UNDERGROUND!

This blog isn't unpopular.

It's under ground.

Oh yeah.

This bideo makes me happy.

No - actually the end is no good. But I love it.

I was searching for these words on the internet and I realized that nobody had ever written them out, except for the last line about "existentialization." Which is a good line. But there is something really nice and relaxing about this kind of techno-nonsense when it is not important that you understand it. It is kind of like listening to adults talk at a dinner party when you are a little kid and you don't get what they are talking about. The way I remember it, it wasn't always boring, sometimes it was really mysterious and interesting. Anyway, despite the complete nonsense words about plant types, coin collecting, and cell metabolism, this actually parses pretty well. It is type 1 nonsense - grammatical nonsense that gives the impression of lucidity. Type 2 nonsense is ungrammatical, does not parse, and gives the impression of opacity.

Isn't this great? It's almost like a prayer.

"(beep!) The unicellular power generator itself is filled with a series of maximum coils attenuated dicotyledonously. (beep!) In this same circuit there is an intaglio of numismatic krypton wavelengths which abrogate the hydromatic momeraths at the rate of five ventricle icons per microcataboly. The electromagnetic (beep!) console in this same area is synchronized to a pragmatic signal compiler by means of a sonar metabolic transducer for maximum data existentialization (beep!)..."

:0

Interpretation Check

Here's what I've been working on today.



I think this is just past the point of recognition. Take a guess - what is it? It will eventually be a part of the animation series that I am going to put together with the paintings from "Perceival" in that show "Artifact/Metafact" I'll be in in September in Queens if the world and I are still around then. "What is it?" being one of two basic pathways your brain uses to gather visual information. The other being "Where is it?" - which is much less exciting. This picture is in cyberspace. Everyone knows where cyberspace is.

CARDAMOM CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm cardamom crazy.

Good Song

This is a song that is good for still evenings.

In aa.nkho.n kii mastii

Weather on the Sun

Scientists at NASA, in the telecommunications industry, and climatologists are worried about the solar maximum, coming up somewhere between 2010 and 2014, but they have not been publicizing it in order to avoid freaking you out. Freaking out is what we do best here on synesthetic superscam. This may prove to be the biggest solar maximum in recent history, buffetting the earth with radiation, taking out satellites, power grids, spiking skin cancer rates, disrupting the environment, and potentially worsening the situation with Earth's degenerating magnetic field.

While we are currently at the solar minimum, today earth is flying through a very large solar flare. There is chance that you may be able to see the northern lights even if you are not very far north.

Here is my new favorite space weather site:

space weather\

Here is a website where you can listen to the songs that planets sing:

dread lion

Cat Bird

I was just listening to the excellent song "Christine" off Siouxsie and the Banshee's album Kaleidascope. The window was open because it's warm and the sun is shining, and the music was playing probably too loudly. And a cat bird started singing along to the song. It was quite clear that it was not just coincidence as the bird was only responding to the gtr part that plays during the chorus and was quiet during the verses. It was a simple two note call that echoed the pitch and rhythm of the gtr part exactly. I'm pretty sure that I've heard cat birds sing this way before, so I think it was responding to the music rather than imitating the music.

Here is one place you can hear the catbird sing:
catbird calls in NJ
But I don't hear the gtr part from Christine. I could be mistaken, it wouldn't be a first. But I saw it singing...

Oh - I was looking very hard at the forsythia and daffodils today and I didn't see any bees. Now, it is only partially sunny, so that might be why. So I will have to look on sunnier days. It was sunny last week and I didn't see any bees. I was outside a lot, but not seaching systematically. Then a few minutes after the cat bird incident a bee flew in the window. I had to help it find its way outside. I think the bees situation is terrifying. I don't mind if there is an apocalypse for humanity, but I don't want all flowering plants to disappear as well.

Here's that song we were talking about:

Christine

We love the part where she says:

Now she's in purple
Now she's a turtle
Disintigrating

That makes sense to us. Switching back and forth between fantasies is the same thing as dis-intigrating. Because reality is a fantastic construct, even everyday reality. And if the fantasy falls apart, so do you. Just wait until the very end when her voice starts to wash away. This is a spring song.

