Abandoned houses offer unique opportunities from a visual point of view. The deterioration transforms materials. Texture on top of texture. New patterns overtaking old ones. Nature repossessing. This textural aspect to deterioration and the patterns that it creates can be rich and fascinating to look at.
I also find that the experience of seeing a deteriorated house (or any familiar object) interesting. When looking at the image we see a dual image of the house – one as it is, and one as it was. You see a huge hole in the side of the house not just as a hole, but also as an interruption of the known. And so the mind seeks to recreate the known. We fill in the holes. We project. Our eyes follow the angle of the broken awning to a point, now destroyed, and we can feel the mass that was of the front 3rd floor. The same with the porch covering. This visual duality – the mind flipping between destruction and pre-destruction – is magic. It's entertaining and engaging.
If this catches your fancy like it does mine, don't miss the "lego primer" on right of Mr. Doyle's page.
"U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan befriend local animals as a way to help cope with the emotional hardships they endure every day while deployed in a war zone. The Operation Baghdad Pups program provides veterinary care and coordinates complicated logistics and transportation requirements in order to reunite these beloved pets with their service men and women back in the U.S. These important animals not only help our heroes in the war zone, but they also help them readjust to life back home after combat."
Lilo and Stitch, "Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten."
William S. Burroughs: A Man Within investigates the life of the legendary beat author and American icon. Born the heir of the Burroughs Adding Machine estate, he struggled throughout his life with addiction, control systems, and self. He was forced to deal with the tragedy of killing his wife and the repercussions of neglecting his son. His novel, Naked Lunch, was one of the last books to be banned by the U.S. government. Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer testified on behalf of the book. The courts eventually overturned the 1966 decision, ruling that the book had important social value. It remains one of the most recognized literary works of the 20th century.
The film features never-before-seen footage of William S. Burroughs, as well as exclusive interviews with his closest friends and colleagues including John Waters, Genesis P-Orridge, Laurie Anderson, Peter Weller, David Cronenberg, Iggy Pop, Gus Van Sant, Sonic Youth, Anne Waldman, Hal Willner, James Grauerholz, Amiri Baraka, Jello Biafra, V. Vale, Wayne Propst, Diane DiPrima, Dean Ripa (the world's largest poisonous snake collector), and many others, with narration by actor Peter Weller, and soundtrack by Sonic Youth.
William Burroughs was one of the first to cross the dangerous boundaries of queer and drug culture in the 1950s, and write about his experiences. Eventually he was hailed the godfather of the beat generation and influenced artists for generations to come. But his friends were left wondering if he had ever found contentment or happiness. This extremely personal documentary pierces the surface of the troubled and brilliant world of one of the greatest authors of all time.
"Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing."
Ratu Udre Udre (pronounced [ˈunreˈunre]) was a Fijian chief who holds the Guinness World Record for “most prolific cannibal.” During the 19th century, Ratu Udre Udre reportedly ate between 872 and 999 people. He kept a stone for each body he ate, which were placed alongside his tomb in Rakiraki, in northern Viti Levu. According to Udre Udre’s son, the chief would eat every part of his victims, especially the head, preserving what he couldn’t eat in one sitting for consumption later.
Doesn't Guinness have the option listed somewhere to "break this record". Just thinking about that is making me laugh.
Just finished reading "The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York" by Deborah Blum.
Told through the eyes of chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler, this is great addition to knowledge base of history of forensic investigation in general and toxicology specifically. You get to learn all about what poisons do to the body and how they were detected, puréeing organs and boiling bones to perform the strangest of alchemy-like experiments. Also a brilliantly vivid look at turn-of-the-century New York, government corruption and overwhelming filth in era prior to EPA. Think greasy toxic smog so thick it burns eyes and lungs on simple walk to work. Everyone who thinks it was soooooo great back then should read this book.
Cyanide deaths are impressively gruesome. Violent "body-rattling" convulsions, desperate gasping for air, a "rising bloody froth of vomit." The book distinguishes between hydrogen, potassium and sodium cyanide. The salts seem especially brutal:
If swallowed, they burn their way down. An autopsy of a cyanide victim found the mucous membranes of the lips, mouth and esophagus darkened to a bloody, ragged red -- especially if the poison had been taken without food to buffer the impact. The stomach became swollen, discolored, clotted with swampy, streaky mucus...
Beautifully written, extremely interesting cases, vivid description, lots of neat facts. One of my favorite underlined passages was about autopsy.
The Bellevue autopsy room was quiet and cool, with high ceilings and white plastered walls. Lights hung brightly over each long marble dissecting table; at every table's foot was a deep rectangular copper basin with hot running water, to keep hands and instruments clean. As the standard manual reminded pathologists, blood and fluids that dried on the fingers could be "unpleasant" and dull the sensitivity needed for the operation.
The instruments lay in bristling rows. There was the section knife, with its short thick blade and heavy handle, used for making long incisions, and slim scalpels ready to make the finer cuts. At Bellevue they always laid out three instruments for probing the brain: a deep cutter, with a six-inch handle and six-inch blade "so strong it does not bend or feather too easily" to slice through the dura, the tough membrane protecting the brain; a thin, two-sided blade with a rounded tip used for incisions; and a pick, used to free the brain from the spinal cord so that it could be removed from the body.
