invocations in eggshell

who’d-a-thunk a sub-par wes craven flick from the 80’s would lead me to items of interest? after watching serpent and the rainbow recently i went off in search of voodoo and found veves. quote: In vodou (Voodoo) practice, veves are intricate symbols of the loas (gods), and are used in rituals. each loa has his or her own complex veve, which is traced on the ground with powdered eggshell or cornmeal prior to a ritual. the ability to draw a veve correctly is considered to be the skill of an initiate. the better drawn a veve is the more powerful in invocation it is. see below for a few examples

posted by jmorrison on 01/31 | lost & found - belief | | permalink
more historical androids

picked up a book a couple of days ago called robots robots robots put out in 1978. that’s the same year the now infamous star wars holiday special came out so it’s safe to say it was smack dab in a resurgence of popular culture’s interest in robotics. c3po and r2 did wonders in that regard i suspect. this 70’s date of publication for robots robots robots also just happens to make the title a bit silly. truth be told 85 percent of the book is taken up with automata rather than robots proper. there just weren’t as many robots on the loose 30 years ago. the word “robot” didn’t even exist until 1920. it’s not a bad book, all things considered, and i thought i’d share some of the “robots” contained within… see below

the house painter

william mullingar higgins- the house painter, or, decorator’s companion: being a complete treatise on the origin of colour, the laws of harmonious colouring, the manufacture of pigments, oils, and varnishes: and the art of house painting, graining, and marbling: to which is added, a history of the art in all ages. 1841. i hardly need to include a decription after a title like that! cool book from the times before the arts of “the home” splintered into a hundred different disciplines. of particular interest to artists are the paint recipies. see here for larger versions of each handpainted plate.

posted by jmorrison on 01/29 | sights & sounds - books | | permalink
what’s that stink?

finally got around to reading harry g. frankfurt’s on bullshit, which has sat on my living room table for months. many folks read this slim volume (it was all over the news when it was published last january) and most people couldn’t suppress a wink or wry smirk considering its content, as though bullshit were not, in fact, a “serious” subject for inquiry. i bought the book with no smirk whatsoever, but with high hopes. i’ve long held an unspoken suspicion that bullshit might be more dangerous and damaging to the human condition than anyone is prepared to accept.

Unspeakable Edibles

Well, I haven’t posted in a while. Been beat to hell for a couple of weeks, too tired to shovel the driveway. But here’s something I just got to get off my chest: I can’t help but wonder who named some of these foods. The tweedledum and tweedledee, so to speak, of absurdist portmanteau food names, if you ask me (and you didn’t) are: turducken and tofurkey. These are compressed from the names of the ingredients, so: turducken is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, and tofurkey is tofu made to imitate turkey.

the history of glasses

apparently no visual instruments (i.e. glasses) existed at the time of the ancient egyptians, greeks, or romans. seneca is alleged to have read “all the books in rome” by peering at them through a glass globe of water to produce magnification. nero used an emerald held up to his eye while he watched gladiators fight. the chinese are sometimes credited with developing spectacles 2000 years ago, but apparently they only used them to protect their eyes from an evil force… just a few meager factoids from the history of eye glasses. if such historical minutia is too geeky for you try this instead.

the forgotten critics of oral tradition

we humans love our stories. they have been a vital part of every human culture ever recorded. today we get our weekly allotment of stories predominantly through the television and movies and before that radio. going further back we got our fix through theater. and if you go all the way back there was the oral tradition, a folkloric amalgam of tales, legends, proverbs, jokes, and popular beliefs which we told one another. if the analogy of movies to oral tradition is solid then what else might our current experience with stories tell us about that of our ancestors?

space junk

came across a nat geo story today on the subject of space debris, more commonly referred to as space junk, and the warnings coming out of nasa about its accumulation. i’ve been fascinated by the idea of space junk since first reading about it a few years ago. the fact that there are thousands of human-made doohickies whipping around in low earth orbit, forming what amounts to a “junkosphere,” is wild. since the size of this debris cloud grows by an average of 4% every year it also happens to pose real dangers for humanity’s future space initiatives, be they scientific, commercial, or military.

posted by jmorrison on 01/20 | tech & science - space | | permalink
time and a word

...we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless -paul bowles. (see below for more.)

posted by jmorrison on 01/20 | lost & found - ideas | | permalink
blog noir

it was a tuesday night. no big shakes in this particular quarter of the web. my page was flanked by gutters on both sides as it always is. traffic rumbled into the referrer log at all hours, urchins watching everything. some regulars from the neighborhood stuck their heads in to shoot the breeze. peacay and aitch glanced in the window, hoofing it to one digital library or another no doubt. sebastian and pz sent some folks my way, each with a tip of their snappy fedoras. i was in my office, feet up, tipping a glass. like i said, no big shakes, just a tuesday at the grindstone.

