Category Archives: Canada/Tungaska

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What’s outside the rectangles with the green entities, then? First, let me emphasis or reiterate that the reasons behind The Flintstone’s Great Gazoo being brought into the present collage are not just because he’s green like Ray Walston’s similarly green clad Martian character or actually green like the Incredible Hulk, although that’s obviously the main surface tie-in between the 3 framed images. No, this is more Tungaske magic in action here, explained in a post from about a month ago called “Town Oddities”. I won’t repeat the information except to state that the Tungaske woman in the photo is also green clad, has the implications of worm *helmet* — accidental in the photo, it seems — and that she shares other characteristics with the live action Gazoo character. It was very natural, given this background, for me as a collagist to transpose the large silver fish from “gloved green helmeted short plump smiling fisher-woman” to “gloved green helmeted short plump smiling Gazoo” and go from there.

Looking at stuff outside the inserted rectangles now, we have the return of 12 Oz Mouse’s Fitz in the center of “Goodwater Goodland 03”, drinking his beer once more. He’s always got at least one or two stashed away somewhere on or around his body in the series, it seems, and can whip it out at any time. Witness this:

Fitz obviously is associated with the other green beings in the collage, starting with the Great Gazoo as explained before in “Boos Interpretation 17” and working out from there. Gazoo’s silver fish can also be seen as booze — two imbibers, then. As far as the Martian and Ray Walston go, we must keep in mind that Tungaske inexplicably has a large Martian crater named after it. And for (Bill) Bixby and The Hulk we must remember that Iron County Missouri, which contains both a Bixby and a Banner (about 15 miles apart), also has an even closer Goodwater and Goodland between them. Bill *Bixby* starred as David “Bruce” *Banner* in The Incredible Hulk show to follow up on his co-starring role in the earlier “My Favorite Martian”. The proximity of Goodwater to Goodland here (also framed by the north and south county lines of Iron) led me directly to Tungaske and this landmark, 611 page history book on the community…

We have a complex interweave of collaged associations building upon clues from maps, TV and film sources, books, photos, Second Life, and more — leading up to “Goodwater Goodland 03”. And we have these actual names culled from an Iron County map in the present collage (bordering the “My Favorite Martian” insert), just like in the former two collages of the set.

Back to Fitz and the center of the collage: Behind the green mouse is the composite Tungaske and Tungaske Cemetery signs we’ve seen in “I Must Be Going. Hello!”, which stand for a town in danger of dying out, leaving only the dead to rule. Behind it is what appears to be a sunset or sunrise, but is actually the top of Lisa Simpson’s cartoon sun-like head. If it is sunset, this could be despair. If it is sunrise: hope. We are going to assume this is a hopeful situation for Tungaske, and that the town and its cemetery will not become “as one” here, since Lisa Simpson keeps appearing in Boos collages to come. She is the ordained savior artist.

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The central figure of “Booses” is the Great Gazoo from the popular 1960s animation show, The Flintstones. But here he’s seen in his live-action version from the 2000 movie “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.” More on the Great Gazoo here:

The Great Gazoo is a tiny, green, floating alien who was exiled to Earth from his home planet Zetox as punishment for having invented a doomsday machine, a weapon of immense destructive power. His invention was a button which if pressed would destroy the universe in an explosive “ZAM,” though he insists he made it on a whim (“I wanted to be the first on my block to have one!”) with no intent of using it. Gazoo was discovered by Fred and Barney when his flying saucer crashed; Gazoo recognizes Fred’s and Barney’s world as prehistoric Earth, implying Zetox banished him through time as well as space.

Gazoo refers to Fred and Barney as “dum-dums” and constantly causes problems for them. He can materialize and dematerialize objects, teleport, freeze time, travel through time, and perform other remarkable feats, but when he attempts to help out Fred and Barney, he usually ends up causing even more trouble. Although his powers are frequently described as “magic,” they are more likely based on incredibly advanced science, in accordance with the third of Clarke’s three laws. The only people who are able to see Gazoo are Fred, Barney, and the children, because they believe in him; animals also can see him. A running gag is that Fred argues with Gazoo while Wilma believes that he is talking to himself. When their daughter, Pebbles, says “Gazoo,” Wilma thinks Pebbles is sneezing.

And a funny addition here:

The Great Gazoo is also referenced in The Simpsons episode “The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase”, a metafictional episode looking at alleged future developments in the series that would never come to pass, which include Ozmodiar, a floating green alien that only Homer could see. Ozmodiar eventually appeared (twice) in The Simpsons episode “HOMR”.

