I only know one other person who loved this movie...it's kind of a love it or hate it movie. I thought it was the coolest thing...stabs at political arrogance, nationalism, permanence, human squabbles and the notion of stature between cultural boundaries...plus, it's one shot...one take...cool. Red and * gave Stagg and I an awesome book based on the BBC program The Power of Art. The book opens...Great art has dreadful manners. The hushed reverance of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things, visions that soothe, charm, and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure and then proceed in in short order to rearrange your sense of reality. It's a fantastic book with wonderful reproductions.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Russian Ark - Trailer
I only know one other person who loved this movie...it's kind of a love it or hate it movie. I thought it was the coolest thing...stabs at political arrogance, nationalism, permanence, human squabbles and the notion of stature between cultural boundaries...plus, it's one shot...one take...cool. Red and * gave Stagg and I an awesome book based on the BBC program The Power of Art. The book opens...Great art has dreadful manners. The hushed reverance of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things, visions that soothe, charm, and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure and then proceed in in short order to rearrange your sense of reality. It's a fantastic book with wonderful reproductions.
What Kind Of Mind?
"Anthropological accuracy requires, therefore, a great deal of caution about the hunter-gatherer:farmer dichotomy. In reality, there is a possible spectrum of economic systems-with hunters at one end, farmers at the other, and many kinds of misture in between-rather than two exclusive categories, some pair of opposites that between them include all possible human societies. In this respect, the hunter gatherer;farmer divide is itself a form of myth.
Nonetheless, I believe that within this distinction lies a set of intellectual and imaginative opportunities. Thinking about the place of hunting peoples in the human story offers an insight into the history of the world. It provides a parallel insight into the nature of the human mind. The destiny of the hunter-gatherer is both an external and an internal process, an issue for societies and for individuals.
The hunter-gatherer mind is humanity's most sophisiticated combination of detailed knowledge and instuition. It is where direct experience and metaphor unite in a joint concern to know and use the truth. The agricultural mind is a result of specialized, intense development of specific systems of intellectual order, with many kinds of analytical category and exacting uses of deductive reasoning. the hunter-gatherer seeks a relationship with all parts of the world that will be in both personal and material balance. The spirits are the evidence and the metaphors for thi relationship. If they are treated well, and are human in the right way, and are therefore at peace with human beings, the people will find the things they need. The farmer has the task of controlling and shaping of the world, making it yeild the produce upon which agricultural life depends. If this is done well then the crops will grow. Discovery by discovery, change by change, field by feild, control is increased and produce is more secure. The discotomies of good and evil, right and wrong express this farming project: control comes from separating manipulative resources from the rest of the environment and working with determination and consistency against all that might undermine this endeavor.
The differences between hunter-gatherers living before agriculture developed or beyond the later farming frontier, and small indigenous societies based on a mix of farming and herding, hunting and gathering, may not be best understood by issues of mind. As noted, ideas about spirituality and the boundaries between the physical and the metaphysical are shared by many indigenous societies, both hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers. However, all agriculture depends on controlling and remaking the natural world, and farmers have the task of both defending thier feilds and finding new ones. These are social and economic reasons for relatively high levels of organization and aggression. It is no coincidence that in so many parts of the world, including regions where different indigenous systems live along side one another, agriculturaists despise hunter-gatherers for being "primitive" and hunter-gatherers complain that farmers are belligerent. In the colonial era of the past 500 years "developed" agricultural societies have launched themselves with particular ferocity against all other peoples, and have, in particular, sought new land in vast territories occupied by hunter-gatherers. However complex the overlap between different kinds of indigenous societies, the dicotomy of hunter-gatherer:farmer says a great deal about how the world and the mind have been shaped." from Hugh Brody.
Nonetheless, I believe that within this distinction lies a set of intellectual and imaginative opportunities. Thinking about the place of hunting peoples in the human story offers an insight into the history of the world. It provides a parallel insight into the nature of the human mind. The destiny of the hunter-gatherer is both an external and an internal process, an issue for societies and for individuals.
