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I downloaded The Incident onto the old iPhone last night and was marvelling at the amount of objects that must've been drawn in creating that game, so decided to have a go at that in my own kind of way. It resulted in this drawing.
So on my desk on this specific day (Saturday 18th September, 2010), we have:
Montana 'Erika' spray paint
Montana 'Gonzo' spray paint
Plasti-kote Clear Super spray paint
Halfords clear lacquer spray paint
A selection of small plant pots and their dishes
A wooden puzzle I made when I was about 14
Silly drawing on a block of MDF
Pink post-it notes
Lacie external hard drive
Tin of Chupa Chups
Afro-style comb
Grace Kelly at the V&A pamphlet
Nutella &GO! smuggled through security from Rome airport
Some leftover sulphuric acid from the new battery I got my Vespa
Two A7-ish sized Rhodia notepads (squared)
Cactus V4 camera flash receiver
Stadetler multicoloured fineliners
Envelope containing a variety of seeds from a variety of sources
Waitrose cocoa tin full of makedo parts
Waitrose milk chocolate chunks tin full of bolts from my Vespa
30cm Stanley steel ruler
Nikon SB-600 speedlight
A random pouch of photos
Pirates Mad-libs
'Happy Birthday Glamour Puss!' birthday card from a year ago from the Hospital staff
Pile of old flyers from Hospitality at Herbal
BT rotary dial phone from the 70s (old clacky)
Colop Purple Dude rubber stamp
Peg
Purple crocodile clip thingy holding up one of Lilly's business cards
A5 Rhodia notepad (squared)
Staple Wizard automatic stapler
Pritt Stick
Credit Crunch mug full of sharpies
Tamron 'tampon' 28-200mm lens from Lilly's brother's old film camera
Magnolia Monkey painting on a piece of cardboard previously used as a stiffener for when mailing records
Black and white film in a cannister
Faber-castell sharpener
Apple nipple mouse
Wooden crocodile pencil holder I've had for as long as I can remember
Pen and paintbrush pot hand-painted by Lilly, containing two pairs of left-handed Fiskars scissors; one for paper and the other for fabric
Uniross battery recharger
Man-eating chairs warning sign
Flip Mino HD (second generation)
8gb Sandisk SD card
Blue Podspeaker (right)
15cm steel ruler
Sigma 10.5mm fisheye lens
Ray-Ban aviators
Linocut cutters
Paul Smith iPod case
Kleenex Balsam tissues
60gb fifth-generation iPod, somewhat scratched up from where it jumped off my Vespa
Apple keyboard (full-size slimline model)
scalpel
0.2l purple Really Useful Box containing googley eyes of assorted sizes
Blue painters' tape
Ikea glass half-full of water
Belkin memory card reader
Scotch Magic Tape dispenser
Nokia N73
Pottery blowfish from Vietri
Lens hood for Sigma 30mm HSM
Humbrol silver enamel paint
Burt's Bees cuticle cream
Hospital pill USB stick
Fishing Wire
Neutrogena lip balm
Nikon D40x with Sigma 30mm HSM lens and Cactus v4 trigger
Wacom pen and stand
Wacom Intuos3 A5 Wide tablet
Classic Yellow Post-it notes
Expired tax disc from my vespa
Oversized Paper Clip
Paul Smith wallet (no cash in it, I hate cash)
Canon BCI-6 cartridges, some used, others new
Paperchase manilla ribbon
Another peg
Sigma lens cap
Nikon 18-55mm lens
Scotch standard 10mm tape
Stanley 99E knife
Letter from my accountant
Apple 20" Cinema Display (right) with lego pirate, moomins, Apple iSight camera, tiny magnets, the smallest pyrex beaker I've ever seen and a tiny meerkat on top
Purple Mag-lite
Apple 20" Cinema Display (left) with glass elephant from my great gran, glass dachshund, a pound coin I found on the Bakerloo line about 4 years ago, and a couple of random US cents on top
Rave Digger glowstick
Faber-castell eraser
Stanley 1992 blade
More classic yellow post-it notes
Bonne Maman jar
Puprle duck tape
Canon CanoScan LiDE 200 scanner
Pantone formula guide - solid coated
60cm Stanley steel ruler
Missile-style anti-standby switchbox
Blue Podspeaker (left)
Two Vivitar 285HV flashes and Cactus V4 triggers
Second generation iPod Nano dock
20gb third-generation iPod and dock
Skippy peanut butter jar full of paperclips
First-generation iPhone dock
Italian train tickets x4
Keys to a bright-pink Audi TT nobody wants to buy
Zinsser 1-2-3 Primer Sealer - the best primer in the world
Gorillapod SLR-Zoom size
2009 MacBook Air
Copy of 1999 by Prince on CD
First-genertion iPhone
A bottle of hotsauce that shares my family name
And this is a relatively tidy day for my desk!!
This image was wiped out in the Great SCED Washout of 2011. My apologies if your favourite or comment went with it - I did all I could before I had to restore it manually. Thanks for understanding!
KC-130F.
VMGR-352.
NAS Miramar, California.
Marines.
Sept 1984.
To AMARC as 2G0033 Jun 16, 2004. Still on AMARC inventory Jul 1, 2008
A male alate or the winged reproductive form of the normally wingless ant group. The species is currently unknown, but we have it sent off to someone for identification. The back story is that this tiny (that is the smallest acupuncture needle you can get in the background) ant had emerged by the thousands from a dead tree and was being fed on by a flock of cedar waxwings. To complete the story we want to know about the ant's name. From St. Michael's, Maryland. Collected by the life long naturalist Jan Reese.
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All photographs are public domain, feel free to download and use as you wish.
Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200
Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know
" Ode on a Grecian Urn"
John Keats
You can also follow us on Instagram - account = USGSBIML Want some Useful Links to the Techniques We Use? Well now here you go Citizen:
Art Photo Book: Bees: An Up-Close Look at Pollinators Around the World
www.qbookshop.com/products/216627/9780760347386/Bees.html...
Basic USGSBIML set up:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_yvIsucOY
USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdmx_8zqvN4
PDF of Basic USGSBIML Photography Set Up:
ftp://ftpext.usgs.gov/pub/er/md/laurel/Droege/How%20to%20Take%20MacroPhotographs%20of%20Insects%20BIML%20Lab2.pdf
Google Hangout Demonstration of Techniques:
plus.google.com/events/c5569losvskrv2nu606ltof8odo
or
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c15neFttoU
Excellent Technical Form on Stacking:
Contact information:
Sam Droege
sdroege@usgs.gov
301 497 5840
Sabrina discusses with Julia her ideas for storage of the ribbon, buttons and new material delivered to The Crafty Rat.
I'm preparing for a trip to Australia and editing what it's the camera bag. This seemed like a good time to update the camera inventory list for the insurance policy ! I don't bring all of this on a trip - just what will fit in the Canon backpack - which ends up weighing about 15 lbs.
We celebrated our another Wedding Anniversary with a special night at Café Monarch. Recognized as one of the most Romantic Restaurants in the US. It is romantic, elegant, and therefore expensive. We love coming here for special occasions and they make special occasions memorable.
This is the view from the east end of the bar looking west at the front door.
Welcome to a world of culinary elegance and sophistication you will not find anywhere else in Arizona. Named by Trip Advisor as a Top Three Fine Dining Restaurant in the Nation, this family owned and operated gem in the heart of historic Old Town Scottsdale has earned an illustrious reputation for its first-rate service, elegant ambiance, and five-star cuisine.
At Cafe Monarch the menu is always changing, bringing you an ever-evolving array of innovative culinary creations that feature nothing but the finest in premium fresh, local, seasonal, and sustainable ingredients. The four-course prix fixe menus are meticulously designed to delight even the most sophisticated of palates.
