Phantasms

Life through a bottle of gin 2

Seeing the world through a bottle of gin

perogies

Phantasmal

Organicum Residency 1a and 1b (reeder and knack)

Organicum Residency 2 (Stan Dangerman)

Langside Window

Horace Window

I have finally found a band in TO... and we played the Drake last night

Check it out here

Look what I found growing outside my apartment...

Saving the World, ch. 1

If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.

--Daniel Quinn

Label 2014

More Self-Referential Stuff, Ughhh. (photos by Julie Epp)

Tripple Dose

Check out this hella photo of your very own Don Throbinson III and Killah Krahn, by the fantastically fabulous Ms. Shannon Flynn!

15% Human, 85% Sheep, 100% Weird

Yep, here's another news post, from this article:

Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

I don't really have much more to say about this, so I'll just add a few comments from the good people at slashdot:

- Wait, I thought Scottish Farmers had been making these for AGES!

- Hah, in Soviet Russia, humans are 100% sheep.

- Next we are going to have to send the sheep to public schools. And humans are going to complain that they are taking over our jobs.

- When they get to 51% human can you marry them?

- Mary had a little lamb.

The Nail House

Taken from the Globe & Mail article by Geoffrey York, photo by Mark Ralston:

It has been dubbed "the nail house." Sticking out like an upright nail, the house and its owner have stubbornly refused to be hammered down by a property developer who has bulldozed everything around it.

Mr. Yang is a former kung-fu champion who is admired for his defiant attitude and his toughness. Last week, he used two steel pipes to climb up to his home from the 10-metre-deep pit that surrounds it. Brandishing a set of wooden clubs, he shouted to onlookers: "If anyone dares to come up, I'll beat them back down."

Thousands of property disputes have erupted in China in recent years. Many cases are similar to the nail-house case: A private developer buys up a site, gains support from local officials and puts pressure on hundreds of local residents to leave.

The Skybird Band - Bella Vista - March 28

Alf Catolico - drums, Gilles Fournier - bass,
Sky Onosson - guitar & vocals

Wednesday, March 28 at the Bella Vista,
corner of Maryland & Wolseley

One night only, and the weather should be pretty damn nice!

The Lee Oswald Experience

Orbit of the Dreaming Eye

A soul crept imperceptibly for millennia.
Beneath the skin, churning, rumbling.
Yearning for the chance to burst,
Violently into shape
A shape so terrible, so awesome,
That no one could bear to look
Or resist.

Reaching heroic tragic height
Either fall to death or float away
Into the promise of a new destruction
Swear to change
And lament the failure
Perpetuate the inability
To see past its own dreaming eye.

Introducing: The Smoke Tiger

Bio Pic, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

The Smoke Tiger is an alchemist using music and artistic performance as components of a holistic program of spiritual transmutation. Through various media including digital cut & paste and traditional post-modern painting the Smoke Tiger expresses his studies of various esoteric schools including the traditions of shamanism (astral travel, trancework, nature and animal worship), traditional European occult (banishing and summoning of demons, tarot, ceremonial magic) , ancient mythological lore (nordic, celtic, mayan, egyptian, greek, hindu), as well as the mystery religion schools (kabbalah, taoism, zen, bhudism, sufism, gnosticism).

Although the career of the seer arguably begins before birth, the Smoke Tiger was officially self-initialized into Sorcery through the Kaoss Machyn project of 2003; a multi-disciplinary extravaganza including musical album, drawing and painting show, and ritualistic performance, culminating in the spiritual death of Andrew Courtnage and re-birth of the artist SmokeTiger.

Since graduation the Smoke Tiger has traveled extensively in search of enlightenment, journeying to both the lower and upper worlds meeting holy people and pilgramiging to power places following in the tradition of the Norse God Odin; the one eyed travelling nameless stranger. Along the wayThe Smoke Tiger has experimented with many paths including the poison path of intoxication and the flowering way of silent meditation.

Accepting that creative expression is but a facet of complete spiritual transformation, the Smoke Tiger practices martial arts and yoga in order to further gather chi and open the energy channels of the body. Accepting that the microcosm of the soul cannot receive liberation without that same macrocosmic liberation of the greater society, the Smoky Tiger follows counter-culture and anarchic-conspiratorial-revolution theory.

