The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Tag: personal

  • War Between the Worlds, and its sequel

    I’ve been making posters that, I’ve claimed, were from the First Interworld War. I’ve decided that, “really”, they’re from the Second Interworld War. The primary motivation for the change has been the realization that most of my inspirations are from WWII, not WWI. Also, this allows me to imagine, vaguely, that H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds was the First Interworld War. Here’s what I envision:

    Wells’ Martians apparently did not have radio technology. It seems a pretty big lack, but who knows? Mars does not have a Heaviside layer, I believe, so the idea of long-distance transmission by radio might not have occurred to them. Also, there are signs that Well’s Martians were telepathic. If so, and if telepathy is not easily conveyed by electromagnetic fields, then they might never have gotten into that technology. If telepathy is then also short-ranged, we’d have the situation I want; to wit, that the Martians dying on Earth are unable to relay a warning about infection to the Martians at home. Since the Martians (justifiably) probably found it inconceivable that we resist their might, they might have kept chucking one or two cylinders a year as reinforcements, not knowing at first that the war was lost and later, not knowing why.

    So, for the next decade or two, at random times spaced by a few months, these engines of death would come down on Earth. The Martian within would extricate the walking machine, lay waste to the surrounding area, but then eventually die from the same disease that brought down the first. Along the way, the powers on Earth would get valuable experience and technology battling the lander and then trying to recover it. This allows me to leapfrog tech when I need to, and explains the follow-up.

    More below the fold.
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  • New posters

    More from the First Interworld War. One is an updated version of my very first Interworld War poster. The second has the tagline “See Action Now … Join the Rocket Service.”

    My reasoning, and the actual posters, below the fold.

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  • Why I’m a Technophile

    For you to understand this post, there are two things about myself I should tell you — they’re already well-known to any of my friends:

    1. I drink a lot of Coke.
    2. I have catastrophically bad eyesight.

    More below the fold.

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  • More from the First Interworld War

    Researching for this(!). I came across a great book called You Back the Attack — We’ll Bomb Who We Want, billed as “remixed war propaganda”. An artist named Micah Ian Wright took World War II propaganda posters (some from the Bad Guys) and reworked them to put a Bush Jr. spin on them. It’s snarky, obnoxious, and really hilarious — though sobering in a way, too.

    As a bonus, Mr. Wright included all the original, unmodified posters as an appendix. So it’s easy to see how these were used and how they could be used. I expect I’ll be pulling a lot of inspiration from this book. The first such brainchild is offered below.

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    Researching for this(!). I came across a great book called You Back the Attack — We’ll Bomb Who We Want, billed as “remixed war propaganda”. An artist named Micah Ian Wright took World War II propaganda posters (some from the Bad Guys) and reworked them to put a Bush Jr. spin on them. It’s snarky, obnoxious, and really hilarious — though sobering in a way, too.

    As a bonus, Mr. Wright included all the original, unmodified posters as an appendix. So it’s easy to see how these were used and how they could be used. I expect I’ll be pulling a lot of inspiration from this book. The first such brainchild is offered below.

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  • More propaganda

    from a war that was never fought. 🙂 I haven’t really decided if all of Mars is noxious (in this reality) but since Well’s had “the Black Gas”, I figure the TEF had better have gas masks. And while it might seem unthinkable that women would carry arms in Victorian/Edwardian society, it’s a fact of the 20th century that major wars break down mores, and a truly interplanetary war fought with turn-of-the-century technology would conceivably accelerate that process. Plus, I needed another model. 🙂

    That You May Breathe Free

  • New, if silly, pursuit

    So I haven’t stretched my creative muscles very much lately, and I’ve been looking for something to do. Playing around with Poser and some models I got from the Net, I decided I was going to make propaganda posters from the First Interworld War, loosely conceived as the follow-up to H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds. I know it’s far from unique but it struck my fancy and I’m going to try my hand. The first, very rough, effort is below. The tagline is “Take the fight to them… Sign Up For The Transplanetary Expeditionary Force”

    Take the Fight to Them — propaganda poster from the First Interworld War

    I’m certainly open to suggestions for future posters. Right now, all I have is the image of a man or woman in Vitcorian space gear and gas mask, with the tag “He risks breathing poison… So you can breathe free… Support the Third Planetary Bond Drive”.

  • Nothing But a Dream

    One of the things that goes along with advising Student Council at my school is orchestrating the annual Talent Show. For the past four years, that’s included performing as the first act — largely because I badger my fellow faculty into performing, and I feel I shouldn’t ask them to do something I’m not willing. Also, because secretly I am a ham. The song is always something of my own writing and always a capella, because I don’t know anything about playing instruments or writing music for them. I like this because it gives me a chance to demonstrate that I am every bit not a singer as I am not a songwriter. 🙂 This year’s offering was called “Nothing But a Dream”. Because I have no shame I’m including a Quicktime movie of it as well.

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  • Marc Cohn in Carnegie Hall

    I am not really much of a “joiner” and I don’t have many entertainment things about which I get passionate. Long ago, however, I decided that I would pick an artist and follow them closely. I chose Marc Cohn, whom you might remember from a 1991 hit “Walking in Memphis”, which still gets significant airplay, at least on the sort of stations I listen to. 🙂 Anyway, Cohn has continued to release albums at a gushing dribble (three in fifteen years) but also tours a lot and plays intimate, small venues.

    Last night I rode NJ Transit up to NYC to catch his show at Zankel Hall, a small 600-person adjunct to Carnegie Hall.
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  • from 2003: Synchronicity, in memoriam Robert Hauter Myslik

    [edited 2007 0130 to correct Rob’s middle name, which was Hauter and not Hunter.]

    This piece dates from around 2003 February 10. I wrote it about three weeks after the death of a legendary colleague and true friend, Rob Myslik. Rob taught at Hun for nine years, including two while I was there, and then went off to pursue his dream of being an even-more-world-class writer. He went to Missoula, MT in the summer of 2001 with Susan Bogue, the love of his life; in summer 2002, they wed. Rob came back to the East Coast in 2003 January to catch up with his relations and friends. Then, on 2003 January 21, while heading out to the Sundance Festival, Rob was involved in a tragic car accident and killed. It was devastating to many people, and I count myself among them. I wrote a quick piece that day but it took three weeks before I could truly find my voice.

    By the way, some people quibble with my opinion on the Pink Floyd connection. If you’re one, I hope you’ll keep reading anyway.

    God keep you, Rob Myslik, wherever you are now.
    -=-Bernard HP Gilroy
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