I love this poster. She doesn’t even look particularly German. It’s good art and there’s a something extremely ironic about this in a 3rd-wave feminist sort of way. Can’t put my finger on it. Artist Harold Forster did this beautiful piece as well, which I may post about at a future date.
More to be seen here: The Art of War from the The National Archives of the United Kingdom
My friend Kelly showed me the sites in San Fran some time ago. Took me to eat at the lovely and old St. Francis Fountain in San Francisco. Opened in 1918, this place has small wooden booths, tattoooed friendly staff and great milk shakes.
Also a fantastic candy selection.
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Since I forgot my camera, she was gracious enough to lend me hers for the above pix. I had a great time with her on this little adventure. It came at the end of a day’s worth of San Francisco site seeing.
For more pictures:
St. Francis Fountain on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
st francis fountain on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
She has just returned from a visit to England where she saw one of sites I’ve wanted to see; The Dorking Cock!
For more info see: The Dorking Cock Has Been Erected (on the A24) – Firetop
In the lower courtyard where Star Provisions/Bacchanalia are, there hangs a bronze historical plaque. It tells of how the city got its start.
“Adalanta Desert
When the Tehachapi incised the Adalanta Desert with two great sphaltways, a settlement at their junction was inevitable. Martha Pelaski’s small trading post that became the great city was built here…”
At first I couldn’t find this plaque. I went to Star Provisions and the nice Brazilian counter guy offered to show me where it was. After leading me to the plaque in the lower courtyard he asked me to explain it to him. He was pleased to be working in a place of historical merit and wanted to know more.
I had to tell him that it was a complete fiction, part of a country-wide project that imagines the North American continent not as it is but as a place full of alternative history. Plaques like this are scattered around the country. Cabinet Magazine’s interview with Eames Demetrios details the people that made up his world.
“There are over 5,000 zones or quasi-nations in Kymaerica. Each one has its own story. For example, there is the Tehachapi, which is the great road building culture in Kymaerica, and they built most of what we now think of as the interstate highways. There are the people who were the original Samurai who were blown off course and settled what we now call Santa Barbara (which they named Hizurokoro). There are the People of the Wind who make buildings totally out of air and who believe that what we call hills are actually depressions in the sky, and what we call valleys are actually hills in the sky. In the area that is present day linear San Diego there is something called the Sandafuegan Fire Cult which puts out valuable possessions and then sets fire to them.”
So, it was in Atlanta/Adalanta that a bit of that historical fiction took place.
Discover Kymaerica
Kymaerica Plaques – a photoset on Flickr
For another bit of alterna-history, there this bit of cryptic graffiti in a Georgia Tech elevator.
The “muted trumpet” is symbolic of a long-standing war between rival postal factions. Taxis was symbolized by a trumpet, the Tyrstero a muted trumpet showing its rival silenced. All of this stems from Thomas Pynchon’s short novel The Crying of Lot 49. While the Tyrstero faction was imagined by Pynchon, Franz von Taxis actually founded the first Italian postal service in the 16th century. Pynchon’s broad and arcane conspiracy appeals to me so it was nice to see a little bit of it in the real world at Georgia Tech.
For additional info: Thurn und Taxis on Wikipedia
I’ve discovered that my appreciation for anything (music, books, website, etc,) has this cyclical tendency, on-again-off-again. I listen/read/visit, and then I get distracted and put down the pursuits. But often these interests reappear because I’ve found something else that compliment and reinforce something I liked at one time. More times then not I find that I am not alone in my appreciation of what ever has caught my interest.
Cabinet Magazine is one of those things. The magazine issues are collections of arcane facts and stories about people, places and ideas. And being a successful magazine, it must mean I’m not the only one reading about strange and unusual things. Like…
Last Monday, I called their NY office and ordered all of their back issues, the most current and got a 1-year subscription. Wednesday all the issues arrived! This is my attempt to surround myself with reading material that will capture my interest and keep me focused. A problem I’ve been having lately. I’m going to continue to attempt to get the remaining issues that were sold-out to complete my collection.
The magazine is influenced by the Wunder cabinet (also Wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities) . A precursor to museums (which means to excite the Muse) these cabinets or rooms were private collections of natural oddities, things, etc, that individuals would display on their homes. “Wundarkammern; cabinets of curiosities, which proliferated in the 16th and 17th centuries. These were usually collections of natural history specimens—skeletons, stuffed animals, fetuses. Sometimes they were ethnographical artifacts, brought from distant lands. Gathered magpie fashion, these cabinets were eclectic, unsystematic and sometimes a bit gruesome.” The Getty Museum in LA has a book, Devices of Wonder, that includes the topic of curiosity cabinets in it.