"A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory…” – Albert Einstein
IMG_1179 acd-SharpenAI-Focus
Ava Jhamin For
ME
Playing In My Inventory
(fd) - Baggy Pant Brown
(fd) - Denim Vest - pink gold
Kungler - RDRB #28 Top
Hily Haalan - Melina Summer Bootie with hud light pink slink
Magika Hair - Written Dark deep brown
25 Rose Pink Bangle
CCD Long Nails + Ring camel
Tips & Tricks........Don't be afraid of mesh on mesh. Just remember that size underneath especially of open jacket or vest is smaller even if comes through doesn't matter cuz hidden by jacket or vest.
Also don't be afraid to look at tops from gown, suits, anything you would be surprised the magic you can come up with.
Happy Styling
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Here's a cool bus to bring your Lego city students to and from school. There's room for 11 passengers and a driver. I used some of the stickers from set #60329 to add some detail, but they are not necessary if you do not have them. Also the inventory calls for a stop sign piece (890pr0001) which is a pretty rare and as you can see from the photos I didn't even have it so I replaced it with a similar part. Doing so will save you about $10.
What to do on Boxing day? I made an inventory of my camera collection and put them all together for the group photo. I have 3 or 4 more but missing at the moment, they will show up out of a box somewhere. The drone isn't here either.
Consolidated PBY Catalina
G-PBYA was originally ordered for the Royal Canadian Air Force as a Canso A amphibian, basically equivalent to the US Navy PBY-5A. It was built by Canadian Vickers at Cartierville, Quebec and was allocated their constructors number CV-283 before adopting the RCAF serial 11005. It was taken on charge by the air force on 27 October 1943 and initially saw service with 9 (Bomber Reconnaissance) Squadron at Bella Bella on the British Columbia coast between Vancouver and Prince Rupert. It was on their inventory from November to the following August. 9 Squadron had been based at Bella Bella for some time prior to the arrival of Cansos, having operated Supermarine Stranraers there. The Cansos were mainly operated from water despite their amphibious undercarriages and were used on day and night patrols, looking out for enemy submarines.
By mid-1944, the threat of a Japanese invasion of Western Canada had receded and it was decided to disband 9 Squadron and close the station at Bella Bella. The Cansos, including 11005, were flown to Alliford Bay in the Queen Charlotte Islands, also in British Columbia, and transferred to 7 (BR) Squadron in August. The job was the same – anti-submarine patrols mostly – and 11005 remained with 7 Sqn until it too was disbanded on 25 July 1945. During this period of 11005’s service, it would have flown with an overall matt white hull and upper surfaces, the lower hull being gloss white.
With the war over, 11005 was no longer required in its originally intended role and it entered a period of storage at Moose Jaw before being converted to a freighter in 1948. Subsequently, 11005 flew with 413 Survey (Transport) squadron and, later, with 121 CU/CR Flight. It flew photographic reconnaissance missions surveying the Arctic regions, search-and-rescue and flood relief supply flights. In April 1949, it was re-designated 413 S(T) Squadron until, at the end of October 1950, it was disbanded. 11005 then passed on to 121 (Search & Rescue) Flight at Sea Island, Vancouver with whom it would have carried the hull code QT-005. It was finally struck off military charge on 25 May 1961. Purchased for civilian work it was used for firefighting pest control, general freight and fuel hauling and photographic/geophysical surveys.
The Catalina was eventually purchased by Plane Sailing Air Displays, there followed a long period of work on the aircraft to make it ready for the long ferry flight to the UK. The crew, Paul Warren Wilson, Rod Brooking and Garry Short flew to Duxford, to be met by a small band of dedicated crew and supporters, almost outnumbered by representatives from the aviation press, radio and TV!
Following its triumphant arrival at Duxford, it flew at a good number of airshows during the 2004 season, its first being a long flight down to Biscarosse in south-west France where it not only performed impeccably in the air but also made several flights from water, its first for many a year. At the end of the 2004 show season, C-FNJF entered a period of overhaul and preparation for British registry as G-PBYA and it was re-registered as such on November 19th, 2004. The start of the 2005 season saw G-PBYA still flying in its bright yellow, red and green colours. In May, it flew the short distance from Duxford to Cambridge where it was repainted in its current scheme representing a wartime USAAF OA-10A Catalina 44-33915 of the 8th Air Force 5th Emergency Rescue Squadron at Halesworth, Suffolk. It has now, like it’s Plane Sailing predecessor, become an established and hugely participant at air displays throughout Europe.
The Catalina is operated by Plane Sailing Air Displays Limited on behalf of Catalina Aircraft Limited which is made up of a number of shareholders. The enterprise is supported by its own ‘fan club’ – The Catalina Society.
20190714_9485TM3
Enlarge image for a better view - [click on image and zoom]
You can now delete items in your folder according to the date you bought them since the new inventory features in the latest Viewers have a *RECENT* menu. However, you also have another filter that allows you to list the items according to date purchased called *Days Ago*. By increasing the number of days to the age of your avatar - you can list the items in order of date purchased. Therefor, by scrolling to the bottom of your itemized list you will have your oldest items there and you can do a quick inventory clean up.
Easy Steps
1- Open Inventory Folder
2-Click on Recent Menu Tab highlighted in yellow.
3-Click on gears wheel (bottom left of Inventory Menu - highlighted in yellow ) this will pop up another window -- scroll down this window until you see *Show Filters* - click on *Show Filters* --> another pop up window (seen on the picture far left of the screen).
4- Scroll down to *Days Ago* increase this number to the age of your Avatar.
5- Now scroll down your itemized inventory to the bottom of the list where your oldest prims are.
Have fun deleting old prims !! This works for the latest updates for SL Viewer 3, Firestorm and Phoenix.
Hope this is helpful !!
Riviera
WEEK 22 – Clarksdale Kroger Closing, Set I
(cont.) Unfortunately... I was here to document a closure :( These two liquidation signs – standard for Kroger's Delta Division, as we've seen a couple of times before in my photostream – greeted shoppers in the store's entry vestibule. (Alongside those odd cinnamon-scented brooms: not sure who the heck ever buys those things, but they come back every darn year!!)
The Clarksdale Kroger was announced to be closing on December 15th, 2017, although at the time no specific closing date had been set yet. I wanted to be sure to visit and document the store before it closed down, hence my early January trip.
(c) 2018 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)
The bag is a Saddleback Leather Thin Briefcase (medium).
Tablet is a Nexus 10 in a Poetic Graph Grip case.
Saddleback Leather Moleskine cover with Moleskine notebook (medium).
Parker Urban Premium Matte Black Medium Point Ballpoint Pen.
Blackhawk accessories zip pouch (for the smaller electronic parts).
Keyboard is a Microsoft Surface 3 bluetooth keyboard (works perfectly with the Nexus).
Mouse is a Razer Orochi (left over from my dearly departed gaming laptop).
Two-port USB charger with cable.
Retractable ethernet cable.
Mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter.
USB ethernet adapter.
MicroUSB to USB adapter.
ASUS MiraCast.
Sony MDRNC100D Digital Noise Canceling Earbuds (for the occasional flight).
Smith & Wesson Swat Baby Serrated Frame Lock Knife.
MAXCRAFT 7-In-1 Precision Pocket Screwdriver.
Leatherman Super Tool 300.
Mini first aid kit (in Maxpedition pouch).
Lock pick set (old hobby).
Business cards.
Batavia, NY. October 2018.
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If you would like to use THIS picture in any sort of media elsewhere (such as newspaper or article), please send me a Flickrmail or send me an email at natehenderson6@gmail.com
Context Provocation Mythogram (Part 1 on Lost by David Shrigley) (part 2 on The Messenger - by Bill Viola)
I had seen the grey and white pigeon with black bits, on a number of occasions. It seemed to have a habit of standing in the gutter at Gorbals Cross, even in the pouring rain. Why it seemed indifferent to the wet, when everyone else in Glasgow was running for shelter, I could only wonder at. Then I saw this notice Sellotaped to a tree in a park. It had an intriguing strangeness about it, so I called the telephone number, but it was unobtainable. There was a cold wind blowing when I returned to the park, but it brought with it a faint aroma of baking bread. I moved in close to the advertisement, to try and understand its logic, but suddenly a colder gust tore the scrap of paper from the tree, and as I watched, it soared away and fluttered in a huge grey Glasgow sky.
