Big Clouds, Big Scorpions, Doing Stuff

When the Sun sets below the horizon, big clouds and high clouds can sometimes remain in direct light for quite a while after the ground-level landscape goes into shadow. When clouds are big and high, the effect can be extraordinary.

I saw this today to the southeast after sundown.

I didn’t think I had time to fiddle with setting my camera manually, so I just let its automatic sensors do their best. It was a pretty extreme lighting situation and I think the camera did reasonably well.

In this shot, the whole top ridge of the cloud formation is illuminated.

I moved south a little, to get past the power lines and grabbed another shot with more of the foreground. Already the illumination has risen to include just the top of the clouds.

I walked about half a block east and zoomed in a little to frame just the bright clouds and some dark, low clouds. The illumination is at just the tip of the massive cloud bank.

I should have taken one more picture, with the giant clouds completely in shadow, but I didn’t think to do that.

When I was taking the pictures I wasn’t thinking about the sequence of the illumination moving, I was thinking of the great contrast between the illuminated area and everything else. Once the shadow spread over the entire cloud that contrast was lost and I put away my camera.

I wish I had taken one more picture, with the whole cloud in shadow. It would have been a cool sequence. A real photographer would have gotten that final picture.

It really bugs me that I didn’t take a final picture with everything in shadow. It really bugs me that I let my thinking in the moment—my thinking about the great contrast—distract me from the larger, more interesting reality of the sequence of illumination moving up the cloud.

A real photographer would have grabbed more photos regardless of his thinking “in the moment” because a real photographer would have taken for granted that there’s always more going on than you’re thinking about at any given moment.

This really bugs me. But it nicely sets up what I wanted to talk about today.


Even before I saw those clouds, I’d planned on today’s post being about the value of doing stuff even if you’re doing stuff that isn’t done perfectly.


This is a topic close to my heart.


I like writing, and I think I’m reasonably good at it. However, I also like making music and drawing and photography and amateur astronomy and doing little movies and even a couple of other things that don’t make it onto this blog. Since I know I’m not particularly good at any of this other stuff, I spend a lot of time wondering if there is any value—in the larger sense that word—in my doing any of this other stuff, beyond the personal satisfaction, I mean.

And I think there is.

Here is one of the ways I think about this.


Back around 1957, an old-time Hollywood producer—a guy named Jack Deitz—financed a low-budget monster movie called, “The Black Scorpion.” Deitz wasn’t looking to make art or fulfill any personal ambition to make a fine monster movie. He was just trying to crank out the most low-cost product he could manage to crank out to cash in on the popularity of “giant bug” movies back then.

Being a cagey, resourceful Hollywood type, Deitz hired a bunch of fringe people who couldn’t really find work at the big studios, but who could be counted on to deliver acceptable product. His leading man was a little too old to be a leading man, but experienced. His leading lady was attractive but not necessarily a great actress. The script was almost laughable. His main special effects technician—Willis O'Brien—was a famous guy, an extraordinary talent who had created “King Kong” decades earlier. But Willis O’Brien, in 1957, couldn’t get much work because studios didn’t want to pay for his proposed projects. So O’Brien was forced to take low-paying jobs where he couldn’t really create special effects the way he wanted to. And, since he was getting on in years, he hired an assistant who did almost all the work, a young man named Pete Peterson. Peterson had some health issues which made it hard for him to work fast enough to suit the big studios, but he was conscientious and skilled and, like O’Brien, willing to take what he could get, willing to do low-budget work.

It’s tempting to think the result of this penny-pinching and compromise would be a disaster. But that would be a mistake. The movie “The Black Scorpion” is actually a lot of fun to watch.

Almost every particular aspect of the movie is awful, but the end result—somehow—is kind of fun.

I saw it as a kid and even as a kid I realized that the special effects weren’t very special. And I realized the movie had a “thrown together” kind of look to it. But the filmmakers had put together a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. They had crafted one or two reasonably well-made scenes that were exciting. And the whole thing just worked at some weird, low-budget level. It scared me and entertained me and I had a lot of fun watching it.

It’s still fun to watch even if “professional” types are very critical of it. Here is how Tony Dalton and Ray Harryhausen—a close friend of Willis O’Brien (referred to as “Obie”) write about “The Black Scorpion” in their book “A Century of Stop Motion Animation:”

Viewed today, “The Black Scorpion” is most definitely not a classic of model animation; in fact it would be fair to say that it is positively sad. Coming five years after Ray’s innovative “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,” which also had a miniscule budget, the film is made up of stock footage, bad acting and sub-standard effects. It has all the marks of an attempt to cash in on a cycle that by then had almost run its course. It is also apparent that Obie found it difficult to come to terms with using cheaper effects to achieve spectacle. His 3-D sandwich method of animation had been tried and tested over many years but the problem was that nobody could afford it any longer. Certainly not the sort of producers who made films like “The Black Scorpion.”

They’re certainly right, it’s not a “classic of model animation.” But, in its own way, it is a classic. Many low-budget films like “The Giant Gila Monster” or “The Killer Shrews” are as fun to watch today as they were when they were made. These films were not made to be “social documents” or “statements” of any kind. There were simply created to be stories with a beginning, a middle and an end and they were created to be as entertaining, maybe even thrilling, as their filmmakers could manage with whatever meager resources they had available.

These filmmakers certainly knew they weren’t doing anything “good” by traditional Hollywood metrics. But they went ahead and made their films anyway.

And these films—awful by any metric imaginable—have entertained generation after generation of monster-movie fans.

These people tried. They did the best they could do. And though they themselves were almost certainly unhappy with the results, what they created was wonderful.

I love this stuff.

This stuff isn’t “serious.” And, at the same time, this stuff isn’t “parody.” These people knew they didn’t have the resources to do perfect work. But they didn’t set out to poke fun at or trivialize what they were doing. They just did the best they could do with the resources at hand.

I love this stuff.

Regardless of its flaws, I’d rather watch “The Black Scorpion” than just about any big budget Hollywood production that’s come out recently.

It’s something about fun.


It’s something about a creation that was made because a person wanted to make it, rather than a creation that was made because it was a person’s job to make it.


I’m going to end today’s post with a few stills from “The Black Scorpion.” These aren’t the monsters. This is one of the “love scenes” in the movie. It’s awful, but it’s wonderful at the same time.

