Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

Took a walk yesterday during lunch; there's this spot on the wall in the alley behind my workplace that has an inexplicable white square spray-painted on it. Every time I walked past, I'd see it and wonder, what's that about?

Upon closer examination, my suspicion that some tag had been painted over appeared correct—though exactly how *this* is better than the obfuscated tag is unclear. :)

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

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//Since 1997 the ANC government has used various methods to fend-off criticism. These have run from attacking motive to bullying, obfuscation, bullshitting, lying, and outright denial. Over time civil society and media became inured to these tactics. So it was something of a welcome surprise when senior government officials - including the president and his deputy - started admitting responsibility for South Africa's energy shortages.

The basic line pushed by President Thabo Mbeki (and others) was that government underestimated the likely rate of economic growth and wrongly ignored Eskom's warnings that it needed to start building new capacity. For this they were very sorry.

These apologies have not silenced criticism, but they have been very effective in drawing attention away from where it should have been focused. This is known, in other fields, as misdirection. A Wikipedia entry notes how "The magician choreographs his actions so that even the critical and observant spectators are likely to look where the magician wants them to. More importantly, they do not look where they should not." One way of doing this is through movement, whereby "A larger action covers a smaller action."

Similarly, it is to the government's advantage to admit to failing to approve the building of new generating capacity on time. At worst they can be accused of ideological prevarication. Meanwhile, our gaze is shifted away from places where the ANC would prefer it not to wander. One of these is the way in which the ANC funding vehicle - Chancellor House - has been cut-in on massive contracts for the building of the Bravo and Madupi power stations. The other relates to the way in which the Eskom's racial obsessions were responsible for last week's massive black outs.//

www.politicsweb.co.za/iservice/eskom-the-real-cause-of-th...

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

Having rarely seen much of it in the flesh before yesterday, I’ve never really been sure what I think about Rothko’s work. I suppose I’d always thought there was a kind of grim humour to it, with these huge window-like figures hung high in windowless gallery rooms; and I was aware not only of a Warhol-like fascination with repetition, cycle, and (im)mutability, but also of a somewhat Klein-esque experimentation with colour, texture and profundity — even if my perception of it was mediated and inevitably emasculated through the Habitat-isation of (e.g.) “Orange and Yellow”. The Tate Modern’s current gathering of his late works reveals quite how much a real-world viewing illuminates and clarifies Rothko’s art, and hence how much sense it makes that he should have been so concerned in his lifetime with the compositional aspect of the works’ presentation — not least because the presentation in question, even though perhaps at odds with aspects of Rothko’s reported views on it, is itself so intelligent and sensitive to the work.

On first seeing abstract pieces, I often can’t help myself from wondering, Middle England-like, how much artistic ‘skill’ or ‘talent’ is required to daub paint in a seemingly random or at best simplistic manner on a canvas. After enough viewings, investigations and conversations, however, the knee-jerk “I could have done that” has at least come to be followed usually equally automatically in my mind by “Well, you didn’t; this artist did”, on which cue I settle into some kind of analytical appreciation of the work, taking authorial intention as a first principle and working outwards, as though mapping atoms of causation, into its effect on the viewer. (OK, I know, that’s mental, but come on, give me a break — I’m a computer geek, a decomposer and a re-builder of things. I can’t help it. It’s the way I’m made.) Though I started out on this exhibition in the same analytical mode, fussing over which room was which so that I could make sure I was reading the right bit of the guide, feeling slightly short-changed by small mural studies in gouache on paper looking much to my impatient brain like children’s washes of colour, by the time I left, I’d undeniably felt something quite different, brought about by these paintings; something quite inexplicable and quite powerful.

The guidebook returned more than once to what it called Rothko’s “preoccupation” with the display of his work; in the first room, a small cardboard model was shown of the space proposed to him for display of his mural at the Tate; later, photographs of some of the pieces under ultraviolet light showed details of the brushwork. Strangely, for one as construction-oriented as I am, under some circumstances I find an exhibition’s dwelling too much on the craft, the historicity, the detail of the manufacture to be a distraction, sometimes even an annoyance — surely, I ask myself (perhaps through some desire to escape, by the offices of overpowering sensation, from that very orientation) the work leaves something to be desired in terms of immediacy and appeal, if such examination is required in order to appreciate it? In this case, however, it was exactly that examination which opened up the desired sensation to me.

