Teknolojical Rationalitee

"When the savages are hungry, they scatter in the forest, they begin the exorcisms, and beg the animals with tasty meet...to have pity on them and fall in their nets and feed the human race that is in danger...."

[Nikos Kazantzakis]


To view at smaller size, right click on image and check "Show All". The image will play at smaller scale.

One may also click on the image twice and go directly to the posting at YouTube.

Ballistics Descending A Staircase

"Spatially speaking, he stands in doorways and presides as janitor over entrances and exits; in the temporal sense he is the beginning: his month is Januarius, the first month, standing between the year that is beginning and the one that has ended. He faces two directions because every passage implies two places, two states, one left behind and one being approached. Janus is a hinge, a pivot...."

[Octavio Paz, after Dumezil on Marcel Duchamp]

Kala Christougena

"Then he starts a new sentence, abandons it before he finishes the first two words. You can feel from his agitation that it is his first time on the air and he does not yet feel at home. 'Yes,' he says after a little while, 'an ancient Egyptian said, 'Happy is he who has seen the most water in his life....'"

[Helen Kazantzakis]

Best viewed at smaller size. Right click on image and check "Show All". The image will play at smaller scale.

One may also click on the image twice and go directly to the posting at YouTube.

Zounds

"Grant that the putative difference between appearance and reality, whether or not it is a real difference or merely an apparent one--the latter possibility in itself being a luscious idea--grant that whatever this difference, one can say safely enough that no one has ever made the argument that appearances are somehow not perceived...."

[E. A. C. Paleolithic Patronage]

Ouah Ouah

"Philosophy approaches this goal to the degree to which it frees thought from its enslavement by the established universe of discourse and behavior, elucidates the negativity of the Establishment (its positive aspects are abundantly publicized anyway) and projects its alternative...."

[Herbert Marcuse]

Best viewed at smaller size. Right click on image and check "Show All". The image will play at smaller scale.

Xmas At Ground Zero

"Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse...."

Note: From original digital photographs of Weird Al Yankovic by Elsa Celestina Costa.

Rocky Horror Chess Stake Tempo

“Language is an error of humanity. Words do not express the depth of feeling between two beings who love each other. A word is a worn pebble applied to thirty-six shades of affectivity. Language is convenient for simplifying, but I detest it as a means of locomotion.”

[Marcel Duchamp]

Let's do the time warp again....

The Strong Law Of Large Numbers

"The Way has never known boundaries; speech has no constancy. But because of the recognition of a 'this', there came to be boundaries. Let me tell you what the boundaries are. There is left, there is right, there are theories, there are debates, there are divisions, there are discriminations, there are emulations, and there are contentions. These are called the Eight Virtues. Beyond the Six Realms, the sage exists but does not theorize. Within the Six Realms, he theorizes, but does not debate. In the case of the Spring And Autumn, the record of the former kings of past ages, the sage debates but does not discriminate. So I say, those who divide fail to divide, those who discriminate, fail to discriminate. What does this mean, you ask? The sage embraces things. Ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discriminations before others. So I say, those who discriminate fail to see."

[Chuang Tzu tr. B. Watson]

The Same Old Tune (Animated Anaglyph)

"A score of quantum physicists have gradually come to the conclusion that for their formulae to work there must be presumed a certain minimal order of magnitude, Lambda. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

[E. A. Costa Paleolithic Patronage]


Another animated anaglyph, best seen with 3D glasses--blue right, left red.

The Metaphor Of The Marbles

"On the other hand, in order to distinguish two road signals or two Manet paintings one resorts to both space and color parameters. In the first case the pertinent elements are the normal spatial dimensions, with features such as 'up/down', 'larger/smaller' and so on; in the second one, pertinent elements are wavelengths, frequencies or, more commonly speaking, cues. The fact that a road signal is enormously simpler than a Manet painting does not matter. Thus in detecting two tactile signals, one has recourse to certain thermal and pressure gradients, while in detecting the difference between the two signs channelled through a solid matter, like two gestural signals, one relies on positional or kinetic parameters such as the direction of the gesture, its stress, and so on...."

[Umberto Eco]

The R. Mutt Eye Rhyme Bow Wow Rap

Walking Dada's poodle.

Best viewed at smaller size. Right click on image and check "Show All". The image will play at smaller scale.

War And Peace

"What is random? Given infinity a chimpanzee at a typewriter should ultimately manage to compose Gone With The Wind. As well as a critical essay discounting said work as a serious piece of letters."