Here’s the backstory. Giant scorpions are killing people. The hero, a geologist, is about to get lowered down (“I love it when they go down into things”) by a crane into a vast cave where the monsters might be hiding. So he’s in a silly cave costume and “the girl” is all nervous about him going down into the cave. She tells him not to go, to leave it to the police or the army.


He says, “Listen, Doc and I know more about caves than anybody else here.”

She grabs him and gives him a kiss on the cheek.

He grabs her and plants one right on her lips.

She says, “Why did you do that?”

He says, “Maybe I just wanted to see what you would do.”

She says, “What did I do?”

He says, “You did alright.”



It’s awful, not matter how you look at it.

But it’s wonderful, too. At the same time!

I love this stuff.


It’s good to do stuff. I don’t understand exactly why. But if you want to do something and you are serious about doing it, there is something wonderful there. I don’t understand it. Even if something is awful. It’s wonderful, too.

It’s good to do stuff.

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Sex With A Monster: The Musical


Harps And Flutes, Swans And Monsters



Moths, Scorpions And Unreal Women

A Sketchbook Page With No Sketches

There are twenty-four different pencil colors
in the Derwent line of pencils called Graphitint.

Twelve come in the small tin. To acquire the others
you have to buy the full-size, twenty-four tin set.

Along with white, these are the eleven colors
that aren’t included in the small, twelve tin set:

Along with black, these are the eleven colors
included in the tin with a dozen pencils:

These are graphite pencils. They can be smudged, erased.

They can be worked like a simple drawing pencil.

And they can be brushed with water to flow like paint.

All the colors capture the subdued, glowing hues
a watercolor painter achieves with careful
application of the mixed-pigment paint, Payne’s Gray.

As a medium, dry colored pencils often
are used for detailed, realistic renderings.

So far as I know, water-soluble pencils
haven’t yet established a canonical style.

It’s the unknown. It’s the wild you hold in your hand.

It’s the wild you hold in your hand and think about
and you turn it into the opposite of wild.

This is the start. A sketchbook page with no sketches.

I’m going to try giving this sketchbook some thought.

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*



The Wind, Here In The Sea Of Clouds


The Built World Redux—Art And Souvenir


Careful Thoughts And Getting Lost


Pretty Crates Above Train Tracks


Freedom From The Wild/Lost In Metonymy



My Five Celebrity Pencil Cartoons (Annotated)


Noli Me Tangere


The Lost World Of Stacy And The Llama

Weather, Fringe Talk And Debunking

CHICAGO (AP) — For millions of people enduring this week's extreme heat and humidity, it feels like they're living in a pressure cooker. And in a sense, they are.

Much of the United States is trapped under a heat "dome" caused by a huge area of high pressure that's compressing hot, moist air beneath it, leading to miserable temperatures in the mid-90s to low 100s and heat-index levels well above 100 degrees.

"It's hot no matter what you're doing or where you are," said Tim Prader, a 50-year-old construction worker who was taking a break Tuesday at a job site in St. Louis. Although his huge Caterpillar excavator has air conditioning, he couldn't entirely escape. "When you're done for the day, you're ready to eat, drink and hit the couch."

The oppressive conditions extend from the northern Plains states to Texas and from Nebraska to the Ohio Valley. And they're expanding eastward.

When a high pressure system develops in the upper atmosphere, the air below it sinks and compresses because there's more weight on top, causing temperatures in the lower atmosphere to heat up, said Eli Jacks, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Silver Spring, Md.

The dome of high pressure also pushes the jet stream and its drier, cooler air, farther north — it's now well into Canada — while hot, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico circulates clockwise around the dome, traveling farther inland than normal.

(more at the link)

Heat 'dome' traps much of US in pressure cooker

Weather here in the Midwest lately has been HORRIBLE!

And it’s really getting to me. I like peace and quiet. I really like peace and quiet. But this hot weather has been so hot that even at night temperatures only go down a few degrees. Normally in the summer I run my air conditioner during the day and switch it off right before I go to sleep. The cool air usually stays cool until the morning and I can sleep comfortably cool and in a quiet bedroom.


But now the air conditioner has to stay on all night. Humming, clinking, buzzing.


This heat—and the endless humming, clinking and buzzing—is getting on my nerves.

And I’m a guy who perspires. I mean I sweat. So for the most part I need to keep two tee shirts around—one I wear when I go out which pretty much stays soggy from sweat, and one I wear when I get back home which stays pretty dry thanks to the cool air from the noisy air conditioners.


This weather doesn’t work for me. Somebody needs to do something about it. This is the 21st century. This is the George Jetson world. I read science fiction when I was a kid. By now cities are supposed to be under giant glass domes and climate-controlled and all that. We’re supposed to be comfortable all the time.

Damn it, people are working on the flying cars but nobody—so far as I know—is working on the giant glass domes to cover major cities and create climate-controlled wonderlands.

Damn it!

*

I’m not going to link to any fringe sites, but I want to talk about some fringe speculation about the current weather and some debunking that was done even before much of the fringe talk started.

Here is a paragraph from the AP link at the start of this post about the current weather:

“The dome of high pressure also pushes the jet stream and its drier, cooler air, farther north — it's now well into Canada — while hot, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico circulates clockwise around the dome, traveling farther inland than normal.”

So the accepted mechanism behind the current HORRIBLE heat is that hot, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico is the culprit.

Well, some people are wondering if this relates to the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.

The general fringe belief is that temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico are anomalously high because the huge influx of oil into the Gulf from the Deep Water Horizon spill has “de-coupled” the Gulf from the currents circulating in the Atlantic. That allows the Gulf simply to accumulate heat and, so to speak, simmer. A more convoluted fringe belief is that, also, at the same time the Gulf has been de-coupled from the Atlantic, oil continues to leak from deep water fissures and the upwelling oil melts frozen methane hydrate deposits and that process adds to the heat accumulating in the Gulf waters. (Here is some background info on methane hydrates: Methane hydrates and global warming)

So, the fringe thinking goes, the gradually heating Gulf waters change the weather patterns across the US, keeping the jet stream abnormally far north. (There are other suspected consequences of the Gulf “de-coupling” from the Atlantic, but these are the most interesting speculations right now.)


I have no idea if any of that is true.


