Puddle Monsters: Creatures Of The Edge

Monsters seem to need a background and a foreground.

Monsters typically appear in a background and
move to something like a foreground then disappear
into whatever’s functioning as the background.

UFOs appear from over the horizon,
cavort in our sky, disappear in the distance.

Bigfoot creatures appear from out of the tree-line,
walk in front of us, disappear into the trees.

Lake monsters rise from the depths, cruise on the surface
where we see their wake, disappear into the deep.

Monsters seem to need a background and a foreground.

From what background could a puddle monster appear?

The puddle is the foreground but puddles contain
no infinite distance, dark depths or endless trees.

From what background could a puddle monster appear?

How long is the coast-line of Britain? Or how long
is the bounding circumference of a puddle?

It sounds like a simple question but the answer,
like a puddle’s edge, becomes more complicated
the closer you look. There’s an infinity there.
Or there’s something like an infinity because
when the scale becomes small enough nobody knows
what metaphysics—or what creatures—you will find.

I think that’s where puddle monsters live. On the edge.
In the edge. Where ever, what ever, the edge is.

Monsters seem to be creatures of the infinite,
visiting, for a time, our bound reality.

Look carefully at the next puddle you see but
give thought to how close you get, how closely you look.
The edge of the puddle is something infinite
and creatures of the infinite are called monsters.

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



“How long is the coast of Britain?” B. Mandelbrot


How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical
Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension, at Wikipedia

Puddle Monsters

Early this morning I went for a walk to buy the Wall Street Journal.

In an alley I passed on the way to the convenience store I saw an old man using a hose to wash off the asphalt parking lot behind an apartment complex. There was a sewer at the edge of the parking lot and most of the water drained away. But at a few spots the water formed large puddles on the black asphalt.

A woman was standing in the alley. At first I thought the woman, like me, was just glancing at the old man washing the parking lot. But the woman seemed to be staring at the puddles of water.

I walked over to the woman. “The puddles make interesting patterns against the asphalt, don’t they?” I said. “The asphalt is black and the puddles reflect the sky so bright.”

The woman looked at me silently for a moment. Then she shrugged and looked back at the puddles. “I suppose that’s true,” she said. “But I wasn’t thinking about patterns. I was wondering if the monsters that live in puddles of rain water also live in puddles of water like this, water from a hose.”

“Monsters in puddles of rain water,” I said. “Puddle monsters. You know, I’ve never heard of puddle monsters but people who study lake monsters often hear of what sound like credible reports of monster sightings in lakes much too small to support a breeding colony of any kind of real animal. If people see monsters in very small lakes then, since those lake monsters can’t be real animals as we know animals, monsters in puddles of water would be sort of the ultimate extreme spot to see something like lake monsters. Whatever lake monsters really are.”

The woman looked at me silently for a much longer moment. Then she said, “Yes. That’s exactly right.”

I nodded. I pointed at the next block. “Would you like to go for breakfast?” I asked. “I can talk about lake monsters all day. Even lake monsters in puddles of water.”

The woman smiled then. She nodded. We went to breakfast and talked about lake monsters in puddles of water.


That’s my excuse for why my post was so late today.

Field research.

Puddle monsters.

Stay tuned. Much more to come.

The Sky On The Phone Talking

I do everything in ink now
even notebook scribbling like this.

The sky seems far away to me.
I scribbled it that way in ink.

I scribbled these words in ink, too,
before computerizing them.

I saw a girl outside talking
on her telephone as she walked
from her car to the Walgreens store.
The sky seemed far away, so far
in fact I wondered if the girl
had the sky on the phone talking
saying, Hi, yeah, long time no see.

The sky seems far away to me
but I’m not tempted to call it.

But if someone did call the sky
I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
Phones are right here, right in our hands.
Phone talk is reality now
and everything that’s not phone talk
is a sky too far to see or
something like a scribble some guy
jots on a sheet of scratch paper.

The sky seems far away to me
but I’d rather scribble the sky
than phone it and pretend to talk.

Coherency Marionette — Gravity Laughing

“Don’t ever do that again,” she said,
then laughed and said, “Do it one more time.”

An accumulation of atoms
becomes massive enough to ignite
and simple atoms of hydrogen
under the influence of their own
gravity blaze to life as a star.

I think it’s our own coherency
of intent, atoms of persistence,
that define us, that animate us,
that blaze out from within us as we
laugh and become bright human people.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she said,
then laughed and said, “Do it one more time.”

