Who Knows?

He had driven Julie out past the edge of town where there was a cherry orchard that had been let go, that had overgrown in new wildness, that was no longer managed by anyone. The farmhouse was abandoned too. The parents of the missing girl hadn't been able to bear to look at one another anymore, after all those years of fruitless searches, all that agony, even though they had been childhood sweethearts and good companions to each other. Although they had been married for twenty years. "I guess they just too keenly reminded each other of that loss," Julie thought. It was a hard thought.

They were standing in that sundered couple's bedroom, actually, looking down on the orchard, which was in bloom, drinking the rain of a somewhat dark spring day. Though it no longer mattered to anyone, it was still beautiful. Like the girl would always be beautiful, Julie thought, when the ones who loved her were all dead, and everyone else had forgotten her. She had seen her photo.

Robert rested one of his hands on the sash of the window that looked down on the trees and gazed through its pebbly bleariness of rain. One of the panes had been shattered. Someone had probably thrown a rock through out of bored mischief. Kids are terrible, she thought. Acts like this were opening the house up to the cycles of nature, beginning the erasure of the fact of the house. Was it what was best now? Julie didn't know. It was a house of pain, she knew. The rain just made it all seem worse. There was still an end table left there, beside where the bed would have been. You could see places in the paint where pictures or photographs had cheered this room which was now so desolate. Looked like someone had smoked there nervously. A long sweating out of years in nicotine. It's strange the ways even walls will talk to us.

"They say when it rains like this, she tastes the earth, what she's missing, what the rest of us have, and she gets up and walks. People have seen her. Who knows? Maybe one of these days she'll even lead us to the one who did this to her. Hell, maybe she'll lead us to her moldering body. They searched for miles around here, dragged that pond, walked the state game lands. Hundreds of people. Dogs too. I don't think they'll ever find her. She could be hundreds of miles from here. Keep your eyes peeled. They say she likes walking through that orchard sometimes. And it's such a dark day."

"What a horrible joke to make, Robert!" Julie said coldly. "A girl died. Practically a child! We're not kids around a campfire."

But Robert chortled as he exited the room, excited again, like a bird dog after a pheasant. "Hey, down this way. I want to show you her bedroom."

Miffed, she didn't follow him right away. Instead, she walked to the window where Robert had been standing.

Her body winced back from the window, nearly involuntarily. Her eyes had given her body a shock. Because down below in the yard there was a young girl, perhaps seventeen years old, who was standing behind the vehicle in which they had arrived. She was only a few feet away from it. Her clothes were torn, hanging off her, her long hair was streaked with mud. She was barefoot. She was resolutely still. Otherworldly still. She was staring at the trunk of Robert's car.

Getting There

A mathematician and computer scientist, N., who had been working with Cantor's theories on infinite sets and cardinality and the physics of parallel universes, devised an experiment he felt could vindicate the much-maligned C.

Georg Cantor was often vilified for having produced unprovable, assailable mathematical conjectures regarding the infinite and its interplay with the individual constituents which composed it. The encyclopedias of the day include skeptical notes on Cantor: "These results are highly counterintuitive, because they imply that there exist proper subsets and proper supersets of an infinite set S that have the same size as S, although S contains elements that do not belong to its subsets, and the supersets of S contain elements that are not included in it."

N. wondered how he might definitively prove to the world that Hilbert was indeed correct with his "Paradox of the Grand Hotel":  "It is demonstrated that a fully occupied hotel with infinitely many rooms may still accommodate additional guests, even infinitely many of them, and that this process may be repeated infinitely often."

The experiment N. devised was ingeniously simple. He decided to email himself a simple message whose text would explain that he was exploring the infinity of the set of himself and searching for proof of an alternate version of himself in a parallel universe. If he wrote back to himself, without ever setting his own fingers to his keyboard, he would be vindicated.

He was using a computer of his own design, nearly a supercomputer, but not quite. He began the mailing and ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million, ten million, one hundred million emails sailed off and returned without a hitch. This was what N. expected to occur. But the computer continued shooting these textual arrows, these emails, into a vast cosmic sea of numbers and soon it was ten billion, one hundred billion, ten trillion, and so on, until a googol of these emails had been sent, and then, arguably, a googolplex of such emails, if computers could be said to "get tired" of appending zeroes to the end of a number, growing that strange abstract creature's infinitely extensible tail.

And then the first few stray emails showed up on N.'s "registry of miscounts." They went out. They did not come back. Still, N. waited. He felt the shudder of the quantum symmetry. But he realized the problems. In how many universes, did N. have the same email but still lack the comprehension to understand the deep meaningfulness of this simple communication written from himself to himself? It would be like a satellite messenger from earth sailing past a planet with a primitive life form that could not even reckon an overture from another world.

How many emails that slipped through and reached their designated N.-other (N.'s preferred term for his alternate selves, with a subscript to indicate number) were disregarded and discarded, disbelieved as pranks or cognitive flukes that came out of some altered state, believed to have been the result of having been drunk or high or having gone without enough sleep. Many emails would be seen but never opened. How many N.-others were capable of understanding the import of the email and knowing the importance of writing back. Most N.-others would be self-absorbed idiots, some even worse. And, of the infinitely small number of emails that N. estimated would "make it through," he knew the process of writing back would be equally fraught. The odds of that email returning to its true sender would be just as astronomically high. There was no guarantee that these slippages opened up a "true conduit" or isomorphic mapping of time. Indeed, N. believed this would not be the case at all. This is why he believed the odds of success in his experiment to be dauntingly slim.

It was on a rainy Thursday afternoon that N. had been writing a paper on the arrays of "slipped emails" which had never returned, which appeared to have made it through to parallel universes, when his textual scanner gave him "The Ding." The Ding was N.'s pet name for the audio signal which allowed N. to know that an email had returned from a different email address or from his "own" email address with text added or the original text altered. Since N. could not physically read these astronomically huge numbers of returning emails, and since he had every reason to suspect the "confirmatory email" would simply return with himself as sender, that it would come from the same email address from which it had been sent, he needed to add this verification procedure to his process.The text-comparison verification was designed to weed out any email text differences that merely denoted server problems and their standard verbiage, which had been authored by N. himself as controls for this experiment. The Ding was actually a sound file of the old seventies song "All by Myself."

N.'s heart was nearly stopped when he heard Eric Carmen's treacly, drawn-out delivery of the lyrics from the schmaltzy, self-pitying pop song of  radiophonic yesteryear.

He went to the target email which was highlighted, segregated from the massive body of returns, which was still growing in magnitude in nearly unimaginable leaps and bounds, still attempting to scale that impossible distance between finitude and infinitude.

