Lake Superior Aquaman
PDD Headshot Backstory
When joining Perfect Duluth Day’s “Saturday Essay” roster, I was asked for a headshot and I submitted this which accompanies my essays. It is a video still from an old GoPro on a stick. The camera has broken through the water, and my face is about to break the surface. Water depth @ 20-30 feet, off the sand beaches of Park Point. It was late summer and I wanted one more batch of diving photos in my Aquaman colors. (more…)
Plutonium Loves
I loved her and now that I’ve left I am full of cancer. My genome breaks further each day in a cascading cellular demolition. She’s a physicist so we used to see each other around the University. Once the accident made her radioactive, we saw each other through the leaded glass of her containment chamber in St. Luke’s. (more…)
The Alworth Incident
Introduction: UMD’s Alworth Hall was built in 1974. It was rebuilt in 2011 in the wake of the Alworth Incident which claimed the life of Desiree Zontal, Dean of the Research Instrumentation Laboratory. Her graduate student Ward Hind, and her husband Horace Zontal, Associate Dean of the Physics Department, both survived. Mr. Hind, the jealous saboteur, is incarcerated in Oak Park Heights in a cell made of the anomalously-irradiated bricks of the lab. In these essays, we put a human face on the Incident, although in the case of Mr. Hind, this is, ironically, impossible.
Lake Superior Aquaman Fashion Week
(On the ‘gram @lakesuperioraquaman)
Planetary distress call recorded by UMD Observatory (UPDATE: with reply)
The Richardson Brothers: Planetary Distress Call
"Mayday, mayday, mayday! Come in, anyone, or anything! This is Jim Richardson, the Lake Superior Aquaman of Duluth, Minnesota, USA, transmitting a planetary distress call from the M-Class planet Earth..."
richardsonbrothers.libsyn.com
AP: University of Minnesota, Duluth – The UMD observatory at the Swenson College of Science and Engineering has recorded a planetary distress call. The audio has been obtained by the Richardson brothers of Duluth, shared here. God help us all. (UPDATE below!)
Lake Superior video from Duluth included in Ukraine exhibit
Three of my Lake Superior videos are included in this exhibit of “video dress sculptures” with “looped video playing in three places on each dress”: The Invisible Woman: Videodresses. All dresses and skirts by Genevieve Davis of Wisconsin. Videos of Lake Michigan by Genevieve Davis, except the above: #1 The Politician, #2 the Mother, and #6 the Composer, which incorporate three of my Lake Superior videos from here. This digital exhibit will be at the Gender Museum in Karkhiv the Ukraine from January – March 2022.
Richardson Bros. House Swarmed by Cops
One of the hazards of living in a house full of props is getting cops called on your casket. (more…)
Lake Superior Aquaman media hits
Documenting all extant media coverage of my exploits since 2005. Sharing them here. Articles, interviews, TV, radio, all the things:
Things I saw on Park Point
I woke up this morning and said to myself, “I’m going to Park Point to take pictures of mushrooms in sunbeams,” and indeed I did (some sunbeams not included). Along the way I saw many strange and wondrous things, it was like The Odyssey. Pics below the fold: (more…)
Successful transplanting of phallus impudicus
I successfully transplanted these phallus impudicus (“impudent phallus,” aka the common stinkhorn) from one end of town to another in my diabolical plan to expand the range of this deLIGHTful species. (more…)
Meryl Streep: HACK
THIS IS A JOKE WE ACTUALLY LOVE MERYL STREEP. One night I dreamed my step-brother Martin in Kansas City called Meryl Streep a hack. When I told him about it, we both thought it was so funny, and cracked jokes about it for days. The result is this probably misguided video making fun of Meryl Streep WHOM WE ADORE
On patrol: Boat propeller blades
While on patrol I found these two big iron flower petal things not too far offshore, wedged among the rocks. They were about 50 feet from each other in around ten feet of water. I think they may be blades from a large boat propeller. Yes I wore a shark fin for this patrol — a couple years ago I encountered a three-foot muskie in this area, and felt it best I should shark up. (more…)
Lake Superior Aquaman on patrol
Duluth MN circa 15 feet deep: All clear
SubSuperior: Day 1
Beta-test/proof of concept/first annual; video to come. Making music underwater and projecting it on land with hydrophones.
Lake Superior Aquaman: Tried helping this fish but it wanted to die
Tischer Creek: I saw this dying 7-inch fish under a foot of water or so, seemingly pinned to a rock by a stick. I moved the stick so it could swim away if it wanted, but it did not want to; I only interrupted the dignity of its final breaths. So I left it to die in peace.
Lake Superior Aquaman: I just went to Wisconsin for a second
The other day was so warm I didn’t wear a wetsuit, just my Golden Age costume. Didn’t even wear my flippers because I felt natural. I was at the Duluth rock beach called The Ledges — you can see Richardson Island from there. Standing at a sheer drop, in one-foot-deep water, within a step you plunge in @7-8 feet deep. From there, a casual swim to 12-15? I vaguely fear the sight of large fish. Happens sometimes/nothing there this time but the boulders. Loons and mergansers hunt here though. When I came up after a minute my friend Stephen Bockbock said, “I was getting worried about you,” and I said, “I just went to Wisconsin for a second.” Someone said, “Rock.”
Seagulls dive bombing my shit
Lake Superior Aquaman pink flamingo seagull dive bomb attack, Duluth, Minnesota.
Lake Superior Aquaman graffiti in Iowa City
Thanks to citizen @wiscontron for bringing this to my attention. It reads “Lake Superior Aquaman” with a picture of a trident, then someone has followed that with “<- The Admiral Nelson of Great Lakes.”
Duluth, Minnesota and the Lost Confederate Gold
In 1861, Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey was in Washington D.C. when the Confederates started the Civil War. He was in the Oval Office when Lincoln received the fateful telegram detailing the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina — the most serious in a string of Southern aggressions, including the seizing of Federal armories across Dixie. Heeding Lincoln’s call for troops, Ramsey walked right up to the President and said, “Mr. President, let Minnesota be the first state to commit 1,000 volunteers to answer this latest outrage from the disloyal states.”
Ramsey’s commitment created the famous fighting force known as the Minnesota First Infantry Regiment. They were the Civil War’s earliest northern enlistees, and they saved the Union at Gettysburg as every Minnesota schoolchild knows. On the third day of that pivotal battle, after Pickett’s Charge, Pvt. Marshall Sherman of St. Paul emerged with the scarred battle flag of the 28th Virginia Infantry. Virginia whines about it to this day but we’re not giving it back neener neener neener. (more…)