Digital Imagery, Flash Fiction and Video by A.F. Knott

Not Seen As Human - Images Strung Together Series

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 17:16:00 +0000

Backstage Pass on Father's Day

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 03:01:00 +0000

The Spectre of Alice Found a Hopper House and Looked Inside

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 09:57:00 +0000

Monday, Birds Tweeting Outside, Thinking of You

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 09:44:00 +0000

"Do you want me to say, 'It's Monday, I'm sitting here listening to the birds chirping outside, thinking of you. . .'"

I replied, "Yes." I was half serious.

"I can't communicate with you in that way."

"I know," I said.

But now it's Monday, the birds are chirping outside, and I'm thinking of him, my son.

Video Archive One: Whistler's Mother Spits, Three Pears, Theresa's Dream and Jethro!

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:19:00 +0000

Whistler's Mother Spits

Three Pears

Theresa's Dream

Jethro!

The Running From Captain Kangeroo and Mister Greenjeans Archives

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:01:00 +0000

Running from Captain Kangeroo

Running from the Green Bomb

Running from Mister Greenjeans AND Purple Pancakes

Evil Evil Pancakes

Running from the Wrath of the Wind

Distortion of Runners in the Midst of a Purple Apocalypse

Running from Mister Greenjeans, Pancakes and Syrup

The Quilting Bee and Doing the Wash in Black and White

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Wed, 27 May 2015 23:44:00 +0000

The Quilting Bee

Doing the Wash in Black and White

John Coltrane: Black and Blue

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Wed, 27 May 2015 09:44:00 +0000

Mail Order Scarecrow and She Crossed the Line into Poverty Town

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Fri, 22 May 2015 08:55:00 +0000

"The Farmer couldn't understand what had happened. He had followed the instructions on the folded up piece of paper to the T and erected his new scarecrow on its wooden mounting bracket included in the kit, all of it shipped brand spanking new from the factory in Cincinnati with a Sears Roebuck guarantee. Well, the thing did what the ad said it would do and kept the crows occupied, but then after about a week, he began noticing the Divas out in his field. The crows were fine. The just sat there transfixed. But the Divas were another story. They became active, very active. And after a couple of months, he started telling people in town, 'If I had to do it over again, I'd take the goddamn crows over them Divas any day.'"

*******

"The demarcations are fine in some cities, where lines between safe and unsafe become blurred. She'd been looking for that steakhouse she heard about, tucked away into a nondescript neighborhood, like all the good restaurants are. At this one they come to your table and ask one question: "How do you want your steak cooked?" It was a Friday, she just had a shit week and was going to treat herself to a 24 ounce T Bone with a baked potato and butter.
But she didn't bother to Google the directions before getting into her cab. And when she got out, didn't know where she was until its was too late. She didn't know the steakhouse was in the opposite direction and that she had crossed the line into POVERTY TOWN!"

Pears

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Tue, 19 May 2015 17:34:00 +0000

"Back in those days, this kind of thing was just so hard to explain. . . Didn't even bother to try. She'd let the pear in through the back door then latch it."

"Dad's got a set of two new big pears! And if Dad's happy, we're happy!"

Nietzsche's Mother: Evidence of her Time Travel and Enormous Influence on the History of Metal

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Sun, 17 May 2015 12:08:00 +0000

A withered Polaroid found in sewing basket at a Flohmarkt just outside of Naumberg depicts at first glance an anonymously chaotic scene yet at closer inspection supports what had previously been only conjectured and considered anecdotal. The evidence was suppressed by Nietzsche's sister, Therese Elisabeth Alexandra Förster-Nietzsche, that their mother favored the young Friedrich and attempted to bring him up as a righteous head banger, both of them traveling regularly into the future through unknown means in order to attend metal concerts and the like. She would guide him to the front row of each festival and force him to stand directly in front of the main column of speakers. This exposure to extremely loud Prog and Metal music is now thought to have greatly influenced his thinking and later contributed to his ultimate hospitalizations, further calling into question the "diagnosis" of dementia. The above photograph was taken by a security guard who has recently come forward to corroborate the identities. Friedrich's mother was a well know fixture at these festivals and had been referred to her as, "The mother of all mothers."