He opened the email and read:

"Hello? Is this some sort of joke? I don't remember sending this email and I don't see how it is possible that I did so, and I have no idea why I am writing this "reply" (it is preposterous) but we do seem to have some mathematical interests (a faith, no?) in common, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to write you "back". Although, if I am correct, your odds of receiving this "reply" are astronomically against "us," and I don't expect to ever hear back from you. In any case, thanks for thinking of "me" (yourself?) and Farewell."

It was all N. needed to read and know.

Now began the work of convincing the world. He anticipated the odds of his going insane during this attempt were very high. He anticipated failure. Why wouldn't he? He knew the odds.

(make everything great again)

Photographyby "nothingofinterest" on lomography.com: https://www.lomography.com/photos/21285532

Great Deal

A young woman was left without a couch when her roommate moved out and took it with her. She went on Craigslist and found one she thought was a steal. It was a model that sells for close to two thousand dollars retail and the owner was asking only six hundred and fifty, with no apparent condition issues.

The young woman was very security-conscious, but the seller was up front in dealing with her worries and had actually crafted a very humorous ad designed to assuage the fears of any potential buyers. He joked about having given up cannibalism "five years ago." She talked to the middle-age man on the phone and he seemed trustworthy, a bit bland actually, but she was a very careful young woman. She told him she would be bringing two strong male friends along to load and move the couch for her (this was true). The couch seller was fine with that but explained that with his work schedule he could not be present for the pickup. However, he could leave the couch in his unlocked garage and  and she could just pick it up. She could complete the transaction through Paypal or leave a check in his garage. She chose to do the latter. She thought it was nice of him to trust her in this manner.

Her muscly guy friends helped her get the leather couch into her apartment, enjoyed the pizzas and beers she had provided as "payment," and then went home to their respective partners. She couldn't stop admiring the lovely couch. It was pristine. She sat on it for a few hours, watched her favorite shows and finally went to bed.

The next day she was missing. She hasn't been seen since. Video cameras in her apartment building showed (presumptively) the man from whom she had bought the couch leaving her apartment, carrying a sleeping bag with a body in it. It is virtually certain she was the one in the sleeping bag. Whether alive or dead, nobody knows. The police discovered a compartment in the bottom of the large couch where they figured the man had secreted himself and from which he had emerged after she had gone to bed. She had supervised the carrying of her abductor into her apartment. The house from which she had removed the couch was discovered to have two corpses in it, the former residents and true owners of the couch. Nobody knows who the man is or his present whereabouts. The check the woman had left was made out to a fictitious name, Hugh Lusall. The police  detectives working the case believe this to be a sick pun for "you lose all."

A Promise

 There was a prosperous merchant who had wed his great love early in life. They were happily married for a dozen years, but regrettably she sickened in the thirteenth year of their marriage, when a plague went through their town. She died quite suddenly. She had always loved to brush her long, fair hair with a gilded heirloom brush, a gift from her mother, who had received it from her mother. The dying woman admitted it was a vanity, but she made her husband promise to bury the brush with her. She knew he would remarry after her death, and she could not abide the idea of another woman using her hair brush while she lay a-moldering in the grave. Her husband promised to honor her wish.

However, her husband neglected to honor this wish as he had promised. He considered it silly, unseemly even. His new bride found the brush and squealed with delight. She knew it had belonged to his first wife, but she didn't really mind. It was exquisitely made. She loved to contour her long brown tresses with it. And her husband loved to watch her do this, for she was comely and shapely.

Soon after, his new bride's hair began falling out. She had to take to wearing wigs at her young age. And then her teeth began to fall out. Soon, they were all gone. The husband, like his new love, was an emotional wreck, as the doctors could not diagnose this strange malady. He had his own suspicions, of course. He cursed his wife's ghost. And then the lovely new wife's fingernails fell out, one by one. When her wig was off and her primitive dentures were out, she looked rather like a walking corpse, he thought. But he told her she was beautiful and to wear more makeup. She wept all the time.

The merchant went to a fortune teller who confirmed that it was indeed his wife's ghost working this mischief. She mentioned the hair brush even before he could say a word about it. She told him to set his wife's grave on fire. She couldn't guarantee it would work, but she said there was a chance. So that is what he did. He went to his wife's grave and set it on fire. And he cursed her for her selfishness beyond the grave, her vanity and pride. What use, after all, was a brush to a corpse?

As he arrived home from the cemetery, he was horrified to see his house was on fire. Truly it was a conflagration. The entire neighborhood was wetting down all the other houses and praying from the rooftops to heaven. His mansion was a total loss. The stables too had caught fire and all of his horses were dead. His new wife was on her knees in the street weeping. She had lost her teeth in the fire. Her wig had fallen off and little children were mocking her. The spaces where her fingernails had been appeared to be bleeding again.

"What?! Was nothing saved then?"

She held his dead wife's hair brush before his face."

"Only this beauty!" she said,  and she began to brush her hair with it and sing the same song his dead wife would always sing. It was clear she had lost her mind.

He knew that he was truly ruined.

This was all such a shock that the merchant fell dead in the street at the feet of his new wife.

She was left a pauper and since she was too loathsome of appearance to secure a new man (or even to sink into the cyprian's trade) soon afterwards she drowned herself in the river at night, as decency required.

John Cage Ryoanji

Seriously, Yum.

(trust)

CNN and Monomania

I must be old, because I remember when CNN used to be in the business of all the news, all the time.

Now it's gotten to the point where the network has a few monomanias that dominate and replace the idea of "universal coverage" of world news. It's no longer news. It's now wholly advertising fodder, advertising pandering. 

I understand the upcoming American presidential election is crucial. But I still think the network has lost credibility by talking about Donald Trump fairly constantly. Doubtless this is what sells the most advertising. I really think the network has abdicated its original mission. Things are still happening in the world that matter very much and almost all of those things have absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump. How many round tables of talking heads chattering away on Trump (many of them annoying repeat guests with only a few sound bites in their heads which they parrot constantly) do we really need in a twenty-four hour period?

It's only when a tragedy the size of the Orlando shooting occurs that the channel turns its attention away from Trump and its small handful of other monomanias.

I have to confess I have started watching OAN (One America News) to get fully-rounded news. I do not sympathize with the conservative ideology of this network at all, but I greatly appreciate that it disseminates up-to-the-minute domestic and world news. It's clearly a fledgling network with budget limitations and the young anchors are perhaps a tad green, but they get the job done and I learn what's going on in the world. I cringe every time they refer to Bernie Sanders as "the Marxist-socialist Bernie Sanders" (I kid you not, they never mention his name without affixing that inaccurate epithet) but I will still hang around to get the news.

