Satanic influences

Posted on by Dale

Heavens. One has to love a column which contains the sentence, “For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.” It’s just so adorable. You can read it here.

You will notice that this is a cached version. By the time I had read the snarky summary at Huffington Post and decided that I would brave the original, Christian Broadcasting Network had taken it down. You would think such a devout organization would have firmer principles.

Shakespeare, as usual, gives us the exact phrase for this kind of thinking: “so excellently ignorant.” This woman has absolutely no evidentiary structure on which to base her world-view other than her belief in her own fictive lenses. Notice I do not say faith. This is not faith, it is narrative.

I can just imagine the firefight that broke out when this got “reprinted” at CBN. While many of CBN’s readers probably agree with her that Halloween is of the devil, I would bet about half of them looked askance at her hysterically ahistorical take on Harvest Home.

This is the kind of mindset with which it is useless to argue: the jargon, the fictive structure, the blinkered dichotomous worldview—this is a person who has settled into a dopamine fix which rewards the thrills most of us feel when we’re seven years old and nestling in a cardboard box while the monsters roam the backyard around us. This author wouldn’t even understand anything I have just said. She is a Flatlander, and any sphere who approaches her will be greeted by shrieks of “She’s a witch!”

Bless her heart.

New music, 10/28/09

Posted on by Dale

I actually sat down and wrote a new piece of music last night. It’s a surprise for someone who would never read this blog, and its performance is far from assured, so I’m not going to post the actual score here.

I will link to the mp3, however.

It’s not done. I am going in tonight and kicking the last verse up half a step, that kind of hokeyness is part of what the piece is about, and then adding a semi-elaborate coda.

If it is scheduled for performance, I’ll let you know.

UPDATE, 9:09 PM: The mp3 is now the finished, cleaned-up version.

An idea

Posted on by Dale

I can save the Republicans Party.

No, really, I can. My plan is super easy, and it’s a win/win/win situation.

Here’s the deal. I don’t know if you’ve been following it, but the New York 23rd District special election has gotten pretty strange. The official Republicans Party candidate is one DeDe Scozzafava. She has been endorsed by such luminaries as Newt Gingrich; Michael Steele says, “I support the Republican nominee, as a Republican Party chairman,” Steele said. “And that’s the way to go, right?”

However: Palin, Pawlenty, DeMint, Rohrabacher, Tiahrt and other heavy-hitters have endorsed Doug Hoffman, who does not list any party affiliation on his site, nor does Scozzafava, if it comes to that, but is in fact the candidate of the Conservative Party.

Well.

It seems to me that this is a perfect opportunity for the old-guard Republicans to seize the control of their party back from the conservative whackjobs who currently hold it hostage. They have money, right? Aren’t they the rich people? Pay people to switch to the Conservative/Teabagger/Nutjob Party.

You can’t tell me that those rich white a-h’s don’t know how to do this surreptitiously. They’ve been funding “think tanks” and “fair and balanced” networks and “grassroots movements” for decades now. This ought to be a piece of cake. Just pay Glenn Beck enough money, and he can trigger a mass exodus of the 28%ers from the Republicans Party over to the newly powerful Conservative Party.

And there’s the win/win/win: the nutjobs have their own party that can cater to their anger and prejudice; the Republicans have their party back; and the Democratic Party might have some sane opposition.

Because, and here’s the entire point, the Nutjob Party is made up of barely 28% of the voters. They will never again influence an election. And that, my friends, is change we can believe in.

Revised The Movie Star

Posted on by Dale

A couple of posts ago I invented a new drink, which Marc cleverly named “The Movie Star.” (It involves Canton Ginger Liqueur… Ginger, get it? I didn’t. He had to explain it to me. Doh!)

Tonight I revised the recipe:

  • 1 part Canton ginger liqueur
  • 1 part grapefruit vodka
  • 1 part lime juice
  • 1/2 part pineapple juice

Besides denominating the vodka specifically, I tripled the amount of fruit juice, so right away it’s healthier. Score!

Painting, 10/24/09

Posted on by Dale

I’ll be updating this as the day goes by.

Here’s my first stopping point on Field IV:

Field IV @ 11:45

You can click on the image for a larger, more detailed view.

I continue to explore the idea of “erasure,” the fields of color on the bottom and top, the hieroglyphic figures (this time more “scribbly” and in color), all crowded out by the mass of white. There’s a big glowy spot in this one, too.

It’s clearly not done. I’m not even sure it’s started. It’s a couple of ideas I’ve been wanting to try, mostly in response to a commission from Seth Langer. Seth, if you’re reading this, this may be your painting, finally. Eventually.

More later…

Painting, 10/23/09

Posted on by Dale

I am in the mountains at the Lichtenbergian First Annual Retreat, the purpose of which is to produce crap all weekend, i.e., to produce as much art as we can without worrying about its quality.

So far, I have certainly done that, with 20 charcoal action sketches of varying quality, a couple of self-portraits with some interesting bit about them, two paintings purporting to be portraits which really suck, and now another in my Field series:

I’ve set up the next one but will work on it later tonight. This next one will explore some visuals that I worked on back in August out in the labyrinth.

Labyrinth additions

Posted on by Dale

Down in Fernandina Beach, we came across a grinding stone at an antiques place. It was on consignment (one wonders who would have such a thing?), and the price was reasonable: $5.00.