Metafiction rocks! Back to “Booses”: The Great Gazoo holds a silver fish in his hands, and seems to be eating it. A small white cartoon ghost hovers to his left, holding a mug of booze or beer. Ironic juxtaposition. The fish also has the word “BOOS” across it, acting as a kind of forward projected buckle for the Gazoo’s belt. This seems to imply that the fish also represents booze, and that the Gazoo is imbibing too, just like the little ghost.

Notice the very similar color of the animated Gazoo and 12 Oz Mouse’s Fitz in these images; I just happened to save them in the same folder on my computer:

Fitz is also an imbiber of alcohol. In fact, he’s always at least a little drunk in the show. So I think it’s safe to say that Gazoo and Fitz the Mouse are supposed to be overlapped in this collage, given that a duplicate of Gazoo’s right arm holds Fitz’s letter to the left. The green-blue hummingbird is a dart. Gazoo’s helmet even has the shape of a inverted hummingbird feeder of sorts. But what of the fish? I guess this is as good a place as any to remark that in collage 3, another green being (Hulk) — seen through the doorway of the Boss, MO rock house also appearing in collages 1 and 2 — has the head of not a fish but a bird between its teeth…

… and I was conscious of the association at the time, since collage 3 was actually finalized after collage 22 here. Bird and fish are suppose to be tied together, leading in from the “Can You Be More Pacific?” miniature, or collage 21b as it were.

Collage 23, “Goodwater Goodland 03”, contains the same image of the Gazoo, so we can just continue our analysis by examining that work. The collage is unusual in several aspects. One is that it shares the same name with two earlier, proximate collages of the Boos series, or “Goodwater Goodland 01” (collage 09) and “Goodwater Goodland 02” (collage 10). The unusual part here is it comes a full 13 collages after the latter of that set. Why the reappearance of an already dispensed name? It’s because we have much of the same pictorial framework in place for the present one: we have the return of the mural picture from collage 10 in particular, with rectangles removed that depict smaller representations of the same mural seen from different angles found in collage 09. In Boos Interpretation 07, I describe how this flipping of background and foreground stands for a tajitu situation, where yang and yin energies have interchanged.

“Goodwater Goodland 02”

Instead of the rust colored funerary book appearing “behind” the rectangle areas removed from the Tungaske mural, we now have 3 separate pictures of *green entities*.

Of course there’s Gazoo again at the top (sans fish this time), then part of a DVD cover for the show “My Favorite Martian” to the left, another 60s TV staple like The Flintstones, and then the return of Bixby and his Incredible Hulk character in the last rectangle to the right. Bixby just happened to be the co-star of the earlier “My Favorite Martian”, alongside star Ray Walston (who played the Martian of the title), and I included his full name in the culled image to make the Martian-Hulk association more open. The Great Gazoo, although not technically Martian (although sharing the same general color, shape, and *helmet* as a true Martian from another cartoon classic)*, certainly fits in as another related, green alien. To complete what we see in the rectangles, Gazoo also has “Lisa Simpson eyes”.

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* Interesting (The Great Gazoo vs. Marvin The Martian):

http://dev.xversusy.com/challenges/Marvin_the_Martian_vs_The_Great_Gazoo

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We draw back out to see the whole of Tungaske in “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific”, the 20th collage of the Boos series. The title refers to the town’s 2 avenues featured in the miniatures of “Atlantic” and “Pacific” — 2 apiece. And we will return to the same Pacific Avenue house currently for sale in the next set of miniatures coming up. In “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific”, we continue to evolve the various stories building up in the village. An image of Ohio’s former Great Black Swamp has been inserted in its center, roughly situated between the two avenues in question. Boxy Brown with see-through hair is positioned on its upper end from the picture’s perspective, opposite fellow Aqua Teen Hunger Force character Master Shake, also appearing as partially transparent.

This is yet another yin-yang reference, since Shake is very white and Boxy Brown is an abstract representation of an African-American (“black”) man. We’ve seen these same two characters placed on opposite sides of another body of water in the Stonethrow collage “Animation Station”, the first part of the ending tetraptych of that May 2015 series.

