hiraki sawa, and the guy with the oxygen machine

discovered the haunting work of a japanese artist named hiraki sawa at the fort worth museum of modern art.

he makes films like screensavers full of surreal imagery moving in mundane places.

if you have real player, you can check out the video that was showing in the fort worth museum of modern art (this website is in french):

http://www.arte.tv/fr/art-musique/die-nacht-la-nuit/Die-Nacht-_2F-La-Nuit-_2325/369052,CmC=369062.html

here's the artist's website with snippets and tastes of some of his other films:

http://www.softkipper.com/index.htm

whilst at the fort worth museum of modern art, i also caught a film. i sat down in back. i waited patiently.

then, this old man walked in and sat next to me in the empty room - not RIGHT next to me, two seats were between us - and he had a device in his hand that connected with tubes to his nostrils. every two or three seconds the machine made a whooshing whir of a noise, at the decibel level of a loud whisper. WHOOSH.... WHOOSH.... WHOOSH...

i don't want to kick him out of the theatre for his medical device, no matter how annoying. i do wonder why he sat down next to me in an empty room. he wanted me to move? he wanted to test me, somehow? what was he trying to prove?

i do not know. i got up. i moved to the other side of the room. still, i heard it in the air. WHOOSH... WHOOSH... WHOOSH...

the movie started, and i couldn't stop hearing it until about halfway through the film.

i don't know if it was a guilty noise, or an accusatory noise, or just some symbol of death on a friday evening. decrepitude walks among the young and hip. he carries his single lifeline in his hands, making annoying noises and warning of the time to come, when we will not be young or hip. we will have new hips that do not work as well as they used to. we will slouch not because we are pretending to have a reckless attitude, but because we cannot hold our own shoulders up.

gather ye rosebuds while ye may. death comes for us all someday.

fall webworm

the tree outside my door has become infested with these strange, beautiful worms. they sew giant sleeping bags across the leaves of the tree that grow larger and larger like a big spiderweb, but it is only a tent to protect them from predators while the webworm feasts on leaves.

growing up, we had two trees in our front yard and two in our backyard that became home to these little, furry creatures. they fell into the car, into backpacks, into the cracks in the old house. like an old man's eyebrow that has come to life, these white bugs meander all over the walls of my memories.

now, they have found a home outside my window. the tree, like its hands are wrapped in bandages, does nothing to stop the webworm. the webworms crawl up and down the doorways and patios. they climb over windows. they tickle your hand in the dark when you reach for the door.

the fall webworm is harmless unless you are a tree. however, they do attract hornets that hunt them. more than one stray hornet has chased a fall webworm into my apartment, where the hornet becomes the hunted victim of a very agile cat.

all in all, i am fond of the fall webwrom. i feel like calling all of them mortimer. they all look like tiny mortimers, to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_webworm

PSA from Stacy Whitman's Grimoire

from: http://slwhitman.livejournal.com/2007/08/10/

[quote]And now a public service announcement from the adult side of the books department. If you've seen the latest PW, you should look for the WotC Discoveries ad about halfway through--it's very nice. Note that they'll be open for unagented submissions next month, though agented submissions can be sent year-round.

Wizards of the Coast Discoveries™ is a fantasy-tinged speculative fiction imprint that discovers new worlds, new talent, and new voices for adult fiction readers.

Wizards of the Coast Discoveries, a brand new imprint debuting in January 2008, is looking for well-written speculative fiction. We will open for submissions September 1 and close for submissions January 15. Further guidelines can be found at http://www.wotcdiscoveries.com.

Agented submissions are welcome year round.

In January 2008, Discoveries will launch this exciting new imprint with Firefly Rain, a southern gothic ghost story by Richard Dansky. Further launch titles include Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott and Devil’s Cape by Rob Rogers, both first-time novelists who were selected from previous open calls.

Good Luck!



So if you've got a manuscript you think would fit Discoveries--I hear from my compatriots that they're looking for speculative fiction like magical realism, high fantasy that breaks boundaries (i.e., this is not your father's high fantasy), horror--they're pretty open right now, but it needs to be of a literary bent for adults. Follow the submission guidelines and don't submit until Sept. 1.

