Gently coaxing Apophis.

Okay. You know it and I know it. In these times it's not uncommon to record oneself in a sex act, tactically leak teaser megabytes on myspace or tumblr, then sit back to await that TMZ call.

I get the temptation, and reserve my right to join the insanity at a future date - if I choose to go that route. But for now, I'm onto something better. I'm pandering to humanoid survival instincts and encouraging us all to unite for the sake of this planet.

No buzzwords here. Sustainability. Carbon Footprint. Save a Tree. Nah, I'm in the biz of asteroid deflection now. You heard me.
 

Yep. Marvel Comic stuff, to go along with my uber-envy of Robert Downey Jr.'s current gravity-defying career trajectory.

 

A couple of erstwhile, redoubtable astronomers, who are avid Stargate fans in their real lives, have been in touch with me to help save Earth. Roy Tucker and Virgiliu Pop spearhead an ambitious mission to succeed where SG-1 apparently didn't. They're taking the fight to Apophis and Ackeelover is boldly going along for the ride. Wicked an' wild, Dr. Strangelove style!

 

Regardless of bookie-odds favoring "close shave" vs. "apocalypse," this is a brilliantly simple plan. It's a nice change from routine satellite maintenance, and, a potentially potent, organic response to extraplanetary threat. Yet, it all amounts to nothing without Youtube and you. And me. And Roy. And Virgil.

 

How can this be?, you ask. Has the world gone mad? Uh-uh, this is about destiny, empowerment, and the right to stand up to the Universe and say, "don't hurl any more large baked potatoes at me, son!" A Rockethub campaign has begun. I've been told Apophis himself is aware of this and anticipates the engagement, especially as many doubters have become distracted and complacent.

Pundits are by nature sceptical and may scoff, but plenty suggests that Apophis has not been rendered harmless. It's frightening to think who may ape this orbital terrorism with nefarious intent to enslave, rape 'n' pillage. Yes, pillage - and rape.

I don't have to spell it out for you. Baddies ain't PC.

Since it'll be hard to re-convene any SG-1 team to full-effect readiness (certain to be filibustered in Congress anyhow), the onus of responsibility shifts to egalitarian Tau'ri social media.

Radically apolitical, Crowd-funding is socialism and capitalism simultaneously. A "liberal" approach, which looks "conservative" nex' to all dem fancy nuke options. (Use favorite buzzword here).

Aaaand y'know what? Jaffa Kree! - it juuust might work.

There's a perfect point in everyone's life to look inward with steely resolve and ask of your soul, "should I risk everything for want of a coat of paint?" Yes, we are at that point - spare the paint, spoil the globe. Ask any Siberian. Vote Yarkovsky! (see links).

 

(N.B. - Apophis, not to be underestimated, is said to have a complicit twitter host @actualApophis. Stay informed - and, should there be a sex tape, it's likely to surface there first.)



One of those moments.

Over the course of a single lifetime an inquisitive soul will have seen countless day-to-day occurrences, some of which remain imprinted on the brain for years. A passing observation may trigger a rush to judgement or make you ponder cause and effect.

 

Looking, and being aware, is how we develop or confirm intuition and cultural perception. Photographs are useful in preserving psychological reference data, but seldom fill in the matrix.

 

A recent rummage through some adolescent mementos turned up two snapshots taken on a mid/late-Seventies New York City trip. The view, across what I remember as 6th Avenue, stopped me cold in my tracks. A man was kneeling in front of a restaurant, apparently planting one the sidewalk. Pedestrians ambled by with nonchalant, seen-it-all-before, cursory regard.

There was more interest from one tan-suited businessman with a briefcase, and an impressionable island-boy visitor to lower Manhattan pointing a pre-digital camera through gaps in traffic.

Back then, the Big Apple was a very different place compared to the post-9/11 NYC of today. Neither of us, it occurs to me now, thought that this could've been an Islamic posture of devotion.

In fact, my read, ignoring the possibility of my own ignorance, concluded this was a victim-of-the- streets in the static throes of a mental-breakdown. And I was there to record the moment.

