there does seem to be an uptick in evangelical xians rship to Bunyan.

jenny teller's sci. illustrations are gorgeous, and an excellent way for visual and written info to co-exist. esp. see the jellyfish.

the typography of John Carpenter's the Thing.

hundreds of japanese munciapl flags


compare this with Shelton's Honey Bea, as Brad Shoup did in TSJ, & talk about the implicaitons of list songs on country music.

CAmeron met with Murdochites 26 times in 14 months. Also, read the new yorker's article on murdoch this week.

almost three dozen photos of allnations pow wow in seattle.

W. Chaput the new archbishop of philly, is RAtzinger claiming ideological purity and hard work over innovation and a certain kind of mercy?

i'm back and forth on Romney's LDShood as a liability in 2012, this new study makes me lean into thinking it is a major one.


Trapeze Strip Tease, released by Edison.

Elizabeth ParkeR a domestic worker in 19th century england, was beaten and thrown down the stairs when she refused to have sex with her employer, as a revenge she cross stiched her testimony on a peice of linen.

i spent 12 hours listening to some of the deputations, and watching mamoliti be angry and ford be bord, and i was hoping it would make a difference, now i'm not sure.

Chuck's essay on Eric Church quashed some of my love for it--but then I listened to this:

Sue Tilley who posed for Beneifts Supervisor Sleeping, writes a tender and quite amusing adendum to the offical Lucian Freud obit in the gaurdian.

martin skidmore died.

Women's suffering has often inspired admiration from audiences whose embrace of their tragic heroine can seem like equal parts sympathy and sadism. Those of us who took pleasure in the fruits of Amy Winehouse's inner turmoil now have to acknowledge its ultimate end. As we contemplate this, we can also revel in what was most entrancing about her music: its brashness and utterly engaging power, the upfront expression of a woman who was loud without apology. Her big notes still live.

Anne Power's on Winehouse

last auction cycle warhol was responsible for up to a third of revenues from the major houses. The economist explains this, and how it might not be a good thing.

Toronto project for restoring, in aesthetic ways split concrete planter boxes.

it was a tradtion in the 18th century and earlier, in london, of when droping a child into a foundling hospital, leaving it with a bit of spare cloth, here is an onlin eexhibition that explains the practice, and shows some notes and cloths.

120 mid century modern logos.

though Clark Henry's Butch Guide comes from 1982, the masculinity as assumed normal in the gay male community, and the refusal to acknowledge butch asa kind of drag is still ripe for heavey parody.

Bette Davis on Joan Rivers in the mid 80s.

1500 South East Asian Book Designs.

Marvel Hex Codes

Corruption in China is begginning to be seen by the outside world as a major problem--and this comes with the liquidity of capitial, like this telegraph article on officials funnelling 76b out of the country.

minnepolois bus tickets

design treatments for St Bartholemew's church in NYC, including these icons for guild work:

From Jul 10, 2011

United Steaks of America

some pretty great street shots of Melbourne.

6000 prisoners in California are on a hunger strike.

From Jul 10, 2011

Zoran Lucic, Wayne Rooney Poster, From the Sucker for Soccer seires, more here:
about 35 of them

original art for Teenage Sex Club, a romance comic from 1951.

some photos of Twombly's styudio from the 70s. The work was shot by Horst for vogue , so they have a solid, well defined glamour, and an explicit fashion for the sake of fashion aesthetics, instead of an art history reportage, but there are some things that are interesting none-the-less. The neo-classical sculpture, are interesting because they suggest a set of translations of classical motifs, as opposed to actual anceint work, and hte amount of white in the space are not unsual, but this picture, with that white and yellow pop cylinder in the midst of dull/patinaed brown bronzes is a metaphor of twombly's work:

From Jul 10, 2011

sometimes the majestorium provides a useful stop in corruption, but not before Father Corapi, the charasmatic priest in the WEstern US convinced his followers to give him "He holds legal title to over $1 million in real estate, numerous luxury vehicles, motorcycles, an ATV, a boat dock, and several motor boats, which is a serious violation of his promise of poverty as a perpetually professed member of the society." (Sometimes the reporters for the National Catholic Register are a little bitchy.


