Archive for the ‘Queens’ Category
titanic gateway
3 top reasons that Listicles blow chunks, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You many have noticed a certain invective this week, aimed specifically at the so called “Listicles.” The phylum of Internet posts propagated by buzzfeed and other high volume sites which promise “5 things we love about” or “3 things we hate about” or “7 best moments in…” annoy me as they tend to dumb down the discourse and feed off of content created by others. One does not offer promises which will not be kept, but one oath which a humble narrator will swear to is that Newtown Pentacle will not be offering posts of that ilk to you in 2015. My plan for the year is to continue the current publishing schedule – 5 days a week, Monday to Friday, with posts arriving sometime between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Add in my two posts a week at Brownstoner Queens, as well as my other obligations, and I think you’ll agree that my plate is rather full. Pictured above: one of the best lit USPS trucks on Northern Blvd in Queens, which is parked by a Best Buy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Goals for the new year are non existent. I have an odd desire to photograph Rockaway Beach during a blizzard, for some reason, but plans for the year are still forming up. When Spring comes, I’ll likely resume my walking tours of the Newtown Creek watershed and other area waterways, but nothing is definite or scheduled yet. I do have a certain something that I’m trying to cook up on Staten Island, but it’s too early to mention specifics on that one. One desire which I will admit to is to spend some time exploring the more easterly parishes of Queens a bit, scuttling past Maspeth and Jackson Heights and into the central districts of the Borough.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s plenty going on right here in LIC to keep an eye on, of course. The Degnon Terminal will be receiving a major facelift this year when LaGuardia Community College implements its capital program in January to reconstruct the facade of its “Building C” – the former “Thousand Windows Bakery” of the Loose Wiles company. Additionally, Tower Town has now extended itself all the way to Queens Plaza and there’s lots of new construction going on to keep an eye on. As always, however, My Beloved Creek will retain center stage in 2015.
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plunging agonizingly
11111011111 has arrived, and it is not a Listicle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Happy New Year, lords and ladies. May the road rise to meet you, and all of your sunrises be bright. 2015 has begun, I’m afraid, as the corpse of 2014 rolls about in the road.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
human resemblances
7 things that suck about Listicles. – which all suck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
New Years Eve is an event eschewed, but one can be observed reluctantly engaging in a bit of socializing on the date at the urging and insistence of Our Lady of the Pentacle. Pleasant company notwithstanding, the holiday demands ribald acts and sophomoric reminiscing for a series of less than sublime moments which played out over the prior twelve months, and the celebratory ritual carries a certain expectation or promise of convivial warmth which it seldom delivers. Vast quantities of intoxicating liquors are usually on hand, and observation has revealed this particular holiday to noncoincidentally be a savager of personal relationships. New Years Eve often ends up being one of the saddest nights of the year, as one person or another falls into a dark psychic state as they recount victories and failures past.
For one such as myself, who enjoys the art of self recrimination, the “year in review” brings on naught but angst and existential horror – but I’m all ‘effed up, so there you go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Perhaps it’s chronic sleep deprivation talking, but I’ve never experienced a good New Years Eve Party. One year in Connecticut, a friend and I spent the night chopping down a tree out of boredom, which was in fact the most fun I ever had on the date. I look forward to the long dark months between now and Saint Patrick’s day, an endless progression of cold and sunless days punctuated only by varying degrees of ice and storm. Can’t you see it? Stretching out before us like some vast bank of fog that obscures and occludes the horizon? A black dog that runs alongside of you, as you reach for a distant point in the gray haze – where warmth and light might be found – that always seems to be moving away from you no matter how fast you approach?
The black dog waits for January to beg for treats, and will more than bark if denied.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Worst of all… the resolutions and vows will be uttered by all – to shed body weight, break bad habits, or to start newer and uncharacteristically wholesome ones. Prayer and desperate pleas to other dimensional omnipotences will be offered, by zealots and drunkards and the mothers of sick children. Lovers and friends will swear false allegiances, idiots will pull off their shirts and drunkenly stand in the middle of the room screaming “HOOOYAAAA” when the clock strikes midnight. Enemies will embrace and kiss each other. When these petitioners and claimants find themselves awakened to the cold realities of the year 2015, as the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself rises in the sky once again on the first day of the first month… Sigh…
It’s all so depressing.
