The Mythic Landscape (And French Writers)

There is an influential opinion that the terms like ‘myth’, ‘mythological’ etc imply a negative connotation in the sense of something ‘untrue’ and therefore illusory at best and deceitful at worst. From the point of view of sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists, subjective ‘truisms’ can have immense power and extensive effect even where they intrude into everyday reality – one only has to think of the far-reaching consequences of dreams or religious faith – and in this case Meurger is trying to illuminate the ‘meaningfulness’ of narratives about encountering mysterious ‘creatures’ in the imaginative world he calls the ‘mythic landscape’.

Bob Rickard
Fortean Tomes Publisher

Today’s post is me recommending a couple of very interesting posts at another blog.

But I want to say some stuff about these posts I’m recommending and, while doing that, I’m going to tie up one old loose end from here at Impossible Kisses.


First of all, here are the links I’m recommending.

Over at Loren Coleman’s website Cryptomundo, last month he talked about a book written by a French sociologist about lake monsters in Canada, published in English as “Lake Monster Traditions.” I’ve never read the English translation of this book, but it was an important book in Coleman’s life and his thoughts on the differences he perceived between the French edition and the English edition are interesting. That blog post is here:

Rethinking Lake Monster Traditions


Loren Coleman is a pretty influential guy in the world of Forteana and the publisher of the English edition of the book wrote a response to Coleman’s critique. That response includes some great background on the publishing business (the original English translation was made by the French publisher’s girlfriend!). That blog post is here:

Fortean Tomes Publisher Responds: Lake Monster Traditions Misunderstood



French writers are interesting.

And influential. This blog, of course, Impossible Kisses, was and continues to be influenced by the thoughts and writings of a French former astronomer named Jacques Vallee. His book “Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers” really popularized the paradigm of linking modern Forteana to ancient fairy-faith beliefs.

And beyond Forteana, Vallee was and continues to be very realistic and buttoned-down in his thinking. His book “Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults” may have been the first—and may have been the most detailed—UFO-related book to focus on manipulations of fringe believers by government and military intelligence agencies. In that book Vallee had commented on the group that would later become known as the Heaven’s Gate cult. That particular study is still relevant today because similar and equally bizarre—or maybe even more bizarre—beliefs are being put in circulation by internet would-be gurus about the incoming comet Elenin. It is just an average comet by all astronomical and astrophysics metrics, but it is being manipulated—for some purpose—by fringe groups in the same way as the Hale-Bopp comet was manipulated. And we can only hope there will not be similar results.

And for me personally the topic of French writers goes all the way back to the Seventeenth Century. There was really interesting math stuff happening in France four or five hundred years ago. The philosopher and statesman Leibniz developed the calculus of infinitesimals, but more than just what we would call the calculus came of this work. The whole concept of “infinitesimals” became a topic in itself among French mathematicians and some of the stuff I’ve seen translated now and then is as much philosophy as it is mathematics. However, it is very hard to find any of this writing translated into English.

(This is oddly similar to what happened more recently with the catastrophe theory of Rene Thom. Thom developed the mathematical theory almost as a adjunct to his philosophical thinking, especially about morphogenesis in biology. But Thom’s original writing is very hard to find, and instead catastrophe theory in English became strange, faddish, complicated math almost divorced from the simple elegance of Thom’s original writing and thinking.)

A while ago in my post A Place To Read Books I’ve Never Read I mentioned that I’ve read many of the books I’ve wanted to read, then said that I haven’t yet read some French math books. The particular book I had in mind is Analyse des Infiniment Petits pour l'Intelligence des Lignes Courbes, which translates as “Analysis of the infinitely small to understand curves.” This book was published around 1696 and was written either by Guillaume de l'Hôpital or by Johann Bernoulli. No one seems to know. At any rate, I have now and then seen excerpts from it and it looks very interesting, but I’ve never found an English translation, not even at college libraries.

I’ve never found any of Rene Thom’s books in any easily available English editions, either.

And one of the scary things about wanting to read an English translation of the book by Guillaume de l'Hôpital (or Rene Thom’s works) is that I know that reading a bad translation can be worse than not reading the book at all. And I know that bad translations happen all the time. (As may have happened with the lake monster book.) Sometimes what happens is that text gets “modernized” and the philosophical elements (or the author’s examples or the author’s word choices) which the author was happy with when a book was first written get completely eliminated, or get completely re-written to fit modern theory about one thing or another. And the seemingly “out-of-date” philosophy (or other content) may have been the most interesting content of the book!

(Or, more seriously, the original content may have helped a reader understand the writer’s thinking, while re-written passages conforming to some contemporary pedagogy may, in fact, obscure a writer’s thinking. My experience has been that this kind of re-writing is, strangely, more common than anyone would expect.)


So, that’s today’s post. I really enjoyed reading those links from over at Cryptomundo and I wanted to share them. And the topic of French books—and English translations—is an important one to me because there are some things I’d like very much to read that seem to be only available in French. Or, more accurately, I mean the books are only available with a meaningful context around them to people who can read French.


So I am hoping someday to meet a pretty French mathematician or philosopher and I plan on buying her a lot of dinners if she will talk to me about this stuff.

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Inca Roads (Introduction)



A Typical Day On The Road To Utopia


The Road To Magonia



A Mussel Of A Different Color

Where I Torment, Torture And Traumatize A Teen

I’ve wanted to do this post for a while, but I’ve been trying to think of some good way to link together the two parts of the post. I haven’t thought of anything good, so I’m just going to do this plain.

