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| | | | | | | | | 2. Mural Painted by Judy Baca in "Chicano" tradition
| | | | by Philosawyer |  | | | at Sat 17 Aug 6:24am | score of 2 compelling | | | | | | |
I know very little about Chicano or Mexican art but the distinctive style immediately reminded me of work by an artist named Jose Clemente Orozco who back in the 30s adapted mythic Mexican imagery to his murals. Orozco's large mural in the Dartmouth College Library certainly seemed a little out of place with its themes of revolution (Although relatively diverse now, I suspect that there were not many Hispanic students there back in the 30s or for a long time after).
A little research reveals that the artist was Judith Francisca Baca who has been described as an "arts activist" and a "driving force behind L.A.'s dynamic murals scene."
As Judy put it, "The simple fact that, even in death the bodies of racially different people were required to remain separate, was what moved me to create an artwork that would give dignity to the Mestizo's story and the stories of countless others who toiled in the mines, fields, and railroads of Colorado." Judy wanted to speak of the shared human condition as temporary residents of the earth. The landscape of the mural represents the journey that so many have shared from Mexico to the US. The images are those of real people who worked on the railroads, mines and fields, including Judy's grandfather (the man in the yellow sweater in the lower right). The purpose of hidden people in the landscape is not to guide one's path, but to tell one about the history. Once again, like all the murals discussed, Judy Baca tells the history of a people that has been forgotten in America, the Chicanos.
Baca has transported her twenty-first century techniques to Denver, where she's currently completing an installation for the Denver Airport: La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra, a first-time-ever digital transfer to aluminum that commemorates the story of the Hispanics of the Southwest.
The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with."
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| | | | | | 3. I'm not sure what all those symbols really mean.
| | | | by MAYORBOB |  | | | at Sat 17 Aug 6:44am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
But, I do have a thought on why everyone who sees them goes post haste to open their personal copy of "The Great Book of Conspiracies". The oxygen is so very, very thin in Denver.
Tending to final details.
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| | | | | | 4. The Truth is Not out There!
| | | | by Petronius | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 7:26am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
I love following the links in stories like these, particularly when one person refutes a conspiracy as evidence for an opposing and even sillier conspiracy theory. An amazing amount of energy is being expended to very little result.
I liked the detailed analysis of the murals as a symbol of alleged New World Order plans. Apparently it never occurred to the writers that the murals in fact represent the mainstream of didactic mural design: bad draftsmanship combined with banal and hackneyed symbolism and mindless 1930s style agitprop. I did like the floors, though. At O'Hare Airport the only thing you see down there is caked-on chewing gum.
What rescues us from insignificance is the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers. Carl Sagan
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| | | | | | 5. DIA Conspiracy DOA
| | | | by Nephthys |  | | | at Sat 17 Aug 8:27am | score of 3.5 informative | | | | | | |
I live in Denver, voted for the new airport, and then watched in amazement as the conspiracy theories rolled in about the unusual artwork, "secret runway", catacombs built for the internment of the New World Order's political prisoners, alien landing sites, illuminati, masonic symbolism, etc.
Now, I can neither prove nor disprove the secret features such as the catacombs or secret runway, but I can shed some light on the artwork. Most of the artwork is a celebration of Colorado's history.
The fossils in (if I remember correctly) Concourse C represent the rich dinosaur beds. The Chicano art in the main terminal celebrates the Spanish and Mexican history of the area. The metal "paper airplanes" are obvious, it's an airport. The odd inscriptions scattered around the floor reference various sites that are sacred to the Navaho and Anasazi indians. COCHETOPA: the name of a river, mountain pass and hills. SISNAAJINI: Navaho term for the mountain called Mount Blanca in Colorado. MT BLANCA: This mountain is referred to by the Navaho term above. BRAAKSMA and VILLARREAL: the artists who created the tiles. The gargoyles in the baggage area, although strange, are there to do their historic job - frighten away evil spirits - and any one who knows anything about DIA's ill fated baggage system can understand that.
