18 - A Scanner Brokenly

"A Scanner Brokenly" is a play on "A Scanner Darkly", which was an excellent novel by Philip K. Dick, one of my all-time favourite authors.  The book was also made into a decent movie adaptation, and is one of my artistic inspirations.  The name "A Scanner Darkly" is itself a play on a biblical text, 1 Corinthians 13:12, although Mr. Dick quoted and commented extensively from other Corinthian chapters in his novels and lectures. 

However, "A Scanner Brokenly" also refers prosaically to the fact that I rendered my flatbed scanner inoperative.  This puts a serious curb on the material I can present in JSVB, as a lot of my art depends on accurate scans.  I'll just have to show off stuff that's already on my hard-drive until I can fix or replace the scanner. 

An image from the past:  in February 2008, Canadians were on alert as a malfunctioning American spy satellite was supposed to de-orbit and crash in our country.  My wife and I made a spoof of the thing, took shots of it in our back yard, and she blogged about it using this photo.  Afterwards, this exact image became the #2, yes! #2 highest entry in the Google Image Search, if you used the exact search phrase "American Spy Satellite". 

These days, this image doesn't even show up on Google anymore.  Most of the shots are frighteningly real depictions of USA spaceborne surveillance technology, plus that same old rusty cat with an acid green toy vice-gripped to its head. 

Fame is fleeting in the art world, and anonymous fame is even fleeting-er in the Information Age.