can this camera

I was just trying to figure out how many flannels to put on before I go to see Let Me In for the second time (review forthcoming) and this is what I get bombarded with. I genuinely forget that these videos exist. And while I have a lot to say about the idea that the internet becoming a stockpile for a small but weird variety of media like this, I am mostly overwhelmed with shock when the internet suggests it to me. 

It's like how last night at the bar, this lady with nice glasses sent a dude with an old timey hat to ask me if I "hated" her because she thought I was giving her death stares. I wasn't. In fact, I was only looking at her because I liked her glasses! I had been told earlier in that same evening what an "honest face" I have -which I took as a particularly nice complement for what could be construed as an inability to prevent any insignificant passing thought from distorting my face. When the gentleman in the coal miner costume asked me if I had been giving her the stinkeye, I was shocked and could only reply "REALLY?" a lot of times before figuring out that it actually was hurting my feelings. "I try to be so nice!" and "I like her glasses! That's all!" was all I got out before the guy offered that he thought she was a crazy person.  He explained that his buddy was trying to hit on her and she wouldn't shut up about how I was looking at her so he was just trying to "put a cork in her ass" about it. While I like that phrase, I was still a little bent out of shape about the idea that I could unintentionally make someone feel bad like that. I feel like I try to put out good things into the world and more precisely to be friendly, but somehow the world gives me back felt hats putting corks in asses and bear attack videos when I am only trying to check the weather. I went over to smooth things over with girl who was still hanging out with those dudes who were international clothing importers or something. She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. It got weird only to get weirder when the boss of the two guys asked my name. I told him and offered my hand for him to shake and he tried to fucking lick my hand. I pulled back my hand and said "no fucking way" and walked off. No one seemed to laugh or even take note.

To bring this all full circle back to internet videos, I am one drink at the Hemlock away from becoming the Winnebago Man.

Watch this documentary. It's a fair treatment of a brilliant and true wingnut that a bunch of dumbdumbs like but don't really appreciate. Jack Rebney is a fantastic figure who isn't all that angry. His friendship with Keith is so great as is his love for his dog, Buddha. There is a really touching scene where Keith brings Jack the single biggest windchime I have ever seen. It's also interesting that one of the things that drove Jack to his hermit status is the faltering of television news media, particularly the lack of candor and dignity available in that form. Plus, you get to see his cool wingnut lifestyle near Mt Shasta. 

The Symbolical Head

Phrenology is my favorite quack science. Brains mapped and personalities felt as physical bumps. Heads and persons laid bare.

Austrian physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) invented 'craniology' which became 'organology' which was renamed by Johann Christoph Spurzheim as "PHRENOLOGY." Essentially, phrenology assumes that different traits and functions are located in different parts of the brain. Because the distribution of the features across the brain are so regular, they can be mapped on models and conversely, read on actual human heads.

Four things should be considered true according to Gall,as outlined in The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular
1. Human moral and intellectual faculties are innate;
2. their function depends on organic structures;
3. the brain is the organ of “all faculties, of all tendencies, of all feelings”;
4. “the brain is composed of as many organs as there are faculties, tendencies, and feelings.” (quoted in Samuel H. Greenblatt, “Phrenology in the Science and Culture of the 19th Century” Neurosurgery, 37:4 (1995) 790-805.)

While it may no longer be quite scientific to treat the shape of the cranium as the cause of behavior, feeling, and temperament, phrenologists were some of the first to declare that the mind was located entirely in the brain, now a scientific given. They also suggested a fragmented model where different areas of the brain were responsible for certain tasks or sensations -a simplified, but not inaccurate understanding according to modern neuroscience.


So here I am eating some trader joe O's this morning, reading about phrenology when I noticed something about the chart...



Besides the demanding directive to "know thyself," under the right eye of the model, there is the word "language" written in the well of the socket. It is precisely where I have charcoal gray scars from running into a copcar going fullspeed on my bicycle on mushrooms.

See?




What does it mean that I have blackened scars on the exact portion of my face that corresponds directly to my strength, my medium and mode? Is it as simple as saying that the mangled region is the cause of my anxieties about writing? I was fascinated by language long before the accident. My obsession with words and their function is as old as those large dark circles under my eyes. What change can a tear in the most precious phenological nerve cause? Is it causal or a facial manifestation of a preexisting tension? I've already gotten over the melodramatic allusion of having a black facial scar but now this?? Phrenology and scars both carry the weight of being irreversible.


Where is Orson Squire Fowler when I need him?

Probably in some heaven of octagonal building somewhere or perhaps in his Golgotha of Gothem? He and Henry Ward Beecher ran phrenology offices, examination room and a museum known as “the Golgatha of Gothem” known for its massive display of over 1000 human and animal skulls, and casts from the heads of “the most distinguished men that ever lived” out of a building on 27 E. 21st St in New York.

Old Orson could probably answer a lot of my questions right now. Just check out his fantastic architectural plans for the Octagonal house.



He wanted to build in globular or cycldrical forms as he saw in nature, but saw the costs of building as too high. Octagons were better than squares, it seems. They are incredibly efficient structures. Easy and cheap to heat and cool, as they have less surface area.

And this one was out in Hayward until it was torn down for a highway annex.




A utopian model taken up by Southern grandeur, in Natchez, Mississippi.

Plus he was a vegetarian and advocated for health reform.




Can I get a head massage and a diagnosis please?