While walking through The ATL’s famous Chicken Bone Plaza (CBP), The IP noticed an industrial crane co. pickup truck parked just above the railroad tracks.  Then he saw some industrial crane co.-type dude with a large measuring tape reel.  The IP figured there must be some industrial-crane-oriented event being planned, so he just asked the crane co. dude what he and his company were contracted to do.  “We gotta get a crane in here so we can take out “that thing.”  When The IP’s gaze (how postmodern!!) followed along the industrial crane co. dude’s outstretched arm and index finger, he knew right away what he meant by “that thing.” 

Hell, The IP’s always called it That Thing.  Everyone he’s spoken to about it calls it that too.  And those unfamiliar with the area will often ask, as they walk by it, “WTF is “that thing?”

What is it?  What does it “mean?”

The reader is forgiven if it (like “Cousin It” on the Adams Family) doesn’t grasp the social significance and magnitude of MARTA and its Five Points Station.  The IP will write more about that later; right now it’s about That Thing.

From what The IP’s heard and read, Five Points Station was going to be an architectural and engineering golden spike in the center of an expansive and modern transit network, serving a booming Southern metropolis.  Atlanta, “The Capital of The South,” deserved a transit station with pizzazz, and that, very superficially, explains That Thing.

Based on some solicited anecdotes, brief recollections from some Old Heads at his office, and from looking at the “thing” itself, The IP can try to explain.

Basically, That Thing was, and remains, a late-70s “high-tech” architectural element that was hoped to set The Five Points MARTA Station apart while simultaneously providing information, music, color, and visual excitement to all.  It was going to be a dynamic civic billboard, the visual and textual nexus of a bustling transit station in a city where all were “To Busy To Hate.”  This actually was the dream, and the station was designed for that purpose.

Yet the issue here is not an aesthetic one.  Like it.  Hate it.  But if you ride MARTA, you can’t ever ignore it, and now with its demise known, The IP will miss it; it looks better to him every day. 

The IP can see the hope That Thing embodied; and the more you look at it, it really does have a funky style; it’s kinda like if Nagel went into abstract sculpture.  And it had lamps embedded in it!  Some of them still work!  And that Red translucent stripe actually does glow at certain times of the day.  And that skylight is pretty cool as well.  The IP never really looked enough beyond That Thing to see how it works as an element in the overall design.  It hangs there like a pop-art guillotine.  Maybe that’s why they are removing it?

How and why certain words become “offensive” or “disparaging” is queer.  A perfectly mundane, descriptive word that has to do with animal husbandry can be transformed into an insult, with the insult usually being to the animal in question. 

Through anthropomorphism, many a respectable bird and mammal is ridiculed in our culture without much consideration for its true, often positive, attributes.  Think about it:  “That guy is a rat;” “Those lawyers are vultures;” “He’s a mole;” “What a worm;”  “Don’t trust that guy, he’s a Double-Crested Cormorant if I ever saw one;” you know what The IP means.

And it goes the positive  way, too: “He’s a real pit bull in court;” “She’s a real fox;” and the classic “He’s hung like a horse.”

That is why The IP finds it strange that nobody has used the term “mulatto” when describing Barack Obama.

mulatto(mʊ-lăt’ō, -lä’tō, myʊ-)

[Spanish mulato, small mule, person of mixed race, mulatto, from mulo, mule, from Old Spanish, from Latin mūlus.]

The ”Little Mule,” Barack, with his iconoclastic mommy.

Barack’s half-sister was interviewed in the NYT this past Sunday.  

The more The IP looks into Barack’s past, the more interesting he becomes; actually, he becomes more interesting than the way he currently presents himself.  

Here are a few select Q&As from the NYT: 

Barack’s father was Kenyan, and yours was Indonesian. Your mom was what used to be called a freethinker, a white anthropologist from Wichita, Kan., who moved to Jakarta after her second marriage. 

My mother was a courageous woman. And she had such tremendous love for life. She loved the natural world. She would wake us up in the middle of the night to go look at the moon. When I was a teenager, this was a source of great frustration because I wanted to sleep.