The respectfully muted lighting in which Rothko himself had been so insistent that his work should be presented is maintained in the main Seagram room, contrasting directly with the conservators’ inspections in the next room, the stark change of atmosphere from the practically ritual to the scientific adding weight to the feeling of getting under the ‘skin’ of the paintings. The nigh-pornographic revelation of the layers of multiple paint media under the UV lights combine with the glass-backed presentation of one painting’s underwear to instil a feeling of paradox, an unease brought about by the juxtaposition of the large murals’ seemingly uncomplicated gloomy luminescence with the sudden realisation of the actual complexity of the work undertaken to impart that appearance of simplicity. Layer upon layer, stroke upon stroke, coatings, glaze, obfuscation, redirection, misdirection … Should we be seeing this? Should we be laying bare this depth of care, rather than simply appreciating the final result, particularly in the case of an artist so intentionally proscriptive about the manner in which it might best be appreciated?

I found this dichotomy particularly striking, because it was exactly the realisation of the care taken which opened my eyes to these big, bold, engaging, contemplative canvases. Not just the care taken in and of itself, but the demonstration of what was under the surface made me consider these pieces in a new, naturalistic way. From the more or less subtle re-covering and smothering of the landscaped “Red on Maroon — Mural, Sections 5 and 74” in the Seagram room, to the intense, concentrated paper studies and the increasingly open, even loose textures of “Black on Gray”, I became aware of a kind of tangibility to the paintings, not the thickly-applied oils of a Van Gogh but something altogether delicate, as though the ethereality of the intention behind the works had somehow been infused into the physical materials, bonding with its form and somehow lightening the weight of that material even as it impresses its reality upon the viewer.

The “Black-Form Paintings” seemed to me the summation of this experience. As the guide says, “prolonged contemplation reveals the slow build-up of the surface through multiple layers and the close attention Rothko paid to gradations in tone and texture”; in the course of such contemplation, the paintings really do seem somehow to reveal something of themselves. The familiarisation of my eyes to the light, the surroundings and the composition of the space allowed the Black Forms to shimmer before me, pulling in and out of my conceptual focus, and I found something enormously compelling about these implied monoliths. Something mysterious, something suggested, something long-known and yet long-forgotten; a kind of magnetism, an unspoken yet powerful compulsion towards something just the other side of comprehensibility. It felt in that moment as though there really might exist, in the world, such a thing as human meaning, be it devoid or otherwise of objective implication, and as though such meaning might be conveyed across time and space, even through inscrutable, formless form.

I’m still not sure what I think about Rothko’s work, but at least now I know that I feel something about it. Thankyou, Mark Rothko, for your enduring obsession with communicating your wordless meaning, and thankyou, Tate Modern, for granting it this prism.

After years of being dumbed down and whipped into a froth by talk radio and junk tv, the voting public of the once United States of America was simply unable to see the difference between the corporate sham and the statesman. Some were too angry, others too greedy but most of them were just taken in by the rhetoric and relentless obfuscation. They chose wrongly and allowed the short-sighted corporate puppets to finish what their genuine enemies had begun nearly 8 short years before. They forgot what their forefathers knew: that greatness is the result of hard work and luck, and never a birthright. They chose to fear their differences and listen to their darkest demons. Some, in the world, ever so briefly, grieved for the missed opportunity and the end of the great experiment. While still others, rejoiced.

---

This is one of the most terrifying things I've read lately, in part because it's not the only thing I've found on the net with these sentiments:

pointblanknews.com/artopn773.html

And Bush has made us safer? I think not.

Bigger and darker

Grandpa no! Don't you see by not obfuscating your recursion you will cause an overflow in your capacitor memory??

Not sure what this pair were up to. Didn't show on the map until they headed north on the down fast - and headcode was obfuscated - most unlike GBRf. I suspect they went to Peterborough as 0H06 but not sure.

66725 and 66735.

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

[8:07 pm, 28/07/2022]

Rack: I love that you find inspiration everywhere, including Mena. High and low. I love that you are not a snob. I am. I’d like to beat it out of myself. It is a useless trait. I’ll gladly finish it if you predecease with the book unfinished. I like the idea. Batty passing of baton between the bat-shit crazy. Re. forgetting: I see now how my mother very judiciously employed it to get off the planet.

The city is eating my soul today. Otherwise, I’m grand. All those travelers and their self-induced nightmares. So glad to be flying nowhere.

