The Shogun Enters

The Shogun Enters (2008)

[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?

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Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until the image had its eyebrows shaved and its teeth blackened.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, shogun, the shogun enters, concubines gone wild, xtreme dusting, view with binoculars, cruelanimal, blog with a view

Gort Takes a Sick Day

Gort Takes a Sick Day (2008)

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

After a bitter unseasoned vegetable
dish the vet took

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.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, poetry, found poetry, gort, gort takes a sick day, the day the earth stood still, the day the earth threw up, view with binoculars, cruelanimal, blog with a view

Juggling Accident

Juggling Accident (2008)

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

With barbecues abounding
I bookmarked my personal life. Was it
that chainsaw idea? Shock Video
does not recommend bowling balls. I made
one pigeon into ceramic icons. A ring
right in my face was so undignified
I got grilled by cops with cleavers who said
knot theory threw my game
off and back out before I lost my voice.

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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.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, digital art, illustrated poetry, found poetry, juggling accident, careful with that axe eugene, cruelanimal, blog with a view

Mr. Hyde

Mr. Hyde (2008)

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

A strange case.
A corpse trail.

Take a potion
sorrier than origami attacks
or a King special.

Avenge the death
of tech-boom billionaires
and break their canes.

Your two-faced drive
and your dark side screen shots
make a mannered demon.

Quaff that crap down.
Be worse but more.

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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.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, digital art, mr hyde, dr jekyll and mr hyde, found poetry, google poem, view with binoculars, them changes, cruelanimal, blog with a view

Cleo

Cleo (2008)

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

I recall how Caesar and Cleo
Made love in the Milky Way
They needed boats and armies to get there
I know there's a better way
--Neil Young, "Sedan Delivery"

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How about some music to wash down today's image?

"Sedan Delivery" by Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Bonnaroo Music Festival, 6-13-2003

Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until I added that Asp filter.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, digital art, cleo, cleopatra, neil young, sedan delivery, watch your asp, view with binoculars, cruelanimal, blog with a view

Palin Rally

Palin Rally (2008)

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

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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Image initially made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until every house on the block became Frankenstein's castle.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, digital art, palin rally, sarah palin, palling around, view with binoculars, cruelanimal, blog with a view

Car Salesman

Car Salesman (2008)

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

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.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, digital art, found poetry, google poem, view with binoculars, car salesman, preowned blogging, cruelanimal, blog with a view

Mortgage Everything

Mortgage Everything (2008)

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

With bad luck and a large vocabulary
you too can own a home. Good for you
you future Steinbeck lover. Tip obsessive as Wells Fargo
and punchy. Pockets out. One outstanding

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.

I hope to find a job at this pity party
after call center therapy. Bootstrap tough
it is if tagged you underwriter you lump sum jumper
you Maxim sinful exec. Greedhead is good.

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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.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, digital art, found poetry, google poem, view with binoculars, mortgage everything, bail out, jump now, mayday mayday, cruelanimal, blog with a view

Leah Turns 21

Leah Turns 21 (2008)

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

This one goes out today for a special someone. Happy Birthday.

P.S.: I know. Weird pic. But, then again, being an adult can sometimes be so strange.

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Image initially made with Sterling-ware. Post-processed daily, on its own, and continuing to become more beautiful in every way.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, leah at 21, happy birthday, throw the trash away, let's hit the bar, cruelanimal, blog with a view

The Idea of Order at Yucca Mountain

The Idea of Order at Yucca Mountain (2008)

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

After auditors found flaws
in water conducting fractures
a billion bank robbers will be dumped
filling Nevada to capacity. Waste
your congratulations or move away.
That obvious volcano blows off geology,
safety surveys and good luck fairy tales.
A better alternative like a trickier repository
goes probabilistic and money mad
until deficient water moves
through like radioactive
pipe fitters drip down black walls
where sound science is
not stored. Moisture percolates.
Railcars plunge. In a quarter million years
no firm idea
can then be permanently
disposed.

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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":

May he rest in peace...

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, fractal blog, digital art, found poetry, yucca mountain, the idea of order at yucca mountain, robbing banks with plutonium, david foster wallace, cruelanimal, blog with a view