bjournal

The weirdness is strong with this one. David Bowie is set to play Nikola Tesla in a movie directed by Christopher Nolan, the same guy who wrote and directed Memento and Following.

Hmmnn…

Aug 31^st

²⁰⁰⁶

Musca et Malus Domestica

Fairly common fly
on green garden apple,
shortly after sunrise.

Aug 30^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Craving Sunrise

Here's a short story I wrote for a thingy over at The Mimosa Effect.

Aug 28^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Newest Member of our Clan

Myrtle, the Red Ear Slider. She's 200 million years old, and cute as a button.

Aug 28^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Apples in the Rain
I

Aug 27^th

²⁰⁰⁶

The Map is Not the Territory

I don't like maps that look nothing like the territory. Right from the Dewy Decimal System to my employee number.

I kind of get alphabetical order, but everything else makes me anxious. I think that might be because alphabetizing is so close to words. You know, dealing with letters and all…

A fear came over me and I broke out in a fine, prickling sweat. In my hands, I held what for all the world looked like a stylized Paris subway map. Stylized by someone who really liked greyscale. Somewhere therein I was supposed to divine what I was to be doing for the next nine soulless hours.

A timely-yet-brief reprieve came in the form of an urgent and unscheduled task. It was a non-nebulous directive to grab a thousand mixed widgets and haul them to another place and un-mix them.

Stop me if I get too technical. And forgive me my spelling and grammer (I am so freaking tired).

I like performing tasks like designing web pages or taking odd photos at weddings and parties. What I don't like is having to search down three Superior Drones in order to find out what I'm supposed to do next. This would be due to the aforementioned Venn diagram / map of what I'm frikkin' supposed to be doing. Apparently, clerically - up in the offices - it all makes sense. This would mostly be due to these folks' distance from their own actual stock-and-trade.

So, I go around all day, with every single task being transmitted to me verbally:

"I want you to fabcon the stockover near the new poles in sector nine. You'll prolly wanna grab some K-29's and another guy. Do you know Ray? He's working over in 68. New 68, not old 68 - near RTFA. Oh, and those have to be Billy Sixed with today's date and Skew."

Or graphically:

I feel illiterate.

Aug 26^th

²⁰⁰⁶

I find it interesting that, in America - the United States thereof - you can be deported even if you are already a U.S. citizen.

Best way to get rid of your criminal underclass? Expel them, even if they hail from the home of the Big Mac in the first place.

Aug 24^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Go Teem

I thought I'd write something about my new gig as a drone in sector six. The project that I and many other numbers have been tasked with involves completely re-tooling one of those big faceless box-stores - while it's still open.

The company itself I will not mention, for fear of corporate assassination. That said, the business' name is one of those that sounds nationalized, but isn't.

As for the task of changing the location of every single item in a store while customers attempt to find said items is entertaining beyond the pale. It is rather like taking apart and reassembling an airplane whilst it is en rout from Gander International to John Lennon Airport (i.e. inadvisable at best, suicidal at most.)

And it's a big plane… er, store. The giant box is a half-mile long by a quarter mile deep. I once looked up and counted the incandescent lights that hang amongst the weather-harboring altitude of the store rafters. Conservatively, if each one of those football-sized bulbs cost $100.oo, then there are about $30000.oo worth of big ideas up there. I overheard a mid-level functionary in sector H talking, and it seems that the new owner (of the Meglo-Store) wants to replace all of the bulbs. I would like to be around to see that happen. Not even the local fire department has a ladder-truck that can reach that high. The company will need to find a number of electricians that have also spent time in Cirque du Soleil.

Tell me again why the ceiling has to be 60 feet higher than the absolute tallest thing in the store?

If the bulb replacement goes off like an aerial ballet, it will certainly be an improvement over what's happening below. On the ground, things are more akin to a demolition derby. Personally, my body is covered with contusions, scrapes, cuts, one gash, and various "bruises of the rainbow". This gives me sort of an international flavour, as I have every possible human skin-tone located somewhere on my body.

