[Click on the image above to see the view with binoculars.]
In the Shire now somewhat worse for wear Wise Sam hastening to marry Rosie blots out all talk
of a Phoenix sequel. Frodo sells his hobbit hole and pawns a gold ring for a hospice bed in Rove Country.
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Image initially made with Sterling-ware. Post-processed until it became My Precious. Text is a "Google poem" collaged from search strings of frodo retires.
[Click on the image above to see the view with binoculars.]
Sure to bring back holiday memories almost as amusing as the story of Mary's delivery. Blog that bit. We Three Kings of Seuss are foregoing frankincense for a bailout as Whoville preps for layoffs. Maybe bankers in their Wall St. bunkers will kick back their free loot in a new animated special. Forget Christmas. Someone stole the global economy.
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Image initially made with Sterling-ware. Post-processed until its heart grew twice its size. Text is a "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of grinch epiphany.
I wonder as pixels of HD grains stir each Misty May serve. And how many
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Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until the image became my opponent and spiked one in my face. Text is a "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of the bane of beach volleyball.
[Click on the image above to see the view with binoculars.]
As the clock moved towards 10 in the morning, and again at two in the afternoon and eight in the evening, there was a great flurry and bustle throughout the palace. The highest-ranking women made their way to the Upper Bell Corridor, which led to the double door between the men’s and women’s palaces. As the castle drums sounded the hour, the cluster of bells that hung by the door jangled.
One maid remembered how fearful she was of cleaning them. The bells were only supposed to ring when the shogun entered the women’s palace, and anyone who rang them at any other time was severely punished. But the trouble was that the slightest move set them jangling. Dusting and polishing them were terrifying tasks.
When the bells sounded, shaven-headed nuns who acted as officials unfastened the locks, drew aside the bolts and slid open the door. Men waited on the other side, but only one stepped through: the shogun. --"The Caged Concubines," TimesOnline
I don't get quite the same treatment when I come home. Here's what happens: My cat wakes up, yawns, arches her back while stretching, meanders slowly over to her food dish, sits impassively, and stares at me.
You tell me. Who is the shogun, and who is the servant?
two shots to the torso. Radishes bled like chopped up bolts.
Reparation lawyers beamed down. Off switch or soup?
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Image initially made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until every tank in the world glowed before disappearing. Text is a "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of the phrase gort takes a sick day.
Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until I went too far and used a hammer. Text is a "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of juggling accident.
Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until the image began to resent and ridicule its earlier incarnation. Text is a "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of mr hyde.
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I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States. --John McCain, "McCain Defends Obama", 10-11-08
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Savvy customers with sticker shock want more free pens. Negotiate as you fog over, forget his interests are not yours. Discuss discounted swindling in a last jail interview. So go off script. Engage in sleazy reset. Seek penance when that test drive turns a murderous corner. Dealer with it or grow a conscience.
What does it take to trade? A personality? A good golf vibe? An actual selling price? Tap down any twinge of coy. Let pigeons sweat as you harbor homicide passing blank notebooks to the boss. Suck it up sucker. You nada charisma. You zero commission. Motivational speaking sells more lemons for ex-cons.
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Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until it just couldn't go any lower because it's done all it could do. Text is an original "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of car salesman.
sub-prime calculator you are. Lower heart rates. Peer to peer pressure. Bad boys with bad credit reinforced your refinancing when gutting the home of my schemes. My broker just baaed.
Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until the BailOut bailed out. Text is an original "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of mortgage everything.
Image initially made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until the colors leaked into groundwater and contaminated the other images on this blog. Text is a "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of the idea of order at yucca mountain.
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A short note: One of my favorite contemporary writers, David Foster Wallace, passed away this weekend. I still sometimes enjoy pulling his novel Infinite Jest from my bookshelf and opening it to read four or five pages at random. The only other novel I've ever done this with is James Joyce's Ulysses. I actually consider both novels to be long prose poems.
I was more of a fan of Wallace's nonfiction. The title essay in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is one of my favorite reads. Consider the Lobster never disappoints either. For all of his wordplay and maximalistic trappings, Wallace could be hilarious and profound simultaneously. Even more rare, he was an ironic postmodernist who told the truth and made himself vulnerable in the process.
Although Wallace could be extremely funny, he was also certainly aware that artistic self-examination can be dangerous and even lead to radical solutions -- just as reflecting deeply on one's own existence is sometimes perilous. In a 2005 talk at Kenyon College, he observed:
[L]earning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
Here is a short clip of Wallace talking about "failure":
Image initially made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until my mood ring turned brown and the picture was already drawn. Text is a "Google poem" collaged from search strings of seed toss.