What was the significance of the advertisement? Glasgow must have a million pigeons, all of them grey and white with black bits, so why would anyone need to advertise for one that's 'lost', and then by the same token imply that they didn't want to find it anyway? I began to suspect that there never had been a pigeon, and that something quite different was lost. But how do you find what's lost, when you don't know what you're looking for?
There does seem to be a pigeon living, so to speak, in the visual language of the notice. It's an ideal, not a physical pigeon. A kind of word pigeon, which seems to be hinted at by the addition of the letter 'd' to the word pigeon, suggesting a creature hybridised from two words:
pigeon: a bird with a heavy body and short legs, sometimes trained to carry messages.
pidgin: language, not a mother tongue, made up of elements of two or more other languages.
Is what is sought a normal sized, mangy, grey white and black, nameless bird, with short legs and a heavy body? Is it sometimes trained to carry messages in a language made up of elements of two or more of the languages? This is not so confusing, because any text carries at least two themes. Some are read in the words, and the others can be read between the lines. By doing this, and accepting that there is only language, we can try to understand the difference between this ideal pigeon and a pigeon-shaped physical thing.
Supposing, for the sake of argument, that there are such things as pigeons, (and we can't tell from the advert that there are), we could make an inventory of things we think we know about pigeons. We could then say, that this is an inventory of assumptions that are implied by, and therefore used by the advert to kindle the ideal pigeon. They lie as it were, between the lines of the advert, but they affect the language it uses, and the way it looks.
Of all we think we know about physical pigeons, one important difference is that they live and die in a city of cliffs and ledges. They don't experience the city they shit on, and fly in, as the buildings of an urban social system. We experience their behaviour as a sequence of differences, and when we think we understand these differences, we make words for their different ways of behaving. Through language, pigeons are absorbed into the structure of the city; but they aren't aware of being absorbed into a world of words. They experience the city as pure spatial difference, and they don't need their language to indicate objects.
This is where the two languages of the advert seemed to conflict. Language for us is the means by which we try to organise the world, but between the lines, we see that language for a pigeon is not that at all. We could call this conflict 'poetry', and leave it at that; but that might divert us into art, and away from the city. If we are to find and read its lost message, we should really face head on, the dangers that the advert imposes on logic.
A pigeon's life is the defence of its pigeon-hood. Everything a pigeon does, is aimed towards its survival until that situation is impossible. Even its call. We hear a pigeon making a cooing sound that differentiates it from the other things in our frame of reference, and we say that one of the reasons that this thing is a pigeon is because it is cooing. But cooing is not metaphorical language, made up from various subtly different sounds that represent things like the eggs and nest. Although there are certain modulations of cooing, these are not differentiated from each other by their need to function in a language as a sign for something. Cooing is part of the sexual posturing of a pigeon, and because of this, cooing is the profound defence of its own pigeon-hood. As far as we can determine, a pigeon is absolutely its own most cooing thing - for itself and only for itself.
A pigeon is essentially an 'am cooing' thing, not a self-conscious 'I am cooing'. Cooing is pigeon; but that 'is', as an implication of presence, is only as far as we can say it with words, because pigeons aren't inside something called presence. And because pigeons have no need to represent themselves to themselves, they have not evolved a language that can elevate the self, that a pigeon could be conscious of, to the status of the genetically infinite.
Our consciousness of time as a linear unfolding of 'nows', centred on the present, supports a common language structure that is also linear. We talk in time, and we hear ourselves speaking at this present moment. Our language is made of words that are repeatable ideal values, derived from ideas and from things like pigeons. We hold these things ready for use, and at any time, we can represent them, so to speak, almost as if they are physically here. But to be able to communicate in this way, we need to suppress in a quite unethical way, that physicality of things, the unity of which is the very idea of pure spatiality, that profound exterior difference between any one present moment and the next, that would compromise and confuse the linear logic of language. We must suppress the physicality of things, or we wouldn't be able to speak, for living in the pure breadth of unlimited relativity. But the physical nature of pigeon shit is never experienced through discourse. The sanctity of our consciousness of pigeons is seldom contaminated by the abject orifice.
This necessary degree of colloquial insulation from the physical is reflected in our practical behaviour. We have a manual dexterity that enables us to arrange materials, and experience them as such. This is because our internal time consciousness predisposes these skills and materials to being for the sake of some future arrangement, and for some progress towards a better situation. We call this technical expertise, technē, which was for the Greeks, crucially, a practical experience gained from encountering the differences of the physical world, which they were part of.
This view from within the physical world was manifest in their art and architecture, and the Greek body and mind was no doubt fused to the planet. But this plural and diverse way of thinking was already being suppressed through the linearity of a language that had to be made to account for the capitalism and control of material wealth. Derrida's reference to Leroi-Gourhan's text, describes this:
"The development of the first cities corresponds not only to the appearance of the technician of fire, but... writing is born at the same time as metallurgy. Here again, this is not a coincidence... it is at the moment when agrarian capitalism began to establish itself, that the means of stabilising it in written balance accounts appears, and it is also at the moment when social hierarchization is affirmed that writing constructs its first genealogists... the appearance of writing is not fortuitous; after millennia of maturation in the systems of mythographic representation, there emerges, along with metal and slavery, the linear notation of thought. Its content is not fortuitous."
Through the centuries, this linear notation assumed an ascendancy that changed the way European people thought, and the type of questions they asked. Technical specialism and linear notation gradually came to repress what Leroi-Gourhan calls the "Mythogram" - a writing that spells its symbols pluri-dimensionally. Gradually, people asked less the question, why is this the way it is, and more they began to ask, what is it in its own structure? This change of purpose may be evidence that a 'culture' had begun to see itself as self-sufficient; but it was also the opening of technology, that paved the way for an unlimited globalized commodification.
Today, the technical operations of our production lines dovetail smoothly and imperceptibly with linear language. These two modes of structural or systemic defence become synonymous in the word technology, which is the practical management of something called nature, within the voice of consciousness. This ideal world enables us to avoid grappling with pure awkward difference.
Pigeons are not technological. A nest isn't built from twiggy and feathery materials. As a pigeon grapples with the pure awkwardness of physical things, it's not aware of them as materials for progress. What we call materials for nestbuilding, are for a pigeon that exterior part of its own physicality, that must be arranged as a defence of its pigeon-hood. A pigeon is that properly constructed nest, the truth of which is only verifiable in terms of eggs and chicks. Pigeons are their own profound physical relationship with the planet, they are that very spatial exteriority of difference between them and the things they deal with, that one day just stops.
By calling on lost feral pigeon, the notice implies something of this. What is so disconcerting, or indeed dangerous about it, is that it plugs straight into that unnameable spacing, that was already there between one present moment and the next, before the very idea of representation. In other words the advertisement cannot be a representation derived from anything; the advertisement is a purely physical, and visual thing. You might say that its words were never voiced, or that its speech, which would always have been the easiest and most powerful way to represent and dominate things in the breath of its spirit, is immediately silenced by a pigeon that could never be present. Or even lost.
