Glaucooooommmmmaaaa!
This is one of the strangest websites I've visited lately, and at first I wasn't too sure if it was "for real." It's one of those disease sites, supposedly dedicated to glaucoma research -- but it seems to be celebrating the condition as much as fighting it. Keep your speakers on and you'll hear an angelic soprano singing a hymn to "glaucoooommmmmmaaaaaa..." Bizarre. And note the creepy eye in the bottom of the left frame -- it will follow you around the room.
I had my first eye exam in about five years the other day. No glaucoma, but I do need some new specs.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Random Acts of Poetry
Random Acts of Poetry
Talk Radio
When they see executions as an essential aspect of their movement, the clear ones mentally excavate the channels of their clocks and bookshelves, and distribute chrism among a series of comedians supplied by numerous abusive childhoods and directorates. These methods were perfected by factory workers. Oil paintings of their labors abound in each house, where the lights polish the dark windows like sunbeams on opaque ponds, and the sounds of creaking attic floorboards lend poignancy to the spiraling psychodramas that disturb all moralizing trumpet players -- those that beat the walls with their electric agitation. The siblings, who sit looking sullen in the dim light, drink from jam jars, contemplating violence and longing for public recognition of their great endeavors and the bouquets of the city. The roar of the pistons, the precipitation of steam, and the sweat of heavy men is recorded as hard music, songs derived from righteous masturbation and a riotous fate.
Talk Radio
When they see executions as an essential aspect of their movement, the clear ones mentally excavate the channels of their clocks and bookshelves, and distribute chrism among a series of comedians supplied by numerous abusive childhoods and directorates. These methods were perfected by factory workers. Oil paintings of their labors abound in each house, where the lights polish the dark windows like sunbeams on opaque ponds, and the sounds of creaking attic floorboards lend poignancy to the spiraling psychodramas that disturb all moralizing trumpet players -- those that beat the walls with their electric agitation. The siblings, who sit looking sullen in the dim light, drink from jam jars, contemplating violence and longing for public recognition of their great endeavors and the bouquets of the city. The roar of the pistons, the precipitation of steam, and the sweat of heavy men is recorded as hard music, songs derived from righteous masturbation and a riotous fate.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Joke
Backbroke Valley
A woman sits down next to a cowboy in a saloon. She says, "Are you...a REAL cowboy?"
He replies: "Well, Ma'am, I brand calves, rope steers, mend fence, ride the range...think about cows a lot of the time...yep...reckon I'm a 'real' cowboy."
She says, "I'm a lesbian. I think about women all day, all evening, all the time...I think about making love with women."
They sat there sipping their beers. Then, a man walked in and sat on the other side of the cowboy.
He asks the cowboy, "Are you a REAL cowboy?"
The cowboy responded, "Well, I thought I was...but I just found out that I'm really a lesbian."
(via bridgit)
A woman sits down next to a cowboy in a saloon. She says, "Are you...a REAL cowboy?"
He replies: "Well, Ma'am, I brand calves, rope steers, mend fence, ride the range...think about cows a lot of the time...yep...reckon I'm a 'real' cowboy."
She says, "I'm a lesbian. I think about women all day, all evening, all the time...I think about making love with women."
They sat there sipping their beers. Then, a man walked in and sat on the other side of the cowboy.
He asks the cowboy, "Are you a REAL cowboy?"
The cowboy responded, "Well, I thought I was...but I just found out that I'm really a lesbian."
(via bridgit)
Friday, March 10, 2006
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Word of the Day
Word of the Day
celeritous (adj)
quick, rapid
"There appeared in Forrest's right hand, which had seemed empty, which had seemed not to move or to perform in any celeritous and magic manner, a very small, stubby, nickel pistol, with a caliber much too great for it, and down whose rifled muzzle the earl found himself gazing."
--Gouverneur Morris, The Spread Eagle and Other Stories
I've never owned a gun myself, or felt any desire to. I did have a cap gun as a boy, but I don't think that counts. I mostly liked it for the loud bangs and smell of gunpowder it made. I would sometimes neglect the gun altogether and just expode the caps on the sidewalk by hitting them with rocks. Such fun! My father kept a rifle, unloaded, in his bedroom closet, and used to shoot woodchucks with it. I never touched it, because it scared the bejesus out of me. I wonder if he still has it.
celeritous (adj)
quick, rapid
"There appeared in Forrest's right hand, which had seemed empty, which had seemed not to move or to perform in any celeritous and magic manner, a very small, stubby, nickel pistol, with a caliber much too great for it, and down whose rifled muzzle the earl found himself gazing."
