If you’ve been around any length of time, you know I am as fascinated with dreams as predictors of future events – as I am with the ability of software to pick up coagulation areas in language and infer something about the future from that.

So let’s rewind to our vivid dream about an April earthquake – which hasn’t happened yet – and see if there there is anything to be learned.

The original “An Odd Earthquake Dream” was posted January 13th back here.

At the time, part of the quake was the description of a 0+ quake, West Coast, and in April.

Well, thankfully, the hot date for April has blown on by.  But not before leaving us a gift to ponder..

The premise of the dream was that there was a series of quakes up in the  Lakeview Oregon area and that when the 5.5 follow-on quake came, it would point to where the epicenter of this massive quake would be.

Well, here’s the interesting part:  On April 23 we had a 5.5 earthquake.  And this, was interpreted in the hours after my odd earthquake dream back in January, this way:

“One (and they are possibly a pairs) are in the 5.3 and 5.6 category and they connect with “Thursday” or “Friday” and after this, people who are involved will be going back to the city (this happens east of San Francisco).”

Well, there it was – April 23 – and a Thursday, so that leads me to draw some lines on the map and they point to the area 200 miles north of San Francisco.

One of the returning news crews will be stopping (on the way back to the city) to have something that’s like an apple fritter or apple scone – as a place somewhere in the area that is famous for those.

There were other oddities about the story too:  Lot’s of dog references, a kind of map of a state or national park area (it was shown as a kind of green glass layer under the area.

Obviously, the news crews and pie doesn’t make sense (now/yet, though perhaps in the future).  The dog reference is still “out there” too.  As to the maps of state parks, the line from the Lakeview area quakes through this one (on the 23rd, on a Thursday) gives us several.

First this is the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, Humboldt-Redwoods State Park, and the Trinity National Forest all in the area described in the dream (lining up the quake swarm in Oregon with the 5.5).

All of which draws out focus to Cape Mendocino, but honestly do I expect a 9+ quake over the next 7-days in that area?

Statistically, No.  But the dream still haunts, so what was it about?

That’s a tough one to answer because it gets us off into the spiritual/metaphysical realms. 

Anyone who had studied the Electronic Voice Phenomena, would have good reason to believe that there is a possibility of some kind of communications with the “other side of the veil” of what we call life.  Seers know it, and so do we parents who have had “remote knowing” experiences with our children.  Vivid, undeniable knowing when it is possible no other way than through some undocumented communications channel.  And that channel may transcend death.

On the evidentiary side, we also have to look at data starting with Ray Moody’s book “Life After Life” that came out back in 1976, I think it was.

And let’s not overlook religions (as a group) because so many of them are predicated on some kind of afterlife (bardo, etc) and on the idea of reincarnation.  There’s also a “rewards program” that covers the waterfront from passing out virgins to eternal bliss, immortal pleasures and you know that list.

Yet there are a lot of interesting groups that have shown an interest in (to use the electronic voice phenomena as an example) contacting the “other side.”  Here’s a Wikipedia note on groups focused strictly on the EVP approach to what I refer to as “the veil…”

The Association TransCommunication (ATransC), formerly the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP),^[57] and the International Ghost Hunters Society conduct ongoing investigations of EVP and ITC including collecting examples of purported EVP available over the internet.^[58] The Rorschach Audio Project, initiated by sound artist Joe Banks,^{[39][40][59][60]} which presents EVP as a product of radio interference combined with auditory pareidolia and the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetics Research, a non-profit organization dedicated to studying anomalous phenomena related to neurophysiological conditions.^[61] According to the AA-EVP it is “the only organized group of researchers we know of specializing in the study of ITC”.^[62]

Parapsychologists and Spiritualists have an ongoing interest in EVP.^[63] Many Spiritualists experiment with a variety of techniques for spirit communication which they believe provide evidence of the continuation of life.^[64] According to the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, “An important modern day development in mediumship is spirit communications via an electronic device. This is most commonly known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)”.^[65] An informal survey by the organization’s Department Of Phenomenal Evidence cites that 1/3 of churches conduct sessions in which participants seek to communicate with spirit entities using EVP.^[66]

The James Randi Educational Foundation offers a million dollars for proof that any phenomena, including EVP,^[51] are caused paranormally…

The oddity that jumps out at me as a real IN YOUR FACE lack of focus is that humans as a group/species have not done a very good job – at all – of looking at the death barrier and figuring out how to get more effective communication going between this side and that.