And feel free to pass this along to writers you know, writing groups, etc.[/quote]

brief exploration of robots

when we design robots, we make them look like ourselves, perform amazing feats of human genius. they play chess. solve rubik's cubes. they beat us at these things. yet, still we design them to look and perform like humans, measure greatness in the quality of the imitation.



but robots are not copies of our selves. they are a physical embodiment of a function. like these robots from cornell.



still, when we deal with rubik's cube solving robots, part of that function is showmanship. We make them look like ourselves to make people wonder at our self.



also, notice in this final video there is a young girl. children are the original extensions of self.

children: the original robots.

tiny pieces of glass from abandoned things

the pagan mountain god, El, made covenant with His servant. El divided bulls and doves and geese and dolphins in twain. leviathans divided in twain. fleas divided in twain. El divided everything alive except for a man and a woman on that long plain.
his servant, a diminished soul, trembled in the blood of so many dead things. he wondered how long ‘twould be before the divisions came for the servants.
the ritual was simple enough. one makes a vow. one passes between the divided beasts as many times as there are beasts. if one breaches the oath, one becomes divided like the dead beasts.
El made his vow, to his servant. his servant received it, in terror.
El’s footsteps through the bloody sands – red mud – steamed in the heat of the ancient fires. sand and blood melted into purple glass, cracking under the weight of the oath. In one long night, time slowed near still, and this old mountain God passed through once for each beast – a billion times.
the servant, terrified, watched as the old god made this vow. he aged a thousand years. he died and was raised from death a thousand times, watching this vow.
the cracked glass beneath the old god’s feet sparkled in the torchlight like the stars of the oath.
El had pointed to the heavens. El had said, “your descendents shall be as numerous as the stars.” to a foolish, dirty servant, as ignorant as the slaughtered beasts, El had withheld the truth. Your descendants shall fill the stars. Each and every star shall hold a child of man in the gravity well – a billion children of men. Let the universe fill with these creatures until a singularity comes where mortal passes – like waking up – into immortality.
after the ceremony, El returned to is family with the holy alphabet where soundwaves rattle and bend reality beyond the silver veil of atoms.
El had created himself in his own past.

i don't know which is worse...

1) being last on the list... dead, stinking last.

2) getting the book description horribly mucked up.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6465832.html

upon the death of my corn pops cereal

alas, my corn pops cereal was infested with a horde of hungry ants. i had left the box upon my counter closed and - i had thought - sealed shut. but ants broke through my little efforts. they climbed down into the golden stash of sweet, corny goodness.

angry, i threw the whole box in the trash, wishing ruin upon those sneaky ants.

yet, the ants were not so cursed. they were broken from their tribe - this is true - but the little beasts could live their days in peace and gluttony among the corn pops and all the other bits of filth that fill the trash bag, and the dumpster, and the dump truck, and the dump.

i was no psychopomp of damnation. i was an angel of mercy, tossing these blessed thieves into a paradise. the only lingering pain is the loss of the tribe.

yet, this is also a loss of duties. these ants, with nothing but time and ample food, might create a new language of smell in the filth. they might craft tiny baubles and compete for the aesthetic pleasure of their tiny eyes and sensors.

i have created a convent in a plastic bag. i have created culture.

yet, i would trade this new ant civilization in a heartbeat if i could still eat my corn pops.

bits of paper

crumbled bits of paper tumble out of pockets at the end of the work day, after good citizens have stumbled home from traffic and gymnasiums and happy hours and everything they do before they turn off the lights and think about death in the dark.

televisions drown out the worst of it. but even those get turned off.

then, crumbled bits of paper emerge from the bottom of pockets. some of them are receipts. some of them are notes. i pushed the papers open, searching for phone numbers that might have been slipped inside by some anonymous paramour.

i found nothing. i sat in the dark, and i thought about death until the dreams came.

about texas summers...

in my corn pops, i acquired a spongebob squarepants pencil topper with big poofy hair. the green hair is supposed to change color when you warm it up with your hands, or your breath.

i blew on it a while. i rubbed it with my hands. nothing.

then, i remembered that i lived in texas, in august. i put the pencil topper in the freezer for a while.

it came out with blue hair. i rubbed it and blew on it and succeeded in making green hair.

the directions say that the hair is supposed to change color when you heat it up. around here, that means you have to cool it down.

mr wu is my hero

boingboing is awesome. thank you boingboing for this amazing discovery.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/08/chinese_robot_farmer.html

here's the youtube video:

things that make you evaporate into thin air

a robot designed to perform a simulation of an electronic simulation of primitivism.

a.k.a. a simulation designed to simulate simians with the task of a simulation of simians simulating simian precognitive sentience.

anyday now, we will all collectively evaporate into thin air and wander ethereal streets leading nowhere.

turtle

there he is, soaking up the sun where the teenagers usually put their shoes when they're swimming. this is a swimming hole, and it is supposed to be full of people and blue water and that rock is supposed to be above the water. it is a lovely place to sit and watch the wind blow through the trees on a warm summer day. it is the place where teenagers line their shoes up like little turtles on the stones.

it rained and rained and rained. it rained so much that shoes turned into turtles to protect themselves from the rain. the only shoe left is the one that could transform into a turtle.

perhaps when the rainwater washes downstream, and the river isn't so fat and brown, the blue water will bless the turtle, and he will be a shoe again.

invisible deer

invisible doe
eating invisible grass
did not run from me

busy week

i'll be back later. subscribe and you'll get an e-mail.

tschues.