It all sounds vaguely reasonable to me in an Oliver Stone sort of way, but I’m one of those people who just likes cause-and-effect. I sometimes see causation when the only thing really going on is just random, emergent changes, normal patterns of variation within chaotic (deterministic but non-periodic) complex systems.

And it turns out when some people first talked about the temperature of the Gulf of Mexico possibly impacting US weather, a reasonably smart fellow did a remarkably detailed and data-centric analysis of the suggestion and the current temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico SEEM to be within normal variations which have held steady for decades and decades. Check out the debunking here: Are Gulf Of Mexico Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Near To Record Levels?


Now, I have just one observation about this. The fact that the current high temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico are consistent with past examples of the high range of the temperature variations doesn’t mean that these current high temperatures AREN’T caused by geophysical changes to the Gulf. It is a strong indication that they’re not, but only time will really tell. If the current temperatures remain high for a longer period than the high temperatures existed in the past that would be an indication that something odd is happening.

It’s interesting that the fellow debunking the Gulf speculations threw tons of numbers at his readers, but he never derived an expected periodicity to the past excursions into high temperatures.

That would have been an interesting and testable number.

Everyone interested in this issue could have watched to see if the current high temperatures declined (or remained high) after this-or-that number of weeks as they have in the past.

Still, time will tell.

There are so many smart activists on all sides of the climate-change debate that someone with access to and knowledge of these databases will fire up their copy of Mathematica and create a post, somewhere, with some interesting charts and graphs.

If I hear about them, I’ll re-post them.


Now I’m going to go put in ear plugs and get some sleep.

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Hot Red Earth, Cold Blue Jazz


The Application Of Beyond Understanding

Posh People Squabbling

“Ahem. My Lord. I’d like to volunteer myself
for this task. I want to kill the boy.”

Okay, this is going to be me talking briefly about “Harry Potter.”

I’ve read at a show business site that the concluding movie of the Harry Potter storyline—or, the original storyline as I’m sure it someday will become known, since almost certainly there will be more movies made for the ‘franchise’—is setting all kinds of records. So I’m just going to do one post about this saga of ‘witches’ and ‘magic.’

*

First of all, a disclaimer: I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books and I’ve never seen any of the Harry Potter movies.

However, various people have been enthusiastic enough about them to talk at me about them and tell me about Harry Potter, and I’ve read enough second-hand stuff about them to be able to have content for this one trivial post.

*

Second of all, another disclaimer: I’ve never read any of the Twilight saga books, either, and I’ve never seen any of those movies, either. So I’m not going to be talking about that stuff. And I’ll probably never do a post about that stuff: Hey, it’s a sad, lonely teenage girl who decides she’d rather be a monster than a human and there are good monsters and bad monsters [sighs] and the author presents the troubled girl’s choice as a good thing and it leads her to love and a fulfilled life. Nice story, “author.” NEXT!

*

Anyway, I more or less like some real-life witches and alchemists so I decided to rent a Harry Potter movie and just do the very least I could do to stay current with the real world.

So I rented “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Pt. 1.”

I bought a can of Redbull and a bag of candy and sat back to watch.

Oh my God. I made about ten minutes before I hit the fast-forward button. And then even that was too much and I kicked the fast-forward into its high-speed mode.

At one point—only one point!—I dropped out of fast-forward. The beautiful (and passionate! hey, a passionate British person!) Bellatrix Lestrange, I guess the evil witch of the Harry Potter saga, was “torturing” someone or another.

Basically it was Helena Bonham Carter squabbling in a mean voice with someone. It was better than nothing.

Then that the scene ends with Beatrix Lestrange killing a Hobbit—or something like that—and the movie gets back to its real plot and I hit the fast-forward button again.

So I feel I still can say I’ve never seen a Harry Potter movie since I watched the vast bulk of one mostly entirely in fast-forward mode, except for a scene with Helena Bonham Carter, which I did watch.

(To be fair, I did enjoy Bellatrix Lestrange in that scene. I would have been all in favor of her knife killing the Potter boy instead of the “elf” or whatever it was and then just make the rest of the movie about the pretty, energetic crazy witch played by Helena Bonham Carter.)

Anyway.

I hate this stuff.

I don’t regard it as corrupt, like the horrible Twilight saga. I just see the Harry Potter stuff as boring. In a typically British way.


Brits often seem to see all of existence as just people squabbling.


And it’s always posh people squabbling.

It’s never, say, drunk sacks of wet newspapers like Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss squabbling. It’s always posh, well-educated, clean, polite, energetic and interesting people squabbling.

Forever. Even when British people turn their attention to metaphysics, they typically just embrace some Greek gods scenario or something similar where you have omnipotent immortals who are also posh, well-educated, clean, polite, energetic and interesting people squabbling. Literally forever.


I liked the books of the “Lord of the Rings” saga. There was a lot going on there. Certainly there were people squabbling, but there was a lot going on around the squabbling and, for the most part, even the squabbling was minimized. As it should be. But Tolkien was a real writer.

Now we get just endless rip-offs of the Tolkien stories that rip-off only the trivial squabbling and put endless fluff around the squabbling.

I hate this stuff.

But I wanted to say something about Harry Potter and now I have so I am done with it.

*

However, just as a kind of afterward, I’ve always been looking for an excuse to link to this little YouTube clip. I very much liked “The Blair Witch Project” and I even liked—not as much, and just in passing—the sequel, “Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows.”

Now, as bad as “Blair Witch 2” was, the evil witch—more or less—of that movie was really good and INFINITELY more interesting than ANY of the characters of the Potter saga. (To my eyes and to my thinking.)

Anyway, someone put up a little selection of excerpts of Tristen from “Blair Witch 2” gradually bringing the dark side out into the real world. It is a great part of a mediocre movie and here are just some clips of it:

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Amy Winehouse In The Sea Of Crises


Kate Moss (And Why My Life Is Derailed)



This Scary, Pumpkin Time Of Year, Part Two



Fluorescent Lights On A Book Of Shadows



“The Clock Had All His Attention”

Too Beautiful To Comprehend

Can’t you just feel the Moon shine?
Ain’t it just like a friend of mine?

