Black Smoke, Rainbow Smoke

Black Smoke:

Rainbow Smoke:

by Cai Guo-Qiang.

the Ulysses Hapaxes

Finally all the hapax legomenon from James Joyce's Ulysses in one place!

Based on an analysis of the Project Gutenberg edition of the book is the Ulysses Hapaxes.



The text was first cleaned with the admittedly simplistic steps of punctuation removal and conversion to lower case characters. Next each white space separated word was frequency sorted and words that occurred only once were listed in alphabetical order. A space was added every 100 words to break the hapaxes into blocks for easier visual inspection. The first word for each letter is printed with bold blue text.

No effort was made to further categorize these hapaxes, for example differentiating those words which are just rare from those words which are unique to Ulysses. Regardless the result is one which provides a unique view of the literary style and skill of Joyce at the lexical level. Specifically his vocabulary, neologisms and tone can be compactly appreciated in convenient form.

Reremembered words abound.

Music You can Find on YouTube that You Can't Find on iTunes

The start of a new filing cabinet post. Not available as a playlist, but works reasonably well as a playpost.

1. Metronomy, A Thing for Me

Now follow the bouncing ball.



2. James Yuill, No Surpirse

Folktronica as a genre...



3. Dan Black, Yours

Freaky revolverheaded dancing.



4. Get Well Soon, Listen! Those Lost at Sea Sing a Song On Christmas Day

wunderschön!!!



5. The Shortwave Set, Glitches 'N' Bugs

No ache, no pain



6. Curve, Ten Little Girls

Has it been 16 years?

Shrigley's Cat

David Shrigley has some pieces in the 2008 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh.

One of the works is a stuffed kitten holding a sign "I'm Dead".

The gallery guide describes this work as "an ironic yet tender work bordering on the grotesque".

As a good a description as any I suppose.

More on David Shrigley elsewhere.



Nothing complicated but sometimes clever.

Louise Bourgeois & Longevity

Giant spiders loom overhead.

Bulbous smooth forms descend.

Metal, stone, fabric and drawings.

All spanning decades.

At 96 years, Louise Bourgeois is proof that art is different. There may be other writers, athletes, actresses, and software programmers that are approaching 100 years old and still busy with their life's work - but I'm not aware of them.


From a childhood in France, to decades in New York, to international exhibits in the past few years. Louise Bourgeois has created and continues to create some unique works. Gender, memory, nature, deformation and connection. Headless, armless and legless figures lurk and writhe. Creepy and, in context, impressive.

Art may be a garrunty of sanity but one can't help but wonder of in the case of Louise Bourgeois art might also be a garrunty of longevity.

Goldsworthy's Roof

The National Gallery in Washington D.C. has an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture called Roof. It's dated 2004-2005 and the cell phone tour stencil on the floor notes that it's made of Buckingham Virginia slate. But it's also made of glass, with most of the sculpture in an outside sunken patio and the other part bulging through the glass into the interior of the museum.

The exterior portion is not accessible from the outside so there is a view from above into the sunken courtyard filled with slate and then a view from below. The reflections off the glass are distracting, especially on a cloudy day, so that the sense of space seems somehow reduced. It is in fact looking through a window to view the piece. But the piles are perfect. Gradually rounding to their intersections and with the far piles as backdrops to the near piles caught between inside and outside.