02/08/2008
The wonders of the Internet, pt. 8,521.6
Before I get back to my standard ranting and raving about government, politics, economics, music, and the weather, I wanted to share this enlightening bit of business.
On my office computer, I have as a desktop image a gorgeous color picture of someone's farm, taken from a plane. Lots of green, very geometric and pleasing to the eye. A few days ago, while waiting for the water to boil or the bread to toast or something, I started trolling the net, idly looking for other aerial farm photos.
I found a few, but then I was brought up short.
Check this:
There are some wild farmers left out in the country, yo. The artistic soul finds a large, green palette that yields woodcut style on a grand scale.
And what a scale it is. The road cutting across the photo has buildings on the left edge of the piece.
But wait.
Apparently one way to maintain yourself as a farmer is to turn your cornfield into a "spend the afternoon getting your butt lost in our cornfield maze; traumatize the kids and sweat off a few pounds." Scale on this one? Buildings in the lower right-hand corner.
Represent West Virginia.
As always, the commercial aspect appears.
The wonderful Grandmothers to Grandmothers movement in Canada gets a well-deserved share of the shine.
The Harry Potter contingent gets a wizard design to view from the broomstick. The buildings are those specks on the bottom.
Now, it wouldn't be too unreasonable to ask exactly how these designs come to be.
Here's a Photoshopped plan of a prospective field (note the repeating corn texture):
I hope there are a lot of farmers doing this on their own; I wouldn't mind seeing IMPEACH BUSH spelled out across a few dozen acres; maybe it would be visible from space, if not from Washington.
But if a farmer needs help, there's this company...