What’s not to like?

So here’s the new table:

It will be a wonderful addition to sit next to the new adirondack chairs:

I have bought four of these. There were four in this other antiques place, but two had already been sold. I bought the other two, but then the man who makes them offered to make me four and paint them any color I want and deliver them from Tennessee. (His mother-in-law lives in Roswell.) I hope they’re in position in time for the Lichtenbergian Annual Meeting.

Update, 10/21/09:

I also bought this hurricane lamp, a nice big one, for a quarter of its original price:

It will nestle amongst some ferns somewhere.

Reading: T. R. Pearson

Posted on by Dale

I am rereading A Short History of a Small Place, by T. R. Pearson, one of the funniest novels of Southern literature.

Short version: Miss Pettigrew, last of a noble family, climbs up the water tower with her chimpanzee and jumps off. (The chimp remains behind.)

Long version: The town of Neely, NC, and everyone in it.

There are the Epperson sisters and their cousin Cora, who “distinguished themselves in the minds of the Neelyites by going from reasonably normal to unquestionably insane without ever pausing at peculiar,” by emerging from their home one day having “decided they were triplets.”

When they are upset that the city won’t recognize them formally, the sheriff “said he was so pained by their predicament that he suddenly suffered a lapse in good judgment. [He] told them that he would consider recognizing them as triplets if they were able to get fifty adults in Neely to sign a petition verifying their claim. It was a tremendous mistake. The sheriff said he had temporarily forgotten what people are like.”

There’s the new Methodist pastor, who wants live animals at the Christmas pageant and obtains the services of “Mr. Jip French’s old blind pony that his boys chased around the pasture and ran into fences. But when he tried the animals out at a full-dress rehearsal the reverend discovered that he couldn’t use the pony because it was given to breaking wind, not very loudly, Momma said, but in near lethal concentrations. So the reverend tried to get another pony but couldn’t and had to settle for Mr. Earl Jemison’s steely-grey hound, Mayhew, which was probably one of the biggest dogs in the county and which the reverend decided to transform into a camel by means of a couple pillows and a brown rug.” The pageant itself is wildly wrong.

There’s Pinky Throckmorton, who in trying to rid the windowsill outside his office in the post office of pigeons, ends up partially poisoning them all and enraging the D.A.R.’s sensibilities, until fortunately there was a national convention in Nashville and “the whole local unit of the D.A.R. chartered out the First Baptist Church activity bus and headed west for the weekend, and when they returned to Neely all blue-blooded afresh and historically agitated anew, a trashcan full of poisoned pigeons did not seem such an atrocity anymore.”

The Throckmorton episode is a 52-page digression from the main story, triggered by the monkey pissing on Pinky on page 108, winding its way through Pinky’s heritage and detailing his obsession with suing his fellow man, and ending with the fallout from the pigeon massacre on 160. By that time, you’ve forgotten all about the chimp and are truly startled and delighted to be reminded why we’re being told about Pinky in the first place. (He’s going to sue the mayor for being pissed on.)

And that’s where I am now. Go get your copy and read it, right after you read Jasper Dash and the Flame Pits of Delaware, by M. T. Anderson.

Labyrinth, 10/11/09

Posted on by Dale

Today was simple work: plant the ferns where the tree used to be, move the pavers, sit in the labyrinth.

All I have pictures for is this:

However, I wish I had taken photos of the new location of the pavers. They’re at the bottom of the driveway in a little altar-like setup, and I put candles on them for the evening. From the labyrinth, looking to the east, suddenly now there’s a vista of lights climbing like stairs from the entrance of the labyrinth ever upwards. It’s quite a lovely effect.

Labyrinth, 10/10/09, part 2

Posted on by Dale

I was all set to write a witty post about that most manly of manly man power tools, the chainsaw, and how I had to borrow one from Craig because I don’t have one myself, nor any real reason to buy one, and how it compared to my little electric hedge trimmer and then let the comments fall where they might, when two things happened:

  1. Marc snarkily replied via text message that a chainsaw is efficient; an ax is manly.
  2. I melted Craig’s chainsaw.

Let the comments fall where they may.

Here’s a simple report, then.

Here’s my first pass, getting the smaller limbs taken apart.

So far, so good, but it was shortly after this that the saw ran out of gas. That was the problem, you see.

Here we are at the last bit. The larger trunk was interesting, because after I got almost all the way through the trunk, it would break off and I could roll it right out of its bark. The larger pieces I sawed in half. Yes, it would probably be easier or faster to cleave them, but that would require the use of a real manly tool, which, needless to say, I do not own.

And here’s where I ended after I melted Craig’s chainsaw. The problem was that small engines require a mixture of gasoline and oil in order to keep running. I knew this, but Craig didn’t mention it, and there were two separate ports for gas and oil, so I thought that perhaps these newfangled chainsaws did their own mixing through some superior space-age technology. Oops. Craig’s mistake was thinking I could cut up all that wood with one tank of gas.

Anyway, next project, after I take Craig to Home Depot to buy a new chainsaw:

Here are the paving stones left over from the construction of the labyrinth. They’ve been sitting here at the steps to the labyrinth for a year now. It’s time to move them.

This way, I can start working on the entrance to the labyrinth. Since it’s the east, it needs something air-related. I will also have the pavers in a better position when I start working on the dance floor patio next spring. (That’s the area at the left of the photo.)