每天的天氣預報，今年都下雨就是了。想要晴天，請搬到戈壁地區。

The Weather Bureau has announced that they are no longer providing day-by-day weather forecasts. It’s rain for the rest of the year. If you want sunshine, try the Gobi desert.

This man has walked on all fours, like a monkey, for the last eight and a half years.

here::

Why am I not surprised that he’s Japanese?

Just a thought
If smells could be recorded, and placed on YouTube, we would have fifteen thousand roses, eight thousand birthday cakes, two thousand recordings of fruit, and sixty million farts posted by teenage boys.

藍鵲雧樹上，樹鵲噪鳴；Taiwan Blue Magpies cavort in a tree, accompanied by a chorus of tkrat / 樹鵲 / Himalayan Tree Pies. Neither are very quiet birds.

臺灣藍鵲, Taiwan Blue Magpie, Urocissa caerulea; 樹鵲, Himalayan Tree Pie, Dendrocitta formosae. You can also hear the monotone trill of the byahoq, 五色鳥 / Muller’s Barbet, Megalaima oorti.

每年寫春聯，用雙面膠貼在山門，等著蜂來吃掉。

星期五、六、日我們早出晚歸。星期五回來時，看到下句下垂，剛要撫平，阿超說，不要碰。再看，有一條蛇纏繞聯紙，可能吃東西。好了，不打擾了，晚安。
星期六晚上牠還扗那。雙面膠有那麼黏嗎？怪！星期天晚上回來時，牠鬆鬆地掛在那裏，我跟超講，明天白天再來看，可能要埋。
今午出去找筍時，蛇還扗春聯上。蛇的生命力很強。我用竹竿碰了一下，牠馬上反應：活的！太好了！輕輕地撕下聯紙，喝住狗，把蛇送到谷壑，蛇摩石擦土，很快就解脫了。
很高興護生，但百思不解，怎麼會跑到春聯後面黏住？
不喜歡我的書法就說嘛！

I've seen some weird things in my time, but this just about takes the cake.
At Chinese New Year, I write door titles and post them on the gate. Usually the hornets eventually turn them into material for their hives.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we were out from morning to night. Friday night when we came home, I noticed that the left sentence had come loose, and was about to stick it back into place when Sabiy said, Don't touch it. I looked again, and there was a snake tangled up in the paper. It seemed to have eaten something. We left it there.
It was still there when we came back Saturday. We realized it had gotten stuck on the two way tape. Sunday it was hanging slack, and I told Sabiy, I guess I have to bury it tomorrow.
When I went out to gather bamboo shoots for today's lunch, I realized it looked slack but it didn't look dead, and snakes have strong survival powers. I decided to treat it as a live snake, so I got a bamboo pole and prodded it. After spending three days on the gatepost the week after Easter, it was alive. I carefully pulled the paper off the post, snake still attached. Keeping the dogs back, I lowered the snake into the ravine. With the friction of the ground, it quickly freed itself from most of the paper.But what it was doing stuck to the back of the paper on the gatepost, I'll never know.

白梅花蛇, mountain wolf snake, Lycodon ruhstrati ruhstrati

今晚去看韓國的環球芭蕾舞團。如果有機會看他們表演，一定要想辦法錯過。
We went to see Korea's Universal Ballet. If you have a chance to see them, be sure to miss it.

If you haven't seen this, you really should.
洛杉磯一名九歲的男生(聽起來大概是墨西哥人)用舊紙箱、膠布做成遊樂場。不只有創意，還很有經營的頭腦！


http://cainesarcade.com/

現扗婚姻制度很顯然不合現代人的需求：三對結婚就有一對離婚。從一而中，難。同性也要求合法結婚。
本blog前一篇提出，為了要與對方約會，願意關手機嗎？
我想，對多數現代人來講，關手機與對方獨處，要求太高，辦不到。人與人之間的交往這麼的薄弱，婚姻怎麼會久？
或許未來婚姻的發展，會一群男的與一群女的結婚。三、四個男的與三、四個女的結群婚，大家扗一起，離合自如，隨著心情變換。
The institution of marriage very obviously is out of step with modern life. The divorce rate in Taiwan is 33%. In the US, the divorce rate for first marriages is around 41%; for second marriages, 60%, and for third marriages, 73%. The divorce rate in Argentina is 200%.
Whither marriage? We are called upon to respect the right of two people of the same sex to marry; then why not three? Why not harems?
Modern people seem unable to spend time alone with one other person. If you want to see how prevalent that problem is, ask the person you are with to turn off his cell phone. Many would rather die.
Perhaps in the (not so distant) future, marriage will be a shifting alliance between three or four men and three or four women, maybe more, maybe less.