James Taylor
“Carolina in My Mind”

Sunday morning I had some stuff on my mind and I was walking through a parking lot thinking. Not the parking lot where I saw the cool birds or the pretty wild flowers. And not the parking lot where I once saw a fox. This was a different parking lot. Anyway. So I was walking, thinking, not really paying attention to the world around me. I was thinking about people I used to know. Suddenly a grasshopper flew up away from my feet in front of me, flew to the side and landed on a concrete divider. That got my attention and for better and for worse I’m the kind of guy who stops to look at bugs so I stopped to look at the grasshopper.

It was an orange grasshopper!

I’ve seen grey grasshoppers and green grasshoppers and even bright yellow grasshoppers, but I’ve never before seen an orange grasshopper.

This orange grasshopper was friendly enough to let me walk around him or her and get some photos.

I don’t know a lot about grasshoppers. I think this was a type of grasshopper called a “Carolina Locust” or “Carolina Grasshopper.” Despite their very specific name, they are wide-spread and appear in many different colors.

It might be something else. But my first thought was that it was a “Carolina Locust” and—of course!—I was immediately gone. Even more so than normal.

In my mind.

 

Hello, thank you, yes I see you and think about you
and I appreciate you making this trip for me.
The Carolinas mark the western edge of the sea
called the Bermuda Triangle. I wouldn’t argue

with anyone who said the mystery isn’t true
and everything can be explained. I’d even agree.
I’m glad you’re here anyway. You know I want to flee,
know I need a triangle to disappear into.

I wish you could collect me and take me back right now
but you’ve already done more than enough. You’re a friend.
I have energy. I hop around a lot myself.

I’ll get from here to there—I mean chemistry—somehow.
That girl’s flute song is too beautiful to comprehend.
I’ll be along. After I put this book on a shelf.

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Affannato


The Library That We’ve Made Of Ourselves


Dinosaur By Moonlight: A Puppet Show



Beautiful Bugs, Annoying Clicks


Naming Things


A Ladybug Looking Out At Winter



Dream Birds Untangle Dream Knots


Christmas Witches I Mean Wishes


Christmas Witches: A Present Of The Past

Dinosaur By Moonlight: A Puppet Show

I don’t think we would learn more if we sent
robot spacecraft to orbit the people
we tried to understand with our science.

I don’t think we would learn more if we went
into space ourselves naked and aroused
instead of the robot spacecraft we send.

The Library That We’ve Made Of Ourselves

The green witch said, “Cryptic riches
come from intercourse with witches.”

Christmas Witches: A Present Of The Past

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Enceladus Was A Child Of Gaia


The Wind, Here In The Sea Of Clouds


Scientist At A Hamburger Stand


The Library That We’ve Made Of Ourselves



Real Estate Gothic


The Criss-Crossing Of Sara’s Hair


Creatures Of Darkness And Light: The Movie



Moonlight Becomes You



‘Now Sing Of Walls! Sing!’


Christmas Witches I Mean Wishes


Christmas Witches: A Present Of The Past


Christmas Witches: Ogres And Showgirls

The Library That We’ve Made Of Ourselves

Sometimes we get so close to each other
we can even recognize someone’s face
and hear their voice without a telephone.

Sometimes we get so close to each other
we can extend a finger or a hand
and touch someone or be touched by someone.

Sometimes we are scientists and study
a person’s features, everything they do
and say and we ask specific questions

and catalogue all the things we find out
about this person so close we taste them
and smell them and become experts on them.

Then one day like an apple that falls up
when we’re sitting under a tree thinking
the person so close walks away from us,

does something our science cannot explain,
contradicts all identifications,
undermines our epistemology,

and we look at all the books around us—
the library that we’ve made of ourselves—
and we throw away each one of those books.

I don’t think we would learn more if we sent
robot spacecraft to orbit the people
we tried to understand with our science.

I don’t think we would learn more if we went
into space ourselves naked and aroused
instead of the robot spacecraft we send.

As I type this—put these words on a page—
the almost full Moon is high in the sky
and it’s not falling or walking away.

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Enceladus Was A Child Of Gaia


The Wind, Here In The Sea Of Clouds


Scientist At A Hamburger Stand



Expedition To Amy

Scientist At A Hamburger Stand

An ion is an atom or molecule in which the total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons, giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge. The name was given by physicist Michael Faraday for the substances that allow a current to pass ("go") between electrodes in a solution, when an electric field is applied. It is from Greek ιον, meaning "going."

“Ion” at Wikipedia

Dawn is a robotic spacecraft sent by NASA on a space exploration mission to the two most massive members of the asteroid belt: Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Launched on September 27, 2007, Dawn is scheduled to reach Vesta on 16 Jul 2011, which it will then explore until 2012. It is scheduled to reach Ceres in 2015. It will be the first spacecraft to visit either body.

Dawn is innovative in that it will be the first spacecraft to enter into orbit around a celestial body, study it, and then re-embark under powered flight to proceed to a second target. All previous multi-target study missions—such as the Voyager program—have involved rapid planetary flybys.

“Dawn (spacecraft)” at Wikipedia

A total of three ion propulsion engines are required to provide enough thruster lifetime to complete the mission and still have adequate reserve. However, only one thruster will be operating at any given time. Dawn will use ion propulsion for years at a time, with interruptions of only a few hours each week to turn to point its antenna to Earth. Total thrust time through the mission will be about 2,100 days, considerably in excess of Deep Space 1's 678 days of ion propulsion operation.

The thrusters work by using an electrical charge to accelerate ions from xenon fuel to a speed 10 times that of chemical engines. The electrical level and xenon fuel feed can be adjusted to throttle each engine up or down. The engines are thrifty with fuel, using only about 3.25 milligrams of xenon per second (about 10 ounces over 24 hours) at maximum thrust. The Dawn spacecraft carries 425 kilograms (937 pounds) of xenon propellant.

At maximum thrust, each engine produces a total of 91 millinewtons -- about the amount of force involved in holding a single piece of notebook paper in your hand. You would not want to use ion propulsion to get on a freeway -- at maximum throttle, it would take Dawn's system four days to accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour.

As slight as that might seem, over the course of the mission the total change in velocity from ion propulsion will be comparable to the push provided by the Delta II rocket that carried it into space -- all nine solid-fuel boosters, plus the Delta's first, second and third stages. This is because the ion propulsion system will operate for thousands of days, instead of the minutes during which the Delta performs.