Quantum Mind

I have been reading a lot of books on quantum mechanics recently. I don't have the proper mathmatical background, so it is a lot of work, plus I am not terribly interested in early cosmological history (the big bang) or subatomic structures (string theory), and while I find extra dimensions conceptually interesting, I can't follow the math at all, and I don't want to misunderstand it as sci-fi or get discouraged, so I tend to avoid it.
Much of the quantum theory I'm most interested in has to do with the nature of consciousness - the so called "quantum mind" or "consciousness causes collapse" theories. I am interested in how the collapse of quantum superposition requires a conscious observer, and what the role of the mind is in decoherence. I have read about the role quantum tunnelling plays within synapses, but I am not sure if this mechanism has been proven. I do think that quantum physicists need to explain consciousness if it plays a role in the equasions that they use, and I am not convinced by any arguements to explain it away. It seems that because this is such a vague area, the research is not too focussed and some unscrupulous popular scientists are grasping at straws. I think that thought experiments like "Wigner's friend" are a useful way to highlight areas that need to be thought through, so perhaps the important first steps to uniting physics and consciousness studies can be taken by using a philosophical approach rather than a more traditional experimental approach, although any answer should be testable and falsifiable. I am not satisfied with Pan-Consciousness ideas, will-centered ideas, or traditional spiritual ideas either. I think the best idea around is that each quantum reaction is collapsed by a sort of loop with its equal yet opposite reaction, a loop which is closed in the mind, and which creates a unit of time perceived as moving fwd. This also addresses the question of how the illusion of time is created by the mind. But I don't understand it yet.
I just finished reading the book "The Physics of Consciousness" by Evan Harris Walker. A lot of these ideas come from there, but I am pretty skeptical of his approach. The book contains some amazing ideas, but sometimes they are not communicated clearly - either they are too math-based or they are incompletely explained. Plus there are often frustrating assumptions and
"gut feeling" kinds of statements. Despite all these things, I think this is the best effort I've seen at asking and answering some questions that religious, philosophical, and scientific thought sometimes avoids.
Anyway here is an online reading list that I have been going through. I'll keep you posted, but I don't plan on figuring it all out anytime soon. But it has been on my mind and is influencing the art projects I am considering. I have nothing smart to say with words.

Translation - Mehboob Mere!!!

Here is a faithful translation of the song Mehboob Mere from, um, whatever language it was in, to English.

MALE

Dollar doll manger bake ray, oh!
Kathy techno gagger nana jar bake ray



FEMALE

Mamboed melee!

Mamboed melee, mamboed melee

Terra anchor say mushy penne day

Catch dared hay melee scene mean

Mushy mast maraud mean jeans day


MALE

Ayah hole, oh hole, oh hole!



FEMALE

Mushy mast mast mushy mast mast

Mushy mast mast hen mast mast

Mushy mast mast hen mast mast

Hen mast mast mushy mast mast

Anchor mean cajole, pair on mean pay all
In adamant say main cartoon sob co Gaia all

Mamboed chi mambo tense

Sack kinder pair yeah cab be arse

Main terra dolphin banner co nuclei hone

Massage a dodge key guard say


Mamboed melee!

Mamboed melee, mamboed melee
Terra anchor say mushy penne day

Catch dared hay melee scene mean

Mushy mast maraud mean jeans day 


Mushy mast mast mushy mast mast

Mushy mast mast hand mast mast

Mushy mast mast mushy mast mast

Mushy mast mast hand mast mast

Mast mast mast mast mast mast mast mast mast mast



Yeah nasal homecare hay body chorally

Somehow vow jetsam jasper dill harem

Hand ashy cohabit choral to

Yeah pal nana terror age call co

A name le merry anchor see

Catch patio naming cyan ho call co


Mamboed melee!