STeve Anderson is a very angry man. His speeches against women preaching, against what he considers a culture of licentiousness, and against certain cultures of sexuality, and his refusal to engage in the world are notorious. (mostly because he films and uploads his videos on youtube). These photos of baptisms, and the joy he shows in them, complicates the narratives of anger and exhaustion that function as the core of his work.

John Waters Interview about his art practice.

From Jul 5, 2011

Letter of Resignation XXXI by Cy Twombly, 1967, Ink and Graphite on Paper, collection of John Waters (who described Tyomblys techique, as the "poetics of hte palmer method"

From Jul 5, 2011

Cy Twombly, Anadyomene, Bassano in Teverina 1981, wood, nails, crayon, paint, cloth, and screw eye, 18 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 29" (47 x 57.1 x 73.6 cm). Private collection, Rome

From Jul 5, 2011

Cy Twombly, Roman Notes, Lithograph

‘In his own particular way, Twombly tells us that the essence of writing is neither form nor usage but simply gesture - the gesture that produces it by allowing it to happen: a garble, almost a smudge, a negligence. We can reason this out through a comparison. What would be the essence of a pair of trousers (if it has one)? Certainly not that carefully prepared and rectilinear object found on the racks of department stores; rather the ball of cloth dropped on the floor by the negligent hand of a young boy when he undresses tired, lazy and indifferent. The essence of an object has something to do with the way it turns into trash. It is not necessarily what remains after the object has been used, it’s rather what is thrown away in use. And so it is with Twombly’s writings. They are the fragments of an indolence, and this makes them extremely elegant; it’s as though the only thing left after the strongly erotic act of writing were the languid fatigue of love: a garment cast aside into a corner of the page.” Barthes, on Twombly.

From Jul 5, 2011

From the Blossom Show, in Chicago, his last big american show.

and he, and this is the great thing--talked about how it was needed to discuss the politics (about how the films move between the witch and the nymphette, and that's a problem (and maybe a catholic problem) but it is, and there were reasons for that, and we notice the politics, and we move on to the aesthetics w/o trying to settle the middle.

also toby dammit, fellini, terrance stamp, worth seeing.

oh, and on my question of black swan, he put his fingers and index fingers in a triangle, and talked about black swan, suspira, and perfect blue as three points on that triangle.

he also talked about how, in his way, the perfect is the enemey of the good--and with as much love and desire for Cocteau, as he did for Buba or Fulci (and Fulci's bodily horror)

or about how touch of evil was a better film than citizen kane, b/c touch of evil went off the road (and proceeded to pantomine a car wreck as a good thing, as a worthwhile thing)(

it made my passion and my weirdness and my love for excess, and my desire to expand what is good, and i was really depressed and really gone before i went.


i mean i love suspira, i love argento, but this almost accidental del toro, i think made me feel more hopeful

del toro talking after a double bill of suspira and toby dammit.

it was life affirming, his casual fannish knowledge of film, his love of the aesthetic of film, his desire for the excessive aesthetics of fairy tales to trump logic, a discussion of scopophillia, of hitchcock and his students argento and de palma, how a bollywood film does this thing, where it just leaves the narrative plot and returns at its lesiure, about bluebeard, about the nature of good and evil as it relates to decadence with a small discussion of the piety and evil of joan of arc's leutitent...it went on for an hour, and i just felt affirmed, profoundly affirmed.

drinks and dinner with andy/jamie and their family.

four things i thot today:

a) line from the poet and episcopal priest tim dlugos: each great hope seems/to melt away like snow beneath the force/of the spring, the waking life again" i am working away, slowly and difficulty from systems that contain all to build a life upon--the melting snow, with the feeding water, and the intemperate schedule, and the refusal to have a system, is a metaphor for that?
b) the red and white blocks devolped for testing spatial relations were created in the early 50s at STandford, b/w 1950 and 1970 stanford had several pysch expirments intended towards placing the chaotic into mediated boxes--can this kind of pyschometric testing be connected to Reichs gender work or to the Prison Expriment
c) isaac, being lead by the patriach, to his death or at least sacrifice, we hear the story from Abraham's point of view, in art, in lit, in the scriptures, but is our rship to G-d closer to Isaac than Abraham (and by extension, Jacob knew that he would get the blessnig, and in the wrestling and the maiming and hte lingustic changes, there was really rarely any doubt--the story of Isaac is a crime story, a noir, it has suspense)
d) winters tale as a mirror of midsummers night dream?

