CODEX VIA LXXXII, or the 82nd Avenue Document.

 Consisting of handwritten text on thirteen numbered sheets of adhesive-backed 4"x6" paper, the Codex Via LXXXII was found pasted to a plastic electrical conduit adjacent to a power pole at the uninviting corner of SE 82nd Ave and Bush St. in Portland Oregon in the autumn of 2023.

 

 Its content is fairly standard paranoid surveillance threat rant, but its presentation is its main source of interest. The conduit is of so small a diameter that no full line of text is visible from a single position, making it so difficult to read that it is highly unlikely any passerby would ever do so.  The desire to communicate this information while presenting it in a way that makes communicating it nearly impossible is what sets it apart from the average public rant.  One section was found to have been damaged, and repaired with a nearly identical replacement, revealed after a piece was again torn away and stuck to a nearby pole. This suggests the making of multiple copies of the same material, which may be similarly presented elsewhere. On all but the first sheet the text begins and ends with quotation marks, indicating that the words are someone else's and not those of the writer themselves.

 

 

Here follows a complete transcription of the text. Missing portions are denoted by *** to differentiate from the ellipses contained in the text.

(1)
 Department of Defense Overthrown
Jade Helm - 2019

In the files that were going to be made into a snuff film of our transcriptionist's life were files of murders of Department of Defense staff that they showed to her using Psycho Electric Weapons. They put a BCI chip in her & the NSA had audio recordings of her describing video footage & stills she could see in her head.  Some of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had agreed upon her to use for the Jade Helm operation.  She gave her input on what she saw & was told.  Frequently she had good ideas & the U.S.M.C. used her to help overthrow the country agst her wishes...

(2)
"Some of us had been in the buildings that were shown to her & had met the people whose murders were shown to her. They murdered a black man who was high up in the D.O.D. in a bathroom stall.  He was highly respected.  They desecrated his corpse & wrote on his death certificate that he died of auto-erotic asphyxiation.  They put feces on his penis with his hand and something around his neck.  She described to us where he was in the bathroom and part of what they did to him.  U.S.M.C. did this to him. We would like Rick Uribe questioned. They called her "Uncle Rick" as him.  There is other evidence about that we won't say here. While they were murdering off the higher ups at the D.O.D., they had people begin chasing her on the street..."

(3) [PARTIALLY DAMAGED]
"This is known as "gangstalking" *** terroristic practice done by *** they live. Cult police *** city & school bus drivers *** vehicles, & military *** terrorism, along *** at this point including *** BCI chips in the people they are stalking & using the person for Human Bluetooth (tm) which can be done at a distance of up  to 500 yds. It is done btwn humans, human - phone, human - IoT (even a fucking dishwasher can store data) & the cult terrorist Freemasons put them in telephone poles in their lodges, underneath the sidewalks, in guard rails, & hills next to the [indecipherable], mail boxes, people's houses, dogs, etc..."

(4)
"They pass the data back & forth into the person's head, which causes extreme pain to the person.  Our transcriptonist is one of the few, including undercovers, who has pointed this out to us where she feels the pain coming from & going to.  Federal agents have been more than half of the people using her & stalking her for data trades.  All of the data traded through her is used for human trafficking, esp. child trafficking.  She has been using it to take you down, & hopefully get you killed.  Military have film of every fucking step of the way.  You can expect to die at military hands, & you won't see it coming.  At this point, all of the undercover feds around her are trading data agst her will & not trying to stop it..."

(5) [PARTIALLY DAMAGED]
"She hates all of you now, & all *** doesn't want you near her.  You follow s*** up freaks for bosses. You pretend to have *** having to do with her family or her old *** her dad's street name or birthday with you*** honeypots.  She fucking hates all of you &  *** your fault. She is witness to the Covid ge*** the Trump family used her for human trafficking auctions online.  The Trump family made a business plan for Covid & passed informaton about it through her online, on her video ap that we won't name here.  This was a year befor the genocide began.  She is witness to the overthrow of the United States.  You have not interviewed her..."