[EAC Paleolithic Patronage]

Warp Jive Five (Animated Anaglyph)

Another animated anaglyph, best viewed with 3D glasses--right blue, left red:

Lucianesque

Lucianesque

Mopsius: Didn't you say that you never wanted to see or talk to me again?

Mopsia: That was the past. That's over and done with.

Mopsius: But that was just a few seconds ago.

Mopsia: Still it's the past. It's over and done with. It's insignificant.

Mopsius: May I ask a question?

Mopsia: Shoot.

Mopsius: How do you speak a sentence, let alone write one? Isn't the beginning of the sentence already the past when the sentence is being finished?

Mopsia: That's easy--it's assembled and understood in the continuous present.

Mopsius: The continuous present?

Mopsia: The continuous present.

Mopsius: I am not sure I understand. What is assembled in the continuous present? Isn't it a sentence constructed in the past and thus insignificant?

Mopsia: No, the assembly is in the present. That's the important thing. That's the meaning. It's always in the present.

Mopsius: So there is no such thing as a past meaning?

Mopsia: There may have been meanings meant in the past but they are past. Only the present meaning is important. We live and breathe in the continuous present. Isn't that obvious. You can't live in the past. The past is dead.

Mopsius: I see. Meaning may continuously change but only the present meaning is significant. Like the weather or a feather in the wind.

Mopsia: You might say that.

Mopsius: So there are no consequences?

Mopsia: Nothing final. Nothing that can't be changed.

Mopsius: Changed in the present, I presume.

Mopsia: Naturally. You can't change things in the past.

Mopsius: I suppose not.

Mopsia: It's all perfectly clear.

Mopsius: But you keep saying, "There are consequences".

Mopsia: The consequences too are always in the continuous present.

Mopsius: For yourself. Or only for other people?

Mopsia: I am a continuous present.

Mopsius: But you are always saying to other people, "There are consequences."

Mopsia:That means there will be consequences in the future if others do not act according to the dictums of the present.

Mopsius: Your dictums.

Mopsia: Of course--why should I be concerned about any dictums but my own. I can't speak for anyone else.

Mopsius: I see.

Mopsia: And my dictums exist in the continuous present.

Mopsius: But you don't follow your own rules.

Mopsia: That's a 'you' statement. And I will not listen to it.

Mopsius: Are you sure there is no way you can hold yourself to your determination never to want to see me or talk to me again?

[copyright EAC]

Duck Of Earl (Animated Anaglyph)

"Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck of Earl
Duck, Duck, Duck of Earl
Duck, Duck, Duck of Earl
Duck, Duck, Duck of Earl..."




An animated anaglyph, best viewed with 3D glasses--right blue, left red.

M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O....

"Once you understand how a mousetrap works, you can use it as a springboard."

[Dialogue from Stanley's Kubrick's Fear And Desire]

The House Of Bubblegum

Also available at youtube at slightly larger size:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV1cPvtNakA

To watch at smaller scale at youtube, second button in on the right.

22.5

"Don't look back, something might be gaining on you".

[Satchel Paige]

Repilian Brain--Mammalian Brain

"The Christians went even further. The thought that the divinity had written a book moved them to imagine that he had written two, and that the other one was the universe."

[Jorge Luis Borges]

Head Shot

"A journalist representing 'Soviet Russia' came and asked me to write about the atomic bomb. Our young guide Vlad told us how the partisans in Vietnam used bats instead of airplanes. They hung on the bats' necks a small sack of powder with a fuse, then the bats would go to nest in the garrets of the houses where the French soldiers lived; the powder would catch fire and the houses would burn...."

[Nikos Kazantzakis tr. G. C. Pappageotes]

Walk Right In

Best seen at smaller image size. Right click on the image and click "Show All". The image will reduce to smaller scale. At youtube click the second button in on the right.

The Doubloon

"Shall I call it wise or foolish, now; if it really be wise it has a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then it has a sort of wiseish look to it."

[Herman Melville]

Bai Ma Fei Ma

"The Mohists, who puzzle us by being at once the most religious and the most logical of the ancient thinkers, also contrive to be the most pacifistic and the most martial. One of their 10 doctrines was the condemnation of all military aggression, a corollary of their principle of universal love. But they did not merely allow defensive war, they specialized in it...."

[A.C. Graham]



Note: A larger version of the above animation, also in animated .GIF format, is available here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=560407&member

Ouah!

Just a midnight girl on a sunset isle....

Pretty Red Hibiscus

Note: Above is also available here:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=mopsius

The resolution quality played at youtube's "small scale" (second button in on the right) is close to optimal for its size, which is what was aimed at.

Will The Real Oscar Homolka Please Stand Up?

Running Wild

And For Our Next Trick....

"Wu Yong placed two fingers together and calmly spoke a few words. And as a result, in East Bank righteous men became bold robbers, in Stone Village fishing boats became vessels of war. Truly their commander could speak of all things in heaven and on earth, and turn up the rivers and roil the seas. What did Wu Yong the Wizard recommend? Read our next chapter if you would know."

[Shi Nai'an and Luo Guanzhong, Outlaws Of The Marsh, tr. S. Shapiro]

Bumpy Ride

Doctor Other

Doctor Other

Tacky Dalek sex

Behind the divan who knows

who doctoring whom?

[Copyright EAC]

His Life Inside The Orange

His Life Inside The Orange

Long ago in school they told him
it is he that moves.

He looks over the green edge
of his morning juice.

In the cool air
the fire is still there.

Did he bring the sun up again?

He feels dizzy.

[Copyright EAC]

How Many Aliases?

How Many Aliases?


"What looks

to the world

like giants..."

Bulgakov says to Stalin,

"are geniuses..."


There is a pregnant pause.


Dzhugashvili bends over

telephone to ear

adjusts a clean white sock

glances at factotum

prepares to pounce.


Bulgakov's eyes shut

his mind whitens

suddenly glints

with the Moscow Theatre:


"standing on one another's shoulders."


[Copyright EAC]

Salvador's Pissoir

"As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game...."

[Washington Irving]

Note: This is a slightly different version of a first and last post to the gallery of a site that claimed something new and revolutionary in the way of computer graphics but was in the end, as in the beginning, quintessentially mediocre and conventional. I posted it and was immediately banned. I am flattered that, even unintentionally, it was understood. Later, also in a slightly different version, it appeared, in another gallery where I have also been banned, as the first installment in the R. Mutt series.

Gasperini Wiggle No.3

I call the type of 3D animation below "Gasperini Wiggle" after Jim Gasperini, a San Francisco photographer, who hit upon the brilliant device of running two images from a Stereo Camera in sequence as an animated .GIF, thus inventing a new type of 3D animation.

Gasperini uses only photographs himself, but the technique applies more widely to any medium that can be animated.

Gasperini's impressive site, which contains much more than his Wiggles, is here:

http://www.well.com/user/jimg/

Zweck Or The Aim

"For thirty years I have trumpeted that there is no adequate communication between scholars, men of letters, and the damned papers, the press. We have no standards of accuracy that an optician or physicist wd. recognize as other than sloppy and rascally. We have no communication system worthy the name.

And this infamy is as base in purely 'cultural' or decorative and pleasurable subjects as it is in vital statistics and fragments of history which ought to be the common possession of every man in the street.

Properly, we shd. read for power. Man reading shd. be intensely alive. The book shd. be a ball of light in one's hand...."

[Ezra Pound]

Chronia Polla (Animated Anaglyph)

The animation below is an animated anaglyph, best viewed with 3D glasses--blue right, left red.

The Decline Of the Future

"The decline of the future is a phenomenon that manifests itself, naturally, in the very place where it shone like a real sun: modern Western society. I will give two examples of its decline: the crisis of the notion of an avant-garde in the realm of art, and the violent irruption of sexuality. The extreme form of modernity in art is the destruction of the object; this tendency, which began as a criticism of the notion of the 'work of art', has now culminated in a negation of the very notion of art. Things have come round full circle: art ceases to be be 'modern': it is an instantaneous present. As for sexuality and time: the body has never believed in progress; its religion is not the future but the present."

[Octavio Paz tr. H. Pane]

This Is A Loop

"Into how many parts can you divide a second? How long will it take you?"

[E. A. Costa, Paleolithic Patronage]

Clepsydra

"What needs to be said is well said twice over."

Empedocles of Agrigentum

Checkmate

Checkmate

What is the precise population

of New York City?

Of Baghdad?

Of Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

How many pistaschios
are there in Tehran?

What is the precise length

of the Mississippi River?

How long is the Ganges

in centimeters?

When the Nile floods
how many square inches
are covered with water?

How many piranha
are there in the Amazon?

What is the exact distance

at its shortest point

of the planet Earth from Mars?

How many devils are there in Tasmania?

Are all human beings viviparous?

And how many of you
are there in the world
(at any one point)?

How many grains of sand
on the beach nearest to
any one personality?

Have you counted them?

How long in nanoseconds
did it take you to understand
this poem?

Don't forget to count yourself.

(copyright EAC)

The Corridor At The End Of The Corridor

The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,--
Said, "Who taught thee me to name?
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam."

