New Orleans police officer shot during robbery www.privateofficer.com

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New Orleans LA Feb 25 2013 The shooting of NOPD officer John Passaro as he responded to an armed robbery report Saturday reminded the men and women of area law enforcement agencies of the dangers they face every day. Over the past year, at least seven local cops have been shot -- two fatally -- and one was run over by a car.
"It's all of our worst fears," said Capt. George Bonnett, a spokesman for the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office. "The thoughts and prayers of our entire agency go out to officer John Passaro, his family and all the men and women of the New Orleans Police Department."
In just seconds, everything can change for police. Just moments before he was shot Saturday, Passaro sounded "happy-go-lucky, jovial," on the police radio, according to Bryan Lagarde, a former NOPD officer and director of ProjectNOLA, who listened to the radio traffic. "It was a seemingly routine call, but all hell broke loose."
Two NOPD officers were critically wounded when they were shot early March 1, 2012, during a traffic stop near Delgado Community College. Police said Justin Sipp fired 14 times at officers Tony Mayfield and Michael Asevedo; both were struck in the torso. Sipp was killed by return gunfire.
On Aug. 16, 2012, a group of people associated with the "Sovereign Citizens," a group on a federal domestic terrorism watch list, shot four St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office deputies. Deputies Brandon Nielsen and Jeremy Triche were killed; Michael Boyington and Jason Triche were wounded.
In a separate incident, NOPD officer Karla Baker was hospitalized after a suspect ran her over during a traffic stop in eastern New Orleans on Dec. 9, 2012. The incident was the second time Baker had been run over on the job.
In the early hours of Jan. 27, NOPD Sgt. Sidney Jackson was shot in the thigh by a mentally ill suspect while responding to a disturbance at an eastern New Orleans convenience store. Police said 41-year-old Damon Jones managed to grab Jackson's holstered gun even though he was handcuffed at the time.
After incidents such as these, the law enforcement community often rallies around one another, appreciative of the ultimate sacrifice they each could encounter at the next call for service.
On his Facebook page, Passaro wrote many posts showcasing such appreciation.
Following Hurricane Isaac, Passaro, who lives in Slidell, wrote: "I would like to thank the Slidell PD, Slidell fire dept. and EMS, while I was away protecting and serving other peoples families and friends, you were protecting mine ... thanks guys."
On Sept. 11, he posted a photograph of New York firefighters hoisting an American flag at Ground Zero and wrote: "Honor them ... Never forget!!!"
On May 28, Passaro wrote next to a photograph of an Army memorial: "For your service and sacrifice ... I thank you."

Following the St. John shootings, Passaro posted a poem on Aug. 22 that read, in part: "'In the line of duty,' I hear them say/ My family now the price to pay."
"Thank you for your service," Passaro wrote. "Rest in peace, we got it from here."

Source:NOLA

Constantino's Market Downtown

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It's easy to believe there's no grocery stores in downtown Cleveland if  you don't know what you're looking for, but Constantino's Market is definitely there, at 1278 W 9th St.
On the plus side, they have a lot of local grocery, they're family owned, and the quality of the food is very good. The downside is the price- but what would you expect from a grocery store with no competition? If you want groceries without having to drive out of downtown, you probably have to hit Constantino's.
The popular consensus is that it's good for the prepared foods, but the staples just aren't worth it to buy there.

Mama Santa's - Little Italy

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People in Cleveland think that the Little Italy area is lovely and romantic, but having lived there for three years, I think it's kind of overpriced and bigoted. There's definitely a dark side to Little Italy, including but not limited to a racist mob and some super gentrification going on.

Most of the restaurants in Little Italy are overpriced and vermin-infested. One of the cheaper places to get something to eat is Mama Santa's; and it's where we got pizza from while we were in college.

I went with my friend to Mama Santa's for a walk down memory lane, and both of us being visibly queer, we were treated with some condescension (weird looks, snippy remarks) from the waitress. The food was the same ordinary food we enjoyed during college; nothing special.


Note well that they don't serve pineapple on pizzas here... the waitress made it clear to us that we'd need to go up to Hippie Coventry to get something so outlandish as that.

Daniel's lunch

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Daniel loves to eat lunch at school
So far, mom packed his lunches, he only bought chocolate or strawberry milks sometimes whenever we want it
He finishes his lunch everyday
Day 1 Chocolate chip waffle
Day 2 Buttered Pasta
Day 3 Ham & mayo sandwich
Day 4 Ham & mayo sandwich again (his request)
Day 5 Hamburger bun with....another ham and mayo...haha
Day 6 Jelly sandwich and Cream cheese sandwich

Until day 5 he always ate it up, he is also finished his snack
Looks like he is always hungry
Note: Now he can eat more than Clarissa, who is 4 1/2 years older

Mom is happy that he can eat all of it .
So far he doesnt want to buy lunch at school, he still enjoy homemade lunch. These days he is memorizing his pupil number ( which is also like a pin number for buying lunch)
Maybe next week or week after that he can buy lunch. NOT everyday hopefully. Mom will go bankrupt if he buys everyday :)
(Note: we dont have to order at the beggining of the month, he can just order if he wants)

someone else's dread

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and the dread of not knowing if you like a short story, despite its undeniable strain of dread

Two (from the collaborative project Seconds by Adam Simon and Matthew Sharpe)

The meanness of the satirical essay you wrote hit me yesterday like a baseball on the chin. Those Sundays we lay curled up in each other on your hard futon kissing and discussing Marx eventually gave me serious lower back problems but at the time I was having like these day-long orgasms in my brain. You said, "Satire will be an important tool for the revolution," and maybe it will but it also can be a place for someone to hide from the intensity of any real feelings he may have and also to transmute them into a very painful projectile to be hurled at the person he has them about. 

It felt so good to be able to unburden myself to you re my inner conflict over my job at the ad agency, so then to see it lampooned yesterday on your blog in what was basically a "humorous" open break-up letter to me - "I'm hoping my $10 million campaign for the US Army is offset by the fact that I buy only free-range organic granola" - made me feel, well, I don't know, what does Marx say about how it feels to be betrayed by someone you lay naked next to for a cumulative total of fourteen months of your life, someone whom you let pull your hair - hard! - during sex because it game him so much pleasure even though it really hurt you although you sort of liked it but only because of the obviously intense pleasure he was deriving?

Also, do you think those cool hand-printed signs in the window of your bicycle shop aren't advertising?

After I read your thing I had a lot to say and even if you thought you knew what I was going to say and didn't want to hear it from yet another person, it wasn't fair to not let me say it, and the beautiful mixtape you gave me didn't make up for that because if I've gained any knowledge from my time with you it's that beauty is one thing and fairness is another. 

You said, "The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law." So you keep posting those satires of me on your blog from the back of that little storefront were you work and sleep, and I'll climb up to the roof deck of my nice apartment building and advertise to the world till I'm hoarse that i loved you. 