One very annoying thing did appear on OAN today. At first, it appeared to be an ad spot Trump had taken out for himself. It began with a head shot of Trump and a voice-over narration of him speaking about national security. Then it went off into a really dim-witted sequence of clips attempting to show liberals (both Clintons and other Washington insiders) attempting to address the same issues. There was no context given for this weird (pro-Trump?) media thingie which went on for maybe two or three minutes. If anything alienates me from watching OAN, it will be weird crap like that. The network claims it intends to keep the conservative slant for its political programs and keep the news objective and clean. If they do that, maybe I will hang around. Please no more weird conceptual vids. The quality of that editing was embarrassing. Any pre-teen YouTuber could have done a much better job. Maybe you should hire one, OAN.

Our County Coroner Has His Own Show on Investigation Discovery

This guy works only a few streets from me, probably two or three miles from my front door.

I drive past the Dauphin County Coroner and Forensic Center fairly often. South 28th Street happens to be a great shortcut actually.

I'll look forward to seeing the show.

Somewhere (thrift shop I'm guessing) I picked up one of their t-shirts with a body's form outlined on it. It reads, "Death is certain. Life is not."

Graham Hetrick has always fulfilled his important office with dignity and his comments in our local newspapers reveal him to be an intelligent and compassionate man. He recently commented on how discouraging it is that he ends up being the next to last stop for so many young people, victims of homicide. For most of his career, that was not the demographic case.

Now I'm thinking of the opening short story in Stephen King's collection Everything's Eventual, which I read last week. That's a short story about an autopsy being performed on a living (paralyzed) person who cannot speak or move to sound the alarm that he is still alive. Think Poe updated. Spoiler alert: this tale of a near-vivisection has a happy ending. I wonder if Graham read that one. King actually gives the story a humorous spin.

Malcolm

Real Steal

The worst thing that ever happened to Steve Touloumes was the disappearance of his girlfriend Karen Byers, when he was seventeen and she was sixteen.

They had been technically camping illegally in a forest, not an official campground, a pretty piece of private property at the base of a mountain, less than ten miles from their hometown. They had fallen asleep in the same tent after getting sloshed on some whiskey Karen had stolen from her older brother's stash. Steve woke up the next morning and Karen was gone. Forever. The true story was as simple as that. But few believed it. There were detectives (and many others) who went to their graves convinced that Steve had gotten away with murder. They had spun the usual, predictable narratives and clung to them. It's worse to think some boogeyman in the shadows can just swoop in like that, isn't it?

Steve had gotten away with nothing but a stone in his heart and a lifelong regret that he had ever stolen away with a beautiful young girl all those years ago. He was sure then Karen had been abducted and murdered, as sure then as he was today.

Steve would still think of Karen whenever he saw a young woman who looked the way she looked that summer, or when he looked at his own daughters growing up and worried about their safety and counseled them with an urgency they might not see in other fathers warning their daughters about what to do or not to do in a world of strangers.

But Steve's daughters were all women safely ensconced in their own complicated lives in other towns, other states, that day he walked into his favorite Salvation Army store, located in a strip mall not five miles from his home.. Home now lay in a town a mere thirty miles from his original hometown.

Della, a whie-haired comedian who worked the register, liked to greet Steve and joke with him. She knew his preferences.

"We've got a bunch more old cameras in. Film, not digital. Woo-hoo. You're probably the only person on the planet interested, if you are up for more of that Stone Age tech. You know where. The usual aisle."

Steve called out his thanks and made a beeline. Photography had become a passion for him over the past decade.

Once he reached the aisle with the mostly junky old cameras, his eyes zeroed in on an antiquated little Minolta. This one seemed to be in pretty decent shape. It didn't appear to have been used much at all. Steve smiled when he remembered all the old commercials back in the days from this now defunct Japanese company, which was actually one of the best makers of cameras for decades. "From the mind of Minolta," the commercials would always intone somewhat portentously. Minolta had launched in Japan (in the thirties, was it?) but it was a cooperative venture back then with German lens makers. You got the best of both worlds, as you couldn't beat the German lenses at the time. By the time the camera Steve was now turning over in his hands had been produced, the company had begun making forays into digital and had begun incorporating those advanced features into their cameras. This little camera was just such a hybrid. It was still a film camera, but it had a few nice digital features. It had a decent zoom capacity.

Then Steve noticed there was film in the camera. He smiled. It was always fun to drop off these rolls and peer into the lives of strangers. Quite possibly these people were no longer walking the planet. But here were their most cherished moments, on a dusty thrift store shelf. Film would keep those memories safe for half a century if need be, possibly longer. Because every found roll Steve had ever dropped off for developing had come out fine. Heat could damage an old roll of undeveloped film, but you'd still usually be able to see what was photographed through the colorful distortions which heat causes. No doubt about it, film is a small miracle of memory.

The camera was a real steal. They always were here. Della was right. Steve was one of the few who even gave these old machines of yesteryear a second glance.

On the way home, Steve dropped the film off at at a CVS that had an in-store lab. He always made it a point to tell the girl (rarely it was a young dude) behind the counter that it was found film. Just in case it turned out to be naked photos of someone's girlfriend or boyfriend. You could never be sure what you were getting. It had never happened to Steve, but he had heard the funny stories.

Steve hadn't yet gotten around to stopping at a battery supply place to find the specialty batteries the Minolta required by the time he picked up the developed film two days later. He sat in his car with the windows down and opened the film packet and entered another world as soon as he looked at the first print.

His head began to spin. He felt a tightness in his chest.

The first photo was of himself. He was in the woods. Camping. He had the long hair of his youth. There was the tent. The tent. He had never gone camping again after that Friday night and Saturday morning when his life changed for the worst, forever.

The second photo took away any doubt. There was Karen sitting on a boulder beside the creek in her cut-off shorts. She was smiling into a green space of shadowy trees across the creek, smiling at anything, at nothing. Smiling from the feeling of being sixteen, the feeling of being beautiful and free. Smiling at the feeling of having absconded for just one night, the feeling of being wild.

Almost all of the photos were surveillance photos like this, clearly taken with the little camera's zoom. He could see the primary focus in the photos was Karen.

Steve called his wife and began to explain what he was looking at. She was instantly worried he was having a heart attack or a stroke. He could barely speak. She actually insisted that he not drive anywhere. She made him promise. She drove to the CVS parking lot and they looked at the photos together. They agreed the police must be called. They needed to take custody of this evidence.

It was the last three photos which were most disturbing.

The third from last photo showed Karen in the back of a van, wearing a long green dress with a floral pattern. It was not like anything Karen would have owned or ever have worn. It looked like something you would see Loretta Lynn wear back in the day. It was the look of terror in Karen's eyes that really turned a screw somewhere in Steve's heart. It was an image he would carry to the grave.

