Apple And The Status Cow

Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

Apple’s “1984”

(What is Apple’s “1984?”)

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

Tricia dreamed she was
a blue morpho butterfly
by a river bank.

Susan Kare’s Blue Butterfly

My Haiku

(Who is Susan Kare?)

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

“ ... Apple had hired all these Hewlett-Packard people who were running the Apple II engineering, and they didn’t know anything about the Apple II. Apple went through various fads where it would hire engineers from a certain company. It had an HP period, a Xerox period, a DEC period, but HP was the dominant one in the early days. There were a few Apple II hobbyists like me, Bob Bishop, Charlie Kellner, and Rick Auricchio, who had bought Apple II’s and became so obsessed with them that they naturally migrated to Apple. But, they also hired all these guys who didn’t even know what an Apple II was when they started working there. To me that was totally incomprehensible. Why work at Apple if you don’t even like the Apple II?”

Andy Hertzfeld Joins Apple

(Who is Andy Hertzfeld?)

Status quo.

On Michigan Avenue there’s an Apple store.

Today people will walk into that Apple store

and they will buy Apple Macintosh computers.

All those people will walk out of that Apple store

with machines that run Intel microprocessors

with NeXT UNIX as an operating system.

Status cow.

Escape From Earth And The Status Cow

And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Render to her just as she rendered to you ... ”

Revelation 18:4-6

Something like two thousand years ago, when the status quo of Roman occupation became unbearable to early Christians they were able to leave the Middle East and re-locate to the fringes of the Roman empire in Europe.

Something like five hundred years ago, when the status quo of Roman Catholicism and secular nationalism became unbearable to Europe’s Protestants they were able to leave Europe and re-locate to colonies in the ‘New World’ here in North America.

Today, when the status quo of consumerism and global corporatism becomes unbearable to Christians—or anyone else—where can anyone go?

*

In 1981 filmmaker John Carpenter made a low-budget adventure/science fiction film called “Escape from New York.” The plot was that Manhattan had been turned into a prison and the President of the United States had been captured by inmates there after Air Force One crashed on the island. The inmates hope to use the President (one way or the other) to break the status quo and escape confinement. The government, however, sends in a tough guy, Snake Plissken, who plays out the superhero role of protecting the status quo by preventing the inmates from escaping. Even an independent filmmaker like Carpenter sticks to the archetypal plot of maintaining the status quo at all costs. The film is interesting mostly because it co-starred Adrienne Barbeau and even when there’s nothing particularly interesting to look at in the movie it is always fun to look at Adrienne Barbeau. The film is also interesting because by the time Carpenter got around to making a sequel, the issue of status quo had moved to center stage and as a filmmaker Carpenter was ready to tackle the issue in a very different way.

In 1996 John Carpenter made “Escape from LA.” In this film, an earthquake has separated Los Angeles from North America and the federal government—which has become dominated by “extremist” Christians—has turned the island of LA into a prison. The President’s daughter, however, steals a powerful new weapon and hides out on the island of LA where she gives the weapon to terrorists who hope to overthrow the US government. The government, again, turns to Snake Plissken. He plays out the superhero role of protecting the status quo by going to LA, ‘rescuing’ the President’s daughter and stealing the super-weapon away from the terrorists. Returning to the mainland, however, Snake is confronted by just how wretched the status quo is. The President is revealed to be an amoral monster who wants to sentence his own daughter to death on national television. The terrorists are still massing an invasion force along the southern US border. Snake has to choose what he will do with the super-weapon. Will he give it to the President who will use it to wipe out all opposition to US rule? Will he give it to the terrorists who will use it to replace Western civilization with gang rule? Snake Plissken, in a move very rare for superheroes, takes a third path: Snake destroys the status quo by using the super-weapon himself to destroy all electronic, technical infrastructure across the entire planet. The terrorists are destroyed because their ability to organize and coordinate themselves is taken away from them. The Western governments are destroyed because their ability to organize and coordinate their populations is taken away from them. The movie ends with Snake Plissken lighting up a cigarette, looking at the camera and saying, “Welcome to the human race,” and then turning and walking away.

*

I would like to write the screenplay for the third movie of the inevitable trilogy of “Escape From” films. So far as I know, Carpenter is not interested in making a third film, but I still would like to write the script for a third film.

I would write, “Escape from Earth.”