MERMAID AS METAPHOR (a beginning consideration from forkergirl's temporary fish eye lens advantage)

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fish eye lens advantage image from forkergirl's photostream

In this consideration of Mermaid as Metaphor, a point of entry and a point of departure (bifurcation hub) are formed by two elements brought together (in a range of manipulations) forming a third element that is a composite of the two (1 element plus 1 element = a 3rd element [1+1=3], as Rima pointed out in a limited forked multimedia story class). At this hub is a common depiction of mermaids in which two unrelated biological segments of two organisms are brought together in (primarily visual) unification usually depicted as horizontally split halves forming wholeness: a mermaid.

This (visual) wholeness is a form of marriage, an easily imagined evolutionary progression or regression of marriage. Though the one mermaid outcome of wholeness formation is usually offered, there are at least two composites that would emerge from each union in this imagined evolution or regression. Human upper body + fish lower body, and human lower body + fish upper body. This is an answer to where's the other halves? —the human lower body and the fish upper body? An example of this more complete merger outcome scenario supplies the horror factor of The Fly (1958). The human/fly hybrid is created when a teleportation experiment meant to be an exclusively human teleportation experiment becomes a human/insect teleportation experiment when a fly is discovered inside the teleportation chamber with the scientist when the experiment is already underway and no one is there to stop the experiment. Though the human/fly hybrid is an unintended outcome, that the hybrid is an outcome indicates a form of successful, if horrifying, biological union. The film features both composite forms: human body with fly head/hand and fly body with human head/hand. Once the hybrids emerged, the assumption was that capturing the fly body/human head composite and repeating the experiment with both hybrid outcomes in the chamber, would restore the human and the fly to pre-composite forms though other possibilities would have been as likely had the fly body/human head variation not been snared in a web of spider for whom the genetic modifications of the humanized insect changed nothing.

A cautionary tale, to be sure. A scientist accused of playing God to be sure.

Though I hesitate the use the term, this serves, in part, as a, well, deconstruction of the mermaid metaphor. It is a closer look inside what is and isn't occurring in the architecture of the metaphor that a mermaid is, and simultaneously is an invitation to explore what can happen/is happening inside other metaphors, using the outcomes of those explorations to establish other opportunities and forms of expression: the making of other poams (products of acts of making).

In popular depictions of mermaids, biological segments contributed by the human and by the (unspecified species of) fish seem interchangeable, largely because each segment apparently remains intact with crossover of fish into human, human into fish. The fish and human portions of a mermaid hybrid system could be separated easily. It is obvious where to cut. The human and fish segments seem closed systems stitched together (or in some other way held in place) superficially. The forming of human/fish composites seems exceedingly neat with a well-defined boundary separating fish function and appearance from human function and appearance. No transgression of species apparently occurs; nothing, well, fishy in the merger. Mermaids, rather, seem models of respect for species purity despite their being linked. No tinkering with the actual DNA as human DNA and fish genetic code don't mix, but instead exist side-by side. Good neighbors who share much, but not everything. Good spouses who share much but not everything.

If a deeper connection is considered, the external division and separation of fish and human raises questions about function, form, and layout of internal organs. Just how is the mermaid metaphor creature mapped internally? Surely anatomical mingling occurs, or it is difficult to imagine viability of this trans-species as a species distinct from human and fish with its own biological frameworks and systems; the fish, in the more frequent ichthyological bottom half mermaid configuration, would have no heart, no brain, no circulation of human blood in fish areas. If the halves are stitched together superficially and not integrated into a single being, each half would then need separate and contained systems of respiration, systems of ingestion, systems of excretion, etc. A romanticized depiction (and why not such a depiction!) of mermaids does not support contamination of the beautiful, usually, woman, with fishiness. Indeed, the mermaid might even be a purer form of woman for rejecting genitalia in favor of fishtail; with breasts, she may suckle a child and could even seem, depending on who's constructing the idea system, nearly as wholesome and good as Mary, Mother of Christ. In this wonderful anatomical chart (to the right) of a mermaid from gearfuse.com, the internal revelation is still decidedly human in keeping with the biological structure of most mermaids; no doubt a common or typical mermaid is dissected in the well-imagined image of mermaid reality wherever it exists, in imagination, gaming, and/or virtual worlds, for instance. Mermaid Diaries is a blog all about a little mermaid named Natalia Zelmanov and her adventures in second life. Below is a video of a Spore mermaid followed by a video of a Second Life mermaid show:






The common mermaid is uncomplicated, unproblematic in biological terms. She (usually) looks good,
and, in keeping with her fish contribution, is an excellent catch.

Consideration of shared biological functioning is not meant to discredit the mythic or aesthetic function of mermaid systems, and certainly does not undermine an ability of imagination to overcome problems of mermaid existence within shared physical realities. That closed biological and chemical systems can align themselves without sharing structures or circulation, may give a nod to some of the power of imagination as part of the glue maintaining the human/fish alignment. Not that everyone can (or should) use imagination in tis manner; what I refer to as imagination may be referred to differently in other cultural and/or belief systems that configure reality differently, including religions in which what some might consider supernatural is real; prayer connects a human mortal reality with a divine system of existence; prayer and belief function as bridges between these configurations.

It is quite odd, I think, that more mingling apparently does not occur at the juncture of fish and human in a mermaid system of co-dependency to be one being, one creature; why not more raggedness as these halves struggle to come together? In the production of mermaids, if something is occurring biologically, why not more evidence of mutation in the manipulation of humans and fish to produce mermaids? Where are the failures? Where are the monsters of human/fish alliances? Where are the other creature from black lagoons (gill-men) and other evolutionary missing links along the evolutionary road to mermaid? What is it about certain environments that seem to encourage emergence of human/fish hybrids? So much perfection! —similar, it seems (sorry for a lack of statistics) to a rate of perfection in production of angels or other beings embodying some human elements and some divine elements. Something in imagination apparently overcomes potential conflict in human and fish unions —did not George W. Bush say that he hoped the human and the fish could coexist peacefully? In configuring scenarios of this coexistence, some of that peaceful cohabitation would exist within a single body, half human, half fish; the bi-species creature practicing a form of political correctness in blending —indeed, Bush's statement could be construed as a call for transspecies experimentation, phase one focusing on human and fish peacful coexistence scenarios.

Had W seen Shiloh Pepin on a Discovery Channel documentary (Mermaid Girl) when he said that?
Did he realize that there was such a condition as sirenomelia, that humans were sometimes born with their legs fused in a disease commonly called mermaid syndrome, a challenging coexistence that might look peaceful? What hope for the future of humans did he foresee in improving human/fish coexistence? What's in that enhanced coexistence for Americans? for democracy? for capitalism?

In written metaphor also things come together with suspicious ease, perhaps in part because of familiarity with a long history of mythical part human creatures from ancient, classical, and sacred texts ; indeed, even Jesus Christ is a half-human outcome of a human/divine union. Evolutions occur inside metaphor; there is a journey from something to something, and details of the journey are seldom mapped. Mapping of what occurs inside metaphor could be quite revelatory and could lead to other revelatory forms of making, thinking, and/or understanding. To the left, Gort becomes The Stig, and to the right, Sambo becomes Obama in two metaphork evolutions by forkergirl. Much, much (compelling and exciting, among other forms of work) remains to be done.

