Terrier at Sea

Annika sent me this photo she snapped at the Museum of Natural History in Helsinki, Finland (she was there for work). It's from a temporary exhibit, Animals at Sea.

Annika wrote, "I wish I could remember more about the dog, but all I know is that he was called Nisse and accompanied his Swedish owner (officer in the navy? Or the merchant fleet?) at work for many years. The uniform is from the 1910s, if I remember correctly."
_________
After the past couple weeks of dental pain, drugs, hives, and more, stronger drugs, plus hours and hours online trying to grok the nature of current communications, I ended up feeling knocked off my feet, emotionally and physically.

I spent the last couple days--in blessedly beautiful weather--reading books.
Books.
What a relief.
Nothing jumped out at me; nothing swept me off into branching and re-branching channels; it was just plain old one word in front of another. (Fascinating, challenging stuff, about the Iroquois, but physically non-invasive.)
I feel restored to my self.

And this picture makes me feel right spry and sparkly again.
Woof, woof!

OK, me too. ("Tik Tok")

All of a sudden, everyone's posting this--I've seen it on three non-Trekkie sites this weekend. So I was dubious, but now I've watched it, I see why.
It's really good.
Everybody gets to play, and there's a dash of slash, like nutmeg on egg custard.

"Working on the Enterprise is pretty much a non-stop party."



By Miss Sheenie.
Star Trek is definitely an improvement on the official video of Ke$ha performing TiK ToK.

FreeRice, Famous Paintings

I found the woodblock print "The Plain at Suzaki" (below), by Hiroshige (1797–1858)), on the game Identify Famous Paintings at "FreeRice". I'm surprised I didn't know this print. (I mean, I'm surprised it hasn't been reproduced into mushy familiarity, like the "Great Wave" by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).)


I added FreeRice to my sidebar. (I found it on Felting Your Soul.)
If you click on it, a vocabulary game pops up. (It adjusts to your answers, so it gets tough.)
Or you can choose other games, under "Subjects", such as Identify Countries on a Map.
Every correct answer = 10 grains of rice.

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program. Its partner is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. The money comes from ad banners that run at the bottom. More about FreeRice at the Berkman Center.
________________
II. Identify the Animal

And while I'm on the subject of Art History, I always thought that was a cat in the prow, in "Fur Traders Descending the Missouri" (1845, George Caleb Bingham).

But, no! It's a bear cub:

What a great painting--you can feel the velvety air and hear the stillness.
Bingham himself called the picture "French-Trader—Half Breed Son." The son is leaning on a pile of pelts. And they're all looking at us...

I was looking into the painting wondering if it could go in the Frindian book. But the date's too late; the Missouri is too far west for the time period.
More close-ups and info at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Remix Rules of the 13th Century

LEFT: Saint Bonaventure, by Claude François (Frère Luc) (here)

"A man might write the works of others, adding and changing nothing, in which case he is simply called a 'scribe' (scriptor).

"Another writes the work of others with additions which are not his own; and he is called a 'compiler' (compilator).

"Another writes both others' work and his own, but with others' work in principal place, adding his own for purposes of explanation; and he is called a ‘commentator’ (commentator).

"....Another writes both his own work and others' but with his own work in principal place adding others for purposes of confirmation; and such a man should be called an 'author' (auctor)."

- Saint Bonaventure, 13th Century Franciscan (d. 1274), via Moby Dick Remixed: Appropriation as a New Media Literacy (Anna van Someren)

______________
Entrance Song for the Feast of Saint Bonaventure
Feast Day: July 15

"The learned will shine like the brilliance of the firmament, and those who train many in the ways of justice will sparkle like the stars for all eternity." --Daniel 12:3
_______________
"The current emphasis on digital remixing makes visible the degree to which all cultural expression builds on what has come before."
-Henry Jenkins, 21st century
_______________
There was no copyright law until 1709's Statute of Anne, in GB. But there had been wrangles much earlier.

Reputedly in 557 A.D. Abbot Finnian of Moville and St. Columba disputed over St. Columba's copying of a Psalter belonging to an Abbot. The dispute over ownership of the copy led to the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne (also known as the Battle of Cooldrumman), in which 3,000 men were killed.