Mamboed melee, mamboed melee
Terra anchor say mushy penne day

Catch dared hay melee scene mean

Mushy mast maraud mean jeans day


Mushy mast mast mushy mast mast

Mushy mast maraud mean jeans day

Hand mushy mast mast mushy mast mast

Mushy mast maraud mean jeans day ...

Learning to Fly

"Learning to Fly" by Tom Petty is an amazing song.
This promises to be a fairly stupid post.
I'm really into pop songs in which the melody is carried entirely by the voice, and where there is no production trickery to layer two vocal parts for one voice on top of one anther so it sounds like it is coming from some impossible fake parallel universe - that's not very realistic is it? When you are singing this kind of song you don't have to go "dun-dun-dun" or "zhrr zhrr zhrr" (fake gtr sounds). These songs are singing songs. They might actually sound good to someone who was listening, wheras songs where the melody is carried by an instrument, the sound is usually in your head, so when you are singing along it sounds stupid. Songs to sing when you are doing yardwork - or in the subway - the subway has the best singing environment because everybody can hear you, but nobody acknowledges it, and the screaming wheels give you a great noisy, harmonic environment. Some singalong songs are great songs to improvise around, writing your own melodies - I've been into doing Bollywoodesque vocals on American pop songs - amazing. Also good for this are the Beatles, the Pogues, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, etc. But "Learning to Fly" is a great song because it is so simple - the call and response.
Hint - if you are singing this song to your dog it's probably a good idea to sing the response in a kind of woofy-woof-dog voice so if someone were listening it might seem as though you were singing along with your dog - it would also be appropriate to sing the following lyrics:

I'm learning to woof
(learning to woof)
cause I'm a DOG
(learning to woof)
learning to woof
(learning to woof)
is the hardest thing
(learning to woof)
...

Note that this abandons the rhyme, but that loss is more than offset if you actually use the woof-dog accent.
I'd like to hear more about what songs people sing when they sing to themselves. What works? I want to expand my repetoire. And I wanna know why people don't sing singalong songs that much anymore. And why people don't dance when there is music playing - I was in Washington Square Park and I was feeling dancy, and there was nobody dancing. It made me want to move to a different country.
Anyway, you should really try singing "learning to woof." No seriously. Give it a shot.

In the meanwhere - here is a great song that has nothing to do with woof dogs:

Mehboob Mere

Breakfast

I ate some cerial for breakfast. Then when I was almost done I noticed that there were lots of little tiny ants floating in the milk. Half-alive ants. Looks like I had ants for breakfast! Whoops! But actually, they were not disagreeable, and I hear they have "lots" of protein, though I have trouble believing there was lots of anything in those little guys. Good ting I'm not a vegetarian tho...

MAJOR UPDATE!

Hard Core Dan has started his own lame blog, Hard Feelings!. I am hoping it will blossom into a beautiful flower of disgust.

self-archeology

I was digging around in the compost heap behind my parents house today and this is what I found in the dirt:













Archeology is usually a practice of studying dead people. Digging in the decaying leaves and detritus from the property, past tiny monstrous albino grubs and alien subterranean fungi, through my famiy's history back to the early eighties... It seems quite morbid, and I guess it is.
But it is good to have dirt on your hands. Because the reason people leave their homes and go "back to nature" is to find knowledge. Because our brain's superstructure evolved in the context of a world ruled by weather, evolution, and the periodic cycles of the planet, these things naturally click into genetically-determined paths - I guess it gives rise to the feeling that there are truthful metaphors or revealing analogies in nature. But it is just a click-fit.
Now, I know that some will say that there is no distinction between "nature" outside and the nature of the universe that governs all the physcal universe including office buildings, TVs, nuke bombs, chihuahuas, jolly-ranchers, etc. But they would be missing an important distinction between the world governed by simpler replicators (DNA) and our "artificial" world created by memes, the complex replicator we call our thoughts. The "artificial" world is the projection of mind onto the physical world. Not that mind is not governed by physics - I think it is, entirely. But that it is an order of magnitude more complicated where physical objects have a more subservient relationship to information. And, may I say, this new way is quickly destroying the old order. The eighties seem positively loamy compared to today.
And what of the nature of these people who threw away these things? Only that they not only created artifice, but consumed it. Year after year of sugary, artificially-colored, artificially-flavored plastic snacks in noisy, insistent, artificially-colored plastic wraps. Sugar like a drug, creating cheap tissue, fuelling hyperactive violent play. Disposable plastic dolls, armed to the teeth. These friendly mechanical horrors and disembodied fear-trinkets are the simulacra of our nighmares.
So it wasn't the dirt and decay that was morbid. It was the bits that refuse to decay.