“Dawn: Journey to the Asteroid Belt” at NASA

Well, she's got her daddy's car
And she cruises to the hamburger stand, now
Seems she forgot all about the library
Like she told her old man, now
And with the radio blasting
Goes cruising just as fast as she can, now

And she'll have fun, fun, fun
Til her daddy takes the T-bird away

“Fun, Fun, Fun,” Beach Boys

The Dawn spacecraft goes from-zero-to-sixty
in four days and cruised to the asteroid belt
to do science, playing the cards it was dealt,
looking at rocks to see what there is to see.

If the Dawn spacecraft could nix tranquility,
toss away its cards for something more heartfelt
than watching, maybe, ice on a big rock melt,
should it spark off to play in complexity?

A witch could summon storms, though they might not come,
an alchemist transmute lead to gold, or not.
Both kept watch, too, on the planets, Moon and Sun.

There’s an engine. Some hear it rumble and hum.
There’s a library, and there’s another spot—
hamburgers, donuts. What if Dawn turned to fun?

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Dawn Spacecraft at JPL



*



“The Librarian And The Painter”



Enceladus Was A Child Of Gaia


The Wind, Here In The Sea Of Clouds

The Wind, Here In The Sea Of Clouds

“You find in this industry that the simpler things are, the better off you are in the long run. We believe in the fulcrum, and we believe in the inclined plane. The wheel we’re not sure of.”

An engineer from the nuclear energy
industry, quoted by John McPhee

I’m working industriously
on a science fiction romance
about an astrophysicist
and her theory that when the Moon
transits the Earth’s magnetosphere
small electrostatic effects
repeated for thousands of years
play a key role in creating
the smooth features called lunar ‘seas’
which don’t dominate the far side
but which do dominate the face
of the Moon exposed to the Earth.

I suspect when the story’s told
it will involve two scientists,
one dinosaur and a love song.

I can type the story. Film it.
Sing it. Draw it. I really can’t
perform an interpretive dance
to communicate the content
of the characters and the plot
but I’m hoping someday to meet
a brave Russian ballet dancer
who’ll try out stuff like this with me.

I suspect I’ll be better off
in the long run if my story
gets told simply, with simple tools.

I believe in graphite pencils
on archival drawing paper.
Stop-motion animated films
on computers I’m not sure of.

But my philosophy’s not clear
on how long the “long run” might be
and I am equally unclear
on what’s better in “better off.”

Stop-motion animated films
are more fun than static drawings,
even drawings made with fancy
high-tech graphite pencils that flow
like subtle watercolor paints
when brushed thoughtfully with water.

I believe that unless I meet
a brave Russian ballet dancer
who’ll try out stuff like this with me
I will ignore this “better off”
and I will ignore this “long run”
and this science fiction romance—
about an astrophysicist
and her theory that when the Moon
transits the Earth’s magnetosphere
small electrostatic effects
repeated for thousands of years
play a key role in creating
the smooth features called lunar ‘seas’
which don’t dominate the far side
but which do dominate the face
of the Moon exposed to the Earth—
will get told as a puppet show
about two pretty scientists,
one dinosaur and a love song.

I think it’s good not to be swayed
worrying which way the wind blows.

A very bad nuclear-power-plant accident could kill tens of thousands of people. The plants are so carefully engineered, however, that the possibility seems remote. The reactor core would have to melt down, and the outer containment shell would have to be breached. Then an invisible, odorless, imperceptible cloud would drift downwind. How many people died would depend on how many people were downwind.

John McPhee

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Enceladus Was A Child Of Gaia


The Lost World Of Stacy And The Llama


Halloween On An Inclined Plane


This Evening At The Stilyagi Bar®



Nuclear Accidents, Beatles, Mean Snakes


Nuclear Accidents, Sociology, The Word ‘Bistre’


Ha! Man Throws Away Library!


“Where Did The Cows Go?”



Whispering On The Moon


Sense Of Place

Enceladus Was A Child Of Gaia

Today’s post is going to be a little strange.

I’m working on a bunch of stuff right now. Unfortunately I have no idea exactly how or when everything or even anything will come together. Maybe late this week I will have some new music or a new video (or some new drawings!). Or maybe next week. Or maybe later. I’m just not sure right now.


(An aside: Today’s post talks about Enceladus. Gaia—among other things—is the name of a cool synthesizer. I’ve more or less decided not to buy a synthesizer—On Not Playing A Synth Workstation #1 and On Not Playing A Synth Workstation #2—but if I were going to buy a synthesizer, I’d probably buy a Gaia.)


Anyway, I want to do a post to start setting up something of what I will be posting about later. That’s what today is about. So here goes.


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First, here is a story from NASA about one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, interacting electrically with Saturn’s magnetosphere:

Electrical Circuit Between Saturn and Enceladus


This artist's concept shows a glowing patch of ultraviolet light near Saturn's north pole that occurs at the "footprint" of the magnetic connection between Saturn and its moon Enceladus. The footprint and magnetic field lines are not visible to the naked eye, but were detected by the ultraviolet imaging spectrograph and the fields and particles instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The footprint, newly discovered by Cassini, marks the presence of an electrical circuit that connects Saturn with Enceladus and accelerates electrons and ions along the magnetic field lines. In this image, the footprint is in the white box marked on Saturn, with the magnetic field lines in white and purple.

A larger white square above Enceladus shows a cross-section of the magnetic field line between the moon and the planet. This pattern of energetic protons was detected by Cassini's magnetospheric imaging instrument (MIMI) on Aug. 11, 2008.

The patch near Saturn's north pole glows because of the same phenomenon that makes Saturn's well-known north and south polar auroras glow: energetic electrons diving into the planet's atmosphere. However, the "footprint" is not connected to the rings of auroras around Saturn's poles (shown as an orange ring around the north pole in this image).

The Cassini plasma spectrometer complemented the MIMI data, with detection of field-aligned electron beams in the area. A team of scientists analyzed the charged particle data and concluded that the electron beams had sufficient energy flux to generate a detectable level of auroral emission at Saturn. Target locations were provided to Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrograph team. On Aug. 26, 2008, the spectrograph obtained images of an auroral footprint in Saturn's northern hemisphere.

The newly discovered auroral footprint measured about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) in the longitude direction and less than 400 kilometers (250 miles) in latitude, covering an area comparable to that of California or Sweden. It was located at about 65 degrees north latitude.