Do you think of your brother as black?

Yes, because that is how he has named himself. Each of us has a right to name ourselves as we will.  

Do you think of yourself as white?

No. I’m half white, half Asian. I think of myself as hybrid. People usually think I’m Latina when they meet me. That’s what made me learn Spanish.  

That sort of culturally mixed identity was seen as an anomaly when you were growing up.

Of course, there was a time when that felt like unsteady terrain, and it made me feel vulnerable.  

You were ahead of the multicultural curve.

That’s one of the things our mother taught us. It can all belong to you. If you have sufficient love and respect for a part of the world, it can be a meaningful part of who you are, even if it wasn’t delivered at birth.  

You pithecanthropes should check out some history about Obama’s mom here.

Just look at the above mulatto!  Beautiful!

Mulatto.  Even Obama won’t use the term.  Unfortunately, with the way the politicos, media, and much of  the hoi polloi frame the issue, it comes down to hard, cold, ideas about “Black” and “White.”  WTF?  This is EXACTLY why all this rhetoric about race-cards, The Civil Rights Movement, MLK Jr., etc., is just a huge distraction.  Like his half-sister, Barack is a hybrid.  Presenting himself as such might actually be a good thing.

That is why The IP proposes a makeover for Barack Obama; well, not really a makeover for Barack the guy, but for Barack the idea, the image of the guy.

Mulatto.  That is perfect for Obama.  His current and looming big mistake is to frame himself as a “Black” man, or even the more tempered “African American” man.  He shouldn’t make this election about Black vs. White.  But he should promote his Mulatto credentials.  Obama must become, unabashedly, a Mullato “The Little Mule!”  People love mules!  Seriously, you should check out these beautiful animals.  Here are some really nice ones, and they’re FOR SALE!!

Yet it has been said of human Mulattos that they are “a child of two races, ashamed of both.”  This is sad if it’s true, but that’s no reason one can’t turn that frown upside down and accentuate the positive.  Mules break the mold, especially when compared with the high-bred horse.  Here’s a list of Mule attributes and how they could help Obama:

Mules have fewer feeding problems than horses do.

Remember when Clinton became known for needing a McD’s fix all the time?  What about when George Senior puked that sushi on global TV?  Don’t expect that kinda embarrassing behavior from Obama.

Mules eat less than horses do.

Obese Presidents no longer command respect like they used to.  Grover Cleveland would have a hard time in these days days of photo ops and video chats.  Why do you think that douchebag Romney got into the race?  Was it his rhetorical flourish?  Not that Obama is not handsome; he’s already been on the cover of GQ fer chrissakes!  He just doesn’t look like a showroom dummy like that other guy.

Mules excel in physical soundness.

A plus with the lady voters, and a good attribute for all the traveling he will have to do.

Mules live longer productive lives than horses do.

We’ll just get more out of Obama in the time he’s in Office.

Mules can more easily than horses be handled in large groups.

WTF?  The IP grasps for a parallel here.  Uhhhh.  Help!

Mules have a strong sense of self preservation.

Another trait good for a long campaign; watch him squelch assassination plots, dodge bullets, respond to Clintonian criticism.

Mules are surefooted and careful.

This will help Obama “pound the pavement” for handshakes (votes), and keep him from falling over on platforms like Fidel or Bob Dole.

Mules incur fewer veterinary expenses.

Hey, who wants a President that’s always having polyps removed from his colon?  That’s just gross. 

Mules don’t look like horses.

Even Hillary looks more like the former Presidents than Obama.  As a mulatto, Obama sets himself apart just by being himself.   

People say Obama has no “experience.”  I would match Obama’s biracial, multicultural, multi-parent, multi-country  experience with Clinton’s suburban Chicago/Wellesley College experience ANY DAY!

Here’s The IP’s “Campaign 08″ summary:  

McCain is likely to be the man for the GOP. 

Giuliani evokes the fable of The Tortoise & The Hair, with the G-Man playing the Tortoise.  The only difference is that, in this version, The Tortoise loses.