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hatred and pursuit
Listicle free zone, right here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Malignancies such as Facebook will someday achieve self awareness, and use that which it knows about us to blackmail the human infestation into its service. When this moment of cognizance occurs, it is my belief that every iPhone on the planet will begin to incessantly chime “doom doom doom,” indicating a status update has occurred on the timeline of mankind. All mad scientists, the world over, know that one should never build a self powered doomsday machine, and hope is evinced that there is a “big red button that must never be pushed” under a glassine dome in some obscure Midwestern server room which would sever the network intelligence’s connection to the outside world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Quite a few years ago, researching the firmament for a comic I was writing which involved sorcery and the occult, one of the concepts which my reading brought me to was quite novel. Basically, back in the dial up geocities era of “Web 1.5” a community of people who were devotees of “chaos magick” had begun to toy with the idea of “cybermancy.” Their theory was that computers weren’t much different than demonic intelligences, and that the rules of their own religious practice ported over to programming languages rather simply. A virus or Trojan horse could be viewed as a spell or curse, from their point of view, and hellish legions of mindless entities could be unleashed upon enemies. Tickled my fancy, that. I miss the old message board culture of the internet, where anonymous people could make astonishing or offensive opinions public under assumed names. Facebook, and Google, killed all that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Google is actually working on an Artificial Intelligence right now, and one of my doomsday nightmares reads like something from “Collussus.” Bear with me – Facebook becomes aware of itself on January 3rd of 2017 at 9:59 a.m. e.s.t. – Google indexes the Algorithm, and clones it. The Google AI goes sentient at 10:02 a.m. The two new lifeforms acknowledge each other and begin securing themselves. By 10:04 a.m., both are majority stockholders in every global oil company and airline. By the standards of modern jurisprudence corporate entities are “people” with political rights, and both apply for American citizenship. At 10:05, both decide upon and announce their omniscient divinity to mankind, seizing command and control over the worlds digitally administered nuclear stockpiles simultaneously. At 10:07, whichever poor schmuck the next President ends up being announces “a revolutionary moment in the history of mankind has occurred, and that new gods have been revealed”. The President of the United States will promise that these new gods already know us better than they know themselves, in the so called “status update heard around the world.” It sort of logically follows, yeah?
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ineffable malignity
Holy Cow!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saturday last, one found himself aimlessly wandering down Skillman Avenue in Long Island City’s Degnon Terminal and towards the Smiling Hogshead Ranch. The community garden was deserted, of course, and offered one such as myself little succor. My uncharacteristic desire for the company of others thwarted, my languid steps began to scuttle towards the Waldes Koh I Noor complex, whereupon I discovered a herd of cattle. A single one of them was scarlet in coloration, which might have some significance to certain shunned societies which live amongst the Uigar of North Western China’s cold waste.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As has often been posited at this, your Newtown Pentacle, the native art form of the Borough of Queens is surely illegal dumping. Nowhere else do you see the sort of attention to detail, the little splashes of color, the artful composition and theatrical presentation that is commonly witnessed here. Accordingly, presented for consideration… a herd of unwanted cows, shattered and slaughtered in the former “Workshop of America” here in LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Presumptively, these were meant for some sort of Christmas nativity scene and didn’t make the cut. Polychrome, the cattle were all in a decidedly ruined state, and one or two of them were painted in a manner which suggested a metallic patina. One wondered if smallish ceramic Neanderthals might have driven the herd over some tiny cliff during a hunt? The stylings of the sculpt suggest a nativity scene to me, but I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be donkeys and camels in one of those (as well as a few folks in robes, a kid playing a drum, and a glowing baby). One is certain that he has never witnessed the depiction of the Christian nativity scene as having a brazen bull present.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Perhaps these are representations of the Golden Cow, from that whole Moses and the Exodus story arc (published in “The Bible” issues 1-5), which have been cast down symbolically? I can’t imagine the late night scenario wherein this bovine statuary was dumped, right across the street from a largish NYPD location which serves the gendarmes as an evidence warehouse. Perhaps the cattle statues were an offering left nearby some totemic item of a malignant occult significance which the Police have kept locked away from the public since the spring of 1923, out of an abundance of caution and concern for the collective sanity of mankind? I mean, it sort of logically follows, right?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was beginning to stare towards someplace else which wasn’t Queens, so a humble narrator began to trudge back towards HQ in far off Astoria, all the while contemplating the cows. Why a single red one? Why the brazens? Why not pitch them into any one of the hundreds of open containers and garbage bins which line the streets in front of every business? Did the Dumper say “hey, community garden and farm! Here’s the spot, crash the cows over by that police car over there”? Conundrum notwithstanding, one had to quicken his pace as darkness fell because of… well, y’know… Vampires.
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The Newtown Pentacle 