Leo Pellegrino plays the Contrabass Saxophone

Man Ray (American/French, 1890-1976) - The Eye That Sees Everything (1919) - Airbrush & brush & gouache on tan wood-pulp laminate board, 30.5 x 24.6 cm. - The Art Institute of Chicago (Gift of Mr. Frank B. Hubachek)

Haiku proceeds syntax?

the moon is gone wild

grammar am a lost ethos

specificity?

An interesting distinction

"Frustrated by being referred to as a mere "caricature" artist, William Hogarth produced this print in 1743 explaining the difference between characters and caricatures — which he saw as radically different — and demonstrating his style as being firmly aligned with the former." Source

The Beats... Philosophic Warriors? (pre-)Psychedelic Messengers?

I'm not sure what to make of the Beats. Easily parodied on TV and in the movies... an instrument of cultural and personal promotion...  obviously unsound (and unwholesome) lifestyle choices...  closely-related to consumer culture... interesting energy, fashions and forms... directly--obviously but also merely vaguely and superficially "counter-cultural"--indeed, how effective in this measure (as a cultural/counter-cultural "movement") and in what ways?

It's interesting how the Beats were so rapidly left behind by the culture they helped to foster. In the wake of Frank Zappa, Gentle Giant, Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Alice Cooper... by the mid-70s the average "hippie" kid in the Midwest was in a position to possess a more sophisticated and appropriate "psychedelic understanding" than the Beats ever achieved. (And along these lines, look at the unfortunate "insights" Michel Foucault came away with after his "famous" psychedelic experience at Zabriskie Point... and more on him, Zabriskie Point... and Antonioni's films in a forthcoming Highbrow post.)

Moving beyond the question of their interesting place--and it is interesting and it is a "place"--in the stream-of-culture: from academic and aesthetic perspectives, when I go back and read the Beats today, their work seems... hmmm? Weak/embarrassing?  Nihilistic?  Insipid? (Do they make of poetry a thing that it is not?  Hmm...) Along these lines, as I read Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in passages where Wolfe parodies "Beat writing", I am struck that his passages are more impressive than the originals. And as far as that goes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe and John Milton have written things that are far more "psychedelic" and "cosmic" and "transgressive" than anything the Beats ever came up with. Indeed, most of the Beats' "transgressive" and "cosmic" insights are little more than either gauche exercises in staring at their own belly-buttons, or Dutch-angle encomiums to the Goddess of Self-Destruction.  And this goes for hippies, freaks, new wave'ers, grungesters, goths, emos, witches (and whatever trendy or hipster "bag" you might crawl into, wear, evoke, or "conjure") as well...

Two pieces by Henri Lievens (1920 - 2000), Belgium

Cover for the Marabout pocket edition of La Guerre des salamandres (War with the Newts/Válka s Mloky) by Karel Čapek

Cover art for An...2391 by B.R. Bruss. 1974 
 

Writing about witches...

Mod paradigms...

(The building at the beginning of the video (starting at 0:21) is the Department of Water and Power building (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) in Los Angeles, California.)

Bienvenido Bones Bañez, Junior announces an exhibition: The Paradise Lost Legacy - November 7-15, 2026 - Davao City, Philippines

A tribute to John Milton's 418th Anniversary! Including the world famous art book of Robert J Wickenheiser and Terrance Lindall: The John Milton Projects 2009-2015 by Terrance Lindall featured in an exhibition, with photos montages of historical events. And also Emanations Third Eye on Surrealmageddon, Emanations Zen, Emanations 11, and Emanations 12... 

"Behold the power of Golden Bat!"

A departure from Richard Powers' usual style... with the exception of the humanoid figure, bottom-center-right

1959 Ballantine Books Original (first) Edition; cover art by Richard Powers. Stories: "Danger! Child at Large" by C. L. Cottrell; "Twin's Wail" by Elizabeth Mann Borgese; "The Holy Grail" by Tom Purdom; "Angerhelm" by Cordwainer Smith; "The Dreamsman" by Gordon R. Dickson; "To Catch an Alien" by John J. McGuire; "Press Conference" by Miriam Allen deFord; and "Invasion from Inner Space" by Howard Koch. 156 pages.

Inquiry onto a self-portrait and a photograph: a case study, but studying what? Abnormal psychology? Aesthetics? Culture? Cultural production? The phenomenology of a "self" reading and viewing a clever blog post on a more-than-usually-clever blog? Books are listed on the right.