I'm still uncertain what I witnessed. Mr. Brown-Suit approached, tentatively poked and voiced what seemed a caring inquiry. Reaction unforthcoming, he shrugged and moved on. A couple New York minutes and I was on my way too. Never to forget.

Everyone knows that Avenues on the Gotham grid run on a North-South axis. Streets go East to West. This inconclusive detail keeps my memory murky, because Mecca, from there, should be somewhere to the east of Long Island.

Do The Wurm.

I enjoy running, kicking a football, or riding a mountain bike on a Whistler Mountain trail. Fresh air isn't overrated, and hitting the gym, if only to stretch, remains a very effective way to actively entertain myself. Someone else may choose solitaire or collage, but ever since the world was conquered by digi-chip electronic networks, there's so much more to do.

Apparently, you can make pretty much anything at all in iOS. Multi-level gaming works for many. Others just use their devices to chat. This week I made generative arte moderne via Wurm, a fairly new graphic-design app - that kinda fell in my lap.

(Wurm in my lap? - dem couldn't call di ting Boa? #cheaplaughs)

Well, effort number one sucked me into a virtual vortex every time I touched that iPhone5 screen. The wondrous results reminded me of dreamy aboriginal art I'd seen in Melbourne, even though I began this first Wurm-sesh with colors chosen for more of a Jamaican/African association.

Immediately apparent was the array of possibility. Clearly, as much time would be spent on "creative" (that "insider" noun), as would be spent deciding exactly when a doodle was done, a finished product, worthy of any metropolitan galleria.

My follow-up effort produced a frantic, chiffon-esque, macro-print ... or a cellular deconstruction of an elite chocolate mint, depending on which of your senses is keenest at time of viewing.





















Right from jump I found manipulating an image to make what I wanted, to be more difficult than interpreting the results I was getting. That's when shit got real. Sauciness emerged from d'art.

It may be just the boy-brain thing, but I can successfully identify horny scenarios in the suggestive lines of certain masterpieces. If it is true that reading inkblots presents insight into personality and mental wellness, then, I give myself over to the doctors.

But, I'm bringin' my Wurm wit' me.

If you've ever seen The Shroud, or Selassie in a cloud, or even St. Peter (Pan?) on a pilgrim's potato chip, then you've played the shape game before. No place for the sanctimonious.

When the mind's eye told me not to be so specific, freeform fingering (you were warned) on the smooth palette yielded randomly stimulating backgrounds. One such caressing, in opaque swirl, became a roiling, apocalyptic, smokiness.

It got me thinking of Armageddon. And North Korea. So I threw words at it and put it up on Ackeelover Chronicles.

Voila, my first Wurm-ogram. Take that, Kim Jong Un.



Independently developed by Anna Oguienko of Toronto, Canada, Wurm is a cool app-tool for playing Rorschach recognition. Then again, and just as likely, it could simply be an artsy play-toy, providing confirmation, if any was needed, that ultimately ... peeps is gonna see, what they wanna see.

Use sparingly, as prescribed by a professional.

One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure.

Diggin' deep in the personal archives is the quickest way to maintain a presence on a blog when there's no time to write.

When I was much younger my family had a cottage in the hills of the Parish of St. Catherine. It's cool up there. We had expansive views to the North, received radio signals fron Cuba, grew coffee bushes and enjoyed the uncommon fruit of the Rose Apple trees.

The nearest town is Sligoville, said to be the first village peopled by freed slaves in mid-1830's Jamaica. History here is very close to the surface of contemporary observation and one can feel colonialism in the mists that regularly cosset this mountaintop.

The verdant vegetation was/is tropical and lush, with ferns of various description growing like weeds in the fertile soil.

 

One day, and several days thereafter, while fulfilling my gardening chores cutting back an encroaching fern thicket adjacent to our stony driveway, I happened upon what probably used to be someone's refuse heap. Whoever it was had a predilection for European preserves and Irish beverages, judging by containers I found clustered just below the surface of the dark earth.

