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Something Wonderful: One Breath Around the World

by Vanderleun on February 20, 2019

Leaves me breathless.

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Terry February 20, 2019, 5:30 PM

Watching that made my lungs feel like they were going to explode. I used to free dive off the northern coast of California for abalone. Fort Bragg area was great but the water was quite cold.

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ghostsniper February 21, 2019, 11:46 AM

In my early teens I used to practice holding my breath while sitting in church.
Silently. That makes it quadroubly difficult.
I would hyperventilate for about a minute then pull in the big one.
I got up to 3 mins.
We had a pool and I found out holding your breath just because is different then when you have to.
Just staying underwater uses up a lot of the oxygen. I’d go under and hook my arm around behind the ladder that way I didn’t have to expend energy staying down. So in the real world I could never stay under more than about 2 mins. The best part was at the very end of the credits when he went in that taco joint and ordered a fish chimichanga. Watch close and if you use VLC you can slow it down and zoom in.

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pb February 22, 2019, 2:26 PM

Couldn’t figure out where he was going with it…

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Matt Burchett February 22, 2019, 5:21 PM

In summer of ’74, I lifeguarded at Rock Lake pool, a 2M-gallon public swimming hole repurposed from a defunct limestone quarry. When the grumpy boss left for the evening, we’d pour gasoline onto the expansive waters of the 12′ deep section and touch it off. Swimming under flaming surface water at age 17 on a midsummer night with friends was, I thought, the coolest thing imaginable.

I swim corrected 🙂

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Only by Fire is Fascism Finished

Year upon year in Earth’s darker forests,
Heaped at the foot of the trees,
Dry drifts of wood rot and leaf fall increase
Which sunlight shall never seize.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

The ash that descends in the September skies
Where the leapers swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer
With that fire which hollows the bones.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

If their god decrees war, God’s war shall prevail.
His lessons are seared in His stone.
No dreams shall defer, nor wishes erase,
The answers that burn in the bone.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

Only by Fire is Fascism Finished.
This Sin is demanded that Your Line may Live.
Only through Fire is Freedom Reborn.
Each generation pulls the Sword from the Stone.

— Van der Leun

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Van der Leun: The Normblog Bio of Your Host“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”