Peaks scaled, lows plumbed.

India Gate, New Delhi.

“The Rights of Human Beings and Citizens,” Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

“Coco Avant Chanel,” Tokyo.

Khost Province, Afghanistan.

Another night, another post. Quite a nice rhythm establishing itself, even if it is at a rate that runs contrary toward my self-professed ideal of a "deeper" reading experience.

Firstly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, I should offer fair warning; we're again in not safe for work (or school, I'm finding) territory.

In fact, though it may be considered uncouth, or even [gasp] pedestrian to acknowledge its presence in the slightest, today's post contains adult imagery of an explicitness not typical of the blog so far. Why?

Ah, why. What a great question. And yet, you do realize that in asking it that you've already made your determination that whatever response can be supplied will be unsatisfactory (you haven't said as much, actualized and potential reader, but I've seen it in your predecessors' eyes), and you'll (most likely privately) determine that I'm just juvenile, perverse, or semi-consciously misogynistic.

And you, being clever, wouldn't be wrong in any of these. Or at least not provably so.

Consider it a form of pictorial democracy. A leveling. Consider it a "youth" thing. I don't give a shit what you decide.

But the reason I'm acknowledging it at all (knowing rather than suspecting that it would in fact be beneficial to make no allusion toward it) is to tell you that I tried to weasel out of it. I thought, "You know what will absolve me of having to offer a justification for posting outright pornographic material? If I present it next to a copy of itself as a wireless bitmap image."

I thought this. And tried it. Just now. And see that it's quite ridiculous. It's actually painfully, laughably transparent.

The lesson I'm choosing to take away from this experiment? WBM is a format best reserved for appropriated pixel art; and don't kid myself about my ability to be clever.

I'm not that clever.



While I'm just calling down the wrath of the copyright gods, as I seem to do on a daily basis sometimes... let's just keep things going. The comic is from Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle, and is one of my favorite strips of the past few years.

The other is an essay by Mr. Luc Sante from this month's Aperture. These are photocopies. If you want the images in a better format, you still have time to rush out and pick up the new issue (which feature Eggleston's colorful abstractions on its cover). But also you can rest assured that I struggled there at that flatbed, dear reader, to ensure that those scans of photocopies of magazine-printed images would contain some amount of information. Previous entry in this series/project that I sometimes do. I've gotten much better at web optimization since then! Those old png-8s are gigantic, and I doubt look much better.

(This scanning project makes me want to buy this book. This one, too. I have The Cinematic. It's fantastic. Have you seen these volumes around? They're worth considering. )