...normalization goggles...25jan14...

H the Large, H the Larger, then it may be construed as smaller.

Hite.  Harried.  Holistic.  H. h. h.

The Theory - EdwardianJackal by edwardianjackal on deviantART

Giants mount in praise.

Can we simply not talk of cigarettes?

La Queue de la Souris from Reineke on Vimeo.

And weary, wary - another ordinary January.

It's the date today.  Again.

IDIOTS from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.

Wherefore?  Wheretofore?  Wholly wheat.

The braised cafe and slaughter whole adorn the windowed frame.

...once there, a time...12jan13

...there was a time, not long ago, though time may lie to me (it has before)...

you and I were confident in the candlelight, you were enraptured by words
'laying in folds of gossamer' with you wanting sleep, together
limbs were entangled and I brushed at the small tendrils of hair from your sweet temples
I kissed you like a psalm
those lips - I can taste them still: I knew then I would
your eyes carried grey like a low sky in winter
the smell of your bed, you bowed your head in willing deference at moments
I believed it to mean you cared
please say it were so
please lie and keep lying
and say it was so
     - A Songbook, 21JAN14

"Ma vie est usee.  Allons!  feignons, faineantons, o pitie!  Et nous existerons en nous amusant, en revant amours monstres et univers fantastiques, en nous plaignant et en querellant les apparences du monde.  saltimbangue, mendiant, artiste, bandit, - pretre!  Sur mon lit d'hopital, l'odeur de l'encens m'est revenue si puissante: gardien des aromates sacres, confesseur, marytr...."
- Une Saison En Enfer, "L'eclair", Arthur Rimbaud

Comment active est la colère, mais prolongée est chagrin d'amour! Les maximales éclat prévue avant en plaques de nacre. Mon amour! Il s'est avéré peu et présenté à si peu. Vie pitoyable, vous avez fait une parodie de mon mieux. - A Songbook, 21JAN14

...Art Haus on Netflix...20JAN14...

Exploring the deeper side of Netflix tonight in a study of the alleyways between the thoroughfares.

Room 237: Kubrick's The Shining provokes reaction.  "237" is nine viewpoints that go wildly off the mark, depending on your level of involvement in the dubious concepts of conspiracy theory.  However, a fascinating time digging deeply into the movie: it's color aspects, it's symbology - and, at the end, despite my disagreement of some of the assessment, you learn to appreciate The Shining again.  Whatever Kubrick had in mind, we can definitely agree he made deep rooted choices in making it one of the best horror movies of all time.

Plagiarism in 2013: Ruth Graham proposes why did 2013 become the year of word theft?  The good news is that, in the writing community, it is, after millennia, still frowned upon.  It is property, it is the poet's.  Don't do it.

Caesar Must Die: A documentary that pits the context of Shakespeare within an Italian prison, the incarcerated troupe in their portrayal of Julius Caesar.  These men and the play they enact are a sight to see: they emote in a way that few actors otherwise can.

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters: with the overabundance of cameras in the world today - there is a dullness to the art.  If everyone can take the same picture, since the phone or the camera takes much of the guesswork out, then what do we have left?  Crewdson, on the other hand, infuses much into each shot. I hate to use the word 'stylized', because it elevates beyond that, since the thematic tones that he strikes are decidedly not sleek.  They are a hyper-realization of a moment that is struck within him - the light and colors of some memory that you understand lives within him.

Mystery of a Masterpiece (NOVA): what is compelling in this piece is not the framework of the story that NOVA puts forth, it's the underpinning that Leonardo Da Vinci could possibly thrill us several centuries after we believed we've seen all of his works.  Could this portrait be his?  The signs outlined in the documentary point to a high degree of confidence it very well could.

Science as a cult of instrumentation: Philip Ball, of Aeon, argues the vacuous ideas of science feeding upon each other instead of expanding our conceptual basis of what to do next.

"Beauty" a Short Video by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro - a work that elevates the flaccid genre of online video repositories.

B E A U T Y - dir. Rino Stefano Tagliafierro from Rino Stefano Tagliafierro on Vimeo.

General Orders No 9: a visual dream of Georgia, USA.  A stream of consciousness that looks under, around, its impact as a state.

Mark Twain and the West: Lapham's Quarterly surmises Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County as a humorous aside of post-Civil War, albeit with a larger lesson on a reflection of that age.

Indie Game: a lucid (as you'll find many articles written on it as well) look at the state of independent games today.  The frustration of coders who put their all and a year or two, into a title to see that they just didn't get enough from it.  A sad state of affairs for those that would like to see art in a genre that is dominated by war, space or undead titles.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi: the dream is a luscious one, filled with knowingly cut pieces of salmon.  For those wanting of more art in how katana blades are derived, see how Jiro presses his crew to understand the right way to start a fire in the kitchen and to get the seaweed to taste 'just right'.