 

My interest in archaeology was nascent at the time, but rooted enough in my sensibilities for me to cherish the finds to this day. I share them here without too much verbal embellishment for they speak loudly by themselves, as tangible vestiges of the colonial yesteryear I frequently reflect on in my musings.

 

Worthy of note is the prone, round-bottomed bottle embossed with the "Medicated Aerated Waters, Belfast, Ireland" assertion, and the salt-glazed crockware jar which simply proclaims that it once held I. C. Hoffmann's "Rassberry Jam."(sic.).

 

I often wonder if that early spelling of Raspberry influenced the development of  well known, colorful Jamaican expressions.

 

Ackeelover Chronicles will continue ...  

Ugli. Produce of Jamaica.

In Canada it's mid-winter. Wild berry season is faint memory. Nothing succulent will bear on bush or tree for months to come. For those of us raised on the perpetual bounty of the tropics, finding familiar fruity favorites can feel like a Survivor quest.

Just as the spice trade of yore seduced European tastes, so too does NAFTA's econo-facilitation of exotic imports, from unfrozen parts, keep mouths drooling when farms and farmers freeze up north.

Enterprising brokerage, serving Canadian multi-cult reality, augments produce shelves in supermarkets. The ubiquity of Jerk condiments simply isn't the whole food story, so I, for one, choose to head for the fruit displays. My new Bodum juicer has been working overtime since Christmas, and it's kept me in a citrus frame of mind.

I target various types of Orange, Grapefruit, Honey Tangerines, even Tangelos. This time the scavenger hunt yielded Ugli.

No surprise, this fruit is named for its appearance. The somewhat scrotal crumple of the external rind may be visually unbecoming, but it's an easy peel, and, nectar within is touted as being more sweet than tangy.

Ugli is a unique hybrid of Grapefruit, Orange and Tangerine. I'm told it's now grown Down Under, but this is another of those Jamaican originations the world has taken to, and a Jamaican company remains the primary patented producer.

Clearly I'm not one to ignore analogy. I find it difficult to resist extrapolation - beyond reproductive innuendo, into the realm of cultural association itself. As Jamaican in metaphor as it is in genesis, perhaps there is philosophy bred into this fruit.

Out Of Many, One People is Jamaica's motto, mirroring the composite chromosomal makeup of Ugli. Similarly, aspects of Jamaica's socio-schizoid geneology can give one impression while being something else entirely.

Fortunately, stripping away superficial layers ultimately reveals a thing of beauty. The smaller of my two fruit, suitably splayed to expose a suggestion of proto-labial fecundity, cried out to be instagrammed atop Uncle Rick's hand-crafted cake-stand. The larger one I juiced and guzzled, despite finding it not quite as sweet as propaganda promised.

Citrus lends itself easily to grafting, to wit, it's not unusual to pick Oranges and Lemons from the same tree. Come to think of it, this does beg comparison to certain complexities of the contemporary Jamaican zeitgeist.

The good. The bad. And ... the Ugli.

It's Apophis. Did You Miss Me?

Ackeelover Chronicles boasts more than a passing fraternity with the mind behind the campy malevolence of the larger-than-life figurehead Apophis. Fans of Stargate SG-1 know this.

It's a-propos therefore, that this is the established bulletin-board for his intergalactic communications whenever he's in da 'hood, or just feeling the need to talk, as Gods sometimes do.













I read the news today. Oh boy. There it was in black and white. Potentially Dangerous Asteroid - Apophis Bigger Than Thought. But then, I could have told you that. Try nuh miss the memo.

Apophis writes ...

"Nok tel Tau'ri ... it's no secret, having appeared in your global press, that I'm preparing my 2036 assault on your planet. At the moment this involves careful reconnaissance consisting of a series of orbital fly-bys, starting with the one today, should you care to look. Now showing in select skies near you.