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…for the end of the world. 

Sick and tired of the MSM?  Who isn’t! 

Tired of the crumby playlist you’ve head for the zillionth time on your FM station?

Want some information, so MP3’s aren’t ideal?

The radical prepper’s answer (and we have ours on the air) is to build your own radio station!

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We’ll get to MFMB in a minute – it’s my should-be patented secret to marital bliss.  But let’s start with the BBQ part since that takes less explaining.

This year’s competition started a week or so back, when Elaine’s son Brandon, who lives up in Tacoma, lit off his wood-fire BBQ and sent us the most delicious looking plate of ribs we’d seen either in a picture, or real life for that matter, in years.

So this past weekend we got out the BBQ here and started firing off the summer’s best.

As you can see in the top picture, Elaine likes breasts (don’t go there, we’re talking the damn chicken!) which has been rubbed with a mix of lemon-pepper marinade and K.C. Masterpiece seasoning.  On top of this goes some Jack Daniel’s  BBQ Sauce from the store and yessir, damn fine ‘Q.

My approach, off to the right here, is a little different.  Ure’s taste runs more to Asian so when I’m lazy I mix up a 50-50 of Very Teriyaki (which has enough garlic in it to be Italian/Asia) and mixed about 50-50 or whatever feels right with Kikkoman pre-made Teriyaki sauce.

This is poured over the chicken about six-hours before grilling.  First step is to toast it up on all sides, basting as you go.  A shot of tequila (warmed) will do a nice flaming glaze if you put some sugar and a teaspoon of Everclear in it…depends on if your home owners insurance is current).

After browning up, you set them to one side of the grill and then roast for about 30-40 minutes at 350’ish.  Experience teaches that the thermometer on a BBQ is useful.  So is a timer.

The next big BBQ plan this week is for my Chinese-flavored country style ribs.  Then we will send the Tacoma division of family a couple of pictures so they can have to wash the slobber of their monitors; like we did when the kids rib pictures showed up.

The recipe isn’t terribly difficult.  Try it – it’s to die for.

The sauce/marinade:

About 1 cup of brown sugar.

About 1/2 to 3/4 cup of soy sauce  (adjust to your desired salt/sweet taste)

About 4 tablespoons of mushed up Maraschino cherries with some of the juice to boot.  No, no pits or stems…

A heaping teaspoon, or better, maybe two teaspoons of ground ginger.

A half-dozen ground up garlic cloves

Several solid shakes of Cayenne pepper.  No…make it a bit more…lot’s more, depending on your fortitude and whether you like spicy or mild pork.

The lazy way to do this?  Take all these ingredients, and throw them in the Vitamix.  Hit high a few times (things will warm up, and melt since my chainsaw doesn’t have the power of the Vitamix.  Let it sit overnight so flavors blend.

Next morning toss the trimmed, fat-free ribs into a bowl, toss with about 3/4’s of the mix and wander off for 8-hours.  Work on something else.

When you are famished:  Heat the BBQ, quick brown on a hot flame, basting lightly with some sauce to get a nice glaze going.  Then kill heat on one side, slide the ribs over there, and turn the other burners down to maintain 350-400 degrees and have an adult beverages.

When you run out of things to talk about, or begin to stumble, or the chips and salsa aren’t enough, the ribs should be done.

Remove, cover with foil (keeps insects off them) and haul out the dipping sauce.  Made of…

1/4 cup catsup (or ketchup of however you spell it)

1/4 cup of  freshly ground prepared horseradish.

Long-time readers will remember this as our shrimp cocktail sauce, too.  Yes, dual purpose sauce and it does well with Chinese/Asian foods.  Heavier on the horsey, or not.  Depends how close the fire department is.

A purist would go to Tai Tung in Seattle and have real Chinese food, but it’s a 2,130 mile drive from here…so we make-do at home, instead.

Having grown up in Seattle’s Asian community, I am partial to “blow the roof of your mouth off, freshly made Chinese hot mustard.  The right way to do it is to mix up dry powder, give it 10-minutes to hot-up and then serve in a three-tray with sesame seeds and ketchup with a dash of honey and/or cherry juice it in.  That would be the RIGHT  thing to do.  Plum sauce, too, or Hoisin.  Nice dipping assortment.