This is actually a response to David's DJ Shadow post down there but the comment wouldnt allow my video

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I was under the impression that John Oswald's Plexure, released in 1993, was the first entire album to depend solely on other musicians' work. Plexure is about 20 minutes of mixed and mashed snippets of pop songs released between, I think, 1980-1990, or at least somewhere in that span of years. It’s pretty disorienting, but also extremely interesting, if you can stand what essentially sounds like somebody fiddling with a radio tuning knob, constantly cycling through radio stations for 20 minutes.

However, I think Oswald has been quick to distance himself from "sampling" in the traditional sense, like what is done in hip-hop. Oswald labels what he does as Plunderphonics (essay: Plunderphonics or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative) and seems to draw the distinction between Plunderphonics and sampling in that hip-hop and other sample-heavy genres, e.g. glitch, normally attempt to fit their samples into an existing peice, or a peice which will exist; either way, the sample is merely a layer among layers. To "plunder" is instead to make music exclusively out of samples, to use the sampling machine as a musical instrument in itself. To create plunderphonic music is then to use such an instrument to recreate "noise" (what we hear around us, natural or unnatural) the same way that composers (Oswald dwells on Ives in particular) create melody out of existing tone scales and public domain pieces (since many of those older composers were creating in a copyright-free era).

It seems that Oswald is aligning himself with Futurist composer Luigi Russolo, who created “music” out of assembled devices which would recreate noises such as whistling, thundering, creaking, etc, and John Cage, whose compositions using radios in the 40s and 50s (I think that’s right) preface Oswald’s own radio-derived pieces. Essentially, Oswald provides an avenue out of the copyright dilemma by asserting that A. “plundering” has been a musical tradition stretching from Bach to jazz to contemporary pop music, and B. the sampler is a unique instrument, just as are pianos, trumpets, guitars, capable of producing music that, though it may be derived entirely from other pieces, is wholly unique on its own and is thus a creation equal to any other musical or artistic creation.

I have Plexure if anybody is interested in hearing any of it, but I won’t post anything from it since I don’t want anybody unwillingly bombarded by such abrasive dissonance. I will, however, post a Girl Talk song; Girl Talk is the pseudonym for DJ Gregg Gillis, who is a contemporary mash-up artist. Mash-up, as a genre, I believe probably comes closest genre-wise to reproducing Oswald’s aims in Plunderphonics, except that mash-up, generally speaking, is party music.



The song is track number 10, I think, from Gillis' 3rd album, Night Ripper (Warning: Explicit language). The video was created by Concordia University professor Matthew Soar, for the Open Cinema Source Project.

Part of the fun of mash-up music, and Girl Talk's in particular, is also being to recognize all the samples (there's something like 200 or so,maybe more, samples spread out over 16 songs) which relates to a buzzword thats been circulating recently about the "pleasure of the known," in which culture has become so reflexive and referential that part of the cultural experience, and part of participating in society, is being able to place references (think of such fare as Mystery Science Theater 3000, Family Guy, the Simpsons, not to mention tons of poetry, etc). To be a participant and to derive pleasure from participation seems increasingly tethered to knowing sources, and being appreciate the layering of sources (a source referencing a source refering a source). Of course, this is incredibly off topic and deserves a different post entirely.

As for what David said about subdivision, I like the application to text poetry and I agree that prosody seems to be the replacement for the music that would accompany a video poem (I guess that should be reversed: music is the replacement for prosody). Or even for a video poem without music, video itself has a rhythm to it, as Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky noted in his book Sculpture in Time: "The dominant, all powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame....[The expression of time]...is the very foundation of cinema...Rhythm...is not the metrical sequence of peices; what makes it is the time-thrust within the frames. Rhythm...is the main formative element of cinema....Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame." (Sculpting in Time, pgs 113-120).

Anyway, I agree that sampling, or plundering involves the subdividing of ideas in a LFT kind of way; the only quibble I have, David, is your statement that "[DJ Shadow] unit[es] others' fragments". Isnt it the other way around, though? Don't his sources, and the sources for most other musical sampling/plundering begin as united, and then the artist/sampler/Dj/plunderer fragments those compositions? At least, that really only applies to music-- not that a DJ couldnt unite out of fragments, I just dont know of any case where a DJ has done so. I think the point you made is still relevant for poets though, and maybe this is where the alikeness between a DJ and a poet ends: a poet can unite fragments or fragment unities and create poetry out of either. We're lucky to have it both ways.

As for what I was supposed to post, about the supposedly French Oulipian idea about how any word has the potential and the weight of all other words (which I think I now actually picked up from Derrida, not Oulipo) I'll get to that this weekend, since what began as a simple "Hey, here's the link" has turned into something else.

DJ Adio at Beachwood Place with Phillip Bimstein's Door music reveal some of the Vibrational Ways of Doors in Augmenting [Limited Forked Theory] Configurable Spaces, including idea spaces, and a fondling of ripples of creation —riding some of those wavy portals

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While at Beachwood Place Mall, looking, as usual, for evidence of interaction (such as shadows and reflections), I came upon DJ Adio in a shop window, positioned where both he and his reflection could be seen on two glass planes on which reflections from passersby also temporarily converged, diverged, then converged again on the second plane. A sampling, if you will, of space, of occupancy; a sharing of moment as he spun red discs of music I could not hear.

The sharing of space as reflections converged seemed to be a visual aspect of what the DJ was mixing; persons he did not know, could not see were becoming part of him, walking through his image, enlarging what his image could contain, just as he was enlarging sonic space and sonic meanings.

DJ Adio was functioning as a door, as a bifurcation point, as an entrance and exit point, an access point —and his gestures seemed to be shuffling what was converging, configuring the sonic and visual geometries of the connections. A fantastic door system that I wanted to highlight and explore further with Philip Bimstein's Door music and added vocal tracks expressing and exploring some gist of my observations that were part of the convergence, part of the collaboration.

DJ Adio Door Ways Ghost Relay: an adventure in vibration studies was a poam outcome of an unplanned investigation of a convergence of DJ, reflection, observation, meaning as transit system, the mixing of elements by a DJ in the configuration of a moment.

In this investigation, the movements and gestures took on more context as ripples of experience, shockwaves fanning out from a central event: the DJ's role as an assembler of realities within realities; DJ Adio was acting as a hub into which realities fed, a hub of convergence where he reassembled what converged and transmitted alternate versions, more of the other possibilities for the information that converged in his hub. DJ Adio as relay station, as transformer.

"You are mathematical. You don't have to do math; you are math." -Thylias Moss

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Here's a little math I can get with:

“A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.” --Terry Pratchett

Also, I may consider a side-gig in thaumaturgy.

Yes. I think I may.