"It was the only time she became ohne Angst," Friedrich allegedly had confided to Lou Andreas-Salomé, "When we be head bangin' in the future."

*****

The mother and son were also thought to be ardent supporters if not the raison d' etre, for the late seventies London scene.

*****

In one of the many photos taken at a Rammstein Press Conference, the magnitude of influence which Nietzsche's mother wielded on the history of Metal could be only inferred. The band was one of the few that did not deny the association.

The Physics of Fruit

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Wed, 13 May 2015 08:52:00 +0000

Horst Mayer, Professor Emeritus of low temperature thermodynamics, regarded the student, removed his glasses and wiped one lens. He said,

"This is not physics. This is. . .I don't know what this is. There is no such thing as the Physics of Fruit. This is a . . . I would call it a hodge podge. None of it is true. I don't know why you do this. There is not so much time to waste before you need to submit your dissertation. Why do you bring me this?"

The student stammered, "Herr Professor, I. . ."

Dr.Mayer interrupted the student. "I think you need psychological counseling. Many of the students have done this. They have gone to psychological counseling and returned right as rain. This is what you must do. Please do not waste my time with this nonsense. I had specifically put aside this hour to review your dissertation on non equilibrium thermodynamics. They are now waiting for me at the laboratory."

The student said, "Herr Professor, I was just. . ."

"No. You must go to psychological counseling. There is no such thing as the Physics of Fruit. This is all in your imagination, somewhere in your brain, there is misfiring of neurons and chemical imbalances. This must be looked into. You will be right as rain afterwards. Please do as I tell you and you will be right as rain."

"Yes, Herr Professor," the student answered, replaced the diagrams in his back back and left the office. He inadvertently left one on the Professor's desk.

As soon as the student left the room Horst Mayer regarded The Gaussian Field of a Banana. He tapped his pen on the desk then arose and brought the drawing over to his piano bench and placed it on the stand. He sat still for a moment regarding the image then opened the piano's key cover and began to play a piece of Gustav Mahler, Des Antoniue von Padua Fischpredigt or, St. Anthony of Padua's Sermon to the Fish, penned in 1893. As he played, his eyes closed and his head rolled back. A breeze through the window jostled his white hair. Drool fell from the side of his mouth, cascading over his chin. Then he farted suddenly, slurped and stopped playing. The Professor slammed his piano cover closed, wiped his glasses, crumbled the students drawing and tossed it into the garbage.

The Plague Doctor's Anatomy Lesson and His Revised History of Medicine

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Tue, 12 May 2015 13:29:00 +0000

His mother said, "You can't remember that far back," but he could. He remembered before the womb, when he was a fish, helping others to swim. He remembered being eaten, again and again. His nightmares until a short time ago, were of being swallowed and eaten alive.

His mother had been Queen of the Prostitutes, and sat in front of a mirror encircled by torches, threatening suicide offhandedly. There was drama in the brothel from sundown to sunup.
As a child, he yelled, “You whore! You whore!” and ran like hell as that would piss her off. She'd chase after him with a cleaver.
After all, he was the illegitimate son of Jack the Ripper, a form of royalty in those circles, and could have been destined for glory but his mother, acting in what she saw as his best interest, sold him to the Babylonians so they could teach him medicine. "That or the military," she had said, waving goodbye.
For him, he realized now, it was a fall back. He could have been a prostitute himself or a mass murderer but no, he became a doctor and knew all that entailed, that kind of responsibility did not suit him. Yet he "grew into it," and only practiced for a thousand years until he had THE definitive midlife crisis.
His first job was a doctor of snakebites, a Marsus. The bites most often on hands of the wine drinkers, who had been showing off. They were usually still drunk by the time they were brought to him. He enjoyed talking to them nonetheless asking them how they had got into their messes in the first place.

Then it was his medieval practice and that was a real grind. Only last week, at the museum in Oxford, he examined a skull of a man he had trephined, recalling how the man had struggled and that the nurse was forced to hold his arms.

Then came the plague of London, 1665, and he was busy as hell, once again.

