“Oh,” says Red Molly to James, “That’s a fine motorbike.
A girl could feel special on any such like”
Says James to Red Molly, “My hat’s off to you
It’s a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952.
And I’ve seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme.”
And he pulled her on behind and down to Boxhill they did ride“Oh,” says James to Red Molly, “Here’s a ring for your right hand
But I’ll tell you in earnest I’m a dangerous man.
For I’ve fought with the law since I was seventeen,
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine.
Now I’m 21 years, I might make 22
And I don’t mind dying, but for the love of you.
And if fate should break my stride
Then I’ll give you my Vincent to ride.”“Come down, come down, Red Molly,” called Sergeant McRae
“For they’ve taken young James Adie for armed robbery.
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside.
Oh come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside.”
When she came to the hospital, there wasn’t much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
He said, “I’ll give you my Vincent to ride.”Says James, “In my opinion, there’s nothing in this world
Beats a ’52 Vincent and a red headed girl.
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeves won’t do,
Ah, they don’t have a soul like a Vincent 52.”
Oh he reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
Said, “I’ve got no further use for these.
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome,
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home.”
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride.Richard Thompson
1952 Vincent Black Lightning
The End of The Beginning
I just finished volume I of Rising Up and Rising Down, and I am now about 50 pages into volume II, which is the first volume of Justifications, i.e. when it is permissible to use violence.
The first section is “Defense of Honor”. In it Vollmann divides the idea of honor into two cross-referenced groups of two: Inner honor – the way a person holds his actions in relation to his conscience; outer honor – the way a person is perceived; individual honor – or honor as a person, and collective honor – honor as part of a greater whole or group.
I am not far beyond these definitions, but already Vollmann has quite an impressive list of players: Joan of Arc, Napoleon, the Afghans, rape victims, the families of rape victims, Yukio Mishima, the Samurai, Japanese twentysomethings, Martin Luther King, the Light brigade, King Xerxes and the Spartans at Thermopylae… the list goes on. In each case, he examines the violence committed and then compares the act to the justification given for the act and asks “Was this truly justified, or merely apologized for?”
Needless to say, this is an uncomfortable book to dig through. Vollmann writes beautifully, but the topic is, ultimately, so very ugly.
Carpe Carp
The sides of the river below the dam are mostly lined with ice, except where turbulence keeps the water too angry to freeze. In some places the ice stands out more than ten feet from the bank (or wall, where development encroaches too closely). And in the midst of some of these sheets of ice are areas of open water. Some are caused by oddities in the bed of the river. Some by being insulated by heavy snowfall. Some are broken open by enterprising-yet-bored programmers. And some are caused by chemical-laden runoff from the nearby parking lots.
It was in one of the latter type that Scott and I found a carp. Nothing unusual in and of itself; the river is silty and slimy and therefore ideal for carp. But the ice surrounding the pool in question extends to the bed of the river, so the carp could not have swum here, and if it had been here before, we would certainly have noticed.
Then we noticed an odd track along the wall next to the river, as if something had been…dragged. No footprints, however; just the drag marks, extending from fifty feet or more down-river. And little clumps of snow which could have been kicked down from the walkway ten feet over our heads. Having been raised on the Hardy Boys, we immediately solved the mystery: someone, fishing from the walkway, had hooked the carp and, being unable to reel the carp up through twenty feet or more of open air, had brought the thing to land and walked it up to where the river bank was accessable from above. Then this brave sportsman had un-hooked the carp and thrown it in this pool.
Could have been worse, I suppose. He could have left it on the ice to form another carp-cicle for Scott and I to throw at one another.
For a few minutes, we contemplated this carp:
“What do you think”
“Dunno. Looks like a great place to be a carp.”
“Yeah, but it might freeze. Water isn’t deep enough to cover it.”
“Won’t freeze. The salt in the run-off will stop it.”
“Probably kill it too.”
“Takes a lot to kill a carp.”
“Yeah, but that road salt’s some nasty shit.”
“Yup.”
“Yup.”
So we decided to rescue the thing. I got the honors and Scott got the camera.
First I poked the carp with my finger. It didn’t do anything. Probably worn out from being dragged through the snow, and most certainly stoned out of its head from the parking-lot effluvium. Reassured, I very gently grabbed it around the middle, avoiding the dorsal spines, and lifted it out of the water. At that moment Scott’s foot broke through the ice and startled the carp, which immediately panicked (to the extent that a carp can panic) and flipped out of my hand and raced back and forth in the meter-square pool which was its toxic little world.
Perhaps it was having flash-backs.
After it calmed down I got it in a better grip, lifted it, and [And here I want to throw in an interjection: I do not recommend ever handling a carp bare-handed. Fish keep themselves aquadynamic, insulated and vermin-free by producing slime which coats them, and carp produce more than most fish. Coupled with the fact that a carp is basically an aquatic rat or seagull, and that the Grand River is not the freshest body of water in the Northern hemisphere, and I had a handful of “ecch yuck bleargh gack phew O God my hands!” -jw] carried it the ten feet to open water and gently set it down.
Apparently it had forgotten that it had ever lived anywhere else, so it wasn’t until my own foot broke through some ice that it panicked and swam away.
