RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

I’m going to go ahead and fly out to California in the morning, so I have to leave with something so profound that you can think about it for an entire week.

I don’t believe in coincidence. It’s not that I think there’s some consciousness out there setting up fancy little scenarios that make you think “that was weird.” I just think that our capacity to understand the universe is extremely limited.

When an event happens that we call a coincidence, it’s either something completely meaningless that our mind draws false connections with, or we have a sense that there is a connection, but lack the capacity or ability to perceive it’s cause or meaning.

That brings me to the biggest ‘coincidence’ within 100,000,000 miles. Our perfect solar eclipses are almost infinitely improbable. The sun and moon have nearly identical angular sizes when viewed from earth. The sun is 400 times wider than the moon, but also 400 times farther away. There’s no reason for this. Beyond that, like humans, these near perfect eclipses are only a temporary phenomenon. The moon is literally inching away from earth. Within 50 million years our perfect eclipses will be a thing of the past. That’s a blink of an eye.

As far as space and time go, we are incredibly lucky to be able to witness this. I hate to sound like an asshole, but the whole thing reminds me of an old Buddhist teaching. The story has to do with the incredible ‘coincidence’ that we exist at all.

“Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole there.

A wind from the east would push it west, a wind from the west would push it east. A wind from the north would push it south, a wind from the south would push it north.

And suppose a blind turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every one hundred years.

Now what do you think - Would that blind turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?”

“It would be a sheer coincidence, Lord, that the blind turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole.”

“It’s likewise a sheer coincidence that one obtains the human state….”

I have no idea if eclipses are just pure chance, or if they have any fundamental reason for being that I can’t comprehend. Is it natural that they’d exist at the same time as us? Is there any connection at all? Who knows?

Whatever the meaning(lessness) no one can argue that they haven’t shaped our own history. Through time, eclipses have been both feared and revered. Battles have been fought or stopped because of them. Mathematics have been created to predict them. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was proven by one.

In some Star Trek style interplanetary style federation of civilizations, this could be earth’s big tourist draw. But until then, here’s an eclipse calendar. Go see one before you die.

This is just one of those shots that’s so hard to get. The planet Saturn, aligned between the Cassini spaceprobe and the sun, in order to get that total eclipse lighting. Just a great photo.

This morning I’m riding my bike to work and when I pass by my car and see that the driver’s side front tire is flat.

“Shit.” I think to myself.

The car is parked in an alley street, so after work I head on over and decide to put on the donut and take it down to the auto shop about a mile from my house. I loosen the lug nuts, jack up the car and put on the spare. I lower the car and notice that the spare is just about as flat as the other tire. But it’s on and I only have to go a mile. I’ll drive slowly… I think. About 100 feet later, the tire is off the rim and I’m driving on metal. I pull over immediately, now on 10th street in a very precarious spot.

“Shit” I think to myself.

Next I go inside and grab my bicycle pump. I’ll put some air in the flat tire and put it back on the car. Hopefully it’s a slow leak and I can make it to the auto-shop. I pull the car a third of a block up to a small, private parking lot and steal someone’s space so that I don’t get killed trying to change a tire in a center city street. I get everything back out, but realize that the car is on a slant.

I go looking for a rock to stick behind the back tire, so the car, when jacked up won’t fall on and kill me. I find a perfect piece of concrete and just for good measure, go looking for a piece for the other tire. Instead I find a homeless man drinking steel reserve in the back of the parking lot.

He becomes my companion as I re-change the tire. I learn all about his life. To tell you the truth, he’s was absolutely fascinating character. 42 years old, grew up in Roxborough, still torn up over a girl he dated down in Florida who left him so that she could whore herself without hearing his shit about it. Mentally ill ex-junky, HIV positive, a man who freely uses the word ‘nigger’ loudly and without hesitation in the course of a public conversation.

He seemed harmless, but I did not leave my tools in his reach. If I had a free hand, I kept the lug nut wrench in it, just in case he tried to rob me and I had to beat his head in. He talked at me for 20 minutes, completely self aware of his situation, but completely resigned to continue on with it.

