The Fountain of Youth?

"I'm frightened by the devil,
but I'm drawn to those that ain't afraid" Joni Mitchell.

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking - he knows!" Frank Lloyd Wright

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Max Planck

I came across a really interesting proposition at Grant McCrackens blog. (link above) He suggests creating a unique system:

"I need a briefing system. (And it's not just me. Every marketer, educator, politician, cultural producer, and retailer, needs this too.) This would supply me with a steadily supply of intelligence on what is happening on TV, on line, and in the world. It would give me advance notice of the forces shaping my world. And it would give me early warning of the things that are going to change the way I make my living, raise my family, live my life. It would be nice to have a little notice. I mean, come on.

This could be a briefing exchange that would allow me to trade insights with other suppliers (using some kind of credit system). I would also allow me to sell new insights to clients for cash. Where would I fit in the system? Oh, I guess an anthropologists chattering away as I do could create something useful, if only by bundling all these daily posts into aggregates of illumination. (Hah!)"

I was quite charmed by this notion and realized such a system already exists!

And it is "free". All you need to do is partake in ritualistic eating, meet to drink drugs and surrender to other people who might mess with your mind.

It's called high school or university. Or nightclub, coffee huff and have friends.

I't's also called being young and hip.

Kids already have a briefing system; a currency exchange of fun, music, comics, news, games, merchandise and consummer savvy. They product share and if crassly raised product compete.

I remember in the early 90's when every one was getting old. People didn't know much about music they stopped going dancing and keeping up with new movie releases. Then they bought computers. By the zeros my friends were all hip again! They knew who the new bands were, who cool actors were. Two things happened to provide this sudden knowledge of contemporary culture. They got the internet and their kids became teens.

I was never a really cool person, but I was just funny enough that cool people liked to hang out with me. I was just sexy enough to get into clubs and work in bars and I was an artist, so that kind of helped get cool friends. My edginess is from nature: camping in Montana, boating in the Pacific Northwest. Not exactly urban-hip currency. I have almost always journeyed through many contemporary extreme experiences by the grace of my friends who had way more guts than me. They made me try edgy make up, dragged me to speakeasys, shared recollections of their herb and drug experiments and friends at Triumf, a particle accelerator, turned me onto electronic mail 20 years before anybody had home service. And the best? Friends turned me onto all kinds of edgy literature...where the extreme "briefing system" really goes for the gusto. William Burroughs, Melville, McCarthy, Cathy Acker, Neal Stephansen, Bataille, Di Lillo, Dickens.

The most efficent and speedy "briefing system for contemporary culture" is very organic and right in front of us. It is to be found in blogs, hunter and gatherers and young people...if we dare to listen to each other and still go out dancing.

The customer that would need McCracken's briefing system would be the customer who might least transform by its value. There are few minds more fucked up than one that isn't open to new ideas and letting go of their own egos and the tyranny of believing they know how the entire world should live.

If listening and spending time with young people can help older people stay young and informed is there nothing that older people can teach young people?

Could this be an exchange?

I find myself yet again with questions? What exactly is cool and good to know about? What insight is the most important insight to share?

It is the communial currency that improves our quality of life. We are addicted to American Idol for our vote in the rags to riches Broadway musical soap opera result. We all want a voice.

And the only way we know we ever have a voice is when we have the validation of someone else in our life witnessing our passions. We share information about the things that represent our own strugggling souls. It might be clothing, it might be music, it might be homehardware, it might be picking the winner of a singing contest on tv.

Being informed is more important than having discerning taste. Perhaps being informed is the new high brow? It doesn't matter if air conditioners are bad for the environment, it is much more important that in your cooled down house you can tell your neighbour all the latest studies on air conditioners and the environment. Every body can tell you exactly the pros and cons of their behaviour, but they are still badly behaving.

I know American Idol sucks. I hate the style of singing, I prefer natural voices like Chris Cornell and Busta Ryhmes, but I can tell you all about each American idol performer and who is going to win. That currency might help me in some social situation.

