Form/function

Looks ugly and dirty at first.  Because it is.  But look closer, and there's a lot to learn.  Each shape has tons of implications.  Things so precise you can really screw them up.  Millions of explosions have happened right there in the dark across tens of thousands of miles - desert, plains, forest, mountains.  Hours upon hours it has been a red hot metal gasket sandwich with the bread sliced just so.  Hope I can get it to burn again.

Tis the season

Maybe a little tasteless for the colonial race to brandish - yet effective.  The sight of an enthusiastic white man on a terraformed pacific island surrounded by invasive species... it's only iterative.  It wasn't long ago, Christmas is summer on the beach.  Richard Candler, everybody.

Primitive motorcycles

Today will be a mechanical day.  Lines on cars, motorcycles, surfboards and horses are sometimes what make people waste so much time on them.  The right lines on a horse can make it priceless.  They're not mass produced.  You can't order an '87 Steppe Trotter and expect it to look like anything else.  They're all one of a kind, special snowflakes.  So analog.

Demolition addendum.

Shop night

Some modification required.  

whoa.

Well, the ante has been upped.  For good.  All.I.Can is one of the most remarkable films I've ever seen.  A piece.

Dilemma

"I have maybe 200 motorcycles. / I never counted. / I don't have any money.  If I got some money, I'd buy a motorcycle."

Morning mist

The Bend is shrouded this morning.  Everything solid is frosted.  It's cold, the sun is coming up.  That dendritic rime on your windshield is pure deposited vapor.  Lookout Mountain, Stringer's Ridge, the Moon Pie Factory, and the power grid are cloaked.  Night has chilled the air, but the river is still warm from yesterday's upstream sun.  It's not a breath of fresh alpine clouds, but I'll take it.

From whence

An American shepherd watches his sheep.  The photo was taken more than a century ago by a man who believed his subject was a descendant of one of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.  It's hard to tell what matters when it comes to the preconceptions of the observer.  I want to know what you, the reader, may see here.  I'll tell you what I know afterwards.

From a dictionary:

The construction from whence has been criticized as redundant since the 18th century. It is true that whence incorporates the sense of from: a remote village, whence little news reached the wider world. But from whence has been used steadily by reputable writers since the 14th century, most notably in the King James Bible: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help" (Psalms). Such a respectable precedent makes it difficult to label the construction as incorrect. Still, it may be observed that whence (like thence) is most often used nowadays to impart an archaic or highly formal tone to a passage, and that this effect is probably better realized if the archaic syntax of the word without - from - is preserved as well.

Earthling

It might be December, but here in cragistan we don't worry about that.  Sure, on a shining 62 degree day just weeks from the solstice, you could expect the rocks to be crowded.  Earth has 7 billion people, and half of them were probably at Foster Falls yesterday.  But don't forget that Chattanooga is made of cliffs - there's no shortage.  Trees leafless and shivered from the night frost bask in solar wind.  Light blasts down on what seems more and more like the surface of one sweet world.  On Lookout Mesa, The Refuge is just waiting for some love from Wurzel while he raps in.  It's the east-facing limb of a noble syncline exposing one hundred feet of pure sandy butter.  By the time you clip the anchors on Earthling, there might not be anyone else on the planet.

Blank Slate

Erik has scored the keys!  Now it's time to make something happen.  Visualize, o ye slathering dudely craftsmen, visualize.