The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Damien Hirst. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Hirst

David Falconer. Vermin Death Stack; Vermin Death Star
http://www.artnet.com/artist/693649/david-falconer.html

Jake and Dions Chapman – Hell. The Chapman Family Collection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_and_Dinos_Chapman

Peter Davies. The Hot One Hundred.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/peter_davies_hot_one_hundred.htm

Tracy Emin. I’ve Got it All.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracey_Emin

In the beginning, one must assume that there was nothing — no matter, no energy, no time — Tohu v’Bohu. Formless. And Void. But there was an Egg. An Egg of Infinite (Nearly) Potential. And the Egg’s name was named Ananke. And then — let us suppose — there was something — Genesis describes it as the spirit of God, moving across the Deep — modern science might designate it as random repeating pseudoquantum fluctuations — some sort of bubbling — a frothiness — and in the strange nonlight of the Egg, within its structure, where all things are possible and time was without meaning, the most unlikely of events become possible through the calculating potential of an Unlimited and Unlimiting Present.

And thus the world was born — with Egg and the Spirit mingling and tearing itself apart — like a wound in God’s side. One imagines that some part of this diety is deeply disturbed by this wound, and wishes nothing more than for it to close. Is there another part that keeps the wound open? Like mighty hands pushing aside the waters of a fiercely flowing river to uncover a bed of dry land? This river — raging on either side of this fragile temperate voidspace is the Storm.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/02/the-diggers.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/27/reengineering-fundam.html

Behind the scenes of a party, a real knockdown, loads of conspicuous consumption, every one in their finest suits and smartest dresses, elegant and fashionable in this second fin-de-seicle, band playing w/ horns, people dancing and drinking and standing around in wide welcoming circles, behind the scenes the paterfamilias, the owner of all of this is, is meeting with his confidantes  and heirs and dealing with a terribly unpleasant unwinding, a mass deleveraging, a coming together — a bad decision, a less of two evils, is about to get made, and paterfamilias is going to have to make it. The soiree’s ironic juxtaposition is not lost on him — the money spent out there, the money at stake in here, in this sumptuously adorned office, a home office, full of trinkets and trophies, the trappings of his kingdom. A decision. You wait until the last minute and then you jump — being early is the same as being wrong. Well, this was it. It was time to jump.

Our minds process information in layers — sifting and subconciously interpreting, linking the data of perception into preexisting schema — how do we learn to talk? imitation? but how do we learn to think? A tree, standing before us and bouncing the light rays back into our eyes, perhaps resisting the press of our appendages and thereby demonstrating its matter and assumed persistence — exists on many levels as the light in our eyes and the nerve signals in our skin send information back up to our cerebral cortex — once there this information passes through a mysterious gate, out of the world of science-as-we-know-it and into the world of theory. Do we think in English? How much? The Tree before is a tree — compared to every other tree we’ve ever seen — compared to the picture of a tree we saw/read in a kindergarden primer — the Tree is its strange multiplicity of trunk and brances and leaves — but it is also a simplification, a green circle on a brown stem. We see a Tree — and we see a Treehouse. We see the Trees we played in in our childhood — thin trees in Zayde’s back yard (named by me, the Namer, the Jungle), tree I climbed on in the special kindergarden playground, A great massive canopy tree at an Arboretum – a secret fastness, a great lone tree named the Computer for our imagination games by my friend, three trees growing out of one structure at the far end of an elementary school playground, the farthest edge of the school’s authority — the tall trees that ringed that playground, blocking the road and serving as both darkness and boundary, the palm trees of Florida, the Redwoods of California — this is my personal history of trees, all summoned up and competing with the Tree I look at (which I’m not looking at, I’m in my room) — and other trees — a bad poem about a tree, learned of on Jeopardy, the Trees of Life and Knowledge in the First Garden, paper, lumberjacks, bonsai trees — all clustered around the simple data perception, crowding it out, especially as I commuicate it to you or, in this case, only pretend to see it — so even here, at the very bottom, a tree is not just a tree. The word, the thought, the concept, the sign — so much more already.

How much more so than a word like society, or love, or future.

The sky was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
— William Gibson, Neuromancer

a running list

– Intention(s)

– Time

– Scarlilock Mums

– Change

Subjective Film-making. Doesn’t matter what drug you’re taking: Anything can be a drug. Ellen Burstyn: addicted to this dream, food, television, anxiety pills which the doctors give her. With Pi, one actor hanging out with for the entire time. Hip-hop sensibility, quick cuts, samples, show the subjectivity. Pi, the obsessive compulsive turning of locks. — Fall is Green. Summer is Yellow. Winter is Blue. The Journey you’re going on. 20 second love scene >> 4 hours of filming. The montage of drug taking (sounds in the background, ending with the wide eye). He is an intensely creative director. Clearly has a tragic disposition. Like him, I believe that Life is Tragic. Is this what we like about Tragedy? The Sacred Resonance between the actions on the stage and the pattern of our Lives? Does Postmodernism have room for Tragedy? Clearly — Beckett’s Endgame. Requiem. Postmodern is very often very tragical — since it lends itself to an intense exploration of the Trapped — of the Rats in the Maze — of the Confusion.

Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893). Spoiler: It’s a vegetable.