The story would be that without the population-at-large knowing it, the L5 Society has been successfully running orbital colonies at the Lagrangian points L4 and L5 for many years. [The L5 Society is a real group that has been around since 1975.] The evil, ersatz ‘Christian’ government survived the disaster at the end of “Escape from LA” by transferring their important people up to these orbital strongholds. The story would be that this ‘government in exile’ would hire Snake Plissken once again to ‘rescue’ a woman scientist held captive on Earth and bring her up to the Lagrange colonies. Snake’s reward would be a place in the colonies as well. Snake would battle through the disorganized forces planet-side, locate the woman scientist and prepare to help her get up to orbit. But Snake would discover the whole mission was a con game. The orbital people in fact really wanted to kidnap the woman themselves because she was on the verge of developing a ‘reaction-less drive’ that would make it possible for any group planet-side that was reasonably organized to create their own space program and try to re-locate themselves to the Lagrange points, create orbital colonies themselves or even by-pass and supersede the orbital colonies by using the super-drive to colonize the asteroid belt or Mars. The movie would end with Snake Plissken ferreting out the true intentions of the remnants of the federal government in orbit, ferreting out the true intentions of the fringe groups planet-side who want to destroy the orbital colonies and protecting the woman scientist so that she can finish the space drive and deliver it to a coalition of groups who are going to re-locate to the asteroids and Mars and start fresh, leaving behind all the old tribulations and conflicts of Earth’s past.

*

Today, when the status quo of consumerism and global corporatism becomes unbearable, where can anyone go?


I can’t even begin to answer this question in real life. [If anyone knows, PLEASE post a comment on my blog or send me an e-mail at GoblinStudies@GMail.com and let me in on the secret!]

But I can answer the question in a screenplay: Just as good Christians started colonies here on the American frontier, I would have decent people establishing colonies on what Gerard K. O'Neill has called the High Frontier.

People pass me by
On my imaginary street
Ordinary people
It's impossible to meet
Holding conversations
That are always incomplete
Well, I don't know
Oh, where are there places to go
Someone, somewhere has to know
I don't know

Silver rain was falling down
Upon the dirty ground
Of London Town

Orbis Non Sufficit And The Status Cow

People who read books [people who read books?] might know that ‘Orbis Non Sufficit’ is the family motto of James Bond but film buffs, fans of the Bond movies, probably don’t know that because in the film, when Elektra King tells Bond, “I could have given you the world,” Bond replies, “The world is not enough.” He doesn’t say, “Orbis non sufficit.”

*

There is something ironic—not cool, smart irony just ugly, dumb irony—about James Bond saying those words to Elektra King.

Before Bond shoots the unarmed Elektra and kills her, it is Elektra who is fighting for a different world than this one, a world wrenched away from the status quo, a world not dominated by amoral British businessmen, British aristocrats and the Western infrastructure that has grown up around such people.

It is Bond who is fighting for orbis per se.

*

I would like someday to make a non-canonical James Bond movie.

I mean non-canonical in the sense of the 1967 farce “Casino Royale” or the 1983 ‘Thunderball’ remake “Never Say Never Again.”

The movie “The World Is Not Enough” itself is partly non-canonical in the sense that it is not an adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, even though the Orbis Non Sufficit back-story is taken from “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” which is from the Fleming canon.

*

I would like someday to acquire the screen rights to the story from “The World Is Not Enough” and remake that story as an animated film.


I would makes some changes to the story, however.


My version would still begin with Elektra King murdering her father. James Bond, however, would know from the start that Elektra was a supervillain. Bond would know, too, that he could never worm his way into her confidence because he is too well-known as a spy. So in my version Bond would recruit a young artist whose work Elektra admires and prevail upon the young artist to infiltrate Elektra’s organization.

James Bond would reveal his identity to the young artist. He would reveal Elektra King’s supervillain plan to the young artist. He would explain to the young artist that the fate of the world depended on him striking up a friendship with Elektra King, winning her confidence and then setting up Elektra so that Bond could foil her scheme.

In my version, as Bond worked his way around the fringes of Elektra King’s organization while the young artist became acquainted with Elektra herself, the young artist would be appalled at the way Bond killed Elektra’s henchmen in cold blood. The young artist would be appalled at the way Bond stalked and prepared to kill Elektra King.

The young artist would be appalled, too, at the way Elektra ordered British businessmen to be killed and the way Elektra plotted to explode nuclear devices around the globe that would topple the national superpowers and enable regional insurgents to establish footholds over many millions of people.