He disliked both his hat and coat as they were too hot but necessary. He placed carnations in the beak reservoir although lavender or roses tended to be more popular with the other doctors. It's purpose was to fend off odor which were felt to cause disease, the miasma theory of infection. The plague physicians tended to be second rate, and generally had got into trouble. He was one of those and accepted it, one of fallen the rank and file. He prodded his patients with the cane feeling, even then, like an idiot. Touching the patient was forbidden, just like the twenty first century yet later he realized that may have been a good thing. He could have very well died himself back then.

The 1656 woodcut depicts the plague doctor “Dr. Beak from Rome” (“Doktor Schnabel von Rom”). His bird mask was stuffed with straw, serving as crude air filter.

A few centuries later, the same nurse, pulled a cart with her husband’s dead body all the way from Whitechapel to Waterloo, tipped him out then shoved him against the station wall with her boot. His corpse had laid in their room for a week, their children, sister, mother, father sleeping with burlap over their faces.

The day she dumped his body, she screwed the doctor on his instrument table, scattering it all onto the floor and thereafter it became the time of cholera, when shitting and fucking were all around him. The nurse told him, “If you don’t continue to fuck me I will make your life a living hell.” It was after hearing that and watching her shit on the pump handle in broad daylight that he realized something was wrong, not with the world,but with him.

He began to miss his own children whom had grown up and died over the centuries after he moved into the cities, he thought, "on a mission to treat the sick." Things began to unravel. The doctor questioned his calling.

He walked the streets of the quarantined zones, injecting myself with transforming potions of his own design, heavy metals, hair, fungi, even bacteen and mouthwash. . .trying to discover a cure for what infested his head when there was no disease present at all.

One Russian woman told him, just before she died of dehydration,“Those bitches aren’t listening to what you say.” But he had become hard of hearing.

He continued to examine the grey and waxy faces of the dead, day in, day out, year after year, century after century, maintaining his vigil over the bodies, asking if there was anything he could do to help, when they were clearly already dead. He began to understand something of the irony and the difficulty being oneself.

He moved to the American West, treated cowboys for free, prying off their toenails. The nail made a little “tick” when it was dropped into the spittoon. He rode out to treat the Navajos in their hogans and shook grandma and grandpa’s hand. "Ya a t’eeh shi che Ya a t’eeh shi ma," he said, and was told that made them relatives.

The Navajo medicine man, in his nineties, came to the fort only to collect a tin of government salve and stared at him, posture erect, having just sat in the dirt for nine days and nine nights straight performing a Blessingway. He liked the doctor's sunglasses. The doctor took them off.

In nearby Deadwood, he treated the town fortune teller. She could only tell him that she suffered from a form of procrastination and that her Moon was trining her Mercury but that her life was otherwise ok. She just showed up one day and told him, "I work with the unseen." He noticed she wore her heavy sweater in the desert heat covering her body. His stethoscope shook when he listened to her heart.

She cursed and smoked sitting on his exam table.
The doctor prescribed her this and that. She balled up the prescriptions and threw them in the pale before leaving and always said, "It's fine." One day she turned at the door and said,
"Once you start to integrate, you have to take responsibility." That was the last he saw of her.

One hundred years later, at the beginning of the 21st Century, when the icebergs of Greenland began to melt creating super storms, and the tide of the Insurance Industry rose to unprecedented levels, flooding seaside bars and closing the soft ice cream stands; when all touching was entered into the electronic medical record systems and talking became out of the question (unless documented and submitted for corrected billing), that the doctor realized what had happened: He had no connection to the dead, to death or dying, or to snakes. The Babylonians had taught him how to smell the rain but he had long sense forgotten all that.
He quit medicine and his nightmares of being eaten alive went away. He felt there was still time to become either a prostitute or a mass murderer before he died.

Images and Offhand Remarks Concerning Eyeballs, Sandmen, Masahiro Mori and the Uncanny

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Mon, 11 May 2015 08:23:00 +0000

The eyes suggest the possibility of sight, what bestows it and takes it away. You have your third eyes, your evil eyes, your hindsights, foresights, insights, all-seeing eyes. . . Yet there remains the threat of blindness at every sharp corner and what we see when they are closed. . .

