saturn return to sender

I’ve recently seen The Labyrinth of the Faun and Children of Men and I’ve decided they’re fraternal twins. They both put some fragile innocence into nightmarish and horrifically violent situations, and the story follows the protector of the innocence, who possesses some essential purity. They’re also both gorgeous movies and really really hard to watch. At the end of each the most articulate reaction I could manage was something like “holy crap that was effing hard core!”

So it’s kind of ridiculous but I’ve put together a little chart comparing the two. Spoilers follow the break.
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I know some of us have puzzled over how to use spam as art … it seems like such a rich (nay limitless, unending, flood-like) source of weird post-modern … um, something. Surreal poetry? Transcendental koans? If only we could somehow convert it into electricty …

At least one person is putting some real effort into the project: at Fresh Spam, weird, amusing spam subject lines are a generator for weird, amusing painting. (Via Mobuzz.tv.) This stuff is totally going into a museum one day. Or maybe wall art for a cyber café?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes the spam headlines seem eerily related to something I’m thinking about, working on, etc. I mean yes: a flood of random phrases is bound to eventually hit on something meaningful, but it happens an awful lot lately. It’s kind of freaky.

Just a quick note to say that a comet visible in broad daylight is some crazy $#!% and I’m ashamed to have missed seeing it in person.

I’ve spent about 8 10 way too many hours now trying to get a usable environment for writing my thesis. I’m going to try using LaTeX … god help me.

update
This is getting ridiculously long … I’m writing all this not so much to be read but for the benefit of search engines and people out there who might be trying similar things …

Hopefully I will be able to post a concise summary at some point.

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