There were delicate tissue-cutting scissors and powerful bone scissors used to crunch through cartilage and thinner bones; dissecting forceps; at least one good butcher's saw for the bigger bones; smaller saws for tasks like removing the spinal cord; brass and wooden foot-rules (twelve-inch rulers); tape measures, measuring glasses and calipers; large scales to weigh the whole body and small scales to weigh the pieces; glass-stopped jars to hold the organs for poison analysis; and the usual assortment of sponges, pails, vessels, plates, and bottles that collected in all postmortem rooms.
Listen to feature on All Things Considered and read excerpt from Prologue HERE
Unblinking and unsettling, “A Certain Kind of Death” lays bare a mysterious process that goes on all around us: What happens to people who die with no next of kin?
Filmmakers Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock present this dark milieu in surprisingly composed and beautiful scenes. We witness a variety of public employees handling the bodies, personal property and money of those who have died alone, each worker helping nudge the deceased into non-existence.
As each life is revealed to us, each is also drawn inevitably toward the same vanishing point. Crews haul away property, crypt workers prepare bodies for disposal. Appliances, furniture and personal knickknacks of the dead end up in a county warehouse, where auctioneers disperse them to strangers who know nothing of the prior owners.
Unexpected ironies and compelling imagery force us to ponder the question “What is death?” For the unmourned people we have come to know in the film, it is total erasure.
This is one of my favorite documentaries now having watched it twice and wanting more. It is extremely graphic, uncensored look at the entire process. The best part was seeing the bodies up close without any blur and hearing the candid and often unintentionally funny comments of workers.
There is a brilliant matter-of-factness about the presentation that perfectly suits the subject. I never understand why people insist on getting all philosophical or spiritual about death, why they seem to prefer it. This is much less complicated. Much more straightforward. A weird kind of relief in the procedure, the paperwork, the case numbers and files.
WARNING: When I said graphic I meant it. You will see fully nude, badly decomposed, corpses covered in blood, shit and maggots. Skin slippage, broken faces, grey moldy sunken flesh that comes off on plastic gloves in chunks.
... And if you had a difficult time reading that you probably shouldn't watch the film.
It's been awhile. I've been knee-deep in some arty projects. A gift apiece for my folks. Mama Shade got a small decoupaged and sparkled hat box filled with toys (colored bubbles, slinky, crayons, silly putty, and some goofy duck from the movie "Hop") and a little candle votive thingamajig. I also made her a soundtrack inspired by T. at JUXTAPOSE and the song challenge.
Papa Shade had a birthday last week (or the week before, time is a blur). He is difficult to shop for. One of those people who seems to already have everything they need. So I got him a heap of stuff he didn't really need. Together with mi hermana and accomplice I made an elaborate birthday treasure hunt. Theme: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Step 1: Take a naked treasure chest shaped box, paint, afix "Don't Panic" sign on outside.
Step 2: Buy Hitch-inspired gifts from ThinkGeek. Such as a "42" towel, mint chocolate chip astronaut icecream and a survival kit in a sardine can (thanks for all the fish).
Step 3: Continue buying gifts and display love for father by braving the terrifying world of Toys r' Us. Egads. One stuffed toy dolphin, a small package of glow-in-the-dark planets/solar system, and a styrofoam dart dart gun (which got morphed into POV gun). Write labels for gifts (such as dolphin and POV gun) and make Towel magnet...
(I got magnetized photo holder at grocery store, printed this little sign off of Google Image and insert. Towel Day is May 25th... in case you don't have a supercool special magnet to remind you)
Step 4: Come up with three hard to solve puzzles. Sista wrote the first, a rhyme-riddle about Dr. Who. The answer was "Dalek", then how many letters in my name: 5. Second was a cryptogram, a Terry Pratchett quote re-written in alternate alphabet that had to be deciphered. Once the key had been worked out, the question to decode and answer was: Your birthday day. Answer = 6. Third puzzle was a sudoku with a highlighted box. The highlighted box was the third number.
Step 5: Buy small, three number lock like the kind you put on luggage and program with combination matching answers. Lock treasure chest (filled with toys/gifts).
Step 6: Download appropriate sci-fi-y fonts, type up puzzles, get accomplice to illustrate. Place each clue in separate envelope, write introduction and answer sheet.
Step 7: Pack and mail and try not to panic
Greetings Intrepid Hitchhiker!
Seconds before your 66th birthday, you are plucked off the planet and are now hurtling through space powered by pure improbability.
You have:
* A mysterious, mostly harmless, locked box. * No combination. * No tea.
The box was devised by two hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional twins who occasionally moonlight as brain-stealing lab mice. They are most unhelpful. You must now solve a series of puzzles all on your own in order to unlock this contraption. Don't be disheartened! Along the way you will encounter many strange lifeforms and fellow travellers. You may even discover the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Or not. No warranty, no money back. The only guarantee this venture comes with: What you find at the end of your quest will be worth its weight in dolphin snacks.
Good Luck!
Papa loved it, huge success.
This is playlist/album/CD thingie I made for Ma...