“I believe anything is possible.
Research into quantum physics
proves that a system changes
simply by someone observing it.
Therefore, all you have to do is be
awake and aware of your environment,
and that enables you to
transform everything around you.
It sounds like hocus pocus, but
scientists are coming to realize that
just thinking about something can
make it happen. Turns out maybe
faith can move mountains.”
--Christine Anderson

Daniel's lunch

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Daniel loves to eat lunch at school
So far, mom packed his lunches, he only bought chocolate or strawberry milks sometimes whenever we want it
He finishes his lunch everyday
Day 1 Chocolate chip waffle
Day 2 Buttered Pasta
Day 3 Ham & mayo sandwich
Day 4 Ham & mayo sandwich again (his request)
Day 5 Hamburger bun with....another ham and mayo...haha
Day 6 Jelly sandwich and Cream cheese sandwich

Until day 5 he always ate it up, he is also finished his snack
Looks like he is always hungry
Note: Now he can eat more than Clarissa, who is 4 1/2 years older

Mom is happy that he can eat all of it .
So far he doesnt want to buy lunch at school, he still enjoy homemade lunch. These days he is memorizing his pupil number ( which is also like a pin number for buying lunch)
Maybe next week or week after that he can buy lunch. NOT everyday hopefully. Mom will go bankrupt if he buys everyday :)
(Note: we dont have to order at the beggining of the month, he can just order if he wants)

Surfing the Web ... It's all in a day's work.

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My main project for the summer is basically the dream of any soon-to-be job-seeking college student (like myself). I am working with Human Resources to research and develop a social media strategy for recruiting, observing what kind of cool new methods other companies are implementing. The best part of this job is that my research consists of looking at company websites, twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, facebook pages and YouTube accounts all day long. Lately, I’ve been too busy to keep up with my research, but now that our presentations are going to be here oh so soon (exactly two weeks from now) I have to make time so I can be fully prepared to explain what’s going on in the exciting world of recruitment.

Here is a little peek of what I’ve been working on …

twitter – Lots of companies are using their twitter feeds to publicize job openings in addition to sharing information about their culture or their employees, so I follow anyone and everyone from our main competitors to companies like Starbucks and Google. One thing I’ve learned: Recruiters love to tweet … all the time.

So many tweets, so little time ...

YouTube – Some companies are using YouTube to promote their company culture and the organization by posting videos of company events and employee profiles showcasing what they love about their jobs. (How cool is that?!)

Since I’m a marketing major, all of this research is showing me how many different ways social media can be used for one company. Also, I will begin looking for my first post-grad job rather soon, and I’m learning how to be as thorough as possible when preparing for an interview. Most people long for the time to invest in this kind of research, and I’m lucky enough to have it be my job!

I couldn’t end this post without a shameless plug for Vera’s company culture or our open jobs … so check out the official Vera Bradley blog, Inside Stitch, for some fabulous posts about life at Vera Bradley, and be sure to stop by our Careers page to see what openings we have at our home office and in our retail stores!

MERMAID AS METAPHOR (a beginning consideration from forkergirl's temporary fish eye lens advantage)

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fish eye lens advantage image from forkergirl's photostream

In this consideration of Mermaid as Metaphor, a point of entry and a point of departure (bifurcation hub) are formed by two elements brought together (in a range of manipulations) forming a third element that is a composite of the two (1 element plus 1 element = a 3rd element [1+1=3], as Rima pointed out in a limited forked multimedia story class). At this hub is a common depiction of mermaids in which two unrelated biological segments of two organisms are brought together in (primarily visual) unification usually depicted as horizontally split halves forming wholeness: a mermaid.

This (visual) wholeness is a form of marriage, an easily imagined evolutionary progression or regression of marriage. Though the one mermaid outcome of wholeness formation is usually offered, there are at least two composites that would emerge from each union in this imagined evolution or regression. Human upper body + fish lower body, and human lower body + fish upper body. This is an answer to where's the other halves? —the human lower body and the fish upper body? An example of this more complete merger outcome scenario supplies the horror factor of The Fly (1958). The human/fly hybrid is created when a teleportation experiment meant to be an exclusively human teleportation experiment becomes a human/insect teleportation experiment when a fly is discovered inside the teleportation chamber with the scientist when the experiment is already underway and no one is there to stop the experiment. Though the human/fly hybrid is an unintended outcome, that the hybrid is an outcome indicates a form of successful, if horrifying, biological union. The film features both composite forms: human body with fly head/hand and fly body with human head/hand. Once the hybrids emerged, the assumption was that capturing the fly body/human head composite and repeating the experiment with both hybrid outcomes in the chamber, would restore the human and the fly to pre-composite forms though other possibilities would have been as likely had the fly body/human head variation not been snared in a web of spider for whom the genetic modifications of the humanized insect changed nothing.

A cautionary tale, to be sure. A scientist accused of playing God to be sure.

Though I hesitate the use the term, this serves, in part, as a, well, deconstruction of the mermaid metaphor. It is a closer look inside what is and isn't occurring in the architecture of the metaphor that a mermaid is, and simultaneously is an invitation to explore what can happen/is happening inside other metaphors, using the outcomes of those explorations to establish other opportunities and forms of expression: the making of other poams (products of acts of making).

In popular depictions of mermaids, biological segments contributed by the human and by the (unspecified species of) fish seem interchangeable, largely because each segment apparently remains intact with crossover of fish into human, human into fish. The fish and human portions of a mermaid hybrid system could be separated easily. It is obvious where to cut. The human and fish segments seem closed systems stitched together (or in some other way held in place) superficially. The forming of human/fish composites seems exceedingly neat with a well-defined boundary separating fish function and appearance from human function and appearance. No transgression of species apparently occurs; nothing, well, fishy in the merger. Mermaids, rather, seem models of respect for species purity despite their being linked. No tinkering with the actual DNA as human DNA and fish genetic code don't mix, but instead exist side-by side. Good neighbors who share much, but not everything. Good spouses who share much but not everything.

If a deeper connection is considered, the external division and separation of fish and human raises questions about function, form, and layout of internal organs. Just how is the mermaid metaphor creature mapped internally? Surely anatomical mingling occurs, or it is difficult to imagine viability of this trans-species as a species distinct from human and fish with its own biological frameworks and systems; the fish, in the more frequent ichthyological bottom half mermaid configuration, would have no heart, no brain, no circulation of human blood in fish areas. If the halves are stitched together superficially and not integrated into a single being, each half would then need separate and contained systems of respiration, systems of ingestion, systems of excretion, etc. A romanticized depiction (and why not such a depiction!) of mermaids does not support contamination of the beautiful, usually, woman, with fishiness. Indeed, the mermaid might even be a purer form of woman for rejecting genitalia in favor of fishtail; with breasts, she may suckle a child and could even seem, depending on who's constructing the idea system, nearly as wholesome and good as Mary, Mother of Christ. In this wonderful anatomical chart (to the right) of a mermaid from gearfuse.com, the internal revelation is still decidedly human in keeping with the biological structure of most mermaids; no doubt a common or typical mermaid is dissected in the well-imagined image of mermaid reality wherever it exists, in imagination, gaming, and/or virtual worlds, for instance. Mermaid Diaries is a blog all about a little mermaid named Natalia Zelmanov and her adventures in second life. Below is a video of a Spore mermaid followed by a video of a Second Life mermaid show:






The common mermaid is uncomplicated, unproblematic in biological terms. She (usually) looks good,
and, in keeping with her fish contribution, is an excellent catch.