As far as I am concerned there is no conspiracy, only the desire of the designers to create a visually interesting space. Having spent more than my fair share of time trapped in ugly, boring airports, I welcome the unusual aspects of DIA.
Cake or Death? Cake, please.
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| | | | | | | 7. conspiracy of an ugly airport
| | | | by mrradon | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 11:24am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
Ever since the 80s, and possibly the 70s (though I can't remember much because I was just a kid), the local government constantly pushed a notion on the state that somehow, Denver "needed" to be considered as important a city as New York or L.A. or Chicago. The city wanted to reap huge profits off of tourism, and pushed for anything that would encourage people from all across the world to come to Colorado, as if it had something really valueable to offer other than mountains and nature. But culturally, Denver has always been a big void. The aquarium, hundreds of miles from any major body of water, sure was a great idea!
When the airport was built, they had to create brand new roads just to get to it, which are about 10 miles from any other streets and highways, and quite far from downtown Denver. Walking through the airport is like walking through a ghost town, regardless of how well run it's supposed to be. Who voted for and paid for the new airport? People who were also convinced that somehow Denver is an important cultural center, and that it would bring enough people in to put the city on par with a "real" city. Plenty of morons moved to Denver, creating a boom, and pricing out most of the people who already lived there. But they only kid themselves if they think they're pioneering a major urban epicenter.
But I will say this, after 9/11, the airport stepped up to almost suspiciously neurotic security levels. Why there was some notion that Denver would be a target of terrorist hits, aside from the Federal Center, was absurd. It does however make me wonder if maybe there really is something suspicious going on there, because the airport put on an awfully big show of arms for a small cowtown. They might as well have made t-shirts: I went to Denver and all I got was this t-shirt and a security strip search at DIA because they thought my Coach purse looked suspicious.
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| | | | | | 9. Re: conspiracy of an ugly airport
| | | | by Nephthys | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 2:08pm | score of 1.5 informative | | in reply to comment 7 | | | | | |
Here I go, feeding the OT trolls.
Pssst. Your bias is showing. I'll avoid engaging you in discussions about how miserable you are here and try to stay on topic - DIA.
DIA was proposed and built because Stapleton was outdated, much too small for the amount of traffic it was handling, and by the 80's surrounded by suburbs, causing traffic and noise pollution problems. Denver is a major hub for 2 major airlines and the home base of (at the time) many regional budget airlines. Denver had outgrown Stapleton. DIA is in the boonies, but with Denver's growth rate it will not be long before it too is surrounded by development.
As for your snide and facetious remarks about how DIA operates, it does run very well, rarely being closed by the weather, and seldom experiencing delays that originated there.
You complain that DIA cracked down on security with neurotic and inappropriate abandon. I hate to break it to you but every US airport did. I'll play your silly little game and say that yes, Denver and environs are a pissant cowtown* with no viable terrorist targets**, but the security was not for terrorists attacking our poor little backwater, but for terrorists leaving to attack the "real cities".
*Greater Denver population 2.4 million
**NORAD, Mae East and Mae West converging under the 16th Street Mall, the Federal Center, Colorado Air National Guard, the Mint, etc.
PS, just for you, mrradon.
Cake or Death? Cake, please.
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| | | | | | | 21. Completely off-topic....
| | | | by klothos | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 8:11pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 8 | | | | | |
but it's hard to stay completely on-topic with such a great story, isn't it?
With regard to the lizard-men: in biology my freshman year in high school, I had these two awesome lab partners, and instead of actually working on labs much of the time, we drew comic strips about The Lizard People. They would come out of the anatomy poster behind the incubator and possess our teacher, and the teacher in the classroom next to ours.
Then at some point, we introduced Mulder ("Moldy") and Scully ("Scallop") into the scene... and at some point, Darth Vader (in the form of my Darth Vader Pez dispenser) made an entrance... by the end of the year, we had shared quite a few adventures battling the Lizard People and the Smoking Man alongside Moldy, Scallop, Darth Vader Pez, and the guy who always slept in front of us in class -- although the latter never contributed anything other than "zzz" to the battles. Eventually, I ended up flying away with Moldy on a spacecraft piloted by aliens...