By implying that neither nests nor twigs exist as such - by making us think the one as a trace of the other - the advert is quietly and persistently subverting all urban technologies. By drawing on that very unremarkable ubiquitous thing, which is the absolute opposite to what is required for any marketable item, the notice introduces a lethal virus into the world of advertising. By calling with words, to a pigeon that could never be lost, the notice does violence to the logical structure of language. In fact, by the invocation of something that could never be present, the advert erases its own words as representations. Pigeons do not exist. This advertisement is essentially and profoundly untrue. The answer to the question 'what is lost?' is indeed 'what is lost?', or at least that voracious mode of questioning, and with it goes the assumption that texts relate to objects. Because it has used the ideal pigeon, as pidgeon, to silence its own voice, it hangs there abjectly, but quietly optimistic.
To write these things is to think towards deconstruction, and to be suspicious of the power assumptions inherent in a language of representation. The central currency of this language is the image. Which is why so much of traditional art practice has, in recent years, been called into question, by artists whose thoughts tend towards deconstruction. This may have something to do with what Joseph Kosuth was thinking about when he said in 1969:
"Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That's because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting as a kind of art. If you make paintings, you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting - sculpture dichotomy".
Well maybe. It all depends on the context and the intention of the image. David Shrigley's advertisement for a lost pidgeon, as an advertisement in a world of advertising, is a static image that successfully interrogates itself to death, and by doing this, performs deconstructive surgery on its greater technological structure.
Context Provocation Mythogram Part 2 - on The Messenger by Bill Viola
A critical essay by Stan Bonnar
link to still from the video: www.flickr.com/photos/stan_bonnars_artworks/9640685983
In 1996, the church of England's chaplaincy to the arts and recreation in north-east England, commissioned the American artist Bill Viola to make a work in response to Durham Cathedral. The building of this great cathedral was begun in 1093, and it is considered to be one of the finest examples of a Romanesque-Norman architecture in Europe. Viola's artwork is a video entitled 'The Messenger', and this is how he describes the piece:
"A large image is projected onto a screen mounted to the great West door in Durham Cathedral. The image sequence begins with a small, central, luminous, abstract form, shimmering and undulating against a deep blue-black void. Gradually the luminous shape begins to get larger and less distorted, and it soon becomes apparent that we are seeing a human form, illuminated, rising towards us from under the surface of a body of water. The water becomes more still and transparent and the figure more clear on its journey upwards towards us. We identify the figure as a man, pale blue, on his back rising up slowly. After some time, the figure breaks the surface, an act at once startling, relieving and desperate. His pale form emerges into the warm hues of a bright light, the water glistening on his body. His eyes immediately open and he releases a long held breath from the depths, shattering the silence of the image as this forceful primal sound of life that resonates momentarily in the space. After a few moments, he inhales deeply, and, with his eyes shut and his mouth closed, he sinks into the depths of the blue-black void, to become a shimmering moving point of light once more. The image then returns to its original state and the cycle begins anew."
The scandal which ensued the installation was eagerly grasped by the national press. This response from John MacEwan in the Sunday Telegraph:
"On press day, journalists arrived to find to the Dean and Chapter in a flap. They had been legally advised to protect themselves against indecency charges by getting police clearance. Screens were being hastily arranged to hide the film from the general view, because the police had warned that the sight of 'appendages' might upset the public. As the Dean explained: A child who had been sexually abused might come into the cathedral and be disturbed by a large image of a nude male.
"The Dean praised the film: I only saw it this morning, but I think it is a great work of art. Canon Bill Hall, who commissioned the work, added to general approval that it was regrettable it could not be seen as conceived, in full view at the west end of the nave.
"Such verbal support cannot conceal the fact that by admitting the film can cause offence, the Dean and Chapter immediately put themselves in the wrong. To add humiliation to lack of judgement, they have also bowed to the secular authority of the police on a matter they claim to be spiritual. The ensuing mess is no more than they deserve. By turning a blue movie into a Blue Movie, there does indeed seem very good reason for an outraged member of the public to take them to court. The heavy breathing of the soundtrack is now far more scandalous than the screened-off nudity."
Viola's intention had been to make The Messenger: "...have this resonance with, hopefully have a dance with - on the positive side, - on the negative side maybe a conflict with this incredibly powerful place." But although he hopes that the work will have a perceptible interaction with the place, somewhere between dance and conflict, the result was off the scale. In Durham the messenger will inevitably be remembered as screened and censored, so it is worth trying to understand what happened.
It should be noted at this point that The Messenger was also seen in art spaces around the country. I saw the work in the South London Gallery, and although the space was quite dark, being illuminated only by the video projection, there was little resonance with the building itself. I approached the work from this location. Under normal circumstances, the time that the cycle takes, would have involved the terminal expulsion of breath while underwater. This technological stretching of time could be viewed as a subversive commentary on the breath, the voice, and the spiritual dominion of man - a deconstruction of representational purity, glimpsed through an image of the very invincibility of man in fortress 'metaphor'. The authenticity of this view would be signalled by abject desperation, the symbol of a search for the means of linguistic suicide. But although the man is said to be desperate, there is nothing in his body language to suggest despair. That Viola's man is not distressed by any technological dislocation from the meaning of his image, might suggest a utilisation, rather than a critique of metaphorical language.
If this is true, it suggests that the messenger does not address the problem of time and language to the extent that's possible in video artworks. It may be that the water is a metaphor for the subconscious in unity with its physical surroundings, and that this is evidence of pluralistic thinking; but the apparent ease with which he uses metaphor, means that the image as an ideal narrative object, cannot be wrested away from a dominating subject. Because metaphor is essentially derivative and linguistic, its viability as a tool for use towards a greater understanding is in doubt, immediately understanding attempts to dig its way out of representational language. Viola stops The Messenger from drowning through the use of metaphor.
Although Viola reintroduces the human body into the Christian spiritual equation after its exile for centuries, he fails to convince the Sunday telegraph art critic, that The Messenger is nothing more than "... yet another example of body art, its concentration on the physical the reverse of spirituality." Yet surely, as one so involved in the mystical aspects of religious thought, it could be expected that an exploration of mind as body would be central to his project, and that the messenger's body would not be isolated from its own abject but nevertheless potentially ethical reality, by an envelope of spiritual consciousness. Nevertheless although bathing in a linear model of time, The Messenger is the catalyst that causes the very foundations of Durham Cathedral to shake.
It could be argued that what was being censored was not the nudity of the messenger, but the idea of ecstatic love as a way to God. Bill Viola writes that his work is based in unknowing, in doubt, in being lost, in questions and not answers, and he relates to the role of the mystic because of this. He is fascinated by the ancient Christian teaching called the via negativa, the basic tenet of which is an unknowability of God, who can only be approached in love - through the body as much as through the mind of the individual. By love, the soul enters into union with God, a union not infrequently described through the metaphor of ecstatic sex. The via negativa was eventually dominated by the more familiar via positiva of today, a method of affirmation that describes positive, human attributes such as Good and All-Knowing to the image of a transcendent God. But there is also an other aspect to ecstasy.
In his book Being and Time, Martin Heidegger disclosed ecstatic temporalising as primordial to the commonsense sequence of 'nows' we recognize as everyday time: "Temporality is the primordial 'out-side-of-itself' in and for itself. We therefore call the phenomena of the future, the character of having been, and the Present, the 'ecstases' of temporality."
He also disclosed temporality as the ontological meaning of care, and care as Being-towards-death, from which one might assume that ecstasy, both ontological and colloquial, encounters death in a way that would be threatening to the infinite linearity of English ecclesiastical time. In other words it could be argued that it would be necessary for the clergy to censor this aspect of ecstasy, even more so than the sexual aspect of the image.
Nevertheless, the attempt to censor many intimate moments of divergent thought, backfired, causing what might have been a gradual evolution of understanding, to become one of a least intended, catastrophic change, that plunged the people, the clergy and the shaman into an abyss of controversy.
To remember an important dream, is to begin to make sense of its symbols. Although these are events in time, what is important in a dream, is the way in which its images are patterned by the brain. This gives a symbolic picture of the subconscious state, and introduces a potential energy for change. To tell about the dream, is to make word signs that represent its symbols. In Durham, The Messenger may have inadvertently threatened the temporal power base of the Church, and provoked an abject dislocation in its language structure; nevertheless, because this is a shared experience, the first thing to change in light of this dream, might be the very language used to tell it.