His wife kept asking him, "Are you sure it's her? It looks like you, but I can't even be sure about that. Maybe we're both crazy. It certainly does look like you. But is it really her?"

The second from last photo showed a prayer service that had been held for Karen in the early days of her disappearance. Steve could see the back of his own head in the photo. This guy had clearly been enjoying this whole torturous process an entire town had been going through.

"We need to give these to the police, Steve. Do you think they can trace who dropped off the camera at the Salvation Army store? You didn't handle the camera much did you? There might be, well not fingerprints, but DNA? Can DNA last that long? Maybe he handled it recently when he donated it."

"He's probably dead," Steve said flatly. "That's probably why the camera was donated. The bastard probably slipped away."

The last photo was the worst. Somehow even worse than the photo of Karen in her terror. Though it would seem nothing more than a pretty landscape shot to someone who casually glanced at it. If the photo were not seen in the context of the roll.

The last photo showed a little pond in the woods with two sticks in the shallows making a rude cross. They had been lashed together with string. Just stuck in the mud. They would be long rotted away. They would not be there anymore. Steve knew that much. He also knew that's where she was. That's where Karen is, he thought. He knew. Her lonely, watery grave.

But now Steve's wife was second-guessing herself about the police. "They're going to be suspicious of you. All over again, babe. Should we even do this. It won't bring her back."

"I know. We have to. It's the right thing. If there's even the slightest chance..."

So that's what they did.

And the local police and the FBI were suspicious of Steve all over again. The DNA was a dead end. The photos went viral on the internet and still the case would not crack open.

The greatest hope lay in the chance that someone would recognize that little pond where the two crosses once were, but where, by now, there would be nothing.

Hundreds of leads poured in, but the resources and patience grew thin and nothing ever came of it.

After that, Steve felt trapped into searching the Salvation Army store not just for the cameras that came in, but any other possible clue that might surface. And then he began going from one thrift store to another, manically searching. He would often be there when the stores first opened their doors. He would virtually interrogate the employees about new arrivals of donations to the point of making himself a nuisance. He knew Monday mornings were important because that's when so many donated goods would be put out on the shelves. It consumed him. Once, he thought he recognized a comb that had belonged to Karen. There must have been millions like it produced. Then it was a t-shirt that proved to date from a period long after Karen's disappearance. In brief, he began to lose it all over again. He went back into therapy.

His marriage was strong but it ended. Karen was back again. His own children pleaded with him to let it go, but he knew this time he was back with her, his first girlfriend, to the end. On his bad days, he wished that day godspeed. On his better days, he had hope that the impossible thing would happen. The walls of this darkness would crack open. But he knew in his heart that the man was dead. That Karen would never escape that pond. And that he would be living that day all over again on the day he died. Little by little, he became a ghost to his own family. And you know how people will eventually push a ghost away. No matter how much it was initially loved.

Euroscepticism (n.)

eurosceptic adj.

"Euroscepticism (also known as EU-scepticism or anti-EUism) is criticism of, or opposition to, the European Union (EU). Traditionally, the main source of Euroscepticism has been the notion that integration weakens the nation state, and a desire to slow, halt or reverse integration within the EU."

Usage: "See our at-a-glance breakdown of results to help you find out how Brexit became a reality, how each local authority voted and how eurosceptic your area is. Follow the latest news and results in our Brexit aftermath live blog."

(dream landscape with troubling morphology of inverted features)

Watercolor/Digital.

(I should probably crop hair out.)

X Files: The Last Ten Seconds (Conceptual Short)

Closing X Files (The Last 10 Seconds) from jhvihvivkbvjll on Vimeo.

Preferred Camera This Week: Ninety-Nine Cent Special

I have been shooting with several analog cameras this past week and using mostly expired film except with the "better" cameras (lomo and expired go hand-in-hand, don't they?) but my preferred camera has been this absolute cheapest of the cheap, the Lavec LT-002.

I found this at the Salvation Army store where I find so many great, unloved cameras. It was ninety-nine cents. It's like something you expect to come out of a cereal box in terms of quality, but a bit too large to fit in there.

I haven't had the film processed yet, but I am sort of expecting good results. Toy cameras always give you great shots somewhere in the roll, and sometimes everywhere in the roll.  I wasn't aware the camera loves to lay down vignetting. Others experienced light leaks. I wouldn't be surprised, but that might be body tightness and my little Lavec seems pretty tight.

Ted Kappes does a really good job of articulating why giving up control in photography can be exhilarating. He makes this argument in the context of his use of this same camera make and model. His arguments really comport with the wonderful 10 Golden Rules of modern lomography. I love those liberating "rules." They are basically the opposites of rules.

Toy cameras are brilliant in how they dumb things down. They take you back to other centuries very quickly. They let you see the phenomenology of "pictured time" in reverse.

Technically, this camera isn't a strict "point and shoot." You do have four aperture settings. Probably you should expect them to be a little off. (That's understatment). I'm sure this camera is selling for five bucks or under on Ebay. It always breaks my heart when I find great little analog cameras in awesome shape in the thrift store which use really impossible film (like APX format). I know you can still send that out for delivery (even through Wally World who sends it to a good Fuji lab) but it's such a pain in the keister.

One additional technical note about this camera. Jamming seems to be a universal complaint. I'm wondering if that is due to the rather unorthodox design of the take-up spool, because my camera is pretty pristine and I have experience jamming just as others have described. I learned you just have to "power through," force the advance, and you will get to your next shot. The first time it happened, I went into a dark room and reloaded (thinking: "okay, double exposure time") but now I realize that isn't necessary. Consider it part of the joy of junk. I personally love it when things go off-frame. Or I often do, unless there's what I think is a killer shot in there I want intacts. But you can always play Dr. Frankenstein later with editing. 

