"And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing/ remember, prophesy"(10)

Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011)

I loved Amy Winehouses' music. I thought she did such a great job of expressing emotion with her voice. I believed the words that she sang. I'd been waiting for her next album forever. I felt guilty buying the recent Adele album because I really wanted Amy's next album. I know many or maybe most people will not be surprised to hear that she's dead of a drug overdose, but I am. I'm surprised. I'm saddened. I had such a celebrity crush on Amy Winehouse. I had unending optimism for Amy. I always wanted to believe she was getting better. I tried to avoid all those horrible pictures. Maybe she just doesn't photograph well, I thought. Some people just feel too much or have been exposed to too much, and buffer themselves in altered states. It's hard not to see a death like this as a suicide. It's cliched to say, but I hope she finds some peace in death that she didn't seem to have in life.

          Ai ! ai ! we do worse ! We are in a fix ! And you're out, Death

                     let you out, Death had the Mercy, you're done with your

                     century, done with God, done with the path thru it-

                     Done with yourself at last – Pure – Back to the Babe

                     dark before your Father, before us all – before the

                     world -

          There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you've gone, it's good.(67-74)

Allen Ginsberg, “Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg 1894-1956” Kaddish and Other Poems: 1958-1960 City Lights Press, 1989

A few more pics

A few pics

Mr Yuk Mouth

Cats, a skull, and me in wizard hat.

Mia in full tortitude

Maebel and me

Why do i keep thinking about my mortality?

Get this image on your van! (See Van Art in the Gift Shop)

Performance Evaluation

"Have a seat. How've you been..."
The older man sits, sweat steadily dripping.
"You know..." He shifts in the wooden chair. It creaks.
"Yes, well that's what we needed to talk about." The younger man looks up from a clip board with yellowed pages and purple mimeographs, and places it on the desk between them. "We need to talk about your stats."
The old man exhales and leans forward in the chair. He looks down at his heavily calloused hands and brings them together with a clap too loud for this small space. "Let's do it."
"I want to say first off that we really respect the time you've been here. Just going through some numbers, your attendance looks good. You have positive evaluations from your prior overseers going back millennia."
"Sounds good to me." muttered the old man.
"The only problem we have is with your PA%.  It's...well, it's at zero."
The older man snorted, and looked away.
"I'm serious here. What can I do to help? What do you need to be able meet the reasonable goals we've set?"
"Goals? Look, I don't want to be rude, but how long have you been here?"
A flush crept the younger man's neck. "I don't think that's relevant. I haven't been here for nigh 5 thousand years, if that's what you're saying..."
The older slowly leaned back. Watching the other sputter was a small satisfaction.
"...but this isn't about me. We really need to bet those numbers within the acceptable range... What can i do to help... pal?" He looked across the desk trying to make eye contact.
Rage grew in the old man. The supercilious overseer's words hung there. Pal was a bad choice. He swallowed the rage and spat out words. "You don't want to hear this, but it's not me. I am out there pushing that rock up that hill for eternity. Your stats aren't able to accurately account for the punishment of that. Look in order to come up with the PA stat for the Pre-BC section of Hades, err Hell, sorry, old habits, you had to create a base line, and when you calculated the punishment quotient of say, Tantalus, you're completely skewing my numbers. If you look at the punishment per annum stat, you can see that i'm one of the most punished in the unit."
The younger man picks the clipboard up and begins to flip through the pages. He finds one and begins to read to himself. His lips so slightly moving along with words.
"Do you see?"
"Hmm?" The younger man looks up from the clip board and places it back on the desk.
"Were you looking at the per annum stats, showing how punished i really am?"
"No. I was looking over your file. Impressive. You conned how many gods? You do have a way with words. So anyway, how about increasing your stats?"
The older man's brow furrowed. His lips pursed. His words were delivered slowly and deliberately. "I push a rock up a hill everyday. That rock, before reaching the top, always rolls down to the bottom, of the hill."
"...but, but we just want to help you get that rock to the top, buddy!"
"It's...not...getting...to...the...top. That's the punishment. Inherent in the nature of what i am doing is exactly what is  preventing me from meeting your metric. Your calculation makes sense for Tantalus. He's chained up in reach of water and food, yet he's starving and dehydrating because they recede when he reaches for them."
"We're not talking about other people. Look Sisyphus, don't worry about what everyone else is doing. You're here to push that rock to the top of the hill. That's not so hard, now is it? We just want you to focus on one rock at a time!"
"There...is...only...one...rock."
"We can change that! Let's think positive. I really think you can turn these numbers around, and start getting some of those rocks to the top of that hill!"
"Ok. You got it, boss. Are we done here? That rock isn't going to push itself."
"Yeah, we're done. And thanks for all you do."