And in 1623 a setting of the Psalms, by the composer Salomone Rossi, included a rabbinical curse on anyone who copied the contents.

(Wikipedia, History of Copyright Law)

A Fair(y) Use Tale

I just had dinner with my old friend ATK, something of an historian of copyright, and he recommended this toe-curlingly delicious mashup of Disney clips, A Fair(y) Use Tale (2007).

As you may know, Disney® is one of the most ferocious proponents of draconian copyright laws (specifically the Sonny Bono/Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act)--though the company itself made its fortune using stories that belong to the entire human race.



To qualify for Fair Use, this parody is composed of micro-clips, which let Disney characters explain "what" "is" "copy" "right" in their own words.

"Synopsis:
Film professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University created this humorous, yet informative, review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms."

From The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) , housed at Stanford Law School.

It's tough to be conscious.

One of Simone Weil's teachers warned her, "Whatever is misanthropic is false."
I'm not sure I agree it's necessarily false, but it's often cheap and easy and fruitless.

Whenever I get feeling snippy with my species, like, why aren't we all innovators like Dante or Gertrude Stein? it helps me to remember just how insanely complex being conscious is.
It helps me to remember:

“We live in strange times.

“We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, ‘Oh, hi, Ed! Nice tan. How’s Carol?’ involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble.
So give your kid a break, okay?”

--Extract from the fictional book Practical Parenting in a Fractally Demented Universe in the real book Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams

The Grup Dysease

For the past 48 hours, the skin over much of my body has looked something like Kirk's arms here, except not blue:I hobbled to the doctor (the soles of my feet had swollen up!) who said it was most likely an allergic reaction to the penicillin I'd taken for my tooth.
Great.
I've never been allergic to anything. I've hardly ever been sick.
But in the past 14 months I've had a run of decidedly unglamorous medical conditions. The sort of things that one doctor actually proclaimed to be "dime-a-dozen" (gallbladder stones, vertigo, hot flashes, dry socket, ...and now hives).

Kirk and Co. get these blue skin sores in the episode "Miri". The disease only attacks children who are turning into grown-ups ("grups"), and it kills them. Luckily none of my conditions is serious, as in "deadly"--though some of them are unpleasant enough to feel plenty serious.

But they do seem to be associated with aging. My body's defense/healing/regulating systems are starting to go all wobbly, I guess.
I've never paid much attention to my health--never had to. Seems I might should start now, eh? Not just physical/medical stuff, like diet and exercise, but mental/spiritual stuff that might come in handy when one is lying in bed at 3 a.m. with a plate-sized itch at the base of the spine.

I especially want to learn to handle the scary bits. You know, not like when you have a cold, even a really bad one--it's not scary, usually, because you know what the deal is. But most of these body-glitches have frightened me because I had no idea what they were. And I figured I would have to do the almost-most dreaded thing:
make a phone call to a stranger.
This is one of my neuroses: a dread that extends to calling doctors' offices, banks and credit card companies, and distant relatives with hearing loss.

So, as they say in 12 Steps, this seems to be AFLE = "Another Fucking Learning Experience."
If you've got any tips, I'd be glad to hear them.

And, not in the spirit of 12 Steps, when I'm finally off all these meds, I'm going to treat myself to a James Bond: a sort of champagne martini:

James Bond

1 sugar cube
Bitters
Champagne
Vodka

Put 2-3 drops of bitters on the sugar cube. Put the sugar cube in the bottom of a glass. Fill glass about 2/3 full with champagne. Add 1/2 shot of vodka.
Drink and enjoy.

(What would Kirk drink?)

Btw, I'm much better now, though the back of my ears are itching like crazy as I write this. The doc put me on prednisone, which started to clear up the hives in 8 hours---sort of like Dr. McCoy's serum saves the grups.(This is one of those rare times Spock shows concern for the meanie McCoy. I think we'd all be kinder to the people who bug us if they were unconscious.)

Btw2, Mayo Clinic reports that a penicillin allergy is the most common drug allergy. Which makes sense to me---that stuff is in your body boldly killing all life forms it meets, sort of like V'ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Mayo also reports that "the simplest way to prevent penicillin allergy is to avoid penicillin and related antibiotics."
Imagine that.