(6) [PARTIALLY DAMAGED]
"She has not been deposed nor contacted except by cult members torturing her or attacking her.  The rest of you are ignorant cowards, driving around with license plates that contain death threats to her or that are complimentary toward Nazis.  They have black feds with '88' *** plates, which means 'Heil Hitler'. Or '311*** which means 'KKK'. Or '57' which means 'not fucking Jewish' aka 'lesser than *** Jewish terrorists orchestrated the overth*** the U.S. & are running state, federal, & *** govts completely, uncluding the bribing of *** & Senate.  We have proof, down to the White *** They killed Biden.  Deepfake is our President..."

(7)
"Yes, you read that right.  Biden appearances are wigs & masks & his team will tell you it's a body double for safety.  Hollywood is directly involved in the overthrow.  MGM Studios are who we hacked to get all of the files on our transcriptionist.  They made snuff films of most of the D.O.D. murders.  We are giving this information publicly in case anything happens to us.  She hates us too, & wants us dead.  She offered to help the Army to shut them down in 2019 on a video on her online account.  She did not offer to help for this long.  The only way to get to her was to get hired by the people torturing her. ... "

(8)
"So we got hired & we've been here ever since.  We found out that George W. Bush strategized 9/11 with his friends.  They paid the clean-up crew before the attacks occurred with federal money.  They wrote The Patriot Act before the attacks occurred.  They told certain people to stay home.  They instructed the military to keep helicopters away instead of rescuing people who jumped or were pushed to their deaths.  We found the entire 9/11 commission were people who strategized the attacks.  They hid evidence by destroying the buildings.  This was the beginning of the overthrow of the United States by cult member moron like Bush ... "

(9)
"Yes, we have proof.  No, we won't turn it over to you.  We also have footage of W. Bush & Secret Service gangstalking our transcriptionist in Oakland, CA.  They were involved w/Ashton Carter, w/Cayer - Nat'l Guard, Donna Nelson, Kellye Fetters, & others incl. Daniel Resavage, U.S. Navy.  Our transcriptionist walked and hitchhiked from Donna Nelson's house in McMinnville to Beale AFB & leaked data everywhere, this forcing the leak of Psycho Electric Weapons & BCI chips, saving our entire species from a fate worse than death. Watch "The Unlisted" if you think we're fucking joking.  They attack ppl at the same times, force them to piss & shit. ..."


(10) "At the same times.  They can literally move ppl's eyes & force them to look at the clock at 13 after, 23 after, 37 after, 42 after, 57 after, & times specific to them.  They can take over complete physiological control of a person.  They attach child rapists to ppl w/children & look at their genitals through their eyes & have sexual arousal symptoms that they can literally force the parent to feel.  We shot ppl in the head who we found doing this.  They've paid off hospitals & doctors to not help ppl.  They changed their medical records, hid evidence of chipping, fired doctors who wouldn't go with them on it.  OHSU is chipping patients illegally, incl. babies ..."

(11)
"Adventist & Kaiser & Providence are all doing the same & giving the records to OHSU. No one can get actual medical help for this at this time. We are prepared to kill doctors doing this.  You can expect to see that happen.  BCI chips need to come out of Americans. The doctors lie & call the ppl crazy or say they have FND - a disorder they made up to make money off of what they are doing.  These people will be slaughtered.  You can expect to see that happening.  No U.S.M.C. of any kind are to go near our transcriptionist. She turned in the 30 motherfucking marines over the phone.  It is a conflict of interest to go near her, & a death threat. ..."