Meanwhile, like I said - poor customers try to find "Isle 23", while walking around in an environment that looks like it's recently been redecorated by Hezbolah and the IDF. Isle 23 you say?… well, it's no longer between Isles 22 and 24. In fact, Isle 23 is presently being manhandled by a couple of errant drones from sector F. It's heading south at a steady three miles an hour (only to be placed between Isles 74 and 75, where the poor sods who dragged it there will be told that: 1) it is the wrong isle, b) all of the products from Isle 23 are now discontinued, iii) the isle should in fact have been dragged a quarter mile northwest and abandoned in sector Zed Plural Zed Alpha [so that some other mid-level functionary can order his or her drones to get rid of it in someone else's zone.]

Problem solving in this elete force seems to focus on the adage that "there are no problems, just opportunities to make problems for someone else".

More later, if I'm not crushed by something.

Aug 21^st

²⁰⁰⁶

Dolphins blow rings too…

Aug 19^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Mt. Etna is blowing 200m smoke-rings (story by BBC) that drift up to 1000m into the sky. I find this very cool.

Aug 18^th

²⁰⁰⁶

They all Laughed at Christopher Columbus...

(They were Artists, Then.)

We were rapacious and crude, in 1492.

How did we win the west? Let me count the ways. With disease and greed. Okay, now that's two.

That's the year that pantalooned brigands found a continent almost empty. By that time, disease had traveled north faster than the Spanish ever could.

Nine in ten humans north of Mexico had died by then.

Those discoverers of the new world found standing farms; log homes with corn drying in the rafters. Sure, there were great wars against the "Indians" in those early years, but those people the sea pirates met were only ghosts of fading cultures. They were already dead.

We just helped a lot.

Cheating, robbing, killing - you know - the standard stuff.

Potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur work in here somewhere too.

But, I think, their very best weapon was the shear awesomeness of their heartless greed.

Whether it was killing an entire people, species, flock or plant - it must have been jaw dropping to watch someone end something so completely.

They were artists, then.

- to end it so completely.

Aug 16^th

²⁰⁰⁶

12:09 am

Aug 15^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Serendipity doing Her Thing Again

There are several things in this photograph that I really dig, but are so completely not my fault.

For example:

Aug 12^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Found in the Background

I've gotten a bit of a bug for night photography lately. Maybe it's because the days have let off and the nights have cooled down.

So, early last night, camera and tripod in hand, I sauntered into the back yard. It was my intention to take some time-lapse shots of our back-yard fountain (otherwise known as "The Puking Gargoyle"). The exposures I took ended up being long enough to provide okay light, but not long enough to impart that ethereal look I was going for. What I got out of it was a number of blurry shots of a blurry gargoyle spewing water into a blurry pond - blurredly.

As I looked over the photos (one-last-time before assigning them to oblivion) I noticed that I'd caught some action that I thought had actually happened later-on that evening. These next two images are the cropped upper-right corners of the last two gargoyle photos. This action happened "way down at the end of the street" and I wasn't focusing on it - plus, they are short time exposures.

Anyway, it's funny what you find in the background...

This first one is the blurrier of the two. This is on account of the time-exposure and the folks in the situation's apparent agitation. (They're moving around).

In the second shot, we can clearly see a member of the constabulary interacting with a citizen.

I think they're less blurry because they seem to have defused the anxiety of the situation. (They've stopped moving around). Also, I think I bumped the tripod on the first one. I mean there's blurry then there's blurry...

Here's a slightly more accurate depiction of the actual light level and distance. I had, by this moment, noticed the two cruisers (with lights strobing) that were parked directly in my line of sight. Tilting the tripod rig up slightly, I snapped one with the cars being the actual subjects of the shot.