Chuck Woolery sings, possibly high:

...the edwardianjackal "7" fascinating handheld computation devices...14jan14...

Handheld computational devices, in chronological order:
BC 30000: Tally Bones ~ Ancient Man would use the bones of its prey (baboon (Africa) or wolf (Czech)) to carry with them and make tally marks, or, as some suggest, make calculations.  A departure of early man from what would be considered sentient 'others' is symbology of conceptional ideas.  In this form, early peoples would have a medium of record, portability, and malleability.  As we can speculate, this mathematical artifact is more than a crude tool - it had to have been used as a center of discussion, debate, forethought.  It was, in effect, an extension of thought: not toward an outcome or to change a state of another object.  It was conceptual, where ideas could grow.

BC 1800: Cuneiform Script Tablets ~ a well known example is the Plimpton 322 tablet, created from a contemporary of the biblical Abraham.  There are very few extant works in clay, as you can imagine their permeability does not lend itself as other materials for permanence...but for the Plimpton tablet, we see a Babylonian society keeping a table of Pythagorean triples.  'Why' is not the question here, since, as with logarithms, the purpose is to hold numbers not easily memorized otherwise.  For example, in the fourth column, they have listed numbers for the width of an object at 12709, it's depth at 18541 and its diagonal squared at 3437686681.  Tablets were malleable, reproducible.  The thriving mercantile of commerce centers lived off of them.  They were a formal introduction to math as receipt, as reference, as trust.

1200 AD: Suan-Pan, Abacus ~ outside of reference, how would one make calculations outside of proofs?  Meaning, how can the common merchant make calculations on the fly?  You construct a device that symbolizes values in readily desired amounts: single units, then in factors of five.  Tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. can be derived quickly.  It was indeed portable.  It was a technology.  It also allowed for shared experience, since both the merchant and the purchaser could see the calculation's value on its display.  The leap in technology was apparent - it allowed humans to make dozens of calculations a minute if needed.

1614 AD: Logarithms ~ made famous by John Napier in his A Description of the Marvelous Rule of Logarithms.  The theme here is making difficult calculations easier, especially those that take time to do by hand.  They also can help measure against a base-10 construct, like the Richter scale, where each progression of the scale, 1-10 increases by a factor of a 1000.  In computer science, binary logarithm (base 2) is used heavily.  With Napier's 'Bones', a portable cylindrical device helped with complex equations and be the basis of the next device.  Ship's navigation required the use of solving trigonometric conventions quickly.  Gunter's Scale is another similar device of this category.

1621 AD: Slide Rule ~ imagine a device, pre-electronic age, where one could figure multiplication, division, trig, squares and roots, cubes and cube roots, and logarithm on something that could fit in a pocket?  The slide rule is an unsung hero; derision-forming because of its reputation for 'nerds' in the mid-century.  It need not be so.  Its impact on all modern devices is indisputable.  The efficacy an engineer had from performing work instead of drawing out computation is its beauty.

1948 AD: Curta Calculator ~ the story of Herzstark's indoctrination into Buchenwald in World War II, where he finished his design of the handheld calculator is well know.  But, how does this fascinating contraption work?

1972 AD: HP-35 ~ my mother actually had one in the late seventies, since she need to perform transcendental functions for her work in circuit board creation.  For all of us in the seventies,  having something electronic, with a display was the future.  The only portable devices were transistor radios, that rarely had anything other than a mechanical display.  The HP-35 smelled amazing, it smelled electronic.  The display was a light-emitting red diode (a Cylon scrutinizing us?).  It felt like the future, but dang, did I not know how to use it for several months.  It wasn't intuitive, as it probably wasn't supposed to be.  Those that knew slide rule had a better go of it.  Reading the instruction slide, in the back of the unit, was something out of Star Trek, I tells ya!

Where the slide rule was mid-century, where is was analog - the HP-35 was all about the new century, the electronic frontier.  It was a singular calculating device that would eventually make way for the multi-functionary devices of the late nineties.

...a post-Christmas, an eclectic $100 haul...

...ah, Christmas!  A mixed bag for adults, surely.  The glow is not dimmed, however, at the sight of cash and gift cards - bring 'em over, I say.  What to do but go over to Barnes and Noble for an eclectic haul?  A C-note is the budget.  Score?  Had the salt-and-peppered haired clerk squint at me and gave me the 'reward for best taste of that day'.  Choice, right?!  [Would I have preferred the sight of a cute brunette with thick rimmed glasses and glossy burgundy lip balm saying the same.]