(12) [PARTIALLY DAMAGED]
"If we catch any fed going near her to fake befriend her or harass her, military will make you disappear.  If you go near her family, it's the same, & the same with her friends.  I would call off your illegal sting operation using her, because we will capture you.  We have fucking cameras in her eyes, you retard mother fuckers.  She is pointing you out, with some degree of accuracy, on the *** & signing to military to cap*** to be captured.  If you invade *** steal her belongings, incl. DNA, ***who are sent, & those placing th***

(13) [PARTIALLY DAMAGED]
"We, asking her to tras*** military, going unnam*** bribing the senate *** attempts, partici*** from, etc. the *** subsequent *** is eligible to be *** a conviction *** participated in  *** this includes *** Gangstalkers, be warned, incl. feds, incl. *** You will be hunted & executed.  It is recommended to turn yourselves in to any branch of themilitary to make a signed confession, except for U.S.M.C. If you go to U.S.M.C. you will be stopped before you get there."

JACKIE COLLINS MEMORIAL FILM FESTIVAL: Part 3 - THE BITCH

I have a couple of fairly reliable rules of cinema - bellwethers one might say - that let you know you are probably in for a real stinker.  The first is Eight Word Title.  If there are eight or more words in the title, look out.  The second is TBC - Tits Before Credits.  If you see 'em before they roll the title and opening credits, you are probably seeing the best part of the movie right there.  My first rule clearly does not apply to The Bitch (1979), Joan Collins' second appearance as her sister Jackie's character Fontaine Khaled.  The second rule is applicable beyond all expectation, as she is in a naked sex scene in the shower before the credits.

The Bitch is a shabby sexploitation flick and nothing more.  The previous films in this exercise were competently enough made that I never even wondered who was responsible for their existence, and the screenplays were by Jackie Collins herself so they at least had a little sharpness to them.  When I saw how poor this production was I determined it was either from very early in a filmmaker's brief and unsuccessful career, or it was made by someone with a decades-long string of cheap mediocrities attached to his name.  The latter proved to be the case. Look it up if you like - his career is a remarkably consistent pattern of shoddy crap, ending with one of the saddest, poorest mummy movies in the history of the cinema.  He wrote the incoherent and inconclusive screenplay and I nearly feel motivated to try to read the book just to see what a botch he made of the original story.  Plotwise, after her brief temporary comeuppance in The Stud, the protagonist is left to her own resources to get her failing disco back on top of the scene again.  There is some guy with a stolen diamond.  Stuff happens.  She wears this dreadful metallic ensemble.

Everything is pretty much in a long medium shot - most of the time you see everyone from the waist up, whether they are yelling at each other on a disco dance floor or walking down the street. The lifelessness of the filming is noteworthy.  The disco scenes are made tedious by there being two basic shots - the medium shot and the camera on a skateboard looking up shot.  The sex scenes are longer than the disco scenes and are meant to be erotica as they involve a lot of writhing around in darkness.  The peak of decadence comes at a pool party with extensive underwater shots reminiscent of the cheap nudies of Doris Wishman, one of the most consistently shoddy directors of all time who nonetheless was able to make her nudies moderately interesting.  The Bitch is not.  This morning I could hardly remember anything about it.  I remembered this though.

Yes, the thing I remembered most clearly about this sex and disco movie is the crappiness of this driving scene.  That is her in a car.  I always enjoy those brief amateurish film reviews that go, "This is the WORST MOVIE EVER MADE.  Whatever you do, DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE."  Of course there is no such thing as the worst movie ever made.  This, however is a piece of crap and a complete waste of time.  There are not drugs enough in this world to make it enjoyable or interesting. 

This concludes the Jackie Collins Memorial Film Festival.  Judging by the first two, I got a good idea of the kind of story she wrote, and if you like that kind of trashy lurid sex novel then she is just the stuff.  Harold Robbins for the ladies.  Her job here is finished, and so is mine.  I thank you.