How to Add Tabs (Try out the new Blogger design options!)

Lookie! I've added a tab, up above, that opens a stand-alone page!

My sidebars had gotten so cluttered, I'd taken off all the "quotes of the moment". Now I see we can add tabs and pages to our blogs. So, I put all the old quotes back up, there.

It's super easy to make tabbed pages, but not entirely self-evident.

Here's how:

1. Click on "New Post."

3. Then click on "Edit Pages"--it's a live (blue) link, running along the top.

4. That will lead you to the option of making a "New Page." Et voila! Make one. Or ten (the limit).

I never thought I'd be dispensing computer tips, even easy ones. Maybe it's magic that came with the free T-shirt I got at the opening of a new Apple store in Uptown yesterday.

Oh, the manatee! 2

I can't stomach looking at any more oil-soaked animals, and I certainly don't want to spring them on you. So here's a shot of "Alabama Surf".
Doesn't it look like blown glass? Or marbled paper? I think its all the more frightening for how beautiful it is.

Photographer: Dave Martin/AP, via Vidiot Speak.

Margaret commented that "oil spill" hardly seems adequate to describe the horror. Vidiot Speak (and others? I don't follow political blogs) refers to it as an oilcano.

And, another manatee. (You know, "oh, the humanity!" came from the original coverage of the Hindenberg disaster.)
Found at Dr. X's Free Association; but originally from Vidiot Speak?
(I cant find it there, but Dr. X gives it a "h/t", which means "hat tip," according to Blogossary.)

Oh, the manatee!

Graffiti at the end of the block, where I'm housesitting.

"Oh, the humanity!"

I overheard this conversation at the back of the city bus:

Man 1: You hear about the oil spill in the Gulf?

Man 2: I haven't had a TV for 6 months.

Man 3: Man, everything DYING! It killing all the animals* and plants and crawfish and everything.

Man 1: Don't listen to the TV, they just tell you what they want you to hear. Listen to the radio--AM 950 [Air America]. They'll tell you. This oil, it's all over everything! And it's just greed caused it. Greed!

Man 2: Why don't they clean it up?

Man 1: [pause] You ever try cleaning up a chicken dinner in cold water?

____________

*Even the manatee?

Yes. Possibly even the manatee.

Blogging Bare-Assed

"There ain't much time left, you're born out of this insane abyss and you're going to fall back into it,
so while you're alive you might as well show your bare ass."
--Jim Carroll

I've been reading Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters (2009), by Scott Rosenberg.

That, and other stuff I'm looking at about online social media, has got me thinking about my history as a blogger, and about a central question it poses:
How naked are you wanting to go?

The Internet took this question out of the private or artistic spheres--diaries, bedrooms, poetry, portraiture--and forced it on computer users.
Right away, we have to decide how honestly we're going to fill this in:
Name: _____________

All my life I've wanted to get naked down to the bones.
In my first computer tutorial, in April 1992, I drew this self-portrait on Mac Paint (below). There was nowhere to share it online of course. I printed it out and pasted it next to a self-portrait as a sea creature in my visual journal.

But I'd grown up feeling ashamed (the psychic equivalent of dental pain), and I wanted to hide too.
I labelled my journal the Stay Out Coloring Book.I'm sorry I was so afraid, but since I was, it was smart of me not to expose myself too much.

LEFT: My first computer tutorial, April 1992, from my visual journal. (Thank you, Fred Zinn!)

(Hey! Remember that classic Mac bomb screen of death? I'd totally forgotten it till I saw it in this drawing (click to embiggen).
It meant the system had crashed, and you'd lost all the work you hadn't backed up.)

Because I worked in a college library, I got online earlier than I would have on my own.
The World Wide Web was barely two years old in 1992; Gopher was operating out of the University of Minnesota, down the road.
But the new library director who came on board was frightened by change, and we never used these. Our computers served as superTypewriters and mail-delivery systems.

But e-mail! What a dream.
I started to spend my evenings at the circ desk writing. I bombarded friends and wondered why most of them didn't write back in kind. Weren't they bug-eyed with delight too?