OK, keep in mind this was like, 6 years ago -- before the x-files turned into crap.
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| | | | | | | | 11. You Never Stop Learning...
| | | | by ignatiusreilly | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 5:09pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
1. The "tent-like" terminal area of DIA always struck me as representing snow-covered mountain peaks. Thankfully, I've been disabused of my misinterpretation.
2. Until now, I was unaware that Darth Vader was a mason. No wonder Luke was so reluctant to join forces with him.
I need to keep up with these conspiracy sites more regularly.
Give me reincarnation, or give me death.
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| | | | | | 13. Old news.
| | | | by bitfiend |  | | | at Sat 17 Aug 6:35pm | score of 5 novel | | | | | | |
Most people in Colorado believe DIA was a pork-barrel project started by the former mayor of the Peoples Republik of Denver to line the pockets of some of his cronies.
The former mayor Pena sold his line to the voting dupes by predicting (fallaciously) enormous passenger growth, facilitating the need for a new airport. Since DIA was built, traffic is down by 40,000 passengers annually...and it seems some of them have moved their air travel to nearby Colorado Springs (Colo Spgs is up by 100,000 passengers annually since then.) Since it's been open, DIA has lost between 100 and 300 million dollars annually; upon it's forced closing, Stapleton, the old airport was earning a profit of 100 million a year.
Oh, and by the way, Denver International Airport is only "international" if you are flying to Canada or Mexico, in spite of mayor Pena's assertions that DIA would offer "non-stop service from Europe, South America and the Far East." And of course, he got the 20 mile speed trap leading into the airport named after himself. (Pena boulevard) The bad artwork and design incoherence just went along nicely with the direction of the rest of the project.
But that is just what they want us to believe.
Though all these things are true, they were architected by the NWO to cover the true purpose of the airport by making the massive losses seem like the ho-hum result of back room deals and normal government incompetence.
Just the way the reptilians like it.
Underneath this "airport" are enormous holding pens designed for tens of thousands of humans, with the gating leading to enormous kitchens staffed by drone greys. That's right. DIA is an enormous intergalactic cafeteria, and people are the menu.
I know this from first hand experience.
3 years ago, while traveling back from Seattle to my current home in Colorado, I was pulled aside as I stepped off the plane by two strange looking security guards with what I thought at the time to be a skin condition like psoriasis.
I figured it was because of my tattoos (I have HKG3SG1's tattooed on my forearms), or maybe a problem with my checked Armalite. (At the time, Janet Reno and her Red Guard had been harrassing me frequently about my guns and trying to send me to Cuba for re-education, so I was used to being harrassed.) They refused to explain why I was being detained, instead making loud snuffling and hissing noises and shoving me harder towards the restricted part of the baggage claim area. They shoved me into a small room, empty except for a two-way mirror, a sign in large block letters that read "For the children" and a picture of then President Clinton smirking down at me. I decided to sit down and make faces at the two-way mirror while I waited for the interrogation team.
As I got comfortable on the floor, it suddenly fell away beneath me, sending me tumbling down a polished steel chute. As I slid down the chute, enormous rotating rubber fingers, like chicken pluckers ripped my clothing away, leaving me naked and bruised, except for my knee-high Mad Max boots.. I tried to slow my descent, but the chute was oiled and I couldn't get a purchase.
I was ejected from the chute at great velocity into large pile of moaning naked people. The writhing mass of humanity was being hosed down from a high pressure sprayer by a drone grey with what tasted a lot like teriayki sauce and cough syrup.
The greys were grabbing people at random and measuring their body fat with calipers, and either throwing them down another chute with the aid of a pusher robot, or sending them through a gauntlet of big-eyed aliens beating people with what looked like large aluminum meat-tenderizing mallets with blinking lights on them. (I'm sure they were made out of some kind of space metal, not aluminum, but that's what it looked like.)