The Messenger works because Bill Viola is immersed in the same linguistic structure as the church. He is able to open up this meaningful dialogue in a common language, that results in the spontaneous transformation of the situation. This is the only criterion for success. Most important though, is the need to recognize that it's not an artwork entitled The Messenger that people are standing around questioning, but it's their own ideas of what happened, that they are standing among as part of.
When Canon Bill Hall says that The Messenger is great art, he is defining great art within its context. This is close to what Donald Judd meant when he said, "if someone calls it art, it's art." Within that frame of reference, art becomes a word to use, to contextualise an act, to locate it in a social structure of the same name. Here there is a problematic difference of perspectives on art, from two structures that lay claim to ownership of the messenger. When the Dean refers to this as great art, he sees the entire situation at the cathedral as something that's going to profoundly affect his life. He no doubt is very sensitized to the abjectness of the whole situation. On the other hand, when The Messenger is viewed in the isolation of art, a sense of the abject that might signal an intention to bring death into the linguistic equation is missing.
Viola is happy for the work to be shown in art galleries around the country, because he also belongs to an art world structure. But here the problem centres on the definition of something as art. As long as this uni-dimensional conceptual pattern of a specialized social system called art, persists, it will place a barrier between an intention to deconstruct, and any functioning social system which that deconstruction intends to be part of. In this case it forestalls the necessity for art critique to delve into the contextual background of the work, which would reveal the situation as being truly subversive for its context, the Church. This seems to raise the question as to whether it would in fact be counterproductive to place artists-in-residence in such institutions.
To paraphrase Joseph Kosuth's earlier statement, an artist, being a thinker now, means to question the nature of functioning social structures. If one is questioning the nature of art, one cannot be questioning the nature of other functioning social structures. If a thinker accepts art, they are accepting the tradition that goes with it. That's because the word society is general and the word art is specific. The art world is a kind of functioning social structure. If you make art, you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of society. One is then accepting that the human image can only really be reflected by art, and disseminated as such to society.
Nevertheless, art exists, and a defining factor of deconstruction is that it operates on the periphery of its own linguistic structure. It could be argued that if something is art, then by definition it can only deconstruct the languages of art. To be sure it filters through eventually to a broader church, as minimalist style, but to whose benefit? Although much of contemporary deconstructive art is difficult to commodify, it still submits to an art objectification, which capitalism would no doubt see as its last line of defence. If it is this linear, linguistic, capitalization of physical things that threatens to be erased by deconstruction, then capitalist thinking would need to maintain the Object, in order for its languages to be able to predict an infinity of its own presence. This objectification is a technological distance that corporate interest must proliferate to survive; but it means that people forget what proximity is for.
These political processes through which art appropriates, commodifies, and neutralizes the ethical impulse of deconstruction, thwart even the most determined attempts at linguistic suicide. To be art, it must have at some stage controlled unpredictability for its own pre-diction as art; it must at some stage in its own future, be able and willing to look back on proximity, as something that happened before it became art. And yet it is that very unpredictability of proximity that allows fluid discourse to find its own democratic level. Deconstruction seeks democracy in the silence of the artists voice, but this is inevitably only a demonstration of how to deconstruct. If art is to transcend its own objectification, a new art tendency must be conceptualised from which the whole of art can be deconstructed. If the whole of art could be viewed by the whole of the population, from the multitude of tiny intimate moments in time that would motivate such a tendency, then the silence would be intense.
To begin to recognize what factors might characterise this tendency toward democracy in art, we might refer to Simon Critchley's book, The Ethics of Deconstruction, Derrida & Levinas. In this work, Critchley draws on Emmanuel Levinas' thinking on ethics.
"...Levinas is preoccupied with the possibility of an ethical form of language, the Saying, which would be irreducible to the ontological language of the Said, in which all entities are disclosed and comprehended in the light of Being... the Saying is my exposure - corporeal, sensible - to the Other, my inability to refuse the Other's approach. It is the performative stating, proposing, or expressive position of myself facing the Other. It is a verbal or non-verbal ethical performance, whose essence cannot be caught in constative propositions. It is a performative doing that cannot be reduced to a constative description."
A tendency towards democracy in art might germinate in this spatial relation to the other. Language opens up the issue of HOW being in relation to the human other is articulated, ethical or not, but prior to language is the Saying, as the "...sheer radicality of human speaking... as the very enactment of the ethical movement from the Same to the Other", as the very unnameability of the trace. Art might raise the issue of its own transcendence in this space, as a performance in the unpredictable proximity before the Other.
At issue here is a tendency within the ontological language of art, to say 'Yes' to the unpredictable Otherness of the Other. If as Levinas states, the Saying is my corporeal and sensible inability to refuse the Other's approach, then it makes sense to perform art in a space of maximum unpredictability. This does seem to suggest that the whole of art might best be deconstructed in public spaces that are unrestricted, and in which the Other is not a predictable object in the artistic field of vision.
Unrestricted public space is full of people, who come close in an unpredictable way, but who are nevertheless capable of forming the 'we' who can in this present moment, demanded justice, or take a political decision for the justification of any issue. Art is such an issue, but deconstructive art, as a signification that raises the question of signification, could be a means to rediscover the sheer proximity necessary to democracy.
I want to refer back to the mythogram, but now as a clearing for the writing of stories whose symbols spell themselves pluri-dimensionally, and as a deconstructive continuum for ethico-political decisions. A tendency to open democratic space.
website - stanbonnar.net/
LEGO inventory for studded StormTrooper Starbot. This model is mostly composed of common LEGO pieces, like roof tiles, black plates, technic bricks with holes, and technic pins. Starbots contain over 400 pieces, but less than 50 piece types, making it easy to replicate.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrel
In …Regrets
Like most of us, I have regretted some of my actions over the years…
Which, coming from a journey” man” burglar and pickpocket, may seem to be quite the understatement, and possibly just a bit of a daft viewpoint…
But in my defense, the majority of them( actions done by me, that eventually came regretfully creeping into my consciousness) were not planned, but spur-of-the-moment, frying pan-hot, decisions. The vast majority of which were from my younger days, but not all, for as a thief, I am very much an opportunist of the moment.
Which sometimes can get the better of me.
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A Regrettable Affair
As I developed my craft, growing older in the process, I began to lean towards mainly working those avenues that attracted the wealthiest of guests. There were several logical based reasons for this, which I will not expand upon here.
One of the first times, as a still young lady, was a large mega-ultra-rich wedding reception that I succeeded in crashing.
Security at this affair was very salt and peppered about, they had attempted to prevent gatecrashers, but the affair was so large, so very spread about, that the seams of the event had as many leaks as it had guarded entrances.
But getting in was the easy part.
The freedom to ply my trade was another.
As I stated security was scattered about, but instead of just watching certain main entrances and exits, they were watching the bar area, dance floors, and ( no surprises here) the buffet. The only problem was that those were my favorite patches to work over.
But that is not to say I was going away empty-handed, by no means.
I did manage to early on successfully lift solid gold lighter from an unattended evening purse in the lady's powder. The owner, resplendent in a taffeta dress, was busy applying colour to her eyelashes and had her shiny back to me.
A silver Rolex from a rather courteous young man who had somehow not seen me and had bumped my hand, spilling my drink on his sleeve in the process was next.
Then I ran into two wealthy young men, Gary and Sean, who soon tried to outdo themselves to grab my undivided attention.
I ended up seated at a far side table with both, dancing with first one and then the other.
At various times one would leave to get drinks and the other would seize the opportunity to say something incredibly sweet to me. I would then envelope them in a most feeling hug, during which I lifted in turn, both of their leather billfolds from fancy tux coat pockets.