In the brightest image the footprint shone with an ultraviolet light intensity of about 1.6 kilorayleighs, far less than the Saturnian polar auroral rings. This is comparable to the faintest aurora visible at Earth without a telescope in the visible light spectrum. Scientists have not yet found a matching footprint at the southern end of the magnetic field line.

The background star field and false color images of Saturn and Enceladus were obtained by Cassini's imaging science subsystem.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The ultraviolet imaging spectrograph team is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The magnetospheric imaging team is based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. The Cassini plasma spectrometer team is based at the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas.

Electrical Circuit Between Saturn and Enceladus

Now the situation in local space, here, around the Earth, is quite a bit different.

The Earth is much smaller than Saturn, and the Earth’s magnetosphere is also smaller. It is still, however, interesting. Here are some tid-bits about Earth’s magnetosphere from Wikipedia. Most of these excerpts will use the radius of the Earth as a measure. For scale, the Moon generally orbits at around 60 times the Earth’s radius. This is an interesting distance, in this context, and I’ll discuss that a little below.

Here is a general diagram of the Earth’s magnetosphere:

Notice that the magnetic field lines are “compressed” on the side of the Earth facing the Sun, and extended on the side of the Earth away from the Sun.

On the Sun-ward side, the magnetosphere typically extends for about twelve times the radius of the Earth.

The magnetosphere of Earth is a region in space whose shape is determined by the Earth's internal magnetic field, the solar wind plasma, and the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). In the magnetosphere, a mix of free ions and electrons from both the solar wind and the Earth's ionosphere is confined by electromagnetic forces that are much stronger than gravity and collisions.

Despite its name, the magnetosphere is distinctly non-spherical. All known planetary magnetospheres in the solar system possess more of an oval tear-drop shape because of the solar wind.

On the side facing the Sun, the distance to its boundary (which varies with solar wind intensity) is about 70,000 km (10-12 Earth radii or RE, where 1 RE = 6371 km; unless otherwise noted, all distances here are from the Earth's center). The boundary of the magnetosphere ("magnetopause") is roughly bullet shaped, about 15 RE abreast of Earth and on the night side (in the "magnetotail" or "geotail") approaching a cylinder with a radius 20-25 RE. The tail region stretches well past 200 RE, and the way it ends is not well-known.

The outer neutral gas envelope of Earth, or geocorona, consists mostly of the lightest atoms, hydrogen and helium, and continues beyond 4-5 RE, with diminishing density. The hot plasma ions of the magnetosphere acquire electrons during collisions with these atoms and create an escaping "glow" of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) that have been used to image the hot plasma clouds by the IMAGE and TWINS missions.

The upward extension of the ionosphere, known as the plasmasphere, also extends beyond 4-5 RE with diminishing density, beyond which it becomes a flow of light ions called the polar wind that escapes out of the magnetosphere into the solar wind. Energy deposited in the ionosphere by auroras strongly heats the heavier atmospheric components such as oxygen and molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, which would not otherwise escape from Earth's gravity. Owing to this highly variable heating, however, a heavy atmospheric or ionospheric outflow of plasma flows during disturbed periods from the auroral zones into the magnetosphere, extending the region dominated by terrestrial material, known as the fourth or plasma geosphere, at times out to the magnetopause.

Earth’s magnetosphere provides protection, without which life as we know it could not survive. Mars, with little or no magnetic field is thought to have lost much of its former oceans and atmosphere to space in part due to the direct impact of the solar wind. Venus with its thick atmosphere is thought to have lost most of its water to space in large part owing to solar wind ablation.

Due to the size of Jupiter's magnetosphere there is a possibility of very weak and very brief seasonal head-tail interaction between Earth's and Jupiter's magnetospheres. The magnetospheres of the outer gas planets may weakly interact, although their magnetospheres are much smaller than Jupiter's.

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A magnetic tail or magnetotail is formed by pressure from the solar wind on a planet's magnetosphere. The magnetotail can extend great distances away from its originating planet. Earth's magnetic tail extends at least 200 Earth radii in the anti-sunward direction well beyond the orbit of the Moon at about 60 Earth radii, while Jupiter's magnetic tail extends beyond the orbit of Saturn. On occasion Saturn is immersed inside the Jovian magnetosphere.

The extended magnetotail results from the energy stored in the planet's magnetic field. At times this energy is released and the magnetic field becomes temporarily more dipole-like. As it does so that stored energy goes to energize plasma trapped on the involved magnetic field lines. Some of that plasma is driven tailward and into the distant solar wind. The rest is injected into the inner magnetosphere where it results in the aurora and the ring current plasma population. The resulting energetic plasma and electric currents can disrupt spacecraft operations, communication and navigation.

“Magnetosphere” at Wikipedia

So when the Moon is waning, or new, the Moon is quite outside the Earth’s magnetosphere. When the Moon is waxing, and full, and just starting to wane, the Moon is often within the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Now the Moon is believed to have a very weak magnetic field. But there are local magnetic fields on the Moon, and Sun light/shade on the surface dust can generate electrostatic effects that we’ve seen in an earlier post, Flying Saucers And Beethoven.

This is one of the very few interesting astronomical topics that almost never gets covered on the internet or in the hobby press. There are sometimes articles written about what are termed “transient lunar phenomenon,” but those articles are usually just quick summaries of suspected strange light effects on surface features or, more rarely, speculation about out-gassing from active geology on the Moon.

However—and I’m not a physicist!—this seems like a very interesting area to speculate about.

During the three or four days per month when the Moon is within the Earth’s magnetosphere, the Moon will be cutting through magnetic lines of force tied to the Earth’s north and south magnetic poles. If there is out-gassing on the Moon and the gas interacts electrostatically and becomes plasma, I believe one would expect atoms (or molecules?) to transit along the magnetic lines of force all the way to the Earth and disperse into the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Similarly, if lightening from storms or other high-energy events generates plasma on Earth, atoms or molecules could be carried out into space along the magnetic lines of force and—if the Moon is within the Earth’s magnetosphere at the time—interact in some way with lunar dust or lunar surface features.

These would be, of course, tiny, tiny interactions. But over large stretches of time even tiny interactions could add up.

The distances in astronomy are vast, very hard to imagine sometimes. But, nonetheless, one of the lessons of modern science seems to be that everything is more inter-connected than one would suppose.


