Cinco de Mayo Poster (1901)
Happy Cinco de Mayo, or Día de la Batalla de Puebla, everyone!
The song Distrito Federal (below) is named after the district in which Mexico City is located. It’s taken from the free album Luck + Death: the Soundtrack for the Movie in Your Head, soundtrack to the novel Luck and Death at the Edge of the World.
08 Distrito Federal (Stefan Thaens, Belgium) 4:18
Nichelle Nichols on Cover of Ebony
The musical accompaniment for this post is by SackJo22 of ccMixter.org and the original file is posted here: Angles Flying
ANGELS FLYING
You say look up
the light absorbed by the depth of the night
sky surrounding as heaven curves
unchanged since the beginning of time
suspended while dreaming
touch is remembered
You say meteorites are angels flying
This is bigger than you or me
elemental and heavy
the arc of the galaxies
dendrites into infinity
the waters of Europa hidden and deep
our breath is our humanity
you say let’s breathe
a journey out
a trip within
the light absorbed by the depth of night
only a pinpoint shines
the glitter I recall in your eyes
You say meteorites are angels flying
spinning into gravity
pulled within range
flares burst to illuminate
I watch for you in the dark
will you be a comet
racing in the heavens
or will you be a star
or will you be the black hole in my heart
The Sacred Heart
El Fin Del Mundo Es Ya Cierto (click image to see it really fricken’ large and in incredible detail)
One of the calaveras of awesome Mexican illustrator José Guadalupe Posada (1851–1913). “Because of the end of the world everyone will certainly now become calaveras; farewell to all the living, this is for real.” Detail from a broadside showing skeletons in pandemonium because of cataclysmic natural events around them. The text predicts an apocalypse at the end of the year. The year 1899. Happy impending December 21, 2012 all you johnny-come-lately millenialists out there! The world ended more than a hundred years ago and you’re not even wise to it yet.
Homage to Marinetti (click to enlarge).
These are actually from a set of turn-of-th-20th-century French illustrations imagining the year 2000, but the belligerent ambiance of these two renderings, when set together, put me in mind of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian Futurist poet who declared war to be “the world’s only hygiene.”
Orange Nostalgia
Fox Games – Photo of installation by Sandy Skoglund
Not a painting or digital illustration. This is a photo of an installation by Sandy Skoglund. Note the light fixture at the top right and see this photo to see people walking through. (Click image to enlarge.)
Captain James T. Kirk, Stylin’
James T. Kirk, stylin’ in A Piece of the Action (January 12, 1968). Photograph from television. Click image to enlarge.
Jester hood ornament on the Merry Pranksters bus.
Jester hood ornament on the bus (dubbed “Further”) in which Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters toured while holding their “acid tests.”
Embroidered Bird. Unknown artist, my scan from book. (Click to enlarge.)
The Chromophile 