Currently the Smoke Tiger anticipates and is preparing for a nuclear Armageddon within our lifetime that will lead to a new golden age in Winnipeg Manitoba.

Welcome My Son, Welcome to the Machine

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been named by consumerist.com as 'Worst Company in America', beating out close competitors Walmart, Haliburton, and Exxon.

Save

You should be inspired by the climb that you must make. Not because it is a chore, not just to prepare, but because it is the beautiful winding rage that fills you with joy, that fills you with essence. You can go out and play when you feel no pain, otherwise, the gift is for you to bare. A constant iteration of perfection, where you must go only one way, and that is to the better. I am the obscure, living on the edge of a cliff, and you can never lose.

Wolfboy inspired me....

I've been reading Howard's End for about a month now, picking it up whenever I can justify taking an hour or two away from writing papers, and wow that Forster dude sure had some interesting things to say. Here's a passage about the tragedy of preparedness. I could cut it down for you guys, but I can't help myself...

"Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead to nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumed that preparation against danger is in itself good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty."

Those last two sentences just get me every time.

Cervantes....

over the course of a decade, i've read about 2/3 of Don Quixote. I really should finish it someday. Anyway, here are some wise quotes from Cervantes...

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.
Miguel de Cervantes

It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.
Miguel de Cervantes

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.
Miguel de Cervantes

Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.
Miguel de Cervantes

Jests that give pains are no jests.
Miguel de Cervantes

Jehovah-Jireh

from: www.heavylyrics.com

Artist: Deliverance
Album: Deliverance
Title: Jehovah Jireh

Jehovah Jireh my provider
His grace is sufficient for me
For me, for me
Jehovah Jireh my provider
His grace is sufficient for me

The Lord shall provide all my needs
According to His riches in Glory
The Lord shall provide Himself a lamb for sacrifice
Jehovah Jireh takes care of me
Of me, of me


Wolfboy's additions:

She shall give her angels
charge over me

Jehovah-Jireh cares for
me
for
me for
she
evermore and ever is
be.

Metatron

metatcubebw, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Metatron (from Greek Meta+Tron meaning Beyond+Matrix.). Metatron is an angel in Judaism, some branches of Christianity and Islamic tradition Witchcraft. However, there are no references to him in the Jewish Tanakh (Old Testament), the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) or any Islamic source.

There is no consensus as to his genesis or the role that he plays in the hierarchy of Heaven and Hell. A mysterious figure, Metatron is identified with the term, "lesser YHVH" which is the Lesser Tetragrammaton - in a Talmudic version read by the Karaite scholar Kirkisani.

The word 'Metatron' is numerically equivalent to Shaddai according to Hebrew gematria, therefore he is said to have a "Name like his Master".

The Talmud records an incident with Elisha ben Abuya, also called Aher ("another"), who is said to have entered Paradise, and saw Metatron sitting down (an action in heaven that is permissible only to God Himself). Elisha ben Abuya therefore looked to Metatron as a Deity, and is reported to have said, "There are indeed two powers in heaven!"

The rabbis explain that Metatron was allowed to sit because of his function as the Heavenly Scribe, writing down the deeds of Israel, mush as Thoth was the Egyptian scribe.

According to one school of thought Enoch was taken by God and transformed into Metatron, explaining the mysterious passage "Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away (Genesis 5:24 NIV). However, this viewpoint is not shared by many Talmudic authorities.

There may be two Metatrons, one spelled with six letters, and one spelled with seven. The former may be the transformed Enoch, while the latter is the Primordial Metatron.

The Zohar calls Metatron "the Youth", identifies him as the angel that led the people of Israel through the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt, and describes him as a heavenly priest.

Metatron is also mentioned in the Pseudepigrapha, most prominently in the Hebrew Book of Enoch (also called Third Enoch), in which his grand title, "the lesser YHVH" resurfaces. According to Johann Eisenmenger, Metatron transmits the daily orders of God to the angels Gabriel and Samuel. Metatron is often identified as being the twin brother to Sandalphon, who is said to have been the prophet Elijah.