ase

As much as I love chart country, and find it oddly inspirational, I have always found the exquisitely construction of Twain's work was made in such a way that any biographical clue was meticulously scrubbed clean. So the songs weren't about anything, even the sex songs refused narratives of the body--so we think b/c of the show on the Oprah network, and because of the hiring of Swift's team who make confessional work, and because of what we know of the divorce, that she has become more confessional...but it's not true. This is slightly sadder then, for example, Come on Over, but gives no new understanding of Twain. Artists don't need to spill shit, we have no real knowledge of Toby Keith, who makes almost no attempt at the personal or the confessional, and an instinct towards the confessional seems to required more of female artists then men, so part of me really admires the chrome sheen of Twain's immaculate production, and part of me still finds it a little too bland to enjoy as a text, or even the use function that she assumes it will (but then i might not be the audience for this) (the interesting thing is that the youtube video recommends videos of the motivational speaker Joe Osteen as a companion to this--and I'm enough of a prickly asshole that I'm allergic about this shit. )

the politics of the tree of life were lousy, the abstacted, vigentte style story tellijng a little wearying, the last third a goopy hippy disaster, his spirtualism and his pangeic theology as a corrective to the european (this time xianity) interesting, and the 30 minute section about the creation of the earth, from the big bang, to the 50s in texas was one the most beautiful things ive seen in the cinema (esp a tiny, few second cut of a sea dinasour, and a slightly longer scene of two raptors)

also, the only film that had sections set in the present day, and oh brad pitt was great.

"Imagine a stream flowing form a spring and dividing itself off into a number of accidental channels. As long as it proceeds so, it will be useless for any purpose of agriculture, the dissipation of its waters making each particular current small and feeble, and therefore slow. But if one were to mass these wandering and widely dispersed rivulets again into one single channel, he would have a full and collected stream for the supplies which life demands. Just so the human mind . . . as long as its current spreads itself in all directions over the pleasures of the senses, has no power that is worth the naming of making its way towards the Real Good; but once call it back and collect it upon itself . . . it will find no obstacle in mounting to higher things, in grasping realities."

gregory of nyssa, qouted here

Sunday, June 12, 2011

If you are ever in a masonic lodge, note the leader’s chair, to the right is a rough stone, and to the left is a smooth stone, the stones, called ashar’s are a visual metaphor for the linear narrative of rough to smooth that exist w/i a mason’s life.

They assume that you are born rough, and thru received knowledge, given by elders, one becomes smooth. But the way the display works, the rough and the smooth are in the same place, the rough and the smooth work not as a narrative but through a perhaps inadvertent, example of mystic time, or church t ime, where it folds up in on itself, where it functions simultaneously, and where a narrative requires enough liquidity to suggest that the rite occurs from the beginning of time, that it never ends, that persons who engage in the rite are changed, are smoothed, but that the smoothing lacks the permance of existience.

The ashars, the dialectic of the smooth and rough that suggests thru placement and thought, two narratives: the narrative of linear progression, I was rough and now I am smooth; I was lost and now I am found; I was in the wilderness, and now I am home in the city; I was a pagan or an atheist or one who refused g-d, and now I am a Christian. But also the narrative of mutual displacement, of decoherence, of a fractal splitting: I am both rough and smooth; though I am found, I still do not speak enough of the language, and am lost; even in the city I am in the wild’s exodous, my conversion to this new life, and to this new theological practice has not made me less of what I was before.