And lastly, the 17th century Jesuit polymath who much of this oddness orbits around. From the Chronicle of Higher Educations article, Athanasius Kircher, Dude of Wonders…
“…The consensus is unambiguous: Athanasius Kircher was, indeed, very cool. A dude of wonders, even. Even a partial catalog of Kircher’s accomplishments tends to make one’s jaw drop. A German-born Jesuit priest, he served as a professor of mathematics at the Jesuit training institute in Rome. Nicknamed ‘the master of a hundred arts,’ Kircher also knew dozens of languages, including Chinese and Coptic. His scientific writings — studied with rapt interest by scholars (Roman Catholic and otherwise) around the world — included works on acoustics, astronomy, chemistry, mineralogy, and optics. He also published some of the earliest scholarship on ancient Egypt…”
So, is it any good? Ehh… you tell me.
I had been working on songs for almost a year when the computer suffered a bit technical difficulties. All that music gone, except for a few remaining files. Some songs are more finished then others. Now hosted freely on archive.org (for downloadable MP3s) , I put a few surviving files up for public scrutiny. On the player, select a song to hear.
Rarely do I feel like I made something I set out to. I love bands/DJ’s like Justice, Soulwax, Whitey, Erol Aklan and other mostly dance-happy, electronic bands. But I haven’t made anything that reached their caliber. And probably won’t.
The main reason I put the music there is that some of the music I found online is really obscure and/or odd but I like it. But it was put out there to be found. If someone is happy to keep one of these songs as their own, I’ve done the same as someone did for me. Since I haven’t spent any real money, I can’t complain. Originally created on Apple’s free software, hosted freely at Archive.org and streaming with free code… I can afford that.
And more music will be added in the future as it gets finished.
While walking in Piedmont Park this Sunday, saw a guy picking up a girl in the park. One-armed no less. I was rather impressed.
Does it count when the weekend fun starts on Thursday?
Amongst the many things done, we started with the last showing of “Hot Fuzz”. The fanboys on Ain’t It Cool have been going nutty about this one, and combined with reviews from online friends, I had high hopes. The movie was great and I think Simon Pegg (writer/actor) can do no wrong.
A walk to sweets-shop Chocolate Pink was another treat at week’s end. I like their signature cake, the Chocolate Pink, and their decor inside pretty nice as well.
A Thai food craving was sated at Ma-Li, where I’ve yet to have a bad meal. Our favorite Thai food place in town.
We hit Lavapolloza on Saturday with a friend of my wife’s, who much to my pleasure drove. The music and food were good, the clientel DEEE-RUNK!
On Sunday, it was a walk to the Midtown Art Cinema for Spiderman (**1/2) and a short shopping trip to Trader Joe’s.
All in all, a very nice way to spend the days with the missus.
(Listening to Mr. Hopkinson’s Computer ™
At some point Saturday, we will be here. And you?
Sunday’s derby bout was fantastic. I won’t go into detail but it was one of the best bouts I’ve seen yet between the Atlanta teams.
So, I got thinking about where other places have derby. Wikipedia has a list of roller derby leagues, old and current. To narrow it down, I stuck with members of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. They have a map…
… but being addicted to Google maps and Google Earth, I whipped up one of my own.
Women’s Flat Track Derby Association Locations
And that’s how I spent my time… instead of doing something more productive. But now I know what cities would be worth moving to next.
With summer approaching, some travel looks to be in our future. The American south east is full of strange roadside attractions, which means something for me to see in almost any direction from Atlanta. My wife would like to take a trip to the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. Looks to be a quick 2 hours drive. Howard Finster’s folk art heaven-on-earth Paradise Gardens might be on the way. But since I would really like to see the Ave Maria Grotto (in Cullman, Al) we may have to pass up Howard’s place.
“The Ave Maria Grotto known throughout the world as “Jerusalem in Miniature”, is a beautifully landscaped, four-acre park designed to provide a natural setting for the 125 miniature reproductions of some of the most famous historic buildings and shrines of the world. The masterpieces of stone and concrete are the lifetime work of Brother Joseph Zoettl, a Benedictine monk of St. Bernard Abbey. Begun as a hobby, with various materials he could find, and infinite patience and a remarkable sense of symmetry and proportion, Brother Joseph re-created some of the greatest edifices of all time.”
Flickr: Photos tagged with paradisegardens
Neon Poisoning 