*


To me this is one of the three most interesting topics in astrophysics right now. I’m most interested in what is going on in the outer system; I’m also interested in what is happening at Jupiter and Saturn and just how small a dwarf star can be; and then this stuff, I’m interested in wondering about just how inter-connected the Earth and the Moon may be or may not be.


I’ll be talking more about this stuff, but I wanted to get this topic started. And so I did.

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Enceladus (moon) at Wikipedia


Enceladus (mythology) at Wikipedia



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Pluto In Magic And Alchemy


No Doubts About The Party


A Bird Who Could Fly To Neptune


The Muse Ship


A Spaceship That Sparks


The New Horizons Spacecraft As Julia Adams



The Difference Between Clouds And Conquistadors

Freedom From The Wild/Lost In Metonymy

This parking lot bird
watches cars and trucks drive past
and it watches me

adjust my zoom lens
trying to take a picture
of the wilderness

in the parking lot
as if taking a picture
could make me wild, too.

Wild In The Parking Lot

I’m not wild. I’ve known people who are wild
and I’m not and I don’t want to be wild.

When I take pictures in a parking lot
I can see beauty in things that are wild
but hearing the phrase, “She’s a pussy cat”
still makes me shiver. People aren’t wild
and when people become wild they’re more wild
than shore birds running around on asphalt
or flowers growing up through cracks in asphalt.

People don’t photograph well when they’re wild.

And those are pictures I would never take.

Wild things, real wild things, can be beautiful.

But when people go wild they are monsters.

And not the kind expeditions hunt for.

In the novel “Shibumi” the hero
doesn’t attempt to find a companion
in the wreckage of our modern culture.
He travels to Asia and purchases
a concubine, educated, cultured,
raised by an old world organization
that doesn’t attempt to mass-market goods
but just provides services to select
clients the organization decides
will provide their products with proper care.

I could never do whatever that is.
It isn’t wild but whatever it is
frightens me almost as much as the wild.

Mackinnon and Saunders makes beautiful
little plastic dolls and I have sometimes
thought of asking Mackinnon and Saunders
to create an articulated doll
for me that could, for instance, play the flute.

But I don’t think I could even do that.

I no longer remember exactly
how I first met the little plastic doll
I sometimes make stop-motion movies with.

It wasn’t wild and it wasn’t commerce.

It was something I don’t have a name for
but it’s metonymy I think about
and someday I believe I’ll work it out.

There's something here. Lost in metonymy.

It’s what freedom from the wild is about.

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Mackinnon and Saunders Home


“Shibumi” at Wikipedia



*



Ancient Cities Of The Moon


The Opposite Of Washing Machine


Thin Lines Spread Out Into A Grid


When We Meet Monsters


“This Was A Different World”



Wild In The Parking Lot



“She’s A Pussy Cat”


Freedom From The Wild

The Criss-Crossing Of Sara’s Hair

Plum Rain season hit the city yesterday with a torrential downpour of 80mm (over 3 inches) that flooded roads and inundated metro stations and The Bund steps became waterfalls. More than 200 flights were delayed at the city’s two airports with the sudden onset of bad weather. The rain was heavy enough to flood a carriage on a Metro train on Line 3. At about 4:20pm water poured into the train on the overground section of the line through its air-conditioning system.

Shanghai Reader

Today I wrote the start of a new song,
sketched an idea for a video,
wondered about the weather in Shanghai
and noticed that the street lights around here
have been on all day though the Sun’s been bright.

We had a blackout a few days ago
so I guess the grid that controls street lights
is still in recovery, not timed right.

The most interesting grid is the grid
where ideas for songs and videos
travel and criss-cross and intertwingle
and I suspect this is a bigger grid
than the electrical grid or the grid
ocean and atmosphere currents travel
and criss-cross and intertwingle to bring
the rains called the Plum rains back to Shanghai.

The grid called a web called the internet
carries news about Sara’s bad hair days:

For some reason, I insist on living in countries with rainy seasons. I'm all for season - I'm from Illinois where we have all four: 3 days of spring, 50 days of summer, 15 days of autumn and 5000 days of winter. But rain? No. We didn't have rainy season.

Here in East Asia we have what's blithely called the "Plum Rains" (meiyu | 梅雨) which gives rise to images of happy peasants picking ripe fruit. What it really means is day after day of soggy shoes and hair that doesn't quite ever dry. For 2-4 weeks, it's impossible not to look unkempt. Office workers arrive soaked to their knees and everyone's head has a halo of humidity-cultivated frizz. And whatever you do, stay away from the curb when hailing a taxi or you'll be doused by water from passing vehicles. Actually, when it's pouring, don't bother hailing a taxi as you won't get one. Find the nearest subway stop.

I'll try to get in a better mood but I have to admit, when it comes to rainy season, I'm not a big fan. But would I exchange it for a Midwest winter? I'll have to ponder that one...

Sara Naumann
About.com Guide

I’m glad Sara wrote about her bad hair.

I don’t know what my song or video
will be about or when I’ll finish them
but since Sara did the Plum rains’ impact
on her hair, in this great intertwingling
I can focus on something like monsters,
telescopes, or monsters and telescopes.

I love when the Plum rains fall in Shanghai.

The umbrellas opening over there
make everything different over here.

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“Now I Dream Of The Plum Rains”



No Lights In My Kitchen (Or Anywhere Else)


Grinning, Shivering, At The Intertwingling



I Can’t Sleep In My Kitchen


Shanghai In The Epipelagic Layer


Robot In The Rain


Robot Above The Clouds Of Saturn

Wild In The Parking Lot

This parking lot bird
watches cars and trucks drive past
and it watches me

adjust my zoom lens
trying to take a picture
of the wilderness

in the parking lot
as if taking a picture
could make me wild, too.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



New Birds (In The Parking Lot)


Birds And Three Pretty Birds



Almost Invisible Bokeh


Everything’s Happening In Parking Lots



Motion Beyond The Fox Point



Irving Berlin’s Piano



The Girl Who Talks To Dinosaurs

Ode To A Flute: On Getting Blown Right

I told an actress I wanted to use
a body-double of her for the scene
of her playing you. She said I was mean,
said she was an actress who paid her dues,

said she could fake all the physical cues
and make people believe what they have seen
watching her match a soundtrack so serene.
I said you’d know, said flutes fight for their views.