Here on pentacost, which is in most tales, a story of the voice of god speaking clearly and precisely his convenats towards the divine, is like those ashars—there is a linear narrative, that shouldn’t be denied, that there is a miracle of communication, of language, of transference—of being one thing, and then after this radical event, being another thing, but there is also the decoherence, the splitting, the dark seeing, and the terror that comes from the voice of the divine.

We get to easter, as a community—and Christ comes back from the dead, and the flesh of God is obvious. Pentacost works as a second easter, or the second part of easter—where the flesh, the narratives, the responsilbities that were given to us, on the cross become gifts of the spirit—gifts that require a collective responsibility.

But these gifts are often confusing and contradictory, they are often difficult, and they are explicitly in Acts gifts of an apocalypse that we are still waiting for. To understand these acts, we have to recognize the message comes in a variety of forms—there is the gift of language, a reversal, a mirroring, of the curse of Babel. There is the recognition of time, where it functions as an eddy, that floats forwards, backwards, curves in on itself, and provides a place to rest—a time of eternity, where the Eucharist of the Passion is the same Eucharist as Luther in Wittenberg, and the one we have today, and the one that will occur 200 years hence…and the Pentecost is the same way, the passing of the peace, the gathering together as a community, the language used toe express the ineffable become part of the constant renewing of the divine in the life of the church—some of that renewing is difficult, some of that renewing brings joy, and sometimes, we fail to view it as constant. These three messages-of language, of pluarity, and how they fold into a desire for cohesive wholeness, can be eeked out.

Think of the tower of babel not as a curse. We went about it the wrong way, our desire to know God fully collapsed into hubris, but the strong human instinct to work thru the mystery, to talk to god, and to have god talk to us, collectively and personally, comes out of that tower of babel—and when that tower collapsed, it was the birth of language itself—hundreds of languages, there needed to be some work, some process that allowed people to figure out how to talk to each other, now that they did not have the same tounge, but this allowed for different ideas, different perspectives, it allowed for a variety of ways to describe our experiences.

In this sense, Pentacost could be considered a reward for the chaos, a positive spin of the difficulties of Babel’s tower—that God, in the form of the holy spirit, speaks many languages, to a collective group of people, suggests an openness that is perhaps a bit absent in other places—it is not Abraham on the mountain, ready to kill Isaac, it is not Moses removing his shoes and entering the burning bush, it is not Ezekiel or even Christ revealing himself to two confused and frightened disciples during the transfiguration.

This inter-textual, liturgical attachment of this passage, to the passage about the passing of peace , “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

This leads us to a number of questions, can we communicate to god without terror, is the terror and awe of god absent here, with the wind and the voice of fire, and what does it mean to absorb, to listen to the voice of God in this context—in the words of the pentacost miracle:” in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

The seeking of peace and the seeking of meaning, happen together, they happen in a mutally agreed upon community—and a community that is radically different then the tight and restricted community of the Isrealites. The theophonic miracle of the Pentacost, is then not only a miracle of language, the rough and smooth stone of translation and understanding on both sides of the Chair of God, it is also a collective miracle, a miracle about the implications of plurality.

Pluraity in the pentacost is not an easy argument, and it is not often pleasant—it rests on several paradoxes that the Anglican church is still working through. That human communities who rest on religious practice work through. The chief paradox is one of open and closed communities. To be part of the community of faith, t here must be an agreement of what is being said, and also an agreement of which interperations, which positions are so beyond the pale that t hey cannot be said. The diversity of opinions, must contain within it, the seeds of its own dissent. In this sense, to hear the voices of god, in their own language are to simultaneously lose part of the identity that is being preserved.

This question rests on the two passages—the one in Acts, about the list of people, like the midrash or kabbalsitic lists in the Babel tales, that note each of the tribes, each of the nations that was created that day and on the passage in corninthons that states that we must become Christians, and to become Christian require an abandonment of old ways. The paradoxical thought process here is, how can we be both now, both open to the possibility of a radical god, open to the dissent that emerges in other voices, how do we mirror or transform, or listen to the holy spirit so the miracle of the babel has now become a gift while recognizing heresy—how do we know what is permitted, and what is beyond reasonable interpretation.