MUSIC (x7): B&N has a not-so-shabby selection of 4.99 and 7.99 CDs, which is cheaper, if you know what to look for, than their digital counterparts.
- Benjamin Grosvenor "Rhapsody in Blue" 14.99 - ok, so I broke my rule and I took a chance on the disc based on the cover.  Why not?  That laconic Briton in the wrinkled suit said, 'I don't care much if you buy me or no.'  That's the point of analog browsing.  Grosvenor is an incredible pianist. He has a lightness of touch and (surprising to the person who bought it) did put an exceptional twist to Saint-Saens, Ravel and Gershwin.  I recommend it highly.

- Various "Puccini and Pasta" 5.99 - Don't be fooled by the goofy cover and title.  This is actually an understated CD of great music to have a romantic dinner by.  The collection of Puccini's greatest hits, as it were, are performed by the A-list (Carreras, Domingo, Caballe, etc).  Plus the price can't be beat if you are looking for something to dive into opera.  Puccini's melodies get me hot and bothered: I am not ashamed.
- Jackson Browne "Running on Empty" 8.99 - Ok, I've never gotten around to a few greats in my life, due mostly in part to growing up less-than-middle class.  JB is one of those that I simply couldn't get.  In Running, their is a tremendous tenor of thoughtful tracks like the titular song, 'The Road', 'The Load-Out', 'Stay'.  This is definitely a cruising around at night disc.
- Sam Cooke "The Rhythm and the Blues" 6.99 - This is one of those discs I feel almost embarrassed it is at this price.  Sam Cooke is one of my top five voices, easily, and this disc has 20 tracks.  'Get Yourself Another Fool', 'Fool's Paradise', 'Please Don't Drive Me Away' - sure I have more than a few of these on 'Night Beat' (an amazing album), but just check the track listing and argue with me that this isn't a tremendous get.
- Van Morrison "Astral Weeks" 7.99 - Like Jackson Browne, simply wasn't able to buy Van Morrison when I was younger, but I was a fan.  I've picked up very few songs, but Astral Weeks is a watershed moment in his career ('68) and I didn't know much about it until reading the wiki on it tonight.  Apparently it was a deal at the time.  What I hear is nothing like what Van is known for, 'experiment' is a poor word for it, but 'auteur' is closer.  It's as if you hear the culmination of his music, his voice and his compositions exactly as he hears them in his brain - it's a fascinating listen.

- Steve Martin "A Wild and Crazy Guy" 4.99 - ok, ok, I got this because I love Martin's earlier stand-up, particularly the next CD, but, this one has its moments.  The first half is the more brilliant side of Martin, where the second is the side we may not care so much for (or use the word "detest").  Either way, this is a moment in time, 1978, and how the gritty comedy of SNL moved into commercialism.  But, again, the price is worth the admission.
- Steve Martin "Comedy is Not Pretty" 6.99 - now, ok, this album is what I grew up on and it departed heavily from the 'King Tut' Martin and into, to me, much more polished and less zany Martin.  I was lucky to buy this at Anaheim Plaza, with the dollars I had, on cassette.  There was a Sam Goodys with a box in the front. I wore that cassette out and know every bit by heart.  Comedy, yes, is not pretty...hopefully it never is.

BOOKS (x3): Someday I'll have space to house my book collection in proper shelving, but that's a day I suppose I don't want to see.  It means I have enough time.  Never!
- "The Love Poems of John Keats" 10.99 - have the companion book, "Sonnets of the Portuguese" from Browning, and love the formatting of the book.  It's the perfect heft, feel and paper weight for poetry - if that makes any sense.

- Rimbaud "A Season in Hell" 12.95 - A browsing find in the poetry section, which took me a while to figure out where it was in the Fullerton store (shaking my head, help me).  Rimbaud was the forerunner of Beat movement (Ginsberg called him the first 'punk'), with a self deprecating bible of sorts, all written before the age of 19.  A fairly openly gay writer in the mid-1880s, Rimbaud's life reads like a novel itself.  The poetry is translated alongside the original French text - superb!
- Various "Haiku" 15.95 - I tend to sway from the mini-coffee table format, but I need haiku books.  For some reason, the poetry books at the store fronts are in deplorable condition.  Why do folks disenfranchise poetry so?  Because most of you hate it!  Yay!  Anyway, Basho and other haiku-ists abound alongside Japanese prints.  Pretty.

MISC (x2): Other things.

- Deconstructed Journal - Clock Faces 12.95 - just a solid, organic-y journal. Gonna use it to slam that Seqoi story in the crotch.  I own you, weird characters!
- Mighty Bright Book Light 10.95 - need to read my Sherlock Holmes compilation before I go night night - it hurts my brain trying to think ahead of the master.  But the light does its job well.  Thank you, Mighty Bright.

If you stuck around this long - you are a champ!