The hunter-gatherer mind is humanity's most sophisiticated combination of detailed knowledge and instuition. It is where direct experience and metaphor unite in a joint concern to know and use the truth. The agricultural mind is a result of specialized, intense development of specific systems of intellectual order, with many kinds of analytical category and exacting uses of deductive reasoning. the hunter-gatherer seeks a relationship with all parts of the world that will be in both personal and material balance. The spirits are the evidence and the metaphors for thi relationship. If they are treated well, and are human in the right way, and are therefore at peace with human beings, the people will find the things they need. The farmer has the task of controlling and shaping of the world, making it yeild the produce upon which agricultural life depends. If this is done well then the crops will grow. Discovery by discovery, change by change, field by feild, control is increased and produce is more secure. The discotomies of good and evil, right and wrong express this farming project: control comes from separating manipulative resources from the rest of the environment and working with determination and consistency against all that might undermine this endeavor.
The differences between hunter-gatherers living before agriculture developed or beyond the later farming frontier, and small indigenous societies based on a mix of farming and herding, hunting and gathering, may not be best understood by issues of mind. As noted, ideas about spirituality and the boundaries between the physical and the metaphysical are shared by many indigenous societies, both hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers. However, all agriculture depends on controlling and remaking the natural world, and farmers have the task of both defending thier feilds and finding new ones. These are social and economic reasons for relatively high levels of organization and aggression. It is no coincidence that in so many parts of the world, including regions where different indigenous systems live along side one another, agriculturaists despise hunter-gatherers for being "primitive" and hunter-gatherers complain that farmers are belligerent. In the colonial era of the past 500 years "developed" agricultural societies have launched themselves with particular ferocity against all other peoples, and have, in particular, sought new land in vast territories occupied by hunter-gatherers. However complex the overlap between different kinds of indigenous societies, the dicotomy of hunter-gatherer:farmer says a great deal about how the world and the mind have been shaped." from Hugh Brody.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Blog Birthday
Kawasaki Krump on eBay. It's been one year that I have been blogging. This is post # 457. 
I was reading about marketing and found Guy Kawasaki's blog. One day Kawasaki said he wanted to make it to top ten of technorati ranking...so I commented that I would beat him. Then I made a portrait of him for intimidation purposes. Nothing scares an opponent like painting their portrait.Guy Kawasaki is ranked #41 on technorati. I am ranked at 3355. It's a hell of a lot closer to beating him into technorati top ten than I was a year ago. I wonder if he has stopped by to check out my rank?
Sounds to me he's been begging for links from this blog...and a conspiracy?
What's a birthday without a self-potrait as Hunter S. Thompson.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Good Food and Art For Auction
The James Hotel hosted a fundraiser art auction to benenfit needy people living with HIV/AIDS. The party was sold out and people were hunting for art. The food was wickedly good.
Loving the bartenders.
Stagg checking to see if anybody has placed bids...they placed LOTS.
Can you see Stagg's? It's the one lower down and made up of sticker logos and is called MyTube.
Weeelll...no one has bid on my painting. I'm getting nervous. Honestly every other painting has a bid. Mine looks all lonely there...will anyone take Asterisk's Brew home? It's the bright pink one on the left there.
I had to dig out the warm boots tonight...it's a beautiful clear night.
Looks like she bought some art, it's all bundled up to go home.
D.J. Oskar is just about to spin some Madonna. And yes...someone took home Asterisk's Brew!!! I saw a well dressed handsome man pick it up...but I was too shy to go say hi. I wonder if he will find this blog and see these pictures?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The Unexplained
This is not an action packed post...as I haven't really ever been one of those people who experienced a lot of strange phenomenon...but I have always been surrounded and drawn to people who have. I wonder how many folks who stop by this blog have strange bizarre happenings in their lives? Basically, I've enjoyed Star Trek and The X-Files and aside from being raised by several believers I don't have too many unexplained events. I didn't know what to write about today...so went to Amy Ruttans blog to get some inspiration and noticed she posted about Ghostbusters, a movie I also love...and she has a side bar saying she would like to write a novel about the paranormal.
1.