I had no success putting air in the tire and decided to drive at 3mph to the repair shop. I lowered the car and parted ways with my vagrant friend. I gave him $2 to do with whatever he saw fit, declined to give him a ride to South street and headed towards Monroe at Broad and Washington. I thought they closed at 7PM

I pulled into Monroe at 6:50 and the place was apparently closed. I parked in the lot, plastered notes all over the car advertising my situation and my imminent return and asking not be towed. I got my bike out of the back of the car, reattached the wheel, gathered my things, zipped up my hoodie and got on my bike to head home. First though, I decided to check the hours on the window. When I got to the entrance, I saw a sign.

To better serve our customers, we’ve moved to 2300 Oregon Ave.

“Shit” I thought.

I got out the pump again and this time, for some reason it worked. I put 20 lbs of pressure in the tire and headed over to the gas station at Broad and Christian. Meanwhile several situations were fast developing as cop cars were racing all over the place, pulling people over and calling in the helicopters. Bad night all around.

At the gas station, I filled up the tire and headed down to Washington Ave. At 10th I found a gas station with a repair service. That’s where the car is now. The gas station was open, but the repair shop is closed until the morning. Tomorrow at 8AM, I go back and see what the situation is.

I rode home to the sound of helicopters and police sirens.

Soon George Bush will say that he’s though long and hard about things and that the answer to Iraq is more troops. I say this because that’s the line being taken by those who shape the line, but this is also a good time to remember the lessons our president learned from the Vietnam War. When asked about those lessons, he said:

“One lesson is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while… We’ll succeed, unless we quit.”

I don’t really have anything else to say.

I was an infant when the Phillies last won the World Series. I was in pre-school when the Sixers won it all in 1983. Since then I’ve either watched Philly sports teams lose on the way to the top, or scratch their way up only to get their asses knocked off by whoever else made it up that year.

I have many great Philly sports memories, but overall this city is more frustrating than blue balls on a teenager. I have no conscious memory of a parade. I have no hope to see one anytime soon.

With Allen Iverson moving on, I feel it’s my responsibility as a Philadelphian to share my favorite sports memory.

Iverson wasn’t going to lead the Sixers to greatness anytime soon, but not too many years ago, he almost did just that. My all time favorite Philly Sports moment, a game better than 1000 Rocky sequels, was Game 1 of the 2001 NBA finals. The Sixers struggled to the finals, going 7 games in series against Toronto and (Indiana?). The Lakers, led by Kobe and Shaq rolled through the playoffs, sweeping every series. The Sixers traveled to LA for game 1. No one gave them a chance in hell.

I had a few people over and it turned into a small party. The lady in the restaurant below my apartment rang my bell before the game went into overtime. She said we were shaking the glasses in the bar by jumping up and down on the floor. When the Sixers won that game in OT, thanks in totality to Allen Iverson’s play, that was without a doubt, the absolute best I’ve felt as a Philly fan. Here’s an article and some video from that game:

[link]

Back in the pre-blog days of this site I wrote something about skinned bunnies and their affects on my childhood brain. I searched the internet for a good photo of skinned bunnies, but couldn’t find anything. On Saturday, I photographed some bunnies in the window of D’Angelo Brothers down in the Italian Market.

There’s something very disturbing about skinned bunnies. Obviously, their faint resemblance to human bodies is at the root of it, but almost equally as unsettling is the mental image of a cute, fluffy, little bunny meeting the reality of a skinned, splayed, decapitated animal lying on a bed of ice. That’s what got to me as a kid and that’s what I tried to capture in that window. The neon reflecting in the cellophane adds to the strange atmosphere.

