One month

Last month, I posted about the woman in the UK that was going for a month without plastic, and how I couldn't figure out what I would be willing to go one month without, or why. As it turns out, I've gone the past two weeks without any meat, and the past four days without processed food. I'm not going to start wearing flip-flops and listening to STS9, and haven't started designing my art car for the Burn next year, but it is going well. Truth be told, I was eating a pile of chicken lo mein and shredded pork when it occurred to me that I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten a salad, or an apple, or any fresh fruit or vegetable. In fact, the closest I'd come to a vegetable that week was french fries. I'd love some french fries right now, but I'm going to stick with it for a little while longer.

I stopped drinking coffee too. At work one morning, B asked if it was the act of drinking coffee- the pavlovian response of getting it, or the actual caffeine that makes one feel awake in the morning. I think it is as much habit as anything else. I know people who can go to sleep early after a day off, get 9 hours of undisturbed sleep, and still feel like they cannot function without a cuppa joe first thing in the afternoon. Then again, I've gotten up feeling like I'd spent the last week with Kerauc & Cassady, and a sip of dark roasted bean juice makes everything fresh as a daisy.

I'm all for better living through chemistry, but I also think that everything under the sun can be overdone. Yin and Yang. Joy and Pain. Sunshine and Rain. Dog and Cat. Starsky and Hutch. Sanford and Son.

"MUTO" by Blu

This is pretty incredible. Actually, it is totally mind-blowing, when you consider what went into creating it.




MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

700 billion

$116 for every person on the planet (approx. 2.8 bil people live on less than $2 per day)
An Xbox for every woman, child and man in India
155 Nimitz class aircraft supercarriers (only 10 have ever been built)

13 hours at the Bunny Ranch for every US male aged 20-64

23 billion handles of JD

A burrito a day for everyone in SF for 40 years

$17,000 for every US citizen below the poverty line

70 Large Hadron Colliders

3.2 mil median priced homes in the US

4 years of college tuition for 8.8 mil students

Free MUNI rides for everyone in SF till 2172

1 first class Lufthansa flight to Paris for the entire population of California, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona

The Former Future President Should've Run Again

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration."

Al Gore is going Mad Max on us, and I love it. I mean, who doesn't love antidisestablishmentarianism. I know that antidisestablishmentarianism is a church vs state issue, but it smells like anarchy, and I will use it however I wish. If he could've shown this much personality and conviction eight years ago, there wouldn't have been a war in Iraq, Ahmidenijad would just be kooks on the level of Hugo Chavez, no one would be saying "interwebs" with ironic detachment, no one would be shamed for being fooled once but never again, we would have a president who might read the stories and not just the headlines, no child would be left behind anyway...

What I Meant Was...

Yesterday I was walking home from work, and I had the greatest idea for a post. Not exactly the greatest idea, I mean I hadn't figured out the significance of the number 42 or anything, but it was pretty good. I got home, started cooking dinner, checking emails, surfing for porn, staring out the window, forgetting that dinner was cooking, wondering who it was that told me cats were hallucinating most of their waking hours, eating burned noodles, watching Torchwood, checking my bank account, talking to my housemates, wishing I hadn't undercooked the noodles, wondering if, when I write this post tomorrow, I will wonder if whomever is reading this will go back and make sure that I wrote about burned noodles, eventually closed the lid on the macbook, went to sleep, got up the next morning went to work, went to yoga with A, got home chatted with H (and S) for almost an hour, made dinner (yes, it was mashed potatoes), hung out with the housemates, checked emails, realized I'd forgotten about the great idea i had for a post yesterday, started a stream of consciousness post about forgetting what the great idea I had for a post yesterday was, realized mid-post that the idea I had was actually two days ago, then started meta-posting about posting- which means that I am now meta-meta posting and run the risk of getting stuck in a self referential loop. What it all boils down to, is that I have absolutely nothing to post about, but I feel like taking up surreal estate on the internet for another day, and seeing if the mystery reader in Oakland will be back tomorrow. 

DIY for Dummies

When I go to a new dentist, I really don't want to hear something like this:

"Sooo, I've been a dentist on and off since high school. I never studied seriously or nothin', but I have a subscription to Dentist's World and Dentist Magazine. I always go over the diagrams in the back and practice as much as I can. I figure, the more you do it, the better you get, right?"

No, but say I get hit by car and I hear this:

"Dude, that looked gnarly! I saw some chick get hit by a car a few years ago, and I stayed with her till the EMTs came. She totally dislocated her shoulder, and they popped it back in right there. I watched how they did it, and now any time I see an accident, I'm like, hey I can put your shoulder back together if you need it, alright?"

