Man on Wire

One of the added benefits of passing my days hard at work filming on a circus lot is that bits of practice equipment are scattered about everywhere. Taking full advantage of my union-mandated coffee breaks and those relaxed interludes when there is little to shoot, I've become quite adept on some of the machinery, if I say so myself. It's only a matter of time before I transition to the big top, and maybe even the high wire.


Photo: Sergio Nguyen

The Founder of our Nation: Bob-George Washingabe

Our Harare correspondent writes to warn us that, thanks to the ongoing downward spiral in the value of the Zimbabwe dollar, evil and mischievous counterfeiters have recently turned to exploiting the miraculously-still-more-valuable American original. Said counterfeiters, however, are after all in the employ of the government, and therefore are obliged to do their all to perpetuate Bob Mugabe's waning cult of personality. The result is a United States greenback that many experts will easily identify as bogus:


FW: PLEASE NOTE - FAKE USD NOTES IN CIRCULATION!

Fragments of New Orleans, part deux

Help make me legal!

Let's get this busted down automobile of a Cuba policy fixed once and for all!


It's probably too late for me, as this proposed law is unlikely to protect retroactively past violators of the Trading with the Enemy Act, but there is a chance to make Cuba travel legal coming before Congress right now. In a rare antarcticiana diversion into political advocacy, I quote at length from today's junk mail:

Great News! We now have legislation in the House of Representatives calling for an end to the travel ban on Cuba for ALL Americans.

This will mean "Travel for All" instead of "Travel for None" or even "Travel for Some."

Take action now and ask your representative to co-sponsor H.R. 874. The purpose of H.R. 874 is "To allow travel between the United States and Cuba" - for all Americans, no exceptions.

It was introduced by Representatives Bill Delahunt (D-MA) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), along with these original co-sponsors: Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro [CT-3], Rep. Donna F. Edwards [MD-4], Rep. Jo Ann Emerson [MO-8], Rep. Sam Farr [CA-17], Rep. James P. McGovern [MA-3], Rep. Jerry Moran [KS-1], Rep. Ron Paul [TX-14]

You can read the full text of H.R. 874 here.

Please call your Representative today: Capitol Switchboard number: (202) 224-3121 or find your Representative's number here.


The message: · Please co-sponsor H.R. 874, the Delahunt-Flake bill "To allow travel between the United States and Cuba." · H.R. 874 calls for lifting travel restrictions to Cuba for ALL Americans, restoring our right as citizens of the United States to travel freely, and takes a giant step toward restoring our country's reputation in Latin America and the world. ·

(This will mean "Travel for All" instead of "Travel for None" or even "Travel for Some." To co-sponsor H.R. 874 please contact either Cliff Stammerman in Rep. Delahunt's office or Chandler Morse in Rep. Flake's office.)


All photographs from the Walking to Guantánamo project taken while traveling illegally in Cuba. I was only exercising my right to pursue happiness.

Handyman Triple Play Special

At this point in the global economic crisis most everyone has heard the real estate horror stories. Entire city-block-sized condominium developments, freshly minted, primed with Gaggenau kitchens and loft-like contemporary floorplans, in which not a single unit has been sold. Grand homes in famous Westchester suburbs, on offer for hundreds of thou less than what would have been a laughable offer a year ago. With no takers, and nobody willing to lend money to any takers who might have the optimistic gall to show interest.

Even a high-roller like myself has been forced to lay off my in-house architect and suspend the plans for constructing my dream home in the Caribbean. For now the environmental insensitivity of my fourteen-thousand square-foot Italianate Villa and its marble fountain burbling away inside a triple-height foyer will just have to wait. But I still have my sights set on a getaway in the Antilles. Something "green." Luckily, Miss Lindsey and The Toothless Wonder of the Gowanus recently headed that way. They were kind enough to scout out a few options more in keeping with these difficult times, sending the following prospectus for our perusal:

"Livin' in the Sticks®" Breezy yet secure sustainable hilltop living includes flourishing patch of manioc and all necessary farm implements. Tiny carbon footprint. Get back-to-the-land in this one-of-a-kind handmade work of art. Amenities located just beyond the coconut tree.

"Recycler's Dream®" 100% patchwork stitch-and-glue home comes as shown here, battened down and ready for hurricane season. Green living at its simplest. A one-of-a-kind handmade work of art. Expansion possibilities limited only by your imagination and the supply of driftwood.

"Shinyman Estates®" Patented "Passive Solar Rejection" high-intensity electricity-free cladding-based air-conditioning system "wicks heat away" into the surrounding atmosphere. Stairs (not shown) included. "No-fuss" plumbing. Much more attractive than most post-modern buildings. Relaxed terms on this one-of-a-kind handmade work of art.

From our Washington correspondent

On inauguration day in the deep south the excitement in the capital arrived over the car stereo as a crackly, intermittent report of distant goings-on. Thankfully, antarcticiana's DC correspondent Mr. Johnny Stuart was on the mall to capture the scene. Obama may not yet have saved the American people from themselves, but nobody will ever diminish that first day of hope and celebration.

"Yes, we can" morphed into "Yes, we did," right before our eyes.

This guy was out of a job almost as fast as Gee-Dubya. Ending the tortures and indefinite detentions of Gitmo was to be one of Obama's first proclamations.