2)When I was about 10 years old...my cousin and a friend and I would sneak into an abandonded fully furnished house on Quadra Island. We believed the house was haunted and we would sneak in like Nancy Drew and Wuthering Heights and try to find a hidden diary. Fortunately we never got caught and charged with B&E. We eventually found out who owned the house and went and spoke to the woman who had moved out and lived a few doors down. It turned out she was really involved in the paranormal and she taught a class on ESP at the local high school and when we went to high school we took her class. Once, when I was a young adult...I was visiting Quadra Island, and I went up to this old house and knocked on the door as a whole new family had bought the place and lived there. Somehow I managed to confess my adventures as a kid, and convince them for a tour of their house all legit.
3)My cats have always stared at invisible things on the ceilings. It's disconcerting those wacky cats.
4)My grandfather once sat on the end of my bed and chatted with me. He had been dead several years.
5)I was travelling in europe and reading A Hitchhikers Guide To The Universe I lost my copy in a train station. A couple days later, a few hundred miles away, I found a copy on a park bench.
6)I once lived in an apartment that books fell off my shelves and the bath tub would start running full on. It didn't bother me, I found it funny, although weird...but when friends were visiting they hated it...
7)There used to be a homeless woman who lived more or less in a bus shelter at Victoria and Queen East in the 80's in Toronto. Every time I walked past her she would mumble a statement...and then later that day, it would come true. Thats when I realized she was making predicitons. I would always give her a couple of bucks. I actually landed up writing an entire character based her for a short film, his character was played by Adain Devine.
8) Oh weird...as I'm working on this , Oprah comes on in the background and she has a show on ESP.
9) I can't really say I believe in the paranormal, but I've always been interested in hearing about people's experiences. I am not psychic or very dream conscious. My father is an atheist and my mother believes in everything from ufos to reincarnation to Atlantis.
10) I don't believe in coincidences...I do however like to feel things and make a lot of my personal and professional decisions on whether something feels right or not. I have rarely had a paranormal or ghost or unexplained spooky thing happen to me...so I can't even hardly make this list and wonder why I even thought I would try...
11) I have several friends who practice Wicca, astrology and one works as an agent for a medical intuitive.
12) I went to two group meditations with this medical intuitive in Ontario and he was fascinating...my girlfriend went with me, and ever since her chronic pain in her knee and back has gone away.
13) We had a customer at a bar where I worked for years and he was very old and went into the hospital. He was a super cool guy, had seen all kinds of famous jazz musicians met Mohommad Ali, partied with the Rat Pack...he had a lot of great stories and we were all very fond of him. I went to visit him. I decided to go visit him again, and then I found out he died. then we found out it was just a rumour. so I went to the hospital to see him again, because it was so sad to hear he had died, but then he didn't. I said no matter how bad the weather was...I would go see him. I get to the hospital, and the nurse tells me, he just died a second before I arrived but I can see him in a few minutes. URP.
Um...wait, what? But I had made a promise to go see him...So I waited and then she ushered me into his hospital room. I didn't know what to do especially as when I went in the room...he felt like he was still there. No seriously, he was still there. I sat down and meditiated for a while and wished him a good voyage. This was very humbling for me...and I think it's very self centered to assume that the spirit just dies. I felt it is not my business to label this world as a final place...
Um, sorry I don't have any wild experiences...but the weird thing with all of a sdden half way through writing these notes Oprahs show being about ESP is just too funny. Makes me feel it's a sign and jsut now as her show ends...she is going to talk about the scientific communities research in ESP...too bad I didn't watch her show this morning before I started this post, oh well...maybe I should rent the movie What The Bleep again...
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1.
2)When I was about 10 years old...my cousin and a friend and I would sneak into an abandonded fully furnished house on Quadra Island. We believed the house was haunted and we would sneak in like Nancy Drew and Wuthering Heights and try to find a hidden diary. Fortunately we never got caught and charged with B&E. We eventually found out who owned the house and went and spoke to the woman who had moved out and lived a few doors down. It turned out she was really involved in the paranormal and she taught a class on ESP at the local high school and when we went to high school we took her class. Once, when I was a young adult...I was visiting Quadra Island, and I went up to this old house and knocked on the door as a whole new family had bought the place and lived there. Somehow I managed to confess my adventures as a kid, and convince them for a tour of their house all legit.