John Henry Fuseli The Nightmare

Hans Christian Anderson's Ole-Luk-Oie sprinkled sand into the eyes of children to invoke sleep in those deserving. . .

Caroline Emilie Mundt (Danish, 1842-1922), Ole Lukøje

"There is nobody in the world who knows so many stories as Ole-Luk-Oie, or who can relate them so nicely. In the evening, while the children are seated at the table or in their little chairs, he comes up the stairs very softly, for he walks in his socks, then he opens the doors without the slightest noise, and throws a small quantity of very fine dust in their eyes, just enough to prevent them from keeping them open, and so they do not see him. Then he creeps behind them, and blows softly upon their necks, till their heads begin to droop. But Ole-Luk-Oie does not wish to hurt them, for he is very fond of children, and only wants them to be quiet that he may relate to them pretty stories, and they never are quiet until they are in bed and asleep. As soon as they are asleep, Ole-Luk-Oie seats himself upon the bed. He is nicely dressed; his coat is made of silken stuff; it is impossible to say of what color, for it changes from green to red, and from red to blue as he turns from side to side. Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night. But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreamed at all."

Hans Christian Anderson

Ole Luk Oie Book Illustration

Reference ETA Hoffmann's Der Sandmann and his wonderfully drawn character Coppola who sold lens, spectacles, telescopes and "pretty eyes, pretty eyes..." In the same story he presented Olimpia, the "Daughter" of Nathanael's professor, Spalanzani, an automaton woman: The sight of her dis-assembly, in particular, the sight of her eyes, incited Nathanael to madness.

E.T.A. Hoffmann, the author, was a loner. He never had a wife or children. Not much is known about his personal life only that he had a disastrous love affair with a married woman in 1796 after which he went to Glogau, leaving Koenigsberg for the first time in his life, and there wrote "The Jesuit Churches in G.", inspired by his church activities implying he turned to faith. He remained cynical of man however.

Mr. Sandman by Jeremy Brotherton

From Short Film. The Sandman by Rich Ragsdale

The fear of being blinded is seminal to myth and the arts. Words can blind. I bore witness to the disgusting attack of a cartoon character, the attack of his eyes by words themselves, in particular the letters with sharp corners, their agents, the letter S, for instance, its own little executioner, stabbing, puncturing without remorse, his ocular globes!
I heard later though that the character deserved it, and even further, that he had allowed it to happen.

Here we pause and back away. We need to regain our composure in being faced with the intolerable and incompatible aspects of blind chaos and the relentless forces that take serve to remove our sight. No, we have to turn to science for reassurance. We have to understand the processes involved and thereby regain control, regain our sight. To make sense of it all we turn to a graph by a great roboticist, formally describing what every school child should know about THE UNCANNY VALLEY:

Hypothesized emotional response of human subjects is plotted against anthropomorphism of a robot, following roboticist Masahiro Mori's theory of the uncanny. The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of aesthetics which holds that when features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural beings, it causes a response of revulsion among some observers. The "valley" refers to the dip in a graph of the comfort level of beings as subjects move toward a healthy, natural likeness described in a function of a subject's aesthetic acceptability.

+++++++++++

"How do we explain our extreme horror of damage to the eye, Honey? For Freud this fear of damage to the eyes is the result of castration anxiety, Sweetheart, with the eyes and the testicles being equivalent at the level of the unconscious. But that aside, Snoogums, will you be looking at another waitress like that again?"

"Freud kept the large eyeball and testicle sculptures side by side on his desk at all times, while never losing the grip on the ax given to him by his father as a child."

Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel's first film with Salvador Dalí in 1929.

And of Course, a Fly Named Fear

DIVERS IN THE WATER

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Fri, 08 May 2015 12:40:00 +0000

Diver Bears Witness

Breathing

Suction

I Take a New Selfie for my Profile after Eating a Bag of Stoned Prunes:

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Wed, 06 May 2015 22:54:00 +0000

One of the suggestions with respect to online site improvement was that I take a new photograph of myself. The one I have up is apparently too serious looking. So I sat down on the couch and prepared to take a new selfie.

