I played many hours of SEGA as a child

So, I'd like to come clean while I can: I absorbed a large portion of my vocabulary from video games and from playing Magic. Does that make me a bad person?

*

Art Revival

Opens this Friday - 814 Edgewood Avenue.

*

Fafnir is dead, and so is Bergman

Last week, the British Museum revealed the discovery of an honest-to-God Viking hoard. The treasure, a collected stash of more than 8,000 silver coins, chains, and amulets (and no dragon!), would have been worthy of the finest of Celtic man-heroes. Sorry Sigfried, Beowulf: it looks like you missed your chance.


Also, Seventh Seal director Ingmar Bergman died on Monday. I have to admit that I know little about the man's work, but I found Peter Bradshaw's piece especially illuminating. Bradshaw is a critic that isn't afraid to pull punches, but he can achieve moments of surprising accessibility and candor. For example, check his take on Grindhouse.

Bergman: a Life in Pictures.

Be cleansed and rejoice, ye Faithful

TindelMichi and a handful of other artists are putting up a new show this weekend. They're calling it a Sunday Southern Art Revival. (Despite the name, the opening is happening Friday)

I expect good things. I have a paper flyer, but I don't have a digital image at the moment. It looks like a creepy preacher guy doing some sort of occult rainbow-connection thing with his palms...

*

God, I am so completely hung over. But I now own an Apple. My Apple loves me, and I love it. (My last computer had a broken sound card; it was a piece of shit.)

I created a radio station on Pandora loosely based on the Ninja Tune sound. Plenty of funky beats, sampledelia, and smooth DJ action. It makes me happy.

Also, this Daft Punk music video by Michel Gondry makes me very, very happy. Dancing skeletons, mummies, and robots: if I could live in a world like that, my life would be complete.

*

Radio

Alcove - Tonight.

Show info here.


*

bad dreams?

[ * ]

towerWatchtowerWatchtowerWatch

Upon its completion, the Burj Dubai is slated to become the tallest man-made structure in the world. It will surpass the Taipei 101, a skyscraper in Taiwan, as humankind's tallest (that is, phallic) architectural display. The message is fairly simple: "Hey Westerners, Dubai is a big deal."

As economic development sweeps over parts of Asia and certain oil countries, more and more towers will be erected in our sister hemisphere. It's an interesting process.


I'm sure there are plenty of other curious, rapidly developing cities out there. Doha is another oil country capital, featuring the almost extraterrestrial Aspire Tower (below). And Noida, India, (also below) is a city named after a governmental entity.





















Wierd.

**

I was fairly impressed by Alex "Bask" Hostomsky

at the Foundation One show, Double Vision, last weekend.


( It's still up - if you can make it during their regular gallery hours. Unfortunately, I didn't win the autographed comic book, and it made me very sad. ) Bask's images are strong, and he demonstrates a sensitivity to the wood, canvas, and found object surfaces he uses.

*(image left = from an earlier Bask show)










Oh, and is anyone going to the National Black Arts Festival ?
I'm curious.






















(image above = Radcliffe Bailey)

%

Everything profound loves a mask; the most profound things even have a hatred for image and parable. Might not nothing less than the antithesis be the proper disguise for the shame of a god walking abroad?

-Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Part 2

Hee Hee !!

What?


*

Franz Illustrated: R. Crumb's Kafka

I don't do recommendations often, but

R. Crumb's graphic novel on Franz Kafka is a wonderful (and deeply informative) read. Whether you like Kafka or not, the illustrations are fun and are inked with an appropriately dark sense of humor.

These days, Crumb has evidently become mainstream enough that his Kafka can be found at most every Barnes & Noble (where you can pick it up and flip through without having to pay a dime). It's good.














Peter Kuper (image above, at left) also illustrated a comic version of "The Metamorphosis", but it may be harder to find.