To Die as a Toy

I don't know what I was thinking
Reading about the youngest suicides of earth

Only a few of them do they give names
Middle of the night laptop light on solitary face

Airy surrender to reading of these people
Who down-voted earth

At the most unimaginable ages
Six or four or eight

Too young to leave a note
In most instances

But we have all been them
Died forever for a moment

Even as a child buffeted
Who could not think abstractly

But we could suffer
Luckier than the animals

In a slaughterhouse painted red
Because one's choice is

These souls are not counted as "true suicides"
Until they can legally express

Because everything is laws
Which trump truth every time

And an animal that runs off a cliff to escape
We always call it an "accident"

We steal its soul again

Unexplain

It is not love to pretend to know
What I am going to say to you

Before your fire
Or the water under a rock

I don't wake up rehearsing my lines
For the sky outside my door

It is stupid to pretend this
That you will not unmake me

For in your presence all is new
Every day I blow out from under

That feeling which is not love

Painter Who Writes Into

An old man who spits paint
Is a peculiar timepiece but could work

It depends on the street
Which depends (I suppose) on its nation

He has then painted himself off somehow
His words are animalcules

Clearly, they have escaped his control
While living within him

But we can learn by watching
Shadow stuff these his girders

The independence within him
What his spirit (spit) can master

That is the real tattoo in life
The real joy (sometimes)

It depends on the wings
You surrender to

That it is so simple
Unscientific, divine

Some people find trouble accepting
The tunnel of the way out closed off

Becomes everything to them
Fingers like ghosts encrusted around pens

The lingering types

Rebel Snake

                        (after Masaccio)


The part of the whole
Like merely saying it

This is the thing that is drawing
The mouth into the picture

Taken up into a tornado
Not realizing it

Sometimes
Sometimes

It is arguably
It is indefensible

It is merely as water is
The feeling of not wanting

Whoever
Whomever

It's like walking around in a mall
That is mostly circuitously dead

Though people are milling there
With something like feelings harnessed

Into something like children
Which are pulling away as draft animals

Will listen to their own  music
A will of them a nerve of them

That is the fort then indefensible
Love for whoever whomever

Bothered to arrive
In the form of children

They are pure starlight
You can look at in the afternoon

The feeling of not wanting
It is so good on those afternoons

You are the blue shine of the pool
No longer the swimmer itself

You wonder about how your stare
Is now into memory of watercolor

Love Poem

I am interested in you
As I am interested in the paper heart

Of a storm
The blue fingerprint of the sky

Pressed up against a window
Like really meaning it

That is your problem

Dan P. McAdams Assays Donald Trump's Personality at The Atlantic

Dan P. McAdams, a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University, is the author of numerous books, including a widely-read biography of President George Bush, fils.

He did his best this month to dissect the personality of Donald Trump in a really readworthy article at The Atlantic.

I was impressed that McAdams astutely focused on Andrew Jackson as the American president most like Donald Trump in temperament. I agree in certain senses, the irascibility, the ability to hold grudges and so on. But let's not forget that Jackson lived a military man's life. He understood what a life of service was. I think Trump has always had the luxury of never having to know what "a life of service" is. Trump's life has been infinitely more self-serving than the life of Andrew Jackson (his clear faults notwithstanding) ever was. Jackson felt himself the victim of a great snobbery and he was probably justified in those feelings. His wife suffered horribly from that snobbery and his genuine and abiding love for her meant this pain and pique was felt vicariously (and keenly) by Jackson. Not that men could trade in their wives for trophy wives in those days, but even if they could have, Andrew Jackson was not the sort of man who would do something like that. There's another big difference between Trump and Jackson. Trump's core loyalty seems to be only to himself and perhaps his children. Not even wives are in that select loyalty club. This is almost certainly attributable to his sexual rapacity, which is doubtless attributable to his narcissism. I would argue that this is emotional immaturity, but I have no doubt Trump himself would tell us that we don't understand how winners are all about that "piece of ass" (to use one of his favorite, mediagenic phrases). Also sprach Zarathustra. I'm guessing Trump might speak lovingly of this painting and that he might see it art fit to decorate one of his gaudy casinos.

Another minor quibble I would have with McAdams' otherwise fine article (and vivisection) would target that moment where, in discussing the five core personality traits, he asserts that people who rank "high" in the neuroticism category are predisposed to mental illness. ("By contrast, higher scores on neuroticism are always bad, having proved to be a risk factor for unhappiness, dysfunctional relationships, and mental-health problems.")  Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Isn't that "post hoc ergo propter hoc?" At best, it's a tautology.  I think the display of neuroticism we see in (some) individuals is precisely the result of mental illness. If you want to examine that quality in light of how it functions in the constellation of those five personality traits, yes, let's do that. But to assert that it's some a priori quality which can cause mental illness in an individual seems a really fanciful fiction to me. I realize it's a common practice in many forms of psychoanalysis to postulate "governing abstractions" (for example, Freud's trinity of id, ego and superego) and then begin to reason from there, as if these qualities have an objective, verifiable existence. It's a bit quixotic.  I think the neurochemistry and the cognitive wiring come first. I think many people were "born that way" or socialized to be that way so early that they might as well be considered "ab ovo neurotics." But even the concept of neuroticism seems a somewhat passe, twentieth-century notion. Can't we be more scientifically precise at this point? We don't call women hysterics anymore. Should we still be calling people who suffer from a wide array of psychic disturbances with many degrees of differing particularity neurotics?

Thank You, Louisiana Pilot (@Louisahhh on Instagram)

Thanks and shout out to @louisahhh on Instagram for sharing one of my photos. It was a really nice surprise to find that. Apparently, this was some time back, but I don't have Google searches set up for myself so I find these things much later.

Her Instagram is cool as shit. Twenty-two thousand followers is "not too shabby."

Ah, I see by her Soundcloud that she's Paris-based and has 30K followers and much love on there.

A little more excavation, and I quickly discover Louisahhh is everywhere, what we used to call "famous."

Now I have something to look forward to listening to while I paint or draw in the wee small hours.

It's nice to wake up to the kindness of strangers. It's so much better than the stuff on the t.v. news lately. Thank you.

All the Grief in Bridgend

Words in Dreams

I dreamed the word avorsity. The context was a magazine in a dream. Avorsity was one of two words in the title of an imaginary magazine. I met the editorial board. They were young and frenetic. They were humorous and histrionic. I wanted to be somewhere else except in the moments when there was silence. Then I could observe without the need to reciprocate energy, which I felt was exhausting. They were interested in and had accepted a piece of fiction I had authored (also in the dream). I couldn't remember writing the story, which was about eight or nine pages, but I knew it was mine when it was read aloud to me. It was a parody of a certain genre. The eyes of the editors were too brightly colored, nearly electric, glowing like kids' toys under a Christmas tree on that first morning. I saw the color but felt the vacancy, hot and burning like a floor.

(slower, live) (1984)

I Really Loved

Jamie Marks is Dead, Carter Smith's film adaptation of Christopher Barzak's novel One for Sorrow.

It's one of those films that redefines a genre (in this case, the ghost story) and it's also gorgeously photographed.

I have a thing for novelistic and filmic adaptations which center around the idea of the "hungry ghost." And this film does that theme to perfection. There's much poetry to be had here.

The film has received generally positive if lukewarm reviews, but I look for it to grow a cult following with time.

This film was so much better than the spate of Oscar nominated films I watched lately, which largely bored me to tears.

Must-Read Article at Scientific American on the "Genomic Google"

The future. Whew.