Does this shuka make me look fat? The Kenyan posse, like everyone else, refused to let the sub-freezing temperatures throw a chill over the proceedings.

All photographs courtesy the inimitable Johnny "Danger" Stuart

Geography Quiz

Honestly, though, I loved the fish...

The new Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta is billed as the world's largest. It is spectacular, a place you absolutely must visit if you pass through. The tanks are so massive that one seems to be walking through a tunnel burrowed through distant oceans. It is also a Godawful, horrid representation of everything wrong with our consumerist, market-driven culture, an opportunity to stand in a long line like mutton at the abattoir, waiting to spend $27 to be assaulted by the sights and sounds of the food court at your local mall.


The customer, relieved of their entrance fee, enters a vast hall teeming with schools of people, like fish. The ambiance is one of shopping mall. Immediately across from the entrance is the café and snack shoppe, so situated that the public will waste no time yielding up more of their cash. Prominent dioramas proclaim the corporate sponsors of the different exhibits. Home Depot, or its materials, built a part of an exhibit, for instance. UPS flew in the whales for free, and they aren't shy about telling you. Enormous, flashy, three dimensional graphics dangle in the grand hall, as if no contemporary child could possibly enjoy an experience that does not present itself with the aesthetics of a Disney DVD.

Worse, the educational component of this incredible institution seemed limited to a few of the usual platitudes about not wasting water and helping to keep the oceans clean, posted here and there in unlit corners of the walkways on bits of colored cardboard. Any educational awareness I might have taken away from the experience was certainly overshadowed, in terms of prominent graphics, by the announcement that the freshwater meander was sponsored by the Southern Company, a vast hydroelectric and nuclear power concern. Call me a curmudgeon, but this is blood money. To propose to me that I might save the world by remembering to turn off the water as I brush my teeth, while simultaneously providing a greenwashing for a massive power company is, pardon the pun, a damming indictment of the whole affair. It leaves a muddy, brackish taste in the mouth. I know, I know, why not just accept that this is entertainment, not an educational opportunity?

Apologists will tell us that without the corporate sponsorship by companies trying to link this simulated wilderness experience to their brand it would be impossible to build such spectacular exhibits. I'm unwilling to accept that trade, even if the vastest of the tanks seems to be an almost ocean-sized affair, crammed with multiple species of sharks, dense schools of fish of a multitude of species, and, most impressively, no end in sight. The giant nurse sharks look small in it, and they have enough room in the adept underwater architecture to swim away and out of view. We have no sense that these fish have boundaries, that somewhere deep beyond them is another wall. The public ride through an undersea tunnel on a slow-moving conveyor-belt.

Only the Beluga whales seem confined, circling in repeated patterns, like inmates doing pushups in their cells. A whale in a tank, however spacious, is like a goldfish in a shotglass.


Only in the most pristine conditions could one hope to have comparable views in the wild.


For an additional fee customers can arrange to go diving with the nurse sharks.



At the aquarium shop you can buy this creepy, burkaesque dolphin mask, along with thousands of delightful dolphins, simpering sharks, baby belugas and other stuffed, fluffy variants on the cuddly, but we could not find one inch of shelf in this vast store, in the world's largest aquarium, given over to even one serious book about fish, oceans, or ecosystems.

Fragments of New Orleans

The Reptilian Series

Antarcticiana's Zimbabwe correspondent is safely back in Harare after a hair-raising and homesickness-inspiring vacation abroad on various continents. The farcical business of life in the late Mugabe period continues, a total systemic collapse best illustrated, as usual, by the government's continued insistence on printing money faster than it can obtain paper. Soon, furthermore, there won't be enough room left on a standard bill for all the zeroes.

Only a few weeks ago the complete collection of Zimbabwean billion-dollar bills landed on my desk. Imagine our reporter's consternation and amazement (minimal, actually) to discover upon returning to the former breadbasket of Africa that the printing presses were already deep into the trillions. The latest currency report from the front lines of hyperinflation:

We now have the trillion series, The 10, 20, 50, and 100 trillion dollar notes. The trillions were basically printed to pay the military. The notes never made it into the bank and the soldiers were paid in barracks so they didn't have to stand in a queue or be seen to be taking over any queues. Later that day they were seen trying to convert their trillions into US$.

On the day the trillions were introduced, 16th January, the rate was 600 Billion Zim to US $1. 4 days later, on 21st January, the rate is 25 Trillion to US $1. The general public is still waiting to see the trillions in circulation. I have obtained one 10 Trillion dollar note, and when the others are worth nothing I will be able to buy them for $1 each. Notice the shortage of ink color choice. [These colors are identical to the billion-dollar notes and have the same "pile of rocks" graphic, ed.] Luckily there is no confusion as no one really accepts Zim dollars anyway. The problem now is how to pay military and civil servants next month. Coupons and South African Rand are being talked about.

If you add 13 zeroes to 100 trillion you get a reptilian.



Meanwhile, functionaries have announced that passports will only be issued on an emergency basis, at a cost of $650 (US). The Harare Tribune reports that "an official at the passport office said the suspension in issuing of ordinary passports was due to shortage of material needed to make passports. 'There is no paper to print passports so we can only entertain emergency cases which give us foreign currency. The only way to give everyone passports would be to charge a flat fee in forex [hard currency], but that would embarass the government,' he said."

And what would embarrass this government, as my grandpappy used to say, would shame a hog to death.