Idea Subscription
This is cool. And perhaps just the right amount of randmoness that we should inject into the daily humdrum of our frantic lives. Too often are we caught up in all the tings we have to do, including those things we categorize as leisure, that we completely negate the power of the simply random — the doing of something utterly off the course of our regular map simply for the doing and the potential joy that its consequence may bring us…in otherwords, the “just because.”
This is the David Horvitz Project. For all of 2009 he will send out small texts of simple instructional ideas through a mailing list as well as posting screenshots of those instructions on a tumblr page. Aside from the “thinking them up” and sending/posting of the ideas, Horvitz relinquishes all power of the idea to us, the viewer, to do with them all the creative power we wish to do with them — no restrictions.
These were just a few of Gilding’s favorites. She is going to try valiantly to perform some of these, at the very least once a week. Via Halcyon Days.
Penny Pinching
The above was said by Ernest Rutherford, born on 30 August 1871 in Nelson, New Zealand. The son of a farmer, in 1894 he won a scholarship to Cambridge University and worked as a research student under Sir Joseph Thomson. In 1898 he became Professor of Physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. There, working with chemist Frederick Soddy, he investigated the newly-discovered phenomenon of radioactivity. Rutherford and Soddy proposed that radioactivity results from the disintegration of atoms.
In 1907 Rutherford returned to England to become Professor of Physics at Manchester University. In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1914 he was knighted, but the war interrupted his work. He helped to develop methods of dealing with the new menace of submarine warfare, as well as studying underwater acoustics.
In 1917 he returned to physics and a long series of experiments in which he discovered that the nuclei of certain light elements, such as nitrogen, could be ‘disintegrated’ by the impact of energetic alpha particles coming from some radioactive source, and that during this process fast protons were emitted. This was the first artificially induced nuclear reaction. Rutherford had virtually created a new discipline, the nuclear physics.
In 1919 Rutherford became professor of experimental physics and director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, succeeding Thomson. Many of his students at the Cavendish Laboratory went on to become pioneering scientists. From 1925 to 1930 he was president of the Royal Society (to which he had been elected in 1903). In 1931 he was awarded a life peerage and died on 19 October 1937. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. (Source)
Inspired
Historical photo from the University of Washington Medical Genetics of Seattle, WA. Photo above is a quote outside Dr. Motulsky’s RR Office, 1970.
Salute Your Cunt!
My vagina is coming!
Have you seen my vagina of late?
It is dark, black and hairy
Iti is warm, lukewarm and sexy
It is the crucible of paradoxes:
It is both weak and strong
Soft and hard
It builds and destroys
It makes and breaks
It is sometimes the conqueror, sometimes
the conquered
Men crave for it, but turn around and
destroy it
My vagina is coming
In fact, it is already here
Here to sing a canticle to the world
Here to remind the world of its
indespensability
It is the door through which all
humanity goes…
~Afuba, Mfor Divine
The Vagina Poem
am bl
per p ee
fect le d
tion as for
I am e my
not child
a litt ren
le girl I
hairless breathe
and asha so that
med, no I you may
am woman go on
growling with enter living
sophisti with in pink
cation caution velvet
and I can br eleg
ooz aek ance
ing s
B o
E t
A a
U k
T e
Y r p
i
d
e
George Carlin had It Right, and the Kings of Men
So, yesterday’s Mass was about the 10 commandements, and Gilding thought, yeah, George Carlin had it right.
And while we’re on religion. Kings premiered on NBC last night. This show is an interesting mix of the perils of a capitalist run govenment with those of biblical proportions standing behind a monarchial rule. Think Henry VIII meets Big Oil…oh wait, that was Bush, wasn’t it…just minus the obvious brain-to-speech impetiment. Short synopsis, Kings is a modern-day soap about a hero who rises to become the King of his nation; based on the biblical story of King a David.
But the religious overtones don’t stop there and the writers cleverly mix these with a blending of modern era history and current affairs — and this is the Lit major in Gilding.
There is, of course David, the hero so still aptly named and in the premier episode he faces off with Goliath, the giant made literal in the form of a tank and metaphorical in the soldiers of the opposing side he faces down in the midst of a war. Add to that the opposing “country” is named Gath (i.e Goliath of Gath, one of five city states of the Philistines) while the King Silas’s own “country” is named Gilboa (i.e. Mount Gilboa, the setting used by the Books of Samuel for the battle between Saul and the Philistines). Couple that with his last name being Shephard, a little shake and a stir and you have the liberator of the fold from a once good turned strayed King.
Then there is King Silas Benjamin. Biblically, Silas was a missionary companion to Paul and Timothy, but pre-Chiristianity, “Asilas” (the pre-Roman Italian language for “Silvanus” the original version of “Silas”) was an Etruscan leader and warrior-prophet who plays a prominent role in assisting Aeneas in Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid. This Silas is an embodiment of both, a former war hero cum chosen leader by God via a crown of butterflies. As for Benjamin. It is of Hebrew origin, meaning “son of the right hand” and in Biblical story was the 12th youngest and most beloved son of the patriarch Jacob and Rachel. Also, Saul, the first King of Israel, was the son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin. But then there are the more modern connotations of the name, think Benjamin Franklin, favored President of American history, inventor and mover of modern technology. The King embodies these attributes as well, having the magnetic personality and orating skills of Franklin and Hitler combined.