Yesterday, I had this very intense realisation that death is a gift. I can’t articulate it. It was like a visceral understanding that it is the greatest thing we are given, maybe even more deeply mysterious than birth.

Here’s to the end of ulterior motives. Xox

Ruin: Predecease, what a caper! We were never at that planning of making old bones. Were we? And now here we sit at the ripe old age of 102, well me anyway, and we, seemingly, remain still not at the making of those plans. We inadvertently might have parlayed those ‘avoidance issues’ into something vaguely resembling a life. Who would have guessed?

Speaking for meself, and have you ever heard me do anything other than that (rhetorical), I don’t intend spending the next 150 years worrying about that grim(mish) reaping fella. Nosireee, it’s embracing life from here on in, and by the time I have finished this voluminous ‘self-help’ book here, I will be, more or less, ready to pass all that accumulated wisdom on. That’s once you don’t get your grubby Protestant mitts on it, and squidge it into a minimalist posh sonnet, with no punctuation at all (at all). I blame it on the books you’re at the reading of, to be sure. But as I said, I’d even be happy to be a squidged sonnet, if there was some glee there for you in that act of squidging, that squeezing of me universe into one of them there liathróidí, and the rolling of the same wherevs.

Liathróid f (genitive singular liathróide, nominative plural liathróidí): ball (for games). I like that ‘ball’ is a female noun. In life, I have found this to be true too, but that should all come out in the wash, so to speak. I love me some Gaelige.

wherev. A shortened version of wherever. Derived from the popular shortening of whatever, whatev. Hubby: Where do you want to eat? Wifey: Wherev. (passive aggressive answer (it’s in the tone), wifey obviously has the liathróidí, see above).

As you can see, I am not one for all that obfuscation, notes and explanations, translations, whatever will be plonked in the middle of the story, there for all to see, without all that having to get out a magnifying glass to read the reduced size notes at the end of a page, and without having to go to page 2,036 (or whatevs) to see the notes at the end of a book. Who the hell has the patience and time for that sort of crapparoony at this late stage in our devolution? If you want notes, tiny ones at the base of the page, and notes on notes, even tinier, I can recommend Mr. Wallace’s ‘Consider the Lobster’, a truly great book, if you can afford to spring for an industrial scale, state of the art, magnifying glass, or devise. Mr. Wallace is a wonderful writer, or was rather, but, butt, cloaca, as our chicken compatriots like to cluck, ‘Consider the Short-Sighted Old Geezer’.

Anyway, ‘nuff said, who am I to be proffering un-asked for book reviews? But that wasn’t really one. I loved the book, but could only get through half of it, but that was due to my own falling apart, and no reflection on that book at all (at all). Though I do think that we somehow have to include, in what is now being written, that everyone, the whole world even, seems to be at that stage of falling apart, writing has to be for everyone, and can be written by anyone, even Mena, even you and me.

I won’t read Mena Suvari’s book on her childhood abuse, but I loved her for giving that interview about it, in the Guardian yesterday. I was moved by it, her honesty, and I would read her book if I had all the time in the world, which, of course I do. I see the contradiction there. I read the Cumming’s book about his father’s abusing of him, and Gabriel Byrne’s description of his undoing at the hands of an errant cleric. Gabriel Byrne and I are of an age, we went to the same school, that 13th century site of purgation, Drimnagh Castle, and were practically born on the same street, so the looking, for me, there, was a searching for common signifiers. I did find some, though, if I am honest, not a lot. The biggest difference was that they all seemed to have saintly mothers, these paragons that somehow pulled them through. Their stories were more or less all about absent or abusive fathers, ditto with Mcgahern and perhaps less so with ‘Shuggie’. Apparently, according to Dr. Sam Vaknin’s new book ‘Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited’, the dreaded narcissism has its roots in the absent and abusive mother. Well, there we have it, problem solved, I can stop writing now, and just hold onto my lovely truism ‘Nobody sets out to be an axe murderer, a narcissist, a priest, or a bank-manager’, and we have to find it somehow possible to forgive them/us, and everybody else. It’s the bloody drivers what did it! And, to boot, it wasn’t the mammy’s fault either, she had an absent mammy too, though she was beastly dead so couldn’t really help it.

Where the hell would I find the room or time there to be a ‘snob’ about anything? Either way, against all the odds, I did find both the room and the time for that along the way, and all will be revealed in the 94 volumes of me fictional memoirs, to follow.

