Before Hand.

Greek Fire

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Propwash

The insane emperor Caligula once declared war on Poseidon, god of the sea.
He instructed his army to hurl spears into the ocean.

They did.




































































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After seventeen minutes, the army ran out of spears. After waiting for reprisals and receiving none, Caligula felt he had won a great victory.

He ordered a victory parade.

His army marched forward and was swallowed by the deep oceans.

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The words say: " The water never ceases to amaze and win when challenged."

Alternately:

The pictures say: "The buoyancy and quick-bailing tendencies of river tugs never ceases to amaze and the water does not always win when challenged."

Decoy

Pan-American Exposition

President William McKinley was killed in 1901 while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

It happened on the steps of the temple of music.
McKinley shook everyone's hand in a line. When the sad trembling hand of Leon Czolgosz approached, it shot the president twice in the abdomen.

Very interestingly, there were no light bulbs in the operating room where speedy surgery was conducted on the president. Furthermore: candlelight could not be provided on account of the explosive ether used to keep the president unconscious

Medical assistants stood near windows with large pans to reflect sunlight onto the operating table.

Fractales en la naturaleza!

Large hollow

5200000

I have also frequently wanted to take part in a celebration of the number 5200000.

Jungle Rot

Some years ago I fell asleep on a sandbar.
When we arrived, we dropped anchor. There were some hundreds on the sandbar- then very large. The hundreds were happy. They were not wearing very much clothing and they were laughing.
When I woke up, there were less than thirty of us and the sandbar was a great deal smaller than it was.


It was all very silent.

I could see our brigantine anchored in the middle of the river.
I could see our barque-rigged whalers sitting swept-cross beached near to me.

My sleeping bag was very damp. The water was lapping at it.
My feet were sore and stiff.

I suffered from immersion foot for the next three days.

'Arf a 'mo

Even just a little.

Very beneficial.

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Pack animal

There are many ways to slip into debt.

But - if you are very pious, it might not matter.

According to Leviticus 25:8–54: Moses' laws prescribe that all financial debts accumulated be eliminated every half century by heavenly decree.

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In action, see I don't even care the spices.

Drained of all Cartography

I had a dream some time ago.
I was standing on the crest of a mountain on Guadalcanal.

I've never been to Guadalcanal, but I woke up with a very strange confidence in the geographical and topographical layout of the small island.

In my dream, the island was shaped like an S that had been pushed off balance towards the West and a photograph-map had been taken just before it hit the imaginary ground horizon. I was convinced that most of the southern half of the Island was comprised of mountain ranges, the tallest of which occurred a little West of center in the chain. This is the mountain my dream took place on.

I woke up very certain that my topographical knowledge of this island could not be correct.

But recently I decided to check.


















Horrifying.

I tried to remember where and when I would have been exposed to the geographical and topographical information that I rehashed in dreaming.

I tried to understand why I would have committed that information to memory.

I could not remember and I cannot understand. I am afraid I may have to admit that I have not yet been externally exposed to this information, but I suspect I may be living backwards in time.

It is possible that this information will be or has been instrumental to my future self.

I found out later that
the mountain's name is Mt. Makarakomburu.
It is 2447m above sea level.

I can remember nothing more from my dream.

Chinese Frustration

It should be noted, my recent drawings lack a little quality.

Sometimes this happens to me.
I get frustrated with the demanding shapes and feelings of people and their faces.

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This happens and I concentrate on more forgivingly shaped things.
Owl-trees or broken binoculars.






















I might have hyenas later.
I've wanted hyenas for some time.

Ribbon

Let's Synchronize Watches

Everything is coming up strangled.

There used to be a secret army of assassins and muggers that roamed India from about
the 17th to the 19th century. They were called Thuggee and that's where the word 'thug' comes from.

They used to befriend travelers and strangle them.
They mostly agreed it to be a divine mission. They felt that with each life they took, they delayed the coming of Kali and great destruction for one whole millennium.


A great deal has changed.
The Thuggee no longer exist and Kali has more recently been presented as an honest, benevolent, mother-goddess.