現扗人情淡薄，現代人是為手機而活的。
其實，年輕人要約會，應該看，願意為你/為他關手機嗎？願意把手機關掉，與他獨處嗎？
這要問可以發現，對她興趣其實沒那麼大。

當然囉，你要先關自己的手機….肯嗎？

This blog is noted among its readers (helloooo? anybody out there?) for endless pursuits into issues nobody cares the least about.
Today we are going to discuss something people do care about: money. Or more particularly, words for money, and even more particularly (or, if you would, even particularlier), words for money in Taiwan aborigine languages, which, back to the theme of this blog, nobody cares the least about.
Of course, a hundred years ago, aborigines had no use for money, so they had no words for money. The Dayan (Tayal) word, pila[pi´la], also used in several other languages, clearly comes from pira, silver, in Malay.
But what to do with the Tsou (Cou) besu [´besu]? I have come up with what I consider a reasonable etymology. Besu could very well come from the Spanish peso, the piece of eight (eight reales) widely circulated as the Spanish dollar, the Mex, 洋銀, and other names.
Seems reasonable to me, what?

隋書儒林傳：「四海九州、強學待問之士靡不畢集焉。負笈追師、不遠千里、講誦之聲、道路不絕。中州儒雅之盛、自漢魏以來、一時而已。」
隋朝學風如斯，而猶速兦，臺灣可不憂諸？

臺灣與美國的不同：臺灣大學學費漲，都是馬英九的錯；美國大學學費年年漲(公立、私立平均每年漲8%，每九年漲100%)，學生不高興的話，警察攻擊、噴胡椒粉。>>點<<

臺灣與英國的不同：英國大學學費一漲，就300%，警察打學生。

Did you enjoy your April Fool's day? Here are a couple good hoaxes I read about.
In 1976, the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM, April 1, Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily aligning their gravity in a way that would counteract, and lessen, the gravity here on Earth. He told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at that exact moment, they would float. 9:47 AM arrived, and soon hundreds of listeners phoned BBB2 telling how they had floated. One woman even reported that she and eleven friends had floated off their chairs and hovered around the room.
In 1981, the Daily Mail reported on the unfortunate long-distance runner, Kimo Nakajimi from Japan, who had entered the London Marathon but, because of a confused translation, thought that he was supposed to run 26 days, not 26 miles. They reported that Nakajimi was still running about on roads throughout England, determined to finish the race; furthermore, several people had spotted him and tried to flag him down and inform him of the mistake, but they couldn't speak Japanese.

梅毅：「倭人不解事，望文生義，市場中竟有標價不菲的『金屑酒』大肆擺賣。酒裏面金光閃閃，金箔片片，據中藥藥理，生金確可以消毒、祛濕。但以『金屑酒』為酒名，顯然倭人對中國古文化生吞活剝，一知半解。殊不知晉朝賜死人，都是這種『金屑酒』。如此不祥之物，竟被倭人歡天喜地過節過年作重禮相送，也真晦氣到家了。」

post #2200

一個夢想：臺灣所有高爾夫球場變成生態區、所有高爾夫練球場變成射箭場。
高爾夫球是世界上創傷生態最嚴重的運動，尤其在臺灣地少人多的小島上，應該全面禁止。
高爾夫球場要復元，成為健康的生態區，我們看不到，因為蒼天恐怕要幾百年才能彌補無知人類造成的傷害。早一天開始就是早一天好。
沒有了高爾夫球場，就沒有人打高爾夫球，當然就不需要高爾夫球練場，就可以變成射箭場。嘻！
Wouldn't it be nice if all the golf courses in the world were turned into ecological preserves? Of course it would take generations for the land to recover from the depredations inflicted on it, as golf is the most ecologically destructive sport in the world. But the sooner the land is allowed to begin to recover, the sooner it will recover. We need a healthy ecosystem a lot more than we need golf!
Then what to do with all those driving ranges? Turn them into archery ranges. What a wonderful dream!