Coherency Marionette — A Word Sonnet

Coherency
Intent
Persistent
Frequency

Expectancy
Prevalent
Fraudulent
Dependency

Skilled
Marionette
Show

Fulfilled
Puppet
Know

Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy! — 1945 Version

Drinking rum and Coca-Cola
Go to Point Cumana
Both mother and daughter
Working for the Yankee dollar

This is another post where I haven’t worked out exactly what I want to say, but I have a lot of background to put up in case, possibly, sometime in the future I may want to come back and say more about some part of all this.

*

Almost two weeks ago in my post Conspiracy Theories And Masturbation I mentioned the old TV show The Lone Gunmen. To prepare that post, I watched all three DVDs, the show’s entire one season run. In one episode, “The Lying Game,” the show ends with a calypso song playing on the sound track.

It’s the Andrew Sisters singing their 1945 hit, “Rum and Coca-Cola,” a song that spent ten weeks, back then, at the top of the charts.

The episode didn’t feature the entire song, just basically one verse and the chorus. The chorus stuck with me and a few days ago I looked up the full lyrics and—WTF!—that made me look into the background of the song.

*

The song as recorded by the Andrew Sisters is a silly, Americanized pop calypso thing but even the “silly” version is clearly about American troops going to Trinidad and using their money to turn all the women into hookers.

Yeah. One of those happy and peppy and bursting with love kind of fun songs!

*

The real-life background of the song is unbelievable, too. It has its own Wikipedia page: “Rum and Coca-Cola” at Wikipedia.

Moray Amsterdam—Buddy Sorrell!—went down to Trinidad to entertain US troops. He heard a local calypso song lamenting the way US troops were fucking over the local women in particular and the local culture in general. Amsterdam came back to America and somehow used his show business connections to cover the song here—in a happy and peppy and bursting with love kind of fun way!—and get his named listed as the lyricist.

It became a big court case and, eventually, the local musician from Trinidad won the case and was awarded more than a hundred thousand dollars in back royalties.


The original neoconservative agenda: Raping your women. Stealing your music. And then selling your women and music to the world.


*

Of course, the Trinidad calypso incident is kind of a microcosm of what happened to the whole blues genre right here at home. (“Home” is a tricky word there.)

And the Brits continue that tradition: British Blues

*

The whole Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy! thing of course is from the invasion of Iraq, the liberation of Najaf, as reported by Jim Dwyer in the New York Times.

*

Here is the inevitable YouTube of the Andrew Sisters (just audio) singing “Rum and Coca-Cola” followed by the complete lyrics:

If you ever go down Trinidad
They make you feel so very glad
Calypso sing and make up rhyme
Guarantee you one real good fine time

Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
Go down Point Koomahnah
Both mother and daughter
Workin' for the Yankee dollar

Oh, beat it man, beat it

Since the Yankee come to Trinidad
They got the young girls all goin' mad
Young girls say they treat 'em nice
Make Trinidad like paradise

Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
Go down Point Koomahnah
Both mother and daughter
Workin' for the Yankee dollar

Oh, you vex me, you vex me

From Chicachicaree to Mona's Isle
Native girls all dance and smile
Help soldier celebrate his leave
Make every day like New Year's Eve

Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
Go down Point Koomahnah
Both mother and daughter
Workin' for the Yankee dollar

It's a fact, man, it's a fact

In old Trinidad, I also fear
The situation is mighty queer
Like the Yankee girl, the native swoon
When she hear der Bingo croon

Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
Go down Point Koomahnah
Both mother and daughter
Workin' for the Yankee dollar

Out on Manzanella Beach
G.I. romance with native peach
All night long, make tropic love
Next day, sit in hot sun and cool off

Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
Go down Point Koomahnah
Both mother and daughter
Workin' for the Yankee dollar

It's a fact, man, it's a fact

Rum and Coca-Cola
Rum and Coca-Cola
Workin' for the Yankee dollar

Pretty Flowers Pose But Keep Secrets

The Crow Equinox

A crow lands on the window ledge
of a second story window
of an old house. In the back yard
an old dog silently watches.
The crow above the dog is big,
tall as the window’s lower pane.
There is a thin vertical space
between the window and the frame.
The crow squeezes through the thin crack.
It disappears into the house.
The dog outside begins to bark.

The crow is in house.
The dog is barking.

I intended to draw
this as a cartoon

but there are no colors
just the large black bird

just the faded white paint
just the dog so old

he’s only a gray ghost
of his young brown self.

This failed cartoon was intended
to be about love and madness,
about the start of October,
the final day of September.

The crow is in the house.
The dog is barking.

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In 2009 the autumnal equinox occurs
on September 22.

“An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the Sun being vertically above a point on the Equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, the night and day are approximately equally long.”