Yes, dear Rack, allowing yourself to forget is really a wondrous process. But that’s just the half of it.

I understand that death euphoria feeling too. I have had it as well, that “you can take me now” feeling. Exactly who I think that I am telling that to could take one in another direction entirely. I can see why it might take one in that religious route, beloved of the unravelling. I used to have it at that ultimate moment of disassociation when I would be at the highest point of a ketamine rush, that infinite white plain. It was wondrous. I miss that ‘release’ sometimes, but recognize it might be, or could have been, delusional. Equally, it might have been completely real, the most real thing we can experience. De Quincey wrote his work, more or less, at that point, not to mention Burroughs, Castaneda, and countless other, hello Mr. Joyce. There’s even the possibility of spirochete induced euphoria, disassociation, and mercury or Dovato induced ‘rapture’, not to mention whatever ‘magic’ HIV might accelerate having gotten through that blood-brain barrier (but this is true to everything we are a ‘host’ to). I saw moments of that rapture in Jeffrey’s demise, moments of clarity, probably aided and abetted by morphine, or the combination of the same with everything else.

So, yes, I can see it happening walking down the streets, or just sitting still. Manhattan was often Euphoria-inducing for the both of us, and sometimes even together. As an aside, I think you can articulate it, and do. Perhaps it is “even more deeply mysterious than birth”, simply because we now have a more extended arsenal at our disposal to appreciate it, a more ‘mature’ grasp, on what it is ‘to live’ and ‘to die’, something we, perhaps, couldn’t have had yet as babies. We know that ‘limbo’, ‘Purgatory’, and ‘Hell’ do not exist; we know because we deduced it. But these are my ‘bugbears’ more than yours, though I would guess you have your own.

Yes, it’s all a gift.

I have no idea of the full range of my own ulterior motives, and half the time don’t even know if they are actually mine, or those of these drugs, and this foreign invader we are both enjoying, or even other ‘foreign invaders’ we are harbouring and have no idea they are even there, those illegal aliens: from the air we breathe, the water we drink and the plastics we wrap our food in, or imbibe through the air, hormone disruptors and whatnot.

I like that we have no idea what we are swimming in, or what we are floating next to, and I like describing the infinite possibilities ranged about. I don’t really care what form it takes, which is just as well; it seems to be convulsing into a formless entity with somewhat of a mind of its own.

I have decided to let it spread, like a disease or a new virus, basically unstoppable in its ability to mutate, to let it become what it will.

“Batty passing of baton between the bat-shit crazy”, I love it! It could be the last line of a beautiful sonnet.

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

The #346 .Christmas Special at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado just came Blasting up the hill and they still have the "pedal to the metal." I wonder if the EPA likes this show as much as the rail fans here to document the excursions. They have even been known to buy Winter special runs on the CATS Cumbres & Toltec Sceni\c Railway just for the pictures and footage. That, my friends, would have been known as a bituminous cloud cloud to a friend, Neal Miller. I suspect it is an anthracitic cloud if the coal came from the Rockies. I wonder if some power generating plant around here had some shrinkage in coal pile supplies. I also wonder how much coal the little demo required. The tank is getting pretty obscured by the cloud from the exhaust in the bright morning sun. I can't imagine that the cab isn't pretty warm by now!. It's easy to see if a coal powered train just came by: it left it's tracks.

No doubt about it, #346 is a Rockies favorite. The Christmas excursion train was quite full by now even on this early Sunday morning. I moved to Delay Junction after snagging quite a few at the other junction. This is Delay Junction, where Eddie snagged a lot of shots, but no delays seems to be slowing the trips around the loop. Why would you stop at No Aqua anyway? There seems to be an indication of water in the tank according to the float gauge on the side. I readied myself when I heard the engine chuffing it's way up the hill. They may have been sanding the flues to clean the accumulated soot buildup and make a more impressive exhaust show what with extra coal, soot and lubricants. Of course, the flues won't last as long, if not done judiciously. It's a show. There is steam trailing from the electric generator situated boiler top just in front of the cab to help set the scene. I think they must only be running the headlight. The usually spiffed engine is already sooty from Saturday's runs; is it any wonder?

It's nice to know a photographer can still capture life-like shots at the CRRM. Maybe even without Eddie in the scene? Notice the covering over the water tank's ladder to keep Eddie out. There was a cordon across the gate to discourage blood on the track at the railroad cursing. I cloned it out.