Not this time, though on the other hand, I could sue you later, and my lawyer might say this:

"Hey you wanna sue somebody? Sweet. Listen, I don't have a 'law degree,' I think that will kill my ability to really feel the law and make a sound argument flow through me. I did take one law lesson from a guy who had the most lawyeristic talent of anyone I've ever seen. He helped his girlfriend study while she was in Pre Law or whatever, but he was a total natural, and didn't buy into the whole 'institution.' That's probably why they broke up. I don't read any of that Latin stuff either, I don't think that's part of being a real lawyer, right?"

No.

Of course, none of these scenarios could ever happen, because there are laws in place to prevent them, and other situations where people who, much like Donny, are completely out of their element. Unfortunately, there are no such laws in place for music. I have studied it. I can read it, write it, and theorize it. I can tell you the history and I can answer trivia questions (if some people who's names might begin with Ls would shut up and listen). I truly do not understand the dictum where the less you actually know about music, the better a musician you can be. How is it that people who don't have the chops to sing 'Happy Birthday' in tune and in the same key as the people singing next to them, think they can...

Hold on, I need to blow some snob out of my nose. There's nothing wrong with hobbyists/amateurs, and if I said there was, PBS and Time/Life Books would write me a very stern but polite rebuke. I just think that if you are going to take something seriously, you should do it seriously as well. If you do happen to be a 'Donny', don't wait until Walter tells you.

Filming In The Stream...

A CERN press release about the LHC was issued last week; it stated: "Starting up a major new particle accelerator takes much more than flipping a switch. Thousands of individual elements have to work in harmony, timings have to be synchronized to under a billionth of a second, and beams finer than a human hair have to be brought into head-on collision....[O]ver the next few weeks,...[the LHC's] acceleration systems will be brought into play, and the beams will be brought into collision to allow the research program to begin...Experiments at the LHC will allow physicists to complete a journey that started with Newton's description of gravity. Gravity acts on mass, but so far science [has been] unable to explain the mechanism that generates mass. Experiments at the LHC will provide the answer."

So, we still may have 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds till the world will end, and in that time I'd like to quit my job and do something that means something to me and doesn't involve selling anything, buying anything, or processing anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that. While I'm at it, I want to move into Alex Forest's apartment, but I don't want to move to the meat packing district of New York (even though the interiors were shot at 652 Hudson Street, nowhere near the meat packing district) so I want to have it replicated in the warehouse around the corner from Amber. I'd love to go to Paris again, but since I have already been there, I should do the South American tour I was planning for next year. I think when I get outta here, I'm gonna get laid- it's been a while, and if the world is going to get sucked up by anti-matter, masticating box should be somewhere on the to-do list. I have a feeling J thinks I hate her, and would want to clear that up, because we make very good friends regardless of anything else. I wish we could have another night of KLM, but getting our schedules to jive might be hard. And by hard I mean doggy. Then there's rule #3, which I guess there mightn't be enough time to properly break, though I do like her a lot. I haven't had a chance to see my brother in a couple years so that'll have to go up higher on the list, as should PR and the family. I picked a hellova time to stop sniffing glue...

The Not Quite Big But Conceivably Very Large Bang

I'm not a scientist, but I do think Dr Giovanna Tinetti is really hot. She's an astrobiologist and has absolutely nothing to do with the Large Hadron Super Collider, but so what? As I'm writing this, two beams of protons are being shot towards each other in a 17 mile tunnel under France and Switzerland at nine-tenths the speed of light. The goal is to create the Higgs boson, which is said to be the God Particle, or the origin of matter created after the Big Bang. It could also create dark matter, which would give physicists a better understanding of the atomic structure of the universe. That's all pretty cool, but even better than that, there is the infinitesimally small chance that all of those subatomic particles bouncing around could spawn antimatter, which would eat other microscopic particles, getting anti-bigger until it created a black hole and destroyed the Earth. Then we would have a choice- we either sacrifice Mother Angelina and St Brad's media coverage, or Tom Cruise's ego to save the world.

She Put a Spell on Me

I never thought about it until tonight, but I would have loved to see Hatem and Diamanda Galàs together. Her music is certainly not easy listening, it can be downright difficult to bear, which is part of it's beauty. It isn't the music that makes me twitterpated over her, though, it's the idea that if I use 11% of my brain, she's using about 12.5%. As far as the music goes, she was a child prodigy who played piano with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at 14, has a BA and a Masters in music, and has worked with everyone from Pierre Boulez to John Paul Jones (the 4 octave vocal range is cool, but it's as much DNA as talent). That's cool and all, but what makes her truly hot is that she also speaks five languages and has citizenship in three countries and while she was Pre-Med doing research in neurochemistry & immunology, she was studying Bel Canto on her off days and being pimped out by transvestites at night. I think I remember somewhere she said she was going back to school to get a degree in marine biology, too.