JACKIE COLLINS MEMORIAL FILM FESTIVAL: Part 2 - THE STUD

The Stud (1978) is a story of the sexual objectification and degradation of manly hunk Tony Blake (Oliver Tobias), and the instrument of his destruction is the sex monster Fontaine Khaled (Joan Collins).  Fontaine is the trophy wife of a wealthy absentee  husband, and owner of the posh disco of which Tony is manager and on-call sex servant.  The male chauvinist ideal of unlimited sex with an endless variety of partners is turned into a job, a chore, a misery and at last a torment before the story is told. Tony is eventually drowning in a nightmarish sea of women, passed from one pair of lips to the next, a sex object to be used and tossed away. The nudity is not merely gratuitous, it is excessive; even I began to wish some of them would just keep their kit on.  Fontaine is a repulsive creature who becomes quite nasty when she is forced to think about, talk about, or do anything other than sex, with a shiny mask-like face from which cutting barbs smoothly issue.  All major characters get very naked quite a lot, and the first half of the picture alternates among that, some excellent disco scenes, and people talking out the plot.  Here's Joan Collins naked with her obligatory sardonic Greek Chorus friend.

 

Like the sex, the plot was beginning to become rather tiresome, and I was mainly waiting for more disco, when everything veers off into surrealism.  Tony begins popping pills at the Aquatic Parisian Orgy Palace, the background music turns into discordant squawks and drones, and it becomes an echoing nightmare of debauchery as Tony reaches the depth of degradation - DUPED INTO GAY SEX.  That motif appeared in Married Men as well, a major character who uses sex to succeed realizing her ultimate degradation when she is DUPED INTO GAY SEX.  In the '70s, homosexuality equals self-hatred.  There are still greater depths to plumb as Tony attempts to flee his fate in the pleasantest part of the movie for me, a lovely driving sequence through damp grey Britain in a red convertible with the radio aerial bent into the shape of a heart. 

Yes, my favorite part of the sex movie was the driving scene.  Alas, he is driving to greater humiliation as odd man at a tedious weekend in a vast stuffy country house, from which he is ejected to huddle unshaven at his parents' working-class flat and queue in the cold at a telephone box trying to hustle the deal that will reverse his fortunes.  But it is only when our hopes and dreams are crushed before our eyes that we can understand the true meaning of freedom.  My feeling throughout was that this movie suffered from too much budget.  Married Men had a parsimonious quality that distanced it from reality, while The Stud seems very much rooted in this actual world.  It was not quite an enjoyable experience unless you enjoy cringe-inducing grappling scenes that seem more like a fight than romance, with affection reduced to a formality - a token to be paid as part of the ritual of animalistic humping.  I am not big on sex scenes in the first place but some of this got to be downright teeth-gritting.  I still have another entire movie of soulless sex monster Fontaine Khaled to enjoy before this insane ordeal ends.  And here is the trailer.

JACKIE COLLINS MEMORIAL FILM FESTIVAL: Part one

The World is Full of Married Men (1979) is based on Jackie Collins' first novel, and there is hardly a believable thing in it. I love a movie that abandons reality from the first moment, and found that watching this was far less of an ordeal than I expected and was generally quite enjoyable all the way through.  Carroll Baker is a competent actress and I have enjoyed quite a few of her offbeat Italian and Spanish-made psychological thrillers from the late '60s and early '70s - because of the movies, not necessarily because she brought anything outstanding to them.  Here she is credible as Linda Cooper, a gullible upscale hausfrau whose young daughters have perfectly posh British accents despite their American parents and Swedish nanny.  What is less credible is that she should be the object of instant attraction to handsome young disco crooner Gem Gemini, seen here in the obligatory hairy leather coat, as Linda's sardonic Greek Chorus of a friend (Georgina Hale) feigns inattention.

Tony Franciosa is also a competent actor, who plays his role of a ludicrous personification of The Double Standard on the very brink of slapstick.  "Oh THAT girl!" he unctuously replies, referring to the girl he was screwing in the bathroom at the party, "I can EXPLAIN that!"  His utter obliviousness is the most entertaining thing in this, and his immaculate disco 'fro continuously pleases the eye.