The original 18 eight-foot sculptures by Jacob Epstein date from 1908, when this building was designed by Charles Holden for the British Medical Association. Although there was a public outcry against the statuary (which would not even lead to a raised eyebrow in 2007), the BMA stood by Epstein.

However, when the Rhodesian High Commission bought the building 30 years later, the new owners saw fit to crudely mutilate them on the basis of safety. It does seem that the statues were decaying to some extent, but many feel this is likely to have been a mere pretext - and restoration does not appear to have been considered.

The whole episode seems to have become shrouded in much obfuscation and myth. This account from Art & Architecture has the ring of authority and balance to me - it acknowledges the safety issue, but considers it simply a pretext for mutilation:

www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/insight/brockington_epstein...

Other sources I have found introduce wild variants on the story:

www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=923

www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/content.phtml?re...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Epstein

arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1310821,00.html

www.londonist.com/archives/2006/01/londonist_stalk_3.php

The most popular story, retailed by both The Londonist, The Guardian and the Shady Lady site, is that a pedestrian was struck by a falling phallus, leading to the mutilation of the statues on safety grounds. This has all the hallmarks of an urban myth or sensationalist journalism to me. There are no specifics in the story (which is the very hallmark of an urban myth), no recourse to primary sources, no date, no name, no injury details, not even the name of the piece the genitalia supposedly fell off (all 18 pieces have names).

Wikipedia, refreshingly, refers merely to pieces falling off the statues without mentioning phalluses or even pedestrians being struck, which seems rather more plausible, though the size of the pieces is unspecified, could have been small fragments of limestone weighing a few grams apiece for all one knows.

Two sites, The Guardian and the SL site, refer to the mutilation taking the form of castration of the statues. As we can see from the shots here, not all of them were.

The Guardian and Newcastle University (the latter has no truck with the safety issue) erroneously consider all 18 of the statues to be male. They are not, as can be seen from the shots here, and the plaster cast of Maternity on the Arts & Architecture site.

The Londonist introduces an extra twist in which the 'building's owners' are ordered (by an unspecified authority) to 'secure' the statues rather than engineering the situation themselves.

It's not really the point. What we should be asking is why the owners of a prestigious building on the Strand should see fit not only to mutilate their own building's facade, but to continue to display that mutilation in public when restoration - or complete removal - were both obvious options. I would suggest that they were making a statement.

Name: Scarlette 'Nightingale' Bellerose (Commonly Called Noir)

Race: Mehket/Tremere Vampire (Female)

Sexual Preference: Straight

Occupation: House Representative, Socialite, Omnivore

Approach-ability - Somewhat approachable [Available for anyone; modern fantasy setting]

Some Background History if you care,

Scarlett grew up in a modest home, the generic middle of three daughters; she was often 'forgotten about' as her elder sister was the first born and her younger sister was the 'baby' of the family. In her school years, she became known by the nickname "Noir" for her obsession with dark clothing and her habit of going out at night on her own.

Eventually, these habits led Scarlett, as "Noir the Nightingale" (her new persona) to petty theft under the moonlight. This became something of an aphrodisiac for her as she continued to fall into the wrong crowd. At the age of seventeen; Noir would pull her biggest stunt ever. Details of the event are sketchy at best as her parents attempted to keep it 'under wraps' so it would not influence the remainder of their daughter's life.

In college, the Nightingale became even more of a midnight owl and quite the silent rebel as she frequented dangerous locales, lifting fast looking cars and taking them for joy-rides with the wind in her hair. However she was smarter then (or so she thought); at least she never got caught.

Just after college however, Scarlett, under her persona of "Noir the Nightingale" was asked to do something she never conceived before; lift for profit. It was a night, and an experience that would change her life (and after-life) forever....

