Arts

Literature — Comments Off on Your thought for the day: Change
05
May 05

Your thought for the day: Change

From Frank Herbert, courtesy of Quipsmart, a blog for quotations, which I’m trying to update regularly:

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

Frank Herbert’s Dune had an enormous impact on me. It has as much to do with our world and history as it has to do with Herbert’s artificial world and history. There is a strong human dimension to his first book: the power of destiny, the influence of history and tradition, and the relationships between family members. It’s also a book about growing up, and taking your place in the world around you.

Cool Tools / Music / Technology — 1 Comment
27
Apr 05

Phone droolage: 4GB Nokia N91


The zero key on my cellphone has been broken for a while, and you would be surprised at how much you need that particular number when dialing. So, I’ve been looking at phone reviews and what options I have for getting a new one. I’d like to have speakerphone and bluetooth, for example. Anyway, I heard the awesome news that Nokia is releasing an iPod-killing, mp3-playing phone as part of their new phone line-up. The Nokia N91 looks to be a winner.

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Quotations / Society — 26 Comments
26
Apr 05

Meme: “Busier than a…”

The past few weeks I’ve been busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I try to make a lot of lists and at least get through at least 7 items a day. I’m also starting to crunch for E3, which means we’ll be working twelve hour days until the end of May. That’s good because I’ll need all the scratch I can get before I leave to work for myself full-time.

Busier than…

  1. a one-armed paperhanger with a case of the hives.
  2. a one-eyed cat watching nine rat holes.
  3. a one-legged man in a butt kickin’ contest.
  4. a one-toothed man in a corn-on-the-cob eating contest.
  5. a mosquito at a nudist colony.
  6. a one-armed paper hanger.
  7. a cross-eyed air traffic controller.
  8. a set of jumper cables at a country funeral.
  9. a cat with puppies.
  10. a weatherman in a tornado.
  11. a desert cobra at a mongoose convention.
  12. a termite in a saw mill.
  13. a dog scratching fleas.
  14. a one-armed-pimp in a bitch-slapping contest
  15. a one-armed trombone player.
  16. a rooster in a henhouse.
Comics — Comments Off on Drawing with the mouse
19
Apr 05

Drawing with the mouse

Drawing with the mouse is a lot like drawing with Prisma Design Markers, except you have somewhat less control.

Literature — 2 Comments
28
Mar 05

Books for young people

I was talking with Jody about books we had read as kids, and I thought it might make a good post.

  1. The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This was a good series, which I remember little about, except for its good description of pioneer living, like living in a sod house, for example.
  2. The Great Brain series by John Fitzgerald. I read these in my fifth grade class. When you finished your work you could read from the bookshelf in the classroom. That’s where I discovered this series. The stories revolve around these brothers as they get into mischief and solve mysteries.
  3. Flinx Series by Alan Dean Foster. This is a good sci-fi series about an orphan, Pip, and his pet flying snake, Flynx.
  4. The Oz books by L. Frank Baum. These were essentially fantasy books, before fantasy was a genre. There’s a lot going on in the Oz books. Magic, witches, and other assorted craziness. I never really understood the whole Ozma / Pip situation.
Cool Tools / Media — Comments Off on Trendy
21
Mar 05

Trendy

If you’re attuned to what people wear and do you’ll notice fads. Why do people follow the lead of other people? What are you thinking when you wear certain clothes or buy certain products? How do you decide what has value? Here are a few things I’ve noticed:

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Arts — 2 Comments
17
Mar 05

Graffiti link-o-rama

  1. The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal: graffiti removal as art. The squarish areas to cover graffiti as minimalist works. Can graffiti removal be an artistic response?
  2. GRAFFITI REMOVAL: basic technical advice from English Heritage after damage by vandals to historic buildings and monuments
  3. Comprehensive Wikipedia entry on graffiti including types, methods, history, etc. Informative!
  4. Online graffiti generator.
  5. Banksy, graffiti as subversive art. His work is creative and effective.

In thinking about the subject, it is clear that graffiti can operate from many angles. In essence it is a mode of communication. I’m hesitant to use the word “expression” because it’s a loaded term that conveys legitimacy. As a form of communication, it comes in many varieties: political graffiti, graffiti art, advertising, gang-related tagging, drunk shaming, culture jamming (subvertising), etc. How do you decide when it’s a positive thing or a negative thing? I suppose it all depends on point of view, and if that’s the case whose point of view wins out when there is a conflict?

graffiti

Music — 1 Comment
28
Feb 05

New Fiona Apple

fionaI really enjoyed this new Fiona Apple song, Extraordinary Machine, which I came across via the ever linkworthy Waxy.org. It doesn’t sound like her hit songs, Criminal, etc., but it’s great. It sounds like something from an old disney movie or something. It has a very catchy phrasing. Oh, just listen to it.

Comics — Comments Off on “Comics is about memory”
28
Feb 05

“Comics is about memory”

I came across a video from a French television program on comics featuring Chris Ware. You can download the torrent here.

A number of things he said struck me, namely about how drawing comics is more about how you remember things than the things themselves and how he feels that drawing comics is an inherently difficult and depressing art since you are busy drawing while everyone else is living. Maybe that says more about Chris Ware than it does comics, but it is true to a certain extent. Drawing comics means being an observer, more so than other art forms because your main task is to tell a story with words and pictures. This position as observer dictates a certain amount of distance from life and then the sense of alienation he describes as you retreat into memory and the past.

His home is lined with antique photographs and he fiddles with a phonograph while he explains the superiority of bygone times when people knew what life was really about. His nostalgia for and idealization of the past reminds me of Robert Crumb with his identical collection of ragtime 78 RPM records. In the same way, it is not his own past he is nostalgic for, but the remote past from the stories of his grandmother. Is it easier to be nostalgic for a time you never experienced? If you feel like you don’t fit in, is it easier to construct an idealized representation of a dead reality? Retreating into the past is a strategy for avoiding the alienation and uncertainty of the present. Even though the past is dead the imagination can imbue it with an almost mystical reality. In a sense, the past is the ideal framework for the imagination since it has a more definite form in the mind and can be more easily controlled as far as its meaning. The future is unlimited in possibility and in definition.

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