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i love saying Yay. literally Yay!

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Sword, Korea, 17th-19th century

from The National Museum of Korea

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damn, she’s a bad bitch. oh they’re nonbinary? my bad. damn, they’re a bad person

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there’s this mac repair store across the street that has looked abandoned for several years, we’ve never seen anyone go in or come out, and the storefront has a pastel fade. we used to joke that it was some kind of front. how can this business possibly still be afloat if there are never any cars in the parking lot? a couple weeks ago the marquee went from blank to “for rent” and then piles of stuff started showing up in the parking lot, free for the taking. my friends went over and started picking stuff out: oscilloscopes, lava-proof suits, and all kinds of nerdy stuff. i was mostly curious if they had any old crt monitors and lost interest when i found out they didn’t. this is me admitting to being childish and foolish. because holy shit. the person who ran this place and was apparently living there was mark slater, the developer of holovid

i’m sure that means nothing to you, as it did to me at first. let me back up for a second and talk about these:

silicon wafers processed into holographic images. something my partner had collected from the pile across the street. upon writing this i still haven’t seen them in person because my partner is sick and i’m away. on this one you can see a harry s truman quote “fire the son of a bitch” along with an image of his hat. i’ve always thought holography was neat but this particular thing didn’t hit with me so i didn’t think much of it at the time. along with this, though, my partner found thousands of dollars worth of blank silicon wafers. we both had dollar signs in our eyes, without any real idea of how to sell them. last night, my partner sent me an ebay listing for a unique-looking holographic one that had been set into a necklace, and based on the description they had surmised that it was one of the wafers taken from the lot. it was listed at $24.99, which i immediately felt was too low. that’s art! i love a good 3d art. and you can wear it?? i told them, “man i wish you would’ve picked that one up!” and in response they sent me a photo of small box of a whole collection of them. they sent me a close-up image of one of the “blank” ones, which actually had a small etching of code (or something - i’m still trying to figure out how all this works) on it

my partner sends me an image that was tacked onto the ebay listing of a booklet called “printed holograms by bluebell” that they had seen when they were at the parking lot, and were told had been found in the recycling bin. a whole how-to book on creating holographic art with a weird new technology. it was by mark slater, who developed a “measuring instrument” for…. spaceships? when i see the photos of the booklet in the ebay listing, i realize they look photocopied and i think, ohhh whoever was into this stuff was just inspired. how silly of me to think i had been living across from mark slater this whole time. my partner then sends me a photo of a wide cylinder of (presumably) holographic film, still sealed and says “wonder wats on it?!”

and now i’m all a-giggle. i start doing some research on how to develop this weird thing, but i don’t even know where to begin. while i’m doing my research my partner sends me photos of some other things they picked up, mostly floppies, mostly of the same sort of thing, but they all say “slater”/“m. slater”/“mark slater” with a copyright symbol and i’m like, “wtf did this guy know slater or something?” and my partner is like, what do you mean… it is him? i’m kind of stunned now and my partner goes on to say that they saw him all the time, and he looked just like the guy in the author portrait of the booklet. meanwhile, my best friend has been web-searching him and found an online document detailing a dispute he had with the city of tacoma over a piece of land. i’ll link the full document (ctrl f slater) because it is absolutely fascinating, but my main takeaway was the bit towards the top, where he talks about the shipping containers outside of his mac repair store

i wish i could’ve met the guy

will update if we ever get this film developed :-)

(oh while i'm here i wanna include a really useful excerpt from one of his complaints)

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there’s this mac repair store across the street that has looked abandoned for several years, we’ve never seen anyone go in or come out, and the storefront has a pastel fade. we used to joke that it was some kind of front. how can this business possibly still be afloat if there are never any cars in the parking lot? a couple weeks ago the marquee went from blank to “for rent” and then piles of stuff started showing up in the parking lot, free for the taking. my friends went over and started picking stuff out: oscilloscopes, lava-proof suits, and all kinds of nerdy stuff. i was mostly curious if they had any old crt monitors and lost interest when i found out they didn’t. this is me admitting to being childish and foolish. because holy shit. the person who ran this place and was apparently living there was mark slater, the developer of holovid

i’m sure that means nothing to you, as it did to me at first. let me back up for a second and talk about these:

silicon wafers processed into holographic images. something my partner had collected from the pile across the street. upon writing this i still haven’t seen them in person because my partner is sick and i’m away. on this one you can see a harry s truman quote “fire the son of a bitch” along with an image of his hat. i’ve always thought holography was neat but this particular thing didn’t hit with me so i didn’t think much of it at the time. along with this, though, my partner found thousands of dollars worth of blank silicon wafers. we both had dollar signs in our eyes, without any real idea of how to sell them. last night, my partner sent me an ebay listing for a unique-looking holographic one that had been set into a necklace, and based on the description they had surmised that it was one of the wafers taken from the lot. it was listed at $24.99, which i immediately felt was too low. that’s art! i love a good 3d art. and you can wear it?? i told them, “man i wish you would’ve picked that one up!” and in response they sent me a photo of small box of a whole collection of them. they sent me a close-up image of one of the “blank” ones, which actually had a small etching of code (or something - i’m still trying to figure out how all this works) on it

my partner sends me an image that was tacked onto the ebay listing of a booklet called “printed holograms by bluebell” that they had seen when they were at the parking lot, and were told had been found in the recycling bin. a whole how-to book on creating holographic art with a weird new technology. it was by mark slater, who developed a “measuring instrument” for…. spaceships? when i see the photos of the booklet in the ebay listing, i realize they look photocopied and i think, ohhh whoever was into this stuff was just inspired. how silly of me to think i had been living across from mark slater this whole time. my partner then sends me a photo of a wide cylinder of (presumably) holographic film, still sealed and says “wonder wats on it?!”

and now i’m all a-giggle. i start doing some research on how to develop this weird thing, but i don’t even know where to begin. while i’m doing my research my partner sends me photos of some other things they picked up, mostly floppies, mostly of the same sort of thing, but they all say “slater”/“m. slater”/“mark slater” with a copyright symbol and i’m like, “wtf did this guy know slater or something?” and my partner is like, what do you mean… it is him? i’m kind of stunned now and my partner goes on to say that they saw him all the time, and he looked just like the guy in the author portrait of the booklet. meanwhile, my best friend has been web-searching him and found an online document detailing a dispute he had with the city of tacoma over a piece of land. i’ll link the full document (ctrl f slater) because it is absolutely fascinating, but my main takeaway was the bit towards the top, where he talks about the shipping containers outside of his mac repair store

i wish i could’ve met the guy

will update if we ever get this film developed :-)

(oh while i'm here i wanna include a really useful excerpt from one of his complaints)

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Reading Times, Pennsylvania, August 7, 1930

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Please meet Rube Goldberg.

While collecting eggs a couple of weeks ago, this egg slipped out of my hands from 5 feet up above wood, wire, and cement. Quail eggs are VERY fragile when it comes to impacts, so this egg's life flash before my eyes and time slowed down as I watched the world's most ridiculous accidental cartoon egg drop.

It somehow missed every obstacle on the way down (3 shelves) in order to land upon the side of a milk jug I had dropped the day before. It bounced off of that to a couple feet away, and hit the side of a hay bale. It bounced off of that, and somehow landed on the open lip of an empty feed back laying on the floor that I had put down under the towers to prevent the cement from sinking heat from the space. The bag gently collapsed, and rolled the pristine egg to a stop back at my feet.

I stared at it in disbelief. I took it inside and candled it- not a crack in it. So I noted the pen I got it from (CER) and scribbled "dropped?" on it. I figured SURELY it would not develop after that kind of nonsense, but when I candled at lockdown, the little thing was ready to go.

So, I stuck the egg into its own hatching bag, and sure as shit, the little fucker hatched!

And as if the rest of the story is not weird enough, this is possibly the first coturnix chick in the world who didn't immediately faceplant off of a human hand in the pursuit of the cold embrace of death. It just sat there, posing with the egg. Looking around like Hm so this is what being alive is... it's alright I guess.

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The beautiful owl sprite animation from the 1992 Psygnosis game, Agony.

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“There’s a legend about a Chinese painter who was asked by the emperor to paint a landscape so pristine that the emperor can enter it. He didn’t do a good job, so the emperor was preparing to assassinate him. But because it was his painting, legend goes, he stepped inside and vanished, saving himself. I always loved that little allegory as an artist. Even when it is not enough for others, if it is enough for you, you can live inside it.”

— Ocean Vuong, from an interview with Zoë Hitzig in Prac Crit

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what's the mood

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learning that people want you in their lives is a skill you can develop if it does not come naturally

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Common hippopotamus Hippopotamus amphibius

With serrated hinged terrapin Pelusios sinuatus, on adult hippo, and Mozambique tilapia Oreochromis mossambicus, around juvenile hippo

Observed by anibotani, CC BY-SA

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Hiroo Isono, 1982

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huge shout out to this little kid for writing my favorite poem