This is about two completely unrelated events. One happened a long time ago and one happened a couple of weeks ago. They go together, a little, because they’re both about me doing something bad. And just before the second thing happened, I’d almost bumped into the person from the first thing.


First, here is the old thing.


A couple of weeks ago at our local grocery store I almost bumped into a librarian I used to talk to now and then at our local library. I say almost because I saw her and she saw me but she didn’t look like she had any desire to say hello to me or to have me say hello to her, so I just grabbed my groceries and got out. No problem there. Believe me, I know me better than anyone and I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either.

But almost saying hello to the librarian—I’ll call her “S”—got me thinking of a horrible thing I once did.

One morning when I was still going to libraries I went to our local library because I wanted to use one of the public access computers. As I sat down to log on, S walked over with some signs she was taping onto the computer screens. S told me the computers weren’t working and nobody could use them until the technical people got the systems up and running.

As S was talking, telling me not to log on, I just sat down and tried to log on. And the system worked fine.

So S had to take down the signs she had already taped up.

And although I was glad I was able to log on and do whatever I had wanted to do, I felt horrible.

If someone tells you something, it’s only reasonable to listen to them. If someone tells you not to do something, it sucks to just ignore the person and try to do it anyway. Beyond just the simple decency part of the issue, there is the gender issue. Jackass guys always ignore women, especially on technical matters. Jackass guys always ignore women and do whatever they want to do.

That moment in the library I really wanted to use the computer and even though S always had been nice to me and even though S always had been one of the smart and helpful librarians who could actually solve a problem rather than make things more complicated, I just acted like a jackass and ignored her.

It bugged me then and I apologized. But, you know, apologies don’t make things go away and it has nagged at me for years that I acted like a jackass that time.

(Here is a secret, never-before-revealed bit of Impossible Kisses ancient history: S was the subject of Cognitive Blur #1: Librarian Bond Girl. Not the other Cognitive Blurs, just that first one.)

Anyway, and the really awful thing—one of the awful things—is that even though me being impulsive back then has bugged me for years, it hasn’t stopped me from still being impulsive and acting like a jackass.

Which brings me to part two of today’s post.



In Which I Torment, Torture And Traumatize A Teen


A couple of days after that non-encounter at the grocery store, I was taking a short drive to a neighborhood magazine store to get the new issue of American Cinematographer and the new issue of Sky and Telescope. The owner’s a nice guy and he puts them aside for me.

So I wasn’t in a hurry. I mean, they weren’t going to sell my copies of the magazines or anything.

Anyway, the little suburban side street I live on is a north-south street. A few blocks down, the little north-south street ends at a big street that runs east and west.

There is a stop sign on the little street I live on, but the big street has four lanes, two east and two west, and traffic on the big street doesn’t stop.

So if you are going south on the little street you stop at the stop sign and, if you want to go east, to turn left across traffic, you have to wait for the traffic to clear in both directions on the big street because that traffic has no stop sign and no traffic light.

Now it’s not really a big deal. Gaps develop in traffic. Usually there isn’t a long wait. And, if you’re in a hurry, when a gap appears in the west-bound traffic on the big street you can scoot out, half-way, and pull into the turning lane in the middle of the street and wait for a gap in the east-bound traffic.

I guess it’s what suburban people might call tricky, city driving. But I grew up driving in Chicago and I’m used to traffic.

However—and here’s a key point—a lot of suburban people, especially suburban teenage girls and suburban women, grow up driving on suburban streets where everything is laid out nicely and there’s wide spaces and not a lot of traffic. Some suburban women never even try to learn city driving. They never drive on expressways. They plan trips so that almost all their turns will be right turns. And they get nervous as hell even if they have to edge out into a left-hand lane to turn left. It’s true. Some suburban women are very—to put it mildly—very conservative drivers.

So I was driving to a magazine store to pick up a couple of magazines that the owner had put aside for me. I wasn’t even in a hurry.

Driving south on the little suburban side street where I live, I got to the corner by the big street and there was one car in front of me. I couldn’t tell anything about the driver of the car in front of me. But the car’s left-turn blinker was on, so they were planning on making a left turn across traffic, too.

So I buckled down to wait for a gap in the traffic for the car in front of me.

A small gap came and went and the car in front of me didn’t move at all.

Then a larger gap in traffic came and went and the car in front of me didn’t move at all.

I’m not even in a hurry but now, all of a sudden, I’m getting pissed off that the car in front of me is waiting for a giant gap in traffic from both directions before they make their turn.

So I honked my horn.

And the car in front of me didn’t move at all.

Another gap or two—to my eyes—came and went and I honked my horn again and the car in front of me still didn’t move.

So I figure, screw it—like I say, I’m used to city driving—and I decide I’m just going to drive around the car in front of me, take one of the little gaps the car in front of me wouldn’t use, and force my way across the big street.

So I pulled around the car in front of me on their right hand side, their passenger side, and there was a little gap in traffic and I started to scoot forward, to zip halfway across the big street, but before I did I glanced to my left to make sure the driver in the other car realized I was passing them, realized I was going to cut around them, and didn’t try to drive forward too and hit me on my drivers’ side.

And when I looked into the car next to me it was a teenage girl, I guess about seventeen or eighteen. Probably, I guess, driving the family car. Probably, I guess, not often in the situation of trying to turn left across traffic and having an impatient driver behind her.

