mermaid parade, batch the second

Batch the third will consist of some lovely 35mm prints, and batch the fourth will have to wait until I can find Seze's phone number. Please note the Return of the Parrots for Peace. And also we were the Venetian Mermaids (see banner). NB imtboo, you can see the silver shoes in one of these.


( eleventy billion pictures behind the cut )

(no subject)

Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Hear the words of Osama Bin Laden: "This Third World War is raging" in Iraq. "The whole world is watching this war." He says it will end in "victory and glory, or misery and humiliation."--said Our Leader.

A Republican congressman from North Carolina told CNN on Wednesday that the "evidence is clear" that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

Also the fact that this is in the news again fits into my theory of The North Korean Time Lag as unit of measurement.

Also, my morning routine, in addition to coffee, now includes cognitive grumpiness and balancing act, stemming from my semiotic ennui and linguistic aphasia, nee my ironiagnosia (born as in splitting my fucking head open, Athena-style), which, in turn, stem from the fact that language has imploded. Reality has cannibalized the lag, the lacunae that produced irony or hyperbole. Referents that were inscribed in that equation have become outdated.

But, here's what I think: we need new hyperboles. "Orwellian" has stopped being a hyperbole, now it's just true and yesterday's news. It is an impotent word now, standing shyly in the corner, covering its flaccid manhood. But are we so weak? Are we so entrenched in the iconic cultural referents of modernism that we, as a generation, with a cultural moment of our very own clearly demarcated on the calendar as if served on a silver platter, can't come up with one good fucking hyperbole? Are the pomo-haters right, has EVERYTHING been invented already, and we are just pawns, grinning idiotically through a semiotic Gotterdamerung?

People! In our signifying practices we are no better than the ostriches that hide their head in the sand at the prospect of Peak Oil. It's coming, it is quite possibly already here, and if we are going to critique the industrial sector for not getting with the fucking program and preparing to switch the infrastructure over to alternatuve sources of energy instead of proceeding with the apocalyptic endgame of diminishing returns going on now, we should be able to do the same with language. We have hit the Peak Oil of Dystopian Metaphores. You are not going to impress anyone with "orwellian" or "brave new world" or "handmaid's tale" anymore. Furthermore, you are not even going to be able to emphasize. You will think you are emphasizing, but you will be producing verisimilitude, describing reality as is. You will think you are new wave, but, alas, you are verite. So sad.

So everyone, come up with one good hyperbole for our zeitgeist, to fight our ineffectual army of zombie hyperboles that we have been left with.

Let yourself be inspired by Dr. Frankestein, God, Saussure, Lewis Carroll, or Mr. Malaprop.

Start...NOW!