Equinox, Wikipedia

The Law Of The Orchid And Rainbow Jungle

With the cool as in chilly fall air around her,

with the city of Chicago around her,

with the cool as in fashionable stores
of north Michigan Avenue around her,

with the bright red fabric of a carefully designed,
constructed and selected red jacket around her,

with the fragrance of something like
orchids and rainbows around her,

she leaned even closer to me
and kissed me and waited.

“You know I’d marry you,” I said, “but I must
always think first of my ship and my crew.”

“You don’t have a crew,” she said.
“And you don’t have a ship.”

“No crew?” I said.

“No crew,” she said. “And no ship.
You’re not Captain Kirk.”

“No ship?” I said. “Not Kirk?
That puts me in the tough position
of not having a good reason
for not proposing to you.”

“Is it because you’re an idiot,” she said,
“lost in the pretend romance
of pretending to be a real writer
and pretending anybody reads
anything except pretend books
written by pretend writers
and pretending to be married to me
would be too much pretending
even for your pretend brain?”

“If I say yes that’s it,” I said,
“can we still hug and kiss and stuff?”

“We can pretend,” she said,
“to hug and kiss and stuff.”

“Then why don’t we just pretend,” I said,
“I have a ship and I have a crew
and I’m Captain Kirk?”

“Because I have more fun,” she said,
“pretending you’re an idiot.”

I pointed a finger at her.
I said, “You just said something nice.”

She blushed, deeply, the color
of some wild jungle orchid
or the outside arc
of some wild jungle rainbow.

She grabbed my arm, roughly,
and said, “Come on. Let’s go shopping.
Now you have to buy me something.”

Don’t Look Now: Modern Pretty

Recently I read an interview with a comics artist—I don’t remember which artist—in a comics journal—I don’t remember which journal—and he described the production process of his latest comic—I don’t remember which comic.

Out of all that stuff I don’t remember, I do remember how he created the images.

He projected stock poses onto his Wacom display tablet then traced over the photos and added coloring and effects and whatever modifications the image needed to fit the story he was telling.

This is a very common production process nowadays in the graphic arts world.

By tracing over photos you can be sure proportions are reasonably accurate. And software like Photoshop allows you easily to make any changes you may want to “personalize” the image and make it fit your needs.

I suspect this is one reason why so many comics nowadays are so ugly and lifeless and unpleasant to even look at let alone read.

Tracing is a totally dead, mechanical process that in no way captures the life or spirit of an artist or illustrator. It may create beautiful images, but they are, at best, stylish and not art and not even entertainment.

Making changes to a photograph or a tracing of a photograph can be something like creative, but it’s not creative in the same sense as inventing and creating an image.

And this is what modern comics are.

They are something like comics.

But they are not comics in the sense of being art or entertainment.

They are at best stylish and they can be something like pretty but it is a weird, modern kind of “pretty” that, when you look closely, is so fucking ugly it takes your breath away.

Modern pretty.

What Is Love? 6—Broadway Diamond

“Even with modern techniques, the cutting and polishing of a diamond crystal always results in a dramatic loss of weight; rarely is it less than 50%”

Diamond Cutting, Wikipedia

I talk to the trees
But they don’t listen to me
I talk to the stars
But they never hear me

The breeze hasn’t time
To stop and hear what I say
I talk to them all
In vain

I tell you my dreams
And while you’re listening to me
I suddenly see them
Come true



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


That is a very tiny part—just the good part—of the Broadway song, “I Talk To The Trees,” from the 1951 Lerner and Loewe musical “Paint Your Wagon.”

I’ve cut away the Broadway stuff.

If you play only this bit, and arrange it carefully, it is something like a very cool jazz song about love.

I may do that someday in a future post. (I can play it. I just want to get better at it before posting a quasi una fantasia version.)

But I wanted to get this post up first just to get the theme started.

It may not seem like it and it may take a long time for me to get back to it, but there is a lot of Goblin Universe stuff starting out in this post. And this post will end with some silly stuff so that’s something like my favorite combination.

Here is a rough timeline of some background info that will almost certainly pop up in future posts someday:

1951

“Paint Your Wagon” opens on Broadway

1964—1968

Clint Eastwood establishes himself as an action star in the famous Man with No Name Sergio Leone westerns, and American films like “Coogan's Bluff” and others

1968

Steve McQueen becomes a superstar in the wildly popular film “Bullitt”

1969

Clint Eastwood sings “I Talk To The Trees” in the film version of “Paint Your Wagon” (see below)

1970-1972

Clint Eastwood becomes a superstar with such hits as “Play Misty For Me” and “Dirty Harry” and others

1973

Clint Eastwood directs “Breezy”

1981

Philip K. Dick publishes “Valis”

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


And here is the uncut, full-Broadway version of Clint Eastwood singing “I Talk To The Trees:”

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



What Is Love? 5—Godzilla


What Is Love? 4—Forbidden Love


What Is Love? 3—Gorilla My Dreams


What Is Love? 2—Ayn Rand


What Is Love? 1—The Mole People

California One Way Sign

If I go to California
I don’t think I’d ever come back.