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Since she is a V:tR character I just thought she should have this;

Thresholds

Last Updated: 27th April 2014

Previous Update: 25th October 2008

Health - 7

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Willpower - 8

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Vitae - 10

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Blood Potency - 1

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Humanity - 9

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Derangements -

None Currently

Attributes

Mental (5 + 1 + 1)

Intelligence: OOO

Wits: OOO

Resolve: OOOO

Physical (3 + 1)

Strength: OO

Dexterity: OOO

Stamina: OO

Social (4)

Presence: O

Manipulation: OO

Composure: OOOO

Skills

Mental (7 + 3)

Academics: OO

Computer: OOOO

Crafts:

Investigation: O

Medicine: O

Occult: O

Politics:

Science: O

Physical (11 + 5)

Athletics: O

Brawl: OOO

Drive: OO

Firearms: OOO

Larceny: OOO

Stealth: OOO

Survival:

Weaponry: O

Social (5 + 1)

Animal Ken:

Empathy: O

Expression: OO

Intimidation:

Persuasion:

Socialize:

Streetwise:

Subterfuge: OOO

Specialties:

Stealth ~ Inconspicuous - Blending into a background is her specialty. Whether it's on her own, with a 'borrowed' car, on a 'hot' bike - if this chick doesn't want to be picked out of the landscape or a crowd; chances are she won't be found.

Drive ~ Wild and Untamed - Cars, Bikes, Boats, Planes, Go-Karts - once it has a motor she can probably operate it, even without a license. Additionally, if it's built for speed; she'll probably try some stunts with it. Not all of them work all the time, but what's life without some excitement.

Larceny ~ Wired - This chick has some bad habits, while 'borrowing' keys is one way to get something moving; getting down and dirty with monster machines with plenty of 'thrust' has always been her aphrodisiac. Whether she has to cut the red wire or grind the blue and the green until some sparks fly from her friction, Noir can get even the most stubborn security off her lovers to hear them purr.

Merits [7]

Ambidextrous (OOO)

Prerequisite: Available Character Creation Only

Effect: Your character has the ability to use both hands easily. Your character doesn't have obtain penalty when fighting from either hand contrast to a character who has a dominant hand.

Eidetic Memory (OO)

Prerequisite: Character Creation Only

Photography memory, the ability to remember anything said or heard after several period of time has passed.

Effect: If character is not in combat, anything information can be brought up instantaneously, no need to roll needed. If that character is in the middle of combat then that character gain an + 2 modifier for any Intelligence + Composure rolls.

Common Sense (OO)

Prerequisite: Character Creation Only

Your character is deep well-grounded and pragmatic, usually relied upon by others to make the rational sound decision that are simple to understand in a moment notice.

Effect: If your character is about to make a decision of disastrous proportions, you have a second chance to think it over again. This is only done once per chapter.

Flaws

Notoriety ~ Grand Larceny: There was this one time she may or may not have broken into an upper-middle class suburban house and stolen a rather expensive vehicle. She then may or may not have gone for a joy-ride with her (then) boyfriend.... While She was arrested and tried as an accomplice to a crime of this nature; the male she was with on the evening insists to this day that it was all her doing and it was he who was the 'ignorant accomplice'.

Aloof ~ Socially Awkward: She really does hate crowds (more than 3 or 4 people gathering in one place) and does her best to avoid people completely whenever possible. However, around only one other person who has gotten to know her well, she can be quite talkative (if drunk).

Disciplines [4]

Auspex (OO)

- Heighten Sense (O)

Effect: Then this skill is activated, a vampire sense become razor sharp, they are able to notice or sense the smallest of things.

Action: Instant

Cost: -

Dice Pool: No Dice Rolling needed, Player will tell the storyteller how they are using this skill and it will be up to the Storyteller to give the player the appropriate reaction.

- Aura Perception (OO)

Effect: Learn various things about a person from their aura including when they are attempting to lie to you

Action: Instant

Cost: -

Dice Pool: No Dice Rolling needed, Player will tell the storyteller how they are using this skill and it will be up to the Storyteller to give the player the appropriate reaction.

Celerity: (O)

Celerity Lv. 1 (O)

Effect: Increases character's speed.

Action: Instant

Cost: 1 Vitae

Dice Pool: (1 + Celerity) x (character's speed) = [(1 + 1) x (10)] = 20 (Enhanced Speed)

Obfuscate (O)

- Touch of Shadow (O)

Effect: The ability for vampire to conceal items on their person, regardless of a thorough search.

Action: Instant

Cost: -

Dice Pool: Wits + Larceny + Obfuscate

Thaumaturgy: Path of Blood (OO)

- A Taste of Blood (O)

Effect: Gather information from a target from a sample of their blood.

Action: Instant

Cost: -

Dice Pool: No Dice Rolling needed, Player will tell the storyteller how they are using this skill and it will be up to the Storyteller to give the player the appropriate reaction.