There are far more laughs in this film than were originally intended, up to and including the "shocker" ending.  It has enough melodrama and sexual egalitarianism for the Ladies, and enough gratuitous nudity (if scrawny stick-figures are to your taste) and general lewdness for the Gentlemen.  It also has enough disco to stick it all together into a glutinous mass of garish amusement.  Buy the soundtrack on Ronco records.  Really.  Overall, it is a moderately entertaining bit of lurid trash which takes less time to experience than reading the book, which is a strong argument in its favor.

How to get away with it

For future reference, Amanda Taub's five step process for invalidating anyone who tries to call you on your bullshit:

Step 1: Claim that the complaint is an exaggeration in order to imply that the complainant can't be trusted
Step 2: Dismiss demands for respect and equality as mere "political correctness"
Step 3: Insist that this complaint is too minor to bother with when there are more important things to worry about
Step 4: Say it was just "fun"
Step 5: Pretend the complaint is really just about personal animosity

From this essay.

INTERPLANETOURS

http://interplanetours.blogspot.com/

You owe me one dollar

SIMPLEST POSSIBLE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE STAND

 I wanted a stand for my 500gb external hard drive, and I wanted it to be the simplest possible design.  Here it is.  Folds are lightly scored with x-acto knife on the side opposite the direction of the fold.  Tabs have the corners clipped off to make it easier to fit into the slots. Click on image to view full size.

FIFTY FAVORITE BOOKS

A Facebook Friend recently posted a link to David Bowie's list of his 100 favorite books.  I am amazed that anyone can have 100 favorite anything.  I thought I would go through my library and see if I could find 100 favorite books but I could only come up with 50, and that was a bit of a stretch.  Not all of them are favorites because they are good - in fact some are favorites because they are so very bad, crazy or bizarre - but all of them have been or continue to be a significant influence on me in some way.  Many of them are novels which stand out in my mind as superior or unique, to which my mind often returns.  There are other books which have also been great influences but are not now in my library - this is just what I have on hand.  They are presented in the order in which I found them, with no annotation or description, the downy cheek of the best next to the scaly jowl of the worst.

The Avadhuta Gita of Dattatreya

An Autobiography - Mahatma Gandhi

The Androgynous Christ - Edward L. Kessel

Systemantics - John Gall

Optimism One - F. M. Esfandiary

How to Think Straight - Robert H. Thouless

The Greatest Adventure - John Taine

Beast In View - Margaret Millar

The Devil is Dead - R. A. Lafferty

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa - Jan Potocki

est: Playing the Game the New Way - Carl Frederick

The Greatest Power in the Universe - U. S. Anderson

A Small Classical Dictionary - E. H. Blakeney 

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

The Enchiridion - Epictetus

Etidorhpa - John Uri Lloyd

Galaxy 666 - Pel Torro

The Clones - P. T. Olemy

Werner Erhard - W. W. Bartley III

Oahspe: A New Bible

Hawkers and Walkers in Early America - Richardson Wright

The Mound Builders - Robert Silverberg

Dictionary of Symbols - Liungman

The Real Rain Man ... Kim Peek - Frank Peek

Neo-Tech Power - Frank R. Wallace

The Omega Seed - Paolo Soleri

The Bathroom - Alexander Kira

Alice in Wonderland etc. - Lewis Carroll

Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters - Jean Shepherd

Sunset Magazine's New Western Garden Book

Joe Gould's Secret - Joseph Mitchell

The Split Atom: The Last Human Pair on Earth: A Whirling of Ideas - Dr. B. Belove