I really needed a blog, but they didn't exist yet; and when they began, I didn't find them for a long time.

I was afraid of a lot of things, and one of them was men. If I hadn't been afraid, I think I'd have made friends with the sort of guys who'd have introduced me to cool computer stuff. (Yes, I was even afraid of nerds and geeks. I know.)

I finally found blogs through just such a guy: a friend's husband who'd blogged from almost the beginning. I commented so much on his blog, he encouraged me to start my own. (Thanks, Tim!)
He also gave me great advice:
"Don't stop blogging. If you don't have anything to write, post something from the NYT."

I started blogging "flightless parrots" (named after New Zealand's kakapo, right) on September 10, 2004.

By September 13, I was already talking about how slippery it was to present myself honestly:

"I was playing around with different ways I could describe myself.
Here are two descriptions of me, both true:

1. I'm a half-Sicilian ex-janitor who lives with a parrot.

2. My ancestors came from Scotland, some of them. I worked for many years as a college librarian, and I keep a pet bird."

I wrote almost every day. I rarely mentioned my mother's suicide (less than two years earlier), but looking over some of the posts I'd saved, I can tell it's the ever-present baseline.

I posted this quote as my guiding philosophy:

"When I think about people with whom I have the deepest sense of community, I think of people who have been able to share with me their contradictions, their brokenness--thus allowing me to share mine.
When we present ourselves to the world as smooth and seamless, we allow each other no way in, no way into life together. But as we acknowledge and affirm that the cross is the shape of our lives, we open a space within us where community can occur."

--Parker Palmer (He's a Quaker; that's why he uses the cross to symbolize suffering, courage, and renewal.)

So, I wanted to be emotionally naked. (There was no easy way to post pix, so physical revelation wasn't an issue.)
Or I thought I did.
But I ended up exposing more than I really felt comfortable with.
The work left me feeling, as I wrote, "like a sock that is turned inside-out. All the tender inside is pulled to the outside."
Twice at parties, friends of the hosts--people I didn't even know read my blog--told me they liked it. I realized I wasn't anonymous and invisible, which kind of freaked me out.
Then some blog-friendships hit rough road, and I didn't know how to ride that out.

I ended up deleting the whole blog in 2005.
I've written about this before, but I guess I'm still doing the autopsy.

After a two-year break, I missed blogging so much, I risked starting this blog in October 2007. Maybe one day I'll stop blogging? But I promised myself I'd not delete a whole blog again--that ended up feeling too violent.

What does blogging honestly mean to me now?
I'm not sure.
I'm not particularly afraid anymore (or not of the same things).
Emotions and men don't make me want to run for cover (usually).
Posting photos of my ass veiled in 3M window film doesn't bother me (much).
And I've come out about so many things so many times, the closet door fell off.

But it's still hard work to uncover the naked bones. It's still tricky to handle the fragile sea creature without damaging it.
My blog is still where I try to strip off. (Sometimes more, sometimes less.) I'm often more interested at midlife in uncovering ideas than raw feeling (that was reversed when I was younger), but the work is much the same.

My blog is my Come In Coloring Book.
I'm glad to be here.
I'm glad you're here too.

Hanging Out, For Free

Good deal! I just discovered that a book I have on hold at the library, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media
is available as a free downloadable PDF from the MIT press.

It's by danah boyd and other members of the Digital Youth Project.

It integrates "twenty-three different case studies-which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music-sharing, and online romantic breakups," with "in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis."

I want to read it as part of my summer-long project exploring the history of communication. I decided I can't start writing a history until I have a better overview, so I can create some through-lines.
(Like, vampires?)

It makes me so happy that that exploration is my WORK this summer. I mean, I get paid!
Not much, but it's better than paying for the privilege, like I used to as a student.

Sitting around reading, hanging out talking, staring into space thinking.
It's a grand life.

Toothsome

Just got back from another trip to the dentist. All was not well (dry socket), but hopefully will be now.

Dental pain pretty much wipes the brain of thought.
So here're someone else's thoughts, tangentially related to teeth:
The Oatmeal takes a stab at describing the Twilight series: "Kinda like Dungeons and Dragons meets Anne of Green Gables."