But the young artist would notice that Elektra was driven by passion and Elektra was driven by having watched the British aristocracy marry into her family and destroy the family’s ancestral homeland. And Elektra was driven by having lived through being kidnapped and left for dead by her father and his aristocratic friends who on “principle” refused to bargain or pay-off kidnappers. The young artist would observe that Elektra was attempting to over-throw an almost omnipotent evil and replace that monolithic, unassailable evil with a fragmented, rag-tag collection of bad guys that individuals could fight against if they chose to fight for themselves.

The young artist would notice that Bond killed as a business. Bond’s job was to protect the status quo. Bond did not kill out of some passion to establish a better world or even a less evil world. Bond killed as a business tactic to keep his employers in a position of global power.

In the climax of my version of the movie, Elektra King and all the other lesser villains would be gathered at some famous European exterior, maybe Stonehenge. James Bond would do something tricky that disarms everybody except the young artist. As Elektra King prepared to give the command that would explode nuclear weapons all around the globe, Bond would yell for the young artist to shoot and kill Elektra King.

The young artist would think about it.

The young artist would remember all the people Bond killed and why Bond killed them. He would remember everything Elektra had done and planned to do and why.

Then the young artist would turn and shoot James Bond.

The young artist would be a bad shot, however, and Bond would get shot in the leg. Bond would collapse to the ground. Bond would scream at the young artist, telling him that the world would remember him as a traitor, a gutless turncoat, a despicable Quisling.

Elektra King would walk over to the young artist, take his gun and then walk to James Bond and shoot Bond in the head, killing him.

Then Elektra would give the order to start exploding nuclear devices all over the globe. She’d gesture to the other villains, giving them the signal to go to their helicopters and return to their territories.

Then Elektra would walk back to the young artist. She’d stand in front of him. In the background, in the distance, we would see missile launching from hidden silos.

“Why did you do that?” Elektra would ask the young artist. “Why did you shoot James Bond and not me?”

The young artist wouldn’t smile. He’d say, “Maybe I’ve fallen in love with your smile.”

Elektra would shake her head. She would say, “You have never seen me smile.”

“I did,” the young artist would say. “On the train from Paris to Berlin. You fell asleep leaning against me. Your face was tilted down, but I saw your reflection in the window. You were smiling. There was nothing...nothing evil...in your smile.”

Elektra would stare at the young artist. The corners of her lips would pull tight, but stop. The corners of her lips would start to turn up into a smile, but then stop.

Then she would give in and smile.

In the background, in the distance, we would see missiles coming down, impacting on targets on the horizon. We’d see bright flashes, mushroom clouds forming.

Elektra would grab the young artist’s hand and pull him toward her helicopter. They’d both get on board and the helicopter would take off to fly them to her secluded and protected secret lair.

As the camera followed their helicopter, the camera would pull back to a great height and we’d also see more missiles impacting, more nuclear explosions and satellite laser systems firing down at targets on the ground. We’d see cities collapsing into rubble. Dams would collapse and release vast waves of water over population centers.

The camera would zoom in on Elektra King’s helicopter. We would look in through a window. We would see Elektra King and the young artist looking out at the destruction unfolding below them. Neither Elektra nor the young artist would be smiling.

Then the frame would freeze on their two faces.

The end music would begin and the credits would roll. We would hear a custom cut of that old Dawson’s Creek song. We’d hear a singer sing:

This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
She looks so sad in photographs
But I absolutely love her
When she smiles

How many days in a year
She woke up with hope but she only found tears
How can I be insincere
Making promises never for real
As long as she stands there waiting
Wearing holes in the soles of her shoes

How many days disappear
When she looks in the mirror how does she choose
Her clothes never wear as well the next day
Her hair never falls in quite the same way
But she never did run out of things to say

This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
She looks so sad in photographs
But I absolutely love her
When she smiles

How many lovers would stay
Put up with this mess every day
How did we wind up this way
Watching our mouths for the words that we say
As long as we stand here waiting
Wearing our clothes and the souls that we choose
How do we get here today
Walking too far for what’s left of our shoes
Her clothes never wear as well the next day
And her hair never falls in quite the same way
She never did run out of things to say

This is the story of a girl,
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
She looks so sad in photographs
But I absolutely love her
When she smiles

Her clothes never wear as well the next day
Her hair never falls in quite the same way
She never did run out of things to say

This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
And while she looks so sad in photographs
I absolutely love her

This is the story of a girl
Her pretty face she hid from the world
And while she looks so sad and lonely there
I absolutely love her
When she smiles

This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
She looks so sad in photographs
But I absolutely love her
When she smiles

When she smiles

Breaking The Status Cow

LIZZIE: I definitely think you’re ‘most poised’ material.