This grasping for interperation, for a proper limning of the voice of God, rests on the body of the Lord, it is through the flesh of the divine made human that the pentacost can happen, and it is because Christ’s body is our body that we can work through these thoughts and feelings collectively For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. But this is also paradoxical: so we are made to be slaves, and in our slavery, we are free, we are made men or women, but thru the flesh of a man, we are made genderless—but all of this seeing and hearing and making and constructing and finding a collective is through a glass darkly, because of our humanity, we are absent of a full understanding of the nature of god—the Pentecost makes that clear: And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist

This is the difficult bit, the problematic bit—that the blood and the fire and the smoky mist consumes us, but consumes us in such a way that we are not fully processed—we are the smooth stone and the rough stone, and we are a smooth stone and rough stone in contexts of other smooth stones and rough stones—we are made into a wall, or a fence, a face that delinates land, ownership, collective responsibility, the commons—but also exclusion, and loss and collapse.

To be a stone in the wall, to be an aggregate—could this be a successful metaphor for cohesive wholeness—the tension between what is said and what is heard, is a tension that is not solveable, because language is always liquid, is always at risk of slipping away from us, and we talk, we listen, we write, we pray, we engage in physical rituals connected to the timelessness of our encounters with fellow believers, and with the nature of god, in the hope that our desires for communication are not futile.

The joy of pentacost for Christians, is a joy of language and social cohesion as a temporary hopeful interaction against the feelings of hopelessness at a God that is often viewed as profoundly absent. It’s not the speaking in tounges, or the ecstatic dancing that marks other peoples working through of the spirit, but it’s still and it’s small and its enough to keep me waiting for the voice of fire, even thru the blood and the flesh and the smoke

bitch you ain't no barbie, i see you work at arby's, #2, supersize, hurry up i'm starving, darling, radical, on the block i'm magical, see me at your college campus baggie full of adderall, call me if you need a fix, call me if you need a boost, see them other chickenheads? they don't ever leave the coop. i'm in the coop cruisin, i got the stolen plates, serving all the feeds over there by the golden gate BRIDGE, i'm colder than the fridge and the freezer, i'm snatchin all your bitches at my leisuuuuure

p5290208.jpg

p5290208.jpg, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

bridesmaid is further proof of three things

a) produceer has replaced actor, which replaced director, as site of auter.
b) apatow is reactionary, and doesn't like women, and his movies are too long
c) women as actors is less impt than woman as directors.

(but i laughed, frequently, and loudly)

freaks and geeks as a comedy of social mobilty

two things about emily dickinson

a) esp in a 19th century literary context, correspondance is a form of publishing.
b) the editing, the creation of fasciles, the sending work out to a correspondance, and sending some works to editors, for me, at least betrays this idea of her as non publishing.

From May 18, 2011

the problems with perserving the watts tower and how it is ignored by LA cultural elites.

about the ongoing problems with archiving video games

cnet used one of my photos so did LAist anda this american life

Guernica a new political journal, interviews ARundhati Roy, mostly about Indian politics, but with a couple of really smart meta questions.

95 thesis on art and class, by ben davis including such thoughts as

2.5 One role for art, therefore, is as a luxury good, whose superior craftsmanship or intellectual prestige indicates superior social status

2.6 Another role for art is to serve as financial instrument or tradable repository of value

2.7 Another role for art is as sign of “giving back” to the community, to whitewash ill-gotten gains

2.8 Another role for art is symbolic escape valve for radical impulses, to serve as a place to isolate and contain social energy that runs counter to the dominant ideology

9 pages of hand written dungeon maps and notes, from D and D campaigns from the 1980s.

fox found amongst the construction of a London Skyscraper.

From May 18, 2011

Anna D Fall Collection, this year, fuck look at those gloves.

Steven DAvis a national cricketter for England has come out.

idioms aboult colour, sorted by language.

langauge education, and native culture as n extension of genecodial practice.

solid profile on Denueve.

Melville's marginallia.

elizabethan blackwork


My Little Pony does I Am Telling You I am Not Going.

