Art?

     I dunno.

     It's what happens when I clean a couple of fountain pens with a quick dip in distilled water and then drop a square of paper onto the swirl.

It's Always Watching

     It takes a picture every two seconds, and tags it and indexes it, too.  And they'd like to sell you one.

    I'm not sure if it's kewl or deeply disturbing.  Probably both.  Log your life!  Stick the data in the cloud!  Early aviators feared "clouds filled with rocks."  There may be worse hazards lurking in ours.

After The Storm And Just Before

After:

ETA: I'm surprised no one noticed the airplane.

Before:

W For Welles

     Sunday, as the storms roared through, I had the pleasure of introducing Tam to the Orson Welles "free-form documentary," F For Fake.

     If you've never seen it, it's something of a precursor to Penn & Teller's Bullshit!* (right down to the use of magic as a...metaphor?), something of an art movie about art and a fake about fakers, and contains several splendid Welles monologues, with the spot-on timing and intonation that makes him such a pleasure to listen to.  To tell you too much about the work would be to spoil the fun -- while it is at times self-indulgent, the payoff makes it worthwhile and in the meantime, you're carried along on a trip through times and places you'd've otherwise never have seen.

     Heck, Tam didn't even fall asleep.
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* While I'm reluctant to use rough language, that is the title of the series and the pair have put forward an excellent reason why.

And The Award For Best Borrowed Riff--

     To Veronica Varlow, Sail-ing her way between nostalgia and the unguessable future. (Snark aside, it's a nice listen, somewhere between an essay and Aerosmith's proto-rap.)

Ow. Ow, Ow (Leaf-Raking)

     Tam and I cleared the front yard yesterday, raked up all the leaves.  Viola!  Well, more of a cello, really, lumbering and sad as a small, lost pachyderm, picking out a minor-key melody of turning seasons and cold winds to follow:

A few more leaves have fallen since and there are more to come (lo, the mighty oak has not yet relinquished its leafy thralls) but the big job is done.  Just in time for predicted violent weather -- wind gusts possibly as high as 70 mph!  (That's 31.29 m/sec for the Euro contingent).

     The job is not without benefits: along the no-man's-land between sidewalk and street, hidden under leaves gold, brown and shameless red, the year's last few violets are quietly blooming, dreaming still of a summer now well-lost.

     Meanwhile, my back is reminding me of many summers lost, that I'm no longer young -- and that I really need to buy a new mattress soon.  Couldn't even sit up in bed this morning, had to roll on my side and let my legs drop to the floor.  The hot pad has helped and I believe a decent breakfast might, too.

Panic On The Ball State Campus

     The news was full of images from a circling helicopter over Ball State University last night, police cars from at least three different agencies (university, city and state) were littering the streets and sidewalk, armed officers leading crowds of students, even more heavily-armed ones going through a couple of buildings room-by-room, occasionally glimpsed via telephoto lens through a window or door--

     Had a madman mowed down innocents in a blaze of horror?  Were there, as early reports claimed, hostages?

     No.

     Was there an actual gun?

     No one is sure.

     What did happen was a student in the Rec and Wellness Center yelled, "GUN!"  And the the building got cordoned off, much of the campus was locked down and every available officer -- and the news media -- descended on the area.  After three hours of worry and consternation, nothing was found.

     Bank robbers of America and would-be terrists from all over, please do not take note.

     Much like happened earlier this year at IUPUI, when someone reported seeing a man with a long gun on the campus, the school was put on "lockdown," massive police presence followed and nothing turned up.  (There's been speculation that the incident at IUPUI was the result of someone quite legally securing a firearm in the trunk of their vehicle, but no one has come forward.)

     News coverage of bent half-wits mowing down unsuspecting students have resulted in this kind of over-reaction, with multiple police agencies combing through maze-like campuses and buildings.  Unless great care is taken in communication and coordination, sooner or later it's going to result in a blue-on-blue incident.  Students are no more careful of their words and actions than they've ever been and all it takes is for someone to want a little attention or get careless with a toy gun and--  wham.  Lockdown.  Staties and Officer Friendly and the Campus Cops stalking the halls with what one reporter correctly pointed out as "assualt rifles" and we can only hope their radios all have at least one shared channel and somebody's keeping track of who's where.

     ("Lockdowns" bother me, too -- that's what they do with unruly convicts at prisons, no?  OTOH, some BSU students were collecting outside the police barricades with cups of coffee, chatting with reporters and playing lookie-lou, so it's not quite a large-scale edition of the Stanford Prison Experiment, at least not yet; but save your Zimbardo faceplam, it's coming.)

     Big News Coverage -- of a big nothing.  A big needlessly-endangering nothing, reinforcing the lesson to college students that, should they see someone with a firearm, the correct response is to call the police and shelter in place.  Is that really what they ought to be doing?

Spy Logic

     Only a spy agency would find one of its own dead, padlocked into a gym bag in his own bathtub, and declare it to be "most probably" a solo accident.  (Squickful descriptions.)

     Okay, then; they're all Room 101 at this hotel, aren't they?

Is It Usually This Noisy Inside Your Head?

     The Optimist declares this is the best of all possible worlds.

     The Pessimist fears he is right.

     The Persimmon is a fruit.

     (And despite what you readers of The Onion might think, the Gaekwad is -- or was -- the ruler of a portion of India, don'cha know.)

Conversation From A Breakfast

     Half of a conversation, anyway, as a large and striped yellow tomcat stands up and pats the edge of the table, hoping I won't notice:

     "Why yes, Huck, French Toast: the housecat's normal prey."

     Huck says nothing, just sits back and gazes up at me with a confident expression.

     "Oh, all right, I suppose milk, eggs and 'butter' do count," since cats don't know from margarine, "But not bread, sugar, cinnamon or vanilla!"

     Huck continues to stare, now joined by Rannie doing her best impression of a black-velvet painting of a sad-eyed child.  A tiny flake of nicely browned French Toast escapes my fork and both cats track it but -- ha! -- they're too slow.  I catch it before it hits the floor and they both turn and stalk off, every step as eloquent as a stereotyped Sax Rohmer villain: "You have foiled us this time, Nayland Smith, but we will return...!"  And thus depart the beautiful, wicked Celestial and the giant tiger that is her closest (if not always appreciated) companion.  Or something.

     (This morning's menu: French Toast, a strip and a half of bacon and a Roseholme Tomato Cup, which is a very large cherry tomato or very small regular one quartered, seasoned with a bit of "Montreal Steakhouse" mix and served in a tiny bowl.  Juice and coffee or, for Tam, some heart-racing energy drink, 'cos snarkin' ain't easy.)

First!

     The Wall Street Journal piece on stopping the next publicity-seeking fool with a firearm that I linked to Sunday last is now seeing widespread linky-love in the gun-blogosphere.  Good; it's a meme that needs to be spread far and wide.

     Stop making them famous! 

     Yes, cover it -- it's news. But stop treating these jumped-up failures like they were Pol Pot or Charles Manson.  Stop with the six-day grief-fest on national news and instead promote healing.  If the media and their fave pols want to hand out some more gun-control rants, fine; but don't pretend these sickies are some new Everyman, or that we could stop them by melting down all the AR-15s that ever were.

"Cold Enough For You?"

     It's 19° F this morning.  Nineteen degrees!  Okay, okay, Indiana is well north of the sunshine line -- Tam still calls the region "cold, frozen North Yankeeland" -- but for November, this is ridiculous.

     C'mon, Al, where's that global warmening now that I need it?