六道輪迴中各有六道。這必定是人間的地獄道。哭。
Count your blessings. No matter how hard your luck is, you were not born in Camp 14.

camp 14

the book comes out today::

士林王家都鬧的很大。臉書上看到有人說，只有臺灣這個政權才會這樣拆民房。
很不幸的是，我想不出任何時代、任何國家不會常常發生這種事。
在歐美，拆民房之事，司空見慣(美國版，武裝警察先衝進去，跟民眾分享警棍、胡椒，若有違抗者，還送子彈。)
唐玄宗稱至道大聖，而公主擴建宅第，拆民房幾百戶。陳水扁當臺北市長，拆南京東路、林森北路的眷村；時久，細節忘了，但記得里長是賣水餃的小市民，因為強制拆除，被弄得頭破血流(當然也有政治因素：拆眷村的同時，陽明山平等里民在國家公園濫墾、起土雞城，不取締，因為深綠)。
但：臺灣新聞界，唯恐天下不亂；政客隨時挑撥離間、爭權奪利。事情總有兩面。我一位好友剛好在士林那一帶住了幾十年，大街小巷的居民他都認識，所以我問他。他是這樣講的：「那邊三十六戶已經答應要拆了，沒問題了，就是這兩戶不肯。建商要賠他們好幾棟新房子，他們可能認為還可以再撈。那三十六戶被他們搞的烏煙瘴氣。那兩戶拉布條，很多外面的人來湊熱鬧。可是我們這一帶的人都支持警察，我們認為一定要拆，不拆不行。」
可供參攷。

「這是我開車的英姿」
The flashy (ugly) blue-purple car ahead of us pulled over by a cement embankment, and a hand reached out of the driver's window: a hand with a cell phone:: the driver was commemorating his trip to Wulai by taking a selfie.

….. shaking my head….

Yesterday's post about the parachuting priests brought to mind a story told me by my friend Jerry L. Jerry had been in the Airborne in the late 1960s, at a time when everybody knew that
Airborne = nuts
Jerry said that if two Airborne guys had a grievance with other, they would each bite onto one corner of a handkerchief, and slug it out until one or the other man dropped.
The late 60s was a time when a lot of people were unhappy with the military industrial complex. To placate the taxpayers, the army decided to put on a show to prove that their tax money was being put to good use. Jerry's unit was assigned to work on the parachuting exhibition at a time when the men were at odds with their officers. I forget just why, but they were not happy.
At the show, the taxpayers examined a variety of trucks and tanks. Then the taxpayers were settled in grandstands by a field as two large trucks and a tank were loaded onto a plane, which took off, circled the field, and came in to demonstrate how the first truck would be wafted onto the ground with parachutes. Which would have been a lovely show had not the disgruntled soldiers tied all the parachute cords together. The taxpayers were certainly impressed when the truck nosedived and burst into a million parts, all paid for by the taxpaying public. They were even more impressed when the second truck did the same nosedive.
The announcer was building up patriotic sentiment by telling the taxpayers that this just went to show how dangerous parachuting was, so they should be grateful to the valiant soldiers who fight our wars, and provide them with enough money to buy only the best equipment.
Meanwhile in the control tower, Jerry's officer was screaming into his radio, telling his men that they had better not tie the cords together on the tank, which was the grand finale of the show. The men assured him, No sir, we did not tie the cords together. They simply pushed the tank out of the plane without a parachute at all.
Jerry was quite impressed. "You know, a tank is really tough. It didn't burst into a million pieces when it hit the ground. Instead, it went straight into the ground, in one piece." For their contribution to the show, Jerry and his unit were given the privilege of digging out the tank, with shovels, by hand. They found it about fifteen feet straight down into the earth.