messiestobjects

More X-Rays For The Status-Updatedly Inclined

UPDATE: I just realized that I'd already wrote about the hand surgery in the previous entry. Totally forgot; was just excited about the new post-surgery x-rays. I blame prescription medication.

This is an MRI image of my knee. You can't really tell that it's a knee, or what is supposed to indicate what's normal and what's broken unless you're a doctor, I suppose. But it looks like a ghost face, which is spooky because I had my knee surgery and I now have a zombie in my knee named Ted. So meet Ted, everyone.

That's a side view, where Ted is less apparent. So anyway it looks like I've got several months of Physical Therapy ahead of me before I'm walking like normal and maybe jogging again. I can walk a bit now, but with a robot leg brace and a crutch. I'll probably have to wear the brace for 6 months or so; it's hard to get a straight answer out of these people. I think they don't want to discourage me with too much bad news. Wanna hear something funny? My cousin Kevin, who lives in Australia, was playing rugby this week and not only tore his acl, but his mcl too. Way to steal my thunder, Kevin. Jerk.

So I did also wind up getting surgery on my hand; the Doctor didn't think it had healed at all on its own after a week so he went right in. He screwed the fractured bone together with what looks like two wood screws and a metal twist tie.

That's going to make going through security whenever I can get back to work a real bitch. And it gives me a bit of the wiggins to think about the loose end of that twist tie just hanging out in the side of my hand flesh, but I'm using my hand almost normally nowadays so I'm happy. It's going to be a while before I can get back to chopping wood and lifting weights though.

Spoiler Alert! Surprise Surgeries Lead To A Detailed 'Rogue Moon' Book Report

I did wind up getting surgery on my hand; that's one of my before x-ray shots there. I don't think it's narcissistic to post it because it looks cool. See the break on the far right? That's my 5th metacarpal and I now have what looks like a drywall screw and a metal twist-tie holding the bone together. I can't wait to get my copy of those x-rays.

Top view. Thank the *FSM for keyboards, because I don't think writing by hand would be possible with that shattered thing. Did I mention that I'm totally high right now? I had my knee surgery yesterday, and today I am way drugged up on many many pain killers, which are not really stopping the pain so much as making me feel dopey, loquacious, and ready to write a post. According to my boss, who is awesome, I won't be working for a long long while. Which I think many people would be okay with, however I'm really going to miss the travel. But acl replacement surgery is a serious business, I'm told. Bending it will be out of the question for a few months. I'd really rather not spend this post complaining about how my life is going to suck and be different now with far less travel for a while at least, so I thought I'd do a book report post.

I recently acquired the seventy-ish books in the excellent Sci-Fi Masterworks series, which is a series of some of the awesomest sci-fi books ever. Some of my favorites are on the list, but there are many I've never read, and many many that I'd never even heard of. I've been wanting to read them for a while, but until my recent injuries I hadn't the time. Now, I'm all dove in.

'Rogue Moon' by Algis Budrys is bizarre. It was written in 1960, well before the moon landing, and part of what he did in the novel was to envision a future version of Man's eventual moon exploration. In Rogue Moon, we don't use rocket ships to get there, we use what is essentially a beam machine like in Star Trek, but with a few upsetting differences. What the transporter does is, it picks apart and reads every single atom in the object to be teleported and in this process, destroys it. It then sends an electronic signal with every single bit of information about the object's atomic structure to a receiver on the moon, which then breaks down local raw material (moon rocks, i.e.) and reconfigures the atoms from said material to match the signal's specifications exactly. What this means for a human transported this way is that he is actually killed by this machine, reduced to atomic slag. The copy of the human that is then assembled on the moon is so exact that his brain's electrical currents, neurons, etc. contain the exact personality and memories of the original.

The reason men are travelling to the moon in the novel is that there is an artifact of unknowable properties on some acreage on the backside of the moon which, when entered, becomes some sort of bizarre human killing game. If you move the wrong way in the wrong spot, you are killed in a horrible fashion. If you get through one area, the next has its own rules that will also kill you gruesomely. It is not known if it is a natural phenomenon, an alien artifact, a higher dimensional highway intersection, or what. Man's discovery of it is compared to a small beetle who inadvertently walks into a disposed tomato sauce can on the ground. The beetle can't understand why he gets trapped in there, nor can he know if someone has placed it there to torment him, or if it has merely been discarded and forgotten there having nothing to do with him, or even whether it is a natural or artificial construct. Beetles are ignorant of tomato cans and lack the intelligence to comprehend them, and humans are ignorant of this artifact and lack both the intelligence and the context to navigate it. It was impossible to study in any meaningful manner, until...

