My Silent Shadowlife

A gallery of silent stars: flappers, vamps, clowns, and virgins.

charles ray

They should make a spoof of the movie Ray and call it Charles and base it on the life of Charles Ray, one of my favorite sculptors alongside Auguste Rodin, famous for his sculptures of eight feet tall women and families of four. Of course my favorite is the lifesize firetruck he made out of aluminum and plexiglass and parked outside the Whitney. Maybe there is something noble, or at least aristocratic, in art made to be deliberately ineffectual.

heat vision and jack

Apparently Ben Stiller directed a failed sitcom for Fox called Heat Vision and Jack. It starred Jack Black as a astronaut and Owen Wilson did the voice for his motorcycle.

I watched four hours of Brideshead Revisited today. Sebastian is in a bad way. Charles is too of course, but his affliction is of a more transient nature. He will soon become involved with Julia. I look forward to the last tape, when Lord Marchmain dies. The passages in the book that deal with his death are really remarkable.

Barack Obama

Hero Hawk? Dawn Treader?--here's a link to Obama's convention speech and an article from some periodical called the Black Commentator.

Q Lazzarus

Maybe this is a little 2004--the text is not really of interest but the pictures of Q Lazzarus are cool. And if you haven't heard the song you're really missing something special.

I miss Dillingham

The current temperature in Dillingham is 10 degress F, with the windchill at -4, in case anyone is interested. Here are some pictures of the town of 2,000 people with two bars where I spent three-and-half months living and working. May I direct your attention particularly to the Dillingham Hotel, known locally as the Dillingham Jail. I spent my first, disoriented week sleeping on a stiff bed in one of the Dillingham Jail's wood-paneled rooms. I slept well but poor Alice one room down was kept up all night by singing and dancing; villagers staying directly below her, spending their dividend and welfare checks on booze and the $100 room fee. I never figured out the peculiarly Alaskan style of money-management.

Noam

A ton of stuff from Chomsky here. What a valuable source of information. I hope he keeps his door locked at night.



What is it about the computer that gives one such a headache?

LINCOS (lingua cosmica)

Here's an interesting article on LINCOS, the language invented by a German scientist in the early 1960's to communicate with intelligent lifeforms on other planets. Lincos fits into the history of interstellar communication and perfect language theory. Also provides an interesting ars poetica. See also ASTRAGLOSSA.