Yule Heibel's Post Studio © 2003-2014

She’s back

Boy, I’m slow. Halley facts = Halifax!

Raed’s at the Guardian, but where is Halley?

What happened to Halley’s Comment? Blogspot says “not found”…?

Snow in summer

As I type, I’m getting a sense of what it must be like to be strafed by military aircraft. For some unfathomable reason, there’s a display of the Snowbirds just over my roof and somewhat to the south — Jesus!, here they come again, it seems about 100 metres over my head!

They are so loud! All that’s missing is the rat-a-tat-a-tat and a huge ka-plooie! For some reason, I love fireworks, which are basically exploded armaments made aesthetic. But I can’t get into this, it’s scaring the heck out of me.

Paul Virilio, please explain this aesthetic of speed!

PS: Ok, ok, so the guy in the uniform is cute. The Gang of Four knew what they were talking about when they sang, “I love a man in a uniform.” Bang bang, shoot shoot.

Why I’m lazy on principle

Recently, Halley’s Comment served up Rocky Road, and for what it’s worth, I thought it was the perfect Sunday dish. It started somewhere around here, and then some people apparently gave her a hard time about it, but she did it anyway, and had some interesting reflections about it. Opting out — and getting flak for it — reminded me of an article (in a Munich paper) I read in the late 70s that recounted the hostile reactions a woman got in response to keeping one day a week alcohol-free. Her drinking buddies went nuts. They said she had a problem; they didn’t see that they were the addicts or that they were enabling each other. Puritan America is happy enough to let you be alcohol-free, but it seems that there are always other addictions a-plenty that your co-dependents don’t want you to lose.

Why I’m not a teetotaler

William Gibson has the best by-line for the Pentagon’s scheme to revive democratic participation in current events by creating a futures market in terrorism. He calls it Ender’s Futures Market Terminated. Yes indeed, Ender: I guess science fiction writers always did have the inside track on the gifted, but who would have thought that badly challenged (read: misguided) intelligence in high places would come up with something as dystopic as this. Sci-fi pales in comparison.

Balls & Lanterns

Davin points to a very funny weird ping-pong game …uh, performance. He calls it Matrixpong.

It’s festival-all-sorts in Victoria right now, and last Saturday night was Luminara, followed on Sunday by an antique cars festival. (Victoria is where all good antique cars go when they die: they come here reborn in A-plus shape, unfettered by emission restrictions.) I went to Luminara on Saturday, but took no pictures. Luckily, Davin did. He posted them here — take a look, they’re beautiful. If anyone went to the antique cars extravaganza in Oak Bay, and has pictures, let me know.

Swissematter

According to a book review of Elizabeth MacLeod’s Albert Einstein: A Life of Genius in YES Mag; Canada’s Science Magazine for Kids, Einstein “approved the patent for the mold used to make the Toblerone chocolate bar.” (The review is by Reuben Wasser, age 9.) I ask you: did you know that? But, but…: Just two words re. the Toblerone: Billy Connolly. Listen to his review of the triangle-shaped bar by clicking on “Switzerland” a bit down the page. (I’d link to it directly, but those goons in the copyright / anti-file-sharing sector worry me.)

Ceci n’est pas une affiche des pare-chocs

You’ve seen the bumper stickers, I’m sure: “I only listen to what the voices in my head tell me to do”? The bloggy e-version is “I only listen to what the emails tell me to do”: It’s a weird world. Best not ask. B- happy! day

Saint Uncle

I’m still without a computer of my own, instead stealing moments on a borrowed desktop machine. It’s interesting to me to see how dependent I’ve become on my very own direct connection to the internet, on the laptop’s ability to “sleep,” meaning that I can wake it up whenever, by popping open its lid and have it be “on” without the hassle of logging on, of sitting at a desk, of focussing in that particular way. The laptop allowed me to peek at the world in bits and pieces: flip the lid and take a look; oops, Mrs Peel, we’re needed — now I’m off to quell some emergency, leap a tall building, whatever; back to the machine, open the lid again and pick up where I left off, exactly there; join the others in the living room while they watch a dvd or read and be part of the “pack” even as I do something else, with laptop curled on top of my lap: handy dandy gadget, no doubt about it. I’m going to cheat today: I’ll just point to some amazing posts on Making Light. Lately I’ve been thinking about allegory — nothing too well-formed yet, just something prompted by some bad art chosen for a public monument here in Victoria, a work by Mowry Baden that strikes me as somehow provincial, even though it’s dressed in the guise of cutting edge modern. But really it’s allegorical in the worst way, meaning that in less than a decade you’ll need a guidebook to make sense of it, very unlike the amazing nominal Wall by Maya Lin, which works now and will work in the future without a guidebook. I’m trying to reason why I think Baden’s piece is crap, and instead I’m looking at pictures of saints, which is and isn’t helping. Because I’m blogging in 5 minute increments here, I haven’t had a chance for a really deep look at all the links in Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s Dueling Icons post, but who would have thunk that paintings of saints (and those persons considered saints) would compel a modernist’s or a post-modernist’s (what’s the difference?) imagination? After all, didn’t Patricia Barber paint the portrait of product in her song Company, a portrait that we’re all supposed to aspire to? for company I like lots of MTV stylish imagery, advised, connived, and contrived to take me far away from me I like a cell-phone conversation short enough to slip in the cracks of the call-waiting-generation I like a foreign film or two if that’s what everyone else likes to do for company (…) for company I like french philosophy deconstructive obscurity formalized, canonized, and dignified by the university I like a trendy indecision weightless enough to forget the forgetting of which nothing bears repetition I like an expensive aperitif if that’s what everyone else thinks is neat for company (copyright Patricia Barber, 1998) So what makes the pictures of saints work? It’s worth thinking about. Thank you Teresa for that pointer and your interesting (and funny) commentary. The other Making Light post a person might want to check out is this one about Creative Loafing and Weapons of Mass Stupidity. Take a look. Finally, briefly, I went online early this evening and — highly unusually — actually had more than one or two email messages. A couple were from these strange people claiming to speak German and claiming to be an uncle. May I make a suggestion? Instead of Wutjunge, how about Raser, with the article (der) added if desired? (Hmm, do you desire Rageboy’s article? Well, do you??) Der Raser (short “ah” sound, incidentally) gets rid of “boy,” has the “er” quality of napster or bobster or whatever, and implies rage as well as frenzy, good or bad. Frank Paynter has the interview, and the Dionysus of Blogdom is not saying uncle, unless it’s spelled with an F. And on that note, I’m off to bed.