3)My cats have always stared at invisible things on the ceilings. It's disconcerting those wacky cats.
4)My grandfather once sat on the end of my bed and chatted with me. He had been dead several years.
5)I was travelling in europe and reading A Hitchhikers Guide To The Universe I lost my copy in a train station. A couple days later, a few hundred miles away, I found a copy on a park bench.
6)I once lived in an apartment that books fell off my shelves and the bath tub would start running full on. It didn't bother me, I found it funny, although weird...but when friends were visiting they hated it...
7)There used to be a homeless woman who lived more or less in a bus shelter at Victoria and Queen East in the 80's in Toronto. Every time I walked past her she would mumble a statement...and then later that day, it would come true. Thats when I realized she was making predicitons. I would always give her a couple of bucks. I actually landed up writing an entire character based her for a short film, his character was played by Adain Devine.
8) Oh weird...as I'm working on this , Oprah comes on in the background and she has a show on ESP.
9) I can't really say I believe in the paranormal, but I've always been interested in hearing about people's experiences. I am not psychic or very dream conscious. My father is an atheist and my mother believes in everything from ufos to reincarnation to Atlantis.
10) I don't believe in coincidences...I do however like to feel things and make a lot of my personal and professional decisions on whether something feels right or not. I have rarely had a paranormal or ghost or unexplained spooky thing happen to me...so I can't even hardly make this list and wonder why I even thought I would try...
11) I have several friends who practice Wicca, astrology and one works as an agent for a medical intuitive.
12) I went to two group meditations with this medical intuitive in Ontario and he was fascinating...my girlfriend went with me, and ever since her chronic pain in her knee and back has gone away.
13) We had a customer at a bar where I worked for years and he was very old and went into the hospital. He was a super cool guy, had seen all kinds of famous jazz musicians met Mohommad Ali, partied with the Rat Pack...he had a lot of great stories and we were all very fond of him. I went to visit him. I decided to go visit him again, and then I found out he died. then we found out it was just a rumour. so I went to the hospital to see him again, because it was so sad to hear he had died, but then he didn't. I said no matter how bad the weather was...I would go see him. I get to the hospital, and the nurse tells me, he just died a second before I arrived but I can see him in a few minutes. URP.
Um...wait, what? But I had made a promise to go see him...So I waited and then she ushered me into his hospital room. I didn't know what to do especially as when I went in the room...he felt like he was still there. No seriously, he was still there. I sat down and meditiated for a while and wished him a good voyage. This was very humbling for me...and I think it's very self centered to assume that the spirit just dies. I felt it is not my business to label this world as a final place...
Um, sorry I don't have any wild experiences...but the weird thing with all of a sdden half way through writing these notes Oprahs show being about ESP is just too funny. Makes me feel it's a sign and jsut now as her show ends...she is going to talk about the scientific communities research in ESP...too bad I didn't watch her show this morning before I started this post, oh well...maybe I should rent the movie What The Bleep again...
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Wednesday, February 14, 2007
First Contact
Cupid Chastised...Happy Singles Appreciation Day!!!!
Stagg and I went to an excellent evening at the Art Institute of Chicago, that not only included photography and a great set of films by Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev we heard a lecture by a real life Indianna Jones...and we met a blogmate! Edward Winkleman was in Chicago for the opening of two of his artists in The New Silk Road exhibition. It was a crazy cold night, but the photography and video installlations were awesome, very compelling. Check out the highlighted texts to get an impression. A real treat was to meet Edward Winkleman whose blog I intensely enjoy...he and his partner, Bambino, are the first bloggers I've met face to face since blogging. I admire Edwards ideas and enthusiasm so much, and it was really good to see his face and to have his charming personality confirmed in the real world. It was a kind of fun feeling...actually I was completely thrilled. Sorry about this scattered post, I'm just all over the place tonight and super tired. I really intended on writing about the real life Indianna Jones, deep sea salvager...but not only am I tired, I can't find his name or the notes I took.
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