- Blood Strike (O)

Effect: A mystic projectile strikes the opponent and returns with their blood in tow.

Action: Instant

Cost: 1 Vitae

Dice Pool: 1 + Thaumaturgy + Intelligence + Occult.

- Purge (OO)

Effect: Nearby enemies vomit blood causing Lethal Damage to all surrounding targets.

Action: Instant

Cost: 2 Vitae

Dice Pool: 2 + Thaumaturgy + Intelligence + Occult.

Equipment

(Item) ~ (Item Effects) ~ (Description of Item)

Size - 5 (usually five, unless merits or flaws are taken)

Defence - 3 (lowest of wits or dexterity)

Initiative Mod - 7 (Dexterity + Composure)

Speed - 10 (Strength + Dexterity + Size)

Armor - 0

Day 29 of 365 (Year Four)

Class went well today. Like I said yesterday, with a bit of studying, I'm pretty confident I'll be able to pass the test for my LEED GA credentials. Today was a bit rougher than yesterday. The section I thought I'd handle the best was actually the most difficult. There is way too much overlap between the subsections and the terms they use, while easily defined by the general population, have different meanings specific within the confines of LEED terminology. To make things worse, the sample questions we were given, which are similar to those we'll find on the test, are fond of using double negatives (or is it triple) to try and obfuscate the reader. All in all though it wasn't too bad, but my head was a bit fuzzy after covering that section.

The picture, in case you can't tell, doesn't have anything to do with any of that though. Well, not directly. I'm a bit worn out and when I get this way I get silly. When I came across the link to Jerzify Yourself I just couldn't help myself. It made me giggle. Not having any other great ideas for tonight's shot, I figured what the hell. Even now, about an hour after I first did it I'm still giggling a bit about it.

As for the show. . .I am not a fan, but after weeks and weeks of hearing about it, I did break down and watch the final episode and the reunion show a few days back when there was nothing else on to watch. I wasn't super impressed. I didn't hate it, I just wasn't impressed. I did appreciate that MTV didn't follow their standard Real World set up and try and find the most dysfunctional group of people to stick into the house. Sure these kids managed to drum up all sorts of drama, but at least it wasn't "set up" by placing a gay guy in a house with a homophobe or a Morman in the a house with a party girl, etc. etc. If you have ever seen an episode of any Real World you know what I'm talking about.

I did a little post production on my own due to the lack of flexibility with how the website Jerzifies you, but all in all I'm happy with the overall silliness of the shot.

I thought I'd better obfuscate the phone numbers, which is why they're all pixellated.

I have obfuscated the KPN emergency phone number, I don't know if it's still active. If it is, I wouldn't want someone prank-calling it based on this photo.

I volunteered to help out the people of Alarmfase 026 (Stichting NCO Arnhem & Nationaal Noodnet) moving in some new historical artifacts for display and some spare parts salvaged from other bunkers. I couldn't resist taking some pictures as well.

The museum is located in the former PTT (PTT, Nederlands) NCO Arnhem communications atomic bunker, built under the "De Leuke Linde" playground during the Cold War (Koude Oorlog). After the Cold War ended, it was used as a high-secure relay station for the Nationaal Noodnet emergency communications network.

Washington DC, The National Mall, July 13, 2014. Over 2,000 climate justice activists assemble for a rally and march to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The looming 4+ billion dollar expansion of the Dominion Resources facility in Calvert County is largely seen by environmentalists as a dirty and dangerous enabler of the accelerated overseas export of fracked gas from nearby states and a prelude to the approval of hydraulic fracturing in western Maryland. Several speakers at the rally skewered Maryland's cowardly centrist democrat politicians who see Cove Point as a 'done deal' and have almost completely avoided taking any meaningful action for their constituents on this vital issue. Opacity, obfuscation, ass covering and capitulation to some of the very worst corporate bullies is what we've come to expect from our spineless elected officials. The marchers braved 93 degree temperatures and typically heavy DC summertime humidity. When I finally left the march at Union Station even the strap on my camera bag was soaked with sweat.

Hows that for frankenkamera obfuscation. This beautiful camera was given to me by my father. Its an old family heirloom. It's still in great shape, actually almost mint, and in full working order, albeit a bit dusty on the outside as you can see from the full size. That old FD 50mm Macro readily outresolves the 42MP sensor of the Sony. I got my copy real cheap online. Its a great and plentiful lens.