Also returning from the May collage is homeless man, already used in collage 09 of the present series (“Goodwater Goodland 01”). Here he is detached from Boxy Brown’s hair and appears below him instead. The sewer top he holds down with one hand now marks the exact spot of a Tungaske labyrinth also referred to in “Wrong Way Whales”, and likewise circular in form. Then opposite homeless man in the the upper left corner is flying Superman from “Superman III” holding Richard Prior in his arms. And then the last collaged-in element to the aerial photo of Tungaske in “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific” is a central slice of the book cover for “The Ordained”, a mystery novel by Terence Faherty. It appears nearer homeless man in the lower right corner, and in the exact spot of the house featured in “Hucka Homebee”, collage 11 of the Boos series.

The image of the Great Black Swamp is also featured in another Stonethrow collage called “Beware (The) Healers” that we’ve already examined in reference to collage 12. This swamp use to exist just beyond the western edge of Lake Erie. In connection with the present collage’s title, this is then neither Atlantic nor Pacific but more toward the center of America, in the Great Lakes region.

A description of “The Ordained” from Terence Faherty’s site:

The residents of the isolated town of Rapture, founded by an Adventist sect, the Ordained of God, are disappearing one by one. The Ordained believed that the world would end in 1844 and that they would be taken bodily into heaven. Now, one hundred and fifty years after their rapture failed to occur, something very similar is happening to their descendants.

Another small town, another one that’s “losing” people. Only Owen Keane, the book’s protagonist and an ordained minister himself, can save the town by solving its central mystery. I think this ties into art being able to save Tungaske. The fellow “junk” artist who lives in the house of collage 11 becomes the savior archetype, and in synch with fellow deity Lisa “The Vegetarian” Simpson. The overlaid swamp symbolizes the morass, the abyss, a kind of mass grave like a cemetery but also a stand-in for hell, perhaps. Door to The Abyss, then. Richard Prior is black like the swamp, but also he is a “prior”, or one who is stuck in time. Rescue by Superman represents ascent to heaven, or perhaps rapture. The swamp is no longer a threat. All these pictorial elements tie together to present a scene of hope beyond despair, eternity beyond earthly bondage. The town can be saved. The world can be saved. Like the labyrinth, a satisfying mystery novel directs a plot line into and out of a core dilemma.

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Well, what we can see immediately is the bookend type framework provided by normally colored Fitz on the left side, and inverse colored Fitz — or at least his torso and his beer — on the right side. This reminds us of the pillars Boaz and Jachin guarding the entrance to the Temple of Solomon in Biblical times.

And, of course, this ties into the yin-yang symbols again. But the inverted Fitz to the right is partially replaced, like a bionic entity, by parts of a normally colored Lisa Simpson or Lisa The Vegetarian as I call her here more commonly, mainly most of her head a little bit of her body. This exchange seems important, since Lisa, when taking a foothold in the Boos series with this collage in her true cartoon form, sticks around to appear in many of the remaining works that wrap it up. We’ve seen Fitz before, starting in collage 06 — in Nautilus City with a meteor flying toward his head — and continuing in collage 14 — head pulverized by meteor in Tungaske. Here he is sans meteor, and leans over to stare at a hole in the ground. This particular image involving Fitz the Mouse was used in several other pre-Boos collages of mine, including the fully animated tetraptych that ended the last series in May (Stonethrow). In fact, the hole appears at the very center of this large collage, perhaps the most complicated I have created so far.

So the hole, and Fitz along with it, represents *center*. But in “I Must Be Going. Hello!” the hole is pushed to one side as far as you can get. Here the leaning-in motion of examining Fitz is emphasized by the position of characters to his right (Peanut and Insanoflex). What is in the hole? We know it is yet another paradox, which sometimes goes by the name of Greenup/yellow down.

bb:

The bug goes down as Don tries to piss (down). *Freeze* the (12 Oz Mouse) DVD, then unpause as the green liquid erupts *up* from the ground as the narrator for Don Aman says “it finally came” — the yellow piss erupts *down*. This the concept of Greenup/Yellow Down, Hucka D.

Hucka D.:

Indeed it is. Or was.

In looking at it closer, I think the relationship of the 2 Fitz’s and Lisa represents another flipping, like we had between collages 9 and 10 but in one picture this time. The Boos collage series is staking another claim to its own identity, building upon a base resonance of Tungaske. Greenup/Yellow Down is a concept that is moved into the past and away from the present center, and, in resonance with collage 11, little front-and-center Hucka D. seems to be putting his stamp of approval on this idea. Boos is setting itself apart from previous series like Stonethwaite, like Falmouth and all the others. And it is doing so through Lisa. Let’s see where this takes us…

*And* I’ve just redesigned this collage by moving the right side directly against Fitz’s bottle, which makes Fitz a true framer for the Hucka D. doll now at the actual epicenter of all this. I rest my case.