Consideration of shared biological functioning is not meant to discredit the mythic or aesthetic function of mermaid systems, and certainly does not undermine an ability of imagination to overcome problems of mermaid existence within shared physical realities. That closed biological and chemical systems can align themselves without sharing structures or circulation, may give a nod to some of the power of imagination as part of the glue maintaining the human/fish alignment. Not that everyone can (or should) use imagination in tis manner; what I refer to as imagination may be referred to differently in other cultural and/or belief systems that configure reality differently, including religions in which what some might consider supernatural is real; prayer connects a human mortal reality with a divine system of existence; prayer and belief function as bridges between these configurations.

It is quite odd, I think, that more mingling apparently does not occur at the juncture of fish and human in a mermaid system of co-dependency to be one being, one creature; why not more raggedness as these halves struggle to come together? In the production of mermaids, if something is occurring biologically, why not more evidence of mutation in the manipulation of humans and fish to produce mermaids? Where are the failures? Where are the monsters of human/fish alliances? Where are the other creature from black lagoons (gill-men) and other evolutionary missing links along the evolutionary road to mermaid? What is it about certain environments that seem to encourage emergence of human/fish hybrids? So much perfection! —similar, it seems (sorry for a lack of statistics) to a rate of perfection in production of angels or other beings embodying some human elements and some divine elements. Something in imagination apparently overcomes potential conflict in human and fish unions —did not George W. Bush say that he hoped the human and the fish could coexist peacefully? In configuring scenarios of this coexistence, some of that peaceful cohabitation would exist within a single body, half human, half fish; the bi-species creature practicing a form of political correctness in blending —indeed, Bush's statement could be construed as a call for transspecies experimentation, phase one focusing on human and fish peacful coexistence scenarios.

Had W seen Shiloh Pepin on a Discovery Channel documentary (Mermaid Girl) when he said that?
Did he realize that there was such a condition as sirenomelia, that humans were sometimes born with their legs fused in a disease commonly called mermaid syndrome, a challenging coexistence that might look peaceful? What hope for the future of humans did he foresee in improving human/fish coexistence? What's in that enhanced coexistence for Americans? for democracy? for capitalism?

In written metaphor also things come together with suspicious ease, perhaps in part because of familiarity with a long history of mythical part human creatures from ancient, classical, and sacred texts ; indeed, even Jesus Christ is a half-human outcome of a human/divine union. Evolutions occur inside metaphor; there is a journey from something to something, and details of the journey are seldom mapped. Mapping of what occurs inside metaphor could be quite revelatory and could lead to other revelatory forms of making, thinking, and/or understanding. To the left, Gort becomes The Stig, and to the right, Sambo becomes Obama in two metaphork evolutions by forkergirl. Much, much (compelling and exciting, among other forms of work) remains to be done.

This is actually a response to David's DJ Shadow post down there but the comment wouldnt allow my video

To contact us Click HERE
I was under the impression that John Oswald's Plexure, released in 1993, was the first entire album to depend solely on other musicians' work. Plexure is about 20 minutes of mixed and mashed snippets of pop songs released between, I think, 1980-1990, or at least somewhere in that span of years. It’s pretty disorienting, but also extremely interesting, if you can stand what essentially sounds like somebody fiddling with a radio tuning knob, constantly cycling through radio stations for 20 minutes.

However, I think Oswald has been quick to distance himself from "sampling" in the traditional sense, like what is done in hip-hop. Oswald labels what he does as Plunderphonics (essay: Plunderphonics or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative) and seems to draw the distinction between Plunderphonics and sampling in that hip-hop and other sample-heavy genres, e.g. glitch, normally attempt to fit their samples into an existing peice, or a peice which will exist; either way, the sample is merely a layer among layers. To "plunder" is instead to make music exclusively out of samples, to use the sampling machine as a musical instrument in itself. To create plunderphonic music is then to use such an instrument to recreate "noise" (what we hear around us, natural or unnatural) the same way that composers (Oswald dwells on Ives in particular) create melody out of existing tone scales and public domain pieces (since many of those older composers were creating in a copyright-free era).

It seems that Oswald is aligning himself with Futurist composer Luigi Russolo, who created “music” out of assembled devices which would recreate noises such as whistling, thundering, creaking, etc, and John Cage, whose compositions using radios in the 40s and 50s (I think that’s right) preface Oswald’s own radio-derived pieces. Essentially, Oswald provides an avenue out of the copyright dilemma by asserting that A. “plundering” has been a musical tradition stretching from Bach to jazz to contemporary pop music, and B. the sampler is a unique instrument, just as are pianos, trumpets, guitars, capable of producing music that, though it may be derived entirely from other pieces, is wholly unique on its own and is thus a creation equal to any other musical or artistic creation.

I have Plexure if anybody is interested in hearing any of it, but I won’t post anything from it since I don’t want anybody unwillingly bombarded by such abrasive dissonance. I will, however, post a Girl Talk song; Girl Talk is the pseudonym for DJ Gregg Gillis, who is a contemporary mash-up artist. Mash-up, as a genre, I believe probably comes closest genre-wise to reproducing Oswald’s aims in Plunderphonics, except that mash-up, generally speaking, is party music.



The song is track number 10, I think, from Gillis' 3rd album, Night Ripper (Warning: Explicit language). The video was created by Concordia University professor Matthew Soar, for the Open Cinema Source Project.

Part of the fun of mash-up music, and Girl Talk's in particular, is also being to recognize all the samples (there's something like 200 or so,maybe more, samples spread out over 16 songs) which relates to a buzzword thats been circulating recently about the "pleasure of the known," in which culture has become so reflexive and referential that part of the cultural experience, and part of participating in society, is being able to place references (think of such fare as Mystery Science Theater 3000, Family Guy, the Simpsons, not to mention tons of poetry, etc). To be a participant and to derive pleasure from participation seems increasingly tethered to knowing sources, and being appreciate the layering of sources (a source referencing a source refering a source). Of course, this is incredibly off topic and deserves a different post entirely.

As for what David said about subdivision, I like the application to text poetry and I agree that prosody seems to be the replacement for the music that would accompany a video poem (I guess that should be reversed: music is the replacement for prosody). Or even for a video poem without music, video itself has a rhythm to it, as Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky noted in his book Sculpture in Time: "The dominant, all powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame....[The expression of time]...is the very foundation of cinema...Rhythm...is not the metrical sequence of peices; what makes it is the time-thrust within the frames. Rhythm...is the main formative element of cinema....Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame." (Sculpting in Time, pgs 113-120).

Anyway, I agree that sampling, or plundering involves the subdividing of ideas in a LFT kind of way; the only quibble I have, David, is your statement that "[DJ Shadow] unit[es] others' fragments". Isnt it the other way around, though? Don't his sources, and the sources for most other musical sampling/plundering begin as united, and then the artist/sampler/Dj/plunderer fragments those compositions? At least, that really only applies to music-- not that a DJ couldnt unite out of fragments, I just dont know of any case where a DJ has done so. I think the point you made is still relevant for poets though, and maybe this is where the alikeness between a DJ and a poet ends: a poet can unite fragments or fragment unities and create poetry out of either. We're lucky to have it both ways.

