For Oscar

Nominated, Best Animated Short

Mardis Gras Indians

You've got first chief, which is Big Chief;
First Queen;
you've got Second Chief and Second Queen;
Third Chief and Third Queen.
First, Second, and Third chiefs are supposed to have a queen with them. That's just tradition.
Your fourth chief is not called fourth chief, he's the Trail Chief.

From there on it's just Indians, no title.

You also have your Spy Boy, your Flag Boy and your Wild Man.

Your Spy Boy is way out front, three blocks in front the chief.

The Flag Boy is one block in front so he can see the Spy Boy up ahead and he can wave his flag to let the chief know what is going on.

Today, they don't do like they used to. Today you're not going to see any Spy Boy with a pair of binoculars around his neck and a small crown so he can run. Today a Spy Boy looks like a chief and somebody carrying a big old stick. It's been years since I seen a proper flag. Today everybody has a chief stick.

The Wild Man wearing the horns in there to keep the crowd open and to keep it clear. He's between the Flag Boy and the Chief.

Obsessing w/Fury

Feirouz come on the balcony
so that the birds can hear you sing
so will the black cedars of Lebanon
and the pines of Ararat

Feirouz, oh my sorrows, Feirouz!
When I listen to you singing,
I always leave my heartaches
at the crossroads of life

Send me your love songs
on the wings of the southern winds
so they can pass from Gavdos
and go farther up to cover the whole country.

Feirouz, oh my sorrows,Feirouz!
listening to you sing
I have always learned to give
more then anyboby else ever will

The angles sing the archagelic psalm
and in the heat of the Beqaa
you sing and give freshness to them

Feirouz, oh my sorrows, Feirouz!
everytime I hear you sing
I leave my pain
in the crossroads of life.

Paint by Numbers

for the intellectually curious

Red Pill? ...or Blue?

... an interesting inteview if you have an hour.

Camus vs. Sartre

Stalking the Corridors

On the morning of April 16, Dr Bernard Rieux emerged from his consulting-room and came across a dead rat in the middle of the landing. At the time he pushed the animal aside without paying attention to it and went down the stairs. But once he was in the street it occurred to him that the rat should not have been there and he turned back to inform the concierge. Old M. Michel's reaction made him still more aware of the incongruity of his discovery. To him the presence of this dead rat had seemed merely odd, while for the concierge it was an outrage. In fact, the man was adamant: there were no rats in the house. However much the doctor assured him that there was one on the first-floor landing, probably dead, M. Michel's conviction was firm. There were no rats in the house, so this one must have been brought in from outside. In short, it was a practical joke.

That same evening Bernard Rieux was standing in the corridor of the building, looking for his keys before going up to his flat, when he saw a large rat emerge hesitantly from the dark depths of the corridor, its fur damp. The creature stopped, seemed to be trying to get its balance, stopped again, spun round and round with a faint cry and eventually fell, blood spurting from its half-open lips. The doctor looked at it for a moment, then went upstairs.

- Albert Camus, "The Plague"

Silhoutte on a Dark Night

The tomb of Paheri, an Eighteenth dynasty nomarch of Nekhen, has an eloquent description of this existence: Your life happening again, without your ba being kept away from your divine corpse, with your ba being together with the akh ... You shall emerge each day and return each evening. A lamp will be lit for you in the night until the sunlight shines forth on your breast. You shall be told: "Welcome, welcome, into this your house of the living!"

...and Another for Sisyphus

...is Sisyphus happy?

Examples like this indicate an approach to uptopias which leaves behind the usual focus on content (on the structure of society proposed in a utopian vision). Perhaps it is time to step back from the fascination with content and reflect upon the subjective position from which such content appears utopian. On account of its temporal loop, the fantasmatic narrative always involves an impossible gaze, the gaze by means of which the subject is already present at the scene of its' own absence. When the subject directly identifies its own gaze with the objet a, the paradoxical implication of this identification is that the objet a disappears from the field of vision. This brings us to the core Lacanian notion of utopia: a vision of desire functioning without an objet a and its twists and loops. It is utopian not only to think that one can reach full, unencumbered "incestuous" enjoyment; for it is no less utopian to think that one can renounce enjoyment without this renunciation generating its' own surplus-enjoyment.

- Slavoj Zizek, "Living in the End Times"