Archive for January, 2007
28 items.
Grand Canyon Tourists Lunching, Autumn 2006
Digital painting (with photos by artist for reference)
30 by 20 in.
2007
At the Maswik Lodge at the Grand Canyon.
”Comment
This is my last post. For it I wanted to use this photo by The Voice of Eye, at Flickr, but I was unable to get Flickr to recognize my blog, which it needed to do if I was going to post the picture.
The Voice of Eye has been loading pics up to Flickr showing some of what’s going on in New Orleans post Katrina. The picture I wanted to use today is called “Acrobalance” and is from January 14, when Le Prato came from Lille France to New Orleans, to perform a free show “on a mission of healing through circus arts”.
The photo is a beautiful capture of Anne de Buck and Mikis Minier-Matsakis performing the Living Mannequin act. But it is more than just that. It occurred to me, as I looked at it, that this photo of generous spirit was one of the few I’d ever seen that runs counter the American “do it yourself” pull yourself up by your bootstraps ethic which breeds the sense of the recipient of generosity as a freak, a wall separating that is the recipient’s humanity removed and even transferred to the giver who becomes superhuman. That prejudice isn’t exhibited in the photo of these individuals performing before their audience. They are giving something of themselves, and in a sense the audience is giving something back by accepting that gift and being there for them. One feels the transaction of the performers wanting to give of themselves through their art and that they also seem to comprehend the especial relationship they have with the audience which is accepting and thanking them through their appreciation of the performers’ gift of their skills. They need each other. One has a sense of the performers’ valuing those for whom they’re performing, and the audience valuing them.
Americans have long prided themselves on their do-it-yourself bootstraps ethic, which is by and large a myth. It’s not how the country was made. No, the country and its great resources were taken and parceled out and there were a lot of resources to make some rich–including human resources. But I don’t want to get into here, not now, not too deeply, how the do-it-yourself bootstraps ethic is a myth. I just wanted to point out that it is a myth, that it was sold and accepted, that it has been passed along in folklore in books in movies. That it has been the pride of America. The myth helped the conservative middle class torch themselves in the past few decades, filling the pockets of big business. The American “I can do it myself” pyramid scheme that if you can find enough people to serve as your raft you can raise yourself above them, and they can do the same in turn. Those left at the bottom of the pyramid, for whatever reason, well, however needed they are they didn’t believe big enough and their children shall pay to the seventh generation for it as they sink under the waters.
Truth be told, not many people make it on their own, but usually that’s not going to be as good a story.
How government and business and religion in America works is pretty abusive. I’ve touched a little the past two days on post-punk bloodletting (or pseudo) angst and how I don’t buy it as anything other than part of the system absolving abuse through fashion and speeding it on. I just wanted to mention that here, because I don’t want my inclination to be suspicious of it to be confused with simple matters of taste, when I see it as buying into and glamorizing systems that thrive on abusive exchange.
I know it seems like I’m getting away from the subject of New Orleans here, but i’m not. Nor was this post intended to be just concerning New Orleans.
New Orleans sank. For all intents and purposes it sank. It’s still in dire need down there at Louisiana’s tip. Here come some people from France who wanted to share a mission of healing through circus arts. Quite a turn-around. America is good at sending missionaries, not receiving them. America’s missionaries not infrequently want those to whom they mission to be more like them, and part of their mission is to accomplish this task. But a circus act? Hell, what can it do but perform and lift your spirits. They use what they have, their talents, to give a sense of one’s eyes having been opened just a little wider perhaps…food and shelter being primal concerns but not being all that there is to life. They do it in a way that communicates how everyone has something unique for which they’d like to be celebrated. They can either put a person back in touch with that knowledge or awaken it, such as in children who see the circus and seeing it become entranced with it as a venue through which they could possibly realize themselves…as a clown, as an acrobat, as a daredevil rider.
Anyway, that’s all. I just hope you go and take a look at the photo in question. I think it’s a special one and I just wanted to give a nod to it before signing off. Didn’t want to turn this into an essay.
As I noted at the top of the post that is all too for this blog. It won’t be resuscitated and I don’t plan to be starting any new blog.
Those who have sometimes came by to visit, thank you, and those who sometimes commented, thank you, I appreciated your feedback.