Because when I looked into the car next to me I saw it was a teenage girl and she looked terrified. I mean: She. Looked. Terrified.

Really terrified. She was gripping the steering wheel like Indiana Jones holding onto his whip to keep from falling into a pit. She was leaning kind of half forward and half to her side window to look at me coming alongside her. And the expression on her face looked pretty much like this:

Oh man.

So I knew she wasn’t going to scoot forward and plow into me when I zipped forward so I just zipped forward into the turning lane in the middle of the street. When a gap came in the east-bound traffic I slipped into that. I kept glancing in my rearview mirror, but I never saw that poor girl get a gap large enough to turn onto the big street.

I felt so bad. I still feel bad.

Just because I have no patience, I made a situation that was already distressing to that poor girl into a moment of torment, torture and trauma.

I have no idea who that young girl was, and I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her again so I don’t even have the option of apologizing.

But, like I said up above, I know that “apologizing” about something doesn’t make the thing go away. Just like that business with the librarian has bugged me for years, now this driving thing is going to bug me for years.

This is one of the reasons why I need to move away from civilization and live on a boat. If there are no people around me within a thousand miles, then I can’t torment, torture and traumatize anyone.

And I won’t have to worry about bumping into people I used to know.

Because I know, too, down in my deepest, secret soul, that I’ll have a far easier time learning to live without civilization than I’d ever have learning to act patiently or learning to, as the damn punk kids with all their downers and meditation say, relax.

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Scraps For Alison With Love And Squalor


You Damn Punk Kids


A Place To Read Books I’ve Never Read

An Albireo Question

“This telescope does help us see.”

Dinosaur By Moonlight: A Puppet Show

Even a small telescope separates
Albireo into its components.

Any apochromatic refractor
and any reflector shows the colors—
the beautiful blazing orange large star
and the equally beautiful blue star
that’s smaller and really robin’s egg blue.

Any good telescope helps us see this.

However, no matter how much we spend,
even if we spend a billion dollars,
no telescope will ever help us know
if these two stars are a real double star,
two stars bound by gravity, orbiting
each other as a two-body system,
or just two stars on the same line-of-sight
when viewed from the perspective of the Earth
so that they just appear near each other.

When little science can do everything
big science can, is big science ‘science’?

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That beautiful picture of Albireo is a little misleading. In terms of color, Albireo really does look like that through a good telescope, two blazing, colorful stars. (That photo is from the Melton Memorial Observatory.) But all stars to the naked eye—even when the naked eye is helped by a telescope—all stars are only point sources of light. They are not perceived as disks. When you photograph a star, however, the bright light washes out a disk on the film or sensor, so stars in photographs often appear as disks, just like planets do. It makes for an impressive photo, but it is not “real.”

It’s an interesting issue anyone involved with astronomical imaging bumps up against all the time. Do you attempt to create an image that approximates “normal” human visual perceptions, or do you create something that attempts to recreate the beauty and majesty that a visual scene inspires?

It’s an interesting issue and I’ve talked about it before (for instance in Saturn and Titan, And The Pleiades and in Astronomy And Impressionism and some other posts) and I’ll probably talk about it again.


But for today’s post I wanted to ask a whole different kind of question.


In many different countries, billions and billions of dollars are spent on various “big science” projects. But it is intriguing to ask if big science is really doing anything worthwhile.

There is the simple observation I raised in today’s post. Some things just can’t be learned by throwing money at them.

And there is an equally fundamental issue. “Truth” is not about big and small. “Important” is not about big and small. Good science is just about good science.


Right now there are three issues of profound importance happening in three different sciences.

In physics scientists are trying to characterize and understand the consequences of nuclear decay rates that are not constant.

In astronomy scientists are trying to understand how volatile material can still be present in the asteroid belt after billions of years.

In paleontology scientists are trying to understand how soft tissues can be present in fossil finds when it is impossible for proteins and such to persist for millions of years.


These are three issues that impact each other because they all can help us understand the concept of so-called deep time, and our place in the cosmos in the most basic way.

But these three issues aren’t really “big science” issues. They don’t require billions of dollars to investigate. They are not politically and socially “impressive” issues to investigate.

But they are almost certainly the most important scientific issues anyone in the current world can devote resources to investigating.

If “big science” distracts from issues like these, is big science really science? Or is big science really politics? Or social engineering? Or some kind of strange combination of the two?


Little observations like today’s post can lead directly to “big philosophy” questions like this.


I’ll be talking more about this stuff in the future.

The Evil Light In Perkins’ Eyes

Today I don’t have much, but it’s something I’ve wanted to post for a long time. I’ve never been able to think of a larger context for this little post so I’m just going to do it by itself.


Here is a short excerpt from a reasonably famous science fiction book. It’s not a well-known book nowadays, but it is famous among hardcore fans and I’ll talk about that a little more after the quote.

The backstory isn’t really important, but as one might expect from a ‘classic’ piece of science fiction, this little bit of drama is happening on an experimental spacecraft that is hurtling away from Earth totally out-of-control. The characters are a supervillain named Marc DuQuesne, his henchman Perkins, and two young women they kidnapped before their spacecraft went out-of-control—one woman was investigating the suspicious death of her father and Perkins’ connection to the crime, and the other woman is the fiancée of the hero of the story. Her fiancée is the science wiz who invented the space-drive which Marc DuQuesne stole.