Contemporary culture is breathing recycled ideas, air and entertainment.

If kids can help old people find their objects of passion shouldn't old people remind kids that passion can not be lived though objects or products or celebrities?

Isn't the most ultimate briefing system an ethical quest?

Contemporary cultures live in Plato's cave. How can we brief them to get outside?

Don't be afraid...

We can still listen to Band of Horses and Bound Stems with our Guess cork heeled platforms outside the cave.

Birth of a blog...

Five-year Plan

As is the way in blogland, I found this baby blog...and I like their aim so much for their blog, I hope someone else will check it out. I beleive they are about to find some cool ways to live and problem solve. I think the blog format is such a great opportunity for transformative shifts in life.

They want to live on their boat. I think this idea is a step towards eco-friendly living, taking up less space on the planet, less resources and planet friendly perhaps too?

Anyways, its not an easy decision, obviously or we'd all do it right?

So they need help. Of course I love to talk and I love puzzlesolving so i have made them adopt me the poor people ha ha!

Please see if you want to join in the puzzle...?

i also realized this is a good opportunity to talk about cars!!!! here check this essay out...

Making: The Resurrection of Ishtar

I have already worked my way through American Inventor. I'm hard at work at painting which means I am everywhere else too. I wanted to not like American Inventor. A telling image in last nights broadcasts was when the judges were making a final decision in an allnight conference setting...for the last 12 people who would also get $50, 000 to develop their ideas...they had photos of the people, not their inventions. The stories these contestants had were incredible. Onion eyed was I. So inspiring

Why Madonna? Well, I love this photo and I have tickets to this show. And her Kaballah name is Esther.

I like this pic of the fire dancer. There is a woman on Survivor who is a fire dancer, and my friends own a circus called Zero Gravity Circus. I wonder if they know Courtney on Survivor? Trust me circus people all know each other. Street performers have elaborate and wonderful care and billeting of each other around the world. You can see Zero Gravity Circus in Toronto.

Charlie Sheen is on Ellen. I can't look away. Hooked. I should rename this blog "Avoiding Painting." I enjoy 2 1/2 Men. I am glad Jon Cryer is out and about. Charlie Sheen has created a children's clothing line. I think they are kidding. No. He is narrating the clothes reading from his notes as adorable kids from Ellens staff model them. He says "distressed bubble shirt" and "Romeo and Juliet embroidered denim skirt". I want to think it's stupid, but I can't the clothes are sweet and childlike and the kids seem happy.

Pink is performing Stupid Girls. She's very good. She looks awesome.

I don't know why this story of Pink and her "controversial" song attracts me. Perhaps because I have always been your classic bimbo. Men didn't ask me for dates to talk about books or opinions on farming. Well, okay no one gets asked out for that. I'm not complaining, I think it's funny. My personality and smile and pretty hair got in me the door. Sometimes it got me the second interview. The best thing about Stagg? He actually likes talking to me. It's hilarious.

Ellen says to Pink, " The cd is good and you say so many important things. Congratulations and I love the cd so much."

The Behr paint label I have been hauling around with me for years. And I mean around, New York, Germany, Montana, Atlantic City, Montreal, Memphis, Vancouver. It's from painting a house on Wicaninnish Island. Not my house. But where my sister brother in law and I went to stay with friends. Very west coast. Remote. Beautiful. My bro-in-law and I painted most of the house while we were there. I love the colours and have been planning to use it in a painting since 1998? Like I said, I should call this blog "Avoiding Painting." I love it with the Tiffany blue. The pastel drippy blue too. No logic, it makes me feel.

Now I flipped all of the sections over and am gluing some of these various sections together. I don't know what particularily I'm doing or thinking. I ask, Does it feel like me and what I am thinking?

