About Me

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Adalbert is a forum for me, to post ephemera, photography, poetry, occasional travel notes, and various spontaneous motions. Cover photo: Parsonage where my great-grandfather spent his early years. Taken near Liegnitz, Silesia, ca. 1870. The "xothique" portion of the web address is a nod to Clark Ashton Smith's fictional continent of Zothique.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Dr Miles on the Origin of Man



Dr Miles, or the front representing him, dismissed natural selection in this essay.  The reasoning meandered incoherently;  the author's use of the Heidelberg Jaw was clumsy and awkward.  The writer lacked awareness of the idea of a common ancestor among simians.

Why aren't monkeys turning into people now?

A joke from another page of this strange almanac:

"Papa, did Edison make the first talking machine?"
"No, son, the Lord made the first talking machine, but Edison made the first one that could be shut off at will."  
RIMSHOT!

Friday, May 30, 2014

The thoughts of Dr Miles



Dr Miles, or somebody, on the Great War in its first year. Unimaginably worse followed.  And hey, why not shill some snake oil and tell a couple corny jokes as a closer?


Friday, May 23, 2014

A few notes on Seoul

Seoul at the time of the Gulf War







This piece was published by Denise Dumars in her zine Dumars Reviews not long after it was written.





Saturday, May 17, 2014

Assembled Films

The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), Rain (1929), Apocalypse Pooh (1987)









The past couple weeks I watched these three films, all new to me.  The first and third are examples of found film (Apocalypse Pooh includes found audio as well);  all are examples of film montage.  Esfir Shub 's The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty requires some patience but creates a dialectic momentum as it proceeds.  For me the artifact film clips produce fascination with a vanished past more than they work as propaganda.  This version is subtitled in English and Esperanto (Esperanto, as if it weren't already arcane enough).  It's also completely silent, so I opened up a track of Tchaikovsky's greatest hits as accompaniment, which serves the movie well (although the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy didn't work as a soundtrack for WWI, had to jump to another piece).   Joris Iven's and Mannus Franken's Rain conjures fleeting moods and tones in a prewar Amsterdam. Todd Graham's  Apocalypse Pooh is a funny and well-crafted mashup.





Saturday, May 10, 2014

Solarized Deerslayer




The deer, hunter and spot are the same as those depicted in a photograph I posted 24 July 2013.







Thursday, May 8, 2014

Rodeo Protection Athletes

Rodeo Clown




Rodeo clowns put the fear in coulrophobia.






Saturday, May 3, 2014

Thursday, May 1, 2014

My Shape iss short: My luf iss long





More pseudo-Dutch humor.