--Gouverneur Morris, The Spread Eagle and Other Stories
I've never owned a gun myself, or felt any desire to. I did have a cap gun as a boy, but I don't think that counts. I mostly liked it for the loud bangs and smell of gunpowder it made. I would sometimes neglect the gun altogether and just expode the caps on the sidewalk by hitting them with rocks. Such fun! My father kept a rifle, unloaded, in his bedroom closet, and used to shoot woodchucks with it. I never touched it, because it scared the bejesus out of me. I wonder if he still has it.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Close Encounters
Close Encounters
At the news store today: While waiting in line to pay for my paper, I noticed that the white-haired woman in front of me, who was perhaps in her 80s, had a black eye, nearly swollen shut. She had a toddler with her--her grandson, I suppose--who was fiddling with the candy bars on the shelves under the cash register. He dumped a whole box of them onto the floor. The woman looked down and said, "Oh, don't do that. Don't make me bend over. My eye might fall out!" This produced much giggling from the cashier and the other customers standing nearby. The little boy, however, looked like he was about to cry. I wanted to ask the woman if she'd been in a fight, but I thought better of it.
At the news store today: While waiting in line to pay for my paper, I noticed that the white-haired woman in front of me, who was perhaps in her 80s, had a black eye, nearly swollen shut. She had a toddler with her--her grandson, I suppose--who was fiddling with the candy bars on the shelves under the cash register. He dumped a whole box of them onto the floor. The woman looked down and said, "Oh, don't do that. Don't make me bend over. My eye might fall out!" This produced much giggling from the cashier and the other customers standing nearby. The little boy, however, looked like he was about to cry. I wanted to ask the woman if she'd been in a fight, but I thought better of it.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Post your secrets
It's a Secret
PostSecret is an "ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." The secrets tend to be more humorous than juicy, and the postcard graphics are alternately touching or hilarious.
(Damn, I can't remember where I found this one.)
I used to be somewhat obsessive about collecting and sending postcards, and not just when I was on vacation. E-mail and higher postal rates more or less killed that hobby, but I still have quite a collection of them here. Somewhere...
Monday, March 06, 2006
Art collectivization
Collective Action
An interesting NY Times article on the increasing number of art collectives argues that they "may undermine the cult of the artist as media star, dislodge the supremacy of the precious object and unsettle the economic structures that make the art world a mirror image of the inequities of American culture at large."
An interesting NY Times article on the increasing number of art collectives argues that they "may undermine the cult of the artist as media star, dislodge the supremacy of the precious object and unsettle the economic structures that make the art world a mirror image of the inequities of American culture at large."
Random Acts of Poetry
Random Acts of Poetry
Just Before
Dawn was rich:
a pageant of burning clouds,
like the rubies of a sultan,
dribbled from a golden jar.
Not car horns that morning,
but flutists midwifing
the sun-up
with auspicious trills.
The neighbor's pool
was a flashing ocean, blue as tourmaline,
and later, the mailman was a priest
bringing absolution, not bills.
Everyone I met
glowed like phosphorous
and their words were sweet
as syrup.
I knew I was coming down,
the fever about to take me,
my head already floating
two feet above my body.
But I took the morning’s blaze
as a fleeting gift,
a sugar-frosted illusion,
my world transformed
by the gorgeous mouth of hell,
a counterfeit of paradise.
Just Before
Dawn was rich:
a pageant of burning clouds,
like the rubies of a sultan,
dribbled from a golden jar.
Not car horns that morning,
but flutists midwifing
the sun-up
with auspicious trills.
The neighbor's pool
was a flashing ocean, blue as tourmaline,
and later, the mailman was a priest
bringing absolution, not bills.
Everyone I met
glowed like phosphorous
and their words were sweet
as syrup.
I knew I was coming down,
the fever about to take me,
my head already floating
two feet above my body.
But I took the morning’s blaze
as a fleeting gift,
a sugar-frosted illusion,
my world transformed
by the gorgeous mouth of hell,
a counterfeit of paradise.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
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