But - I'm sorry to say - neither comic will really substitute for reading a Franz Kafka novel in full. (And there's certainly more to the guy than his short stories...)

*

Today, they took down

the lobby exhibit in the building where I work.






















It was kind of traditional ... (in that Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood sort of way). I can't say that I was much of a fan. The next show, unfortunately, isn't much of an improvement either. The pictures look like technicolor knock-offs of Edward Hopper. Although I really like the building's exterior, the interior tends to get under my skin. And those gold-and-faux-wood elevators?

Yikes.

*

*&

^^
Folks who can sufficiently demonstrate to me:

1. why you are cool;
2. how cool you are; and

3. why i should believe you, you freaking liar!

I will by you one hip t-shirt.
For real(z)!

*

2014

These people
(living in two different cities
on the same continent),

reacting to the same news announcement

in wildly different ways.
Strange.

*

Watch out for Deconform

There is a strong possibility that I will be working on the next issue of Deconform Magazine sometime in the near future. Deconform is a smart, youthful (and free) forum for the Atlanta arts community.

Special thanks to Deconform co-founders Sandra Kwak and Todd Woodlan.

More details soon.

*

Guest? Workers?

My new line of work has thrust me into the world of immigration and international employment law. It's not as cerebral as it sounds; we basically respond to clients' needs on a daily basis, pushing around (tons) of visa forms left and right.

As far as I can tell, the Z visa has almost no impact on our work. The push for anti-immigration legislation, however, does. Immensely. Blue collar labor policies covered by "guest worker" programs - the stuff we hear about on TV - represent only part of the immigration issue. You hear very little about "business" immigration (corporate transfers), which accounts for a huge portion of immigration traffic through the U.S. The issue is incredibly complicated, and watching TV does little to help sort things out.

It's a swamp out there.

*

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

At least five of the following are necessary for a diagnosis:

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
4. requires excessive admiration
5. strong sense of entitlement
6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
9. arrogant affect.

(number two and three are real killers...

like reflective surfaces? I do.)

**

This Monday, I practiced

the dance steps for the Godzilla-stomp all over the LSAT.

And I cackled.

(even though the new job entails massive amounts of time in front of a computer,
my free time has diminished dramatically these past two weeks ...

this must change.)

*

Naked ! - Bloggers in Creative Loafing

This week's Creative Loafing featured an article on five Atlanta area bloggers

Peach Pundit - Although Peach Pundit is devotedly conservative, CL praises it as a reliably up-to-date GA politics resource. The blog reportedly hosted an anonymous debate between Georgia Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson and Lt. Governor Casey Cagle during this legislative session.

I Saw It on Ponce - a site devoted to the strange local attractions common to Ponce De Leon Ave., including "naked men masturbating in the street," quotes CL.

Peach Screed - a journalist covers local issues while throwing (well-deserved) insults at the AJC.

Cable & Tweed - A "Dixie music blog." Blogger Rich Vining posts broadcasts of Atlanta area concerts, covering high profile bands as well as local up-and-coming gems.

...and finally:

Inside the Oversexed Mind of Gloria Brame - sex therapist Dr. Gloria Brame shares her wisdom on the horizontal (or acrobatically vertical) limbo. Check Fridays for her weekly "erotic art show:"






















Today's pics include
an Ottoman harem by Picasso (above)

...and Wow, that guy looks happy !






















**

Roses = Yum Yum !!

Monster like eat yum yum roses.

Monster like yum yum Bacon

Yum yum Bacon quiz = fun.

Yah-bu-lon.

*

Are weekends

supposed to be exhausting?

Ways I occupied myself Memorial Day weekend instead of going to the beach:

- packing up and cleaning out my apartment
- destroying broken/useless furniture objects
- enjoying the Broadstrokes opening at Alcove
- enjoying complimentary booze
- filming more scenes for Livy's absurd mobster comedy
- reading Neuromancer
- wishing Adam farewell and good luck in Chicago

I'll finish moving to Kirkwood within the week, and I start a brand new job Monday morning. Hope my head stops spinning.