As for what I was supposed to post, about the supposedly French Oulipian idea about how any word has the potential and the weight of all other words (which I think I now actually picked up from Derrida, not Oulipo) I'll get to that this weekend, since what began as a simple "Hey, here's the link" has turned into something else.

DJ Adio at Beachwood Place with Phillip Bimstein's Door music reveal some of the Vibrational Ways of Doors in Augmenting [Limited Forked Theory] Configurable Spaces, including idea spaces, and a fondling of ripples of creation —riding some of those wavy portals

To contact us Click HERE


While at Beachwood Place Mall, looking, as usual, for evidence of interaction (such as shadows and reflections), I came upon DJ Adio in a shop window, positioned where both he and his reflection could be seen on two glass planes on which reflections from passersby also temporarily converged, diverged, then converged again on the second plane. A sampling, if you will, of space, of occupancy; a sharing of moment as he spun red discs of music I could not hear.

The sharing of space as reflections converged seemed to be a visual aspect of what the DJ was mixing; persons he did not know, could not see were becoming part of him, walking through his image, enlarging what his image could contain, just as he was enlarging sonic space and sonic meanings.

DJ Adio was functioning as a door, as a bifurcation point, as an entrance and exit point, an access point —and his gestures seemed to be shuffling what was converging, configuring the sonic and visual geometries of the connections. A fantastic door system that I wanted to highlight and explore further with Philip Bimstein's Door music and added vocal tracks expressing and exploring some gist of my observations that were part of the convergence, part of the collaboration.

DJ Adio Door Ways Ghost Relay: an adventure in vibration studies was a poam outcome of an unplanned investigation of a convergence of DJ, reflection, observation, meaning as transit system, the mixing of elements by a DJ in the configuration of a moment.

In this investigation, the movements and gestures took on more context as ripples of experience, shockwaves fanning out from a central event: the DJ's role as an assembler of realities within realities; DJ Adio was acting as a hub into which realities fed, a hub of convergence where he reassembled what converged and transmitted alternate versions, more of the other possibilities for the information that converged in his hub. DJ Adio as relay station, as transformer.

"You are mathematical. You don't have to do math; you are math." -Thylias Moss

To contact us Click HERE
Here's a little math I can get with:

“A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.” --Terry Pratchett

Also, I may consider a side-gig in thaumaturgy.

Yes. I think I may.

“I believe anything is possible.
Research into quantum physics
proves that a system changes
simply by someone observing it.
Therefore, all you have to do is be
awake and aware of your environment,
and that enables you to
transform everything around you.
It sounds like hocus pocus, but
scientists are coming to realize that
just thinking about something can
make it happen. Turns out maybe
faith can move mountains.”
--Christine Anderson

Two dead in helicopter crash, explosion in northwest Oklahoma City www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
Oklahoma City OK Feb 22 2013

EagleMed officials confirmed that the victims are pilot Mark Montgomery, flight nurse Chris Denning and paramedic Billy Wynn.
“Our first priority is to tend to the families,” EagleMed spokesman Robbie Copeland said. Company officials were with the families Friday afternoon, he said.
A team of EagleMed officials were at the crash scene Friday afternoon working with investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board, Copeland said.
“We don't know what happened and it may take months to a year before we know what happened,” he said.
12:45 p.m. Pilot Mark Montgomery and flight nurse Chris Denning died in the helicopter crash Friday morning and paramedic Billy Wynn was critically injured, according to email sent to employees from Bruce Lawrence, Integris Health president and CEO.
“We ask for continued prayers for his (Billy Wynn) survival and recovery,” Lawrence wrote. “Our hearts are heavy as Chris is a former Integris employee.”
Denning worked at Baptist Medical Center for nearly 10 years, starting in radiology and then moving to the intensive care unit.
“We mourn his loss as a member of our extended family,” Lawrence wrote. “We also extend our sympathies to the Montgomery family and all those who knew Mark.”
12:35 p.m. The helicopter crashed in the parking lot between Saint Ann Retirement Center and Saint Ann Nursing Home, said Tina Dzurisin, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.
Seven staff members rushed to the crash scene to help. Three helped pull one of the crew members from the wreckage just before a second explosion, Dzurisin said.
One of the staff members received burns to her arm. “Some of them were being check for smoke inhalation, but there were no serious injuries,” she said.
Staff members remained at the nursing home Friday morning waiting to be questioned by authorities, Dzurisin said. Some staff members could get to their vehicles because they were parking in the secure area surrounding the crash site.
Staff members from the Catholic Pastoral Center and the Catholic Charities Saint Joseph Counseling Center have been on-site at the nursing home to assist the staff and the 180 residents.
None of the residents was injured.
“This is a painful tragedy for all affected, and our love and concern immediately go out to the victims of the crash and their families,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley said in prepared statement. “We pray for peace and comfort for those who grieve the loss of the two crew members who died. We hope and pray, too, that the critically injured crew member makes a full recovery.”
11:30 a.m. The surviving crew member was taken to OU Medical Center. A spokesman said Billy Winn was in critical condition. He could not confirm the spelling of the man's name.
10:50 a.m. An EagleMed Eurocopter AS 350 B2 made a hard landing Feb. 29, 2012, near Hugo during a night vision goggle check flight, according to NTSB records. Two people had minor injuries.
10:05 a.m. “No one was seriously harmed at Saint Ann,” said Tina Dzurisin, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. “We are still trying to access that. They are still operating. Obviously, trying to adjust.”


Source:NewsOK

MERMAID AS METAPHOR (a beginning consideration from forkergirl's temporary fish eye lens advantage)

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fish eye lens advantage image from forkergirl's photostream

In this consideration of Mermaid as Metaphor, a point of entry and a point of departure (bifurcation hub) are formed by two elements brought together (in a range of manipulations) forming a third element that is a composite of the two (1 element plus 1 element = a 3rd element [1+1=3], as Rima pointed out in a limited forked multimedia story class). At this hub is a common depiction of mermaids in which two unrelated biological segments of two organisms are brought together in (primarily visual) unification usually depicted as horizontally split halves forming wholeness: a mermaid.

This (visual) wholeness is a form of marriage, an easily imagined evolutionary progression or regression of marriage. Though the one mermaid outcome of wholeness formation is usually offered, there are at least two composites that would emerge from each union in this imagined evolution or regression. Human upper body + fish lower body, and human lower body + fish upper body. This is an answer to where's the other halves? —the human lower body and the fish upper body? An example of this more complete merger outcome scenario supplies the horror factor of The Fly (1958). The human/fly hybrid is created when a teleportation experiment meant to be an exclusively human teleportation experiment becomes a human/insect teleportation experiment when a fly is discovered inside the teleportation chamber with the scientist when the experiment is already underway and no one is there to stop the experiment. Though the human/fly hybrid is an unintended outcome, that the hybrid is an outcome indicates a form of successful, if horrifying, biological union. The film features both composite forms: human body with fly head/hand and fly body with human head/hand. Once the hybrids emerged, the assumption was that capturing the fly body/human head composite and repeating the experiment with both hybrid outcomes in the chamber, would restore the human and the fly to pre-composite forms though other possibilities would have been as likely had the fly body/human head variation not been snared in a web of spider for whom the genetic modifications of the humanized insect changed nothing.