Anyway. Here’s the quote:

An evil light appeared in Perkins’ eyes. He took out a wicked-looking knife and began to strop it carefully on the leather of the seat, glaring at his victim the while.

Dorothy started to protest, but was silenced by a gesture from Margaret, who calmly took the pistol out of her pocket. She jerked the slide and held the weapon up on one finger.

“Don’t worry about his knife. He’s been sharpening it for my benefit for the last month. It doesn’t mean a thing. But you shouldn’t play with it so much, Perkins, you might be tempted to try to throw it. So drop it on the floor and kick it over here to me. Before I count three. One.” The heavy pistol steadied into line with his chest and her finger tightened on the trigger.

“Two.” Perkins obeyed and Margaret picked up the knife.

“Doctor!” Perkins appealed to DuQuesne, who had watched the scene unmoved, a faint smile upon his saturnine face. “Why don’t you shoot her? You won’t sit there and see me murdered!”

“Won’t I? It makes no difference to me which of you kills the other, or if you both do, or neither. You brought this on yourself. Anyone with any fraction of a brain doesn’t leave guns lying around loose. You should have seen Miss Vaneman take them—I did.”

“You saw her take them and didn’t warn me?” Perkins croaked.

“Certainly. If you can’t take care of yourself I’m not going to take care of you.”

Yeah. So, that was written back in 1928. Pretty cool stuff. That book is famous among fans because it was one of the first—maybe the very first—example of what came to be called “space opera” stories. Big sweeping stories and what are called larger-than-life characters. There were, and continue to be, endless copies of such stuff, but this novel and its sequels were either the very first to do it, or among the first, in science fiction.


Women were pretty tough in science fiction back then.


Some people think the whole genre of “tough women” in science fiction started with Ripley in Ridley Scott’s film “Alien,” but that’s nonsense.

And what’s remarkable about women in science fiction from the early part of the twentieth century—and as opposed to the modern world—is that the women who could take care of themselves in early science fiction were not abrasive loners or muscle-bound freaks or any of the other kind of unpleasant, one-dimensional caricatures modern entertainment presents.

In the early twentieth century, entertainment often featured women who were attractive, pleasant, reasonably well-rounded human beings and who, also, could take care of themselves and didn’t put up with grotesque nonsense from the people around them.


What a concept.


And it seems to be a good concept, too. Kind of makes you wonder: Why would the entertainment world abandon it?

When you think about it, it is as if the world before World War One, or, more certainly, before World War Two, were a completely different world than the world we live in today.


As if.


How did we get from that world to this world?


And what the hell kind of world is coming next?

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Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts
And Separates! #1: Grandma Laura


Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts
And Separates! #2: How It Works


Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts
And Separates! #3: The Paperclip Nazis


Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts
And Separates! #4: “Let Me Tell You The Good Life”




You Damn Punk Kids


“This Was A Different World”


The Difference Between Clouds And Conquistadors



The Darkness Inside The Wolf



Love Sonnet With Piano Wreckage And Worms



A Bird Who Could Fly To Neptune

Distance From Paris To Berlin

At Wolfram|Alpha, if you ask “distance from Paris to Berlin” it tells you the two cities are 546 miles apart. It even draws you a map. What more could you need to know?

I like that monster film about the giant snake.
There’s nothing British in it. And the only thing
that’s kind of British—a James Bond-type U.S. spy—
gets eaten by the snake before the snake is killed.

I guess it’s good that books are dead now at the end
and we have movies. Or “good.” Everybody knows
everything in movies—every thing—is pretend.

The Monster Thought Of The Waldensians

On the train from Paris to Berlin
I realized what a mess I was in
And I knew I had to think things through
Or never think again
On the train from Paris to Berlin

On the train from Paris to Berlin
I studied all the wreckage and ruin
And I couldn’t tell if the gates of Hell
Were on the outside or in
On the train from Paris to Berlin

On the train from Paris to Berlin
I watched a waiter fold a paper napkin
He creased each side then spread them wide
To tuck each corner in
On the train from Paris to Berlin

On the train from Paris to Berlin
I saw myself in a thin reflection
I was fleeing from a sleeping face
But her dreaming smile took me in
On the train from Paris to Berlin

On the train from Paris to Berlin
I traveled farther than the train I was in
Now there’s no comparing here to there
Or going back to where I’ve been
On the train from Paris to Berlin

“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.

Orbis Non Sufficit And The Status Cow

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In The Mind Of Everyone Seeing Paris



“The Clock Had All His Attention”


This Scary, Pumpkin Time Of Year, Part Two



The Built World Before The Wrecking Crew


The Built World Redux—Art And Souvenir



I Don’t Know What Distance Means Any More


I Don’t Know What Lost Means Any More



Religion, Politics And The Great Pumpkin

Leaving Mandy Moore

Lake trout are native and widespread throughout North America. Lake trout were originally found in lakes in Alaska, Canada, and the northeastern United States. The lake trout has been introduced into lakes throughout the world. These regions include Europe, South America, and certain areas of Asia. Lake trout only congregate and school during spawning season. Aside from this time of year, the lake trout is a solitary fish.

Lake Trout | Trout Nation

Two trout—a girl trout and a boy trout—were swimming in a wide arc around a sewage discharge pipe emptying into Lake Michigan. Even though they put a lot of distance between themselves and the sewage, their sensitive gills could still detect a lot of the chemical trace elements in the discharge.