*

& ... a flyer*

*

... & more June Stuff

Alcove Gallery
“Broadstrokes: A Showcase of Four Female Painters”
Jenna Colby, Emmy Dudley, Laurel Hausler, & LiShinault
Opens Friday, May 25 7-11pm with music by Cinetrope
Show runs through June 22.

Beep Beep Gallery
“Crawl Space” Bryan Westberry - through June 10.

Lenny’s Bar
Youngblood Fundraiser - June 2nd.

Youngblood Gallery
MINT “Take Flight” - June 7-11, Opens June 9.

Flex Space
“History of the Future Show” - Opens June 8th.

Foundation One Gallery
Groundwork - through June 23.
- and
Derek Hess and BASK “Double Vision” - July 7-11
Opens July 14.

*

Love-struck Robots

Anniversary

For folks willing try something off the beaten path, Brenda Norbeck and Josh Ford’s high energy performance piece, “Anniversary,” is a guaranteed good time. Described by the artists as a “sci-fi comedy,” the performance is a playful investigation of 21st century married life. Mixing political satire with a pleasantly bizarre brand of humor, “Anniversary” follows a backwards narrative structure similar to the film, Memento.

The piece dramatizes the adrenaline highs and disillusioned lows of marriage against the backdrop of an absurdly high-tech American landscape. The country, rocked by a mysterious terrorist attack, elects its first robot president, and the snack food franchise, Frito Lay, becomes the holy symbol of an emotionless commercial dystopia.

The performance is the couple’s inaugural piece as Session 2, a brand new Atlanta theatre group. Be prepared: the show can be a little disorienting, and like many grassroots-variety performance acts, “Anniversary” runs on a *low* production budget. Keeping that in mind, “Anniversary” is as personal as it is hysterical. Session 2 succeeds in creating an emotionally stimulating, laugh-out-loud experience.

“Anniversary” runs Fridays at 8 and Sundays at 7 from May 11 - June 4 at Blank Stage Theatre, located in the Artisan Resource Center in Marietta. Tickets are $8 at the door. Don’t miss the final weekend performances on June 1 and June 3. Definitely worth the drive.

http://www.myspace.com/session_2

Artisan Resource Center

The Artisan space is worth its own mention. Featuring an eclectic handful of Atlanta artists and hosting a number of workshops, performances, and film screenings, Artisan is a venue with a lot of promise. The gallery’s head guy, Brent Brooks, just finished a screening of his original film, Art of Suicide. Filmed primarily in Athens, GA, the movie explores the lives of four struggling art school graduates. Brooks interrogates a number of familiar themes related to death, the “art market,” and “suffering for one’s art.” If the movie could be summarized as a question, it would be something like this one:

“Does a great artist like Van Gogh have to commit suicide just to sell a few paintings?”

Brooks plans to take Art of Suicide to film festivals later this year.

http://www.blankstageproductions.com/

http://www.artisanresourcecenter.net/

**

Wow ...

Damien Hirst is fairly new to me. He's done an intense variety of projects, including stuff with formaldehyde and dead sharks...

His Superstition series (one pictured above) is pretty amazing. It's mixed media on canvas using mostly preserved - that is, real - butterflies to make cathedral window designs. Try to pull up the Flash viewer on the linked site.

*

TindelMichi: Southern "Folk Graffiti"

Standing in front of a collaborative studio space on DeKalb Avenue, I tossed painter John Tindel a minefield-of-a-question, “What is it about your work that represents the South?” The artist, who was walking with a cane due to an injury last month, returned with a varied response.

