Monday, February 28, 2005

If pigs could fly...


Ever heard the one about the lotus flower? This flower is such a spiritual symbol because while it has its roots in the mud, it is looking up at the sky.

This morning I read under a bottle-cap that "pigs can't look up at the sky",
(yet their roots are in the mud). Is this why they want to fly...or why there is such human fascination with them being able to do so?

Pigs are genetically the closest organisms to humans...

Chakrically, we are a totem of the earthbound beast below and the wise, beyond-physical-sight lotus above. In our minds we can fly if we really choose to. Most of the time, we just choose the bodily ease of the mud.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Kitty's Art Class



Who is Kitty? This kinda trippiness could only come from a child's mind...

Full-lunarcy


Have a loony full-moon!

Moon


Take the round flat moon
Snap this twig for handle...
What a pretty fan!

-Sokan





Moon on a stick...

Snorks!



Snorks water pistols!!! I want one!

Glassy bunnies...



don't ask me why...

Water

Alaska



one day...

Friday, February 25, 2005

Tropfest



If you're in Sydney, Oz, on the 27th of March, you really should check out the screening of the Tropfest festival. Once an obscure excercise, as you can see, it's now huge!

Monday, February 21, 2005

voulez vous babel?

How cute! I've just found the Babelfish website, which translates text. To test it, I went for the ultimate cliché of "Voulez vous coucher avec moi se soir?"
the translation being: "Please lie down with me evening?"

take a trip down memory lane...


The Bush that dug weed...


Doug Wead, an author and former aide to President Bush's father

Ever doubt the existance of a conscious entity who designed the universe? Sometimes life's just too apt to be random... When a President Bush can be old smoking buddies with aDoug Wead (Dug Weed)...

the following is a quote from Hemp Evoluion...

New York, NY Feb 19, 2005 -- Private conversations with George Bush secretly taped by an old friend before he was elected president foreshadow some of his political strategies and appear to reveal that he acknowledged using marijuana, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The conversations were recorded by Doug Wead, a former aide to George W. Bush's father, beginning in 1998, when Bush was weighing a presidential bid, until just before the Republican National Convention in 2000, the Times said in a story posted on its Web site.

The tapes show Bush crafting a strategy for navigating the tricky political waters between Christian conservative and secular voters, repeatedly worrying that evangelicals would be angered by a refusal to bash gays and that secular Americans would be turned off by meetings with evangelical leaders.

On one tape, Bush explains that he told one prominent evangelical that he would not "kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

In early tapes, Bush dismisses the strength of John McCain for the nomination and expresses concern about rival Steve Forbes. He also praises John Ashcroft as a promising candidate for Supreme Court justice, attorney general or vice president.

Bush also criticizes then-Vice President Al Gore for admitting marijuana use and explains why he would not do the same.

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions," he said, according to the Times. "You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

According to the article, Wead played 12 of the tapes to a Times reporter. He said he recorded them because he viewed Bush as a historic figure. He is the author of a new book on presidential childhoods.

The White House did not deny the authenticity of the tapes.

"The governor was having casual conversations with someone he believed was his friend," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said, referring to Bush."

Associated Press
-Hemp Evolution

now



before,
my heart gaped open to the universe,
like a bloody wound-
spewing forth my essense
until emptiness.

now,
your existence negates the void-
even when all else is not
you
are.

Friday, February 18, 2005

More on M.Night Shyamalan ...

This is in belated response to Ilapirata's comment on my post on M.Night Shyamalan on the 4th of February, in which I said:

"Nuances, subtleties, strange, almost obscured details, whose amorphous revellations are far more shocking than billion-dollar 3-D perfectly rendered monsters can be.

Life is stranger than fiction and a true artist will know how to collate subtle details, rather than punchy, dynamic shock tactics. A poor man's example of using randomly prosaic, seemingly candid details to hit you where you live, is in the works of Stephen King. MNS is so much more profound, despite the generally commercial format of his works..."

and he said:

"Pretty nifty work in that movie..tho think its the creepy silence that works for his movies.. Example see the "unbreakable" and the comic book comparisions..."

...not quite a direct response to Ilapirata' comment, but I have found a Freudian(!) quote which, I think, helps illustrate the personally-effective, yet non-solipsistic nature of Shyamalan's work. As a Jungian student, I cringe at using the thoughts of Freud, but you can't always throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater...