Music that makes sense to me

I just noticed that nobody on the internet seems to have transcribed the lyrics to DAT politics "Turn My Brain Off" - which is one of the only songs with lyrics that really makes sense to me in a musical style that makes sense to me. I wanted to ask my loyal fans to help me - what does he say during the part "----" after "freaking obsessions" ??? It might be in French! Help me by listening to the mp3... No, it's not important. Incidentally, it is amazing how many words can be said in 2:30.

turnmybrainoff.mp3

la la la laa la la la la la laa
la la la laa la la la la la la laa
turn my brain off!
turn my brain off!
turn my brain off!
turn my brain off!
t t today - I think I have enough now
t t today - I think I have enough now
so can you please
turn my brain off!
oh can you please
turn my brain off!
it makes me say - I think I have enough now
it makes me say - I think I have enough now
so can you please
turn my brain off!
oh can you please
turn my brain off!
STOP
all the connections
freaking obsessions
---
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
oo oo oo oo
stop it now
oo oo oo oo
stop it now stop it now
t t today - I think I have enough now
t t today - I think I have enough now
so can you please
turn my brain off!
oh can you please
turn my brain off!
it makes me say - I think I have enough now
it makes me say - I think I have enough now
so can you please
turn my brain off!
oh can you please
turn my brain off!
STOP
all the connections
freaking obsessions
---
drive me out of my mind
STOP
oo oo oo oo
all the connections
oo oo oo oo
freaking obsessions
oo oo oo oo
---
drive me out of my mind
oo oo oo oo
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
drive me out of my mind
stop it now
drive me out of my mind
stop it now stop it now
oo oo oo oo
stop it stop it stop it now
oo oo oo oo
stop it stop it stop it now
oo oo oo oo
stop it stop it stop it now
oo oo oo oo
stop it stop it stop it now
oo oo oo oo
stop it
oo oo oo oo
stop it
oo oo oo oo
stop it
oo oo oo oo
stop it
now

Gotta go!

There are a lot of theories, but nobody really knows what's going on.

Italian Rice Pie Recipe for Easter

This sweet rice pie is a traditional Italian Easter treat (and it's vegetarian - sorry, no-limits-soldiers...). It's lemony! Mmm!

This is my grandmother's recipe with a few altercations.

9 eggs
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 lbs ricotta cheese - not the light kind - it's dessert!
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup uncooked white rice
2 1/2 lemons
cinnamon powder
cardamom powder
nutmeg powder

0. Pre-heat oven to 350 or 325 or something. 325. Oh and get the cream out so it's not cold - should be room temp or a li'l warmer (that's one of the "secrets").

1. The next "secret" is that you have to cook the rice until it's only half done. To prepare rice I always use two cups of agua to one cup rice, but for this recipe I use three or four cups, bring it to a boil, and then let it simmer on the lowest possible heat for about 10 mins. I then pour it in a colander to drain, wash it with cold water to stop the cooking, shake off as much excess water as possible, and quickly pour it into the batter (see below) to stop it from clumping. It should be a little hard but not crunchy - this is so the rice pie is firm, not mushy.