Cat-in-the-Hat Soccer Socks

Are Paraguay's striped socks modelled after the Cat in the Hat's hat?

I'm still feeling pretty punk from dental surgery,
but yesterday I watched the Germany v. Australia World Cup game (4–0) on an outdoor jumbo TV, surrounded by German fans (as in, from Germany, speaking German--otherwise they seemed exactly like your average white Minnesotans);
and today I met up with some friends at Global Market to watch Italy v. Paraguay (1-1). Most of the people watching were Latin Americans, and the TV was set to the Spanish station.

Language is entirely unimportant in soccer, as far as I'm concerned.
You don't need any words to understand people flying through the air, horizontally.

Geography in motion...

I'd like to see all the games in which the teams are from a country I've done a kids' book about*--especially if they BOTH are, like tomorrow's New Zealand v. Slovakia.
Alas, we're 7 hours behind South Africa, so the game's at 6:30 a.m. I don't have a TV, and I don't think I'll drag myself to a bar to watch, even though some are open, specially.

*
Algeria
Chile
Netherlands
New Zealand
Slovakia

Floating Giraffes

Can giraffes float?

This (and the related "can giraffes swim?") is the question--"one of the biggest scientific questions ever faced by the scientific community"--that scientist Darren Naish discusses in his post on "Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis".

Skipping to the end, Naish and his collaborator Don Henderson conclude the animals would float at an awkward angle that "looks downright uncomfortable", and therefore "that giraffes can swim, but not at all well."

Naish also goes on a brief rant about how "it isn't widely realised how much work scientists do FOR FREE and FOR FUN, IN THEIR SPARE TIME. "

The whole article is a delightful look at investigating questions that may or may not "have any implications whatsoever for anything".
It goes straight in my Humanity Is Not All Bad (H.I.N.A.B.) file.

I appreciate such cheering up because yesterday I had a wisdom tooth pulled.
Yesterday I was fine, fine, oh so fine, floating like a thing that is designed to float, because I was popping Vicodin.
I love those narcotics.
But today I've scaled back to ibuprofen and am no longer feeling quite so very fine, but rather more like a floating giraffe, I imagine.

History in the Stars

Iroquois, 1914

Modern historians have matched Iroquois oral history with astronomy.
Iroquois history records a solar eclipse over what is now central New York, when the first Grand Council of the Confederacy met to set up a league, rather like the United Nations.
Along with other corroborating evidence, this places the founding council in 1142. [1]

It's a potent mix when stories meet hard physical realities, like the movement of the stars.
Or a glimpse of a girl on film.

Here's the only existing film of Anne Frank, from July 22, 1941.

This is from the the Anne Frank House youTube channel, who writes:

"The girl next door is getting married. Anne Frank is leaning out of the window of her house in Amsterdam to get a good look at the bride and groom. It is the only time Anne Frank has ever been captured on film. At the time of her wedding, the bride lived on the second floor at Merwedeplein 39. The Frank family lived at number 37, also on the second floor. The Anne Frank House can offer you this film footage thanks to the cooperation of the couple."
______________
[1] From Iroquois Culture and Commentary, by Doug George-Kanenetiio, 2000, p. 27-28.

From Our Musical Correspondent

I asked Manfred, he of the funny hair, stolen library books, and blog and band Trip to Jerusalem, how one actually records music. I had no idea.

Manfred is usually at least amusing, but his response is more than that--it's a glimpse into the work of creation:

"...start with the beat.

"Being boring, say its four beats to the bar and about 100 beats per minute. Now you record on one of your tracks the timecode, more often than not using a drum machine, which is the 'guide' for everyone else to play to. This beat track will be excised from the final recording."

(Work where the final piece eradicates the original scaffolding intrigues me--like the lost wax process. Or parts of growing up?)

Read the rest here: "The Sound of Drums, Part One".

Hot Flashes

Fresca: "Turn down the thermostat, HAL."

HAL: "I'm sorry, Fresca:The way menopause is affecting my body reminds me of HAL 9000, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not as scary, but a definite reminder that it's not my consciousness that's in charge of this space suit.

