I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts.

[huariqueje]

Water Rings - Miho Ichise , 2025.

Japanese , b. 1969 -

Oil on linen , 45.5 x 38 cm.

[ether--net]

[random-brushstrokes]

Emma Schlangenhausen (Austrian, 1882-1947)

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

The Inheritance (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)

[charnel-grounds]

Louise Glaum in The Wolf Woman | 1916 | dir. Raymond B. West | Fragments from a lost film

[thespliffbunker]

Slavish Degradation

[herpsandbirds]

An Incredible Day at the National Butterfly Center

Mission, TX, Hidalgo County Lower Rio Grande Valley of South TX, near the border with Mexico 11/08/2025

This visit to the Valley was especially to pick up some butterflies that are rare in the U.S. The NBC is right next to the Rio Grande, so very close to Mexico. November is a great time to pick up some rare species, though October is the best month for numbers.

* are Lifers (for the U.S.) and Bold are rare species.

Mexican Bluewing

Malachite*

Silver Emperor

Soldier* (mimics the poisonous Queen butterfly)

Guava Skipper*

Orange-barred Sulphur (rare for this location, more common in South FL)

Tropical Leafwing

Red-bordered Pixie (becoming more common in Soutth TX)

Bordered Patch

Theona Checkerspot

photographs by Paxon Kale CC (I was using an iphone)

The rare butterfly that I was unable to get a photo of was the Ruby-spotted Swallowtail*.

photograph via: South Coast Botanic Garden

Birds:

Nothing too exciting to report, typical of most trips, we saw Plain Chachalacas, Green Jays, Long-billed Thrashers, lots of various hawks, Caracaras, and a pair of Green Kingfishers!

Mammals:

JAVELINAS!!!

[bolaneno]

the color signatures of various elements when ignited

FB image credit: Ceres Science

[the1920sinpictures]

1929 c. Clara Bow gives her cook an affectionate hug in her kitchen. From Vamps & Flappers of 1910s, 1920s, FB.

[starsalvation]

—Natasha Rao, Divine Transformation

[wordscanbeenough]

Louise Glück, from "Blue Rotunda", Averno

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

The Inheritance (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)

[endless-unfolding]

“I want to meet no one; I want to say nothing; I want to go down and rest in the black earth of silence.”

— Robert Bly, from “Depression,” Eating the Honey of Words (HarperCollins, 1999)

[herpsandbirds]

Milde's Tarantula-Hawk Wasp (Pepsis mildei), female, family Pompilidae, National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX, US

- with Western Honey Bee friend.

Another wasp in this genus has what is considered to be the most painful sting of any insect in the United States, Pepsis grossa. This species most likely has a comparable sting.

As with many species of wasp, the adults feed on nectar and pollen from flowers.

They paralyze tarantulas and other large spiders, which they feed to their larvae.

This individual was HUGE, and very active! (almost 2.5 inches in length).

Seen here feeding on a mixture of mashed banana, beer, and yeast, spread on one of the feeding logs next to the trails.

photograph by Paxon Kale

(CC - Creative Commons liscence)

[isozyme]

what is funny about ad Reinhardt and yves Klein? i want to be let in on the joke

so yves klein was a color field painter, also known as those guys who just paint a canvas blue, all blue, all the same color of blue, and sell it for a shitton of money. actually when it came to blue, yves klein was kind of The Guy. 

BLUE

but back before all the fame and the blue, he made “yves peintures,” which was a catalog of his monochromes, pictured here:

the joke is that it’s bullshit! it’s just squares of construction paper glued on the page with little titles written below them. even the preface isn’t a preface – it’s just horizontal lines that he had a buddy of his sign with his name. one time yves klein and his art pals all hyped up a big big gallery show that he was opening. a solo exhibition! very exciting! all the critics and fancy motherfuckers showed up – three thousand people came. with great drama, they were led into a completely empty gallery. “welcome,” yves klein said. “I call it THE SPECIALIZATION OF SENSIBILITY IN THE RAW MATERIAL STAT INTO STABILIZED PICTORIAL SENSIBILITY, LE VIDE (THE VOID).” he was, in every way, a total fucker who loved bright colors and pranking the art world.

meanwhile, ad reinhardt – what’s ad reinhardt’s gig?

ad reinhardt’s gig is BLACK

more specifically, black-on-black grids of very slightly varying shades of black, applied in a very matte, powdery way that left the paintings with almost no sheen. it’s a pretty cool effect in person (if vantablack 2.0 had been a thing in the 50s, ad reinhardt would have busted a nut)

unfortunately, the way he did the paint makes the paintings incredibly difficult to maintain. if you touch one, the oils on your hands will immediately stain the painting, and it can’t be cleaned or repaired.

“no prob, bob,” ad reinhardt said to the flustered museum curators and collectors. “if you mess it up i’ll just replace it.”

“but what about our original ad reinhardt!” said the curators and collectors

“yeah i’ll replace it,” ad reinhardt said, “with the same original painting but not fucked up.” this caused some consternation

incidentally, he also made this small comic, which never fails to tickle me:

YOU, SIR, ARE A SPACE TOO!

one of my real favorite artworks in this vein is by robert rauschenberg, and i’m going to include the story of it because it makes me very happy. rauschenberg was an insane post-modernist – one of his most famous pieces includes a taxidermy goat with paint thrown all over it and a car tire around its neck, that kind of thing – and i love his piece titled “erased de kooning drawing”

so willem de kooning was the husband of elaine de kooning, who painted sick abstract expressionist portraits and was slamming hot

wow

willem was also an artist, and kind of a big deal in his own right, and friends with rauschenberg

one day rauschenberg calls him up like “hey i have an idea for a collaboration between us two art bastards. i need you to do me a drawing, in pencil”

and willem said “why”

and rauschenberg said “wouldn’t you like to know”

and willem said “why”

and rauschenberg said “because i’m gay, give it”

and willem said “that’s not a reason”

and rauschenberg said “fine, i wanna make a commentary on the value of art even after it’s destroyed and palimpsests and ephemerality and shit i guess, so i need a drawing by a famous dude to erase, and you’re famous”

willem de kooning said “okay” and proceeded to find the wettest, most difficult to erase grease pencil in his studio, which he then used to make several drawings until he came up with one he liked and sent it to rauschenberg

and to his credit, rauschenberg erased that motherfucker. he put in the effort. in a spectacular show of spite countering spite, he very nearly got rid of it all. look at this shit:

if that almost-blank piece of paper isn’t a work of art, i don’t know what is

[the-other-voice]

“I would like to write a book about war that would make war sickening, and the very thought of it repulsive. Insane. So that even the generals would be sickened … My men friends (as opposed to women) are taken aback by such ‘women’s logic’. And again I hear the ‘men’s’ argument: ‘You weren’t in the war.’ But maybe that’s a good thing: I don’t know the passion of hatred; my vision is normal. Unwarlike, unmanly.”

— Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War

[unconditionalstudio]

[animentality]