Saturday, February 4, 2012

Plain-winged Antwren

I remember a renowned theorist in artificial intelligence that spoke of being nearly capable of understanding (reducing) himself to a series of impulses with which he was in a state of continuous reaction; "But what's the fun in that?" was the part of the quote that I'd liked quite a bit (said with a mouthful of cake before or after a Rush concert {based on the new t-shirts he and his genius colleagues were all wearing tucked neatly into pleated kahakis [which I don't hate]}):
I don't know why I like or even remember quite the first time I heard of Zdeněk Burian, but I know that Zdeněk Burian is the reason I like some particular other things. I thought of this because I'd seen his name alongside Frank Frazetta in the same sentence (which is something I myself hadn't ever done). These names are deep-seated buttons in my brain that date way back. It was around the same time they started to keep catching my eye I stumbled across copies of The Savage Sword of Conan as drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. It was more like a newspaper folded in half than a regular old comic (plus it was in black & white) so it seemed important and serious, this being before I ever knew that each and every issue was bound to have an alluring cheesecake pin-up of some gorgeous and exotic sorceress in repose and one elaborately graphic kill-scene involving a random rotation of demonic swine and killer man-apes (often on the same page): as a youthful pre-pubescent with the rumbling tornado of lust and violence yet but just arriving on the horizon of my motivations, these comics were my shit. I'm not going to link to that, but here's some old-school Chinese opera masks.
Why just paint towns red?


I prefer my abandoned facilities to be more overgrown with weeds and whatnot.


This dude paints goldfish all down in the water and shit.


This page is in Spanish and I dread automatic translation.


These paintings make me think of and miss you.


These pictures are of boys before and after fights. Boys fight. I kind of think a handful of bloody noses balances out against the deeply-set life-long body-image issues I've seen you ladies lay into each other. I have sisters.


Goodness this is a lot of cigarette cards,


triptychs


One of the cases that began to chip away at the miscegenation laws was Loving versus something-or-other.


Parisian prostitutes make me think of Henry Miller and how he'd rented time with one using money he'd have been better off using for food and thinking, while watching her dress and get ready, that she was some sort of earth-mother-goddess reason-for-all-of-it. Inevitably from there it's on to Fellini and his statuesque Roman whores whom I love.


This Russian grandma was living with nothing for forever then some people found her and gave her a bunch of stuff.


RTP TV: