sneezing out the snoofs

reiterate: ya:
floods and rivers and boats and flotsam and jetsam and dairycows and feverish explorers and tri-cornered hats and underwater divers (with their round diving bell helmets) and bubble-gassers and blibber blabber gum and joan d’arc prouncing on a carp and fitful suzy and unleashing warhounds and hungry burrows lacking sense and ribald phallocentric trickster gods and tickled hamsters and clorophyll and wingnuts and juicy juicy mangoes and flocks and flocks of nameless (to me) birds and (don’t forget!) the owl mask that flies away and jungle prince and james bond’s flying boots and sprinkly starbeings eating earth and grinning cheshires and wrinkly beans and all of mr. green-jenkins’ socks and that calendar with all the sundays burnt out and so…..

For my photographer

I found a website which may get some ideas going for your current project. You’re probably already quite aware of most of this information, but I thought that it might get you started on the path towards some useful resources. Let me know if this proves useful.

The diagrams and old sketch drawings drew my interest especially. As well as the old printed advertisement.

More camera obscuras here. The french instructions are groovy. (Or should I say freedom instructions?)

This is probably my favorite of the five. What can I say: I’m a sucker for the old graphic design and typefaces.

Please see the description of “Vermeer’s Camera”. Very groovy.

If only today’s digital cameras were this aesthetically baroque. One day, perhaps, our digital equipment (computers, cameras, etc.) will have this much character.

This is to the photographer in my life (you know who you are)

I found a website detailing some forgotten/abandoned photographic techniques.

Some excerpts:

CALOTYPE or TALBOTYPE. Paper sponged over with or floated on solutions of silver iodide and potassium iodide. When partially dry, the excess potassium iodide was removed by bathing in distilled water. Paper was sensitized in a solution of silver nitrate, acetic acid and gallic acid. After printing a feeble image was brought up to the required strength by an application of a solution similar to the silver nitrate sensitizer. Talbotypes produced rich warm brown images.

PINATYPE. A transparency was made on a soft emulsion of the lantern plate variety and developed in a tanning developer. The “printing plate” so obtained was bated for about two minutes in an engraving black or photographic brown pinatype dye. The dye was held in suspension by the gelatin in direct proportion to the extent to which it had been hardened by light action during printing. The plate so charged with dye was then washed free of the surplus dye and finally brought in contact with a sheet of paper coated with plain gelatin. The two were squeegeed together and left for several minutes, when the dye in the plate was transferred to the virgin gelatin. When separated, the gelatin bore the dye image. Any number of prints could be made by dyeing-up the printing plate and repeating the imbition process.

Apparently, this information was culled from this encyclopedia: The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography (2 Volumes) 1965 edition, 2nd reprint. Editorial Board: L.A. Mannheim, Daphne Buckmaster, Frederick Purves, P.C. Poynter, Norah Wilson, Paul Petzold, A. Kraszna-Krausz.

Also, your aversion to color photography may be warrented…

Happenings in 2002 you may have missed

Gwynne Dyer, Ph.D., is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. These are some happenings around the world that may have slipped past your radar. I know they did mine, for the most part.

It’s amazing how easy it is for me to forget that so much is going on Everywhere all at the same time. How to keep track of it all, anyhow?

You can read his biography here.

Also, check out the Global Business Network’s website. These are the kinds of organizations it seems worthwhile to keep tabs on, for whatever reason.

will the caftan be televised?

(or should I say yurt?)
once we (the two(?) parts of me) got together, hatched a plan and sprung forth out of the brain. (adeena at delphia or some apollonistickal… are we thinking of?) fullybrained, like a wonderchicken.
there’s no ulcer like the forebrain, or cancelling all the cannibalistic tendencies and pernastities.

so, ahoy, gulliver! i’m in a world where springs of fulsome tragedians are um hitting their bladders with sticks. or i’m sorry: so to speak, some other striking their bladders for them (inflated bladders don’cha). so if i’m remembering: Laputans. (not lilliputians you saucy clavichords! i actually read the whole d*** book!)

who can speak without a bladderstriker and whatsit to you if they don’t?

Of returning

If any are wondering, I have returned from my frazzling trip. Airports become more and more tiring all the time. I am losing the thread of this thing.

My initial experiment in journalizing likeso:

The right side would be for the jumbled and incomprehensible word/images which foible and hopscotch through my brain all the time. (As my main concern regarding them has always been, how and in what way would be the best way to capture and snapshot those flitting brainpatterns.) I had been writing in that fashion for quite some time (as you can see by the archives), when I realized that a part of me (the rational?)–the part that can(?) write in quasi-legible fashion–was being neglected.

Hence, this Left side of things. It occurred to me that it would be nice to have an outlet where I might be able to construct word-fragments which would be immediately decipherable to whomever. (Believe me, I’m as certain of the frustrating nature of my writing as the next person.) The trouble is that I find that I have less to say over here. I’m not really interested in tapping away about the day-to-day hummdrummities. Plenty of people do that anyhow.