"The twilight-realm of phantasy is upheld by the sanction of humanity and every hungry soul looks here for help and sympathy. But for those who are not artists, the ability to obtain satisfaction from imaginitive sources is very restricted.

If one is a real artist he has more at his disposal. In the first place, he understands how to elaborate his day-dreams so that they lose their essentially personal element, which would repel strangers, and yeild satisfaction to others as well. He also knows how to disguise them so that they do not easily disclose their origin in their disclosed sources.

He further possesses the puzzling ability of molding a specific material into a faithful image of the creatures of his imagination, and then he is able to accomplish all this, he makes possible for others, in their return, to obtain solace and consolation from their own unconscious sources of gratification which had become inaccessible."

-Sigmund Freud (whose name lies somewhere between Fraud and Feud)-please forgive my choice of source!

The Blackbirds are rough today


lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.

shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.

taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.

a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.

the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.

and everywhere is
nowhere---
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:

why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school---
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.

we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.

don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.

-Charles Bukowski

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Haiku 1


Camellia-petal
fell in silent dawn...
spilling a water jewel-

Basho

Free-falling

After having just seen my chilhood piano teacher in the supermarket, my hands are still shaking.
From the ages of about 5 to 11, I was under the reign of this man, whose dissatisfaction with anything less than perfection, from the beginning of training onwards, was enough to solidify any obsessive compulsive potential in me into a concrete reality slab.

After a month, he had me playing 4th grade pieces. If I paused to find the notes (often forgotten as a result of nerves), he would punch me. This alone may have made me the underlying wreck I am today.

Initially, by description I may seem lucky;- even hateful; I am an only (lonely) child cultivated to impress. I endured a barrage of elocution, piano, tennis and ballet lessons. I was always shown to adults and expected to impress. Yeah- sure I had all the fucking attention in the world, but who needs it?! Who needs to live in a petrie dish shivering under the intense eye of constant assessment?!
And boarding school- jail for innocent kids who've done nothing but knock themselves out to impress. On the outside, dear reader, you may be thinking "poor diddums"- but believe me- you wouldn't want it if you had it!

Decades later I can't sleep at night and it's only my illegal pleasures which may dull the arrow's point, despite the feelings of inherent guilt in doing so. Surely the few inches of flesh surrounding ones bones should be the one thing in life you really can own- especially the lump of grey flesh residing behind ones own eyes, between ones ears and mouth...!

As my piano teacher and I passed alone in the supermarket aisle I turned and looked daggers and turned away. He must have felt it because when I turned again, he was turning away from me.


How do you justify the hatred felt for someone who has made your every waking moment feel like a highly-pointed tattoo needle striking again and again into your soul? And at the end of the day, did that once fierce Beethovenesque head really deserve the torrent of poisonous energy I sent out today?

The other day I went to Canberra with my friends. It was the setting of my boarding school years and even coming within the school limits sets my heart into a nervous frenzy.


Imagine dropping from a horizontal pipe about six metres down... This is way scarier than it looks...!


I wanted to return to my past, with my present to protect me.
I wanted to park in front of that boarding house and to laugh and blow raspberries and even egg the place. We went to Canberra to visit Questacon (science museum) and in the exhibition was a free-fall slide- it was terryfying and my heart (already in a nervous state by sheer geography) felt like it could explode after that leap.

When we went to leave, it was bucketing with rain and my friends didn't want to drive much aroundthe city so I said not to worry. We found a new Irish pub (-an anomally in that public servant anthill), and had a lovely time and at the end of the day, it was so much better to invest in positivity and newness than to dwell on old wounds.

My piano teacher had been my theatre critic in recent years- never an easy feeling, but somehow that now white-haired little man looked a lot less the fearsome than the diabolical beast I knew and more like a petty little man who I believe was, at the time, just lonely and sad.

Find a little understanding for your magnificent demons and they wither to helpless, pitiful rats scurrying out of the now blinding light of your mind, while you grow to be ten-thousand stories tall.

Shluuuuuuurp!

click me! Lick me!

Valentine's Day making you wanna hurl?


Happy Tree Friends
Cuppycake

Google History

Google is a play on the word googol, which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. It refers to the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web.

