Saturday, September 23, 2006

Where Have All the Titles Gone?

Hm, Been thinking about putting a new theme together for my page, but I'm still rolling some ideas around in my head. I don't want to give too much away just yet. It's been humid here again, it got cold, it rained, and now it's hot and humid again. This weather is going to make me ill yet. Mother Nature tries every year, and every year, she wins hands down. Usually it's when I want to be at my best for something. Comments: Yensid: I reread my last comment answers, and one word came to mind, a painfully loud, very distinct "OUCH." I do owe you an apology for that rant, it was a conditioned response. I came out of a school system that drilled into the students' heads that not having that glorified toilet tissue (diploma) meant you were not only stupid, but ignorant, and worthless too. Part of the reason I abandoned my last semester of high school (aside from the fact that all 4 credits were completely unnecessary, I already had my 21 to graduate) was that very pressure from those wannabe dictators called teachers, guidance counselors, and school administrators. Please accept my apologies, no personal assumptions were, or are, meant by any of my remarks. Believe it or not, your comments are helping me to frame out some of the fundamentals of that additional content I need to add to the article pertaining to the issue of bias. Bias doesn't have to be an ugly word in relation to art evaluation. I'm still having trouble working up a simple exercise to teach people how to mute those partialities. There is an appropriate time to set preconceptions and personal choices aside, like during the evaluation process, and I know personally how hard it is to do just that. Let me just say that it wasn't one of my better moments in Theatre . . . I do appreciate your saying so about the article. Honestly, I'm surprising myself with this piece, it's the first real article I've ever written. I didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did, and that's a bit overwhelming for me. Mamma Vash: The mention of the Santa Anas always makes me recall Studio Ghibli. The name Ghibli came from the Italian word referring to the hot winds that come off the Sahara desert. Yeah a nice hot bowl of soup is good in chilly weather, same with oatmeal in the mornings. Not so pleasant to eat in the summer, but on winder mornings, now that's good stuff. With all things, it's hard to REALLY evaluate something without understanding some fundamentals of the technical portions of creating it. On a later date I may work the article toward visual art critique, which would cover some of those fundamentals, but for now, I thinnk I provide enough for people to get their footing. I've never been to an art museum, but I do have my favorite works. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali is my all time favorite painting, I also like some of Van Gogh's works, and Pierre Auguste Renoir's work The Luncheon of the Boating Party has special meaning for me (My high school ADV Theatre class wrote their own play from the perspectives of the women characters in that piece, and since I was the only guy in class that semester, I did the easy job, stage managing - I still have the stage manager's script for that). I don't look at art the same way most people do. When I look at art, I'm not seeing contrast of colors, brush technique, use of light and shadow or things like that. My mind is piecing together the story of the work. I sit back and wonder why the people in the piece look the way they do, what just happened to them? What do I think will happen to them next? Why are they doing what they're doing? I'm still rooted heavily in Theater in terms of how I evaluate art, I fall into deep subtext all the time, ignoring the mechanics of creation to satisfy these impulses for my need to know the lives and feelings of the characters in a piece. If a piece is just a landscape, my mind can be very scary when in looks for the answers to those questions. I won't even begin to describe what goes on in my head for that Salvador Dali piece, it's that weird. Animals are just as curious as humans about all things. She probably noticed that the little things appeared on the screen as you made the clacking noise with that thing in front of you (keyboard). Sometimes it takes a pet to point out the simple things to us. How often do we take the time to notice those little black things popping up on the screen in front of us, I mean really notice them, not as intelligent humans, but as curious minds? It's like magic if you think about it. beyblader Ah, then you have missed one of the bits of history in this pergatory of a state that actually interests me. See, a while back CSX had a rail spur that ran the 70+ miles between Clarksburg and Parkersburg West Virginia. It ran passenger trains and some frieght too, but here's the good part. When the railroad abandoned that spur, the state turned it into a hiking trail and state park. Well, the story about Tunnel #19, known locally as the Silver Run tunnel may be a little much for the squeamish or faint of heart, so if you don't think you can handle haunting or ghost stories, you'd better skip this part. The story goes that sometime in the early days of the railroad running through there (it's a short trip from Cairo WV westward) A woman was getting ready to be married. Now, no one is exactly sure of the details, but somehow the woman died. Some say she was killed by her husband to be, others think she committed suicide by throwing herself in front of the train one night. Anyway, people began telling stories about Tunnel #19, saying that they'd seen a woman in white standing near the entrance to the tunnel, sometimes inside the tunnel. Some engineers actually began refusing to make the run at all, one in particular who didn't believe in ghosts. That engineer got the scare of his life as he made that run one night, heading to Parkersburg from Clarksburg (east to west). As he was coming up on the tunnel, he saw the figure that others had told him about, standing right in the center of the tracks, a woman in white. Thinking he wasn't going to let a "ghost" get the better of him, that engineer didn't slow down at all, he ran right through the tunnel and kept right on going. When his train pulled into Parkersburg he was met with a very frantic Depot worker telling the engineer that he had gone through several stops with a woman's body lodged on the front of his train. They both went to the front of the engine to check and sure enough a woman in a white dress was hanging to the front of the train. But here's the best part, she stood up, walked down the platform heading back toward tunnel #19, and faded away right before their eyes. She knew that engineer didn't believe, and she did that to spite him. He never made that run again, and the woman in white hasn't been seen as far west as Parkersburg again either. Anyway, I've been inside that tunnel twice, and let me tell you, it's a creepy place to be standing. There are a total of 21v tunnels on the trail, I've been to or through 4 of them. Tunnel #19, Tunnel #13 (there's a train wreck story with this one, I have to photograph the plaque to be able to tell it) Tunnel # 12, and Tunnel #10. Tunnel #10 is especially creepy, only because it's not a bick and mortal tunnel like the others, it's completely cut out of the rock itself. Anyway, if you missed my Tunnel #19 stuff, then you probably didn't get to experience my Mothman tales either. Point Pleasant is a beautiful little town, with a lot of stuff going on. The Silver Bridge collapse back in Dec 1966 or 67, I can never remember the year, the Mothman sightings, the whole TNT area, and so much more. It's a town like out of Twin Peaks or something, it has that rich sense of mystery and supernatural energy about it, but it also has a lot of history from the days Cheif Cornstalk cursed the land. Shireishou If I inspire just one person to take the time and think about what they're looking at before they try to communicate their thoughts, then I've truly done well. Note: All inline images on this page hosted by Photobucket Anime Dreams!

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