Here’s hoping a circus goes riding by, restoring your spirit, if ever you should need it.
The DIA kids website, where inquiring children can learn about old Soviet howitzers
January 31st, 2007 |Posted In: General
Continuing my glance throughs of of the kiddy sections of government websites, at the Defense Intelligence Agency children’s website they don’t even try to offer an explanation on what they’re about to inquiring children. There are no whats, hows, whys. One gets straight to the games, a soldier in camouflage fatigues standing in front of a map of the world (USA center), asking you to help them out by selecting a mission to pursue from the Mission Control Panel.
The missions offered?
You can put together jigsaw puzzles of Soviet military machinery such as the nuclear-capable 122-mm self-propelled howitzer. “Why cold war Soviet military machinery?” I wondered.
“It doesn’t look like a children’s area,” said H.o.p., who has become annoyingly caught up with online gaming and is like to drive me nuts with it.
One can play the Hangman game and spell out “Defense Intelligence Agency” over a background image of a tank. Considering the uhm unfortunate outcomes of the recent hangings in Iraq, seemed to me that the Hangman game was one the DIA would have immediately taken down from the website. But, hey, that’s just me and what I’d have been inclined to do. (The net can build such odd random meaningless links. After looking at the DIA kid website I went over to DeviantArt and visited some of the galleries of today’s select Deviants. In one is a come-hither Czech model fashionably strangling herself with a noose to the tune of glamor soft lighting, but at least it’s a woman scarfing herself right? and so can attract no “Spinal Tap” slapdowns on leashed boot-licking sexism, because it’s the woman herself having a good old time with the self-drawn noose, which she really wants, really. And I only mention it because then I found in another gallery a fun picture of a too anxious 3d caterpillar taking off from the end of a leaf with the help of a blue set of constructed wings [didn't I tell you they were forcing me to the realm of cute], an image I still had open when I checked Tild’s page, saw a link to a place called Linda’s tutorials, and just to see what they were offering in Photoshop I clicked on a basic free tutorial and with that first click brought up a caterpillar in the same position perched at the end of a leaf. Random generation of meaningless echos. People like pictures of caterpillars. The DIA hangman has nothing to do with sexy fun with a noose has nothing to do with the fraternity hazing confused with torture. But I still think the Hangman game is a poor choice for the DIA kids website. It’s just too…well…up front.)
Back to the DIA kids website. In Maze Collision you try to beat your enemy to the helicopter. You are green. Your enemy is red. If you’ve played the first-offered Jigsaw Puzzles then you’ve already encountered the term “red army”. A meaningless echo? I dunno.
Some other games are Simon (recall of sequences of colors over the DIA emblem), Memory (match-up pics of different military vehicles), Document Sort (drag speedy papers into a folder and rise through the ranks) and Air Combat (shoot at planes shooting at you).
The closest you get to learning anything about the DIA is via the Word Search game in which you find a selection of given words in a puzzle, the categories offered being DIA Terms, Operations, DIA History and Vehicles.
DIA History words are coldwar, cubanmissile, vietnamwar, sovietinvasion, dominoeffect, grenada, nicaragua, counternarcotic, justcause, earnestwill, gulfwar, diabadge, embassybombings, nittearms, usscole and waronterror.
DIA Operations are iraqifreedom, frequentwind, eveninglight, earnestwill, eldoradocanyon, justcause, promoteliberty, desertshield, desertstorm, restorehope, providepromise, upholddemocracy, desertstrike.
Never mind some of these names, but they will certainly say something to the children, just as they are meant to guide our own thoughts on the matter. Wouldn’t you like to Restore Hope? Provide Promise? Have Just Cause and Earnest Will? Frequent Wind is not so enticing. I don’t believe I’d like to have that because it sounds more like an embarrassing problem.
H.o.p. played Simon and Air Combat but was not so impressed that he wanted to play them more than once, and not longer than a few seconds, and not so impressed that he wanted to play anything else. Just fine by me. He wandered off to draw.
Now what was I going to write about?