2. Batter - Use a pretty big bowl
First beat the eggs well. The eggs make the custard firm. Don't use 7, maybe 11 OK. It needs to be an odd #.
Put ricotta in a separate bowl and add the eggs slowly, mixing well (if you add the ricotta to the eggs it will be hard to get rid of the lumps).
Then add sugar and cream. Mix a mix a. Oh - I shook the cream in the carton for about 2 minutes cause I wanted it to get a little viscouser to help the rice float. I don't know if that made a difference, so next time I will shake it more. But it shouldn't be like whipped cream, that's for sure.
Oh and a dash or two of salt - depends on if the ricotta is salty or not.
Juice the lemons and grate the rind of two of them and add all that. Mmm - lemony!
Add a 1/4 teaspoon minus of cinnamon and a tiny pinch of nutmeg and cardamom (I actually add these to the sugar and mix it up beforehand because the powdered spice tends to clump together in the lipidy mix). Don't tell my grandmother that I use cardamom - it's an Indian spice, you know, the taste from Chai? That's another "secret," OK? Oh - it's real expensive, but you should have it cause it's real good for curries and in coffee (for true, try it). It's a MAO inhibitor though, so don't use too much. And you shouldn't use too much anyway cause it's a mega-spice like cloves or nutmeg and you only need a teeny bit.
Finally add the cooked rice (if you add it before all the mixing it will get mushy).
Some people use pineapple, but they will burn in hell.
Now everything's added, right? If I forgot anything, add it now.

3. Put the batter in a big rectangle pan. The finished pie will be like 2 inches deep, so think about that. Maybe 14 inches by nine or so? As always with cakes and bread, thin aluminum is best because it doesn't have a high heat capacity like iron, glass or ceramic. Those things will make the bottoms and sides cook faster than the middle and maybe get too hard cause of physics. That's my theory. Oh, then, so it's in right? Sprinkle cinnamon all on top so it's all cinnamony - not a full coat or anything, just a sprinkling everywhere.

4. It cooks for an hour maybe, but sometimes less, sometimes more especially if you didn't listen to me and used cold cream which will make the middle cook slow - I know cause I did it that way once. The way you know it's done is this old trick - you stick in a knife, into the middle not the side, and pull it out. It shouldn't have batter on it. It won't be dry - it'll have water or something on it cause it's not a cake, but it shouldn't have white battery stuff on it. Then it's done and you should take it out and put it in a cool place.

5. It gets served cold so keep it in the fridge and it really makes sense to make a day early cause of that. Oh and it gets cut up into 2 by 2 inch squares and you can eat it with your fingers. If it's too custardy for that then you did it wrong and that's not my fault. It's really good though.

Is that entirely clear?

New Pictocracy

Three posts in a row! That's cause I'm kind of hyper.

Like I was saying, I worked all day on this animation and I think I figured out how to make videos look good on YouTube. Here it is:



Please go to the YouTube page to watch it and comment there...

Searching for sentences on Google

I searched for some sentences from my last entry.

***

I'm like that all the time... which is so not true. I am really quite happy right now. I have amazing friends that continually teach me about the great big thing called life. And he tosses the pizza into the trash can, which was getting rather full that day.

"Well, Babuie,That's what I've been thinking about," says Babette.

"Well stop thinking! Get out of here and leave me alone."

My friends and family know that I have this quirky habit on road trips—I love holding my breath to pass the time. On a recent trip I held my breath for 2 ½ miles! As more people think in the world, the collective vocabulary of the world goes up and this is what increases our ability to think more clearly.

So what is the point of all this thinking clearly, you may ask. I leave you with a thought that Blaise Pascal recorded: “Working hard to think clearly is the beginning of moral conduct.”

***

I honestly feel like that little experiment worked out. I think these "example sentences" express what I was thinking better than the last post did... What do you think?

The workers are human too!

I am really quite happy right now. I finally figured out how to make my videos look super-hot on YouTube. I've been trying to get it right for months, and after working all day for like 4 days on these animations, I finally figured it out. The problem was the compression. YouTube has this awful flash compresion which ruins everything. Anyway, part of the deal is to compress it as a Jpeg photo out - which makes a huge file with more info. You also have to de-interlace it (which is pretty technical, but tvs actually show images as two series of tiny horizontal stripes and you have to use a program to throw half away and fill in the black gaps). But the deepest secret is that although YouTube claims to be 320x240, it is actually 425x318.

There.