It would be as if Wisconsin
moved away and took Chicago
as something like a souvenir.
I’d be somewhere on the west coast
and Wisconsin and Chicago
would be gone away someplace else,
cheese, fish, water slides re-arranged
with Chicago on a table
like a very detailed snow globe.

There’d be nothing to come back to.

That’s how much I’d never come back.

A Snail Relaxing

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


Cool Snail Ben has starred
in one earlier post, and
guest-starred in another:


Snail Tricks

Inconsolable: Top Ten Anagrams

Everything Disappearing

a girl writing on her hand

on the horizon a cloud
moving away in the east

the sun moving in the west

a girl waving in a scene
with a cloud disappearing
with the sun disappearing

a girl waving in a dream
of a cloud disappearing
of the sun disappearing

a girl waving in this world
a cloud here disappearing
the sun here disappearing

everything disappearing

the only thing remaining
after the cloud sinks away
after the sun sinks away
is remembering her hand

the palm of her hand waving
the writing visible there

when the sun and cloud are gone
even the waving is gone

there will be always only
remembering the writing

Conspiracy Theories And Masturbation

“Conspiracy theories and masturbation. I suspected there was a connection.”

Yves Adele Harlow

“I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center...”

Condoleezza Rice, 2002

Friday, of course, is September 11, the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks in America’s history.

After the attacks, a number of highly-placed political figures said things similar to Condoleezza Rice’s comment, pushing the notion that flying a plane into the World Trade Center buildings was such an outlandish act nobody could have foreseen it.

I’m not going to get too involved with political conspiracy theories here at Impossible Kisses. As Yves Adele Harlow—that name is an anagram for Lee Harvey Oswald—points out there does seem to be a connection between conspiracy theories and masturbation. However I do want to make the point that Condoleezza Rice and everyone else who made comments characterizing the 9/11 attacks as unimaginable was flat-out lying.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s just a fact.

Look, here are some pictures of an airliner flying toward one of the World Trade Center buildings and, at the last minute, pulling up and narrowly avoiding the building. These were created at least six months before the 2001 attacks, and depict a hijacked airliner piloted by would-be “terrorists” who are attempting to crash into one of the World Trade Center buildings:







Those images, of course, are from the short-lived TV series “The Lone Gunmen.” The pilot episode, broadcast in March of 2001, six months before the attacks of 9/11, was about a government conspiracy to crash an airliner into one of the World Trade Center buildings with the intention of sparking global fighting and increasing arms sales to generate more profits to the US military industrial complex.

My point here isn’t to suggest the 9/11 attacks were an inside job. My point is that TV writers are almost universally regarded as the stupidest, most uninformed writers in the world. If TV writers were aware of various anti-terrorist study groups which had concluded that flying an airliner into a skyscraper was a plausible real-world scenario then every politician who worked in the context of national security would have known the same thing. Condoleezza Rice was the national security adviser.

Condoleezza Rice and so many others flat-out lied to America and to the world when she and they said nobody could have predicted terrorists might fly an airliner into a World Trade Center building.

That much is true.

What conspiracy theories anyone might want to build on that truth is entirely open to the masturbation fantasies of the individual conspiracy theorist.

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


The Yves Adele Harlow pic and philosophy quote are from
“Bond, Jimmy Bond,” episode 2 of “The Lone Gunmen”

Women Write On Themselves

In an office supply store testing markers that come in thirty-six colors I took out my little pocket notebook and tried out a color from the free stock display called “Moonstone Yellow.”

The woman I was with tried out a dark color by drawing a small square on her left palm.

“Do you want to use my notebook?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “it’s easy just to use my hand.”

I watched her try another color by drawing a line through the small square.

“One of the checkout girls at the grocery store writes prices on her hand,” I said. “She said she loses notes if she writes them on paper.”

The woman I was with looked at me and her face took on an odd expression. It is hard to describe exactly what kind of face she made. She didn’t do anything special with her eyes or mouth but nonetheless she made an odd kind of face. It was a face I’d seen before.

“I’ve never seen a guy write on himself,” I said. “But now I’ve seen two or three women do it. It’s some kind of gender thing. Women write on themselves.”

“You’re going to go on about this all day now, aren’t you?” she asked.