Ellen asks Pink, "What made you write that song?"
Pink, "I live here." Audience goes nuts.
Ellen, "What if you bump into one of these girls." Audience goes nuts.
Pink, "I picked easy examples to attack a general thing I find nauseating, and boring." Audience really goes nuts.
Pink, "That is the opposite reaction I expected when I wrote this song. I was designing exotic sexy bulletproof clothes." "I don't want to be a preacher. I want to live by example. I'm an option girl. Acting like someone else you aren't yourself. You need to rebel against these images of celebrity."
Ellen, "You hear that girls be rebellous." Audience goes nuts.
"In a way you don't want to be stupid."

These are getting glued in somewhere now that I've built up a structure. But I'm having second thoughts about ripping up that top right hand corner because I think it looks like its going to be a tough number, on its own. I should really keep painting it, and then send it to my bro-in-law.

Stagg always makes these great drawings for me. I got all crazy today and loaded it in to this piece.

There were music critics once saying Spears or Steffani was the heir to Madonna. I don't know, I think Pinks new hit is anthem like Material Girls and yet drives a deeper message like Express Yourself. I hope Pink gets cast to play Janis Joplin.



I left the bit of Thursday showing in the newsprint. Why? You want to ask an artist her intentions? Like there might be some sound bite I could knock out? Heh. Well, it reminds me of a favourite novel. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.


This isn't finished yet...but there is what I have not managed to avoid so far, heh heh. Stagg just got home and I should pour him a glass of champagne. It's a tough job but I love it. Raise the bubbly to Ishtar who had a golden egg that turned into the sun, and she travels back and forth from here to the underworld every six months; that takes smarts.

Update: The finished...The Resurrection of Ishtar

Stupid Girls Revisited

I just posted this thought at Grant McCracken site.

Justin Timberlake and Ashton Kucher attained "smart creds" when they hooked up with older women. On Real Housewives of Orange County the other night, an 18 yr old says something like, "when you're with an older woman it makes you the man."

Meanwhile on this episode a 24 yr old woman is flirting with him, her fiance is jealous her attention is on the boy and at a pool party is a woman alone, single divorced and I couldn't help thinking...wouldn't her and the 34yr fiance make a dynamic couple? She would be older than him, but able to provide the things he can not find from his young fiance.

When they first burst on the scene none of these women were famous for their smarts, Drew Barrymore Jodie Foster and Madonna. they have acheived smarts by longevity in the public eye and by becoming finacial moguls which is often associated with brains. As a long time fan of Madonna nothing bugs me more than the outsider judging with a left handed compliment "well, she's smart she's good with money (if not morals or talent)" Like her only talent was to seduce and trick the audience into buying her music when all we really want is a great dance song. Insulting celebrities is also a way to insult each other.

Punk rockers have smart creds. Avril and Pink reflect their brain powers by rejecting social norms, out-thinking the masses has always been a cache of the punk rock experience. Unfortunately substance abuse often takes over their brains or what I like to call "artistic differences" Eventually too many stars like Sublime, Blindmelon, Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain, Sid and Nancy get famous for their self destruction.

Being smart is dangerous.

And maybe that is why for the moment in our current times it is not worshipped?

Book Club discussion excerpt

The Usual Suspects: Man/Bull/Lion/Eagle JackaLupe 4/14/2006
So, Candy, what do you make of the latest notions of Amazon quasi-farmers who widely 'managed' if not exactly cultivated those fragile thin (often lateritic when not riverine floodplain or highland, that being a relative term there) soils? Still Hunter Gatherer, but 'husbanding' all those chewy nuts and such; endless combos of medicinals.

I met Nicole Maxwell, author of a book on the latter, when she was in her 70s, back in 1968 when a few of us from Stanford spent the Summer in Iquitos, Peru, highest navigable port:; Grace Line ships carted whatever the latest 'boom' was producing: after Rubber came Barbasco, the source of that insecticide still used to paralyze insect breathing (natives still use it on fish, casting the powder over the water), Jute, then some hardwoods.