“Visually, so much of what we do is experiment,” he answered, “we call it a kind of ‘folk graffiti.’” John Tindel and fellow artist Michi call their collaboration TindelMichi, adding the affectionate tagline, “Two Fat Southern Boys that Paint.” Their work combines regional humor with a flare for commercial design and Pop as well as a healthy taste for old Cadillac convertibles, fried chicken, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Tindel and Michi’s paintings are as flashy and cosmopolitan as their images are infused with a delicate sensitivity for Southern culture.

For examples, check out the artists’ work on the web. Go to TheCreativeLife.com and click on the thumbnails at left.

The deceptively simple image, CottonMouth Kin, offers the careful viewer a handful of interpretive options. A cow wearing a rather gloomy expression stands with its back to a horizon suggestive of anxieties about the past juxtaposed with the product logos of the commercialized present. The viewer is invited to enter the painting through the cow, whose pink star-shaped mark links it to a silhouette of a Confederate-era steamer in the background. By chance, the symbolism is strangely similar to the star-marked sheep of the novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami.

In Tindel and Michi’s painting, the cow wears its pink star and somewhat droopy angel wings with little mirth. The smoky plume of the ship, which vaguely resembles the historical C.S. City of Vicksburg is inscribed with the crossed-out letters “C-O-N.” Like several of the collaborators’ other works, the piece contains stylistic shout-outs to artists like Basquiat, and in the sky overhead, an eyeball reminiscent of Guernica judges the landscape below. Just as in Picasso’s painting, the innocence of rural livestock - here set off by lime and baby blue - contrasts with the grit of history, held prisoner by that ominous, patriarchal gaze.

“We want so much to create this unique Atlanta art experience,” Tindel elaborates, “we want to take you in, give you food and cornbread, and talk with you and tell stories.” This story-telling process is an important part of the artists’ collaboration. Tindel describes his painting sessions with Michi as “less so much a duel and more of a dialog.” The dialog has a discernable effect on their paintings. Visually impressive, the images also contain dialect puns such as “can’t never could” and “Jackson-Potluck.”

The two artists designed a recent show that centered on the real life story of a mid 20th century Alabama bootlegger. Tindel explains, “We staged this show as if [the bootlegger] was actually the one throwing a party for all of our guests.” Tindel and Michi invited the living descendents of the bootlegger to join the celebration. This dialectic between narrative and art is part of what makes the TindelMichi project unique. The artists have made an effort to use these Southern narratives to energize their openings and events without crossing the line into gimmick.

“There’s a balance between the art and the marketing,” Tindel continues. Still, the two artists like to have a good time. In the past, TindelMichi shows have at various times featured a 1920 Rolls-Royce parked on site, authentic mint juleps (and, of course, PBR), and a buffet complete with 150 pounds of fried chicken.

Tindel, who became a father recently, is looking out for the next change in his style. “I was painting like 18 hours at a time,” he explains, “now I either do tons of little drawings or I paint something over a long period, with very little work each time I sit down.” Having a child, though, does promise to expand Tindel’s repertoire of images. He says laughingly, “One day I’m drawing a helicopter, and the kid says ‘helicopter!’ It’s great.”

Also published at:
http://artfaceoff.com/blogs/leaders/?p=89

For more info:
http://www.thecreativelife.com/MAIN/index.html
http://www.johntindel.com/2005/artwork.htm

***

Markham / Millet

... I just remembered this other painting/poem combo:

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?

The painting is called L'homme à la houe by Millet. He was a realist - which during his time probably meant you were a socialist. (which certainly comes through in Markham's poem)

*

28 w$$k$ later?

Spiderman, etc. So many sequels...
I just know the next thing will be something like

"28 lEAP yEARS lATER:
a post-post apocalyptic thriller."

**

Jeezus, man.

H. C. Warner

Painter and gallery owner H. C. Warner describes his vision for Alcove Gallery in readily understandable terms. “I’d like it to be like Wonka,” he stated in an interview earlier this year, “we could even sell chocolate - I wouldn’t mind.” Pleasantly unpretentious and alive with childlike exuberance, the works displayed at Warner’s art space deliver a refreshingly delicious visual experience. The gallery’s website has thumbnails of featured artists as well as a link to Warner’s own work.