Much like the Biblical King Saul, who was rejected by God for his corrupt act of keeping some of the loot after defeating the Amalekites, Silas is also rejected by God for following the demand of his capitalist backer to attack Gath even after signing a peace treaty with them, thusly ending the war, because of the capitalist’s venture interests in the profiteering off of the war.
And then there is Jack, King Silas’s son. Consequently, Jack is of Old English origin. In its French form, Jacques, the name may be taken from its then Hebrew Jacob which means “he who supplants.” As of the permier episode, the King’s son is already on the track to usurping his father.
And as for that crown of butterflies, a major symbol used in the series. The butterfly in popular culture is a symbol of rejuvination and regeneration. A potent mixture when placed in that of a living crown — the crown being a symbol of royal power and authority. Like the sceptre, the crown is a visible badge of office, granting the wearer the absolute right to rule — to rule was often held to be divinely inspired. Not surprisingly, the “crown of butterflies” was formed by Monarch butterflies, and, of course, the series is dealing with a monarchial rule. But a deeper symbolism of the butterfly is rooted in its defense strategy. Living off the dietary sustenance of milkweed only, the butterfly becomes distasteful, shielding them against almost all predators that soon learn to avoid them after attempting to eat them.
Needless to say, the show is an analytical feast. The storyline is interesting, well written and thoughtful as well as thought provoking. The mix of biblical story with that of modern overtones makes the idea quite plausible. And conspiracists will love the undertones of slippery slope possibilities that our approaching capitalist run government will lead us down this path. Some stats on the show: it is directed by I Am Legend helmer, Francis Lawrence, and its creator, Micheal Green, is the writer of Heroes. The show isn’t overly religious, despite its inspired story and powerful Biblical symbolism. It incurres the use of classic’s characters such as the voice of conscience to the morally dubious Silas, portrayed by a preacher, and a historian, whom the writers employ as their outlet to voice the history, sub-plot lines, and access to interaction with their fans via the King’s website on NBC.com. And at the same time it isn’t an overly political satire, even though it employs a Dick Cheney-esque character out for bloody war for financial reasons (hence the previously mentioned King Silas’s capitalist invester). While some remain confused about what kind of show Kings is, Gilding says its both, its all, its modern drama meets series meets all the fine aspects of the classics wrapped into a bundle that promises to remain entertaining as long as it continues to live up to the smart, thinking show that it provided with its premier. So, writers of Kings, don’t fuck it up.
March is Celebrate My Cunt Month…or in other words, Women’s History Month
the cunt poem
wherever there’s earth, dirt and the moon, someone
is going to write a “woman” poem
all spirals and delicate shells blood and the bloody moon. Someone
is gonna talk about their cunt.
I don’t think my cunt wants to hang out in poems
dripping with beautiful analogy, trying to blend into the ground
its sick of playing nature to my culture. My cunt wants to go to the opera,
it wants to stride through atriums looking at paintings,
it wants to resemble
quantum mechanics and theories as dry
and bloodless as the bones of dead seabirds. It wants
sartorial elegance and a high standard of living; subtlety beyond the lowly
biblical reference and heavy fisted metaphor
It’d like to take this opportunity to point out
the absence of chaos in its structure, it wants to take an opportunity to see if
opportunity knocks, it’d like to remember its no pussy cat
it’d like to take out a hit on the moon Yeah,
it wants to be a know it all a charlatan a diva.
it wont be caught dead in a couple of dead end lines
in the core of an elegy to a lover
it’s gotta have the title track it’s got to have the starring role:
it wants
the first choice and it wants the last word
©Olivia Macassey 2001
Above image is by Debbie Davis
Mad People
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”
~Jack Kerouac
Not Bothering to Conceal the Thievery — Celebrating It In Fact
Via Ullabenulla via Apartment Therapy
Let’s see how far this example of thievery goes on the blogosphere.
Recast It as Social Skills and Get Parenting
“Sure, certain social rubrics have broken down or blurred, and sure, electronic communication seems to have given adults as well as children new ways to be rude. But the age-old parental job remains.”
~Perri Klass, M.D.
from “Making Room for Miss Manner Is a Parenting Basic”, NYTimes
Link: NYTimes– Making Room for Miss Manners…
Photograph by Gill Greenberg, series End Times
Naaktgeboren
“When Napoleon seized the Netherlands in 1810, he demanded that all Dutchmen take last names, just as the French had done decades prior. Problem was, the Dutch had lived full and happy lives with single names, so they took absurd surnames in a show of spirited defiance. These included Naaktgeboren (born naked), Spring int Veld (jump in the field), and Piest (pisses). Unfortunately for their descendants, Napoleon’s last-name trend stuck, and all of these remain perfectly normal Dutch names today.”
Link: mental_floss
Gobbled Thoughts
“I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character…The turkey is, in comparison, a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America…He is, though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards.“
Benjamin Franklin, letter of January 26,1784
Cartooning the Adult Penchant for Diarrhea of the Mouth
The new anthology “Explainers,” which gathers all of Jules Feiffer’s Village Voice strips from 1956 to 1966 is a reintroduction to Feiffer’s basic scheme — to mine the humor of social and political blather; to show, in a funny way, how people talk but never connect.
His neurotic characters yammer on and on, their diarrhea of the mouth part of the fun. This strip is an elaborate back and forth between cat and mouse about established mores, class systems and man’s paternalism toward animals.