Thou art the unanswered question
Couldst see thy proper eye
Always it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Migrant Workers Don't Kill Trucks

Migrant Workers Don't Kill Trucks

Nietzsche found the origin

of the metrical foot in walking.

So with rhythm

which foot marks.

Nietzsche dances on the page.

In the First World

(it was named so by Americanos)

walking by free citizens

is in its last throes.

The beat is technical and passive.

Rhythm is vicarious.

Gringo television

(as can be seen with the sound off)

is a jumble of images

every so often interrupted

by commercial drumming.

Rhyme is not a crime.

Real rhythm takes time.

Some people still walk before they talk.

These are growing statistics:

migrant workers

(mostly Mexican)

walking along highways

in los Estados Unidos being killed

by cars and trucks.

They are mostly walking to work.

Some of these are homicides.

Perhaps one will title this little episode

(technically a conceit were it prose)

" Pancho Villa Road "

What do you think? Is it humorous enough for you?

(copyright EAC)

Antinomies

"If one who is thinking could perceive this horizon--the
intellectual range--in the same way he perceives the limits
of his body, nothing like the antinomies of Intelligence could arise.
And what in fact are these antinomies of Intelligence? They are
the inability to distinguish transcendence in fact and transcendence in illusion.

The cause of these antinomies is language, for language, being a
useful tool, is also a self-locking instrument--and at the same time
a perfidious one, since it tells nothing about when it becomes a pitfall
itself...."

[Stanislaw Lem, tr. Heine]

Aphrodite Of Santa Fe

"My pencil is smarter than I am"

(attributed to Albert Einstein)

Madame Tetrachromat

Madame Tetrachromat

I went to the automat
with Madame Tetrachromat

She stared at each item
but didn't bite them

except each hue from the red to the blue
met with her fourfold approval.

"This one's medicinal!",
she exclaimed about the salad,

"And this one will kill you, lad,
in considerably less than a minute!

This one's got iodine in it,
That one's got arsenic.

See that shade of grink—
that means it's okay to drink!".

(copyright EAC)

A Proverb In Tigrinya

(copyright EAC)

Never Forget

How well I remember

when Saddam Hussein

leading the whole Iraqi Army

(the third largest in the world)

attacked Manhattan

in amphibious vehicles.

It was December 7

the carriers came in under fog

strafing the Bowery first

murdering homeless civilians.

The beachhead was Battery Park

they doused the Twin Towers

with kerosene and set it aflame

and Saddam with a gleeful smile

eating Eli's cheesecake

all of it as if yesterday....

(copyright EAC)

Trucking To Baghdad

Trucking To Baghdad

I was speeding down that grade faster than hell
with load of porkbellies when they rang my bell

There was a flash up front and I dashed to the rear
to save my shotgun and get him clear

Driving a truck on the Baghdad run
Driving a truck on the Baghdad run
We ain't carrying milk and it ain't no fun
Driving a truck on the Baghdad run....


[low background music, fulsome prismatic sotto voce]:

Well, boys, I lost my favorite pair of panty hose in that ambush by Anwar Sonny but we called in air and whacked that there Truck Massage in the end.

[Louder. Music changes to the BOTTLE Hymn of the Republic in the background]

I am not going to lie to YEW-EW-EW--it's a hard war and it ain't going easy, but it's a GOOD OLE HUNDRED TEN PERCENT RAT PATRIOTIC MERKIN WAR to bring democracy and clean living to Anwar Province where Adolph Hitler was born and bred.

And if we don't stop them there and now they will be in NASHVILLE before you know it.

I am just a lowly PATRIOTIC MERKIN contract truck driver making only $300 per hour at this dangerous job bringing Meals-On-Wheels to our TROOPS on the front lines.

But I'll tell you one thing more. I lost my favorite deck of cards with Playboy Playmates of the month on the back with which I used them to teach the local heathen SCRIPTURE....

[resumes singing]

Driving a truck on the Baghdad run
Driving a truck on the Baghdad run
We ain't carrying milk and it ain't no fun
Driving a truck on the Baghdad run....

(copyright EAC)

IF This Screen Were Paper....

If this screen were paper
would these words stand here
unread

If this light were the sun
would anyone await midnight
to write

(copyright EAC)

Que Bonitos Ojos Tienes


What does a poor poet offer
except music?

Sell yourself
for money.

I will pierce your soul
with song.

You dance forever
for those unborn.

You will never age.

Que bonitos ojos tienes--

What clear and lovely eyes.

Forever.

(copyright EAC)