Leaving the Holocene, Entering the Anthropocene

The ecology of Homo sapiens has been noted as being that of an unprecedented 'global superpredator' that regularly preys on the adults of other apex predators and has worldwide effects on food webs. Extinctions of species have occurred on every land mass and ocean, with many famous examples within Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, North and South America, and on smaller islands. Overall, the Holocene extinction can be characterized by the human impact on the environment. The Holocene extinction continues into the 21st century, with overfishing, ocean acidification and the amphibian crisis being a few broader examples of an almost universal, cosmopolitan decline of biodiversity.

It has been suggested human activity has made the period following the mid-20th century different enough from the Holocene to consider it a new geological epoch, known as the Anthropocene, which will be considered for implementation into the timeline of Earth's history by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in 2016.

Is It Okay to Foment Scientific Nostalgia to Advance Species Preservation? Or Should One "Respect Extinction" as a Natural Process?

When I read an article like this one on extinction debt, or "dead clade walking" as it's come to be known in the rather flippant scientific vernacular, I think countries should start appointing panels to see what may be done in terms of habitat restoration (or other changes) which may reverse the "extinction debt" for currently doomed species. Maybe even suggesting such a herculean task is going against the grain of nature. Maybe it's hubris to think we are the gods of nature. Often, preserving one species means the assured destruction of another or several other species. Welcome to the unsolvable world of amoral nature. And we seem to have a problem with preserving human life, let alone other species, apparently because of our species' innate violent tendencies. So why should I dream that we could ever be such good wardens of the planet that we could help those species unable to help themselves? And what criteria would we use to decide which species would be singled out for help?  I'm guessing it would be a self-serving process which would focus on those animal and plant species which most benefit us. How many species will end up on "life support," in a captivity which will never accord with the lives they once lived. It's so sad to think about (in some cases) that you wonder whether extinction isn't the better option. Probably, in many instances, the DNA of these vanishing species will be harvested before they go, to be added to our new genomic Book of Banked Life.

I characterize this venture as a quixotic and perhaps unrealistic one. Yet isn't this what W.S. Merwin is doing with his fostering of otherwise doomed species of trees in his conservancy? That strikes me as a heroic thing to do. Maybe the individual can make a difference.

I find that article on extinction debt fascinating. It's so strange to think that a particular species' extinction debt may be a matter of decades or tens of thousand or even millions of years (see the example of the Caribbean bryozoans). It can vary so wildly. I had to wonder why those few millions of years weren't sufficient time for the bryozoans affected by the rise of the Panamanian isthmus to simply evolve away from the need for those particular Pacific nutrients. I would think this gradual diminution of that resource would just eventuate in the typical Darwinian processes. You would expect selection for less picky bryozoans at the marine buffet. I would have expected that deprivation (at "worst") to have resulted in a pseudo-extinction, where a "daughter species" would remain.

Dead Eye

When the camera died, I grieved.

Eventually, after the period of possible healing through sympathetic magic had passed, I began to pick at its organic damage. At first, I did this gingerly with the right tools. And then I went on into primate grief and picked at the dead eye the way Oedipus would have.

I did monstrous things to this eye (myself). I pulled the broken shutter out (it is nothing more than cheap plastic in 2015 or 2014, whatever year). It was like pulling a scab off a retina. It felt horrible and liberating.

And then...strange vision!

It can see. Without its shutter. It can record. There is still a sensor. Oh, things are wrong but things are always wrong.

I want to go outside with it.

You work with any handicap, any color or lean to space.

"You will be okay," I tell it.

I can't tell if it believes me. It is a brute animal. Divine. One never knows.

1992

Dream of Fair to Middling Women is Samuel Beckett’s first novel. Written in English "in a matter of weeks" in 1932 when Beckett was only 26 and living in Paris, the clearly autobiographical novel was rejected by publishers and shelved by the author. It is set in the town of Kassel, Germany, where 17-year-old Peggy Sinclair, a cousin of Beckett, lived with her parents. Beckett made several visits in Kassel 1928-32. The novel was eventually published in 1992, three years after the author's death. The main character Belacqua, a writer and teacher, is very similar to Beckett himself, though a character named "Mr. Beckett" also makes an appearance in the book.

Chris Ackerley on Beckett's "treatment" of women in his fiction.

The Question

The question, repeatedly, for a lifetime, is not how you handle the person who can be saved but the person who cannot.

Henry Salt: Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress

Here is the complete text of this early disquisition on animal rights by Henry Salt (1894).

The Masserman Experiment: Altruism in Rhesus Monkeys

I'm guessing animal rights activist Reyes in the video I posted below is referencing this experiment by Masserman, Wechkin and Terris, in which Rhesus monkey do seem to exhibit the ability to reason, to empathize and, most importantly, to act altruistically.

These are truly significant findings. Not that I feel animals have to possess these kinds of faculties to be deserving of compassion, to be protected from needless suffering. I agree more with the quote by Jeremy Bentham; the important question is simply whether animals can suffer. If they can, we owe them the same consideration we give to other creatures who can experience pain or anguish.

But for those who wish to deny the continuum of consciousness between those animals and the human animal writing these words or the human animal reading these words, well, that experiment should give them serious food for thought. But then those Rhesus monkeys might be more likely to exhibit compassion than many humans, going by how upset many people get when you try to discuss animal rights with them.

Is that altruism due to the fact that these are social animals? I think it's very telling that the monkeys who had been shocked before seemed to be the ones most likely to be able to empathize and act altruistically, to refrain from delivering that shock to one of their fellow creatures. It's very tempting to extrapolate from that to human behavior and how empathy generally works in that animal population.

And about that test: I'm not a proponent of shocking monkeys. Yes, I do realize the terrible Catch-22 and irony in that this experiment was science causing pain to animals in the name of advancing human knowledge (which here might benefit animals).

Strange Coincidence

I was reading the comments under a video about animal abuse/animal rights, and in an argument between two people, a link was provided to a Pinterest and it was that of sculptor Ana Maria Pacheco, whose work I remember first seeing at the Trout Gallery at Dickinson many moons ago.

It felt like a strange interconnectedness, as if we are somehow all closer than we realize to one another.

The illusions of a middle of a night?

Philosopher Tom Regan and Activist Simone Reyes

American philosopher Tom Regan on animal rights.



"If you do decide to join us, you will get pushback. People are going to think that you are crazy."

Philosopher Peter Singer on "The Ethics of What We Eat"

\\

Postscript: California's Proposition 2 did pass and became the Standard for Confining Farm Animals Initiative. How often California leads the way. Step by step progress is being made. But it took seven years for this to be implemented. It went into full effect in 2015. Now how do we get this to be a national standard? So far it's a slow struggle state by state.

Many of these cruel farming practices are also increasing human disease. Bird flu is almost certainly the product of this. And now we are entering an era when we may actually lose the ability to use antibiotics to combat disease. Guess how we got the MCR-1 resistance gene. If you guessed "agricultural abuse of antibiotics in farm animals", you guessed correctly.