Seems absurd in Texas to have to order a whole case of  Dynasty Mustard Powder, 2-Ounce Jars (Pack of 12) for $29-bucks, so I make do with the fresh prepared horseradish (just the horseradish, not bunch of wimpy sauce crap with it).  Anyone who buys premixed Chinese mustard probably likes frozen piazza, too.

All of these BBQ treats taste really good cold, or just barely warmed.  That’s one of the real tests of good BBQ – how is it cold?

Fine, so now I’ve got you thinking of BBQ – so what is MFMB?

Matching Food, Matching Breath.

Mr. Ure’s lone contribution to marital bliss.  Eat the same foods as your partner/spouse/whatever they are nowadays, and since body chemistry should roughly synch up over time, you will have similar breath!

(My other contribution to marital bliss [“whatever you say dear…”] hasn’t be adopted by large enough numbers to be statistically measurable.)

Gee, I don’t know which would more rewarding…being a cook or a marriage counselor, but I’ll go with cooking and whatever is behind Door Number 3.

Hell of a Woo-Woo Story

We were speculatin’ Monday on the possibilities of timelines, time jumps, thinking CERNtain thoughts and such in in popped this amazing report about the Woo being out and about this weekend:

“…oh yes, temporal reality -there-is-a-portal-in-my-bedroom- is alive and well.

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Not sure it’s a word, but….After showing signs Friday that someone in the financial world (besides Ures truly) had brains, the market this morning is set to bounce hard and high while reality sinks in.

And the reality is what?

Well, in case you missed it this weekend, the IMF movers were warning us all that they are going to print more and pump just like we are, so the global printing festival – driving markets higher  – will continue at least a while longer.

What is some of the “sand in the Vaseline?”

To start with, the IMF is scared that Greece will stiff them on payments.  So our favorite financial dom is pre-scolding the petulant Greeks.

Filed under “50-shades of Euro” we can almost hear the Bankster’s telling the Greeks “Vee are go-ink to vip you and you vill like it!”  Uh-huh…sure. Greeks aren’t buying it.  Why should they be screwed so a banker gets a payday?

Since public opinion is easily spun, the next ham sandwich of distraction will be delivered in the form of boats of immigrants who are pouring in from Africa and points east…Sorry to hear about the dead in the capsizing of a ship this weekend, but it’s an ongoing problem because not many people want to live in war zones

Meantime, one of our well-informed readers suggests:

“Turkey and the Saudis will show their power.

This coming week Obama is having a meeting with Middle east leaders to discuss his Iran deal.The Turks and Saudi’s are as worried about Iran getting a nuke as Israel. If they come away from this meeting. Feeling betrayed by Obama. They may well make some preemptive power moves against Syria or Iran themselves.”

And that moves our scan of the World Messuation along to the Middle East. Saudi officials are just waiting and defending against a homeland oil processing or mall attack, because that is the likely blowback from going into Yemen.

The Houthi’s are thumbing their noses, and we await the arrival of the Iranian supply ships for the next outburst of break dancing on the military front.

Oh, and lighten up on your lib/dream bet on an Iran Deal:  The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards isn’t biting on any kind of inspection plan.  Is our imperial what’s his name gonna buy off on blind faith?  Nothing surprises us, anymore.  But congress?  Not frigging likely.

Our sage reader is right:  If the Obama administration doesn’t get their Iran deal, the whole thing could “go Chihuly.”  (If the reference doesn’t make sense, click here and put Ure thinking cap on.  Puddles of glass…OMG, are you like NOT on the bean yet, today?)

(cue some transition music)

Continuing our morning travel/news/log eastward, we find the Chinese have cut key reserve requirements, but as this CNBC report says, it sure looks like a desperation move.

The reason is simple:  In just over a month, the Hang Seng has gone up almost 14%. Go ahead, annualize that…I dare you.   And that would be a classic market bubble.

Globally, the (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) competing banks are all worried about what happens if something blows out the top end like this – and then collapses. 

Or, (going a bit more east) something like Japan re-implodes into another bout of deflation since they are having a real bitch of a time with hitting inflation targets.

There’s an interesting bet here:  The gnomes of Credit Suisse think Japan could fall back into deflation – and there’s good reason to think that.  But, the head of the JA central bank says “Naw…nothing to worry about – we got this…” or words to that effect.  I’ll take the gnomes and 10.

Fun little trip around the world this morning, huh?  All circular references because in a complex but still-closed system, anything blow up here will lead to a ripple or a nuke there.