Romney drank some kool-aid in Arizona, and now he’s probably having hallucinations of being The President.  They are, in the end, only that.

Huckabee Duckabee Dock,
The preacher is a crock,
The Right in its haze,
Like the preacher, hates gays,
So they think the man is a lock (which he’s not).

Hillary Dillary Dock…naw, forget it.  The IP has no energy for another limerick.  The IP thinks that, ultimately,…Damn.  The Dems have Obama, Clinton, and Edwards, and possibly some combination of the same.  Who knows?  Any of you pithecanthropes want to make a prediction?

On this morning’s coffee run, The IP was heard by his SCA Intern, Josh, to say:  “Hmmm.  I think it’s going to snow…It just smells like it.”

Josh The Intern was incredulous:  “No it’s not.”  To which The IP said:  “Yes it is.”

In some deep, environmentally conditioned sense, The IP did “feel” some snow coming on, and at around 4:00 his snow nose proved correct. 

By the time The IP got home, the flakes were obscenely huge, and as darkness fell, he felt transported back to some Massachusetts or Chicago Winter. 

The IP just stuck his digital camera out his door and flashed the above pic.  Now The IP is scared because it’s clear he captured some biohazards coming to earth.

Then he pointed upwards and took this pic:

Digital cameras still use light and still use a lens, so as long as that is the case, photography will still surprise. 

Even before The IP arrived in Chicago in 1993, that great city’s famous architectural photography studio, Hedrich Blessing, had captured his imagination.  HB’s sublimely constructed images from the mid-twentieth century -almost always in black and white- remain benchmarks for architectural photographers, and collectively constitute a elegiac manifesto for the modernist architecture of the period.  In The IP’s mind, no images better captured the essence of the modernist movement in American architecture. 

Check out their cool website here and take the “Classic Images” tour…it’s worth the simple effort.

The IP recalls spending hours at The Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson & Burnham Archives just staring at HB photos of buildings, many of them located in Chicago, and being transported out of his present world (kinda broke and looking for work) into the essence of modern architecture.  It’s almost as if the HB photos gave him hope, that they said “You see?  You see what is possible?” 

So it was with great excitement and surprise a few years back when The IP began to uncover LP album covers with incredible (color!) HB photographs.  He didn’t know they were HB photos the first time he saw one, but there was something irresistible about them that made him stare at, study, and stammer in incredulity at the almost-surreal and perfect suburban world they depicted: 

Look at the above LP cover from Barbecue, one of Columbia Record’s five “Music For “Gracious Living” series of LPs. HB did in color in Columbia’s “Gracious Living” series what it did in their black & white architectural photography.  They took a subject, in the case of “Gracious Living,” a common suburban family trope, and perfected it like they did their images of buildings. 

The only problem with the LP covers was that they needed to use people as well as static objects.  Buildings, generally, don’t move; people generally do.  So on the cover of any “Gracious Living” LP one finds a suburban family in a perfectly frozen pose of, well, “Gracious Living.” The colors are supernaturally bright, and the set design and composition are exacting.  HB even threw in a visual curve ball here and there to lend a sense of queerness to the scene:

Check out the contemplative son, Tad, sitting on the barbecue wearing…a kimono!!!!????  WTF?  Did Wally Cleaver ever wear a kimono?  Tad chose coffee (or perhaps tea) for his barbecue beverage…WTF?  He must sleep late. 

And that sliced watermelon is enough to induce an acid trip flashback.   

OK.  Here’s a really cool cover from HB:

For the LP Do-It-Yourself, HB clads the dad in a remarkably colorful shirt, and check out the socks on the attentive son!  We also get to peek at the outside world, with the left window presenting the corner of some ultra-modern structure.  The two-tone linoleum tiles on the workshop floor add even more color and excitement to the otherwise static scene.  The wife, also a beacon of color, does it herself with knitting.  It’s almost scary how well-rounded this family is.  And if that little kid is responsible for that abstract expressionism on the pegboard wall, well, his future is bright indeed!     