Now there's another 'export' that's flown out from the upper reaches of the Amazon basin;~) Reminds me of Somoza's little sideline: a few keys of "product" would be packed in with the frozen shrimp and lobster produced on Corn Island, near the Miskito Keys (not to be confused with the Arlo G. 'keys', and that's not Key of G, ether;~)

The Usual Suspects: Man/Bull/Lion/Eagle Candy Minx 4/14/2006
How would you like me to say this so it is understood? Fuck farming. Do I have your attention now?

I think the ideas of "stewardship" and "managing" and "husbandry" are some of the highest orders of pretentions known to humans.

Nature never needed us to babysit it. We now need a Supernatural Nanny reality tv program to come in and put us all on our naughty mats.

Stewardship. Its embarrassing. Conceited.

Totalitarian farming is embarrassing and the source of slavery, prostiution, scalping, war, fox hunting, corporate corruption, government, bleedingheart liberalism, racism, education systems that fail, intolerance and class struggle just off the top of my head.

Unfortunately, farmers just can't see the link. It's a case of observing the experiment and then affecting it. One has to get out side the mindset of farming to recognize the pattern. Denial. Accountability. Farmers have some need to glorify themselves and the silly notion of civilization while dismissing other ways of making a living.

I'm tired of their justifications. Hollow and money grabbing. All the greatest literature of civilization and preliterate cultures has warned of this kind of conceit and lifestyle.

I believe everybody in the world deserves food and should be able to eat. I am not so ignorant to understand that we have painted ourselves into a corner...and now we might have to rely completely on farming to feed everybody. I understand.

I suggest there are different ways to have food.

But am I going to boast about "stewardship"? God no.

We are slaves to growing food and locking it up now.

This act chains us to an economy that puts a price on sex and scalps.

But, I also believe old school IS the new school.

I believe we need to look at subsistence farming and hunting and gatherering life styles for the answers on how to feed us all. On how to run corporations, schools and food factories or as y'll in denial like to call them "farms".

We may have to reject the romantic notion of farming that helps maintain the totalitarian agriculture religion that clouds us from understanding other ways to live. Countryside is not wilderness.

I realize it is against the law to hunt and gather. But for those FEW AND ENDANGERED hunter/gatherers left that we haven't killed off or reprogrammed, people who have seen outside the matrix of farm thinking...we can look to them for lessons.

We can look to them and subsistent farming communities for how to save the human world.

Moveable Feasts

Morning time for Vishu celebration and Ishtar, goddess of fertility and a man who knew a temple could be built in three days because a temple is not a building, but two or more people. We even call a body part temple. That is where worship and communication really dwells. Our temples.The cliche phrase... our body is a temple? Do his followers experience his witty and wise reference to temple?

Vishu occurs this time of year. Coincidence?

Ishtar/ Easter and Vishu occur dependant on astronomical calculations. For Vishu ritualistic food includes raw rice, golden cucumber, betel leaves arecanut and some ritualistic objects include fresh linen, a metal ball, mirror, yellow konna flowers and coins. These often recall prosperity or fertility. A sacrifice and sharing for prosperity in the coming new year. A new year is a re-birth, a reincarnation of celestial personas and seasons.

For Vishu there is another paralel to Easter besides the date. There is a morning surprise(like egg hunting?). To wake up and go to an altar and what you see forecasts your future year. The mirror, the abundant food symbolizing prosperity and abundance.(fertility?)

Does the following sound familiar?

Legend: The Kollam era is said to have begun on the day Parashurama, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, created Kerala by making the waters of the Arabian Sea recede. Parashurama had vowed to exterminate the Kshatriya caste from the face of the earth. In keeping with this oath, he went to war with Rama, who was a Kshatriya.

During the battle, he realised that Rama was none other than the seventh incarnation of Vishnu. He realised that the purpose of his own life had come to an end and decided to spend the rest of his life in meditation. For this, he wanted a place where he could meditate in total peace. The gods granted him a boon according to which, he was to throw his battle axe into the sea and land would rise along the distance it covered. This is how Kerala was created.

I find for me it recalls several stories. King Arthur, Hamlet, and Moses?