The Rule of Mates

Even before I'd heard the rule of mates, I thought it was a good one by which to live. I had, of course, already broken two of the rules by the time I knew what they were. Yes, I call it the Rule (singular) of Mates, even though there are three rules, but it is really one rule in three parts: No housemates, no workmates, no bandmates.

Simple, isn't it?

No, it isn't, because you never know whom you will meet, or how, or where. The problem with the Rule of Mates, is that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I broke the bandmate portion of the rule, she and I had a connection and a groove like no other. Then, when it started to not work so well between us, it affected everyone in the band. Several years later, I broke the housemate part of the rule. The other housemates dug having a sexy, swaggering vibe in the house, until she showed herself to be a lunatic and I reacted like a petulant toddler (really- I stomped around and cried; thanks for saving me from that, Pops).

So, I'm starting to wonder if the Rule of Mates is really a crock, and that if you don't worry about it , things will be fine. Intrepid reader, you know, as if by osmosis, that I'm only thinking about and posting about the Rule of Mates because I'm perilously close to breaking the final sub-rule. I'll keep you... ugh no puns this early in the morning.

Mi Gaza, Su Gaza

From yesterday's post, it should be pretty obvious that I follow politics. Local, state, national, foreign, robot, interdimensional, whatevs. So, one thing that I find fascinating is how both sides make a point of saying how proud they are to support and fund Israel. I understand that everyone wants peace on Earth, as long as they don't work for the military-industrial complex, and "Peace in the Middle East" makes for a swell catchphrase. But do most people even know what the Israel-Palestine conflict is? It bothers me that Israel became the good guys from the very beginning, and the majority of the public just follows whatever they are told in the matter. Sure, we've been lead astray by political leaders many times before, but this is the only topic I know of where every administration in the last 60 years agrees.

A brief history: The first scientific documented reference (ie. not the bible) to an area known as Palestine was in 5th century BCE. The land stretched from the Gaza Strip to the Dead Sea. It was part of the Persian Empire, Arabs and Jews lived together, everything was cool. Then the Romans took over. Jews and Muslims were OK, the upstart Christians were fed to the lions. Then came the Byzantine Empire. Christians and Muslims were OK, but Jews got fed to the lions. Then Arabs took over. Everybody's cool. Everything remained relatively cool for a thousand years. Muslims, Jews and Christians all lived together, and if anyone persecuted anyone else, it was generally an outside Christian ruler. For all of this time, Israel did not exist. In every incarnation, it was always Palestine.

Everything changed when the Nazis tried to kill all the Jews. After the war, and probably influenced by some misplaced sense of guilt, the freshly minted United Nations bent over for the Zionists, who said that there should be a Jewish state, and that it should be where Palestine has stood for 2,000 years. Never mind that Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived there for two millenia in reasonably perfect harmony, it needs to be for Jews, by Jews, and about Jews. Only Jews. Now.

Imagine if you will, being a child who doesn't understand why there are tanks and soldiers outside the front door, and why the family has to move out of the only house you've ever known. Imagine growing up under an unjustified occupation supported by the most advanced and sophisticated military the world has ever known. Did you know that, unlike every other country in the world, a financial contribution by a US citizen to the Israeli government is tax deductible? I put myself in the shoes of a young Palestinian, who has known nothing but an occupied and marginalized homeland, and I understand making random acts of senseless violence. I don't agree with it, but I also can live anywhere I choose. I haven't seen my home get bulldozed so someone else can build their own house. I've never had friends or family killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I expect that the CIA will be creating a file for me after writing this post, because it sounds like I support the turrists, and this is Amurca, and if it's not Amurkin, we don't support it. Well I don't support terrorism or any use of violence, but I see their point.

Not on the Fence. Can't Even See It.

I missed part of Gov Palin's speech at the RNC, so I went to the NY Times website and read the original text. Her pregnant teenage daughter, who is all over the news in the last two days, got her name mentioned once, but McCain's totally irrelevant experience as a POW was gone over in detail. Twice. 