Never mind. Today I’m instead going to display the knot in my knickers over how the popular photography and digital manips at DeviantArt (which does have some great artists, not saying it doesn’t) generally make me want to scream because it’s mostly, usually women with their bare butts in the air or people pretending to be covered with fake blood (categorized “emotive”, usually women) or people (usually women) being tied up with things or licking dangerously sharp things or showing off pointy shoes, and all of it usually looking very fashionable with great lighting and lots of finesse and lots of technical talent and good equipment aiding and abetting. Never mind the bad teen art. I expect bad teen art. But damn I get tired of the same thing over and over again and I think what the f*k is wrong with your brain that you believe slashed up flesh and bruises are glossy deviant fun–though what’s so deviant about it when so many are in on the look is beyond me. All it does is take me back to the dying days of punk (late 1970s) when it began to be a look to be purchased in stores and what was more anti-punk than teenyboppers tripping down to the corner fashionata and buying themselves a piece of oleo-that-hopefully-passes-off-as-butter rebellion. All it seems to me is to be purchasing into an abusive status quo which is the same as it ever was, only dolled up a bit differently so that the sheep can primp on how radical they are.
That it’s as magazine glossy as it is says something about the look. Some could argue, “It’s just showing the truth of the inner pain!” But that’s not what’s up. No, what’s up is a style that is old now, not new, and non-shock full of irrelevance. (And this coming from a person who likes irrelevance.) What teeth it has are those directly borrowed from mainstream commercialism.
In retaliation, I find myself being attracted to works that feature lots of cute pink.
I’m not a pink person. I’m not a cutesy-inclined person. So something’s up when I find myself going through DeviantArt pictures, clicking on cutesy pink and sunny green pics.
And all those photos and photo manips and paintings of women with their bare butts stuck in your face that garner 5 pages of comments on “Brilliant photograph!” when what the comment means is “I love not having to pay for this hot piece of virtual ass!”
But I’d rather have those than the sexed up photo of the girl with the fish hook through her lip. “Wow! That’s awesome! Is it real!?” “It’s 110 percent real!” “Oh, wow, that’s even more awesome! Kudos for you finding a model who would do that!” Yeah, kudos. Look at girl with fish hook through her lip, lead her where you want and she’ll go. Ow, ow. She loves the pain. So damn awesome.
So damn “sell me snake oil” stupid.
“But it’s real honest-to-gut what they’re feeling angst!”
Or…
“But it’s fair trade mutual agreement!”
No, it’s really what they’re buying into without any analysis of the process and product. And if this *is* how they feel they’re not sorting out why, how it comes about and what it means. If they were sorting it out, they’d not be glorifying the fish hook. When I was a kid my cat got a fish hook straight through its cheek. My cat flipped out and started throwing itself all around, wanting that fish hook out. But then my cat was sane and knew something about the food chain. With a fish hook through its cheek, my cat sensed it was not on the right end of the food chain. I’m not saying we should approach relationships or society in those terms, but it stands to reason that a barb through your lip isn’t sexy or fun, and leaves you at a severe disadvantage.
“But the bare butt in the face is good, not bad! Sex is good!”
The bare butts in the face being neck to neck as popular as the fish hooks through the lips, however, does not make those bare butts look good. I look at the fish hook through the lip and I then look at the bare butt and somehow, what d’ya know, I think there’s a fish hook there somewhere.
“There, there, now, you’re just an old fashioned prude who doesn’t understand.”
And I think you’re long on vanity fair and short on common sense.
Unsolved Mystery…At Least For Me
January 30th, 2007 |Posted In: General, This Old Apartment (Building)
Been an unusually loud few hours. Our landlord had the heat turned off over the weekend (geez) but it was back on last night and kicking the pipes harder than I’ve heard so far this year. Bang bang bang bang bang, the radiators were rattling and all the pipes leading to it. Bang bang bang bang bang all night long.
And now for the past 20 (maybe longer) minutes there’s been a helicopter buzzing us. Pulse pulse pulse go the blades. Must be longer than that because I kept expecting it go away and finally I went to the front window and stood there for a long while waiting for it to pass into sight, so I could see what kind of chopper it was. Dark dark dark green-black with no visible markings that I could see anyway. Wasn’t a news helicopter. Flying just right above the level of the buildings and down to tree top level on the street below us. So low that as it circled slow slowly around again it dropped down below the next block of buildings (which are slightly below us on a hill) and out of view. That’s low for a helicopter in the city.
