Mars Saxman / Archives

Thursday, the 28th of March, 2002

This is a good description of Art Nouveau. The goal of "erasing the distinction between major and minor arts" expresses the movement's philosophic core. The idea of designing everything from the house one lives in to the clothes one wears, along with furniture, jewellery, and wall-hangings, is one I can readily identify with. One ought to be surrounded by beautiful, elegant, functional things - objects that pay back in pleasure what they cost in space and freedom.

Tuesday, the 26th of March, 2002

Abandoned subway stations in New York (and more), Boston, and Paris. The last page has links to more pages about abandoned stations in Moscow, Los Angeles, London, Cincinnati, Washington D.C., and Ulanbaataar.

Related are the Seattle underground tour and the Montreal underground pedestrian area.

I'm working on an idea. Can you tell?

Clipperton Island is a barren, ring-shaped coral atoll located 1630 miles south-southeast of San Diego, California, and 1600 miles west of Nicaragua. The only atoll in the East Pacific, it completly surrounds its stagnent fresh-water lagoon and serves as home for thousands of sea birds and millions of land crabs. Clippertons total area is about 7 square kilometers. Most of the island is no higher than 6 feet, except for Clipperton Rock, a volcanic rock formation which reaches a peak height of 69 feet.

In the late 1930's, Clipperton was visited twice by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who wanted it to become an American possession for use as a trans-pacific air base, and in 1944 he ordered the navy to occupy the island in one of the most secret US operations of WW II. After the war it was abandoned, and has since only been visited by the French Navy and an occasional scientific or amateur radio expedition.

Plaques reading "Toynbee ideas in Kubrick's 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter" have been appearing on the roads of eastern cities for several years. Not on signs next to the road - these are tiles affixed to the surfaces of the roads themselves. Nobody knows who makes them or what the message is supposed to mean. The mystery has its investigators and, of course, its web page, but so far nobody has claimed responsibility or even suggested the name of someone who might be involved.

This is too weird for fiction. The only thing I've heard of that's remotely like this is Shepard Fairey's OBEY GIANT! pseudo-propaganda campaign, and that lost its veneer of secrecy with the Salon article a couple of years ago. I'd like to think that like the Giant project, this is the tongue-in-cheek obsession of a merry prankster, but it has the whiff of genuine delusion about it.

A burst of inspiration hit me over the weekend, and this was the result. It blends some of the lightweight flow of my recent portrait experiments with the formalism of a pseudo-art-nouveau layout. But it's really just an excuse to draw a pretty girl.

Sunday, the 24th of March, 2002

The opposite of misery is not happiness, but rather apathy. Happiness is a force of its own which may well exist along with misery and despair, and which must be sought as an end in itself.

Or maybe it isn't. That just sprung to mind and sounded interesting.

Thursday, the 7th of March, 2002

I received the following interesting variant on the classic Nigerian money-laundering spam this morning. It could almost be a pitch letter for a spy flick:

TEL:27-8-2588 5881

Dear Sir,

Please forgive my indignation for writing to you through this channel; I got your contact information from your countrys Trade Journal at the South African chambers of commerce. My name is PEDRO CARSPO. I was a captain in charge of arms procurement in the armed forces of UNITA REBELS in Angola headed by JONAS SAVIMBI. As you may be aware that our rebel forces has been involved in a civil war with the government in Angola over the mismanagement of Angolans economy for several years now.

Sometime in December 2000, I was delegated to lead two other officers to negotiate a secret arms deal worth US$30.7M, In Sofia Bulgaria. Meanwhile after our negotiations with the Bulgarian Government, we all concluded to use South Africa as a neutral ground to make the first installment payment while the balance payment will be made in exchange for Diamond after the arms has been delivered to our rebel camp in Angola.

Due to some complicated circumstances the deal could not be completed until March this year 2001. We were provided with the sum of US$16.5MILLION, as first installment. Meanwhile this fund was realized from many secret sales of diamonds by our rebel leader (Jonas Savimbi) as we control the rich Lunda province of Angola. We could not transfer this money to the Bulgarian government bank to bank because of our countries external banking system has been destabilized by the war, and more due to the nature of the deal. So we smuggled this money into South Africa through the border and deposited the two boxes that contains this money with a well recognized security and finance company. The finance company those not know the actual content of the boxes we deposited with them. Because we declared the boxes to be important diplomatic documents from our federal Government.

But unfortunately, when this arms deal was nearing completion. The Bulgarian Government suddenly announced a ban on selling arms to us (Angolan rebels) and many other war torn African countries and sub regions. This story could be confirmed from the South African citizen newspaper of the 6th April 2001 or any of the Bulgarian news media of the same date, this announcement thereby automatically terminates our contract and arrangement with the Bulgarian Government.

Realizing the opportunity presented to us by this development, I and my two colleagues decided to with hold this money, we seek and was granted political asylum here in Johannesburg South Africa and since then, We have been living here as refugees. We have laid low all this time waiting for the perfect time to have this money moved out anywhere outside South Africa through an investor who will help us to manage and invest it in mutual honesty. Presently, this letter is to seek for your indulgence to use your facility and have this money transferred to your country or to anywhere outside South Africa for an investment that will be of benefit to all of us that is involved. I will like to confirm to you that there is no risk at all attached to this deal as our attorney has already worked out the whole modalities and made all necessary arrangements for a safe and quick deal. That will only take a maximum of 4 bank working days to conclude.

So if you should decide to assist us in this venture please contact me immediately on the above phone number or send me an E-mail, We can deliberate on what you would like me to offer you from the total money for your assistance and involvement in this deal before we proceed to giving you more details.

Thanks And May God Bless You.
My Best Regards.

MR. PEDRO CARSPO.

Tuesday, the 5th of March, 2002

Three skyline pictures, and the digital camera system is broken once again. I took close to eighty shots over the weekend trip to the end of America, plus a couple of film rolls. Unfortunately, upon inserting the memory cards into the computer for retrieval and upload, they became corrupt - the computer refused to read them, and when I put them back in the camera, it complained that they were unreadable. Clearly either the card reader or the MacOS did something weird to the card.

In any case, I have pretty much had it with this system, and I am not interested in spending hundreds of dollars on a new camera, new memory cards, and new card-reader, or whatever it is I'll need.

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