An accidental discovery. A second receiver is built on Earth, in the same laboratory as the transporter in order that the destroyed man might continue his life on Earth, even if only as a copy. If a man is destroyed, and the resulting signal goes out to both receivers, there are a few seconds of confusion: The copy on the moon and the copy on Earth share perceptions for just a few seconds. In other words, the Earth copy actually sees what the Moon copy is up to because their brains are identical, and action-at-a-distance between them seems to be a consequence. But only for a few seconds as, once the copies adjust to their different surroundings, they cease to be identical and go on their separate perception ways.

So an idea is tested and the Earth receiver is outfitted with a sensory deprivation tank, so that the Earth copy is created directly inside of it. Since he has no overt incoming sensations, he is able to stay in sync with the Moon copy for a much longer time, though not indefinitely as even in a sensory deprivation tank the small differences in perception begin to break the connection.

However when the moon copy is sent into the artifact to explore, and when he dies horribly, the Earth copy is pulled screaming mad from the deprivation tank, and is unable to communicate what happened. So a certain type of man is needed, one who not only has a death wish, but who will not go insane after dying, coming back, and immediately reliving a new death horror every day.

Such a man is found... And then the character stuff is almost as insane as the plot. As I said it was written in the Mad Men decade and every single male character in the book hates himself, and hates everyone around him too. There is a constant war of sizing up, testing weak spots, and ridiculous posturing over one woman in particular who is an emasculating mega-bitch in her own right. The only exception is the only other female character in the book, whose only purpose is to listen to the main character's extravagantly long monologues about what makes himself tick and then inexplicably to tell him she loves him. She has no personality and in fact seems to have no last name.

It's here that I'll have to admit that I have not finished the book, but despite the extreme bafflement and irritation that I experience in trying to understand the childish mentality of fictional 1960's so-called Homo-sapien, I'm really enjoying it. A lot of writers from those mid decades seem to use very similar character ideas of people; using pop psychology in fiction was all the rage, and it seems as though it was usually about pissing contests, ego-trips, and makin' love to brainless women, man. Even so, the lousy mores of those old battles of the sexes can't obfuscate the overall bonkers yet thought-provoking plot. 

*Flying Spaghetti Monster

I Juxtapose The Salton Sea With A Depressed Mood I'm Having

It was hectic holidays this go-around, but I thought it might finally be time to get back to the Salton Sea. Behind Salvation Mountain lies Slab City, an RV community for nomadic hippies. That's my only picture; I liked the community bulletin board but I don't really feel comfortable just going around shooting people trying to go about their lives, no matter how weird it seems. I suppose I'll never make a good cultural photographer.

I headed over to the Salton Sea itself; a vast inland body of salt water which is drying up at an alarming rate, apparently, leaving behind salt caked beaches.

To be honest, after spending all morning at the massively fascinating Salvation Mountain, this was more of a rest stop for me. It was creepy enough to keep me shooting, but my mind was elsewhere.

And my mind is elsewhere now. A lot's happened in the month since I was here, and I'm posting these mostly just to get them off of my pending shelf.

I guess I'm feeling a bit out of it at the start of 2012 because I'll be taking a few months off of work, and I'm sad that I won't have any travels to post about in the meantime. I broke myself on Christmas Eve.

I was playing Manhunt Dodgeball with the niece and nephews, and I have no idea how it happened but I found myself writhing on the concrete basement floor in pain. I'd torn my acl and broken my hand.

So I may or may not be getting hand surgery today, depending on how the doctor thinks my hand is healing, and I'm getting surgery on my knee in a couple of weeks. They're going to put a cadaver tendon where my acl used to be. Zombie knee. I'm going to name it Ted. I'd introduce you, but Ted's dead baby, Ted's dead.

We were supposed to go to Thailand in February to hang out with my friend Scott, who teaches Scuba. We were going to sit on the beach, drink and tell our significant others funny and embarrassing stories about each other, and scuba dive.