Wait…I think it’s gone. Yes, it does seem to be. Good. It was annoying.
Oh, never mind, it’s back.
What was I going to write about?
Now it’s gone.
The helicopter.
Not what I was going to write about.
But now that the helicopter is gone and I’ve stopped puzzling over it I’m called elsewhere and unable to write about what I was going to write about.
The why of the helicopter will be one of those unsolved mysteries. No, not as in woooo-woooo mysteries. Just one of those annoying things where you never get to know why. Someone knows why it was buzzing these buildings for so long but I never will.
Life’s like that.
Science Blogging Fantastic Creatures – The Light Eel
January 29th, 2007 |Posted In: Art-Photos, General
Fantastic Creatures – The Light Eel
2007
H.o.p.’s testimony: “When we went to the aquarium we found this creature. In the tank beside it there was a giant red and black lobster. And beside that one was a little fish with an enormous mouth. And beside that was an ugly big fish with sharp razor teeth. And beside that was a big big shrimp. Those are all weird creatures, but weirder still is no one knows anything about this species of light eel. We are the first to have seen it. I swear I’m not exaggerating.”
That’s H.o.p.’s story and I’m standing by it. Right here. Here I am. Standing by his story.
Grand Canyon Tourist with White Hat
Digital painting (with photo by artist for reference)
28 by 18.66 in.
2007
The photo it’s based on…
The original photo in color was too dark and the white hat woman’s face too muddy to put up.
In some kinds of movies if a character stood at the very height of a look-out and yelled “cheese” to all the tourists, they’d all turn and smile and wave. Another plot, another movie, they’d all ignore you.
Interesting conversation with H.o.p. tonight. We were sitting at the puters after he’d practiced piano (he is now taking piano) and H.o.p. says after a while, “What can I do to keep from floating up?”
Hmmm. Okey-dokey. “You feel like you’re going out of your body sometimes?”
“Yes. Going up. I float up above it.”
I could tell he was worried. “If you don’t want to go up there or want to bring yourself back down, you ground yourself.” I smiled reassuringly and took his hand. “Like this. You take hold of something and really feel it and that can ground you. Like the blanket on the back of your chair. You could take hold of that and feel its weave.”
I could tell he was relieved I didn’t flip out and that was instead grinning at him and holding his hand.
“You’ve done this before?” I asked.
“Yes. I can look down and see you.”
OBE isn’t uncommon. What it is exactly, no one quite knows, though science thinks they may have pinpointed a site in the brain that has something to do with it. And considering he’s dyslexic and that dyslexics (at least some) have the ability to holistically see (or imagine) things from different angles, and H.o.p.’s dyslexic, there’s the dyslexia to consider.
I remember the time I was 13 or so years old, maybe younger, and had one of my more peculiar, emphatic waking OBEs. I became so confused by it that I turned my coke upside down (thinking I was righting it) and poured coke all over the place. May have been just a matter of the dyslexia. In the same dyslexic vein, I have been walking through a store, stopped to look at an item, and turned to face an entirely different world, flipped backwards from what it was, which makes everything look very different and then I have to try to figure out how to get out of there. Usually closing my eyes a couple of times and taking several steps will reorient things back to what they were. But it can still throw you.
So this may be the dyslexia or whatever science now thinks might cause it…or maybe he is looking down and seeing me. Hey, you jeer but I’ve had some odd experiences too and am not going to tell H.o.p.
“Does it worry you?” I asked.
He shook his head yes. “I’m afraid I’m going to fall.”
“You’re not going to fall. OK?”
“OK.”
And hoping to further reassure I told him a number of people felt this, sometimes awake, sometimes sleeping.
As someone who used to (very occasionally still does) design websites, I think they pulled a faux pas
January 27th, 2007 |Posted In: General
Think about it. If you’re a zoo, do you really want the background image of your webpages to be an image replicating (or scan/photo of) leather?
San Antonio, yeah, I know all about the food chain and that it plays 24 hours out on the street and on your grounds. But the choice of a leather background image just somehow doesn’t feel reeeeeally right.