Slipping my hand inside their tux jacket pockets, feeling the warmth of their bodies while we hugged, my hand carefully extracted the long leather billfolds each was carrying, as my eyes were lustfully locked into theirs. It was, and is, a very sensuous feeling when I perform a lift like that on my victims.
Especially these two, Gary and Sean, who were both such sweethearts that robbing them was such a delightfully heightened feeling for me. And I suspect there was a certain amount of pleasure coming from their end also.
But that is getting ahead of myself, for obviously none of that was regrettable.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Now let us go back to the beginning:
An understatement would be to say that “The formal dress” wedding was a bit over the top.”
I have seldom seen such a collection of slinky designer gowns and tight-fitting tuxes, along with expensively glittery jewels and lovely designer purses, outside of a BAFTA after-party filled with overpaid actors and actresses.
Which, for the record, are events I have worked over.
For jewellery worn out on loan from upscale stores for such events is heavily insured, and simply worn loosely enough to fall easy victim to my lifting fingers at such affairs.
I very seldom lifted wallets from pockets or purses when attending.
That’s not atoll where the real money was at.
So that evening, as I watched the well-jeweled wedding reception guests arriving to party for this event, I licked my red-coloured lips, anticipating the same delicious scores to be made.
Knowing about this affair ahead of time, I came prepared. I was wearing an elegant sleek sky blue satin gown that I had acquired from a successful burglary of a mansion.
I modified it by adding secret pockets in several strategic locations. It was a nice fit and a smashing look, judging by the staring eyes of the males there that evening.
I was carrying a matching blue purse. My only other accessory was a pair of sparking long rhinestone earrings of the same style the bridesmaids had in. This was no coincidence, I had intentionally found out what they would be wearing and ordered a set so it would look like I was in with them.
Now the wealthy bride, dressed in white lace with a green/gold tartan sash, wanted her equally wealthy bridal party girl’s dresses to be something to be remembered, so the gowns she had designed were a little too over-the-top showy.
The maid of honour wore a red silk version; the six Bridesmaids wore theirs in black satin.” The gowns had plunge necklines, rhinestone-trimmed bodices and sleekly long straight skirts touching the tops of glittery silver open-toed shoes.
Each of the girls had also been presented with a matching collection of rather expensive Swarovski rhinestones. Which they proudly wore, throwing in some really expensive ones of their own to additionally show off with.
The blazing brite jewelry, when added to the bridal party girl’s ensemble, further enhanced the red carpet-like atmosphere of the Bridal party, and fit right in with her other guests over the top evening attire.
The groom wore a grey tux, and his groom’s men wore grey. All the men had on ascot ties that matched the colour of their escort's gowns, all the ties had gemstone pins, green tie, emerald for the groom, red tie, ruby for the best man, and all the rest grey tie, with diamond pins.
A handsome lot.
Watching the smart members of the wedding party interact was smashing fun, and I was enjoying the excitement of watching, inwardly drooling, over their shimmering shiny bits.
^^^^^^^^^
Now, for the regrettable part of my saga.
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It involved two principal characters, not including myself.
The first principal character was a shy awkward 13-year-old girl, redhead, wearing heavy glasses whose makeup and style of dress made her appear far older, but not wiser.
Zeroing in, I soon learned she was named Cadey. Her glamorous parents were both with the bridal party, and a young Aunt who was a partying type, was supposed to be chaperoning her. So Cadey was alone, a lot.
But she was certainly a living doll, leaving me speechless as I watched the lass scurrying about in her smashing, fluidly flowing, shiny in the lights, fancy party attire, and dazzling emeralds and diamonds.
Sorry for all the verbiage, but it is hard to describe just how incredibly fetching she was.
That party attire was in the form of a fitted, richly slick long mint green satin gown with the neckline tied together with a ribbon bow with the ends hanging past her fast-developing, wriggling plump breasts. The slit shoulders of her gown ended in long scalloping ruffles at her elbows.
It was both very elegant and adorably attractive.
Though she wouldn’t be able to wear that gown again in a few months without letting the cleavage out.
Her bare minimum jewels, were very sparkly, very desirable calling out to the female and thief sides of me, especially her lovely necklace.
Cadey wore a longish silver chain embedded with diamonds, ending with a teardrop rhinestone pendant made up of a big round emerald surrounded by more diamonds. It fetchingly fell swinging down from where it hung around her neck, to just below her minty-coloured shiny gown tightly fitted bosom.
In later years I watched a fictitious movie about the Titanic where the wealthy main heroine wore a very similar necklace of sapphire, albeit a bit larger than Miss Cadey’s emerald one.
Still, it was an adult necklace and easily worth a nice around £10,000 to anyone capable of getting it from her.
I managed to discreetly be close enough several times to get a good examination of her delicious attire.
Close enough also to observe a few other things.
Miss Cadey would play with her pendant, and as she did, I notice her fingers blatantly stroking along her breasts, perking them up. Which explained her secret smiles.
Her only other jewel was an emerald Diamond ring that glittered from one of her self-stimulating bare fingers, all of which sported long emerald green painted manicured nails.
I also caught her at times sitting with her hands between her legs, probing inside her silken lap as Cadey watched the guests dancing to slow music. I could tell she was petting herself down there, using the ring on her finger to arouse herself, as Cadey’s breasts again noticeably were bulging from the self-stimulation
I thought if she was pleasing herself, I could perhaps please myself by liberating from her fanciful attired person, that sumptuous diamond/ emerald necklace. Especially since it was entirely on her sleekly slick gown, front and back, absolutely no part of the cold metal touched bare flesh.
With tingling fingers, I could imagine how easily the jeweled piece could smoothly be slipped off her like an ice cube will slip across a steamy slippery surface. It would be that easy to pluck it off.
But alas I never was quite close enough to her inner circle to use my light touch to acquire her dazzling necklace.
And I was just forced to be content on watching it sparkle as it dripped down from her throat, with Cadey oblivious to the sinister attention it was attracting that evening as she wore it.
^^^^^^^
The second principal character came in the form of a cheeky 15-year-old blonde boy, handsome as all get out. His name was Heyden.
I could tell from just watching him interacting with the guests that he was a brassy cocky self-assured sort of young male. With a rough cockney accent that helped promote a bad boy image that young girls swoon over.
He wore a fitted suit over some surprisingly bulging muscles. Rugby player I guessed.
He decidedly was a budding teenage player, with all the common burgeoning male attributes.
His raging hormones were a reflection of his character, as he was deliberately stalking, then going up to countless numbers of young well dressed female guests and giving hugs. Which they mostly returned giggling in the process. But to me, it was quite obvious the lad was doing it to cope with a feel from his victims, of both their touchable fine soft gowns and voluptuously fine nuzzling breasts.
His home base was a table in a far corner just off the dance floor where he sat for brief stints with two exceptionally well-dressed girls.
One lass shared some similarities to him but was not more than 5 years his senior, so I assumed she was a sister or cousin. The other also may have been related but also may have only been a friend of the other lass.
The supposed sister (or cousin) was stunning in velvet with an array of diamond sparklers that made my heart beat and fingers tingle. Her necklace was especially showy and worth just a bit over £75,000
The one I assumed was a friend was dressed like many of the lad’s hugging victims, a touchable gold halter style dress of shiny soft satin, with a pair of rather succulent unbridled breasts just peaking out of the dress's low v-cut neckline. She was wearing a petite set of sapphires, not showy, but worth a small kingdom's ransom. Half of which value was in the gold necklace set with a collection of larger sapphires and diamonds.
I saw he reluctantly was behaving himself while with the pair, (no hugging) though I saw him longingly looking both of the girls over. But he had to satisfy his hunger by sneaking off as much as he could get away with it, to play out his sexually charged games on other prey.