I’m a meat eater. I’m taking a friend out to dinner on Saturday for her birthday. Her favorite place is Monks and my favorite dish there is the rabbit. I’ll probably order that. As a meat eater, I can’t possibly be disturbed by the reality of the meat and call myself an honest person. There’s a whole lot I could write about meat and the importance of knowing and respecting where it comes from, but that’s really for some other post. Until then, skinned bunnies:

I’ve got a parking problem. Case in point. It’s rush hour. I’m on 19th street between Chestnut and Walnut. I see a space and stop. It’s a tight one, but I’m sure there’s enough room. Traffic is thick and I have to be fast. I pull in and cut very hard. I’m barely in, but I’m in. I pull back and forth 6, 8, 10 times. Finally I’m straight and snug to the curb. I get out. The front of the car has less than an inch clearance. I can’t stick my finger in the space between cars. I walk around to the back of the car and it’s almost the same story. An inch, an inch and a half at most separates my car from the one behind me. I’m so impressed with myself that I kick myself for not having my camera.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. I’ve parked in some very tight spots. But now the problem. I get home. There’s a spot on my block. A big spot. I’m in a little Civic and this is big enough for a Hummer. I stop and back up. The angle’s off, very soft, but I have plenty of room… but I can’t cut in. I’m up on the curb. I go back and forth a little. Backing onto the sidewalk, coming back down on the street, unable to get myself the clearance I need. I pull out and pull in again, this time successfully.

It seems that unchallenged, I lose my focus. This is a story about parking, but it translates well.

Well the inevitable has finally happened. This site has been discovered by at least 1 of my co-workers. (Hi “M.”)

O’well. It’s not a bad thing, or at least not as bad as if they’d found out about amputee side project or one of other more unspeakable pastimes. But that’s a worry for another day.

I already knew that the site had been, or would eventually be discovered by my web savvy colleagues. Between people googling my name, my mentioning where I work on the site and even mixing work projects with posts it was an inevitability.

But before my suspicions were limited. Someone would bring up something that I posted and I couldn’t remember if I had mentioned it to them here in the regular world. One co-worker sometimes ends emails with “that’s all for now” and I squint, wondering why. (Hi “R.”) A few artists and various fringe employees are well aware of it and it was only a matter of time.

That time has come. The walls that I so studiously erected around myself and my rent paying work just got a new window. Hello everyone.

This morning I saw the sunrise over the east. This morning the east included South Philly, Camden, oil refineries, Philadelphia International Airport, some more heavy industry and the old Navy Yard. (not Old Navy, but old Navy… and strangely, the new Urban Outfitters headquarters.)

This morning I woke up at 6AM, which is a terrible thing to do on a Sunday morning. But when you’ve got nothing much to do for a while, fatigue can be interesting. I’m not going back to sleep. I’m just gonna roll with it for a while.

This morning I drove from Broad and Pattison all the way back into the part of the city with the tall buildings. I considered driving the whole run of Broad, but I was very hungry and wanted another cup of coffee. The Oak Lane diner was way too far away. It’s 9AM and I haven’t gotten that second third etc cup and I still haven’t eaten. There’s 1 egg in the refrigerator. There are 4 or 5 kinds of cheese.

The other day, I made an impulse purchase of Prima Donna cheese.

This morning I dropped my girlfriend off at the airport, which means I’m living alone for a week. In a week I fly out to meet her in California. A week after that I come back to Philadelphia.

It’s warm here, but there are still insects alive outside in California.

I haven’t done any Christmas shopping, but I’ve been thinking about what I’m getting and for who. I’m ready to start making some purchases.

This story doesn’t go anywhere from here. I could say something out of left field, like our perception is so tremendously skewed by our ignorance, biology and limited capacity that all we experience is a fragmentary illusion of some false reality… because I was reading some person’s myspace page and they were writing about that. That was a few minutes before I started writing this. I was tired and that thought seemed like a nice idea. But actually right now I’m just hungry and want to get another cup of coffee. It’s early on a Sunday, maybe I’ll walk around the city for a while.

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of fun digging through the trash. The best time of year is May/June on Penn campus and West Philly. Penn kids throw away tons of interesting shit. But that’s not what I’m here to tell you all about.