Now, Grackle I'm going to let you finish pecking at that ketchup packet,

but seriously? I mean i defended you when people made that yelp page and complained about you going all Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds on the HEB, and when people said you looked like an oil slick, I said you looked like a black pearl, but now I hear that you eat eggs and bird chicks. What's up with that, Grackle?
A few weeks ago, I found a broken egg on my front porch. A few days ago, a dead nestling on the sidewalk. I have a brick column on my front porch that every season sees a family of European Starlings nest at its apex. The nests are inset into the column, protected from the wind and rain by the bricks and the roof. When I found the egg, I did some cursory research on avian egg eaters, and decided it must have been that shifty Blue Jay i see around here. I vowed to myself to keep an eye out for Jays. Weeks pass. Eggs hatch. Chicks cheep for food. One morning, about 15 ft from the nest lies the body of a little nestling. I gave him a proper burial, and redoubled my efforts to determine the responsible party. I think you can see where this is going, Grackle. Your name came up multiple times. Look, I don't care what you do in parking lots, and fields. Puff up your chest, do your funky little dance, and squawk like an old modem all you want, but don't be coming up on my porch for any eggnapping, or nestling snatching. If you do, I will throw a cat at you. i'm serious. i have two of them.

I can't stop with the kindle covers!

Sunday Craft Project

Well, those seem to be two perfectly ordinary books.

When in fact, they hold my chatty kindle, Edison.

Kindle book cover section of the gift shop is now open.

A Taste of the Sticky Ictal

It started with a feeling that i have trouble describing. At the very basic, it's a feeling of unease, a sort of deep profound sense that something is not right. Almost the feeling that over the real world there is a drape that obscures the true shape or nature of things, and that that drape is fluttering and may be ripped away at any moment exposing some basic truth of reality that will literally drive me mad. This is metaphor of course, during the events it's just a growing, existential unease leading into mild terror. My mind then pictures some place i'm not, usually downstairs in the living room, and the idea that the room exists with no one to observe it causes a bizarre fear. Sometimes from there it passes and I feel better, some times it proceeds.

Today it proceeded, into the lovely world of time loss. So, i had my weird feelings, but while it's happening it's hard to realize what's going on, so i continued on with my morning. Made some coffee. Watched last night's Rachel Maddow. I started watching the show with full consciousness, but about halfway in my brain decided to reboot. I realized i had no idea of what day or time it was. I didn't really know what i was doing. I worked to reclaim the memories. The entire previous day was nearly gone, and the day before that hazy. I went upstairs and knocked on caroles door, to wake her, to orient myself. I don't know what exactly i said. I remember saying, "i made a kindle cover?" "Yeah, on Sunday," she replied. It's coming back to me. Most of it will. On the plus side, I only lost a Monday, which is widely acknowledged to be the worst day of the week.

Triangle Graphing Hollywood Nerds

Hollywood depictions of intelligence usually seem to fall into one of three categories, the Classic Nerd, the Mad Genius, and the rarer Alpha Nerd. Depictions of the Classic Nerd are common, think of the characters in Revenge of the Nerds or every Anthony Michael Hall character in John Hughes films. The Classic Nerd is sympathetic to the viewer and empathetic to other characters, while in comparison the Mad Genius can be nearly incomprehensible to other people due to their intelligence, usually treating those around them with an intellectual detachment. Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory and Sherlock Holmes on the BBC recent reimagining, Sherlock are both current examples. The third, and less common, is the Alpha Nerd. Confident, at ease with their intelligence, and popular with the members of the opposite sex, the Alpha Nerd is represented well in Good Will Hunting.
I really felt that these three archetype could be defined as locations on three different axises, sexual success (A), social detachment (B), and personnal detachment (C), so I rated a small sample of characters from television and film and then plotted the results. I present the Triangle Graph of the Nerd Triumvirate.

