Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World
February 12th, 2009UPDATE: Contest Results
The target was a picture of my ancient, tattered Audio Technica headphones sitting on the concrete floor.
There were no direct hits, but 9 of 13 submissions had something to do with round things. For days, it looked like Evil Chopsticks was going to be the closest one, since he or she drew concentric ovals. The headphones are actually oval shaped, and consist of various sized oval things inside of other oval things. Then Joseph’s submission contained two distinct round/ovoid things, with the one on the left showing concentric ovals. Becky thought that his was the closest to the target. So did I.
Off Target, But Worth Mentioning: Taters submitted two images that were totally off the mark. They were overhead representations of a warehouse and a then the warehouse and surrounding buildings. In other words, nothing to do with the target at all. Taters also wrote some text to go along with the submission, describing the warehouse… Again, off target.
However, in 928 words, that were describing something far off target, what are the odds that the phrases “concrete floor” and “audio equipment” would show up? It wasn’t “audio equipment on a concrete floor.” The phrases were describing different aspects of the warehouse, what Taters thought was the target, in different parts of the writeup. It was like off target, off target, off target and then concrete floor jumped out. Then, off target, off target, off target, audio equipment, off target, off target, off target…
Well, the target was headphones on a concrete floor.
I thought that was interesting; worth mentioning anyway.
Congratulations to Joseph and thanks to everyone else who participated!
—END UPDATE—
UPDATE: I Have to Run the Giveaway Myself
I’ve been back in contact with the promotions person at Dutton Books and it turns out that I have to run the giveaway myself. It could be anything I want.
After a few minutes of thinking up some boring and lame ways to do this, I had a much different idea and began emitting gleeful, mischievous, chortling sounds.
You’re going to have to remote view a target of my choice to win the signed copy of Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World by Trevor Paglen, and one of the creepy patches associated with some secret military project.
Instructions:
1. Your target is called BLANK SPOTS TARGET.
2. Remote view BLANK SPOTS TARGET using the method or protocol that works best for you. If you do not know how to remote view, this is a good place to start (totally free, includes practice targets).
3. Create a drawing of the BLANK SPOTS TARGET. It doesn’t matter what media you use to create your representation of the target as long as you email me a digital image of it (jpeg, gif, etc.). Please don’t send files larger than 1mb.
4. Email the image to [contest over]. (This email account will stop functioning at the end of the contest.) Include only a nickname that will be displayed on this post in the event that you win, place or show. I will display the winner’s image, the image that came in second and the image that came in third.
5. If you win, I will email you to let you know that you won and ask you to where you would like your book and patch sent. I will pass this information to my contact at Dutton Books, who will send you the book and patch.
Rules:
1. The contest ends on Friday, February 20, 2009 at 11:59 GMT.
2. Submissions will only be accepted via email. Someone will almost certainly ask if they can send in a hard copy of their RV work. Again, submissions will only be accepted via email.
3. One submission per person / email address.
4. My wife will pick the winning submission, the second place submission and the third place submission. This will avoid any possible subjective feelings that I may or may not have toward one reader or another. Becky will see the target and then the submissions that came in, but with all identifying information removed. Yes, the trolls that I have banned, you too can win.
5. I am not responsible if Dutton Books somehow doesn’t fulfill their end of the deal on this. I have absolutely no reason at all to believe that they wouldn’t send out the book and patch, but I’m not going to get stuck with the cost of doing that if they, for whatever reason, don’t perform. Besides, where the Hell would I buy one of those patches anyway?
6. By emailing your submission, you agree to allow me to post your RV work along with your designated nickname.
7. I know the target, so this is not an entirely clean RV session. There is a small chance that I could “leak” the result to someone who is skilled at ESP or other woowoo arts and crafts. So, if you’re somehow able to determine the nature of the target because I know it, and not via RV of the target directly, you’ll be cheating if you send in a submission based on those methods. No, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
That’s it. Have fun!
—END UPDATE—
I’ve been contacted by someone at Dutton Books (Penguin Group) who’s working promotions for a just published book called:
Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World by Trevor Paglen
Oh yes, I took her up on the offer for a signed copy of the book, and I’m supposed to link to some sort of give-a-way for a signed copy of the book for you guys. I don’t know how long all of that will take, so I thought I’d just link to the info on this right away since many of you will be as interested in this as I am:
Blank Spots on the Map is an expose of an empire that continues to grow every year—and which, officially, it isn’t even there. It is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a young geographer’s road trip through the underworld of U.S. military and C.I.A. “black ops” sites. This is a shadow nation of state secrets: clandestine military bases, ultra-secret black sites, classified factories, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies making up what defense and intelligence insiders themselves call the “black world.” Run by an amorphous group of government agencies and private companies, this empire’s ever expanding budget dwarfs that of many good sized countries, yet it denies its own existence.
Author Trevor Paglen is a scholar in geography, an artist, and a provocateur. His research into areas that officially don’t exist leads him on a globe-trotting investigation into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled black empire—the unmarked blank areas whether you are looking at Google Earth or a U.S. Geological Survey map. Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out the Groom Lake covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, observes classified spacecraft in the night sky with amateur astronomers, and dissects the Defense Department’s multibillion dollar black budget. Traveling to the Middle East, Central America, and even around our nation’s capital and its surrounding suburbs, he interviews the people who live on the edges of these blank spots.
Paglen visits the widow of Walter Kazra, who, while working construction at Groom Lake, was poisoned by the toxic garbage pits there. The U. S. Air Force defense to his estate’s suit? The base does not exist. The U. S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, Washington D. C. suburbs, secret prisons in Kabul, buried CIA aircraft in Honduras, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless—and eye-opening. This is a human, vivid, and telling portrait of a ballooning national mistake.
<grin>
I think you should do this sort of thing more often. Y’know, like a “Kevin’s Mindf*ck Of The Week” or something, pull some really fun and weird stuff out for us readers to gawp at. Even if it doesn’t involve contests and prizes, it’d still be entertaining.
I WANT TO PLAY! I WANT TO PLAY!
(But then I’d have to admit that I am a dork and have no clue how to submit a digital image of a drawing.)
slinking away, with tail between her legs …
@ pookie
You could make a drawing with pen and paper and take a digital photo of it.
You could also use Microsoft Paint, a very simple program that’s included with Windows.
Go to Start – Programs – Accessories – Paint.
Would either of those methods work?
Also, if you have a Mac or a PC with a Camera attached (using one of those USB cables you just plug into the back or side) you can go to Photobooth or whatever the Win equivalent is and take a picture of something you drew by hand.
I have already bought the book. Through you, as a matter of fact. Looking forward to reading it.
– c
Thanks, Dagobaz. Definitely easier than trying to remote view the target! HAHA