Then I noticed the bag of STONED PRUNES. I was immediately and mightily offended. And this available in a supermarket which sells cookies and candy to children. I strongly, and with righteous sternness, DISAPPROVED! So we've now introduced it into the food supply have we!?

Then I ate one.

Then I ate four more. . ..

Well, I stuffed the whole fucking bag in my mouth THEN I took my selfie..

Clocks On A Shelf, Bathtubs at Sea, Three Gauges and a Knob

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Tue, 05 May 2015 08:39:00 +0000

Clocks On a Shelf

Despite Weather Forecasts, the family set out to circumnavigate the globe in their bathtub.

"HE WAS AFRAID OF THEM BOTH BUT MUCH MORE AFRAID OF THE ONE WITH THE THREE GAUGES AND KNOB."

Holofernes, Meth, Money, Two Satyrs and a Renoir Garnishing a Three Quarter Pound Rothko Burger, All for a Nickel a Piece

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Mon, 04 May 2015 07:57:00 +0000

Caravaggio nailed it with Judith's expression: It was all about the meth and a bag of money. Bacchus had to make his statement and, to make matters worse, Guido Reni's mini me got to partying: There you go, the deuterocanonical perfect storm. Don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. When folks like that get greedy and start feeding their heads, it ain't gonna end pretty. . .

Vigee Le Brun just knew that every time Isabella Teotochi Marini let down her hair, no matter how smart she was, the trolls were bound to show up. She attracted that type. Took it in her stride though, drinking Tall Boys, playing the juke box, she didn't care. . .

She had to clean his poop off her shoulder every now and then. But she wouldn't go anywhere without that elephant. They led a quiet life.

Her Mother TOLD her not to go out into the garden dressed like that. TOLD her. Teenagers don't listen though, right? They don't understand what's out there.

The painting was at the window, clawing, trying to find a way out. It was horrible and to see its expression on the other side of the glass, vaguely sad.

Something Happened in the Space Capsule, Something Smacking of THE UNCANNY

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Fri, 01 May 2015 12:10:00 +0000

There was plenty of speculation among the reporters. They spoke excitedly among themselves just before the NASA spokesperson arrived at the podium for the televised press conference. Some of their overheard comments were:

". . .They screen their astronauts but apparently not well enough."

". . .It just goes to show, you really DON'T know.. . "

". . .She was clearly f''d-up. . . ."

". . .And Un-American. . .some kind of AR-TEEST, some kind of intelleck-chool."

". . . They SAID she developed what they're calling "artistic inclinations." What exactly does that mean anyway? But they're telling us that NOW after sending her up there on our dollar. . ."

Distracted from listening to the reporters whispering, we end up joining the press conference half way through...

". . .we just couldn't predict the absolute effect and implication of being weightless and confined within a capsule thousands of miles above the Earth's surface and that this could conceivable bring about an UNANTICIPATED fulminate psychic extraction of this astronauts deepest black and white fears and repressions. She was analyzed be TEAMS of psychiatrists. In fact, I would make that a stronger statement: she was analyzed by REAMS of psychiatrists, all smoking long stemmed pipes and we ASSUMED that this would be sufficient. We assumed wrong and stand corrected. The Space Program takes full responsibility for this mishap. We would never have suspected that she would invoke a repressed autonomy in the course of the mission or a deep seeded unexpressed proclivity to MAKE ART and watch mindless TV."

"Astronauts are carefully screened for this sort of thing. We are well aware that making art while in orbit, or assuming a creative orientation while underway, would lead to, well, intense self absorption which in turn would render the astronaut far less reliable in that practical sense which we require to negotiate a mission. These astronauts ultimately need to be turned to the same page as all mankind is turned to. And mankind doesn't read fiction."

"The preliminary analysis suggests that the astronauts mother was up there with her, wielding an ax and it also appears that the astronaut was ejaculating a little man from a cannon-like-penis however anatomically improbable that sounds. There was also suggestion she may have been preoccupied with the trial of Orestes, and that there was a Greek Chorus present and a host of other random intellectual and television icons. Or at least this is what we are INFERRING from applying Fourier Transforms to the final transmissions. . ."