Ice -- Station -- Zebra

Ten fingers of whiskey,

ten fingers of terrible drawing?






















And the coattails of my mind are dragging through the kind of stomach ache you get from drinking a lot of warm liquid very quickly.

And any school of thought that has, as a classifying gem, such statements as:

"HELL IS -- OTHER PEOPLE."

-is not the school of thought for me.

That is a line from an existentialist play by Jean Paul Sartre.
And it's the sort of thing that keeps me from sleeping soundly at night.

Jean Paul Sartre is dead, but I brought him back to make a single change to this play.
We spoke warmly together on my green couch and it turns out, very funnily, that in French, the aforementioned line goes: "L'ENFER C'EST -- LES AUTRES."

And what he really meant was: "L'ESPOIR C'EST -- LES AUTRES."
Which would translate to HOPE IS -- OTHER PEOPLE.
Very similar words.
Very understandable mistake.
Sartre confided in me, that he felt very poorly about fighting alongside the people of Paris in the May '68 uprising, while betraying their cause with falsely conceived typos that suggested hell comes from the togetherness of people.

I even got him to sign his name.
It's all legal, if you're very concerned about that.

Anyway, I'd be really happy if the next publishing of this play included his sanctioned changes
because it was a really bad play.

Citizen Know Nothing

What a waste of a good hat.

Right about it. No doubt about it.

Adhesive Solution

I felt a little bad about the last post.
It's Sunday morning and it's a beautiful day.

Life is not about dying.

Sepulchered

There's a place just south of San Francisco called Colma.
About 1500 people reside above the ground.


About 1.5 million reside under the ground.


Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, frontier-outlaw Wyatt Earp, and even Joe DiMaggio, the baseball player.

They're all together.
And they're all dead.


“I am dying. Please — bring me a toothpick.”
-Alfred Jarry, 1907.

Firing Blanks

Terracotta plot

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The pipes, the pipes are calling.

Yesterday, I woke up and couldn't get Derry air/Danny boy out of my head.

Oyster Knife

When pried open -

It let loose two pieces of uncooked rotini and an American quarter minted in 1977.

Blind Muezzin

The blind muezzin turned and yelled:

"Warmer temperatures!

Warmer colours!

Warmer feelings!

Warmer Dreams!"


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Safe mechanism

All the rage

I forgot to mention that this special sort of navy painting had a name.

It was called Dazzle paint, or Razzle Dazzle.
I find these names to be incredibly embarrassing so I'll never use them again.

People not only liked seeing this sort of paint in the water.
But on people and automobiles as well.

Bulwark

A person who adds camouflage to things is called a camoufleur.

When pressed into the difficult work of camouflaging sea-going vessels during the First World War, they all decided not to.

The British camofleurs really enjoyed Cubist painting.
They liked looking at the lines and feeling confused.

For the duration of the first world war, naval camofleurs gave up the ghost.
They came to terms with the fact that nobody can hide corvettes.

They rallied behind the Cubist standard, vowed to further its confusing nature into the frothy oceans!

In covering these hideous gunboats in wildly attractive patterns, they hoped it would prove very difficult for enemy range finders to get an accurate bearing on the distance, heading, and speed of these vessels because of their mass being all broken up by odd colour fields, false bows and complex line art.

There are plenty of black and white images out there.

The colours have been digitally suggested in this photograph.

Best part : There's really no evidence to suggest the paint schemes were very effective.

Make it Snappy

Make it sing

Ironspike

Crush, once a city in Texas, was manufactured for a single spectacle.
On September 15th, 1896, 40 000 people converged in Crush.

This made Crush the second most populous city in the state for a single day.

The crowds arrived to see two steam locomotives collide in a planned accident.

At 5:00 pm, engine 999 (painted green) and engine 1001 (painted red) along with their respective boxcars, were sent full steam towards each other.

The trains both reached speeds of about 40mph.



and when they collided, their boilers exploded in unison.
It sent pieces of train everywhere.














Everyone got a souvenir.