Now, that information has been what has actually been on my mind for days. It took forever to figue out, and now it's just sitting on this block like a puddle in the sun. The distance theory...

Funny how telling secrets is. Maybe that's what I'm talking about here...

No, but I'm not joking. That's what I've been thinking about... And there were a few flashes of inspiration today. I could tell you how thrilled I was, but if I explained what I was thinking, I would... I don't know. My fingers would get ground down.

Sometimes I remember why I became an artist and not a writer. It's because my mind falls down the drain too easily. By which I mean I grasp at a thousand flying, flashing diamonds and come out empty handed. But with stuff attached - paper, pencils, pens, paint, cloth, wire, wood, saws, knives, hammers, pliers, nails, tacks... - then the drain gets clogged and the pool is still. I can swim well. How I love the cool blue - diving down in the deep end to thirteen feet. How long can you hold your breath? I can for more than two laps. For more than two minutes. I love holding my breath. And I love the stuff I use to make art because it is so beautiful and I don't want to hold my breath ever for more than five minutes.

That and I can't spell.

What is the point of all this thinking? Why am I so addicted to reading about shit and talking about shit? Cause that's what it is. Will I ever be still again? Will there ever be some kind of time-out?

If there is, I might explode afterword.

Putty in my hands...
Voodoo voodoo voodoo!
Paint-by-numbers propoganda
Fame Is Magic!!!

FUCK YOU, NEXUS!

Penguin Club - Park

In Sangenjaya, Tokyo there is a store called "Fujiyama Records." It is on an eliptical orbit that only crosses the Earth's plane on strange days, following a kind of alchemical calendar, or, astronauts at the speed of light touch down on a strangely barren future world. You know. It's a magical place. By which I mean it is a lot of work, is slightly poisonous, and is death to disney. Most of the time there's just an old and very shuttered shack behind a vegetable store on a three-cornered block with four corners. It's far away from the subway and the streetlight is cold. Except when it's open. I can't tell you about what is inside.
Here's a CD I bought there. It didn't have a sleeve, just the CD - "Penguin Club - Park."
I remember recording this. It was not actually as late at night as it sounds. I know I sound funny - I was pretty young and... it was a strange day. Sound is - Dark new wave? Dark bedroom? Light bedroom?
Don't try to look this one up. You have no idea how many Penguin Clubs there are.
Penguin Club - Park
Oh yeah, Fujiyama has a website:
Fujiyama Records.
Other posts in my on-going yet poorly-attended mp3 series:
The Buttmops
80's music from Japan

Passed Over?

I'm still waiting for Columbia to get back to me. At this point I don't care if it's accept or reject. I just want the letter to come. Or the email or call. Or homing pigeon. Whatever. I can't sleep good.

I have been hard at work on this simple "Pictocracy" project - making more animations. Its a good project for me because now that I have done the first one the others are relatively fast and simple - a good way to burn time. I have been pleased with the comments - I actually was surprised that everyone has been so orderly - everyone answered with a numbered list - not something I had anticipated. I guess this is a product of American school culture - still pretty rigid despite all the hoopla about fostering creativity (schools don't foster creativity - remember? School?). Not that they don't try. But I guess I can use those years of military-type conditioning to my advantage. This in the same vein as what TCD was saying on the EPN about new genres - creative restriction as a kind of freedom. These thoughts are interesting but dangerous. I want to make it clear that what I am doing is a reaction to a condition that is present in society, not an ideal for society. I am for freedom, but I don't really know what I mean by that. Needs more thought.

I guess the EPN is on spring break or something. Or maybe I just killed it by posting too much. Or maybe "pictocracy" is the greatest artwork ever made and everyone realized there is simply nothing more to say. I'm sure that's it. Anyway, I'm going to finish up a few more of these and then send out some invitations to participate. I never learn that those things never work out. But it pays to keep trying.

PICTOCRACY beta

I put the first Pictocracy video up on YouTube. There are still some problems (as discussed on EPN). Anyway, don't watch it here, watch it on YouTube:

PICTOCRACY beta