Ohne Titel (Selbstporträt) ~ Untitled (Self-portrait) by Raoul Hausmann, ca1915-1920, Oil on canvas Berlinische Galerie

Raoul Hausmann, 1919

Mi-Go brain cylinder in which the Outer Ones can convey a human brain across the interstellar void

Form and Substance Stabilizing through the Maximization of Bio-kinetic Equilibrium, Regardless of Verisimilitude and its Niceties -- a Menace to Conventional (and Civil!) Ontological Self-Concepts?

Okariyan from Ultraman Taro ep. 16e

 

The Sun card from the Summer "suit" of the Astronomia playing card deck, 1829

 

The deck featured three other seasonal suits (Autumn, Winter, Spring). The pack was released with instructions, "Explanation of the Celestial Cards", that details two games: Conjunction and Combination. Instead of suits, Astronomia uses color-coded seasons, with Zodiac constellations and other galactic bodies, like the Great Comet of 1680. 

Click HERE for more images from the deck.

Solar Surge Prominences & Active Coronal Arches — H-Alpha Time-Lapse (July 6, 2026)

"Master Terrance Lindall Leaping For Joy!" by Bienvenido Bones Bañez, Jr. (from Emanations 12)

Emanations and Penumbras - Emanations 12 reviewed on Amazon

A review by M-A Berthier:

I received a copy of this latest incarnation of Carter Kaplan's Emanations series, and this is perhaps the most interesting issue to date, and also in some ways the most adventurous. It contains stories, poems, essays, and several remarkable portfolios of art from various artists. I usually read these issues for the stories and the poems, and this one does not disappoint. One of those stories is a large excerpt of a work-in-progress by editor Kaplan, and his neo-picaresque fragment leaves me highly interested to see the rest -- it may well be his most enjoyable work to date. The opening story by Elkie Riches is a suitable keynote entry way for the entire book. The poems are a nice selection. Some of the high points were from Hodges, Falla, and Hassler, but I am still digesting this part of the book. The overall impression of this edition was its variety and its density. Applause.

Click the cover image to view the Amazon description:

Your Village (Push and Find Out)

Philosophical Remarks on the Declaration of Independence: Sections 3, 4 & 5

Today, we continue to use the "Moral Philosophy in Context" tool to discuss the Declaration.

The Third Part

§3 Section three of the Declaration comprises 28 complaints against the King and the British Empire. These complaints are criminal and civil--the King has perpetrated material and civil damages. Of note is the final complaint, which reads:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

This charge replaced one that was deleted from the Declaration, which addresses the issue of slavery:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.  This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.  Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.  And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Click HERE for a brief note.

Metaphysis, Claims for Logic, Theory of Human Nature

The King's policies are subject to Natural Law. Under British legal system the King was not held to account to Natural Law, much less British law, though on this latter point I lack knowledge of the character, the extent and the force of the restrictions Parliament and the courts exercised against his power.

Moral Philosophy

In violation of Natural Law, the King's policies are immoral and unethical.

Political Philosophy

The King's policies are answerable to the legal and just authority of the colonies (i.e. the magisterial and military powers of the united colonies, exercising their powers as a sovereign state). As he has not answered the colonies in their petitions regarding these injuries, the King is not fit to rule; moreover, he is unable to rule over a free people, as the Revolution perforce will demonstrate. The third section concludes:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

The fourth part (penultimate paragraph) reads as follows:

§4 Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Metaphysics, Claims for Logic, Theory of Human Nature

The subjects, agents and the officials of the British Empire have been duly informed as to the injuries of the King. They are culpable in the King's violations of the natural rights of the colonists, and they will along with their tyrannical king be treated as enemies.

Moral Philosophy

Natural Law is moral and enforceable.

Political Philosophy

Natural Law admits warfare among sovereign nations and states as a process of lawful response to grievances and in the cause of overthrowing tyranny.

The fifth part (final paragraph) reads as follows:

§5 We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Metaphysics, Claims for Logic, Theory of Human Nature

The colonists assert that they are operating under God's will and His Natural Law. 

Moral Philosophy

Natural Law is a template for moral conduct.

Political Philosophy

The colonies are free--independent, and are united as a nation-state--are free to alter their system of government, and thus "assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them". The nation is formed.

The Battle of Lexington, 19 April 1775 William Barnes Wollen, 1910