I looked past the line of folks being beaten with the mallets and noticed they were being led into what looked like an enormous stainless-steel laser wok. A sign above the wok read "Today's special: DZIT DIT GAII". Seated around it were several reptilians and high ranking Democrats, wielding complicated looking space spatulas and wearing bibs just like the ones you get at Sea Galley, except instead of a picture of a lobster on them, there was a picture of a person!.
Determined to escape my fate as alien-democrat stir fry, I rushed one of the greys with the calipers and wrenched them away from it. Now armed, I wielded the calipers like a guthook, slashing away at the spindly aliens as they jive-walked towards me with barbeque in their eyes.
Unfortunately, (Or fortunately, at least for me) the alien marinade made the floor slippery, and as I swung with the fat-measuring calipers at the eyes of another monster, I slipped and fell backwards into a group of people who had gathered behind me to help.
I had my back to the second chute, and as I fell the group fell with me into the gaping "reject" chute. Apparently the chute was a human garbage disposal, which was thankfully only designed to grind up one person at a time.read the entire comment...
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| | | | | | 17. Re: Old news.
| | | | by Nephthys | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 7:02pm | score of 1.5 funny | | in reply to comment 13 | | | | | |
Oh Christ, Bitfiend! I retract all my earlier statements about my disbelief in the NWO/Alien connection at DIA.
Since I know you, love you, and respect you IRL, I am convinced.
On second thought, are you SURE you didn't just get trapped in the baggage handling system?
Cake or Death? Cake, please.
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| | | | | | 14. This is true...
| | | | by vir3x |  | | | at Sat 17 Aug 6:38pm | score of 4 clever | | | | | | |
...because we all know that secret societies operating secretly in secret like to paint huge fucking murals in a public place depicting exactly what their plans are.
What's that phrase... "cartoonish supervillainy"?
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| | | | | | | | 16. sex with the little people of the forest
| | | | by orionoir | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 6:49pm | score of 2 clever | | | | | | |
does dia still have its forest? to me, veteran of many a deathly night wedged into plastic airport chairs, sometimes with teeny weeny little tvs mounted on short metal arms designed to jut up and into one's ribcage, the forest -- a wide open area near a hangar-sized wall of windows, full of tree-sized trees in these vastly oversized flower pots, plus all sorts of sleepable leather couches and ottomen tastefully interspersed as if by the pre-criminal martha -- this forest was sheer heaven.
perhaps it's the mountain time zone or some sort of epo in the air, or that whole conspiracy thing that everyone's denying, but people in denver just seem to get along better than in the east. on one side of my sleeping arrangement was a boozy street person with an aura of any number of communicable diseases, and on the other side was a young couple, perhaps even newly wed, looking perhaps a tad more elevated in socioeconomic status than i. but they were so short! both of them.
it was a cute idea, for two four-footers to hook up as they did, but the idea of them sleeping together and presumably engaging in marital relations weighed more heavily on my mind than the tubercular coughing coming from the less interesting side of my makeshift bed.
i mean, cute is cute, as far as it goes, but i did not want to learn at what sonic frequency did they yelp their orgasmic yelps. the incipient giggles were bad enough. inaudibly murmurred pet names; small-lunged breathing sounds: it was all so inevitable now. the sound which shatters glass, the last sound of a stepped-upon tree frog, the first harbinger of nuclear holocaust itself, they were clearly aiming to squeak through it simultaneously, and i knew that if i became party to this information i would be forever changed. the whole concept of genital warts would pale by comparison.
i'm so happy i can't stop crying -- sting, fr. "lithium sunset"
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| | | | | | 22. If any of those conspiracy theorists were...
| | | | by klothos | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 8:18pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
... really thinking about things, they would realize that something so glaringly obvious is just a distraction for something larger, something that cannot possibly be right there in the DIA. maybe if they start looking for the polar opposite of the DIA, they'd find what it was, indeed, that they were looking for.
or perhaps the DIA is used to distract valuable conspiracy theorists from focusing their attention somewhere else entirely -- and leading them away from other, more pressing things, like who was really behind 911, etc..... or going back further, who it is that really wanted to install Bush into office (who is pulling the strings?). Etc etc.