As my deflationist pal Jas Jain writes (and he has been impeccably right about deflation so far, and sees much more to come…)

What is going to happen this time around is going to be lot different than the Crisis of 2008. I will shut up if the global depression doesn’t begin during 2016-18. China would be a big contributor to the coming crisis and would take the house (the global economy) down.

During the worst depression in centuries, democracies would fall one by one and many countries would disintegrate.

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First things first:  The latest Consumer Prices report is hot off the wire from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Over the last 12 months, the all items index declined 0.1 percent before seasonal adjustment. Increases in the energy and shelter indexes more than offset a decline in the food index and were the main factors in the rise of the seasonally adjusted all items index.

The energy index rose 1.1 percent as advances in the gasoline and fuel oil indexes outweighed declines in the electricity and natural gas indexes. In contrast, the food index declined 0.2 percent, with the food at home index posting its largest decline since April 2009.

The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in March, the same increase as in January and February. Along with the shelter index, a broad array of indexes rose in March, including medical care, used cars and trucks, apparel, new vehicles, household furnishings and operations, and recreation.

The index for airline fares, in contrast, declined for the fourth time in the last 5 months. The all items index declined 0.1 percent for the 12 months ending March.

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Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve mentioned our latest “adventure in odd/transporting home design.”

Our latest project has been to transform the area between the house and t’other building which houses the shop/office/Panama’s apartment into something different.

The hard part was figuring out the right thought model.

There are a couple of large trees on hand.  while it would be tempting to hack them down and turn the area into a huge greenhouse, that seemed like too much work.  Putting in a pool (and using it as a heat sink, crossed my mind, too.

But in the end, a couple of pea gravel loads from John the Dump Truck Guy, seemed best, so we (mostly Elaine) tore out the odd plant that had taken root and in came the landscape cloth and then 3-4 inches of pea gravel.

And it looked OK, except something was missing.  What might that be?

The answer was some research into Japanese rock gardens.  They are NOT maintenance-free.  But damn they look good.

So I’ve spent some time over on this site, looking at the various approaches.  And, unbeknownst to me, Panama built a big wooden rake – about 2 1/2 fee wide – with teeth about every 3-inches or so.

Turns out our space was suitable for hiraniwa – flat Japanese rock garden. Although in size and sense of place, it’s more like the karesansui description (of dry rock gardens).

We may change it up a bit:  The Japanese rock gardens usually have a very few large rocks which act as visual focal points…but we’ve decide to use an old stump-root, or something like that which might be round on the property.  Or, I might weld up an oilrig sculpture and stick it in the gravel – a kind of statement about oil and what’s pending in the South China See where Japan and China have competing claims over oil resource under water.

Panama has a pretty nice “balanced art piece” out in front of his windows made out of balanced cedar logs.  Kind of like a big mobile jutting up from the ground. 

Elaine’s drifted into the spirit of this too; she’s carefully raking circles around the bases of the trees.

In a more controlled environment (like a city) we would have used sand (traditional) but because of the size of the area (35×50, roughly) we used pea gravel.  The other reason on the pea gravel is because I can take a leaf blower to it; something you can’t do with sand.

Visually, the effect of seeing pea gravel at 30-feet feels like sand at 10…so we shall see how it works over time.

Fun to rake and play in…sort of like an adult sandbox.  Not terribly expensive and it doesn’t kick up dirt and dust from the mower. 

Rocks don’t generally need fertilizer and special handling…but this being where we are in human history, I’m sure one of these days a specialized tool (besides a few rakes) will show up on the net.  We’ll be either buyers or toolmakers when they do.

Membership in the North American Japanese Garden Association is something we’re pondering, too.  Their website (here)  is worth looking at as some really wonderful gardens go scrolling by on their header.

Membership is $85 for a basic/basic but $150 to get their Journal.  Depending on how important your “outdoor vibe” is, it’s better than just tossing a few railroad times and sod in and calling that landscaping.

Japan Woodworker has a good assortment of green and white pruning paste and other garden supplies over here.  Training wires for your Bonsai, perhaps?

More practically, our best regards to Frank Tashiro of Tashiro Hardware in Seattle who turned 93 in January.  A few of us early Seattleites (who were there before California moved north) can remember Tashiro Hardware’s early days, just south of “Muscatel Meadows” south of the King County Courthouse.

Japanese Economics

Reader asked this one:

“with the strong dollar, is it time to buy a Japanese car?

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