Because April is originally Eostremonat we have Easter being derived from Ishtar, meaning April. The date of our ritualistic eating for both Vishu and Easter is determinded by the moon...and often changes so that is why it is a moveable feast.

Stupid Girls

I am always asking myself questions. And the Oprah show the other day with Pink and the video by Pink of Stupid Girls has been on my mind. I ask...what celebrity has an image of being a smart girl?

The internet always offers some relief heh heh. Here is a little from the fabulous Grant McCracken, one of my gods, about Stupid Girls. His whole blog is fantastic! A rich source of thought for us economicanthroculturevultures! Click on Stupid Girls title to find the rest of this entry. Careful, he is addictive:

In the Stupid Girls video from her latest album, Pink is supposed to have made fun of Paris Hilton, Mary Kate Olsen, Jessica Simpson, and Lindsay Lohan. When asked to explain, here's what Pink had to say,

None of these girls are stupid. (sic) They have dumbed themselves down to be cute. I just feel like one image is being forced down people's throats. There's a lot of smart women. There's a lot of smart girls. Who is representing them?

This is going to be an interesting cultural artifact in 100 years.

But why wait?

Here are 5 of the assumptions in evidence.

1) that these women have dumbed themselves down.

2) that "one image" is being "forced down people’s throats."

3) that smart women and girls need "representation."

4) that representation is the artist’s job.

5) that the way to represent smart women is to mock dumb women.

1) that these celebrities have dumbed themselves down.

I don’t know that this is so. Perhaps Pink has met the women in question. Perhaps they have revealed to her secret subtleties and depths. Maybe. Maybe there are what they seem to be, pretty ordinary except where blessed with beauty, talent, charisma and a fan base substantial enough to make a studio executive wet himself at lunch.

I prefer to think of celebrities as experimental vehicles. Experimental airplane are often named with an "X." (For instance, the "XF-92A" flew between 1948-1953, serving as a test for the delta-wing.) We could adopt this practice: Paris XHilton would signify that she is an experiment from whom we expect to learn something. In her case, we are looking at a girl who is well born, not quite with us (a little like Peter Sellers as Chauncy Saunders in Being There), inclined to sybaritic behavior and the scandalous, without a flicker of the lascivious or any apparent loss of status or celebrity. Now we know. It is not clear whether this is the triumph of self possession or the effect of watching too many Jerry Springer shows, but now we know that some people can do just about anything without cost. We also know, or more accurately we are inclined to suspect, that there is not the performance of stupidity. Paris XHilton has crafted herself in many ways but it is not clear that she dumbed herself down.

2) that one image is being forced down people’s throats.

This has got to be wrong. For every Paris XHilton, there is a Jody Foster. For every Jessica XSimpson, there is a Diane Sawyer. For every Lindsay Lohan, there’s an Ani DiFranco.

3) that smart girls and women need representation.

This is an ideological remainder from the 70s and the 80s. The cultural imaginary created for and by the media. We read these heavens to orient ourselves in physical and moral space. But because this imaginary has been crafted by and for special interests, some images are excluded. It is someone’s job to install these images in the heavens. Thus did the Mia Hamm and the US women’s soccer team of the 1990s help create big changes in the way in which young women thought about sports, competition, and soccer. For every Paris Hilton, there is a Madeline Albright. For every Jessica Simpson, there is a Condoleezza Rice. For every Olsen twin, there is is an Oprah Winfrey.

4) that representation is the artist’s job.

The avant garde are the keepers of culture. It is up to them to refashion our ideas. They do this by dint of their own courageous example. They will create new understandings of who and what we can be.

I think this is now the celebrity's job. That’s the service they supply us when they act of experimental vehicles. The artist’s lost this assignment. Popular culture took it away from them.

Of course, Pink is a celebrity, and in that capacity she is influential. But when she summons this explanation of her video, she is playing the artist's card, claiming the artist's prerogative. And my argument here is simple: celebrities instruct by example, artists by instruction.