A cautionary tale, to be sure. A scientist accused of playing God to be sure.

Though I hesitate the use the term, this serves, in part, as a, well, deconstruction of the mermaid metaphor. It is a closer look inside what is and isn't occurring in the architecture of the metaphor that a mermaid is, and simultaneously is an invitation to explore what can happen/is happening inside other metaphors, using the outcomes of those explorations to establish other opportunities and forms of expression: the making of other poams (products of acts of making).

In popular depictions of mermaids, biological segments contributed by the human and by the (unspecified species of) fish seem interchangeable, largely because each segment apparently remains intact with crossover of fish into human, human into fish. The fish and human portions of a mermaid hybrid system could be separated easily. It is obvious where to cut. The human and fish segments seem closed systems stitched together (or in some other way held in place) superficially. The forming of human/fish composites seems exceedingly neat with a well-defined boundary separating fish function and appearance from human function and appearance. No transgression of species apparently occurs; nothing, well, fishy in the merger. Mermaids, rather, seem models of respect for species purity despite their being linked. No tinkering with the actual DNA as human DNA and fish genetic code don't mix, but instead exist side-by side. Good neighbors who share much, but not everything. Good spouses who share much but not everything.

If a deeper connection is considered, the external division and separation of fish and human raises questions about function, form, and layout of internal organs. Just how is the mermaid metaphor creature mapped internally? Surely anatomical mingling occurs, or it is difficult to imagine viability of this trans-species as a species distinct from human and fish with its own biological frameworks and systems; the fish, in the more frequent ichthyological bottom half mermaid configuration, would have no heart, no brain, no circulation of human blood in fish areas. If the halves are stitched together superficially and not integrated into a single being, each half would then need separate and contained systems of respiration, systems of ingestion, systems of excretion, etc. A romanticized depiction (and why not such a depiction!) of mermaids does not support contamination of the beautiful, usually, woman, with fishiness. Indeed, the mermaid might even be a purer form of woman for rejecting genitalia in favor of fishtail; with breasts, she may suckle a child and could even seem, depending on who's constructing the idea system, nearly as wholesome and good as Mary, Mother of Christ. In this wonderful anatomical chart (to the right) of a mermaid from gearfuse.com, the internal revelation is still decidedly human in keeping with the biological structure of most mermaids; no doubt a common or typical mermaid is dissected in the well-imagined image of mermaid reality wherever it exists, in imagination, gaming, and/or virtual worlds, for instance. Mermaid Diaries is a blog all about a little mermaid named Natalia Zelmanov and her adventures in second life. Below is a video of a Spore mermaid followed by a video of a Second Life mermaid show:






The common mermaid is uncomplicated, unproblematic in biological terms. She (usually) looks good,
and, in keeping with her fish contribution, is an excellent catch.

Consideration of shared biological functioning is not meant to discredit the mythic or aesthetic function of mermaid systems, and certainly does not undermine an ability of imagination to overcome problems of mermaid existence within shared physical realities. That closed biological and chemical systems can align themselves without sharing structures or circulation, may give a nod to some of the power of imagination as part of the glue maintaining the human/fish alignment. Not that everyone can (or should) use imagination in tis manner; what I refer to as imagination may be referred to differently in other cultural and/or belief systems that configure reality differently, including religions in which what some might consider supernatural is real; prayer connects a human mortal reality with a divine system of existence; prayer and belief function as bridges between these configurations.

It is quite odd, I think, that more mingling apparently does not occur at the juncture of fish and human in a mermaid system of co-dependency to be one being, one creature; why not more raggedness as these halves struggle to come together? In the production of mermaids, if something is occurring biologically, why not more evidence of mutation in the manipulation of humans and fish to produce mermaids? Where are the failures? Where are the monsters of human/fish alliances? Where are the other creature from black lagoons (gill-men) and other evolutionary missing links along the evolutionary road to mermaid? What is it about certain environments that seem to encourage emergence of human/fish hybrids? So much perfection! —similar, it seems (sorry for a lack of statistics) to a rate of perfection in production of angels or other beings embodying some human elements and some divine elements. Something in imagination apparently overcomes potential conflict in human and fish unions —did not George W. Bush say that he hoped the human and the fish could coexist peacefully? In configuring scenarios of this coexistence, some of that peaceful cohabitation would exist within a single body, half human, half fish; the bi-species creature practicing a form of political correctness in blending —indeed, Bush's statement could be construed as a call for transspecies experimentation, phase one focusing on human and fish peacful coexistence scenarios.

Had W seen Shiloh Pepin on a Discovery Channel documentary (Mermaid Girl) when he said that?
Did he realize that there was such a condition as sirenomelia, that humans were sometimes born with their legs fused in a disease commonly called mermaid syndrome, a challenging coexistence that might look peaceful? What hope for the future of humans did he foresee in improving human/fish coexistence? What's in that enhanced coexistence for Americans? for democracy? for capitalism?

In written metaphor also things come together with suspicious ease, perhaps in part because of familiarity with a long history of mythical part human creatures from ancient, classical, and sacred texts ; indeed, even Jesus Christ is a half-human outcome of a human/divine union. Evolutions occur inside metaphor; there is a journey from something to something, and details of the journey are seldom mapped. Mapping of what occurs inside metaphor could be quite revelatory and could lead to other revelatory forms of making, thinking, and/or understanding. To the left, Gort becomes The Stig, and to the right, Sambo becomes Obama in two metaphork evolutions by forkergirl. Much, much (compelling and exciting, among other forms of work) remains to be done.

This is actually a response to David's DJ Shadow post down there but the comment wouldnt allow my video

To contact us Click HERE
I was under the impression that John Oswald's Plexure, released in 1993, was the first entire album to depend solely on other musicians' work. Plexure is about 20 minutes of mixed and mashed snippets of pop songs released between, I think, 1980-1990, or at least somewhere in that span of years. It’s pretty disorienting, but also extremely interesting, if you can stand what essentially sounds like somebody fiddling with a radio tuning knob, constantly cycling through radio stations for 20 minutes.

However, I think Oswald has been quick to distance himself from "sampling" in the traditional sense, like what is done in hip-hop. Oswald labels what he does as Plunderphonics (essay: Plunderphonics or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative) and seems to draw the distinction between Plunderphonics and sampling in that hip-hop and other sample-heavy genres, e.g. glitch, normally attempt to fit their samples into an existing peice, or a peice which will exist; either way, the sample is merely a layer among layers. To "plunder" is instead to make music exclusively out of samples, to use the sampling machine as a musical instrument in itself. To create plunderphonic music is then to use such an instrument to recreate "noise" (what we hear around us, natural or unnatural) the same way that composers (Oswald dwells on Ives in particular) create melody out of existing tone scales and public domain pieces (since many of those older composers were creating in a copyright-free era).