There was a very odd small town sentiment to the evening, especially when you include Rude Guiliani's speech. They seem to think that if you were going to be leader of one of the most powerful countries in the modern world, it's better to be an "aw, shucks" small town hick that doesn't know cream of wheat from créme brulée, than to be erudite and worldly. To that end, a few people noticed that Palin was guilty of one of the worst Bushisms- pronouncing nuclear as "nu-q-lar." Well, somebody's about to get fired, because the speech was sent out to, and published by  the press exactly as the beauty queen read it- with "new-clear" spelled out phonetically to make sure she doesn't sound like the ignorant redneck she is.

I love how she talked truthfully about Obama's plan to raise taxes, but didn't mention that it would be done by eliminating the loopholes only available to the rich. It was fantastic that she bragged about firing her governor's chef, when she also brags about killing and skinning caribou, and her love of mooseburgers. Might as well throw in her recipe for mayonnaise casserole. It was sheer genius to admit her belief that enemies of the state should not be given the benefit of basic human rights when she said, "Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?" It was absolutely hilarious that she thinks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's first name is pronounced "Terry." I was disappointed that she only used the word "maverick" three times, but she made up for it by saying:

"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."

This from the woman who, just last spring decided to give a half hour speech at a governor's conference in Texas- almost an hour after her water broke while she was carrying a child that she knew had Down's Syndrome and was about to come three weeks early. Not only did she stick around to give the speech, she got on a plane and flew back to Alaska to give birth. Now, I'm not a doctor, and I think the best kids are billy goats, however, I have heard something said against pregnant woman flying in the third trimester. It probably has something to do with there not usually being doctors and medical equipment on commercial airlines (she'd sold the Governor's Jet on eBay). She wasn't trying to promote her career. If you're a governor, even going into labor takes a backseat to being on a national stage, right? Do we really need a woman who makes this kind of judgment call to be VP to a cancerous 72 year old with a bad ticker?

"Statement" by Dr. Hatem

I told you he was brilliant

Traditional artistic ideology is an inheritance. My ancestors, the Pharoahs, were the most successful artists in history, because their artistic formula consisted of their knowledge, experience, and opinions. Art is the shadow of history, or the record of humanity where history has an organic extent. In other words, years continuously divide man's intention to define his relative position to time. Time obviously does not separate from the place. The ideological understanding of the different shapes of artistic definition previously varied more sharply from country to country. At one time, it was easier to identify the nationality of the artist. However, today most artists take serious steps toward internationality.

I refuse adamantly the pretending of traditional works because I understand that emotions cannot linger. When great portraiture, nature, or even still life is attempted, it takes a great deal of time to accurately execute perspective, color, light, and shadow. Let us ask together, "Is it possible for the artist to keep his original feeling alive, yet immutable for the duration of the piece?" Human feeling refuses to be fixed to a constant.

The infinite quantity of facts which surround us, obligate us seriously to search for a more adequate formula of balance. As a starting point, let's separate the surrounding facts into two main branches:

-The Scientific Sciences, such chemistry or physics;

-The Humanistic Sciences, such as religion or philosophy.

The Scientific Sciences generally have two basic shapes: invention and investment. Invention always places us in the role of traveller progressing from the known  to the unknown. The only certainty is that the unknown is unknown. But that doesn't mean it isn't here or there. For example, we succeeded in pushing the atom to separate by using experience and the subsequent knowledge attained. But that doesn't mean we created the atomic separation. Other inventions accidentally occurred, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a base. Investment is the stage which follows invention. We always invest our inventions to invent again. Art is the the complete understanding of invention and investment's circular shape.

On the other hand, the Humanistic Sciences are more clearly shaped by reaction rather than action. We see Christianity and Judaism through the behavior of Christian or Jewish individuals. But the materialistic mass of religion is intangible. Historical actions are visible, but not the history itself. The relationship between the Scientific and Humanistic Sciences eternally vacillates between the primitive and the advanced. This makes us the catalytic tool affected by the effect. History is the formula between effects and behavior to produce novelty; art is the only agreeable fact for this novelty.

Traditionalists must confess, all they do are geometric equations, relating part to part, or part to whole. They are simply attempting to produce a disciplined rhythm, such as the Golden Proportion, which is a prime example of my premise. We must be serious in acquiring a new judgement which does not equate radicalism with courage. We must ask ourselves repeatedly and directly, "What can we consider admirable?" Forged artistic crisis is the problem of the Modern Artist.

What color or material is used is inconsequential. Let us always keep correction and thoughtful balance as our power of self-direction. We desperately need in this period an acceptable digestion of civilization's secretion which can protect us from this dyspepsia. We do not need to be springs of a clock. We must confess readily that everything in existence is submissive by necessity to exact geometric equations. Intangible Artistic Geometric is the only security against the shock of uselessness. Let us make time the neutral element and strongly face together the impossibility circles and uselessness of others. Let us think together!