She said, “Who the hell cares what a flute thinks?”
She stomped off to pout in her dressing room,
stopping, once, to curse at some technician.

A director can shrug off the high jinks
and the threats and sobbing of doom and gloom.
So you’ll get blown by a real musician.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Ode To An American Zombie


A Short Ode To A Quick Sketch


Ode To “Smallville”


Ode To The Concept Of Cotton Candy


Motion Toward And Away—Ode To Pamela



Clockwork Musicians


This Makes Me Think Of “The Swan”



Affannato



Harps And Flutes, Swans And Monsters



Los Angeles, Nonetheless, Is

This Girl Like Fireworks

This girl like fireworks
exploded in my mind’s sky
but she made no sound.

I thought she was close
but the bright flashing colors
were up in the clouds.

This girl like fireworks
was carefully constructed
to explode pretty.

2011 2nd Quarter Index

June 2011


Thursday, June 30, 2011 -- No Lights In My Kitchen (Or Anywhere Else)

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 -- Almost Invisible Bokeh

Tuesday, June 28, 2011 -- Ha! Man Throws Away Library!

Monday, June 27, 2011 -- Nuclear Accidents, Sociology, The Word ‘Bistre’


Friday, June 24, 2011 -- On Not Playing A Synth Workstation #2

Thursday, June 23, 2011 -- On Not Playing A Synth Workstation #1

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 -- Birds And Three Pretty Birds

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 -- Another Quick Megan Fox Moment

Monday, June 20, 2011 -- Music At The Garden’s Edge


Friday, June 17, 2011 -- Hot Liquid Savage And A Cup Of Paintbrushes

Thursday, June 16, 2011 -- New Birds (In The Parking Lot)

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 -- Maggie And The Fish Head

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 -- A Quick Lunar Eclipse Note

Monday, June 13, 2011 -- Loch Ness Apocalypse


Friday, June 10, 2011 -- “The Librarian And The Painter”

Thursday, June 9, 2011 -- Coming Attractions: The Librarian And The Painter...

Thursday, June 9, 2011 -- “A Little Bit Of A Storm”

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 -- Les Paul Versus Taylor Swift!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011 -- The Lost World Of Stacy And The Llama

Monday, June 6, 2011 -- Can We Reboot The World?


Friday, June 3, 2011 -- One For My Baby

Thursday, June 2, 2011 -- Tennis, French Scumbags, Classic Science

Wednesday, June 1, 2011 -- The Built World Redux—Art And Souvenir



May 2011


Tuesday, May 31, 2011 -- Edma In Heaven Laughing

Monday, May 30, 2011 -- Thinking Of Mountains Redux


Friday, May 27, 2011 -- “The Garden’s Edge”

Thursday, May 26, 2011 -- Motion Beyond The Fox Point

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 -- Style And Substance And Acoustic Terror

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 -- Nancy Kominsky 1915-2011 RIP

Monday, May 23, 2011 -- Dragon Storm: Ammonia Snow


Friday, May 20, 2011 -- “Where Did The Cows Go?”

Thursday, May 19, 2011 -- Irving Berlin’s Piano

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 -- Nuclear Accidents, Beatles, Mean Snakes

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 -- The Best Reason To Study Astrophysics

Monday, May 16, 2011 -- Click—It’s A New Week


Friday, May 13, 2011 -- Pedals, Patches And A Composer

Thursday, May 12, 2011 -- Beautiful Bugs, Annoying Clicks

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 -- Perfect Pages

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 -- Asteroid Scheila Is Not A Comet Update

Monday, May 9, 2011 -- The Monster Thought Of The Waldensians


Friday, May 6, 2011 -- Don’t Paint Your Wagon: Off, Off Broadway

Thursday, May 5, 2011 -- The Book Of Love In The City Of The Dead

Wednesday, May 4, 2011 -- A Quick Robot Guitar Note

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 -- “The Clock Had All His Attention”

Monday, May 2, 2011 -- Four Pictures, Three Without Cars



April 2011


Friday, April 29, 2011 -- Insect Pathology And You: The Musical

Thursday, April 28, 2011 -- “The Piano Singing Back To You”

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 -- Everything’s Happening In Parking Lots

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 -- Exciting Waveforms

Monday, April 25, 2011 -- The Girl Who Talks To Dinosaurs


Friday, April 22, 2011 -- Moon Dust In Waltz Time

Thursday, April 21, 2011 -- Little Complicated Things And Stuff

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 -- The Five Student Colors Of L. S. Lowry

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 -- The Time Of The Dinosaurs

Monday, April 18, 2011 -- A Beard Tangled With Headphones


Friday, April 15, 2011 -- Harps And Flutes, Swans And Monsters

Thursday, April 13, 2011 -- King Solomon, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Laurie Strode

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 -- There Are No Pianos In The Bible

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 -- Fukushima I Nuclear Accidents

Monday, April 11, 2011 -- Ayn Rand, The Tower Of Babel, Breakfast


Friday, April 8, 2011 -- Creatures Of Darkness And Light: The Movie

Thursday, April 7, 2011 -- Repurposing Vicki

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 -- Is The Key The Little Key?

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 -- Two Swans

Monday, April 4, 2011 -- Flying Saucers And Beethoven


Sunday, April 3, 2011 -- 2011 1st Quarter Index

Friday, April 1, 2011 -- Sex With A Monster: The Musical

“Hold Me Forever: A Doll Philosophy”

A toy is an abstraction distilled into concrete form. A drawing that becomes real, that enters our three-dimensional world and leaves the two-dimensional surface behind. Our response to this solid expression of hypothetical concept is a powerful one: at a deep instinctual level our imaginations recognize a dream made corporeal—a magical translation of idea into object. The more faithful the translation, the stronger the toy. The ability of a toy to reduce, whether by being a scaling down of a much larger real thing, or by being a representation of an idea that couldn’t exist, is what makes it powerful: a hypothetical concept has become a tangible symbol you can hold in your hand.

Woodrow Phoenix
quote from What Is A Toy?

Hold me tighter
Hold me all night
Hold me forever

from “A Doll Philosophy”

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Real Estate Gothic



Maggie And The Fish Head



“The Garden’s Edge”


Music At The Garden’s Edge



Digging Britney Redux