Marie 6/11/2016 12:59 A.M.

Pretend you are a fish deep under the sea. What would you most like to do?

Keep from getting caught.



What's your favorite number.

Four.

Is there a reason why?

Yeah. A crazy one. My horse came in.

Marie 6/11/2016 12:50 A.M.

What do you think the stupidest human trait is?

To overindulge in food.

What is the saddest color?

Grey.

What is your favorite type of tree.

I've never given it any thought. But when I think about the tree in front of my house that was so big and beautiful, maybe I'd say blue spruce.

What is the first memory you have of your mother?

That's a hard one. That's a hard one. I can't tell you.

Okay, let's say I ask you to visualize your mother doing something. What's the first thing you see her doing?

Cooking.

What was an expression your mother would say that you have not heard many other people say?

To set the table.

Can you tell me a secret that you and your mother shared at one time?

Yeah. If she falsified something. What was under Daddy's pillow. She wasn't honest with me. I was too young. She said, "It's for his sore finger." (Laughs.) That makes you laugh.

What was it?

(Laughs.) Can't you guess?

That's funny.

Yeah. Funny secrets.

Marie 6/11/2016 12:42 A.M.

What is your earliest memory?

Going to the beach to swim very early in the morning.

Was this in Norfolk?

Yes.

How did you get to the beach?

Trolley.

Who went there with you?

Probably my sisters.

How old were you?

Probably four or five.

Did you actually go into the ocean and swim at that age?

Uh huh.

Was it a rocky beach or a sandy beach?

Sandy.

Was it the sort of beach where there was a crowd or was it a largely deserted or secluded beach?

I don't remember.

Did you like to find shells?

Yes, I liked to find shells. We couldn't afford to rent a raft. Or an umbrella.

You children went without an adult?

Uh huh.

Who would have been the oldest child then?

I'm not sure. I don't remember Christine going with us.

How far out would you swim?

When it was low tide and there was a sandbar, I would go way out there.

Trihalomethane Poisoning

I live in a community which has sent its citizens three letters in the past year notifying us of trihalomethanes in our water supply in excess of the allowable limit (per EPA standards).

I figured I was relatively low-risk for these carcinogens because I don't ingest much of our local water. But now I have learned that bathing in it also puts you at risk. Trihalomethanes are readily absorbed through the skin. And I like my bath very hot, which just increases the uptake of these toxic molecules.

We've got such a long way to go with learning how the disinfection products in our drinking water poison us. It's hard to isolate which particular agents are causing these cancers (most commonly bladder cancer). But we do see that repeated studies show us that exceeding that limit (a mere 80 parts per billion) of of these disinfection by-products, TTHMs (total trihalomethanes),  does cause spikes in a variety of cancers.

It's so strange that I never knew growing up that as I splashed around in swimming pools, I was producing and then assimilating toxic by-products. And the really strange thing is that these by-products may have feminizing properties (there is a correlation with reduced testosterone serum levels in adolescent males). So are young male swimmers being feminized by their love of that sport? I suppose one could interpret the results of that study (cited below) to mean that young males with less than average testosterone were drawn to swimming as a sport. In other words, the question of causality is moot without controls. All we know is that there is a correlation.

Wiki:

Trihalomethanes are formed as a by-product predominantly when chlorine is used to disinfect water for drinking. They represent one group of chemicals generally referred to as disinfection by-products. They result from the reaction of chlorine or bromine with organic matter present in the water being treated. The THMs produced have been associated through epidemiological studies with some adverse health effects. Many governments set limits on the amount permissible in drinking water. However, trihalomethanes are only one group of many hundreds of possible disinfection by-products—the vast majority of which are not monitored—and it has not yet been clearly demonstrated which of these are the most plausible candidate for causation of these health effects. In the United States, the EPA limits the total concentration of the four chief constituents (chloroform, bromoform, bromodichloromethane, and dibromochloromethane), referred to as total trihalomethanes (TTHM), to 80 parts per billion in treated water.

Chloroform is also formed in swimming pools which are disinfected with chlorine or hypochlorite in the haloform reaction with organic substances (e.g. urine, sweat, hair and skin particles). Some of the THMs are quite volatile and may easily vaporize into the air. This makes it possible to inhale THMs while showering, for example. The EPA, however, has determined that this exposure is minimal compared to that from consumption. In swimmers, uptake of THMs is greatest via the skin with dermal absorption accounting for 80% of THM uptake. Exercising in a chlorinated pool increases the toxicity of a "safe" chlorinated pool atmosphere with toxic effects of chlorine byproducts greater in young swimmers than older swimmers. Studies in adolescents have shown an inverse relationship between serum testosterone levels and the amount of time spent in public pools. Chlorination by-products have been linked as a probable cause.

Accidentally Ended Up Watching This Documentary Today

I didn't know it existed.

Salgado has such a spiritual connection to his subject matter. It's very moving to hear him speak. So much difficult viewing here, especially his photojournalistic work in Africa. I don't know how he could spiritually survive witnessing and experiencing firsthand (at length) the starvation in Ethiopia in the eighties and the genocide in Rwanda in the nineties. And that's not even the totality of the war-torn theaters Salgado has photographed at length. He admits he completely lost faith in our species for a period. Who wouldn't, really, seeing such human suffering, such massacres and torture? And all of it could have been avoided. Almost all of the disasters he covered were the work of mankind and not of nature. Even where starvation was caused by nature, the relief (food) that others sent was denied them by other people. His work documents the ongoing madness of the world.

Animal Grief

It's fairly obvious that it is very self-serving for humans to deny animals the possibility of "higher emotions" like grief.

And yet there is so much evidence that higher animals often do grieve. Not all of this is evidence is anecdotal. There have been controlled studies looking at the reactions of pets after the loss of their caregivers or companion animals. There were often signs of bereavement. The data showed this type of behavior was common. Pets often exhibited the same types of behavior grieving humans do; for example, they exhibited lessened appetite, slept more, refused to play, engaged in avoidance behavior, etc.

And yet many people seek to justify and perpetuate this inaccurate view of animals as pure automatons, to deny the possibility of an animal consciousness that might be able to symbolize reality to itself in the ways that we do with our various languages. A quintessential example of this ungenerous and,I think, unconvincing argument can be found in Alfred Russel Wallace's 1889 book Darwinism: “In the first place, we must remember that animals are entirely spared the pain we suffer in the anticipation of death—a pain far greater, in most cases, than the reality. This leads, probably, to an almost perpetual enjoyment of their lives; since their constant watchfulness against danger, and even their actual flight from an enemy, will be the enjoyable exercise of the powers and faculties they possess, unmixed with any serious dread."