The Flower of Life has thirteen circles. [13=4=time] If each circle's center is considered a "node", and each node is connected to each other node with a single line, a total of seventy-eight lines are created. Within this cube, many other shapes can be found, including two-dimensionally flattened versions of the five platonic solids. In early Kabbalist scriptures, Metatron supposedly forms the cube from his soul.

This Cube can later be seen in Christian art, where it appears on his chest or floating behind him. Metatron's cube is also considered a holy glyph, and was often drawn around an object or person to ward off demons and satanic powers.

This idea is also present in alchemy, in which the cube was favored as a containment circle or creation circle.

I know

I know that it's true
angels as energy
and the too many few

I know that it's true
the wondrous absence
of no one and hue

I know that it's true
many more times
then the minute

I know that it's true
angels as energy
and the too many few

further to ancient migrations...

Kon-Tiki was the raft used by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in his 1947 expedition. It was named after the Inca sun god, Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name. Kon-Tiki is also the name of the popular book that Heyerdahl wrote about his adventures.

Heyerdahl believed that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in the south Pacific in Pre-Columbian times. His aim in mounting the Kon-Tiki expedition was to show, by using only the materials and technologies available to them at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent them from having done so.

Heyerdahl and a small team went to Peru, where they constucted a balsa wood raft out of balsa logs and other native materials in an indigenous style (as recorded in illustrations by Spanish conquistadores). This trip began on April 28, 1947. Accompanied by five companions, Heyerdahl sailed it for 101 days over 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean before smashing into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947. The only modern equipment they had was a radio.

that was from Wikipedia:

Wolfboy notes that: While many of his conclusions are now disputed, Heyerdahl's trip proved the theory that, among other things, ancient Polynesian islanders migrated vast distances over open ocean.

The method the ancients used?

A star shaped device that taught young navigators to understand the ways that waves were directed off land masses. By learning the star's movement in the water, they learned to gauge where land was, and how far away it was.

Once they had learned this, they guided canoes over thousands of miles of open ocean by placing their hand in the water and feeling the waves.

Do You Know Where Your Head Is?

More interesting science news...

Some cultures in the early days of colonization of the islands of the Pacific Ocean may have practiced the custom of removing the heads of their ancestors before burial and keeping them, then reburying them sometime later with the body of one of the person's descendants. Archaeologists discovered this by digging up decapitated corpses buried with heads not belonging to them. In some cases the heads came from different islands than where they were found, allowing researchers to determine ancient migration routes.

The Brain and all its weird mystery

I know everyone's had this experience at one time or another, but...

Last night I was trying to remember a Bob Dylan song I used to listen to all the time-- I could remember its context, as in when and where I used to listen to/play it, and with who, but couldn't for the life of me remember a single word, note, anything...

This a.m., I woke up and opened my eyes, and immediately "heard" inside my head the first notes of the song and the words followed. So while I slept, my brain did the work for me, and when I woke up, provided the answer I hadn't even been looking for.

Also, this is post # 2607. At one time, my PB ("personal best", as in most trees planted in a day of planting) was 2600-- actually, that held up for a few years until I finally cracked 3000 a few times, including my second last day ever. My joints and lower back are still unhappy about all that.

IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH

Malaysian police detained an eight-member gang of small-sized robbers dubbed the "midget gang," who allegedly confessed to committing 14 break-ins over the past three months, a news report said Thursday.

All the gang members, aged between 14 and 23 years, were diminutive, The Star newspaper said without saying whether they were dwarfs or just small.

Some of them who were less than 5 feet tall would be picked to squeeze through small openings into the houses they robbed in central Malaysia, The Star said.

Gang members confessed to their crimes when they were detained, according to the report.

The arrests came about after residents in a housing area alerted police after noticing the group loitering suspiciously in a field near their homes, Ampang district police chief Amer Awal was quoted as saying.

Amer and other senior officers were in a meeting Thursday morning and were unable to take phone calls to provide further details, his secretary said.