Right now, Tower Records is throwing away all sorts of items. This evening I found a bunch of signed posters from various artists. I didn’t have the time or opportunity to go through it all, but someone might find something they want in there. For example, I hate Citizen Cope, but if you like him, there’s a big autographed Citizen Cope poster-board lying in the dumpster behind Tower on Sansom street. Go knock yourself out.

myspace

Last week, a Philadelphia Weekly restaurant review for Giwa, a small new Korean place on Sansom street began:

“Don’t fear the kimchi. It’s easier said than done, perhaps.”

I found myself thinking, what? Kimchi? Weird? An object of fear? But I guess for your average non-Korean American, I grew up around a very unusual amount of Korean food. My family kept kimchi around, not constantly, but frequently. For years we’d trek out to 48th and Spruce to the (now closed) Korean restaurant and supermarket.

But anyway, my point to all this is, Korean food is excellent and this city has absolutely no shortage of amazing restaurants. Sure there’s Pastoral on 13th, Miran on Chestnut and now Giwa on Sansom. These places are just fine, but the best restaurants are well outside center city.

Mark my words, in the next year or two Korean food will be ‘discovered’ and suddenly become all the rage. At this point though, unless you’re Korean, you’ll still feel like to be the ignorant foreign speaking, ethnically distinct minority in the dining rooms of the best places. To add to the mystery, I don’t actually know the names of my two favorite Korean restaurants in the city, but I can give you a pretty good description of where they are.

First, head out to 69th Street. Take whatever road you need to get out to 69th and Market. Continue under the station and keep going straight. Soon you’ll get to a crazy ass intersection. There will be traffic coming in 6 directions or so and trolley tracks all over the place. Bear left. In the middle of all this mess is an island of concrete with a parking lot. In the corner of that lot is what looks like a White Castle. It isn’t. It’s a damn good restaurant. Inside is a very nice lady who cooks up everything right behind the diner counter.

The menus are carved into slabs of wood and in… Korean. I’m lucky enough to have a translation, but I seem to have lost the digital file for it. But it doesn’t matter, just be sure to get the seafood pancake and some soju and take recommendations for the rest. The place is surprisingly pricey and CASH ONLY. Come prepared.

69th Street has more than a few Korean restaurants, including the place with my favorite name ever: Wu Rae Kwan.

Next it’s up Broad Street… way up.

Did you know that Philly has a very large Korean neighborhood up in Olney? It’s huge. My favorite restaurant here is extremely hard to find… but here’s how to get there.

Take Broad north to Olney Avenue. Make a right and go straight to Front Street. On your left is Olney Plaza. You’ll see a big white sign. It’s square, it glows and it’s in Korean. Make a right on front, down what looks like a dead end street. When you get to the end, there’s actually a driveway there. Take it down and around into the parking lot at the bottom. Park in front of the big building. The restaurant is upstairs. Downstairs is a Karaoke joint… individual rooms with big screens and couches. It’s a surreal experience and advisable only after an enormous amount of alcohol.

But anyway, go upstairs. Once the large wait staff can track someone down who can speak a small amount of broken English, order the BBQ and feast. You’ll probably get a few free dishes, maybe even a couple extra entrees. Eat, sip plum wine and watch the video game championships on the televisions mounted in the corners of the large, comfortable dining room.

One night I showed up at close to midnight with a group of 7, ate and drank for hours and left a still bustling room. Both the restaurants I mentioned are open very late.

Here’s one other important note. If there’s a button on the table, the waiter/waitress will not come to your table until you press that button. The second you push it though, expect prompt attention. Other than that, explore and enjoy. There’s absolutely nothing scary about kimchi! That’s all for now.

I used to be a humor writer. One of my main online outlets was over at epinions.com, where I’d write ridiculous product reviews for items I’d never used. Recently, I applied for an unpaid humor writing position and went perusing through some of my old reviews. I just hate to brag and all, but the following review for Body Shop Hemp Soap cracked me up.

It also helped me get the unpaid writing position, which I’ve been neglecting since getting the email confirmation… so David, if you’re reading this I haven’t forgotten, I’ve just been busy.