posted by jmorrison on 01/18 | piss & vinegar - fiction | | permalink
sittin’ on wicker

long before rappers were “sittin’ on chrome” and sippin’ dom on their yachts the funky and soulful cats among us were sitting on something altogether different; they were sittin’ on wicker. yes folks, that is correct, as the older of us can attest there was a time not so long ago when wicker was some fashionable shi’ite. for proof one need only look to the thread which ran through the cultures of 60’s r&b through 70’s funk. the shot of the cool cat loungin’ in his wicker peacock chair (henceforth to be referred to as the “funk throne”) is a classic image which somewhere along the way fell out of fashion. sure today we’ve got bullet proof vests, bentleys, and diamond fronts, but i have to wonder, after 30 years in the stylistic dog-house, how long before some enterprising cultural looter seizes upon this forgotten classic and brings it roaring back?

meaning concealed behind meaning

quote: The dirty little secret of the ironist is of course that irony is always parasitic and can exist only by virtue of the earnestness it takes such pleasure in annihilating. Like sentiment, which has been called unearned emotion, the new irony is a form of unearned skepticism. It creates nothing of its own but waits to ambush moral purpose, to play havoc with common sense, to deny reason its moment. The only stand it takes is that there is no stand to be taken, so neither the author nor the audience has to take one.

posted by jmorrison on 01/13 | lost & found - ideas | | permalink
my story

well folks i’m very pleased to announce that nan a. telese, of doubleday, has agreed to publish a memoir i’ve written, a non-fiction recounting of a difficult episode in my life, which will be released later this year. it’s bitter sweet in that the story i’ve recounted is a particularly painful one for me, and to be honest, it was extremely hard to write about. on the other hand having made it through the experience i felt sure that others out there could benefit from a frank, head-on, treatment of the subject. though i’m contractually forbidden to share any of the actual text as of yet, i’ve included a blurb below which will appear on the jacket and which may give you some insight.

posted by jmorrison on 01/12 | piss & vinegar - fiction | | permalink
will i be rich? will i live forever?

here’s an oldie but goody. the museum of talking boards. like band-aids they are better known today by a brand name- ouija boards. the site has a fantastic little gallery as well as some good ol’ factual history, delving a bit into the victorian fascination with spiritualism which fostered the board’s spread. there are some bits about its precursors the psychograph and planchette and many period descriptions. very cool. meanwhile i figured i’d take this opportunity to unveil three new ouija boards which, assuming the venture capital materializes, will be hitting the market later this year, created by the nonist novelty co. see below.

posted by jmorrison on 01/11 | sights & sounds - games | | permalink
filling the husk

when i am utterly uninspired, at a loss as to what to post, or eat, or do next; when i am miserable, or in a funk, or have a nasty crick in my neck, i find solace in turning towards the works of humanity’s great philosophers. time and again i’ve found that the simple act of submerging myself in the torrent of their ideas can invigorate me in a way which not even an altoids stuffed habanero with a listerine chaser can manage. i have of late been in just such a funk. consumed with a nasty “empty-husk” kind of feeling which prevents me from writing anything interesting, or relaxing in my home, or swimming the english channel. as such i’ve decided to dip a toe again into those rushing waters of the awe inspiringly brilliant philosophical mind…

posted by jmorrison on 01/10 | lost & found - ideas | | permalink
pulling teeth

the idiom which ends “like pulling teeth” is effective isn’t it? you can say it with feeling and you know just what it means. no elaboration necessary. it’s universal. and what single thing is the most “like pulling teeth?” why, actually pulling teeth of course. toothaches and methods of ridding oneself of them have bedeviled humanity since pre-history. everything from poppy seeds to demons to the dreaded toothworm were blamed. everything from amulets to spices to prayer to the application of a toad’s thighbone were tried as remedy. most of the time though a problematic tooth was simply knocked out, “a piece of hardwood or stone was placed against the tooth and struck with a rock or mallet.”  anesthesia wasn’t available until the 1830’s! ouch. so just how deeply has the crucible of the tooth embedded itself into the human consciousness?

posted by jmorrison on 01/08 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
he of the golden balls

enjoyed the pacific asia museum’s online exhibit nature of the beast and thought i’d pass it along (via). it’s an exploration of the way artists of Edo-period Japan depicted animals and the natural world. it’s broken up into three sections: tradition, reality, and imagination. as that last heading hints it deals not only with real animals but mythological one’s as well. which brings us to what this post is really about… one wild customer whom the exhibit reminded me of is the tanuki, an animal which might conceivably be included in all three of the exhibit’s sections in that it’s not only a real animal but a creature of japanese legend as well.

posted by jmorrison on 01/07 | lost & found - wtf | | permalink
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