I eventually packed up the tripod and moved closer. I made my way through a couple of backyards and re-deployed the rig (shooting police with a flash, at night, at a crime-scene didn't seem prudent). When I was ready to shoot again, the vehicles were revving-up, as if preparing to pull away. The single shot I was able to get off only caught the spectral trails of their receding taillights.

Aug 11^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Almost an Album Cover

Rest and motion.

I see inner and outer album-cover sleeves here…

Aug 7^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Quartet Dancing in the Park

After dark, we took some pictures in the park...

Aug 7^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Babyglow

Shortly before midnight last night, my good lady asked me if I would like to go for a walk.

I said yes.

Somewhere along the way, we found some of the nicest shots I've taken in a long while.

I'll post more as I fall in love with them.

Aug 6^th

²⁰⁰⁶

An Electric Beetle

This one came to me in a dream. Subsequently, it's buried itself at the base of my skull and it won't leave. Rather a bit of disagreement there.

There's so much time put into it (no it's not all bloody done with bleedin' filters) that I've decided to put the little guy on his own shirt.

Either that, or it might just be the bug making me do things again.

Aug 5^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Cars Hiss By My Window

Windows started tremblin'
With a sonic boom
Windows started tremblin'
With a sonic boom... boom

A cold girl'll kill you
In a darkened room...

(Seven-second exposure taken at midnight with wind, rain, and a car driving through it.)

Aug 4^th

²⁰⁰⁶

Space Junk

Or more accurately, "Junk as seen From Space".

Perhaps, most precisely, this would be Kelford's Junkyard as seen from space. Either that, or someplace with the world's worst valet parking.

I like all the little points of colour. Too many satellite surveillance photos lack colour these days.

(Special thanks to WorldStar NavTrace and Global Powerdyne Acquisitions)

Aug 3^rd

²⁰⁰⁶

You Can See it From Space

This last weekend, my good lady and I visited my old homestead. It was thus that I had occasion to find myself in a graveyard with my Mom. It's not as if this was a regular Mom-and-son thing, it's just that when I'm visiting, she has someone to carry the watering can.

We go out in these instances to tend the flowers that Mom's planted at the graves of my father, grandfather, and grandmother.

Malcolm, Len, and Grace.

It was also hellaciously hot. Come to think of it, most of my trips to cemeteries have fallen on scorching-hot days.

I wonder if this means something.

In any event, while we were watering the flowers, I noticed that what had been a quaint-historic graveyard was now loomed over by a giant box-store. I generally don't have any negative feelings toward Homehardware, but - man, this thing was monolithic. What had been a kind of Lothlorien with headstones was now just a place next to a gigundous box-store. It used to seem that the peace and wilderness went on forever. Now, from my grandfathers' grave, I see a gigantic corrugated-metal cliff-face, emblazoned with illuminated letters. They are, large, orange, and proclaim "We've Got Lumber!"

Upon reflection, I think maybe I'm more concerned about this epiphany I'm having concerning my life's cemetery trips and devilishly hot days.

Anyway, after poking-about and making sure that our various plants got a drink, I had some water left in the watering can - so I set off looking for drooping flowers on any other grave. This is when I realized that all of the other flowers on the other monuments were fake. They were made of paper, plastic and some of nice fabric - but none of them were real.

It was very hot and all manner of humid, I found myself in some kind of existential Twilight Zone episode, and my Mother was wondering why I was giggling.

But, then again, I'm on medication.

Aug 2^nd

²⁰⁰⁶

Email: mark@magpiedesign.net

I'm always glad to hear from you.

[Back]

Magpie Design offers a wide variety out-of-the-ordinary photographic prints and posters as well as impressionistic fine art and irreverent apparel (oddly funny t shirts).
fine art, posters, prints, photography, abstract, impressionistic, t-shirts, shirts, t shirts, humour, humor, funny, political, satire, Peterborough, Mark Harrison ,peace, psychedic, inspirational, irreverent, graphic design, American, Canadian, Ontario