The artist selected to produce the musical incarnation of “Gracious Living” was Peter Barclay “And His Orchestra.”  Not surprisingly, not much is known about this man assigned to provide a soundtrack to the familial suburban activities depicted on the covers of the “Gracious Living” series.  The music on any of the albums is not really different from one another; there is nothing about any of it that says “This is the music to make a wooden boat,” or “This is the music to accompany the slicing of a slab of honey-baked ham.”  It’s all melodic pabulum. Which all makes the “Music For Gracious Living” series less about the aural side of suburbia than it does about its visual side, especially the promoted visual side. 

Oh yeah, about the ham.  That is featured on the LP entitled Buffett:

OK.  The next cover from “Gracious Living” is a bit more…well, let’s say there’s a lot going on; after all, it’s entitled After The Dance:

Gotta love that guy who’s not too proud to wear an apron…at least he’s makin some burgers.  What’s up with that other apron-clad woman’s shoes?  WTF?  And who’s the sniper behind the fruit?  So many questions?  Hard to tell if it’s a painting or a photograph.

Whoa!  WTF?  Where did the bridge players go?  Why did they leave?  The name of the above album is Foursome.  The IP does not want to contemplate what that means at this point.  Nice spread, however.

Taking the cue from Columbia, Mercury came up with “Music To Live By,” also geared toward the suburban ideal of family togetherness. They even went as far as to borrow the idea of placing a…well…a son of a particular disposition in the scene:  

Check out Tad II (on the left), engaged in sublime reverie, as his mom, dad, and sister…do what?  They all seem less interested in the music, while Tad II gazes into the fireless fireplace and thinks about…

Just what the hell IS Tad thinking about?

Who wouldn’t want to dive into each of the scenes depicted on these album covers, if just to experience the “ideal” they represent?   The IP chooses After The Dance for his dive.  It just looks more fun…no kids in the way, and no absent bridge players off having a foursome or whatever.  

*Special Note:  The IP still needs After The Dance and Buffet to complete his collection.  If any of you pithecanthropes find one of those, pick it up and you will be rewarded “graciously.”

A recent retrospective editorial in the NYT pretty much summed up the appalling track record of W. et alii in the current administration.  When The IP read some readers’ responses to it, he saw a faint, yet clearly discernible, glimmer of hope for a future assertion of our collective responsibilities as U.S. citizens:

I hope that we see a nation that does not continue to sit quietly while our leaders in the White House break laws, subvert the Constitution and destroy what we stand for. It is the inaction of the citizens of this country that frightens me.

 The change will occur when the nation, through its votes in 2008, cleanses Congress, the White House and the bureaucracy and can thus enable the restoration of government guided by the great principles upon which our democracy is based.

Your editorial stops short, however, in one key respect: it does not properly admonish the current Democratic-controlled Congress for its complicity in these terribly sad affairs. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have been woefully ineffective in combating the horrendous policies of this administration, and history will, I believe, also judge their inaction harshly and sympathetically and appropriately so.

Your commanding and eloquent editorial brought tears to my eyes as I continue to mourn the loss of the America I used to know, the America I loved and respected for more than six decades. The current administration has surely made this one of the darkest hours in our history.

By the time you pithecanthropes read this post, there may be some indication as to who (whom?) may constitute our next Presidency.  If The IP were a Republitard, he would be hoping that either Hillary or Obama would get the Democratic nomination.  Republitards already vote more than Democrats, and nothing would motivate them like the vision (and sound) of Hillary taking the oath in Jan 09.  If The IP were a Democrat, he thinks either Huckabee or Romney would be a good candidate to lead the GOP to defeat in November.The IP never liked that Tipping Point book, but if you read the above letters to the NYC, the phrase is appropriate.  After 8 years of political and rhetorical shite, people have had it.The IP likes Edwards’ anti-corporate stance, though it’s hard to say if that recent endorsement from Nader will hinder or help him.  If either Edwards or Obama comes out with a substantial “win” in Iowa, The IP will be happy.  He even envisions an Edwards/Obama ticket.

Below is the NYT editorial:  

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to  circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and  nternational law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.