fallen verses

More interesting bio-art(?) is available (in japanese) here, but this site, has an english description.

And, in the realm of “I just don’t know”: Genpets.

I’ve found the image that should be my christmas card this year.

A particularly vile islamic creationsist, “said to be responsible for blocking all Wordpress.com blogs in Turkey, in an attempt to block critics from posting on their blogs. He has also been accused of pedophile acts, blackmail and slander, and leading a sect under the guise of the Science Research Foundation which he heads.”

Wordpress has a couple of posts about this. PZ Myers has a post on this, and has commented about this nutjob before.

Ed Darrell has a pretty good post on this too.

Adnan Oktar, YOU ARE A DEMENTED FUCKWIT.

Abstract
What can you do with a million images? In this paper we present a new image completion algorithm powered by a huge database of photographs gathered from the Web. The algorithm patches up holes in images by finding similar image regions in the database that are not only seamless but also semantically valid.

Wow. That might be enough to make my meager photography skills respectable. More info here.

I have photos instead
Of memories.
I keep looking through my albums-
Thousands of images
And not a single story.
I wonder who I am.-Squaretraveler

Yesterday, I listened to this podcast on IndieFeed. Mongo interviewed Bob Holman, and Bob Holman was talking about a collaborator of his who is a follower of oral tradition, not literary. Since I lack any useful knowledge about the specific person or culture involved, I’m not going to attempt to describe any of it, and just continue with my post. Ultimately, he was talking about how the oral tradition had a different view of stories and how stories were “true,” and that it was at odds with the literary culture of the west, where truth is literal, factual. He seemed to say that this oral tradition had truth in meaning but was willing to be less dependent upon facts. While I have little knowledge, this seems to be in line with things I’ve heard about other cultures with stronger oral traditions than we have. While catching up on last weeks Poetry Thursday posts, I came across Squaretraveler’s blog (which seems pretty good), with the poem I quoted above (not the whole poem, I only quoted the very beginning). I think the sentiment expressed is continuing on the spectrum of the literary tradition. We no longer accumulate stories, just facts: some day, some place, sunny or not, smiling in front of a monument we haven’t taken the time to understand. When it comes down to it, though, all we are, as people, is the story we continually write or tell about ourselves.

Well, I do prefer Bach or Debussy, but…

Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom? …n/m it’s a pirate’s life for me!

No, not a review of any Pirates of the Carribean movie, soundtrack, action figure or fansite. A poem:

Cutlass

She said my tongue left her weak,
but only when it was a vehicle
for my voice.
We didn’t have a sexual relationship.
in any normal sense of those words.
That sweetness was reserved for imagination;
the tart reality involved reservation.
Based on history,
it seemed a fetish of mine:
the object of inspiration
and subject of smooth-tongued alliteration
was someone I would never taste.
And yet,
like a pirate’s treasure in some hidden cove,
I know there is a map
that would lead past the half-truths of language,
and let me plunder your mind.
I would take a single piece of eight
and leave, in its place, this poem.

Does anyone dream of electric sheep?

Pure Pedantry led me to an article in the New Yorker about Phillip K. Dick. The article led me to watching BladeRunner. That led to writing the poem below. This was last night when wordpress decided to eat posts (get the servers a snickers bar, I say) but apparently ate its fill.

Running on the Blade’s Edge

you are walking in the desert
a tortoise on its back
baking
withdrawal is an inappropriate response
when life is on the line

“Let’s go to the off-world colonies!”

The sky leads to the pretty ones,
but nothing is ever as it seems
within pyramids
emotions are falsified
deception is unknowingly supplied

the fall of twilight is accompanied by chimes
even the truth is a lie
“More human than human”
then can we be replaced?

mythical creatures, such as unicorns,
are figments of multiple minds

Your existence has been declared
illegal
withdrawal is an inappropriate response
when life is on the line