I would like to think that I have burned off some bad karma, and that I will not now return in some future incarnation as a carp which gets dragged through the snow, pickled by road salt, and rudely manhandled before I am returned to my hearth and home.
So that, O my readers, is the story behind todays photo in the River Project.
Suffering for Art
Yesterday I forgot to bring my camera with me to work, so after the evening Kendall class I drove to the Fulton Street bridge over the Grand River and took a few low-light photos.
The way my camera (Olympus D-510) works is, if I shut of the flash and the ambient light is insufficient for a normal photo, the camera leaves the shutter open for longer than usual. This has two effects: more light hits the sensor, and I have to hold veeerrrrryyy still to avoid blurring the shot. Usually I just brace the camera on something.
Last night was abominably cold. I got out of my car and immediately my nose began to run. I braced the camera on the metal railing on the bridge, and as I was lining up my shot, eye to the viewfinder, I touched the tip of my nose to the rail.
Anyone who has ever licked a flagpole in the middle of winter can appreciate my situation.
There is no visible damage, but today the end of my nose feels sore and raw. So I hope you are enjoying all of those photos. They sure don’t come easy.
Teachers and Students
Another day, another class. Today was the first in-class assignment: Find a poem or song lyrics, and using basic HTML and Cascading Style Sheets, mark up the document so that [a] The code is clean, and [b] it renders appropriately in the browser.
At the beginning of class I asked the (what will soon be) usual question: “Does anyone have any questions about anything we have covered in this class, thus far?”
Silence.
“Okay! This is your assignment!”
The questions began after about half an hour, and continued until the end of class at 8:30. All in all, everyone did quite well, but it was a good learning experience; for them, the difference between what you think you know and what you know; and for me, what to emphasize in my lessons, and in what order.
Talking over teaching strategies with Bock later in the evening I recalled something Scott and I concluded a year or so ago: Web development, and indeed almost all aspects of programming, would be best taught in an apprentice/master environment. Programming is equal parts science and art, left-brain and right-brain, inductive and deductive. Were it pure science the classroom would work perfectly. The classroom is the best place for rote memorization and repetition. Were it entirely art there would be no real instruction at all; merely predefined tools and a blank canvas.
But in development and in programming, you have at your disposal a very specific set of tools which work in very specific ways, and thus set up very specific boundaries. Within those boundaries you have a great deal of freedom, and thus have ample opportunity to use those common tools to create something unique. The science eventually becomes art.
Perhaps in a more rational world apprenticeship would be the next step after school, but for now there are internships where students learn to smile while being pissed on. All we teachers can do is try to make them waterproof.
Happy New Year!
This past Thursday was the first day of the lunar new year, the Year of the Monkey. Today Master Lee and the rest of our kung fu school participated in festivities at the East Garden Buffet. There was much good food and much good cameraderie. Master Lee gave new swords to all of the instructors, and one of the instructors, Nancy, gave me a matted photo of me performing a tai chi sword routine at the edge of a lake.
So now I have a great photo of myself, and another sword for my collection. At last count I have eight tai chi swords, one kung fu sword, a kwan dao, a fan, an axe and four daggers.
I am approaching the last new pages of the Goya book. At first it bothered me a little that so much of the first half says nothing about Goya himself. On reflection I realize that Connell wrote the book so that at each stage of his subject’s life, the focus is on that which was most important or influential. And what was most influential to Goya’s life was not always Goya.
This Halo Lies!
Yesterday as I was leaving work I noticed this thing:
Normally halos signify holy things, but the building in the center of the photo is full of lawyers.
I am approaching the end of Evan Connell’s wonderful book on Goya (link in the books section). My only complaint is that, other than the cover, there is none of Goya’s work in the book. Not so surprising; the book is about Goya in history, rather than Goya the artist. So I went to the best collection of art on the internet and found all the Goya one could reasonably hope for, assembled in chronological order.
Whiling Away the Days
Cold. Amazingly, bitterly, frightfully cold. The wind coming off the river causes tears and convulsions and physical pain, to a degree I have never before felt. My cheeks are raw and my nose feels bruised. And all this from ten minutes outside. The ducks, which were bravely venturing out from wherever it is ducks go when they don’t migrate, have disappeared. Probably sunk by an iceberg.
Next on the agenda is a chrome package for the photo album which will allow individual users of said application to style it in any manner they choose… within reason. Borders, margins, background colors, text colors, typefaces, thumbnails or no thumbnails…that sort of thing. I have come up with a method of doing it; now I need the time to actually DO IT.
The Web design class is going fantastically well. Yesterday I taught 14 students the basics of text manipulation, borders, and background colors. They got it in one. They be wicked smart.
In other news…
The Creatures in My Head has just turned 2 years old. A bizarre critter a day for 720 days.
The current issue of ThisIsAMagazine has some interesting stuff going on.
Moderate Update
In the process of preparing materials for the Kendall class I have rediscovered a little of the joy of programming, which I lost over the past few months of hellish work. I have modified the Flash photo album to, when desirable, start at the end of a group of photos instead of the beginning. This is useful for when an album is updated regularly and the latest should be shown first, as in, say, the River Project . Next up: a method of “skinning” the album via XML. Perhaps sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Question for the week: Where in the workplace does the power reside?