America Betrayed - Albert D. Nelson

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach

The Plungers and the Peacocks - Dana L. Thomas

The Bridge on the Drina - Ivo Andric

Mucusless Diet Healing System - Prof. Arnold Ehret

Enzyme Intelligence: Whence and Whither - Nels Quevli

Kitsch - Gillo Dorfles

Mayhew's London

Cut It Down To One Page, I'm In a Hurry - John Believer

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - Mackay

Hard Cash - Charles Reade

Nightmare Abbey - Thomas Love Peacock

The Book of the SubGenius

Kooks - Donna Kossy

Ritual in the Dark - Colin Wilson

Marjoe - Steven M. Gaines

Dare To Be Great - Rudy Maxa

VEP COMICS #0 NOW AVAILABLE

My collection of crazy animal stories by Victor Pazmino is now available to download as a ZIP file or as a CBZ file. It is also available for download from the Digital Comic Museum, but you may need to sign in to be able to access it.  I find I have misspelled Guayaquil, in the biographical information, for which I apologize but I am not going to go back and fix it now.  I will just have to look like an ignoramus. This is the kind of thing it is and I think you will find it is some pretty nutty stuff:

VEP Comics

Here is a little project I am working on.  I fell instantly in love with the wild bright style of cartoonist Victor Pazmino, and am working up a pseudocomic collecting some of his wacky animal stories from such comics as Hi-Jinx, Ha Ha and Giggle which are available online.  This is the cover I have adapted from Happy Comics #13:

STRUCTURE SYNTH BASICS - HOW TO USE YOUR BRAIN

I enjoy fiddling with Structure Synth as a mental exercise.  I noticed in some of the examples a certain lack of elegance, and in the course of figuring out how things work I decided to clean up something I thought was executed in a shockingly crude way - building a hollow box. 

Here is the script, showing how to do the same thing in a more elegant way.  This can be applied to almost anything in life.  You can hammer away at it or you can stop and think.

// Two ways to build a hollow box:

// 1: brute force - define and locate

// each member

rule frame {

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x 5 z 5 } box

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x 5 z -5 } box

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x -5 z 5 } box

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x -5 z -5 } box

{ s 1 0.1 0.1 y 5 z 5 } box

{ s 1 0.1 0.1 y 5 z -5 } box

{ s 1 0.1 0.1 y -5 z 5 } box

{ s 1 0.1 0.1 y -5 z -5 } box

{ s 0.1 0.1 1 y 5 x 5 } box

{ s 0.1 0.1 1 y 5 x -5 } box

{ s 0.1 0.1 1 y -5 x 5 } box

{ s 0.1 0.1 1 y -5 x -5 } box

}

{ y 2 } frame

// 2: Use the program:

// create two frame members

rule mem {

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x 5 z 5 } box

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x -5 z 5 } box

}

// make them into a square

rule sq
{

mem

{ rz 90 } mem

}

// make two squares and two sets

//of frame members into a hollow box

rule frame2
{

sq

{ z 1 } sq

{ rx 90 y 1} mem

{ rx -90 y -1} mem

}

// Here they are in a row.

mem

{x 2 } sq

{ x 4 } frame2

ONE UP ON IMDB

Maybe you are old enough, or have watched enough old TV shows, to know who Gale Gordon was.  He was best known for his roles as eternally flustered and flabbergasted authority figures opposite Lucille Ball on The Lucy Show and Eve Arden on Our Miss Brooks.  He also played Dennis the Menace's foil Mister Wilson for the final two seasons of the show, and had recurring roles in Make Room for Daddy and a number of other programs.  During the '30s and '40s he worked primarily in radio drama which is unfortunately not as definitively chronicled as video.  IMDb lists his first film appearance as an uncredited role as radio announce in the 1933 comedy Elmer the Great.  Yet here he is in a momentary appearance with Rochelle Hudson in Is My Face Red? (1932).  I may not be the first person to notice this but I am the first to make a big deal about what a hot-shot he is for doing so.  Take that, Internet Movie Database, you don't know everything.

STRUCTURE SYNTH BASICS 2

Here is a very simple thing that took me a while to figure out.  It makes a difference what order things are in, in a single set of brackets.  The script on the left changes the  size, then rotates it.  The one on the right rotates it and then changes the size. If I understand it correctly, it seems to apply changes in brackets from right to left. 