This whole scenario espoused by Wallace is meant to be exculpatory: "Don't worry about the animals or their feelings." The animals live in a giddy and blank happiness. How could Wallace believe that there is not great stress in the struggle for survival, especially for those higher animals which are potential prey? And that paragraph conveniently omits any discussion of how physical pain, obviously experienced by all animals, might shade into mental anguish. If consciousness can perceive experience as duration, an interior state that endures, cannot pain be experienced as mental anguish?  Wallace's naivete (or disingenuousness) is ridiculous science. It's not science at all, since there is no evidence to back up this viewpoint, for we have no way (then or now) to observe the interiority of animal mental processes. We can only attempt to intuit this from their behavior. I don't see animals in the Pollyanna way Wallace did. I think there is ample evidence that higher animals can suffer in consciousness as well as body, just as we do, and often for the same reasons. I think there is ample evidence that the higher animals can even experience mental anguish. Life is a continuum. It seems counterintuitive to believe that consciousness itself is not also a continuum or that animals are not on that continuum of consciousness (developed mental processes including the apperception of one's own emotions) with us. We species certainly vary in the degree to which we can think abstractly. But I see much evidence that many higher animals do exhibit an ability to think abstractly to varying degrees and to generalize from memory. But it's so clearly in our "species interest" to continue to treat so many of these sentient species as food or product fodder only and to refuse to attempt to empathize with their own existential plights, which are not all that different from ours.

Help End the Yulin Torture "Festival"

Info on Twitter.

You can donate to help the rescue mission here.

There are absolutely horrible videos online showing the torture of caged dogs and cats who are clearly aware of what is happening around them and to them as they are picked off and slaughtered in the most inhumane ways imaginable (beaten to death with blunt instruments).

I just donated.

Here is the petition to end the torture in Yulin.

Do

You are an angel and a lout
Being dead that is what you do
Your bones are cookie cutters for the stars
Or something equally banal
It is like fingering the angle between us and the grass
My feelings towards you
Now you are developing like a photograph
Constantly, inconstantly
One has to push the colors
One has to pull them
One has to dodge and burn one's sentiments
On a sort of plate or paper or sky
Oh, there is no "one"
That funny pronoun of grief
It makes no sense
But that is not what the dead do
They are grainy and round like a stone in your hand

TIL Prince Was a Huge Cocteau Twins Fan

Elsewhere in the interview, Prince discussed the many influences on the forthcoming 3RDEYEGIRL album, Plectrumelectrum, which reportedly features “new music with a sense of history”. On the subject of the track TICTACTOE, he revealed that the song was inspired by a night listening to the Cocteau Twins. “We recorded it in Bryan Ferry’s studio in London, after a night of partying for which the Cocteau Twins was the soundtrack,” he explained. “You can’t understand the words of the Cocteau Twins songs, but their harmonies put you in a dreamlike state.”

--2014

Want

Poem. Dog. Or Something.

POEM OF AEROMONACH SERGIJ. READING BY A.MONASTYRSKY. 1986

The Trump of the Philippines: Year of the Demagogues

Wow. Maybe we should be watching our U.S territories more closely. Of course, we should respect their autonomy, but why didn't American media cover the rise to power of would-be dictator Rodrigo Duterte more closely? I saw absolutely nothing in the American media about this man's ascension to power. Duterte ran a campaign using Trump's new playbook.

The threat issued by Dutarte to journalists echoes Trump's sentiments when he approved of Putin's actions in this regard (killing journalists to quash freedom of the press).

Who would have guessed we would descend to this new low so quickly?

This New York Times article from three days ago articulating why Trump is a great threat to rule by law is totally credible. If you've heard even a hundredth of what this unhinged narcissist and would-be dictator has said, you already know this.

In a nationally televised speech Saturday night, the next president of the Philippines encouraged people to shoot and kill drug dealers that resist arrest.

According to Al Jazeera, Rodrigo Duterte said, "Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun — you have my support," adding, "Shoot him and I'll give you a medal." He also threatened to kill drug addicts.

If you're familiar with Duterte at all, you may not be surprised. Prior to clinching the nomination as president, the former Davao City mayor pledged to execute 100,000 criminals if elected.

But drug dealers and criminals aren't the only ones whose lives may be at risk in the Philippines. A local newspaper reports Duterte recently threatened journalists, too. He reportedly told a crowd in his hometown that, "Just because you're a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch."

Duterte, who's been dubbed the "Trump of the East," is a confessed murderer himself.

"I must admit, I have killed. ... I killed about three people," he said.

But apparently supporters like his tough-on-crime attitude. Duterte was elected president May 9 after winning about 39 percent of the vote. He's set to be sworn in June 30.

--AOL story,
  no byline given

Maybe Nicholas Barclay is Alive

Just watched the excellent documentary The Imposter (I'm sure I saw parts of this before) and had my mind blown (again) by this stranger-than-fiction true life tale.

It's like something David Mamet would dramatize.

I felt that sad certainty that the disappearance of Nicholas Barclay would never have a happy ending, that this was a child abduction or that perhaps the child was murdered by one of his friends or enemies. He was a street kid and got into some hairy situations.

Well, that was what I believed while watching the documentary. That is because one very interesting piece of information about the disappearance of Nicholas Barclay was not included in that documentary.

While the nearly quarter of a century that has elapsed since the child's disappearance certainly does not bode well, there is this one bit of information I learned just now online that gives me pause and makes me wonder. This paragraph struck me:

Nicholas' mother said that her son occasionally displayed aggressive behavior in 1994. He has a juvenile criminal record after he broke into a convenience store and threatened a teacher. His court hearing to determine his placement was set for June 14th, a day after Nicholas vanished. A possibility for Nicholas was for him to be placed in a group home which he was opposed to.

That timing has to make one wonder.

And several family members were heroin addicts at the time (in recovery a long time now) so the home life was contentious and probably threatening.

It might be only a sliver of hope, but I think there is a possibility Nicholas might be a thirty-five-year-old man living his life somewhere.

If he is alive, I hope he finds the forgiveness to contact his family.

Ed Atkins Gives You A Tumour

You can read this work by Atkins here, courtesy of the Whitechapel Gallery and the Tate.

I kept visualizing the text as a vertical structure, the pages representing palette-shaped floors assembled around a giant human spine, floors which could be (if scaled appropriately) descended or ascended in a spiral manner. The floors would bear the text. Perhaps these would be constructed of clear (tinted?) lucite so one could read forward and backwards by looking/progressing down or up.

Here is some further context for Atkins.

An interview about a sort of elegy for Breton and the ill-fated collection the poet left at his death:

(dresses)

Meet the Swinger