“Someone must be doing their laundry,” the boy trout said. “I can taste the soap.”

“Yes,” the girl trout said. “It’s Gain laundry detergent. Apple-Mango-Tango.”

“I remember that stuff,” the boy trout said. “Gain Joyful Expressions soap. Great name.”

“Yes, but they changed it,” the girl trout said.

“What?” the boy trout asked.

“Yeah,” the girl trout said. “I was eating some mayflies along the shore where one of the Gain marketing women lives. I heard her talking on her phone. They kept the actual chemicals the same, and they kept the Apple-Mango-Tango part of the name. But they dropped the Joyful Expressions part of the name.”

“Why?” the boy trout asked.

The girl trout shrugged, a little shiver running the length of her body. “It’s a corporation, you know? A bunch of humans trying to school. Who knows why they do things? Do they even know?”

The boy trout stopped swimming, and the girl trout stopped, too.

“You’d have thought,” the boy trout said, “that they would have kept the Joyful Expressions part and changed the chemicals. Or they would have kept the Joyful Expressions part and changed the flavor name. But of all the things to change, they changed the Joyful Expressions part. That was the only good part.”

The girl trout shrugged again, her lateral line glittering in sunlight that penetrated below the surface.

“Humans are strange,” the girl trout said. “You want to go see if cicadas are falling into the water off the North Shore?”

The boy trout shook his head. When he shook his head, he held his body straight with little motions of his side fins.

“No,” the boy trout said. “In fact, you know, I think I’d like to be alone. It’s been fun hanging out with you, but I think I’m going to head off to deep water for a while.”

“But it’s still summer,” the girl trout said. “The shoreline temperatures haven’t even started to drop—”

But the boy trout just swung his tail in a tight curve, twisted around, and disappeared out toward the middle of the lake.

The girl trout watched the shadowy shape of the boy trout disappear into the deep green distance. She hung suspended in the water, shimmering in the sunlight, alone.

She exhaled a long sigh, and her lateral line glittered again.

The girl trout said, to herself, “What the hell was that about?”

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Gain Joyful Expressions


The End Of The World Shaken Not Stirred



Unrequited As A Cosmology


The Once And Future Mandy Moore

Hello Mark,

Thank you for contacting Gain. Which Gain Joyful Expressions fragrance were you looking for? We do still make Gain Joyful Expressions Apple Mango Tango, but the Joyful Expressions name was dropped and now it is just known as Gain Apple Mango Tango (red bottle).

Thanks for writing.

Brittany
Gain Team

personal correspondence
with the author

Cool Snail Ben Safe At Second Base

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Snail Tricks


Inconsolable: Top Ten Anagrams


A Snail Relaxing



Planetary Colors And The Grail Quest

Expeditions And Wilderness Parties

The ERTS camp had been designed under contract by a NASA team in 1977, based on the recognition that wilderness expedition equipment was fundamentally unchanged since the eighteenth century. “Designs for modern exploration are long overdue,” ERTS said, and asked for state-of-the-art improvements in lightness, comfort, and efficiency of expedition gear. NASA had redesigned everything, from clothing and boots to tents and cooking gear, food and menus, first-aid kits, and communications systems for ERTS wilderness parties.

The redesigned tents were typical of the NASA approach. NASA had determined that tent weight consisted chiefly of the structural supports. In addition, single-ply tents were poorly insulated. If tents could be properly insulated, clothing and sleeping-bag weight could be reduced, as could the daily caloric requirements of expedition members. Since air was an excellent insulator, the obvious solution was an unsupported, pneumatic tent: NASA designed one that weighed six ounces.

Using a little hissing foot pump, Ross inflated the first tent. It was made from double-layer 20-mil silvered Mylar, and looked like a gleaming ribbed Quonset hut. The porters clapped their hands with delight; Munro shook his head, amused; Kahega produced a small silver unit, the size of a shoebox. “And this, Doctor? What is this?”

“We won’t need that tonight. That’s an air conditioner,” Ross said.

“Never go anywhere without one,” Munro said, still amused.

Ross glared at him. “Studies show,” she said, “that the single greatest factor limiting work efficiency is ambient temperature, with sleep deprivation as the second factor.”

“Really.”

Munro laughed . . .

from “Congo”
by Michael Crichton

As I type this, it’s night, a little past ten o’clock.

There is a bright star almost directly overhead.

It’s hot and humid outside but my apartment’s cool
because of a small, efficient air conditioner.

Because I’m so comfortable inside, I don’t mind
taking my binoculars on an expedition
to the front lawn to have a close look at the bright star.

City lights obscure all but the bright stars around here
so without binoculars bright stars have no context
around them, no dim stars creating constellations.

I know, of course, that the bright star is the star Vega,
the brightest star in the constellation of Lyra,
the little harp, but without binoculars the harp
can’t be seen here and the bright star Vega is alone.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I lost track of the seasons.

Because I’m so comfortable inside, I don’t mind
taking my binoculars on an expedition
to the front lawn to have a close look at the bright star.

So I took my binoculars out to the front lawn
and had a look straight up. There was the bright star Vega,
with Epsilon Lyrae and Zeta Lyrae nearby
making a little triangle with Vega above
the little shifted rectangle Zeta Lyrae forms
with Beta, Delta and Gamma Lyrae, so easy
to see with a little help, so beautiful to see
glittering overhead, a shining harp in the sky.