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With collages 16 & 17 of the Boos series, we now move into the realm of the true miniatures, which I suppose make their first appearance here in my digital collage series, or at least as far as I can recall. This is by necessity more than design: I seemed to be running out of online Tungaske photos to use as collage bases and “resorted” to several realty company’s low rez pictures from houses for sale in the village. The two places that kept appearing in searches happened to be on Atlantic and Pacific avenues, parallel to Sask Avenue just seen in collage 15, as already stated (the latter street also previously viewed in the foreground of collage 11, “Hucka Homebee”). I liked the way the names indicated an oceanic frame, as for the continental US as a whole — or Canada as a whole as I’m thinking through it again.

I’m not sure how much there is to scrutinize about these mini-collages, 4 in number. But let’s see what happens. Here’s the two from “Atlantic” to begin, which I jointly assigned to collage 16:

“Atlantic 01”

“Atlantic 02”

I was also digging back into early collages series for images by this point, and came up with a juxtaposition of “Falling Dorothy 01” and “Mr. Bean with turkey on head” for “Atlantic 01”, and then “Waving Truman” and “Crouching Baker B.” for “Atlantic 02”. The first presents a tableau of imbalance, hosted by a many angled, upstairs room. The colors of the images match those of the room. Is this truly a “Matrix”? Is it a turkey of a house (sorry)? The second begs perhaps a couple more questions. What is Crouching Baker examining to the left with his magnifying glass? Is he checking the wiring, the plumbing? Truman waves howdy, ready to move in at a moment’s notice. As soon as Baker finishes inspecting whatever he’s inspecting (told you there may not be much to examine).

The two mini-collages of “Pacific” are slightly more complex. In “Pacific Won”, we have handless, lego-ish dude seen in past collages attending to a prostrate Mr. Bean with an image of Nauvoo Illinois’ Lake Horton emerging from his back. A little bit more meat to this won one; something we can perhaps gnaw on.

“Pacific Won”

Lake Horton can be seen as a *terminal* image for the huge Falmouth series in an excised remake of its collage 43, a two part animation entitled “Cover Up”.

“Cover Up 02”

I won’t show the remake because it’s the same combination of images now seen in “Pacific Won” here: Lake Horton emerging from the back of the identical prone image of Mr. Bean. Has Mr. Bean actually drowned in this earlier collage instead of merely drinking water from the tarn? Is this a dark, malevolent spirit departing a dead body? The grey dude who has lost his hands: does this symbolize the inability to grasp physical objects from the afterlife? I believe this is a moment of death, leading from the occluded Mr. Bean in “Atlantic 01”, with senses such as sight and hearing impaired. This is a body on the decline; the headless turkey obscuring the head of a man, also making him headless in turn. You are what you eat, I guess.

And the same handless grey dude appears in the Falmouth collage, more in the foreground now than beside Mr. Bean. But he also lacks a head, or it is covered by an 8 ball. While this dude is without hands, there are *two* other disattached hands in “Cover Up 02” (yes I realize disattached isn’t a word but I still like to use it at times). What are they doing? The larger one in the foreground is covering up two cubic blue objects (Cubic Peanut and Big E). What are they saying to each other, these two cubic beings who may be dual aspects of one entity? Why does it have to be covered up, per the title? Is this also a “living dialog” snuffed out by the fated hand of death?

Let’s just leave it that “Pacific Won” depicts a moment of death where the soul departs the body, but is still trapped, perhaps, in the terrestrial realm like a (hungry?) ghost.

If so, “Pacific Too” may be a resolution of sorts…

“Pacific Too”

… Lemony World guided by Lisa the Vegetarian to the rescue. She gobbles no meat and thus no turkey. She becomes not the wildly darting, ever mobile *fowl* but remains plant and mineral, rooted in Earth’s fair soil. She does not appear in “Pacific Too” but is inferred by another Simpsons character Martin Prince, another waver who appears very early in the Greenup series from 2004 — in fact, the very first digital collage I made. He is an original being, then, an Adam for my collages. He might have a love interest for Lisa, although in the Simpsons series this is more commonly assigned to brother Bart’s best bud Milhouse, if I recall correctly. And we also have more lemons in this first collage as well, conscious reference to another Simpsons episode “Lemon of Troy” talked about in other places on this blog. And, oh yeah, Martin also has a magnifying glass, like Crouching Baker. He thus shares elements in common with both the characters in “Atlantic 02”.

