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.
[Click on the image above to see the view with binoculars.]
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
[Click on the image above to see the view with binoculars.]
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?