Remember my name

I think of
thin rivulets
blown in
and further
to the drop
of hollow
warmth and
sunny weather

Looking for Artists

The ICC (see link) is attempting to create an exchange between Australia, Korea, and America in the coming years. Our success will be determined by the artists involved. Each country already has several artists representing them and providing homestay facilities. That is with the exception of Canada (so far). I am asking that you or any other visual artists you know participate in this project to some capacity, whether it be a full ICC echange artist, or just helping out. If you or anyone you know is interested in a trip to Australia, Korea, or America (?) or able to offer a space for homestay or some other help, please contact me by email.

david_macri@msn.com

Also does anyone have any advice on this regarding, traveling with and sending art, brochures, translators, places that house (residenies eg:SNAC), fund or show this kind of poject (in Winnipeg or elsewhere).

The WAG and Plug in have a 3 year wait, and are hard to get into, and the rest are too small or have some other feature that makes them difficult to utilize (Eg: the Graffitti Gallery is awesome, but might be a bit rugged for some of our older guests etc).

When an idea is rejected

Yikes dudes, I just received notice that an article I submitted was rejected for publication. The reviewer's exact comment: "I am not convinced." Ugh... that shite don't feel good, you dig? Whatever the case, I have soaked in this rejection, knowing that life is wondrous in all things. May my lesson be learned, and my will stronger. I will convince, so back to the drawing board.

Supersonic Narsisuss

PICT0108, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

tibetan demon with a thousand arms
you cant steal me lucky charms
hydroponic farms
supersonic narsissuss
cowboy camoflauged with a cobra head over the eyes
rising up to meet your maker
going to have a soul down shaker

tho i aint no rumplestilsken you still cant guess my real name


In order to resurrect Osiris, it was necessary for Isis to learn how to swim, and so it was that Isis tricked Ra into telling her his "secret name", by biting and kissing him, so that he would use his "secret name" to survive. This aspect becomes central in magic spells, and Isis is often implored to use the true name
of Ra while performing rituals.

Immigration Misery

As the country waits for Congress and the president to enact immigration reform, the indecency of existing policies is becoming intolerable. The immigrant underclass is in a growing state of misery and fear. States and localities have rushed to fill the vacuum of Congressional inaction with a jumble of enforcement regimes. Farmers are worrying about crops rotting as their immigrant workers retreat further into the shadows. Officials in Colorado have settled on one solution: replacing those workers with prison chain gangs.

The above paragraph is taken verbatim from an editorial printed today in the New York Times. Otherwise, you might be justified in believing it to be pulled out of an Arthur C. Clarke sci-fi work of political bent. What are we coming to??

Wind to knee

I hear the wind
whine a deep
violet sea

Numbers
of evolution
driving the chain
upon my knee

Indeed indeed
pluck the string
eternal
dancing dancing
knee to knee

The Heart of Borneo

The clouded leopard of Borneo has recently been declared a distinct species of large cat. It certainly is beautiful.

The Prairie Prophet

Diane DiPrima-- Life Chant

LIFE CHANT

cacophony of small birds at dawn
may it continue
sticky monkey flowers on bare brown hills
may it continue
bitter taste of early miner's lettuce
may it continue
music on city streets in the summer nights
may it continue
kids laughing on roofs on stoops on the beach in the snow
may it continue
triumphal shout of the newborn
may it continue
deep silence of great rainforests
may it continue
fine austerity of jungle peoples
may it continue
rolling fuck of great whales in turquoise ocean
may it continue
clumsy splash of pelican in smooth bays
may it continue
astonished human eyeball squinting thru aeons at astonished nebulae who squint back
may it continue
clean snow on the mountain
may it continue
fierce eyes, clear of light of the aged
may it continue
rite of birth and of naming
may it continue
rite of instruction
may it continue
rite of passage
may it continue
love in the morning, love in the noon sun
love in the evening among crickets
may it continue
long tales by fire, by window, in fog, in dusk on the mesa
may it continue
the night music
may it continue
grunt of mating hippo, giraffe, foreplay for snow leapord
screeching of cats on the backyard fence
may it continue

without police
may it continue
without prisons
may it continue
without hospitals, death medicine: flu and flu vaccine
may it continue
without madhouses, marriage, highschools that are prisons
may it continue
without empire
may it continue
in sisterhood
may it continue
thru the wars to come
may it continue
in brotherhood
may it continue
tho the earth seem lost
may it continue
thru exile and silence
may it continue
with cunning and love
may it continue
as woman continues
may it continue
as breath continues
may it continue
as stars continue
may it continue

may the wind deal kindly with us
may the fire remember our names
may springs flow, rian fall again
may the land grow green, may it swallow our mistakes

we begin the work
may it continue
the great transmutation
may it continue
a new heaven and a new earth
may it continue
may it continue

DIANE DI PRIMA

Gouche experiment

As usual, I have no idea where this is going.
I`ve never worked with this "gouche" before. Anyone know how it`s pronounced?