MIRANDA: I don’t feel like ‘most’ anything.

GORDO: That’s what Kate wants you to think. That way you never even try. That’s her way of maintaining the status quo.

LIZZIE: Status quo?

GORDO: It means that Kate wants to keep things the way they are.

MIRANDA: Why didn’t you just say that?

GORDO: I did.

LIZZIE: Well, I say no more quo. If someone completely normal dressed in an outrageously hip outfit, well, then they’d get the vote.

GORDO: So do it.

LIZZIE: Me?

GORDO: All you have to do is be better dressed than Kate or Claire for one day.

MIRANDA: And win ‘best dressed.’ You can break the status cow!

GORDO: Quo.

MIRANDA: Whatever.

“Best Dressed for Much Less”

I posted about Lizzie McGuire once before: Politics, Philosophy And Hilary Duff. The show’s been off the air for something like five years, but I thought about it recently because of something that happened last Saturday: I discovered a new “kid show” that has quickly become my current favorite show on television.

Saturday night I was killing time waiting for Svengoolie to come on with a classic old monster movie, John Agar’s “Tarantula.” As I flipped around from channel to channel, I saw some kid comedy where two high school girls were doing an internet show. I stuck around for a bit and I saw a scene where the only adult in the show—one of the girls’ older brother—was yelling at a young boy for making a mess and the young boy picked up a big plastic mallet and whacked the guy in the crotch. He screamed, grabbed his crotch and collapsed. I don’t even remember the last time I laughed so hard at a TV show. I was hooked.

The show turned out to be “iCarly” on Nickelodeon. I’ve seen half a dozen episodes since Saturday. It’s not as funny as the good episodes of Lizzie McGuire, but it is still my pick for the best show currently on television. It’s great stuff. I’ll be posting more about iCarly sometime in the future.

But for today I want to get back to this status quo business.

I’ve always remembered that particular episode of Lizzie McGuire because the theme—the status quo as a tool of oppression—is very unusual in pop culture. It’s very unusual, I suspect, because pop culture most often serves as a tool of oppression itself forever pounding home the message that the status quo is something like god never to rebelled against.

The archetypal superhero story begins with a presentation of a peaceful status quo where everyone is happy, working away and being a good citizen. Then some supervillain hatches a wild scheme to radically mess with the status quo in such a way that will bring great satisfaction to the supervillain. But a superhero jumps in and frustrates the supervillain, derails his scheme and saves the status quo. So the story ends with ‘average’ people again happy and working away and being good citizens.

In fact, Lizzie McGuire itself often did shows glorifying the status quo. In one episode Lizzie became a very successful fashion model. This must be a popular dream among young girls and Lizzie was very happy when she became successful and famous. But then Lizzie’s friends began treating her odd—as if they were afraid of her and dependent on her at the same time. So, rather than have her friends acting oddly Lizzie gave up her modeling contract and abandoned her life of success and fame. What the hell?

We live in a consumerist culture and although it’s very tempting to think that “consumerism” is only about business—about a social climate where people are free to buy and sell and be happy about it—it is worth remembering that consumerism is very pervasive and contains seeds of weird philosophies that germinate within the ethics, politics and aesthetics of a culture. (Probably within epistemology and metaphysics as understood by people living within the consumerist culture as well, but I haven’t given those two a lot of thought yet.)

Of all the oddities consumerism generates, worship of the status quo, I think is my pick for the weirdest.

Because change—fundamental change—is one of the most constant experiences everyone shares. Day changes radically to night. Seasons change radically from heat and sun to ice and snow. Youth changes to age.

In fact, through most of human history, the fountainheads of philosophy—the three major monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam—have taught that radical change is part of existence itself. Creation was transcendentally good. Then became Cursed. And soon [?] will be extinguished in holy fire and replaced with a new heavenly kingdom. And even the Cursed world we live in is subject to the agenda of God where floods and other catastrophes move along God’s plan for Redemption in ways the human mind can’t even conceive of.