“Greenup 01: “Lemon Tree and Niche”

And then the third and last element added to the base photo of “Pacific Too” is The Beatles’ yellow submarine, which also makes several appearances in Greenup. Here in its diagonal form I believe it represents *positive* ascension and correct escape from the Earthly plane. And I forgot to mention that there’s a similar third, collaged-in image from “Atlantic 02”, also found in the Greenup series. I’ll just say here that the miniature burning car dropped from Truman’s waving hand is more in line with malevolent, horizontal/vertical forces, and ones that pin the soul to the ground.

Despite being a miniature, I believe that “Pacific Too” is a considerably better collage than “Finding the Niche”. I’ve learned about putting these things together in the meantime. So there’s that element of growth to throw into the interpretation as well. And growth through contraction is sometimes a way to go.

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Apparently I’m not done with the series (!) I’m going to have to modify the Boos gallery to accommodate new work, however. We’ll see how it goes. Excitement!

“This Town Ain’t Big Enough”

“This Town Ain’t Big”

“Enough”

“Battling The Boos”

And now I’m *really* out of room in the gallery. So this may be it; unable to extend the gallery upwards, it seems (btw, land is up for sale in Minoa again).

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A sphere is also found in the next collage of the Boos series, another 2 part animation. I call it “The Boos Brothers”. Mars is the ball in question now, looming impossibly large in a lakeside setting. Two round creatures baring sharp teeth fly in front of it in part 1, who I know to be the Boos brothers of the title. Perhaps they also stand for Mars’ two moons Phobos and Deimos. They head toward a rust colored silhouette of a woman perched on the bank of the lake. This is actually another statue created for the same Tungaske art event that produced the sphere covered in collage 12 before this. The word RUST appears on the sandy incline below it. A spaceman walks in the lake carrying a large box. Peter from The Fringe swims directly in front of him (or her). He looks toward the rusty woman, seemingly in alarm. His head is framed by the spaceman’s box.

In part 2 of 2, the Boos Brothers have almost moved off-camera to the right. The rusty female torso is nowhere to be seen; have the brothers *eaten* her? The spaceman has moved in front of Peter. His box has shrunk, and he can carry it with one arm. The other arm, now free, reaches toward a tiny cave in the lake bank. We cannot see the hand of the arm. Has it also been “eaten” or somehow lopped off? Or is it just queerly hidden in the shadow?

So what is the meaning of all this? Mars, I believe, is a direct extension of the yin-yang ball seen in the previous collage, and refers to the question, “what’s black and white and red all over?” The traditional answer to this koan is a newspaper or, sometimes, an embarrassed skunk or a zebra with a rash. Here it could be the red planet Mars. A 31 kilometer Martian crater has been named for the town of Tungaske, but noone seems to know the reason why. The boos creatures are perhaps confused about their place of origin. Is it the Martian crater or the town that the crater is named for? At any rate, we know from the next collage that they and their numerous brethren in both black and white forms are headed toward Tungaske en masse.

The boos creatures are introduced here because it was at this general point I decided to name the still evolving collage series that name, after a village in Jasper County, Illinois. I explain some of this in the Boos Overview 01 post. I googled “boos” images and all these round eyed toys came popping up. The two I used in the collage are apparently Mario ghost boos, a malevolent strain.

And I should also put forth the idea here that the map duad Jasper-Newton itself is a yin-yang symbol. In Illinois, the county seat Newton is submerged inside the county of Jasper, as if a seed. In Arkansas the situation is reversed. This duad also represents the two sides of our US of A, or north (Illinois) and south (Arkansas). They also stand for conscious and unconscious states of being, a bigger tableau. If Mars is both, then we are truly dealing with powers of a high intensity indeed.

http://www.insistpost.com/cycle-of-karma-and-reincarnation/

Interesting reading about “hungry ghosts” here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost

It is believed that the soul contains elements of both yin and yang. The yin is the kui, or demon part, and the yang is the shen, or spirit part. When death occurs, the kui should return to earth, and the shen to the grave or family shrine. If a ghost is neglected, it will become a kui. The shen, or ancestral spirit watches over its descendants, and can bring good fortune if properly worshipped.

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