...and the Godkings Rocked!

AlfA?

Arts and Letters Factory (anonymous). ?

Quebec Cinema and two solitudes

So, this past weekend, in my ongoing effort to improve my French skills, I watched "The Rocket", a biopic of the great French-Canadian hockey star Maurice Richard, as well as "The Triplets of Belleville".

Both proved that Quebec cinema is light years ahead of the rest of the country, in my opinion.

The Triplets was perhaps the most unique and engaging movie I've seen in a long time. It tells a story of a grandmother's love for her grandson, and a whole bunch of other subtexts at the same time, involving music, sport, culture, and some weird association with the numbers 3, 6, and 9.

The Rocket is also amazing--very stylish, amazing cinematography, and a cool blend of French and English. What I found most striking, perhaps, was the sense of underlying anger in it, though--a sense of the injustice English Canada has done to Quebec, and Quebec's lingering bitterness. The whole plot basically revolved around the French kicking our anglo asses and getting screwed over in return.

It made me wonder if Canada can be saved.

Anyway, two great movies. See 'em.

Sans Titre

Patmos

St.John, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Cleopatra

he takes me between his fingertips
and words me,
girls,
he sure knows how to word me


wears that stumble proudly
and dances me,
boy,
he sure knows how to dance me


predicts the future with bay laurel
and reads me,
girls,
he sure knows how to read me


turns his gaze from me
and leaves me,
boy,
he sure knows how to leave me
down and noble

Homage to Lenny D and his magic organ

Babylon, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Repairs

Silent
I mouth the words
now
floating on the ceiling of my room
where my fingers searched a space to seep
what awaits
me
in the morning that punctuation
leaves a mark
always spaces to be filled
a comma, a comma, a comma
my voice refuses
caught in my throat
a sharp little croup
now
drowned out
by a choir
demanding I harmonize
groceries
listed on utitlity bills I’ve yet to pay

Son in the Sun

Renovations?

Mightily

I saw the scene of Kings:

And we relaxed there, talking of the fashion and what best made this lounger, and she laid down beside me, moving and turning her back with curly hair that wasn't hers and that stared back at me, knowing exactly what I was doing, and two more judging me, shaming my pick of the fruit a season too early, fairness is beyond reproach, you, you will be hated for your ability to exclude.

And then all of us were rushed to glory, in a scene only from which decay is come, to see the costumed magnificent be elegant, the blue skies and cumulous, towering and full of thin legs were these elephant brigades, even in their sparseness, a desert with no cold, no warmth, no temperature at all.

Then came the black mass in joyous concentration, spilling in heterogeneity and up the concrete apartment balconies as they curved space, making colosseum.

The announcer called for us in the excited rush too look to the heavens and see the plane, so much excitement about this plane. He urged us to take pictures and it was as if almost everyone did, the rocket instead came, but our flashes attracted its gaze as it looped mightily for us in an instant.

But things like that take much longer, and all of it was grace.

So we ran as if we ran, dispersed, guilty to magical lands.

Seer/Dentist

PICT0099, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Novelist

PICT0101, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Who else could it be?

http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.umanitoba.ca/uts/grants/2006photos/DSC_9704.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.umanitoba.ca/uts/grants/str.php&h=1200&w=1800&sz=1137&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=NSsXWQTy4CHFoM:&tbnh=100&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djeff%2Bfunnell%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den

Manufactured Landscapes

One night, I was recently watching CBC when they featured this photographer, Edward Burtynsky. He takes pictures of industrial landscapes from all over the world, China, Bangladesh and the U.S.A. He takes these pictures to show us a part of the globe that we're not usually exposed to but that are very reflective of our time.