So that's off now. Hopefully we can still go later this year, but we'll see. It'll be hard to take these two unplanned months off from work and then turn around and ask for more time off. Anyway, that taken with Obama signing an abhorrent document into law while everyone was partying on New Year's Eve which allows the military to detain any American citizen indefinitely on the suspicion of terrorism, evidence and trial be damned, and it's shaping up to be a depressing start to 2012.

I don't believe in all that Mayan prophecy jazz, because it would require a complete lack of critical thinking on my part to do so, (If the Mayans could predict the future, why did their entire culture disappear? Why do scientists who actually study Mayan writings keep saying "Duh, it's merely a cyclical calendar which is due to reset this year, but they weren't actually predicting the end of anything other than the calendar itself!"?) but some sort of world changing, eye-opening event this year sure would be nice. It's really astonishing how fast the American end-game is approaching.

One Man's Obsession Is Another Man's Salvation Is Another Man's Lunacy... Probably The Same Man

I was back in San Diego for another class, for another week. I was online trying to figure out what to do with myself during my free time (a common work problem for everyone, I suppose) and I stumbled across a thing called Salvation Mountain while researching the Salton Sea area.

Out in the middle of nowhere is a hill. And one day in the distant past, a crazy religious nut named Leonard Knight wandered by and decided to paint it. Actually, much of it he built with adobe clay and straw, and then painted over top of it. He's been bricking, baling, and painting this place every day since 1984. He estimates that he's used well over 100,000 gallons of paint.

You might think, given my history of anti-religious rants, that I came out here with the intention of being condescending and smug about such a massive, insane ode to religious fervor. Surprisingly, especially to myself, the fact that it was a huge glob of toxic, colorful paper-mache out in the middle of the desert was the irresistible draw, and the thought that it was dedicated to a God and a religion with which I disagree vociferously barely registered.

Also, the opportunity to take pictures, as always, completely overshadowed any thought of religion the whole time I was there. I often feel a sort of physical disgust when I go into lavish European or Salt Lake City cathedrals, for example, but that was not present here at all. Salvation Mountain is bizarre, it's insane, it's folk art, it's baffling, but it is not asinine in the same way that official religious locales are.

There are several broken down old vehicles scattered about, and it's obvious that in his off days Leonard was still under a compulsion to throw paint on whatever he happened to be sitting near. The image in his head of his love letter to God was obviously an obsession; up there he's painted a 2D representation of his vision. And down here, he apparently thought the desert needed a boat.

On the side of a painted tractor, I'm guessing that some visitor left these here as stiletto fuck-me shoes don't seem to fit in with his ideas. But it makes a nice contrast.

Ok, one last scope photo... before we go into the rabbit hole. In case you haven't picked it up from the photos, the mountain seems to be painted in a sort of waterfall motif, where the blue and white lines are the water representing God's flowing Love, I suppose.

There is a path going up the front of the mountain, which you are encouraged to tread along.

It's yellow. I'm supposing that's to represent the streets of Gold in Heaven. Or perhaps he's just showing some playfulness...

Yup, playfulness. A technicolor child's dream of Heaven, perhaps.

Sea anemones? But even if Leonard thinks that there are sea anemones on the path to God, the amount of attention to the details of his vision combined with the dedication of giving his entire life to the project are astounding.

Looking out upon his works.... And I was perhaps unduly fascinated by this next shot, having always wondered what the edge of the Universe might look like, or the other side of a painting or a mirror. In Leonard's Universe, it stops right over the lip.

So right next to the mountain is another project. He has created a hollow hill of hay-bales, propped up by trees and interspersed with old car windows. Front view:

Approach view from the top side:

Rear view:

And inside is a warren of painted bales, trees, and pictures. It's bonkers.

Did I think we were entering the rabbit hole before?

Pictures can't really convey what it was like to walk through here.

But I sure did my best.

When I couldn't take any more shots down tunnels, I pointed my camera upwards. It. Just. Never. Stops.

And then I would find more tunnels.

I spent about 2 or 3 hours at Salvation Mountain, taking shots almost non-stop the whole time. I can't begin to express how many pictures I'm actually sparing you from. It's odd how one loony-bin's obsession can become yours that way.

Here is an adobe cave he built for himself to live in; a nice place to escape the heat. Only he never moved in, opting instead to stay in his trailer because he couldn't not paint the hell out of everything he did.

Here's a random clatch of his sea anemones I found off to the side somewhere, for example.