Monday, February 14, 2005

For your love...

My love,- sweet drops of relief upon eternally charred terre,
How you take my hand and lead me barefoot onto your blue satin carpet of forever-
Demain our domain-
Demons prowl and scream as we leave familiar shores,
How sweet to take our leave-
Your dream entwining mine as two elixirs which unite as ambrosia
As my heart dances, with energy anew, to the future-
No more the thrashing of an asphyxiating fish.
Thank you, unique visitor to my soul-
May it be a nest for you always-
You- my golden egg now residing within me...

Thank you.

Happy Valentine's Day, my love.


Lisa- it's your birthday!

Sleepy-eyed, I sit here, umbilical cord slowly unstretching after 4 days away on a birthday trip to the sea (Bateman's Bay, Aust). Blogging started as a TAFE assignment which I didn`t get into at the time...largely because when we did blogging/HTML, I was under the fist of a diabolical, sleep-stealing, heart-mincing demon (as initially, a certain amount of concentration is required for left-brained learning)...however, since, I have taken to it obsessively and being away for the past few days has been hard...

And now I am back, I gaze around at the snapshot of life from before I left. Any time you leave for a period of time, upon returning you may find yourself looking at a person you now feel removed from...(ie- you). A holiday can be like a step outside the usual unquestioned flow of things...
Just for a moment before returning to your familiar domain, you will be taken up above your forest of you, beyond the prosaic details of the trees...

I have been away from my parents for most of the time since I was 11. Every time I have returned any objects I have left in my room have acted as a time capsule of who I was and what I was on about the last time I was home...

This trip was for my birthday. For as long as I can remember this day has been such a black-hole for me...it's not a vain-one-year-older-thing, but just a profoundly lonely day that brings me face-to-face with myself (bit of an lonely-only-child- thing). Usually I would tell nobody and disappear by myself with a journal, pen and bottle of something strong. Not this year- this year since I have found love, so much has changed. I know how it sounds and feels to hear someone else's exclamations of love...somewhere between boredom, discomfort and tantalisation...actually it's always been a heart-breaking tease for me, being immersed in others' luke-warm-used-bathwater tales and public shows of love- (or whatever)...

I searched for 18 years for the ever-elusive chalais of love, and now I have found it with my beautiful Québecker. If anyone has paid their dues to the puppeteer/s of love, it's me and I deserve to speak of it. All takes on such a different face and seeing pictures of myself now, there is a look that fills my face that I don't recognise and suddenly all feels so possible.

My birthday trip was also a chance to celebrate with my best friend, who was born only two days and less than a kilometer away from me. Four years ago, I flew back from Greece to share our 30th birthdays (and with her twin brother). She's one of those people whose colour and life always create a comforting and fun place to be. I am about to start a blog for her, which I will link to on doing so. Since our initial years we hung out, we have moved into parallel universes to each other, but the language is still the same. It's a true test of friendship when all can superficially change, but the meaning's still there...

Here are some image of my friend, her babies and my love making sand-castles just down from where we stayed. One day, these images will help form the boys' memories. When we see a child, we see a child as they are at that time and we don't even notice the look of the world as it is...however one day, that child will look back at those images and be taken by every detail of what is different and what is the same in themselves and their world;- wallpaper, hair, toy, cars, people...

This generation's memories won't be as flavoured by format as mine or those before...in that digital technology has reached a basic floor of images of realsitic appearance whose information will not degrade (unless the actual file is lost or damaged). For me, as a '71 baby, technology very much fits into my assessment of history...at the beginning of my grandparents' lives (the earliest generation I can really be aware of), came the first real beginnings of 4-D media (in film and believe-it-or-not- video). They were sepia and black-and white. Blue eyes looked white and reds looked black. Noone could move thanks to excrutiatingly-long shutter speeds. This and movement-preventing braces made for very stern faces on adults and often ghostly-looking babies (who could not sit still (increasing the appearance of hard-living adults and short-living infants).

With the advent of colourised film

to be continued...
the other birthday song...

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Back to school, kiddies!!!



Sorry, kids! It`s time for back to school!!! I`m so glad to leave the institution. All is heading me out onto the wide blue ocean with my love, my eyes, heart, mind and all necessary implements which must go between me and what I see...to capture, to experience, to boldly go where I have not gone before...or at least to rip myself away from this machine before sunrise...!