Question: "Can this be corroborated?"

NASA: "No, not at this time."

Question: "Is it fair to say there was a lot going on up there in that Space Capsule?"

NASA: "Yes. That is fair to say."

Question: "Where is the spacecraft now?"

NASA: "We are not sure. We are trying to locate it with aid of the Hubble Space telescope. She veered it off course then drove it away."

Question: "Drove it away? You mean, or could we imagine you to mean, that we here on Earth might comfortably imagine the astronaut driving her spaceship away as if she were driving a VW Beetle, driving it away into the darkness of space? Can we be asked to imagine that?

NASA: "Yes, you could. This is precisely the image the Space Program had in mind with respect to what she did."

Question: "Is there missing information?"

NASA: "Yes. From reviewing the final transmission, broadcast from inside the capsule, before the white noise, there was clearly something present in the capsule, something that we consider unwanted, that was not there when the rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, something which we at NASA can only describe, and here we can only borrow from Freud. . . Well, it was something smacking heavily of. . .THE UNCANNY. She may have even tried to leave the space capsule to get away from it, take a space walk it you will but we are unsure."

Question: "When you just spoke the phrase, "THE UNCANNY," there was an accompanying three notes. We all just heard it here. It sounded like, "DUN DUN DUHHHNNN." Were those notes generated withing this television studio for the purposes of embellishing this interview? Are you creating a spectacle for the viewers,providing entertainment if you will, at this moment of Great National Concern?"

NASA: "No further questions."

She Snored and Dreamed of Smoke

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 22:41:00 +0000

She turned onto her back and immediately began to snore.

Her dream began with Smoke.

She awoke to pee.

Bargain Basement Modern Man with Fish Out of Water

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 17:44:00 +0000

Fish Out of Water:

Dispensing last aliquot of will to slap tail,

heave gills, sucking in nothing of use, wondering dimly

when they are going to cut off my head 'n scrape my scales.

After all, I’m a food source for the master race, served in cafeterias with tartar sauce, peas,

mashed potatoes,

eaten raw with wasabi and ginger or, sometimes,

eaten alive.

From the Department of Embarrassing Admissions With Regard to my Own Inadequacies and Baseball Psychopathology Which, In its Sharing, Might Serve the Good of Humanity as Well As Invite Ridicule: A Recollection of, When My Life "Wasn't Going the Way I Expected It To Go," Fantasizing About Throwing 105 Mile An Hour Fastballs as a Relief Pitcher for the New York Yankees and Being Adulated by the Fans Walking Off the Mound.

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:59:00 +0000

When things weren't going well back then, when I didn't really know how I was going to regain my integrity, I began having reoccurring fantasies of throwing 105, 106 mile per hour fastballs on the mound at Yankee Stadium. And in doing so, for just a few minutes every night before falling asleep, my world was ordered and I was hitting the mark.. In reality? I might have been able to throw forty or fifty tops, not strikes most likely, but somewhere within a few yards of the plate, and would probably have to pack my shoulder in ice for two days afterwards.

I have been a Yankee fan since childhood. That has something to do with it but it was my imaginary New York Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman’s delusion within my own delusion, that that I could throw that fast, and his imaginary scouts who discovered me throwing in the parking lot at work, which my ego craved, high on the pathetic scale at a time when I couldn't get a grip on the ball and throw it definitively. Disturbing and embarrassing to recall from the-need-to-be-recognized-for-something-which-I-was-incapable-of-doing-department yet not without its element of whimsy. And for that reason, I share while continuing to simmer in the cauldron of humanity, my own farts bubbling up around me.

"The Perfect Release"

When I became so stressed out with everything converging back then, the money, the divorce, the disappointment in my own behavior, when that crescendoing became so oppressive, I needed to imagine things going right and directed myself toward this solution for a few minutes each day. I imagined myself solving a problem in a direct and heroic baseball manner and being applauded for my ability to do so.