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Recently it came to my attention that some of my everyday activities may in fact be temporarily harming the environment. Although the harmful effects of human activity are infinitesimal in the long run, they may be great enough to cause our extinction. Even Stephen Hawking claims this is so. He fears our planet will soon have an atmosphere similar to that of Venus. Stephen Hawking urges us to colonize space immediately, (Philadelphia Inquirer, 10-9-00). I thought I’d do my part in cleaning up the environment. The first thing I did was buy a bar of “The Body Shop Hemp Soap.”

Hemp soap does not poison our sewers with toxins like other soaps. There’s still the issue of the hundreds of millions of tons of human waste down there, but hey you got to start somewhere. I felt that I was finally doing some good. But while better for the environment, hemp soap proved to be my undoing.

First of all, the stuff makes you stink like a hippie. I scrubbed and scrubbed wondering what the smell was, and then I realized, it was the soap itself. I decided to put up with the stink for the sake of humanity. Boy was that a mistake. A week after I began using the stuff, my boss called me into the office. Taking the liberty provided by a zero tolerance drug policy, I was immediately fired. Apparently my use of hemp soap in the company restrooms was indicative of a dangerously liberal tolerance towards other hemp products, including marijuana. I was officially blacklisted and released from my position.

With nowhere to turn, I found myself on the steps of Greenpeace. The address of the organization I found right on the packaging of The Body Shop Hemp Soap. It was in Greenpeace that I was introduced to harder forms of environmentalism. At first it started as a part time thing. On the weekends and such. But without steady employment, I turned to Greenpeace full time. Seven days a week I was there licking envelopes, (made of recycled paper), standing on the corner, begging strangers for money. In fact, I got so deep into environmentalism that I could no longer function in normal society.

I refused to eat at fast food restaurants. I stopped eating meat. I became unable to drive due to my skewed moral sensibilities. I boycotted countless hundreds of companies, products, corporations and organizations. My new practice of life pushed me to the peripheries of American society. My girlfriend of six years broke up with me after a heated argument about body hair.

My environmentalism then branched out to other areas. I left the Democratic party, joining the Green party instead. Who was I? I had lost my job, my girlfriend, I had given away all my possessions and I had now lost my political voice as well. And all because of hemp soap. It all came to a head soon after.

One day, while protesting the world economy, I was arrested. That was it. I had hit rock bottom. I sat in prison, sobbing quietly into the dirty hemp rags that I wore. If they hadn’t taken my hemp belt, I would have hung myself right then and there. But I struggled on, my commitment to mother earth all that I had to keep me going day in and day out.

And that’s where I am today. Hemp soap led me on a road to extreme environmentalism. I have toned down my rhetoric, but I will never be like I was. I am changed forever. The whole thing was a learning experience. I can’t say whether or not I have any regrets with the path I have chosen. It is not a reasonable or quantifiable thing.

Chances are, hemp soap will lead you down the road to increased environmental activity as well. All I try to do here is warn you where these practices can lead you. It is up to you. I just don’t want you to go into this as blindly as I.

People tell me I’ve got a strange accent, but apparently I’m just from Philadelphia. I took this short online quiz and here are my results:

I’ve got nothing bad to say about scientology. Please let these friendly church representatives do all the impression making for you:

For the next few weeks, much of my computer-time energy will be channeled into a secret project, the results of which I will share with the world when the time is right. That means I might rerun some old writing. It also means that this evening I’m going to be about as vain as I’ve ever been before and share with you an interview of myself.

I didn’t interview myself, the questions were thought up by someone over in the UK who’s writing an article on the Toynbee tiles. As you’ll read, I answered his questions very loosely, often drifting off-topic or going off on some tangentially related personal story. A note also, if I ignored whole sections of the questions, it was with the knowledge that the Resurrect Dead filmmakers would cover those bases.

Friends and loved ones sometimes don’t understand the fascination I have with these tiles. This is the most comprehensive personal account. It’s that more than vanity that makes me believe that some of you might want to read this. So before I’m misquoted, here’s what I said:

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o What is it that fascinates you about the tiles, and how did you first become so interested in them?