Even secular Man has recognized that the notion of ‘dynamic stability’ is only one particular state within a complex and chaotic universe of states that change driven by ‘hidden’ variables that not only are unknown but, often, unknowable. This has become so accepted in the science world that pop culture characters like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park make speeches about it in pop books and movies.

[Added 3:00pm — Indeed, even the movie Jurassic Park itself is an example of the status quo issue in pop culture. Ian Malcolm makes very eloquent and erudite speeches about the inability of humans to “manage” complexity, but the plot of the film follows something like the archetypal superhero plot I wrote about above. The super-rich guy conceives of a plan to radically change the world by cloning dinosaurs and creating an amusement park that will make every other amusement park on the planet as boring as buggy rides. The scientists—substituting for superheroes—arrive at the park right when complexity overwhelms the environment, as the mathematician predicted it would. And through the scientists’ knowledge and general spunkiness many of the people are able to survive the disaster and prevent the disaster from spreading beyond the island to the world at large. The status quo was protected. The world post-Jurassic Park remained essentially the same world as pre-Jurassic Park. The status quo of the planet was successfully “managed” even as one of the heroes of the story was making long—and accurate!—speeches about the inability of human beings to “manage” complexity.]

But the status quo is still enshrined by pop media in almost every way.

For the rest of this week I’m going to be talking about examples of the status quo as the status cow.

Big Lizard Bad France Lisa Wants In Chase’s Pants

I Atom Nun (Mountain Letters Times Ten)

o main nut

i noun mat

u am in ton


o unit man

unit moan


o u tin man

u not main

u on a mint


i am no nut

i atom nun

Red Granite (Updated)

Only a couple of miles north of downtown,
only a block away from Lake Michigan,
there is a skyscraper faced in red granite.

Seven hundred north Michigan Avenue.

The first dozen or so floors of the building
always have been dedicated to shopping.
Always it’s been called the Chicago Place mall.

Big money stores for the beautiful people.

I’ve eaten lunch in the mezzanine courtyard.
I’ve window-shopped with the beautiful people.
That is, I looked in the windows while they shopped.
There is a Saks there, but I never witnessed
Winona Ryder being beautiful there,
shopping, window-shopping or that other thing.
And now I never will. The mall is closing.

The shops are shutting down. The building owners
are converting to condos and office space.

Death, the monster snake, coils around the granite
and the beautiful people flee to Oak Street,
Ohio Street or the Water Tower Place.

The red stone building is like a mountain peak
north in the Magnificent Mile mountain range
but Death, the monster snake, is something larger
coiled around its summit. Death, the monster snake,
devours mountains and brings death even to rocks.

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



The Year Winds Down #2: Buying Junk


Dark days for Michigan Avenue mall

A NOTE ABOUT REALITY:

Okay, this is something like an extended ‘Oops.’

I wrote this post based on my memories of the great mall at 700 N. Michigan. When I lived on the north side of Chicago and worked on Michigan Avenue, I used to visit the mall a couple of times every week. It was my favorite north Michigan Avenue mall. I couldn’t afford to buy anything from any of the stores, but just walking through the place would remind me of the kind of world I wanted to live in and the kind of people I wanted to move among. (I haven’t accomplished either, yet.)

Anyway...

At the start of January I read the news story about the Chicago Place mall having troubles. For weeks I’ve wanted to post something about the mall because I spent so many pleasant afternoons walking around the place. This morning I put together today’s post. However, when I was looking around the ’net for photographs I began to suspect I may have mis-remembered a few points. [coughs]

It’s been many, many years since I visited 700 N. Michigan.

I walked past the place a few months ago when I attended at the Karen Kilimnik exhibit at the MCA, but then I was rushing around like a madman because I was parked in the Water Tower Place and it was costing me $20 for a few hours parking.

So, here’s what’s been bugging me:

First of all, the skyscraper that is associated with the mall I think is actually set back half a block from the mall structure itself. In the photograph at the top of the post, the building at 700 N. Michigan Avenue is the building with the pointy top just northwest of the Hancock Building.

Second, when I look at the mall’s current directory, I see there are eight levels, not a dozen.

Third, the current directory doesn’t even list a mezzanine. (I suspect I was mis-remembering the second level as the mezzanine. Either there used to be chairs and a restaurant there on the second level or I just got some wires crossed in my brain and was thinking of the eighth level as the mezzanine for some reason.)

