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Laurel

In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

About Me


Passiflora caerulea 'Lavender Lady' - Photo © 2008 Laurel Edwards
Zappa, my Border Collie - Photo © 2008 Laurel Edwards
Laurel is not responsible for personal items either lost or stolen.
Have passport, will travel.
I'll think of it all tomorrow... After all, tomorrow is another day.
--Scarlet O'Hara, "Gone with the Wind"
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
--Hunter S. Thompson
For all my rational Western intellect and education, I was for the moment overwhelmed by a primitive sense of living in a world ordered by a malign and perverted god, and it coloured my view of everything that afternoon - even the coconuts. The villagers sold us some and split them open for us. They are almost perfectly designed. You first make a hole and drink the milk, then you split open the nut with a machete and slice off a segment of the shell, which forms a perfect implement for scooping out the coconut flesh inside. What makes you wonder about the nature of this god character is that he creates something that is so perfectly designed to be of benefit to human beings and then hangs it twenty feet above their heads on a tree with no branches. Here's a good trick, let's see how they cope with this. Oh, look! They've managed to find a way of climbing the tree. I didn't think they'd be able to do that. All right, let's see them get the thing open. Hmm, so they've found out how to temper steel now, have they? OK, no more Mr Nice Guy. Next time they go up that tree I'll have a dragon waiting for them at the bottom. I can only think that the business with the apple must have upset him more than I realised.
--Douglas Adams
Yes, this is my website:
Jungle-Eyes Productions
Yes, this is my Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jadewolf/
And read my favorite journalists online:
Robert Fisk - the Independent Online
Hunter S. Thompson - Tribute Site

My Interests



Zappa (my border collie), photography, scuba diving, horseback riding, the sea, kayaking, travel, the Middle East, foreign languages, Arabic, Latin, reading, fishkeeping, politics, current events, history, different cultures, journalism, marine biology, Nikon cameras, and new photographic techniques, and more.

I'd like to meet:

In general, I do NOT add people who I do not already know.
That is all, carry on.

Music:

Cream, Morphine, Les Claypool, Rolling Stones, Drive-By Truckers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus, Jimmy Buffett, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, Green Day, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, Oysterhead, the Doors, Pink Floyd, Galactic, Janis Joplin, the Beatles, the Codetalkers, North Mississippi All-Stars, Presidents of the United States of America, Sublime, Michael Hedges, Deep Banana Blackout, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Metallica, Frank Zappa, Travelling Wilburys, Tenacious D, ethnic and world music, and so on.

Movies:

Specific Movies: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Lawrence of Arabia, Passage to India, Indiana Jones, Kill Bill, Pirates of the Caribbean, Day of the Dolphin, Jaws, Whale Rider, Key Largo, Maltese Falcon, Syriana, James Bond, Star Wars, Four Rooms, Back to the Future, Thelma & Louise, Fight Club, Office Space, Dogma, Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Godfather, Rear Window, Time Machine, Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds (both the 1953 & 2005 versions), and many others.

Genres: Film noir, independent film, early scifi, good ol' action / adventure flicks

Directors & Actors: Alfred Hitchcock, Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, David Lean, Steven Spielberg, Terry Gilliam, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Ghassan Massoud, Omar Sharif, and Johnny Depp (mm!)

Recently Seen: Mongol

Television:

Not really interested in much TV and I don't have cable. I'll occasionally watch the Simpsons or House M.D., though.

Books:

Favorite Authors: Hunter S. Thompson, Robert Fisk, Douglas Adams, Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe, Anne McCaffery, Larry Niven, Alan Dean Foster, Michael Crichton, Shakespeare, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Ian Flemming, Chaucer, H.G. Wells, Catullus, Cicero, Sophocles, Euripides, Christina Dodwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Khalil Gibran
Favorite Books: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Kingdom of Fear, Brave New World, Macbeth, 1984, Last Chance to See, Gone with the Wind, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Dolphin Chronicles, Great Gatsby, Hidden Lives of Dogs, A Perfect Storm, The Sea Around Us, Alas Babylon,
Currently Reading: A History of the Arab Peoples (Albert Hourani)
Recently Read/ReRead: The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini), Sailing Alone Around the World (Joshua Slocum), Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West (Benazir Bhutto), Lads Before the Wind (Karen Pryor), See No Evil (Robert Baer), Sleeping with the Devil (Robert Baer), The Great War for Civilisation (Robert Fisk), The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (Amin Maalouf), Seven Pillars of Wisdom (T.E. Lawrence), Ringworld (Larry Niven), A Traveller On Horseback In Eastern Turkey And Iran (Christina Dodwell), South of the Pumphouse (Les Claypool), Pirate Hunter (Richard Zacks), Rum Diary (Hunter S. Thompson), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling), To Have or To Have Not (Ernest Hemingway)

Heroes:

Hunter S. Thompson, Xenophon, Alois Podhajsky, Federico Caprilli, Charles Darwin, Robert Fisk, Benazir Bhutto, Joshua Slocum, Christina Dodwell, Ken Kesey, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Emille Gagnan, Lotte Hass, Ken Norris, Karen Pryor, Randy Wells, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Danny Clinch, Jim Marshall, Annie Leibovitz, and so forth.