My first experiences exploring the city on my own came when I was 12-13 years old, going to school in Philly’s center city. After school, sometimes I’d go down to the video arcade or wander the streets in the surrounding blocks. There were a few tiles right there and I remember being interested in them… wondering what a “toynbee” was. This was in 1993 or so.

Over the next decade, the tiles were omnipresent in the streets of Philly. Back in 2000/2001, I had a girlfriend who refused to sleep over. I’d end up walking her home from 23rd street to her house near 13th at 3 or 4 in the morning.

Walking home alone I’d get a real sense of Philly’s early, early morning seediness. There’s a stillness. When everything is quiet you can sense the underlying feeling of this city. It’s very dense and it’s very quiet… difficult to describe. Mostly the streets are dead empty, but the people that are out are the rawest and the most uniquely Philadelphian. You meet the strangest people at 4 in the morning. The tiler was one of these people. I also remember changing my walks to take me by the then disappearing tiles. This is when the research end of my fascination began. It started and stopped a few times over the years, but really kicked in Spring of 2005.

o Which is most important to you, the message on the tiles, or the ‘whodunit’ mystery surrounding them?

These questions are inextricably linked. The mystery of it drove my will to research, but the research itself was far more fascinating than most things that I’ve studied. This is coming from someone who enjoys the whole research process. I majored in history at the University of Penn. I’ve spent plenty of hours locked in libraries, poring over old documents. Researching the tiles, their maker and its message has been full of coincidence so ripe that it’s sometimes difficult to believe. At this point, most of the physical facts, who, what, when, where, why and how have been answered. The answers aren’t necessarily magical, but the process that led us to those answers sort of was. Dead leads ended up bearing fruit for completely unrelated and bizarrely coincidental reasons.

o The names James Morasco, ‘Railroad Joe’ and playwright David Mamet often crop up in theories about the originator of the tile. Are you all convinced that neither of these men were the original tiler? Do you know if they were indeed involved in some way?

yes.

o How certain are you that the newer tiles are the work of a copycat? Is it reasonable to wonder whether the new tiles are being laid by an ‘apprentice’ of the original tiler?

This is the biggest remaining question. I’m split between the firm belief that they are copycats, but I almost as firmly believe that they aren’t. It’s split almost down the middle. Here’s for the belief that they are:

They’re made of a different material and are stylistically inferior. They show far less skill and craftsmanship.

The font is completely different.

Some of the new messages seem more contrived, like a younger sane person trying to sound like a “crazy old tiler.” Also switching Resurrect to Raise really changes a lot meaning-wise. I don’t think the original tiler would do that.

They’re placed differently in the street.

With 1 known exception they’re only in Philadelphia (but this could actually work both ways)

Justin Duerr (who’s opinion is always right about the tiles is convinced that they’re copycats)

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Here’s to the belief that they’re originals.

Whatever the tiles were made of, maybe the tiler ran out of that material and couldn’t find any more. Maybe the original tiles were made with his basement floor and he just ran out of the old linoleum.

The new font might be an attempt to make the tiles more legible. This is especially true of the highway tiles.

Differing placement might be an attempt to shift to a different target audience. The new, small tiles are more pedestrian friendly. They also follow public transportation routes, esp the el and subways.

The first examples of the new tiles are some of the nicest and most intricate in design. Whoever the new tiler is, their lack of craftsmanship in later tiles is probably due to a switch towards quantity over quality. In the last few years, the new school tiler has glued more than 100 tiles in Philadelphia. There are probably many more that never took or remain ‘undiscovered.’ That’s the entire output of the previous 20+ years in less than 5. If it is the same tiler, the lack of ’skill’ may be explained by a focus on quantity over quality.

We know certain things about the suspected tile-gluer that indicates exactly why only 1 tile has been found outside of Philly since 2001/2002. It would also explain why he’d presently only be active in Philadelphia.

o From what I’ve read, your research whilst making the movie has brought up lots of interesting facts, such as the fact that original tiler once gave an interview on Larry King. How much are you able to share about what you know about the tiler?