It's just so clear! Ok, so maybe not, but when you separate out the archetypes you can see they each have a distinct pattern.

The Classic Nerds

 

The Mad Geniuses

The Alpha Nerds

The 1980's Val Kilmer comedy Real Genius features all three of the main nerd archetypes,

while The Big Bang Theory only counts two of the three archetypes among it's main cast of characters.

The next step is plotting out basic nerd storylines as progressions along at least one of the three axises. I really should not enjoy playing with spreadsheets this much.

Hoisted by one's own petard

I hereby submit for consideration to the English language the following idiom:
Killed by your own cock
fig. To suffer disadvantage or defeat from your own actions. See hoisted by own petard.
Origin Early 21st century. Colloquial use began after a man in California died from wounds meted out upon him by his own fighting rooster. The man died at the hospital after having an artery in his calf slashed by the chicken.

Police Artist's Sketch

Original Story
Sketch

Egyptian Revolution as Seen On TV, or Bad Art: the Reflux

Just like with the protests in Iran following their elections in 2009, I can't stop watching the footage from the Egyptian protests. It's amazing to be able to watch the raw tape in nearly real time. Ok, so i got the 'ol art supplies out... Of course, mousepads, shirts and coffee mugs are available in the Gift Shop or by Tweet (just make sure to use the Jan25#.)



This is from the protests on Tuesday, January 25th.







This is an image of a protester being hit by a molotov cocktail. This is was 4:37 AM EET on the 6th Oct Bridge in Cairo. The protester in the background was able to turn and pat down the flames to extinguish them, while the protester in the foreground moved away and then used the classic stop-drop-and-roll technique. Both continued to participate in the running battle that night to control a section of elevated freeway overlooking an entrance into Tahrir Square.







I'm not sure exactly when this one occurred. It was actually during the day. When i saw this image on the video i was watching, i immediately hit pause to draw it. It's almost cliche; i mean of course every revolution is going to have someone who climbs up somewhere high and waves the flag. It's like an abacus, you can count on it. i loved how this picture shows all the interests vying for influence over Egypt's future: the people, the state, religion, peace, and maybe the dawn of a new day.

Bad Art

To show how well rounded i am, i thought that in addition to the bad poetry that i shared earlier i'd share some bad art. So, presented with minimal expanded comment.

Update: So, due to overall positive reaction by the local art scene, see the positive write-up on Maebel's blog, Mews of Our Times, i thought i'd give the public a view into just how bad art is made. First off, all bad artists have a certain misplaced confidence in their intelligence or skills or some other facet of their personality, which is ultimately what leads them to try to express themselves through bad art. So passing over the deeper reasons of why I created these particular pieces of bad art, i'll instead just show some of the how.

Ahh, lowly black and white pencil sketches.








with addition of carpal tunnel inducing mouse work and free photo editing







but wait, just to put the final touches, a little watercolors. Yep, and that's how I do it. Prints are available in the gift shop or by mail order.

Acts of Humanity among Horror

When the shooter in Tuscon started his senseless rampage humans reacted as they always have. I imagine everyone was, to some extent, frozen, paralyzed by the utter impossibility of the moment, of the peaceful morning ending with the punctuation of shot after shot into mothers, daughters, fathers, and sons. People protected themselves, and protected loved ones. Some acted in ways completely at odds with their own survival.

When the shooter paused to reload, a 61 year old volunteer, Roger Salzgeber, hit the shooter in the back of the head with a folding chair. As the shooter teetered another man, retired Army Col Bill D. Badger bleeding from being shot in the head, grabbed his arm and the two men, with 135 years on this earth between them, pushed the shooter to the ground and pinned him to the pavement. Patricia Maisch found herself staring into the face of the gunman. When the shooting had started she threw herself down, choosing to not to run and attract the shooter. She regretted that decision when the woman next to her was shot. She remembers thinking, trying to imagine what that bullet would feel like. I can only imagine what she most have been feeling. I was in a car accident once where the vehicle was launched into the air, and I can remember so clearly the time from when the road noise disappeared to when the car hit the ground and began to roll. A horrible anticipation, the time stretching on, my mind scrambling, wondering what having my bones crushed as the car crumpled would feel like. That was just a fraction of the terror that Patricia Maisch went through, as she contemplated a bullet that would never come. The sound of the shooter hitting the ground caused her to look up. She saw his face, the gun in his right hand, and his left hand scrambling to load another 30 round magazine into the empty weapon. Had he been able been able to do so, the number of casualties may have soared. She wrestled with the gunman, and disarmed him, securing the magazine thereby preventing any more shooting.