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Spoiler alert:
Now, I never made the appealing connection between the sexually charged touching 13-year-old Cadey and the equally sexually charged 15-year-old hugger Heyden, until much later… And then almost too late, or too early depending on one’s perspective.
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So watching the boy's antics as well as trying to catch peaks of roving finger Cadey’s dangling necklace, as well as playing my table mates, Gary and Sean, off on each other to try and win me over, I really was having me self a bloody enjoyable time.
Since I was still a young lady I was all for having fun with these types of affairs I crashed. So my mind at that point was being placed on pleasure rather than business.
Though I was eyeing the wristwatch worn by Gary, and the diamond tie pin Sean was sporting as potential targets to be further lifted from the now wallet-less lads.
Before I could let my thoughts turn into action, the bridal bouquet Toss was announced, I knew it was time to go back to serious work, and I indicated I was going to have a go for it to Gary and Sean.
Not caring to watch the show, both lads then took my leave to go upstairs to a
covered deck on the roof to join the other male guests for bourbon and cigar. Neither soul trusted the other to be alone with me.
I went up and joined in with the crowd of swishing-gowned ladies.
Wading into what felt like the inside of a diamond mine.
Licking my lips as I eagerly was looking around and soon set my thieve’s sights on a diamond-laden miss, whose flashy broach was hanging loosely at the waistline of the most silkiest of satin gowns imaginable. It was coloured purple and tightly worn over the voluptuous curves of the rather giddy-looking black-haired, red-lipped, vixen.
A perfect mark during a perfect opportunity!
As the bouquet was tossed and all the ladies were reaching up, I was leaning against the lady wearing my diamond-encrusted target.
My one hand touched the utter softness of her gown, whilst my left hand was slipping in and soon was caressing her glistening broach. In the process I nimbly undid the clasp and slipped it away, palming it.
As the bouquet was caught and everyone was squealing over the lucky lady. I slipped out and went back to my seat.
I was catching my breath before gathering my purse in preparation for leaving the premises before the boys came back.
The broach I had just nicked from “purple silk” was with around £8000 and it would take something special to make me risk staying.
It was then, out of the corner of my eye, I spied young master Heyden working the crowd of departing ladies by sneaking up and giving his usual touchy-feely “sneak” hugs.
He happened to give my vixen in the purple silk gown a from-behind hug and she turned with a squeal and hugged him back.
“Oh, ain’t you just a darling one!”
Inspired by her response, his eager hands wrapped around her pulling her close, and I saw his fingertips were mere centimeters away from the jeweled clasp of her necklace that was hanging loosely down from the back of her bare skin neckline.
A delicious epiphany swept warmly over me, and I knew that I had to stay and at least give it a try.
I picked up my purse and began following the lad after he left his total work over hugging Miss “Slithering Purple Silk.”
I reached him as he stopped to watch the dancers on the floor. The band had started up what would be a series of slow dances now that the bouquet toss was over.
I had to admit I didn’t blame Master Hayden, it was an amazing show, with the lights dimmed, jewels sparking, and tightly worn gowns shimmering as they swished about in the dim lights.
I walked up and tapped his shoulder, feeling him jump( I believe his horny thoughts had made him feel a wee bit guilty).
“Hello Heyden, luv. Remember me?”
He slyly turned and I pulled him into a very feeling, very enveloping hug. Employing my womanly attributes to the fullest.
When I let him go I saw a dazed mixture of perplexity and a slight sense of male arousal.
Perfect
He nodded and politely said, with a bit of a sneer.
“Sorry mum, I don’t remember where I know you from.
Mum!… I can’t be more than 12 years older than you, Mr cocky. I thought sardonically but bit my tongue and answered with a sweet smile.
“I guess we really have not officially met. But I heard a lot about you when you were in school. My friend Mrs. O spoke highly of you.”
He happily cut in,
“Mrs. O’Rielly. She taught my form last year.”
I nodded
“That’d be her. She told me about that marvelous trick you played.”
He smiled deviously. As did I, realized I had read his character right spot on.
“Yes miss, that was my idea planting the shrew in the girl's loo.”
I commended him while at the same time congratulating myself also as I placed a caressing hand along his chest.
“Brilliantly played out “
We then went on with small talk as I quickly began working him into my plan.
I had a lot of practice charming men( and women) into allowing me to get close enough to lure them off so I could make a lift. This really was no different. And it was buying me time to locate Cadey and see if she was poised enough to be vulnerable to the trap I was planning.
As we chatted I learned the two girls Heyden was with were his cousin and her friend. And he told me proudly of some of the tricks he had played on his cousin, as well as other tricks he and his mates had played, mostly on classmate females.
This was getting better and better I thought, and then I spied Cadey standing alone by the women’s service loo entrance, watching the dancers.
Was that a yearning look in her eyes, like the yearning I felt over that expensively takable necklace she was busily fingering? It was still just calling out to be taken from the unwary young girl.
I also spotted a rental Bobbie wanna-be standing nearby, looking the other way at a couple bickering.
So I still could not dare approach her myself and enjoy firsthand the opportunistic fun of parting Cade from that dangling necklace she so alluringly was wearing.
But then, that was not my current plan.
I place a hand on Heyden’s shoulder...
“Speaking of pranks laddie boy, I had in mind a trick to play on my niece Cadey tonight. But I couldn’t come up with a way to make it work out on my own.”
He had been looking around, bored, but I now had his full attention back.
“A trick mum? like what?”
I then explained that I lent my niece Cadey my own emeralds to wear tonight. and I earlier had thought that it would be brilliant if I could get my necklace away from her without her realizing it, then wear it and see the delicious response once she realized It was lost, and now I had it.
I looked at Heyden doubtfully…
“Or is that just a daft idea to try as a prank?”
He grinned...
No mum, sounds a lark to try pulling it off, if you could now. “
I looked him in the eyes, and as I looked surprised he agreed with me.
“Do you really think so? I did think it would be delicious if I could just somehow pull it off? But how?
I jumped with an excited squeal.
Oh look, there is my sweetheart now…”
I had him at the word prank, all the rest was icing as he gave me a broad smile while he turned his head to see whom I was pointing out.
I saw Hayden freeze with lustful eyes as he saw the enchantingly dressed pretty Cadey.
And I’ll admit the way Cadey looked under those lights would have melted the most indifferent of hearts. Mine included as I again salivated over her elegant, slinky-shiny mint green gown outlining tightly along her pretty figure, made even more desirable with the dazzling jewels she was wearing.
And Heyden was anything but indifferent to well-dressed ladies and girls...
And judging by the wicked little smile and horny-eyed gaze as he looked my “niece” over, I was spot on, tell no lie.
I now had a key, I just needed to turn it in the lock to open my door to riches.
He whispered out of the side of his mouth while taking inventory of pretty Cadey…
“One would have to not let her know it’s been taken, of course.”
I rubbed his shoulder from behind, pressing against him, as we both eyed susceptible Cadey….
“Totally correct, and it would be sweet if I had some help with taking it. So she wouldn’t suspect I’m up to something. It will make her surprise when finding her necklace had vanished all the more remarkable….”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“Your niece probably wouldn’t suspect a thing, would she know, If I was the one who took it. I could do it while holding onto her. I mean, like in a hug. Bet I could get it from her that way. Then you can play your trick.”
Aside from the mum bit, his words were music to my ears and I hugged him warmly, leaving nothing out as I whispered into his ear...
“Better yet, do it while dancing with her. Sort of like a prolonged hug. Gives you more time to carry it out? And I could slip you a fiver as you hand me the necklace, for your help of course….”
He broke away and gave me the most amazing gleaming look of agreement.
“I could do just that. It should be easy to hook it off her then!”
I added...
“Just look at the way it is hanging loosely around her throat. It would be child’s play for you I bet.”
Seeing that I now had him hot over the idea, I quickly coached him, fanning the coals before the desire burned out.