Anything that can be shared has been shared. Much more will come in time. The What, When, Why and How is mostly out there. For obvious reasons, the “who” will remain a secret. There are other documents and details that will be revealed at that time as well.

o The ‘Cult of the Hellion’ is something that keeps cropping up, yet any attempts at researching this ultimately come to a dead-end. How much do you know about it?

This comes from the infamous manifesto tile once glued at 16th and Chestnut in Philadelphia. Any non-tile inspired reference to the Cult of the Hellion has yet to appear anywhere that I know of.

o Speaking of your website, I’ve read posts where you discuss that the (new) tiler is aware of your website and pasting new tiles according to discussions you have on the net. Is this just a theory or are you convinced by this, and if so, has it led to you being any closer to tracking the new tiler down?

The new tiler, if they exist has actually been more elusive than the original tiler. They leave fewer traces and clues.

o You’ve said that the tiles are rapidly disappearing. How many are around now and is anything done to preserve them.

Not presently, although some cities actively destroy them, Chicago (verified) and possibly New York.

o How interested are you in the ‘artistic merit’ of the tiles rather than the theories and conspiracies?

Very. This is a totally unique form of art. The original tiles were beautifully constructed. Figuring out how to - in seconds - adhere them to the busiest city streets, undetected and in a way that’s almost entirely undetectable until they’re well embedded into the asphalt is tremendously ingenious. The whole process is completely unique and astounding. Spreading them across dozens of locations in 4 different countries is equally impressive. The theories and conspiracies are just icing on the cake.

o And finally, how’s the film getting on?

I’m not involved in the production of the film.

Long before the much vaunted military industrial complex wrapped its corrosive fingers around the throat of our Republic, arms production was a small and local affair.

In the manufacture of ammunition, the first step towards industrial scale production took place right here in Philadelphia. It was 1808 when plumber Thomas Sparks built America’s first shot tower.

It works like this.

At the top of the tower, molten lead is poured through mesh of varying size. The lead falls the 142-foot length of the shaft, while basic laws of physics reform the liquid metal into nearly perfect spheres. At ground level is a giant water tank which quickly cools and hardens the lead.

The shot tower enormously amplified the efficiency of ammunition production. The Sparks tower - near Front and Catherine in South Philly - was America’s first. It supplied the bulk of ammunition for the War of 1812 and remained in operation until the early 20th century.

Toynbee tile interest comes in and out like the phases of the moon. It’s really amazing how cyclical it can be. Just as my interest begins to ebb and tile fatigue sets in, a series of events unfolds, sending my strange obsession right back into the limelight.

This week began with tile fatigue. Tiling has most likely gone into winter hibernation here in Philly. The message board was dead and frankly, I have other interests that can easily subjugate the time I devote to my ‘tile research.’

Then I got a return email from a man I contacted through the Toynbee.net email archives. He discovered 2 tiles in Aberdeen Maryland about 10 years ago and promised to try and find the photos he took way back then. Justin Duerr may also be close to tracking down a photo of the newly rediscovered Harrisburg tile. (complete with “murder all journalists message”)

By Wednesday a flurry of emails started appearing in my inbox. Interest in the tiles is back on the rise… apparently worldwide. My site stats are also registering a ton of tile related hits each day.

And then this morning, a brand new tile made in a style never before seen was reported in a suburb of Indianapolis, IN by someone who I only know by the internet handle toynbeeindy. Here is that new tile:

This tile looks like the work of a second copycat. The original tiler once wrote, “ONLY BY DESTRUCTION OF THE MEDIA CAN THIS MOVEMENT SURVIVE” but way back when that message was meticulously carved, wrapped and glued, the internet didn’t exist. With more copycats carrying this message on, Toynbee tiles have new hope of an enduring life and legacy.

YOU MUST MAKE AND GLUE TILES!!! YOU!!!

This is the kind of photo that I usually post on people’s myspace pages, but I just couldn’t find the right person. Even still, it deserves attention… so I’ll just post it here.