Now I’m sitting here typing these expedition notes.

Although the weather’s awful outside—hot and humid—
my little air conditioner keeps my bedroom cool.

It will be nice sleeping tonight. I’m under the stars,
even if there is a roof between me and the stars.

And the stars up there make the shape of a little harp.

It’s not a real harp. It’s only a pretend harp. But
I can pretend, too, it will play a beautiful song
and I’ll listen to that melody from overhead
instead of my air conditioner’s compressor noise.

City lights obscure all but the bright stars around here.

But it’s only pretend. All the stars are still up there.

You just have to be cool, and know how and where to look.

12:30 am Update — Actually I see that it has now cooled off very nicely outside. It’s down in the seventies. I can switch off the air conditioner and not listen to compressor noises at all. Tonight it will be just me and the stars.

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



Lyra at Wikipedia



*



What Is Love? 3—Gorilla My Dreams


Harps And Flutes, Swans And Monsters


Weather, Fringe Talk And Debunking


Freedom From The Wild/Lost In Metonymy



“Heavy Cargo In The Heart Of The Sea”


“Expedition” Versus “Going Out”


Someday: The Last Expedition


The Evening Sky Is Cloudy


Daddy Needs A New Pair Of Shoes


Expeditions



Have You Seen The Stars Tonight?



Crown And Tiara

Scraps For Alison With Love And Squalor

“Hi! I’m Alison. I do rebellious

magazine collages. They’re rebellious

because when I cut up a magazine

I’m not only cutting up pop culture,

I’m cutting up the invisible world.

You know, the political and social

alchemy stuff. All the subliminal

embeds in the photography and text.

And I’m not just cutting up all this stuff.

Oh, do you get the cutting up business?

Anyway, I also reshape content.

For my own purpose. I’m making my own

messages. My own invisible world.

I glue down my worlds, damn it, and frame them.

That’s what real rebellion is all about.

The Pilgrims didn’t just exit England.

They built America. Or, well, you know,

they moved around some pieces, glued down stuff

for their own purpose. In both of the worlds—

the visible and the invisible.

Just because something is invisible,

just because I can’t identify it,

doesn’t mean I can’t play with it. Photos,

text columns, pop culture. Hell, cut it up!

Reshape and rearrange it. Glue it down.

Frame it. Yes! Magazine collages rule

in the monolectic New World Order!”

Alison Wakes Up And Introduces Herself

This is kind of a silly and pointless post, but it was kind of fun to do, so I’m going to let it stay.


This is about magazines. And Alison.


I don’t read as many magazines as I once did, but I still read, I guess, comparatively, a lot of magazines. By the end of a month I usually have a sizeable pile of magazines I’ve accumulated during the month.

I usually have, for instance, the monthly issues of Sky and Telescope, American Cinematographer, Acoustic Guitar Player, Guitar Player, Keyboard, American Artist, Black Belt, Elle and Vogue. Then there will be random things I picked up. Robot magazines. Fishing magazines. Maybe something like a Star Wars magazine, just because I can’t believe they print such a thing.

Lots of magazines.

Now, one of the coolest women I’ve ever known was a woman named Alison and she used to read a lot of magazines, too. But instead of just reading a magazine, she would carefully tear up magazines and save the pages in particular folders sorted by subject matter or color or other criteria that were meaningful to her.

Every month she would make—just for fun!—a really amazing collage from the torn up scraps of magazines. Sometimes they were abstract, sometimes they had themes. But they were always cool and sometimes they were just amazing and, amazingly, they all just ended up in a pile in her closet.

Now, at the end of the each month I tear up all my magazines. I used to give them away to libraries, but I’m not as fond of libraries as I once was and, besides, it’s just a lot of fun to rip up an entire month of pop culture.

(To be fair, I do collect tear sheets. If there’s a good article, I tear that out and save it. But, these days, there isn’t as much good stuff in magazines as there used to be.)

So tonight I was tearing up magazines from July and throwing out the scraps but when I came to Elle and Vogue I got to thinking about Alison and, before I threw away the colorful, torn up scraps from this month’s fashion world, I bunched them up on my notebook and randomly shifted around some scraps and—all by themselves!—they made a little found-art collage.

I didn’t glue anything down and gloss it over with acrylic. But I did take a picture.

So here is me indulging in a kind of blast from my past, remembering a time when I knew a very cool woman and making a little magazine collage of my own, giving a little kiss on the cheek myself to Alison’s monolectic New World Order:

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



Corporate Communications #4: Alison (Introduction)


Corporate Communications #5: Alison


Alison Dreaming Of Me *


Alison Dreaming Of The Ultimate Buddy Motion Picture


Alison Dreaming


Impossible Kisses: The Turtle At The Center Of The World



Seeing Things In Christina’s World



A Perfect Day For Love And Squalor

What Is Electric Sugar?

Redmond resident and Borders regular Jon Brown said all these factors — the rise of eReaders and fall of the economy — seemed to have happened at the same time and it is disappointing to see Borders go. He added that he hates to see bookstores close because there aren't enough around and e-books are not the same.

"There's still a place in your heart for books," he said.

Brown's daughter Sarah Brown agrees.

"I'd rather read out of a concrete book than a Kindle," she said.