Fourth, the facade of the mall structure and the skyscraper behind it might be something like pink marble and not red granite. (I don’t know why I associate the Chicago Place mall so strongly with a dark red granite facade. But I still do, even though I recognize the pictures of the building with the pinkish facade. I suspect that a smaller building either immediately north or south of 700 N. Michigan must have a dark red granite facade. I’ll have to check it out next time I’m up on the near north side.)

Sorry about all that!

I try to get details correct. And the fact that I titled today’s post “Red Granite” when the red granite I was thinking about apparently is on a completely different building really makes me frown.

But I’m not going to take down the post.

“Hardly Anyone Visits; No One Stays”

Yesterday I posted a little about Mount Shasta. Mount Shasta is in northern California. At something like the opposite end of North America, at the very north-east tip of Canada, there is a mountain range called the Torngat Mountains.

More than just being at the opposite end of North America, the Torngat Mountains are opposite Mount Shasta in another way as well.

Mount Shasta is part of the whole northern California scene. People take vacations there. Corporations sponsor retreats there. Even people like UFO buffs make pilgrimages there. Mount Shasta isn’t just part of civilization, legend has it that the mountain is a fountainhead of civilization, carried over through some great catastrophe from the ancient past.

The Torngat Mountains are on the Atlantic coast, far north and almost impossible to visit. They are wild. More than just being outside civilization, they have witnessed civilization come and go.

In the Nineteenth Century, there were settlements just south of the Torngat Mountains. Inuit people. Christian missionaries. Outposts of the local government. But over time the conditions were found to be so harsh, maintaining supply lines so difficult, that one by one the settlements relocated farther south. The area returned to the wild, reclaimed by polar bears, wolves, caribou and other wildlife of the tundra.

The Torngat Mountains saw civilization approach, over-reach itself and withdraw.


*


A little more than a decade ago newlyweds George Van Sickle and Stephanie White sailed a small, seventeen foot open boat [!] north along the coast of Labrador and visited the Torngat Mountains. They spent almost two months on the journey. During that time they didn’t see even one other sailboat.

The topic of open boat cruising is interesting in itself and I may someday return to it. Both the topic and the activity. But today I just want to post some of the thoughts of George and Stephanie as they looked back on their visit to the Torngat Mountains:

... Several days later, leaving the white Torngat summits behind, we anchor in front of the abandoned village of Hebron. Until the 1800s, the Inuit lived in small semi-nomadic bands along the coast. Moravian missionaries arrived in the Nineteenth Century, bringing a modicum of European culture. The Inuit came to live in the several mission villages established on the coast. During the 1950s the mission and the government found it too costly to supply these small, remote communities, so everyone moved south to Nain. Hebron was the last village to be abandoned, nearly 40 years ago.

A bull caribou eyes us as we wander through the decaying wood buildings. A rusted windvane records the date: 1832. The cemetery is overgrown by tundra vegetation, most of the graves marked by wooden plaques, long illegible. A few are inscribed stone, and we find Stephanie’s family name of White; on another is my mother’s family name, Cook. We speculate about the lives of these people who once thought, spoke, and toiled at the remote edge of this northern sea.

Perhaps, all along, the lure of Labrador has been the spirit of the Torngat, drawing us to this solitary coast. Poor Torngat, he has the caribou, the polar bear, the wolf and raven. But his people are gone, moved away south, and he is lonely in his icy Arctic mountains by the sea. Hardly anyone visits; no one stays.

The afternoon breeze promises an easy spinnaker run to the south. Behind the barren islands guarding the harbor, a parade of icebergs dot the blue horizon. Even in this cool, brief radiance of summer, there is a long, cold loneliness here. We head back to the boat to pack our gear. Surely, it is the Torngat that we came to see.

George Van Sickle
writing in, “Spirit of the Torngat”
Sail Magazine, May 1996

The Hidden Princess Of Mount Shasta

So I’m a hobo
riding the rails. On a freight
San Diego way

I share a boxcar
with Paris Hilton decked out
in shabby chic threads.

She eats my croissant.
I finish her German wine.
She’s bound for LA.

Me, San Francisco.
I’m teaching Paris to sing
“Just Like This Train” from

Joni’s Court and Spark.
We think we might both change plans
and continue north

up to Mount Shasta.
Paris wants to run a con
on the New Age types.

They still have money.
Paris says she can teach me
to keep a straight face.

