http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD29unJhKSw
--- In cia-drugs@yahoogroups.com, "muckblit" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "stage-prop home in Berkeley, California. I was a rootless city-dweller" -Timothy Leary As a photographer I became aware of how much visual noise our US landscapes have in anything but the most rural setting. Dominion Power utility corp has just bamboozled Virginia state corporations board to approve their power line. The first route, abandoned now, had that power line passing between the new Dominion Valley and fairly new Piedmont and Michael Jordan's home, and the nearby mountain. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new homes with a view, little league and soccer fields with a movie quality view, and Dominion thought they would just put 150-200 foot power towers and lines across the view. Ironically, there is a line of wooden power towers north of here which suggests an inconspicuous route through a gap in the mountain, where an abandoned road is located, and that route never came up for consideration. I kept quiet because althought it could serve as a trump card, or ace in the hole, maybe we could just kick their ass and they would go away. Dominion did go away from us, but not away. OK, visual noise, here in the US, but in Europe there are plentiful cityscapes without all the power lines visible. Power lines are the main culprit. Another kind of visual noise, though, is "rootless stage-prop sprawl city architecture". This is a good thing in Haymarket, which was formerly without form and void, as well as downright ugly. So was Gainesville. As a photographer, I simply cannot find anything in these neo main street, neo venice, neo scenario sprawl city stage prop extravaganzas that I can use. No peeling paint, for one thing. If there is peeling paint, wait twenty seconds for gentrification to commence with demolition. Rootlessness, culturally sterile, without character. If we could spell it out, they could synthesize it, couldn't they? On synthetic main street, betty boop and elvis in plastic in a synthetic main street barber shop. Why am I not thrilled? Go to Arkansas. Branson, another new jerusalem descending from hierarchical utopia. May as well go home to New Sprawl City and wait for paint to peel, checking periodically rather than watching continuously. Anybody got any whole wheat? How about airfare to Europe? NPR just did a follow the campaign trail photo documentary, audio too of course, and their team discovered deep new sprawl city penetration into the heartland. -Bob