Borders' closing leaves huge void in bookworms' hearts

Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc., the operator of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shops ... with 6,800 U.S. locations, enticed investors with plans to more than double its U.S. store count in 20 years after outpacing McDonald’s Corp. (MCD)’s revenue growth last year. Recently, the Canton, Massachusetts-based chain has sought to draw customers in the afternoon with snack foods including pepperoni-stuffed breadsticks.

“We have room to move across the whole country,” Chief Executive Officer Nigel Travis said in a telephone interview today. “We have, in the West, a number of customers who try our brand -- they like the taste of our coffee, they like our speed.”

The stock was priced higher than the top end of the marketed range, with 22.3 million shares selling at $19 each yesterday after being offered for $16 to $18, Dunkin’ said in a statement.

“Investors are just excited about a new, hot IPO that they think has room to grow its unit count,” Peter Saleh, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group in New York, said today in an interview. “There are probably a lot of people who are investing in this name for the long-term growth and the free cash it generates.”

Dunkin’ Brands Shares Surge on First
Trading Day After $422.8 Million IPO

Concrete is the stuff sidewalks are made from.

And it means real instead of virtual.

So children these days speak of concrete books.

This is the world children are playing in,
electric books, electric libraries
you can stick in a backpack and carry
with you—more virtual electric books
than a concrete library has on shelf.

Now everybody knows they’re not the same—
kids say they would rather read concrete books—
but the jackhammers and the sledgehammers
are demolishing all the concrete books,
reducing them to rubble and book dust.

The librarians are throwing them out.

(A writer once thought that job would fall to
the “firemen” but he should have realized
librarians were already on call.)

Bookstores are yesterday’s news. Donut shops
right now are a hot ticket on Wall Street.

Electric donuts will never replace
concrete ones. What is electric sugar?

Sugar is the stuff donuts are made from.







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



The Borders stores around here are closing and they’re currently having a going-out-of-business sale. I visited one recently.

I bought a movie. Ha.

I bought a copy of the special edition DVD of one of my favorite films of all time, Joe Dante’s great, low-budget werewolf movie, “The Howling.”

There are many great scenes in this film. One of my favorites is toward the middle.


A woman’s husband gets attacked by a werewolf. He survives, however soon he starts turning himself, changing into a monster. But instead of being terrified, he embraces the change, enjoys the animal thrills.

When his wife realizes what’s happening, she tries to leave him.

He grabs her.

He says, “You don’t know what it’s like.”


She shrugs free from his grasp.

She says, “I don’t want to know.”


Then she does walk away from him. She’s the hero of the movie.




Concrete is the stuff sidewalks are made from.

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



Rocket Summer People


There’s A Hand Raising A Phone



“Where Do The Children Play?”



La Seule Chose Que Je Peux Faire



Things Libraries Throw Away


Ha! Man Throws Away Library!



Motion Beyond The Fox Point



Coming Attractions: The Librarian And The Painter


“The Librarian And The Painter”

Anal Sex And Death In Los Angeles

So I’m sitting at a table in a famous LA restaurant jammed with a lunchtime crowd of famous LA people. Everyone at my table for some reason—maybe just because it’s Los Angeles—is talking about prostitution.

A beautiful young woman across from me says it sometimes seems to her that she could make a lot more money working as a prostitute than as an actress.

I say, “Robin, you know, right, that it’s not like the movies. There’s a lot more to being a hooker than just wearing skimpy clothes and collecting a paycheck.”

“I know that,” Robin says. “But I’m not a child. I’ve had sex, you know. More than once, even.”

Everyone at the table kind of chuckles.

I say, “Yes, well, you know, there is a test you can take, right now, a kind of test we can give you, right here at the table, to see if you have what it takes to be a hooker.”

Everyone at the table kind of grins.

“What kind of test?” Robin asks.

I say, “Okay. Everyone here is going to watch your face. We’re all going to look at you very carefully. And while we watch you, you just have to say two words with a straight face. You just have to say two words without laughing or smiling or showing any kind of emotion at all. Hookers have to be good at blank face.”

“I’m an actress,” Robin says. “Of course I can do that.”

“Okay, are you ready to take the test?” I ask.

Everyone at the table stops eating and leans forward a bit, to get a good look at Robin’s face.

“I’m ready,” Robin says.

“Okay,” I say. “We’re going to watch you. You just have to say the two words. While we watch you, you just have to say the two words, ‘anal sex.’”

It seems as if everyone at the table holds their breath.

Robin purses her lips to start speaking, but then she giggles and exhales and blushes a deep, deep red.

Everyone laughs and a couple of people point at Robin.

“No, no, no” Robin says. “I can do it. I just got distracted. No. This is so easy. Watch. I’m going to do it right now.”

Robin clears her expression and looks at everyone with a blank face. She starts to speak, then cracks up laughing and puts both her palms against her forehead.

“Don’t worry, Robin,” someone says. “You’re still a great actress. Other girls can work the sidewalk.”

Everyone laughs and turns their attention back to their food.

Robin takes a deep breath and clenches both fists. She says, loudly, “Anal sex! Anal sex! Anal sex!”

But when she forces out the words, she forces them out just a tad more loudly than she’d anticipated and—as often happens at such moments—a natural lull in the room’s conversations amplifies her words even more. The entire restaurant full of people turns to look at Robin as she finishes almost shouting the words ‘anal sex.’

Everyone at the table stops eating, again, and gives a round of applause to Robin.

Robin puts her hands up, again, completely covering her face.