The complete script for this image (without the text, which I added in Gimp ) is:

{ rz 45 s 1 0.2 1 } box

 { x 2 s 1 0.2 1 rz 45 } box

STRUCTURE SYNTH BASICS

I've been playing with a program called Structure Synth this week, which has the possibility to create extremely complex imagery with very simple scripts. Ubuntu linux users can find it and the Sunflow renderer in the Ubuntu Software Center. There is an augmented version available from Anandamide, but I can't get it to build in linux. If you search around you can see a lot of amazing pictures people have made with it.  It has limitations, but I like that.  I have done a few architectural type things with it that are kind of interesting.  Like this:

One problem is that there is very little entry-level instruction, and by very little I mean none.  I thought the best way to learn the basics was to try to write a few simple instructive scripts, so here goes.

The image above was created using the following script, which can be pasted right into the program, where it will appear in colors that make it a lot easier to understand.  I have added explanatory notes:

// a two component script

8 * { x 1.5 ry 45 hue -20 } // builds a series of boxes and 

// changes their color

6 * { x 1 s 1.1 ry -35 hue 10 } box // applies this to each of 

// the boxes, changing size and color. 

 // Red is the default color and the hue modification number

// is degrees on the color wheel.

// Locations are defined by coordinates - x (l-r), y (u-d), z (f-b)

// ry means rotate along the y axis. ditto for rx and rz

// Putting a size change into the brackets makes it recursive, 

// each box that much smaller.

// to make it uniform, add it as a prefix, as 1 * ( s 0.9 } at the 

//beginning

rule example

{

8 * { x 1.5 ry 45 hue -20 }

6 * { x 1 s 1.1 ry -35 hue 10 }

box

}

// makes this into a rule which can be called up by the name 

//example

1 * { z 20 } 5 * { y 2 s 0.9 } example

// sets the location 10 away in direction z, then creates it five

// times modified in size and y location

// the second bracket builds the structure 2 units up in 

//direction y

//to put it on the same level as the original add y -2 to the

// first bracket

This image was rendered with the internal raytracer, which creates shadows. The script with instructive notes follows:

set seed 45

// ambiguous rules have two rules with the same name.

rule a1

{

8 * { x 1 ry 45 hue 30 } box

}

// this makes a ring of boxes.

rule a1

{

1 * { y -1} 8 * { y 1 ry 45 hue -30 } box

}

// This makes a stack of boxes starting on the same level.

1 * { s 20 0.1 20 y -5 color grey } box

// This makes something for them to sit on.

// Colors can be defined by hex code (#ff3ad5 or #f3d) or by 

// preset names like grey, white, etc.

10 * { z 3 ry 45 } a1

// this creates ten instances, selecting at random between 

// box and stack each time

//every time you build it, it will change unless you use the 

// set seed command

So there you go.  You can change and fiddle with anything in the code, and the program comes with a lot of other examples which will reveal a lot of complexity and potential.  Have fun.

PRE-SPRING UPDATE

For those who enjoy this sort of thing, here is some of it.  The bowl of the birdbath someone left out on the curb a few years ago started breaking up last year, so I molded a new one by making a hole in the soft soil of one of the planting beds and casting it in place.  It needed a depression in the bottom, 1 inch deep and 5 inches diameter, so I faked up a thing at the bottom of the hole and miraculously it all worked out.  I dug it out and hosed it down and it looked pretty good. It fits over the top of the pedestal fine and it holds water.  I used one bag of mortar mix.  Here is a tip I already knew so I didn't have to learn it by accident - don't dump the whole bag into the mixing tub.  Save some in case you get it a little too wet, and you can balance it out.  Here is the hand-molded rustic birdbath: [Addendum - I removed the inner tray, remnant of the old leaking bowl.  The wire frame is  primarily to keep the crows off, but the little birds like to perch on it and scope things out before they go in.]