Warner explains that Alcove’s name was chosen for its suggestive double meaning. “Alcove” is a synonym for “recess,” which could designate an enclosed space as well as that period of time when school kids run wild. Located near the heart of Atlanta’s heavily commercialized Buckhead district, Alcove is a welcome diversion from the mainstream. Wandering into Alcove is like discovering one of Wonka’s golden tickets. Compared to its Bennett Street neighbors, this gallery glimmers like gold.

Alcove artists are an eclectic group, reflecting a variety of influences such as folk art, graffiti, comic books, and anime. The vibrant, optimistic yet sometimes hauntingly disturbing works compliment each other with a similarly youthful energy. Warner says his management philosophy is to “treat everyone who walks in the door as a brother or sister.”

Although Warner typically reserves the space for Alcove artists, he made an exception this spring for an exhibition of his own work entitled “Circles.” The collection revolves around the theme of the circus, addressing both the innocent folly of youth and the cyclical mania of adult life. “We all have these visions based on childhood fantasy,” he elaborates, “we don’t see the darkness but its all there, and it’s all part of cycle.”

Warner’s work continues to evolve, but he follows a consistently eclectic style of his own. Clouds of nebulae bubble and boil the color of blueberry and orange sherbet. Comic book renderings of hornets and crocodiles emerge from the nocturnal swirl, joining a dance with Ben Franklin and other icons of Americana.

Warner remains optimistic about art and about Alcove’s future. “You don’t get into it for the money,” he comments, “I’m a beans and rice kind of guy, and I probably will be for years to come.” An owner who describes gallery operation as the hardest job he has ever done, Warner has been developing his business for over 20 years. He states simply, “This planet is beautiful - as hard as that is to believe sometimes - and so are the people in it.”

***

Nextwave-Zombies !

Warren Ellis' parody hero creations, the Nextwave Squad, make a cameo appearance in Marvel Zombies vs Army of Darkness #3. I've never heard of the book, but it sounds appropriately absurd.

Kudos to Benjamin, aka Stephen Hero, for the timely info.

*

Francis Bacon's Trash

Francis Bacon's trash sold for almost 1 million pounds. Sketches, mutilated paintings, and old check stubs (as in checks for the gas bill, etc.) that some fellow pulled from Bacon's garbage went on auction this week.

Another article by Charlotte Higgins opens with the title, "Artists' ephemera is a load of old rubbish." She continues:

Ulysses is not going to be cracked wide open because one has beheld a pair of James Joyce's spectacles. And yet that did not stop Sotheby's from auctioning them off a few years back, along with a medal he once won in a singing competition

You've gotta love those Guardian writers and their deliciously scathing honesty.

*

"Unmodern" Architecture

The Helicon Building, The Hague

Soeters of Amsterdam challenges boring architecture with aggressive ziggurat-inpsired designs. He calls it "unmodern" architecture.

Worth 100

Tracking Neo-populism

On a lark, my history major buddies have been throwing around a number of absurd arguments about "neo-populism" for the past two weeks. We were all still jazzed-up by the spectacular televised exchanges between Bill O'Reilly and Stephen Colbert. At the time, neo-populism was just another made-up term that described the type of "thinking from the gut" anti-intellectualism espoused by media pundits.

The thing is, neo-populism turned out to be a *real* movement in Latin America and possibly even in the United States. South American leaders Alberto Fujimori and Carlos Menem are cited by scholars as neo-populists, and the Midwest Populist Party has used the same term to describe Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester. Their website is kind of scary.

Naturally, Wikipedia had to be updated.

*

Ceci n'est pas une jello shot

this is not a jello shot

it is an allusion made in bad taste.

------
See you later, Ben.
Au revoir, bon voyage, and all that shit.