Some of you will recognize the title as a song by Superchunk. Maybe you'd like to listen to them play it live while you look at the image.
Image initially made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until the forensics came back. Text is a found "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of head shot.
Image initially made with Fractal Zplot while watching the Olympics late into the night. Post-processed until the level of difficulty was beyond my abilities. Text is a found "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of balance beam deduction.
Image intially made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until a continental shelf collapsed. Text is a found "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of the floe goes.
Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed by adding: toad, eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog, wasabi, condiments of choice, bake with algorithms, until done. Text is a found "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of you old witch.
Deco activities, fun and festive, relaxed horrors, amusements with salt water, custom made topless fiddling. Harmful algae blooms into a burlesque. The building industry nags at every horizon.
Another loony family spends a week together intimately stressed.
Stingrays singing under air mattresses size up the kids.
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Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until sand got everywhere. Text is a found "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of at the beach.
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A federal court that ruled against the Bush administration in a Guantánamo detainee case ridiculed Defense Department reasoning as nonsensical, likening it to a 19th century Lewis Carroll poem. --Carol Rosenberg, Miami Herald, 6-30-08
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Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, reveals in greater detail the utter depravity of the Bush administration's official policy of torture. Mayer's long investigation makes clear that the tactics employed by the CIA on suspected al-Qaida terrorists do not exist in some grey area protected by the euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques". They are unquestionably torture. It is all the more shocking then that John McCain, knowing all that he does about torture past and present, would sacrifice his considerable personal credibility and vote to preserve the CIA's ability to torture detainees.
[...]
...what Mayer's book makes clear is that waterboarding was only a small part of the CIA's torture programme. In fact, even detainees that were subjected to waterboarding did not think it was the worst technique they had to endure. That was reserved for stress positions. These were often employed differently but included being shackled to the ceiling of their cells, forcing all the weight of their body onto their shoulders as they were suspended upright for eight hours. One detainee was locked in a box half his size for hours at a time. Most of them were deprived of sleep and bombarded with loud music and noises for 24 hours.
There has always been a troubling level of indifference to these activities, because these are al-Qaida terrorists responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. Rage and anger is understandable, but I hope people inclined toward this viewpoint appreciate that one of the principle divisions between us and our enemies is that we hold ourselves to a higher standard, we take our humanity more seriously and we intend to live up to our moral obligations. The United States should not torture prisoners in its captivity, no matter how grave their crimes. --Ken Gude, The Guardian, 8-15-08
Mayer's book shows clearly the current American administration has committed war crimes. And the consequence? Nothing? Not even a Congressional reprimand?
Image originally made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until it wanted to smash something. Text is half-found "Google poem" collaged together from search strings of she hulk hits the beach.
Image initially made in QuaSZ. Post-processed until it could no longer reproduce. Text is a "Google poem" collaged from search strings of chastity belt.
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After lunch, and a half hour of reading, we piled into our clean car and drove to a playground at a nearby school. Some pent up energy needed to be released. I sat in the sun and soaked up the spring warmth. I also took many pictures of the children as they swarmed over the equipment. I noticed other children playing, with the ever vigiliant moms watching. I overheard a group of children around the ages of 5 to 9 playing and as they moved to a new jungle gym, one boy fell down and the girl called to the other two boys and said, “He only has one life left and he needs to get to the jungle gym!” If that isn’t straight out of a video or computer game, I don’t know anything. I chuckled to myself at how the times have changed. When we played dead in my childhood, we needed a fairy godmother or some such fantasy to resurrect ourselves. --Allison Spence
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Something new. Image initially made with Sterling-ware. Post-processed until it landed on its feet.
Further on down the coast all your public photos and videos are tagged with see-through critiques. A canary, less composed but more used, must be crushed by a magician's cage.
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Something new. Image made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until the image collapased just moments before everything caved in. Text is a "Google poem" collaged from search strings of deconstructed canary.
[Click the image above to see the view with binoculars.]
If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should have never come as such a surprise. The public should have been made much more aware, before the fact, of the uncertainties, doubts, and caveats that underlay the intelligence about the regime of Saddam Hussein. The administration did little to convey those nuances to the people, the press should have picked up the slack but largely failed to do so because their focus was elsewhere--on covering the march to war, instead of the necessity of war. --Scott McClellan, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception
Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth. --John Milton