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| | | | | | 26. DIA
| | | | by mconstant | | | | at Sat 17 Aug 10:14pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
"the new HQ for The New World Order" ... Oh come on, what a load of crap. I live an hour away from Denver and you know everyone's far too into all the New Age rainbow froo when you have to read auras just to get into Boulder off I-25.
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| | | | | | | 31. cube! | | | | by lopati | | | | at Sun 18 Aug 12:31pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
no cube references yet, so here you go :)
***
QUENTIN: Who are you?
WORTH: I'm the poison. I designed the outer shell.
HOLLOWAY: What?
WORTH: The shell, the sarcophagus.
LEAVEN: You built this thing?
WORTH: Not this part, the exterior. I don't know anything about the numbers or anything else in here. I was contracted to draw plans for a hollow shell. A cube.
LEAVEN: A cube! Why didn't you tell us?
HOLLOWAY: For God's sake, Worth. You knew what it was.
WORTH: No
QUENTIN: Worth, you're lying.
WORTH: It's not a first.
HOLLOWAY: Who's behind it?
WORTH: I dunno.
QUENTIN: Who hired you?
WORTH: I didn't ask. I never even left my office. I talked on the phone to some people, other guys like me, specialists working on small details. Nobody knew what it was. Nobody cared.
QUENTIN: Bullshit. You knew from square one. Look at him, he's up to his eyeballs in this thing.
HOLLOWAY: No Quentin. That's how they stay hidden. You keep everyone separated so the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. The brain never comes out in the open.
QUENTIN: Whose brain?
HOLLOWAY: It's all the same machine right. The Pentagon. Multinational corporations. The police! You do one little job, you build a widget in Saskatoon, and the next thing you know, it's two miles under the desert, the essential component of a death machine. I was right! All along my whole life I knew it. I told you Quentin. Nobody's ever gonna call me paranoid again. We gotta get out of here and blow the lid off this thing.
WORTH: Holloway, you don't get it.
HOLLOWAY: Then help me, please, I need to know.
WORTH: This may be hard for you to understand, but there is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan. Can you grasp that? Big brother is not watching you.
QUENTIN: What kind of fucking explanation is that?
WORTH: It's the best you're gonna get. I looked and the only conclusion I can come to is that there is nobody up there.
QUENTIN: Somebody had to say yes to this thing.
WORTH: What thing? Only we know what it is.
QUENTIN: We have no idea, what it is.
WORTH: We know more than anybody else. I mean somebody might have known sometime, before they got fired or voted out or sold it. But if this place ever had a purpose, then it got miscommunicated or lost in the shuffle. This is an accident, a forgotten perpetual, public works project. Do you think anybody wants to ask questions? All they want is a clear conscience and a fat paycheck. I mean, I leaned on my shuffle for months on this one. This was a great job!
QUENTIN: Why put people in it?
WORTH: Because it's here. you have to use it or you admit it's pointless.
QUENTIN: But it is pointless!
WORTH: Quentin, that's my point.
HOLLOWAY: What have we come to? It's so much worse than I thought.
WORTH: Not really, just more pathetic.
QUENTIN: You make me sick, Worth.
WORTH: I make me sick too. But we're both part of the system. I drew a box - you walk a beat. It's like you said Quentin: is keep your head down, keep it simple, just look at what's in front of you. I mean nobody wants to see the big picture. Life's too complicated. I mean, let's face it. The reason we're here is it's out of control.
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| | | | | | 32. "Looks like an X-Files Scene" | | | | by Leviathant | | | | at Sun 18 Aug 1:33pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
That was my first thought upon leaving Denver Int'l Airport at the age o' 17, sitting shotgun in my grandmother's truck as we drove along several miles of road before reaching civilization again. I thought the same thing, returning in 2000 to catch the last show on the Nine Inch Nails US tour. I wasn't aware there were conspiracy theories about this airport, but based sheerly on its looks, the place seems kind of X-files-ish.
I am Leviathant, and I approve this message.
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