"Take Great care and you'll Write fair." (Networking Images, 1)

See also Networking Images, 2 and Networking Images 3
(Meaning "networking" in the broadest sense, including the communication technologies (practical tools) that serve to connect people, as well as some of the design involved.)

Trying to weave together strands of communication technologies...
and feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Above: Wampum belt Delaware Indians gave to William Penn at the "Great Treaty" in 1682. The Eastern Woodlands Indians wove belts of wampum (clam shell beads) to seal treaties and to record cultural and historical events.
Above: The Instructor, or American Young Man's Best Companion Containing Spelling, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetick
George Fisher, 1786, Published by Isaiah Thomas, Worcester. "Take Great care and you'll Write fair."
Above: Telegram from Abraham Lincoln, 1864, to Mrs. Lincoln, telling her he's sending her money and, in response to their son Tad's inquiring after his health and the health of Tad's pet goats, he says, "the goats and father are very well––especially the goats."
Above: Mail slots for the Goldfield Hotel, built in 1908 during the gold rush in Nevada, photo by Scott Haefner
Above: Announcement of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology
Above: Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheet (D&D was first published in 1974)
The original Apple I computer motherboard (1976).
_______________
Sometimes, there're even people, after a fashion:
Above: 1957
Above: 1961, from Vintage Computers

"We must use the tools we have...."

"We must use the tools we have," President Abraham Lincoln said,
in frustration, about his inadequate general George McClellan.
______________

I'm always on the lookout for for space-saving furniture for my tiny apartment.
I found this corner-shaped bookshelf, yesterday, next to a dumpster in the alley a couple blocks away. Too heavy to carry home, of course.This carpet cleaner sat next to the dumpster too. I hoisted the bookshelf onto it, and rolled it home.
It only fell off once.

Snappy (Terriers in Film, 2)

Myrna Loy and Skippy, the wire fox terrier who played Asta in the Thin Man movies.

Red Wall, Night

All 4 Red Wall photos

Red Wall, Evening

 

 

All 4 Red Wall photos

Red Wall, Afternoon

All 4 Red Wall photos

Red Wall, Early Morning

All 4 Red Wall photos

Uh oh. Should I have used primer?

Hm. I thought the color would be more cinnabar than cherry...

(Good-bye, Baltic Sea. Good-bye, tiny herring.)

Magic!

I took all the Frindian books back to the library yesterday (and was relieved I'd only racked up $15.30 in fines).
Abracadabra! They had turned into a 23-page manuscript.

"Anger is an energy."

by Savage Chickens

The video of "Rise" [below], with its refrain "anger is an energy", opens with women beating the hell out of rugs.
How many powerless people in history have taken their anger out on domestic objects?

My Sicilian grandmother used to take revenge on her abusive husband, my grandfather, in homey little sideways.
He'd slam her and their kids with everything from a bowl of oatmeal to a two-by-four.
She'd serve him a sugar bowl "accidentally" filled with salt, and starch his underwear.

(Watch out for the power of the powerless.)

I sense that anger is next up on my To Do list.
I almost never feel angry. Instead, I feel lethargic. Weary. Burdened. Sad. Aloof.

Afraid.

I'm afraid of people being angry at me and of being angry myself. I don't want to hit people with whatever comes to hand, or get hit either.

Being nice because you don't want people to hit you back isn't compassion. It's cowardice.
That may be necessary for self-protection, sometimes, but it's like pouring sugar in the gas tank of creativity.

My fear of anger affects my writing. It slows me down, because I'm trying to be nice, trying to avoid punishment.
What kind of art do you create when you're trying to be nice all the time?
Something like Tupperware?
On the other hand, unchanneled anger just splatters the walls with oatmeal.

Anger by itself doesn't create anything.
I like the idea of anger as an energy, like gasoline. You sure don't want to muffle it in rags and stick it in the basement. Nor splash it all over the place.
You want to run it to an engine, so it takes you places.

I'm working on a gas-fueled engine, but it's still in R&D.

"Rise", Public Image Ltd. (PiL)), John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols), 1986

via Krista
"May the road rise with you."