My plan is a work-in-progress. Tactics have been altered a bit, since Americans always seem to be able to figure things out. I'm aware that proximity of my orbit has set Australia ablaze yet again, a consequence of having to dodge a careening North Korean satellite. Some people shouldn't be allowed to drive.

It amuses me no end to see the enduring fascination you have with the stars. Star Wars sequels and Star Trek icons Kirk, Spock, Sulu and Uhura. Of course there's Stargate too, what with tweeting O'Neills, an undead Daniel Jackson, pin-up Samantha Carter and that Dark Knight shol'va, Teal'c.

So, prepare for some Goa'uld revenge. The right to carry semi-automatic assault rifles can't avert this strike. Apophis is not scared of Bruce Willis ... and as an unrelated sidenote, since Kanye West has implanted his symbiote in Kim Kardashian, another suitable vessel is needed for my dynasty to continue.

Kree, hol shek ... Apophis (on twitter @actualApophis)

Every effort has been made to preserve veracity in translation. No liability accepted on the part of Ackeelover Chronicles. Any resemblance to persons living or dead purely coincidental.

Don't shoot the messenger.

New Year, 2013 Style.

"(If you) don't know your past, y'don't know your future, ..."

That light-but-heavy hook-line from Tomorrow People by The Melody Makers, along with New Year's Day, the soaring rock standard by U2, always feature high on my January playlist.

Time didn't stop last year. We're all still here, with apologies to Syria, Cote d'Ivoire and Sandy Hook. I'm home, with my customary Ackee and Saltfish, while America stares down a rapid-fire succession of fiscal cliffs, and Canada sees past, future and protest in Theresa Spence.

2012 turned out to be The Year of The Gangnam. A Psy tsunami soaked the planet in a smile, and Canada came good again; leave it to Bieber - and Mark Carney. It's a good thing predictions are speculative 'cos what comes next could be even sillier than my reggaefied Gangnam to di dollarstore, Party-Castanet Riddim.



Yes, I've seen the signs. An overdressed monkey roams Ikea in Toronto. Siri usurps social intercourse, and "Christianmingle" could become a recognized English verb, via tele-advertising.

Dictionary: "to Christianmingle" - the act, or sound, of religion and social-networks merging with the-urge-to-merge.

My parents met in New York at a New Year's Eve party in 1953. It could be said this represents my earliest genesis, and each year with a 3 since has proved prosperous, with Positive Vibration. Kismet. Numerology. Superstition. Obeah. Callitwhatchawill ...

 

Today, 2013 already has me feeling like a sweepstake-winner. 



Little toy store.

It's that shop you can't walk by without further investigation.

This community calls itself a town, and in most ways it is. There's a Walmart (a sure sign of commercial critical-mass in North America), two dedicated supermarkets and an equal number of pharmacies. The Salvation Army runs a high-turnover thrift shop and parking meters get converted into free Holiday gifts.

A lone McDonald's duels with two vibrant Tim Horton's, and a similar number of Chinese restaurants offer prosaic Asian comfort food. There's a cosmo-style sushi joint, a branch of most leading Canadian Banks, and main street has at least one of every other establishment typical of such locales.

But in other ways the town is more like a bigger village. You get that sense coming to the occluded streetfront window. Fresh. Innocent. Exciting. The little toy store represents everything that's charming about a place with a population of 16,000 and the magic only gets more palpable at Christmas time.














Where there are children there should be beehive destinations like this. Inside, a honeycomb of busybees doing what comes naturally. Wide-eyed and laughing. Playing. Praying at Santa.

Maybe my sentimentality this Xmas has been keened by the prominent portents of impending apocalypse we see around us. Gunned down six-year-olds is not only good for the hyperbole business, but also for the business of dreams.

Y'see, adults now have added reason to contemplate the blessing of dreams as motivation in young lives. How much doesn't happen if lives end at six Christmasses?

Magnetic slime. Themed Jigsaws. Dolls. Trinkets. Games, and children to verify their gravitas. For me, that's this Christmas, and my wish for all who read here. May everyone look around through the eyes of a child these holidays. And hug a lot.