On Blogging

Guardian ran these two articles on the art of criticism and the new role of bloggers in the journalistic process. Food for thought:

Getting down and dirty in the blogosphere brawl by Dorian Lynskey

"This is just one front in a wide-ranging battle between the blogosphere and so-called old media. In an ideal world, there should be room for both print critics and online ones, with plenty of overlap between them. Good writing is good writing, wherever it appears. But the campaign is in its early days and there are several years' worth of grievances to thrash out before a peace treaty can be agreed."

Getting down and dirty in the blogosphere brawl - part 2 by Peter Bradshaw

"Part of what's happening is that newspapers have, for hundreds of years, been a one-party state, and the net has brought that state to an end. Before the web, there was no serious opposition to the press in the press. Newspapers might express the most virulent opposition to every other institution in British public life: to the Church of England, political parties, the monarchy - anything but the press. Our media sections have nothing like the full-throttle, uncensored criticism of the press routinely expressed in blogs."

*

Secular Conspiracy part I: Plans for Saving the World

It's educational

like Sesame Street, even.

**

Chávez / Chomsky: Hugo Chávez is wacky

Goofy story:

Hugo Chávez boosted Amazon.com sales back in September by plugging Noam Chomsky's book, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance at the United Nations in New York. After publically calling out President Bush as an "ex-alchohlic," a "John Wayne" impersonator, and "the Devil," the Venezuelan president applauded Chomsky for his sustained criticism of American foreign policy since Vietnam. The book instantaneously rose to the top ten after Chávez expressed regret for not having met the scholar before he died.

Chávez, however, was mistaken - Chomsky is not dead. He was alive enough, at least, to submit to an interview later that same week. Although Chomsky may have enjoyed the boosted book sales, he was not flattered.

*

May '68

I've been taking some time as of late to read about history and politics, i.e. - "useful" knowledge of interest to people besides myself. The French seem to like a good riot. I particularly enjoyed these slogans from the May '68 protests:

L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire.

Boredom is counterrevolutionary.

Je t'aime ! Oh ! dites-le avec des pavés !

I love you! Oh, say it with paving stones!

Je suis marxiste tendance Groucho.

I am a Marxist of the Groucho tendency.

That's right - Groucho Marx was a political genius. New Years: we should do wild ghost dances 'till dawn in hopes that he'll return from the grave.

*

Sagittarius

So it's my birthday in Mississippi and my anthropologist buddy, Jacob, is talking to me about linguistics and digging up human bones as a life-long profession, and I presently get the sense that the dame we're talking to has secretly decided that we're bad news (since I've openly described myself as a Democrat) and then Jacob sez' to me,

"So, where were we?"

"Oh, we were saying something like 'Human beings don't know Shit from Shinola.'"

"That's right! ...err Hey, watch out with that drink out here. We don't want no trouble from the Boys in Blue."

"...Gotcha': I guess we're looking out for Monsieur Po-po?"

"Yep. At any rate, it looks like we've Agreed to disagree about Disagreeing."

A raucous erupts from the bar as the blues band steps outside for cigarettes. Cars honking. The smell of BBQ and Budweiser. Your typical Oxford nightlife confusion.

"Nope. I'd have to disagree."

**

Golden Adele

Time ran this article about the recently purchased Klimt painting, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. They are calling the painting the "Golden Adele." Though I do like the painting - it is certainly beautiful - I am very suspicious.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1562173,00.html

Let me explain. In June, the painting was purchased by the New York based Neue Galerie for $135 million. It has been since eclipsed by two modernist paintings, one by Jackson Pollock and one by Willem de Kooning, as the most expensive sale in visual arts history. That's right, one early European modernist followed by two giants of the New York School. In New York. Over $400 million in one year alone.

I certainly do not disaprove of the decisively culturally-minded investment of capital. Nor do I completely disagree with the institution of the museum as an idea. I simply hope that the museum does not become such an institution that its financial girth comes to rival that of, say, the defense budget of the United States. We hope for living art spaces, not over-priced hospitals for dying cultural artifacts.