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


Mount Shasta


Lemurians and Mount Shasta



“Just Like This Train”

Elena Called A Let

This cartoon isn’t really a standalone cartoon, it’s just a page from my sketchbook. I’m posting it because I like it as much as a real cartoon.

This started as a sketchbook pencil drawing of Elena Dementieva. I’ve mentioned a few times that she’s my favorite WTA player. [I talk about her here and here and here.] Right now Dementieva is having a great run at the Australian Open. Many people think this might be the year she wins her first grand slam title.

So I thought it would be fun to draw her.

Of course, I couldn’t just draw her, I wanted to do something funny, even if it’s only in my sketchbook for myself. So I thought it would be cool if she was playing tennis and had to deal with tennis balls that suddenly turned into cans of Beanee Weenies . . .

I did a pencil sketch and I liked it. So I inked it. I added the caption using a plain old BIC ballpoint pen. When I decided to post it I added just a bit of color using one of those Winsor & Newton pocket watercolor sets.

Incidentally, it made my watercolor brushes very happy to be out of the closet and getting some use again. For the last few weeks I’ve been doing acrylics and I don’t use my watercolor brushes with acrylics. Even though I only used one brush for the cartoon, they were all dancing again.


Maybe it will bring Dementieva luck!


She’s the very best WTA player who’s never won a grand slam and she really should win the Australian Open this year. And she is my pick for the most interesting personality in sports. Someday I’m going to do a post about her tribulations in the tennis world. She’s been in two or three grand slam finals. In the spotlight, when she’s had the opportunity to win big, she hasn’t just lost—she’s lost big time. She’s played so badly that she embarrassed herself. But the remarkable thing about Dementieva is that she’s always pulled herself together and gotten back into competition. She won the gold medal at last year’s Olympics. She can be the best player in the world. Or the worst. She’s very, very interesting. And she doesn’t quit. I really admire that.

Chimeras: Slackers And Droodles To The Rescue

A chimera to a paleontologist
is a fake fossil made up from bits and pieces
selected from real fossils of various kinds.
Large profits can be made trading in weird fossils
and reputations can be made studying them.
Large profits can be made trading in fake fossils
and reputations can be ruined describing them.
Chimeras, it’s believed, always have been found out.
Sometimes high-tech analysis finds tricky flaws.
Sometimes flip-sides of pieces are discovered, whole.
Teams have been fooled but never the field over all.

That is one of the very few advantages
to having a dozen or more people living
inside my head with me: They check each other’s work.
Three or four of the fragments of me might get fooled
but there are always dissenters, contrarians
promoting alternatives to the assembly
of slackers gathered together behind my eyes
making neuron scrapbooks, grey matter collages,
cerebral found art, cognitive droodles and stuff
designed to one-up all the other slackers’ stuff.
It’s a complex mess but some order emerges.

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


When We Meet Monsters


Droodles


“Unearthing the Dragon”

— An odd non-fiction account
of the discovery of fossils
of feathered dinosaurs. There is
an interesting discussion
of a recent chimera incident
that fooled some reasonably famous
figures in the paleontology world.



Conscious Realism


Society of Mind

Looking To Fall Into The Bear’s Spirals

Out on the back porch
my telescope is set up.
So I am ready.

I’ve often looked for
Ursa Major’s galaxies.
I’ve never seen them.

Even on clear nights
skies here south of Chicago
are bright. Bad seeing.

I’m hoping one night—
maybe cold, maybe windy—
skies will be magic.

Out on the back porch
my telescope is set up.
So I am ready.

Just seeing something
sometimes somehow makes things change.
I want things to change.

The galaxies near
the Big Dipper are millions
of light years away.

Far as far can be.
I want to be far away.
I’m looking for change.

Out on the back porch
my telescope is set up.
So I am ready.

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


As Far Away As Can Be


No Time, No Distance

Bride Of Muskie Light Switch

Wisconsin is not my favorite state but someday
I might return to it. Far north in Wisconsin.
If the place were a color-by-number fill-in
all the numbers would turn out muskie green and grey.

The Chippewa Flowage. Muskie hunters at play.
I usually fish ultralight but to win
the heart of a hungry muskie I’d ditch the thin
four pound test line for ten, keep my drag loose and pray.

There is a state I hope never to return to.
There is a state I’m sorry I was ever in.
There is a state I wish I never learned about.