It seems that Oswald is aligning himself with Futurist composer Luigi Russolo, who created “music” out of assembled devices which would recreate noises such as whistling, thundering, creaking, etc, and John Cage, whose compositions using radios in the 40s and 50s (I think that’s right) preface Oswald’s own radio-derived pieces. Essentially, Oswald provides an avenue out of the copyright dilemma by asserting that A. “plundering” has been a musical tradition stretching from Bach to jazz to contemporary pop music, and B. the sampler is a unique instrument, just as are pianos, trumpets, guitars, capable of producing music that, though it may be derived entirely from other pieces, is wholly unique on its own and is thus a creation equal to any other musical or artistic creation.

I have Plexure if anybody is interested in hearing any of it, but I won’t post anything from it since I don’t want anybody unwillingly bombarded by such abrasive dissonance. I will, however, post a Girl Talk song; Girl Talk is the pseudonym for DJ Gregg Gillis, who is a contemporary mash-up artist. Mash-up, as a genre, I believe probably comes closest genre-wise to reproducing Oswald’s aims in Plunderphonics, except that mash-up, generally speaking, is party music.



The song is track number 10, I think, from Gillis' 3rd album, Night Ripper (Warning: Explicit language). The video was created by Concordia University professor Matthew Soar, for the Open Cinema Source Project.

Part of the fun of mash-up music, and Girl Talk's in particular, is also being to recognize all the samples (there's something like 200 or so,maybe more, samples spread out over 16 songs) which relates to a buzzword thats been circulating recently about the "pleasure of the known," in which culture has become so reflexive and referential that part of the cultural experience, and part of participating in society, is being able to place references (think of such fare as Mystery Science Theater 3000, Family Guy, the Simpsons, not to mention tons of poetry, etc). To be a participant and to derive pleasure from participation seems increasingly tethered to knowing sources, and being appreciate the layering of sources (a source referencing a source refering a source). Of course, this is incredibly off topic and deserves a different post entirely.

As for what David said about subdivision, I like the application to text poetry and I agree that prosody seems to be the replacement for the music that would accompany a video poem (I guess that should be reversed: music is the replacement for prosody). Or even for a video poem without music, video itself has a rhythm to it, as Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky noted in his book Sculpture in Time: "The dominant, all powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame....[The expression of time]...is the very foundation of cinema...Rhythm...is not the metrical sequence of peices; what makes it is the time-thrust within the frames. Rhythm...is the main formative element of cinema....Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame." (Sculpting in Time, pgs 113-120).

Anyway, I agree that sampling, or plundering involves the subdividing of ideas in a LFT kind of way; the only quibble I have, David, is your statement that "[DJ Shadow] unit[es] others' fragments". Isnt it the other way around, though? Don't his sources, and the sources for most other musical sampling/plundering begin as united, and then the artist/sampler/Dj/plunderer fragments those compositions? At least, that really only applies to music-- not that a DJ couldnt unite out of fragments, I just dont know of any case where a DJ has done so. I think the point you made is still relevant for poets though, and maybe this is where the alikeness between a DJ and a poet ends: a poet can unite fragments or fragment unities and create poetry out of either. We're lucky to have it both ways.

As for what I was supposed to post, about the supposedly French Oulipian idea about how any word has the potential and the weight of all other words (which I think I now actually picked up from Derrida, not Oulipo) I'll get to that this weekend, since what began as a simple "Hey, here's the link" has turned into something else.

DJ Adio at Beachwood Place with Phillip Bimstein's Door music reveal some of the Vibrational Ways of Doors in Augmenting [Limited Forked Theory] Configurable Spaces, including idea spaces, and a fondling of ripples of creation —riding some of those wavy portals

To contact us Click HERE


While at Beachwood Place Mall, looking, as usual, for evidence of interaction (such as shadows and reflections), I came upon DJ Adio in a shop window, positioned where both he and his reflection could be seen on two glass planes on which reflections from passersby also temporarily converged, diverged, then converged again on the second plane. A sampling, if you will, of space, of occupancy; a sharing of moment as he spun red discs of music I could not hear.

The sharing of space as reflections converged seemed to be a visual aspect of what the DJ was mixing; persons he did not know, could not see were becoming part of him, walking through his image, enlarging what his image could contain, just as he was enlarging sonic space and sonic meanings.

DJ Adio was functioning as a door, as a bifurcation point, as an entrance and exit point, an access point —and his gestures seemed to be shuffling what was converging, configuring the sonic and visual geometries of the connections. A fantastic door system that I wanted to highlight and explore further with Philip Bimstein's Door music and added vocal tracks expressing and exploring some gist of my observations that were part of the convergence, part of the collaboration.

DJ Adio Door Ways Ghost Relay: an adventure in vibration studies was a poam outcome of an unplanned investigation of a convergence of DJ, reflection, observation, meaning as transit system, the mixing of elements by a DJ in the configuration of a moment.

In this investigation, the movements and gestures took on more context as ripples of experience, shockwaves fanning out from a central event: the DJ's role as an assembler of realities within realities; DJ Adio was acting as a hub into which realities fed, a hub of convergence where he reassembled what converged and transmitted alternate versions, more of the other possibilities for the information that converged in his hub. DJ Adio as relay station, as transformer.

"You are mathematical. You don't have to do math; you are math." -Thylias Moss

To contact us Click HERE
Here's a little math I can get with:

“A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.” --Terry Pratchett

Also, I may consider a side-gig in thaumaturgy.

Yes. I think I may.

“I believe anything is possible.
Research into quantum physics
proves that a system changes
simply by someone observing it.
Therefore, all you have to do is be
awake and aware of your environment,
and that enables you to
transform everything around you.
It sounds like hocus pocus, but
scientists are coming to realize that
just thinking about something can
make it happen. Turns out maybe
faith can move mountains.”
--Christine Anderson

Retired NJ police officer-wife found dead in VA. www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
Lynchburg VA Feb 21 2013  — Retired borough police Lt. John Philbrook and his wife, Virginia, were murdered at their home in Lynchburg, Va., Campbell County authorities have said.
Police have said the bodies of both Philbrook, 73, and his wife, 71, were found Friday after neighbors had requested a welfare check on the two after newspapers and mail had collected on their property.
Officials from the Campbell County Sheriff’s department said neighbors reported they last saw Philbrook outside his home on Feb. 12.
Once there, police discovered both victims had been shot.
Their grandson, 27-year-old Robert Lee Philbrook, has been charged with second-degree murder and related firearms charges by police. He is being held at the Blue Ridge Regional Jail.
“We’re all shocked. He was one of the great guys,” said Spring Lake Police Chief Edward Kerr.
“The members, present and retired, of the Spring Lake Police Department would like to express our deepest sympathy to the Philbrook family,” Kerr said. “This news has saddened those who used to work with John along with the newer members of the department who know him from the stories passed down through the years.”
Born on July 28, 1939, in Vinalhaven, Maine, Philbrook was hired as a patrolman in Spring Lake in 1967. He received a medal of valor from the borough in 1980 for rescuing two boys who had fallen through the ice in Spring Lake and for disarming a suspect who produced a semi-automatic handgun in police headquarters and aimed it at several officers.
He was promoted to lieutenant in 1987.
Kerr said Philbrook had moved to the Lynchburg, Va., home shorty after retiring from the Spring Lake force in 1991.
Kerr and three members of the borough’s police department will attend the funeral services in Lynchburg on Friday.

Source-APP.com