While this was occurring, Daniel Hernandez, a 20 year old congressional intern who had been on the job for less than a week, moved toward the wounded to render aid. He was about 30-40 feet away when he heard the shooting, and he ran towards the gunfire, oblivious to the danger around him. He was driven to help, and with first aid training from high school courses in nursing and phlebotomy he knew what to do. He began taking checking the vital signs of the wounded and performing basic triage until he came upon the seriously wounded congresswoman. He gave her all his attention, propping her up to clear her airways, applying direct pressure to the wounds to try and stem the flow of blood, and keeping her awake, conscious, and communicating. His actions, along with a host of others, are credited as saving the congresswoman's life.

These people found themselves in an extraordinary situation and acted accordingly. I think we all wonder if we would have the courage, the selflessness, the determination to make the right choice in an awful situation.
 In the moment i think people act, and more often than not people do the right thing. I struggle, though, with the idea that it seems the goodness, even greatness in people is only seen in response to some horrific example of man's propensity for hate, violence, cruelty, and destruction. Prior to the shooting, I was thinking about what the term humanity really meant. On one hand you have the definition that means collectively everyone in the human species, synonymous with people or mankind, and I'm fine with that. It was the other meaning that I couldn't understand, humanity meaning kindness or a basic level of goodness. I think people overall treat each other poorly, from wars and large scale atrocities to that rude person at the grocery store, so to say that humanity means benevolence seemed a bit self serving. When we say dog-like we don't mean really smart even if that represented the highest of canine ideals, but the actions of the killer, those listed above, and many more not mentioned put in stark contrast the difference between the actions of humanity and the quality of humanity. The killer, by brutally murdering other people to accomplish some internal goal, was participating in an unfortunately very human activity, one so endemic to people that it encompasses the entirety of our history, actually stretching back even further, deep into our prehistory, but the killer wasn't treating the people he killed like fellow humans, but rather like animals. The people who tackled the gunman and disarmed him, those who cared for the wounded, those people who ran towards the gunfire that morning were all exhibiting the best of qualities, not just goodness or kindness, but acknowledging a shared humanity. To treat someone else humanely is to act as if they were family, or a friend, to recognize that the similarities between us vastly out weight our differences, to see one another as equals and not just as extras in our own story. I have a better understanding now of what humanity really means, it doesn't mean acting like a human, cause after all what does that mean, humans kill each other all the time, but instead I feel that humanity is more about acting as if others are human. We are all so much more alike than different. We all live and die, and in between we suffer and celebrate, love and mourn; we sleep, eat, and excrete. The rest is just ornamental.

A Love Note to a Telescope or Science Dorkitude, and Bad Poetry.

I feel i should include some background information. In April 2010, the Hubble telescope turned 20 years old, and to celebrate this NASA asked the public to write few words about what the Hubble telescope meant to you and submit them for inclusion in a time capsule. They wrote the request in the first person, and i'm particularly susceptible to that approach. I can't even think about those last few tweets from the mars rover as it slowly lost power in the face of the harsh Martian winter. Anyway, write about what the Hubble telescope means to you. Well, errr, i kind of wrote a love poem in the style of a pining adolescent to the Hubble Telescope.
Just putting this out here for brownie points. You know, sucking up for when the robotic overlords come. won't do a lick of good scrawled on a scrap of paper on my desk, now will it.

Scenes of stellar birth among pillars of giants
the death rattle of stars
swirling nebulae betwixt colliding galaxies
a universe in flux
spasms of creation amid throes of destruction
inimitable by human hands
invisible to our unaided eyes
blindingly beautiful in scope and complexity
Of all human endeavors, Hubble
you lift us highest towards the heavens
on your shoulder we stare into the eye of god unblinking

Epilogue
I fiddled around with the poem for a few days, and ended up forgetting to submit it for the time capsule. I came across it a few weeks later, and went back and looked at the other entries that had made it in. They mainly consisted of "Hubble rulz!" and "You rock!"