Atleast, at 4 1/2 feet square, we can appreciate that the painting is bigger than the rather tiny (and in my opinion, horribly uninteresting) Mona Lisa. Although I do prefer the Portrait of Adele to the Mona Lisa, it is only a very minor compliment. Is "Too Much Being Made On Nazi Art?" I think so.

List of Most Expensive Paintings

*

Rock

Wiki discussions on Stephen Colbert at the White House

**

gradually approaching,

slowly sense the terrible entrance
into the True Sphere of Sagittarius
staring into the lunatic deep

centaurs understand.

**

Political record and platforms

This line appeared on the Wikipedia entry for Nancy Pelosi sometime on November 13th. It did not exist 5 days earlier:

Pelosi is generally considered to be a far leftliberal in American politics.^[5]

Notice the lack of space-age between "left" and "liberal." Wikipedia has quarantined the article on the count of what it calls "weasel words."

My theory is that alcohol and perhaps a dose of rage were possibly involved. I love Wikipedia, because it completely changes every single month.

**

On The Metamorphosis

In the past, I've felt more or less indifferent towards "vampire chronicler" Anne Rice. I was impressed, however, when I read her foreword (it's in the Schocken Books edition) to Kafka's wonderfully painful short story:

I was sure that before the end, the story would veer back toward the commonplace. Gregor would turn out to be "dreaming." The rules of realism would ultimately prevail.

Oh, I had a lot to learn about Franz Kafka. With a courage unparalleled in my experience, Kafka forced us to follow Gregor Samsa day to day, in the family home, in his loathsome insect body. The conventional pacing made it all the more harrowing. The solid context in which Gregor expires from contempt, petty cruelty, and finally indifference made it unendurable, yet crucial. Here was a story that defied logic completely and with complete conviction and it meant something.

Well, well... I think Rice might have hit a bull'seye with that one.

*

Stupidity can be forgiven

But it must be corrected, right-the-fuck-now. Even the Dalai Lama believes that.

***

Yay Demo(cracy) !!!

and she slowly realized

the many subtle ways that this Age of Visual Culture
forces upon us its terrible, kaleidoscopic reality.

the only acceptable

and live-able form of life must be
something like a continuous

and sustained act
of colorful, ever-flowing
Butterfly-
Godzilla-
Stomp.

(Butterfly-Godzilla-Stomp is the name of a dancestep I will create in 2007. It will kill horses, yuppies, and entire platoons of skeleton-ninja shocktroopers.)

**

Please Vote for God'ssake !

they say politics comes from polis which meant something like "your fucking city, right now."

***

What is the secret hidden beneath the Harlequin's smile?

It must be the ancient mystery of eternal servitude and mastery.


*( listen to track number 2 on Silent Shout -- from the Clairmont Lounge to Capital City Country Club, I hear the city cry out the perpetual enslavement of humankind. ethnic-and-otherwise. )

I refuse to go see Spiderman 3

nor will I go see any other Marvel comics movie in the near future, because Marvel comics is cancelling Nextwave. Nextwave is an extremely smart, good-looking, and funny (really funny) series by writer Warren Ellis. One might say it is a highly stylish parody of every other Marvel comic. Furthermore, it is a timely parody that openly pokes fun at our all-too-familiar "war on terror."

Danse macabre

A quote from Frederic Jameson related to the "dance of death." It's all a little over my head, but I find it quite entertaining:

The thought gives new and exemplary meaning to a haunting moment in Renoir's La Regle du jeu, when, at the climax of the costume ball in the chateau, now infiltrated by skeletons waving their lamps and celebrating mortality to the tune of Sain-Saens's Danse macabre, the fat lady pianist, hands in her lap, can be glimpsed staring with rapt melancholia at the skeletal autonomy of the keyboard itself, behind which the piano rolls have taken charge with a vengeance. It is a fable of the work of art at that particular stage of its mechanical reproducibility, gazing at its own alienated power with morbid fascination.