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Bert Does Amsterdam



Check out Bert's trip to Amsterdam...


Wanna take Bert for a trip?

My favourite alien



Friday, February 04, 2005

Go go google!!!

The following is quoted from a Swedish blog.

Retroglobe versificator
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Google - Our Hero

Iraqi kidnappers use Google! An Australian journalist was kidnapped last weekend because they thought he worked for the CIA. He convinced the kidnappers to Google him and they found his web site showing he was a journalist. This was evidence enough for him to be released! Read more at BBC. Go Google!

(...thanks, anonymous!)

Enigma- M.Night Shyamalan

Bibliography of M.Night Shyamalan




Wow. I have discovered a fascinating private personality with a real knack for grasping the kind of details that make a real-life experience so much more impacting than a Hollywood major-block-buster. Nuances, subtleties, strange, almost obscured details, whose amorphous revellations are far more shocking than billion-dollar 3-D perfectly rendered monsters can be.

(eg- the blurred alien news-footage in Signs)

Life is stranger than fiction and a true artist will know how to collate subtle details, rather than punchy, dynamic shock tactics. A poor man's example of using randomly prosaic, seemingly candid details to hit you where you live, is in the works of Stephen King. MNS is so much more profound, despite the generally commercial format of his works.

The man, himself is fascinating and I believe, very powerful. If you want to see the director doing his Hitchcockesque cameo, see Signs- he's the Indian man who killed Mel Gibson's screen wife.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Sci-fi?

Who needs sci-fi when...








‘SEXY’ ROBOTS COULD REPRODUCE
3.2.2005. 11:04:19
The pursuit to develop robots that can mimic human actions and behaviour has gone a step further, with one scientist creating artificial chromosomes and the potential for robots to ‘sexually reproduce’.

Professor Kim Jong-Hwan, from the Robot Intelligence Technology Lab in South Korea, has announced the breakthrough that he says could be installed in a robot within three months, according to a report by the Guardian.

“Until now, most researchers have focused only on the functionality of the machines, but we think in terms of the essence of the creatures,” Mr Kim said.

“Christians may not like it, but we must consider this the origin of an artificial species,” he added.

The professor, who is a leading authority on the technology and ethics of robotics, has led the development of a software system which contains a computer code that gives a robot the ability to ‘feel’ happy, sad, sleepy, hungry or afraid.

This so-called ‘essence’ has been modelled on human DNA, but is equivalent to only a single strand of genetic code rather than the more complex double helix of a real chromosome.

"The artificial chromosome is a software system. It means that the information - their 'genes' - can be easily sent to other robots," he explained.

"So if I send the chromosomes to another robot, that robot can then reproduce by itself. In that sense the robots will be created by the 'genes'. The personality of robots will be created by artificial genes."

“Robots will have their own personalities and emotion and, as films like ‘I, Robot’ warn, that could be very dangerous for humanity,” Mr Kim surmised.

‘I, Robot’, a popular Hollywood blockbuster film featuring Will Smith, portrayed a futuristic scenario of robots installed with human characteristics running amok.

“If we can provide a robot with good, soft chromosomes, they may not be such a threat.”

Mr Kim believes there is no danger that such self-reproducing robots will take over the world, "If we design the chromosomes quite safely, then we can avoid such a bad situation."

The professor has predicted that within 20 years robots could become commonplace, keeping loneliness at bay for people who live alone and replacing cats and dogs as man’s best friend, according to a report by the New Zealand Herald.

Already, robots costing less than $US 200 ($AUD 257) are available to vacuum your home, and the US military is using robots to conduct building searches for insurgents in Iraq.

“In the very near future, personal robots will be in our houses like personal computers,” Mr Kim said.

SBS Australia


"You idiots- you've ruined it all! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!!!"
-Planet of the Apes

Wagga- It's a brothel! Worst ever newscast

Watch local Aussie Wagga news anchor attempt probably the worst ever news broadcast...

Screw-up #1...
Screw-up #2...
Screw-up #3...
Screw-up #4...
Screw-up #5...

...how wonderful to think as sound and electronic waveforms permeate out into space; reverberating history infinitely, that humans such as that will be representing us to all who may one day listen...













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