I described how he should start out not close, but apart, dance one full round with her, then invite her for a second dance. At that point draw her in closer. Then, perhaps, lift your knee up ever so slightly between her legs and see if she responds.
“Then if all signs show she is engaged and enjoying being with you, undo her necklace and slip it over her shoulder and into your pocket. And Bobs your Uncle, you’ll have played her in a trick of your own.”
With a nod and a wink, my brassy young male hugger-mugger was off.
The lad was a natural.
Instead of rushing his victim, he circled and approached Cadey unseen from the flank, his eyes never leaving her pretty figure.
He introduced himself and she readily agreed to a dance. They took to the floor, Heyden cuddling Cadie up in his arms.
I sweated the first dance, hoping Sean and Gary would not come back yet. Though I had contingencies ready if they did. Also, there were worries that young Heyden might become so enamored during the first dance he would forgo his mission.
But my money was placed on Heyden not losing focus. Right now he would indeed be planning, as he danced with Cadey. Deciding on how to best distract the sensuously attired, horny young darling enough to lift off the necklace she was so elegantly allowed to be trusted wearing out this glamorous evening.
I’ll admit to feeling jealous of Heyden as I watched his hands holding onto that luscious minty satiny green gown worn over the tantalizing figure that was Cadey. It was giving me proper chills just watching.
At the same time, I was also ready to flee down a nearby exit if needed.
But the first dance ended with nothing out of the ordinary.
The second dance came and my “protege” was perfect. The girl was swooning and leaning up against him as he clutched her tightly by her slippery waist as they moved to the slow rhythm of the music. I saw him look around and he moved his nimble hands up her sleek backside.
I saw him slightly raise his knee, and Cadey responded by rubbing it against her privates She smiled up at him, then closed her eyes and laid her head on his shoulders, her long red hair covering her face. I could almost hear her purring as Heyden’s knee was rubbing against her previously self-stimulated sweet spots.
As she placed her head on his shoulders he held her extra tight. It must have been electric for the young lady, as her raised nipples were brought rubbed between the luscious material of her gown and his muscular chest.
It was then that his fingers left her sleek back, deftly gliding up her silky smooth back, and then, ever so gently, lifted her necklace clasp away from the oblivious darling’s high-gowned neck.
He studied it, turning it, then with quick fingers, had it open and was pulling its glittering length up and whisked over her sleekly attired shoulder.
My guess was he had had practice helping his cousin with her own pricey necklace. So this was simply reversing that process.
I watched as the necklace fell behind her, sparkling momentary against the minty green satin backdrop of her gown.
That quickly he has it in his fist and pocketed it.
In the dim lighting, no one but me saw Heyden carry out his end of the “trick”.
Not even the rental cop whose eyes were gazing over the dancers focused on the buffet line on the opposite side, was aware of a young lady being robbed right under his puggish nose.
Then Heyden pressed Cadey in tighter, squeezing her into him as his now empty fingers started caressing her backside, while he rubbed up against her bosom frontside. I could imagine just how much Cadey’s breasts were being aroused since mine were doing the same just by watching.
I thought:
“That’s the lad, keep her distracted enough not to realize she has had her bloody jewels nicked.”
The music ended and as the others left he held onto her and the pair stayed locked in their embrace.
They only broke it off when they realized they were alone on the floor. With guests doing the “ooohs and awes” over them, Heyden led her off and she kissed him on the cheek thanking him. Her neckline delightfully bare now that the breathtaking necklace she had been wearing all that evening, had been slyly taken off from her.
I mean really? In my mind how could someone allow a lass that young to be dressed up so noticeably elegant that it attracts everyone’s attention, then on top of that allow her to be wearing such an expensive piece of jewelry, and not realize that it would make her a proper thief’s target?
Unless of course that “someone “ believed thieves only are found in dark back London alleyways and never would ply their nefariousness at upscale weddings. So of course it’s perfectly safe to allow a young lady to wear one’s good jewellery here, without worries of being robbed. I’ll be the first to drink to that belief.
The thought also popped into my head that Cadey was now warmly thanking the very thief who had, with a sexy surreptitiousness, been busy reliving her wriggling figure of the valuable jewels she had been so seductively, so vulnerably, allowed to be wearing, as he was dancing with her.
Cade swished happily off one way, while Heyden(and her necklace) moved off in the opposite.
Heyden circled around, eventually coming back to me, his smile was a devil's own. He reached into his pocket and handed me the necklace.
“Should I help you on with it mum?”
“No,” I said taking it from him,
“I’ll do it in the loo.”
I handed him the fiver, and with a wink, as he nodded, touching his nose, he turned and was off.
And so was I.
For I had outdid my welcome by lying to Heyden about who Cadey was.
Seeing that Cadey would probably sooner than later discover the loss of her necklace, she may very well seek him out again and ask questions that would create a situation impossible for me to wriggle from.
I skirted around the long bar area to a side hallway which had the closest exit.
On my way out I spy Heyden’s wealthy cousin and her pretty, equally wealthy, friend both now pissed out of their pretty heads on liquor. Both their expensive necklaces were glittering up a tantalizing storm as they giggled at each other.
I paused.
I dare not risk the time to do any more lifting.
Besides, there was yet another rental Bobbie leaning up against the bar with a smirk as he unabashedly was eyeballing the same two ladies ….
So I reluctantly passed them both up, left via the back exit, and made my successful escape from the premises.
^^^^^^^^
It was a very satisfactory two-hour drive back to the hotel that I was been currently using as my base.
And I was feeling anything but regret at that point.
^^^^^
It was not until I was back at the flat, while I stood naked in front of the full-length bathroom mirror, fingering and admiring the emerald/diamond necklace stolen from the youthfully innocent young lass, that I started to feel that twinge of creeping regret that I mention at the beginning.
As my mind went over the evening's antics, I reminisced how adorably Cade had been wearing this simply too-valuable necklace set with emeralds and diamonds that I simply had to have. knowing full well how easy it had been to talk master Heyden in tricking it from the child.
Not to mention how I had to end my evening early and miss out on partying further with Sean and Gary.
Regret had indeed seeped in as I held up the sparking necklace to the lights.
For,n reminiscing over the night's antics, I remembered that Heyden had said that he liked to play tricks with his cousin. A cousin flaunting a £75,000 diamond necklace that she also had been allowed to keep wearing.
But I had been so focused on using him to get this mesmerizing £10,000 necklace, I had given no thought to convincing Heyden in acquiring his cousin’s necklace instead, using the same plot.
And let Cadey keep wearing this one.
I’m other words, without thinking things through, and being hasty I lost a potential £65,000 in profit.
Meaning I could have instead talked him into playing the same trick on his giddy, trashed cousin as I had him do on Cadey.
I could see it clearly now, in hindsight.
Using a similarly tantalizing outline, I would have talked him into dancing close with his highly drunk cousin.
Coaching him into lifting and pocketing her necklace to later pull it from his pocket and ask if this was hers?
Then as the shock wore off, convinced Heyden she would probably give him a hug and kiss as a reward. Probably from her friend also. Then he could use their exuberance to convince both of the pretty ladies to a close dance as a reward!
I was now sure he would have gone in for it, judging how easily I had sweet-talked him into doing the same on gullible Cadey.
After watching him play it out on his cousin, I would have lured him back to me to be congratulated and dangled a fiver to seal the deal.
In my mind's eye, I saw me hugging Heyden, then I would easily pick his pocket clean in the process.
Then as Hayden turned to hastily go back to his cousin to play out his trick. I would have taken off with his cousin’s more valuable diamonds, instead of Cadey’s lesser.
Yes, I did so now regret not thinking it through entirely.
I took off the necklace and threw it inside my leather satchel. Promising myself that I would try not to make a similar mistake down the road.
I then went to bed, tossing and turning as I regretfully pondered over what may have been.
Fini