I used to be a lot hotter
What's It All About?

Mars Probe Headquarters
or How I sent my own probe to Mars without spending a million dollars.
Most of this stuff has become irrelevant and was edited down.

I suppose I could find something better to do with my time besides thinking up stuff like this. On the other hand, I spend too much time thinking about stuff like this anyway, so I might as well keep on. I've seen huge, drastic changes in the world in my lifetime, and been amazed by how little of it was under our control. Clever inventions like television and birth control pills have changed things like our politics and working habits. Satellite reports from VietNam brought that conflict into our living rooms, and popular shows have unified (for better or worse) our national culture. No one predicted these changes, not even science fiction writers (well, most of them). What bizarre cultural upheaval will the new wired millenium bring, with the internet speeding up to incredible new transfer rates and more completely stupid stuff like my Mars Probe being posted every day? The mind boggles, or it would if it hadn't already.
We can't all be Picasso. But it's MY world, or worlds, and as Picasso himself said "We artists are indestructible . . . even in a prison or a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art . . . even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell." So is it good art? Who cares? That's not really the point. As a by-product of my life I produce artifacts which have meaning to me, if not for anyone else. Picasso also said "You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea." Pretty much the story of my life and times, Pablo old bean.

I'll never win any beauty prizes, which is one of the reasons I use my own face as a test pattern in so many of these pictures. I'll never win any Rat Races either, which doesn't bother me as I don't care to run with rodents. I've sputtered along with my stutter all my life, peering out through my glasses and pushing my hair out of my eyes, looking at everything sideways and not really caring for my whole life and I don't see any big changes coming any time soon, except that my hair's graying and I'm starting to limp. I see folks all the time with twice my advantages crying because something hasn't been handed to them on a platter, but I have a good time in spite of life's hard knocks.

Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And thus our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
-Shakespeare
Well, I may be an ugly toad but I have that jewel in my head; and as long as it keeps showing me the worlds hidden inside a drop of water or just beyond our sight, I'll have to waste more bandwidth filling up pages with this stuff.
Steve Hooley - Henderson Library - Ga Southern U - Statesboro Ga - Planet Earth / shooley_at_georgiasouthern.edu