Every night I lay in bed and they called me out from the bullpen. I took to the mound and my job was to throw a strike with every pitch. I just had a 105, 106 mile per hour fastball. That's it. I was my age in the fantasy, fifty two, fifty three, only had three or four pitches in me per game so I would throw those pitches then walk off. Simple. And it was the walking off the mound part, after the job was done, that brought the momentary sense of comfort. When the inning was over, when I walked off the mound toward the dugout, having been called from the bullpen with two men on, two outs kind of thing and all I had to do was throw three good pitches, three strikes, and had been able to do just that and other people saw me do it, well….Yeah, and I could bask in the glory of being "special" for being able to throw a 105 mile per hour fastball at the age of fifty three, And I loved all that imaginary attention that I was getting back then, way-up-in-my-own-head-yo.

No, I don't have that fantasy any longer as I have a much better sense of what needs to be done, knowing it's my own damn fault if it doesn't GET done, Yeah, every now and then I'll clear a bar in my head with violent and definitive fighting skills but I know what that's about. . .

"Rodin Shows How to Throw a Curve"

Oh, and one more thing, there was a practical side to my fantasy: I imagined myself getting paid twenty thousand dollars a pitch. . .not unreasonable to ask. Have you ever bought a lottery ticket and imagined what you would do with the money?

Whitey Ford Pitching against Bill Virdon

Bob Gibson

Brooks leaping When the Orioles Win the '66 Series

"Baseball Apocalypse"

"Baby Reacting to the Baseball Apocalypse"

A World War Two Flying Ace Sits on the Exam Table Talks About How He Did Things

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 13:03:00 +0000

Donald Foley, ninety three years old, sat on the exam table, feathers for eyebrows, cross hairs for pupils, his lower lids now deployed like landing gear.

Having had a colon resection a month previously, followed by pneumonia then a pulmonary embolism, he was pissed off but not nearly as pissed off as he had been, at age eighty six, when the FAA refused to renew his flying privileges after three cardiac stents. He'd flown seventy missions with the Eighty Second.

"You know, Tony, it was just a matter of practice," he said. "You got credit for a mission, but only if the enemy was engaged."

Mr. Foley shot down the Bulgarian ace even not knowing who he was: Podporuchik Kyumurdjiev of the third Orlyak.

Mr. Foley held both hands out, palms down and said, "The P38s would take off in formation, you see, and if a plane would attack, the first person to see it, well, there was one word that was used and only one word: 'Timber.'"

"You just said, 'timber.' We would go in different directions. You’d hear timber but didn't know where it was coming from."

"You’d come in on a train but you didn't fly with your gun sights, see."

"Some of the younger pilots started firing too early. No. You maneuvered the plane in first then looked into the gun sight. You could see steam coming out of the pipes on the trains when they were hit then the whole engine would explode."

"For a ship, you'd hit the wheelhouse first and there would be nobody alive to steer the ship. You’d push the foot pedals,

first on the right then on the left. He held his hands out and tilted them. The plane shifts, see, just a little, back and forth, and takes the whole deck out. "

Wu Qi, Irving Norman, Percy Wyndham Lewis, Daniel Milberg Then WWII Photos Illustrating Timber, An Account of a Real World War Two Flying Ace Sitting on the Exam Room Table Explaining How He'd Go About Taking Out a Train

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 12:49:00 +0000

Wu Qi

Liberation War Prisoners by Irving Norman, 1970

Percy Wyndham Lewis, A Battery Shelled 1919

Daniel Milberg: Chicken Sandwich

Donald Foley, ninety three years old, sat on the exam table, feathers for eyebrows, cross hairs for pupils, his lower lids now deployed like landing gear.

"You know, Tony, it was just a matter of practice," he said. "You got credit for a mission, but only if the enemy was engaged."

Mr. Foley shot down the Bulgarian ace even not knowing who he was: Podporuchik Kyumurdjiev of the third Orlyak.

"For a ship, you'd hit the wheelhouse first and there would be nobody alive to steer the ship. You’d push the foot pedals,

first on the right then on the left. He held his hands out and tilted them. The plane shifts, see, just a little, back and forth, and takes the whole deck out. "

Fyodor, thinking that he hears gossiping just outside the door, chooses a mask before venturing out

noreply@blogger.com (AF KNOTT) — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 08:20:00 +0000

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most."