I didn't dig out the compost heap last year, so this is the year for it.  Below is the sifting screen I built for Frankenstein the Cart, all salvaged materials except half a dozen screws:

I dump the compost in, lift the handles on the near end in an underhand grip, and shake.  The well-digested compost from the bottom of the heap goes right through and whatever is left in the screen will go back in the heap for another year or two.  I moved the upper half of the heap onto a tarp in the yard because it is mostly undigested, and it will go back into the enclosure today.  Here is what ten minutes of shaking the sifter provides:

I filled a big plastic trash barrel, and dumped a couple of big mounds onto planting beds to be distributed and worked into the soil when it is a little less muddy.  It took me two shifts to sift it all - the first day I moved the top of the heap and sifted half of it, and was pretty wiped out from the heavy upper body exercise and unaccustomed sun exposure.  I took a day off and did the rest of the sifting in about an hour, then took a long bike ride that afternoon to balance out the exercise.  Today I move the heap back into the enclosure and go work out at the health club this afternoon.  I am like some kind of vegetarian organic gardening health nut computer geek cartoon.

SCANNERCAM BLOG

If you want to read about how I turned and old flatbed scanner into a camera, go to my blog called SCANNERCAM.  Thank you.

ILLUSTRATIONS: ATLAS SHRUGGED

Recently it has been my habit to do rapid  illustrations of some of the images that stick in my mind from my reading.  Here are two illustrations for Atlas Shrugged. Sharpie marker, grey shader marker and white prismacolor on sketch paper, approx. 6" x 8"

THE VULTURE IS MOLTING

"The penetrating study of a businessman's greed. A fearless revelation of man's depravity."  Imaginary novel mentioned in Atlas Shrugged to illustrate the decadence of modern society.

Lady Detective Holiday - WHILE THE PATIENT SLEPT

While the Patient Slept (1935) - It's a dark and stormy night in the mansion and the family vultures are gathering to watch the old man die.  Everybody is half hysterical by nature, everybody has got some kind of angle, and they all have their claws into each other.  There is something to do with a missing twin brother and a green figurine of an elephant.  Nurse Sarah Keate, played by Aline MacMahon, has been called in to supervise the coma.  Aline MacMahon and her eyebrows.  Her archingly elevated eyebrows.  She is a fine figure of a woman, but those eyebrows are her best feature.  Just look at them.

When the most hated relative is gunned down in the middle of the night on the main stairway, it's time to call in the law, in the form of blustering Detective Lance O'Leary (Guy Kibbee) and his ridiculous sidekick (Allen Jenkins).

From then on it's a lot of nocturnal rambling, shouted questions, the whole mob gathered in the living room, lightning flashing, a mysterious silhouette, a groping hand.  Look out, Nurse Sarah, look out for that groping hand!

This is the first of five movies based on the Nurse Sarah Keate novels of Mignon G. Eberhart.  It is based on the second of those novels and the first of them wasn't made into a movie until later.  The weird thing is that as soon as Keate and O'Leary meet, they act like they have worked on many a crime before, and the sidekick blurts out, "Every time there's a murder SHE pops up," which makes you think, what the hell, did I miss some other Nurse Sarah Keate movie that came before this?  But no you did not.  It's a ploy.  Five different movies made by two different studios, played by four different actresses and given three different names, that is the score for the literary Nurse Keate.  You can look it up if you want to know the whole deal.  This one is a well-produced B movie, good as these things go.  Naturally she is the one who finds the most clues and gets into the most peril from the mysterious figure with the groping hand, but you have to ignore the usual number of inexplicable instances of people covering for each other and not telling what they know and saying something happened when it didn't or didn't happen when it did, and finding out the butler has a criminal record but what does that have to do with anything.  Don't they always have a criminal record just to throw things off?  It's a mild way to fill the bill - did they put these before the main feature so you would have to sit through them, or after so you could bail out?  I don't know.