I'm no film expert, but I do at least know that the English title of the movie is The Rules of the Game. It's a black-and-white picture about this extravagant party on some over-sized estate that goes terribly wrong. And then people die.

The Harlequin

(Just some notes. Nothing serious.)

I dreamed of the Harlequin. She came to reset the wheels of history.

Spanish rhythms fuel her Dionysiac stampede. High-fructose Indian corn scattered like eulogy-garlands. Sugarcane-laced manufactories sacrificed to the tropical night. Her carousers embody an eclectic psychomachia, one at once agrarian and cosmopolitan. The city groans and delightfully clatters into a heap, laying down its cruelty-arms for the day. Aquarius painted everywhere in a hauntingly familiar teal-and-maroon Latin glow.

And yet the cigar smoke lingers on the plantation balcony.

Skeletons attacked Mankind in 1958

If you cannot see this photo, go vistit my website.











Click here for uncontestable, videographic proof that skeletons attacked the mortal named "Jason" in 1958. He had argonauts, and, curiously, he was still alive in 50's. And he was in color.

Skeletons will not fuck around.

Photographs by Joel-Peter Witkin

Skeletons are way more awesome than Ninjas. Seriously.

I was discussing Halloween costumes with my buddy, Jon Carll, and a certain revelation occurred to me:

“Skeletons are way awesome-er than Ninjas.”

Yes, I think I see quite clearly now. I must deliver this delicious skeleton-Gospel to the good people of this planet. Before it is too late.

I have been hired

to write "light" legislation, starting December 16th. I will wear a tie, and I will commute to the capitol building down next to Georgia State. I will be a cog. A well-paid cog, but a cog nonetheless.

It's a funny job - I will basically take over a lot of bulk-paperwork that technically falls beneath the qualifications of your average attorney. Here's a paraphrased example:

Commending Prophetess Michelle Johansson; and for other purposes.

WHEREAS, Prophetess Dr. Michelle Johansson is an internationally acclaimed Bible teacher, prophet, psalmist, and media personality; and

WHEREAS, she is the best selling author of Why the Universe Loves Me, selling more than 600,00 copies in less than a year, From Capricorn to Solomon, and several other ground breaking books . . .

(names have been changed for legality reasons. otherwise, this is real. yep.)

New to Me: Warren Ellis

Though I realize the book started back in '97, Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan struck me as some of some of the best writing I have seen - comics, novels, anything. The prose is aggressive: seething, violent, and dirty with occasional moments of radiant lucidity. Additionally, the book is intensely political. Art does not have to be socially disengaged.

A passage from trade paperback volume 5:

Terrible goddamn place. Some days it's like some bastard nailed a ticket for the bus tour down to fucking Hell to the front of my brain. For every wild everything- depends-on-it first-week- of- being- madly-in-love kiss on a streetcorner, for every beautiful woman stopping to feel the sun on her face and every child dancing in clean rain, there's a kid living in its own shit in a dumpster somewhere wile DAddy sells his ass for milk money, tanks breaking down unwanted houses just to stop homeless people squatting there ... Time was this place didn't make sense and I would live with it. Either it's changed, or I have.

There's all the good things on this ticket and pure fucking evil too. And all the same, I'm going down with you.

Wooster Collective

Word, check it.

Wooster Collective is a little hotspot community for street artists and street art enthusiasts. This piece was assembled entirely out of rubik's cubes. Tons of excellent images.

New to Me: James Joyce

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Though I am sure the book is required reading for most English major types, I was thoroughly impressed by the description of Stephen Dedalus' artistic epiphany - some devastatingly life-transforming satori:

- Stephaneforos!
His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhod, spurning her graveclothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.

Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!