It’s a muskie state, too. I was the fish. Hooked through
my jaw. Played. Netted. Landed. Filleted. Cooked. Bitten.
Chewed. Swallowed. Half-digested. Then vomited out.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -



Muskie Light Switch


Chippewa Flowage

A Spaceship That Sparks

If I had a spaceship—I mean a real spaceship
with what science buffs call a reactionless space drive
capable of accelerating at 1G
for hour after hour, sometimes day after day—
I would tweak with the drive to make my spaceship spark
just like the silly-ass spaceships in Flash Gordon
(I mean the black and white Flash Gordon cliffhangers).

I like the idea of a spaceship that sparks.
I don’t know exactly why. I do know that if
you accelerate at 1G you can travel
from Earth to Pluto in only about two weeks.

I’d go sparking, flashing through the outer system.

I’d find some water ice out there around Pluto.
I’d make a raspberry snowcone with leftovers
from the time when our solar system was forming.
Then I’d come back to Earth, sparking all the way home,
and post pictures on my blog of myself eating
the snowcone with Pluto visible behind me
through the spaceship’s viewport. If someone commented
that the image was very good Photoshop work,
I’d say, “No, it isn’t. I flew out to Pluto
in a spaceship that sparks and I made that snowcone
from ice that was primeval. I mean primeval.”
The person would say, “Yeah, sure.” But I wouldn’t care
because I’d be planning to spark my way to Mars
to get eye-to-eye with that Cydonia face.

Anna Kournikova Epistemology

Bernadette’s Mirror: Landslide

Bernadette’s mirror is a mystery to me
and Bernadette is a mystery to me, too.

Bernadette’s mirror is a thing doing its thing,
reflecting me and reflecting everything else
and reflecting Bernadette, too, who’s not a thing
but who’s reflected and watching the reflections
with me, thinking about the reflections with me.

Bernadette’s mirror might remain a mystery
but if I compose my beliefs in words just right
Bernadette will smile. Then she will tell me the truth.
Then I’ll know the truth. Then I’ll be able to move.

Like a landslide, I’ll kiss her, rocks tumbling downhill.

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


Bernadette’s Mirror: Strata

Bernadette’s Mirror: Eroding

Bernadette’s Mirror: Fossilized

Bernadette’s Mirror


The Fossil And The Paleontologist

Fossils Never Run Away, But

Bernadette’s Mirror: Strata

Bernadette’s mirror is a mystery to me.

Reflections are colors making shapes making scenes,
scenes that arrange themselves one against the other,
burying each other, juxtaposed, like strata
of rock enfolding millions of years, being time.

I feel the reflections from Bernadette’s mirror
enfolding me, coloring me and shaping me,
juxtaposing me against the strata of time,
being before, being now, being yet-to-come.

I can’t move, all bent out of shape but looking through
the strange folds around me, penetrating me, too,
strange colors reflecting from Bernadette’s mirror.

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


Bernadette’s Mirror: Eroding

Bernadette’s Mirror: Fossilized

Bernadette’s Mirror


The Fossil And The Paleontologist

Fossils Never Run Away, But

Bernadette’s Mirror: Eroding

Bernadette’s mirror is a mystery to me.

I’m staring into it. I cannot look away.

All the mysteries behind me are so ugly—
so endlessly hopeless and so fucking ugly—
that turning away, turning around, turning back
isn’t even something that I wish I could do.

I don’t think I’ll understand Bernadette’s mirror
regardless of how deeply I look into it,
how desperately I think about what I see,
how creatively I compose beliefs in words.

I cannot look away. I wouldn’t if I could.

I’m a rock, eroding, thinking about the wind.

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


Bernadette’s Mirror: Fossilized

Bernadette’s Mirror


The Fossil And The Paleontologist

Fossils Never Run Away, But

Bernadette’s Mirror: Fossilized

Bernadette’s mirror is a mystery to me.
I’ve looked into it and now I can’t look away.

I wonder: Is this the Medusa myth for real?

I’ve seen Bernadette’s mirror. I’ve looked into it.
Motion, now, is something else, like a distant place
I once visited but can never return to.
Movement, now, is just a thing that I remember.

I am stone, now, in front of Bernadette’s mirror,
something like hypnotized but more like enraptured.
Watching. Lost among the reflections. Fossilized.

I’m a museum piece, now, to the world outside
the reflections I see in Bernadette’s mirror.

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


Bernadette’s Mirror


The Fossil And The Paleontologist

Fossils Never Run Away, But

Bernadette’s Mirror