Notes and Photos from LACMA about the installing of a Bruce Nauman show.

Florence Lowery 26 abandoned gas stations.

astonishing review of the Bill Cunningham movie.

two ppghs and 200 words about American Soliders killing civillians, is the best i have read about it.

LDS mother talks about the ethical implications of autism and baptizing her child at 8.


Alamanc Singers, I Don't Want Yr Millions Mister.

China Melville might have done swamp things, which would have been awesome.

Sai Baba's estate might have been worth 5.5b.

We WEi tortured and confesses tax crimes under duress

Tina Fey's prayer for her daughter.

susannah breslin on the war in iraq.

Gilbert and George's drinks bill in 1974 is a more interesting story than one would have anctipated.

south carolina forbids any book for priosners, but the bible.

46 per cent of Chicago homes are finically underwater.


John Waters on Craig Ferguson.

James Meek writes a blistering article on privitazing the post office in Germany, Holland and England, and about the nessecity of public/social services. Must read

Companion Cube Sweater.


Sleater Kinney, Is This Love.

the awl has some of the best cultural writing today, this article on Chris Canyon and queerness in the WWE is well worth reading.

photo references to classic pinup photos. here is some for Harry Bush I always thought that the cocks on the men in Harry Bush's men were a pornogrpahic exaggeration, but the photos make it seem that they are a fairly accurate depection, which must mean something about signifed and signifer.

David Foster Wallace syllabus for his creative writing courses, excellent use of the vernacular, with some solid respect for writers who are not usually rspected.

Pius and the Nazis, or JPII and ignoring the child raping both would indicate that sainthood should be limited to those who do not use their offices to ignore great evil.

Louisville Kentucky, and the blvd community church there refuses to sign marriages for anyone unless all are married--the congreationlist aspect of community churches can be used as well across the political spectrum, just as anarchism joins conserative and progressive thoughts, this is an interesting example of that. here is the churches offical site.

From May 18, 2011

From May 18, 2011

Two Works by Wong Kari, Digital Photos, 2010

really love the colour and the compostion of these photos of japan by wong paki.


King Cudi's 50 Ways To Make A Record, a riff on the Simon song.

Audre Lorde on the erotic": "During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and forth, over and over, until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it. I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience."

Mamet as a conserative excellent writing, but nothing as shocking, or as much of a charachter arc, as the writers think, plus some cliches.

alabama toronado footage as much jesus and guns as one expects in cliched depctions of the american south.

good to know lizzie is capable of the odd offensive colonial gesture.

anne powers fantastic article on women, violence, and popular music, hidden in an reivew/profile of ruth gerson--the country singer. has an mp3 of her version of Deliah's Gone.


DAvid Byrne, Butt Naked, 1992.

Lady Freda Harris's original watercolorus of the Thoth Deck, is now avaible for sale. Wonder where they have been all this time.

Greer on the slutwalks.

Graham Warrington Mural, Basement of City Hall, Vancouver, 1972.

first person account of extreme solitary confinement

NY Times infogrpahic on debt in Europe.

Hilary Clinton is conserned about food security.

Roberta Smith/ ny times on Ai WEi Wei's major new work in NYC.

jim mcnulty smirking the tumblr

Chicago Musuem STore the only place to get the Baltz Prototype catalog--his preview to the masterpeice New Industrial Parks. great review of the baltz show

Literal New Yorker cartoons.


Amusing and Effective Campaign to allow skilled immigrants in CAnada to work in their fields.

i like this idea of atheist chaplins in the military

African American Unemployment is rising heavily, in urban areas, almost as bad as the 30s depression.

Ebert reveiws the new Herzong

Laura Logan's explicit acknowldgement of her sexual assulat is intensely brave and should be commended.

robin givhan on the new designer for Balhmain.


This patrotic budwieser ad collapses the homoscial into the homoerotic, but in a safe, domestic, and patrotic way.

Tories backbencers in the UK are looking to dismantle the NHS, Harper in 5 years?

great review of the baltz show


High School Talent Show Milk Chug.

From May 18, 2011