“All day, hell,” I said. “This probably will be on my blog tomorrow.”

The woman I was with smiled, then got all focused and concentrated. She wrote something on the palm of her left hand. She stuck her palm up in my face for me to read what she wrote. She’d written, “Do not use my name!”

I smiled, too. I wrote in my notebook and held it up for her to see. I’d written, “Okay, I won’t.”

The woman I was with laughed.

Where There Are No Butterflies

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

Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #1: Et In Arcadia Ego


Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #2: Paris Hilton


Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #3: Fons Et Origo


Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #4: Atlantis


Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #5: The Butterflies From Atlantis



Looking Back At Butterflies From Atlantis

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


A Paris Update:

Back in 2006 when I wrote the first Butterflies
From Atlantis piece, a Paris Hilton Google search
generated roughly 83 million hits. In 2008 when I
wrote Looking Back, a Paris Hilton search
generated 65 million hits. This morning a
Paris Hilton search generated 47 million hits.

Books are disappearing.

Paris is disappearing, too.

I will miss books more.

Coming Up Close Everything Sounds Like Zombies

I wanted to say—
But anything I could have said
I felt somehow that you already knew

“Coming Up Close,” Til Tuesday at YouTube

I bet if the singer had said something about zombies it wouldn’t have been something the other person already knew...


That’s pretty much my favorite sad song of all time. There’s nothing at all—nothing!—in the lyrics about zombies. But of course it makes me think of zombies. Maybe it’s the abandoned farmhouse or some desolate Iowa farmland. Whatever. But I hate pathos, so in my cartoon instead of the girl being all sad she’s happy that at least she can out-wit the zombies trying to eat her even if her band ultimately is going to break up and she’s going to have to sing the same one song for the rest of her performing career.


At least it’s a good song.


Here are all the lyrics:

One night in Iowa, he and I in a borrowed car
Went driving in the summer, promises in every star
Out in the distance I could hear some people laughing
I felt my heart beat back a weekend’s worth of sadness

There was a farmhouse that had long since been deserted
We stopped and carved our hearts into the wooden surface
We thought just for an instant we could see the future
We thought for once we knew what really was important

Coming up close
Everything sounds like welcome home
Come home and oh, by the way
Don’t you know that I could make
A dream that’s barely half-awake come true
I wanted to say—
But anything I could have said
I felt somehow that you already knew

We got back in the car and listened to a Dylan tape
We drove around the fields until it started getting late
And I went back to my hotel room on the highway
And he just got back in his car and drove away

Coming up close
Everything sounds like welcome home
Come home and oh, by the way
Don’t you know that I could make
A dream that’s barely half-awake come true
I wanted to say—
But anything I could have said
I felt somehow that you already knew

Coming up close
Everything sounds like welcome home

Coming up close
Everything sounds like welcome home

Come home
Come on home

Quasi Una Snow White And Vampirella Fantasia

You used to be the best
Making life alive for me
I know that you’re still out there
And you’re like you used to be
We’ll have ourselves a time
We’ll dance the morning sun
We’ll let the good times come in
We won’t stop until we’re done
We’ll be back in the high life again
All the doors we closed one time
Will open up again
We’ll be back in the high life again
All the eyes that watched us once
Will smile and take us in
We’ll drink and dance with one hand free
Have it all so easily
We will be a sight to see
Back in the high life again


BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE, Steve Winwood

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


Snow White And Vampirella

Snow White And Vampirella

I don’t care at all. It means nothing to me.
At first I thought I was going to be mad.
Or wildly sad. But it means nothing to me.

I don’t care that Disney bought Marvel comics.

Snow White happened in 1937.
Disney was Disney then, before I was born.

Vampirella never was Marvel comics.
Frank Frazetta did Vampirella’s premiere
for Warren Publishing. Those were the comics
that I waited for, sat in the store reading.

I don’t care that Disney bought Marvel comics.

Snow White and Vampirella don’t give a fuck.

Snow White and Vampirella aren’t even
looking back to see what those corporations
are rambling about in their press releases.

I care about Snow White and Vampirella.

I don’t care that Disney bought Marvel comics.

Snow White and Vampirella have been buying
new clothes and they both look pretty damn sexy
when they laugh about their plans for tomorrow
and everything I am is wildly, madly
focused on being with them tomorrow night.

All the cool stuff will happen tomorrow night
and the night doesn’t issue a press release.

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



Snow White

Vampirella


Disney Buys Marvel

Polite Doors

Lost In (Something Like) Rock And Roll

Give me the beat now
Free my soul
I want to get lost
In rock and roll
I want to drift away


DRIFT AWAY, Doobie Brothers