I stand up and address the restaurant. “No, it’s not what you think,” I say. “She’s just pitching a new reality show idea to some Discovery Channel executives.”

A famous comedian at the next table says, “That’s exactly what I thought it was.”

And everyone in the restaurant laughs.

“And let me say,” he adds, “that’s a reality show I’m going to watch.”

And everyone in the restaurant laughs.

A famous leading man one table over says, “I’m going to watch that show, too. For about three minutes. Then I’ll have to take a nap.”

And everyone in the restaurant laughs.

I sit back down and Robin spreads her fingers just enough to peek out at me. Her eyes—even in the shadow of her fingers—are so bright and so angry that she looks like a special effects shot in a movie where a woman is about to turn into a werewolf. A really angry werewolf.

Through her fingers Robin glares out at me and growls, “I am going to kill you. I am going to kill you.”


But, you know, it seems a fair trade. Everyone dies. At least I got some laughs.

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



This is for Karen Kilimnik




Karen Kilimnik


The Abandonment Of Meaning


“Kari Loses An Underwire From Her Bra...”



Los Angeles, Nonetheless, Is

This Woman From The Canals Of Mars

What I thought was most interesting, however, about the great debate a hundred years ago is that Percival Lowell often photographed Mars and—to his eyes—his photographs “proved” that the canals were real. Other people looked at the photographs and told him they saw nothing. When popular magazines and book publishers reproduced Lowell’s photographs, back then, Lowell suggested that he should hire somebody to “enhance” the photographs to “bring out” the linear detail that he could see but which printing had difficulty reproducing. Back then, publishers and editors adamantly refused to create such re-touched photographs because they argued the manipulations would “spoil the autographic value of the photographs themselves.”

The Autographic Value Of Photographs

Every time I try to start a drawing
I make a few marks, sometimes just guidelines,
and then I stop and look at the paper.

In my mind’s eye I see the piece finished.

And I can’t bring myself to make more marks.

Because in my mind’s eye the piece I see
looks like a copy of a photograph
or a parody of a photograph
or a storyboard for a photograph
and I think, “Why not take a photograph?”

And I don’t know how to answer myself.

I like to draw and I have cool pencils
and I have lots of paper, both free sheets
and sketchbooks, cheap ones and expensive ones.

But I can’t look away from photographs.

Photographs have shapes, values and colors,
all the things marks add up to in drawing.

Photographs, too, have what people once called,
autographic value—reality,
sort of, excerpted, fragmented, but real.

What is a drawing but marks on paper?

When you can have something that is like real
what’s the point of making marks on paper?

I like to draw and I have cool pencils
and I have lots of paper, both free sheets
and sketchbooks, cheap ones and expensive ones.

My hand just stops. It’s like pissing me off.

Photography is like this cool woman
smiling, yawning, not covering her mouth,
and then looking at me watching her yawn
knowing I think she should have raised her hand
to cover her mouth and that makes her laugh
so she laughs still without raising her hand
and sticks out her tongue at what I’m thinking.

She’s so pretty I wish I could draw her.

My hand just stops. It’s like pissing me off.

If I had an articulated doll
I would take fifteen hundred photographs
and assemble a stop-motion movie
of this amused woman and her rude yawn.

I can’t look away. And it’s not the yawn,
it’s this thing, this autographic value.

I’m so tired of not doing a drawing.

And when I yawn this woman laughs harder.

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



Red Bull, Hershey’s And A Woman Yawning


A Cartoon Can’t Buy A Yawn



The Best Reason To Study Astrophysics

Amy Winehouse Makes It Official

Singer Amy Winehouse, who achieved worldwide fame with her album Back to Black, has been found dead at her flat in north London.

The body of the 27-year-old Grammy award-winner was discovered at the property in north London by emergency services at around 3.54pm on Saturday afternoon.

It is understood her death is being treated as "unexplained".

Her death comes just a month after she called off some European tour dates after she was jeered for a shambolic performance during a concert in Serbia.

Winehouse's 2006 breakthrough album Back to Black won five Grammy awards, but her music has since become overshadowed by her chaotic lifestyle and run-ins with the law.

Amy Winehouse dies aged 27

Look at the tangle of pretty blue flowers.

And behind the green, what a dark background.

I increased the saturation a bit,
and adjusted the midrange, lights and darks.

Maybe the tangle of pretty blue flowers
is a little prettier here, glammed up,
than out in the wild, uncropped, uncomposed.

I don’t know. Maybe the pretty blue flowers
were trying to run away from the dark
and they got all tangled up. Now the dark,
the wild dark, will be able to catch them.

Getting cropped and composed, getting glammed up,
is a moment of freedom from the wild,
a moment when the wild dark is held back,
reduced to just a trivial background.

The pretty blue flowers tried to run away
from the wild dark but the flowers got tangled.

I just took the picture. Even without
the glamour, the flowers still were pretty blue.

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



This is for Amy Winehouse.

Thank you, Amy, for
letting me pretend
to talk to you.


Kate Moss (And Why My Life Is Derailed)


Never Having Kissed Amy


The World And The Supervillain’s Nightclub


Ode To The Concept Of Cotton Candy


Amy Winehouse In The Sea Of Crises


Expedition To Amy


Posh People Squabbling






Lost (For Brittany Murphy)



Freedom From The Wild



Ancient Cities Of The Moon


I’m Sorry The World Did This To You


The Difference Between Clouds And Conquistadors

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.

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



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.

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







*



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