So remember how I said I came without smugness or condescension? Well, that blissful state of photgraphic being was briefly shattered near the end of my stay. The whole time I was there, I was so in awe of the visuals, and obsessed with capturing them, that I hadn't really paid any attention to the words he was writing in paint. Until I went out and around for one last round of shots and I started way back out, by the mailbox.

Erm... poor choice of wording there Leonard. Maybe that's how it's written in the Bible, but some paraphrasing might have been beneficial. All this does is make me think that you wanted Jesus to violently prison rape you. Granted, I'm sure I'm more dirty minded than you, and I have been watching HBO's OZ on dvd lately, but you've got to think about your audience, after all.

The smugness and condescension went away fairly quickly though. I may be infantile about certain things but I have learned that remaining infantile beyond the shock moment is probably unhealthy.

The problem though is that once I started paying attention to the words, that's all I could see, and it admittedly became more difficult to ignore my anti-religious feelings.

At any rate, to distract my self from getting too snarky, I wondered what paint on the ground looked like up close after baking out in the California desert sun for years.

I took a seat at the makeshift viewing area before leaving, and found yet another photo op.

And one last distance shot, because I. Just. Can't. Stop.

Hundreds of photos, and I kind of wanted to go back at night and get some more in different light. But I didn't. If I'm back out that way again, then maybe. But with this post I'm glad to get this mountain of obsession out of my system.

It's All About The Little Differences

I was in San Diego for a week and on one of my days off, naturally I headed down to Tijuana Mexico. There's not much to see there, but I wanted to get a real Mexican taco and some cheap prescription medication. Specifically I was looking for a topical creme (none of your business!) that even with a prescription here in the land of the medically fleeced is wicked expensive. Also I was thinking of picking up some prescription strength ibuprofen because the constant long flights criss-crossing the land of ridiculously high medical care costs can get tedious in my lower back and ass-bone area.

These are pretty much the only pictures I got in Tijuana, but I have more border town follies to tell. Luckily, I also visited the Mount Palomar Observatory while in Southern California and there's not much to tell about that trip so I'll punctuate my Mexican tale with those pictures instead.

So randomly, I chose one Mexican pharmacy out of hundreds; a tiny corner shop that I liked the look of. I went in and the proprietor introduced himself as Federico. I asked him if he had my topical creme (shut. up.) and he did, and then I asked him about my ibuprofen. He had it of course but it was a bit expensive for me so I opted not to get it there and maybe shop around a bit first.

So as I was purchasing the topical creme Federico pulls up a bottle from behind the counter and asks me if I like Tequila. I stutter for a moment but what is one supposed to do in such a situation? I say well sure, who doesn't? So we do a shot of tequila together. I then sputter a bit with the tequila shivers, but it's actually pretty smooth stuff and I enjoy my shot. I say well that's mighty nice of you Federico, thank you very much. He says hang on hang on, want another?

So we're hanging out for a while, chatting about this or that, doing shots of tequila in this pharmacy over the counter in broad busy daylight and I think, "Mexico is different." Then he asks me why I wanted the prescription strength ibuprofen for and I explain to him about my lower back pain and all of that. So my new friend ducks down under the counter again and pulls out a large blue pill and hands it to me with another shot of tequila and says to try this one out. I of course take it because I trust this mad chemist completely, for some reason (I'm guessing it had something to do with the tequila but I suppose we'll never know for certain). "What is it?" I ask, putting down my empty shot glass. "Vicodin my friend," he says. "Wonderful," I reply.

I had sprained my foot jogging on a hotel treadmill earlier and I quite forgot about it during my afternoon in Tijuana. I had the nicest time, walking about, buying a cup full of salty pomegranate seeds from a street vendor. I got my taco and a cerveza too, and they were delicious and I felt very good and nice.

My job in San Diego was on a Navy Base, and the next day I was talking to one of the Navy guys in the class telling him about my trip to Tijuana and he got all weird on me. He said "You went to Tijuana?!" And I was kind of like uh, yeah why not? It's like 15 minutes down the road, what's the big deal? And apparently the big deal is that the military has forbidden servicemen to go into Mexico while off duty because of all the drug cartel related violence down there. He was telling me how people are getting killed there all the time, or kidnapped, even American bystanders and I was thinking huh, I'm glad I went and had such a nice relaxed time there without knowing about all of that.