Category: Art and culture

Discovered in Cueva de las Manos in Santa Cruz, Argentina.

As you can see from this ancient cave painting dating back who knows how many thousands of years, even at the beginning of civilization the human mind craved creative expression and immortality.

Was this due purely to some dastardly mutations of the DNA, a spontaneous sizzle of electrical sparks in a developing cortex, an inspiration from a loving God who chose to reveal himself, or a combination of similar random spiritual and physical events?

Probably none of the above, but rather some other reason that we will never understand.

Pure luck late yesterday evening when I turned on the television and just happened to catch the beginning of Listen to me Marlon.

Mesmerized I was pulled in by this psychological magnet, and although I've never been a big fan of his, I discovered that this fine actor had a truly amazing and troubling life.

Hearing first hand his voice on those tapes made me feel like he was talking directly to me, offering insights and many words of wisdom.

"Stevan Riley's award-winning documentary Listen to Me Marlon uses hundreds of hours of Marlon Brando's own archival audio tapes and home movie footage, combined with excerpts from his extraordinary performances to create an exceptionally emotive and vivid portrayal of a man and actor who was by turns tremendously talented, tenacious and tormented."

The background music was also important as it blended perfectly with the ebb and the flow of the documentary.

Since then the Spotify playlist has been turning around endlessly in my mind: Max Richter, Eluvium, etc.

This is the new logo that I designed myself. I used SVG and a little dab of creativity. The three colors are: midnight blue, dark cyan and firebrick. They blend in together quite nicely, don't you think? The interlocking shapes are shifted slightly downwards from left to right. This gives the viewer a subtle impression of movement, that each shape rises a little above and beyond the previous one.

Each geometrical piece of the puzzle integrates snugly with the next one. Together the three objects form a unified and pleasing whole. These shapes represent the software building blocks that I like to use when creating beautiful objects: knowledge, processes and people.

For more information and inspiration please have a look at the Gishtech logo page.

Purchased this game for my tablet and I really like it, very peaceful and meditative, challenging enough to keep my mind sharp while at the same time making me feel more relaxed about life.

I looked to the sky and I saw the sun turning to us
I looked for the road but all I could see was the dust
I remember your voice when you said it was better for us
Oh oh oh, how I've done myself in
Oh oh oh, how I've done myself in

-- Basia Bulat, Heart of My Own

I cannot wait to see the new movie by Sacha Baron Cohen.

This comedian is truly an amazing artist, and he certainly proves this with his third character which as usual he portrays convincingly, daring the public and challenging us with essential questions we'd rather ignore.

I find it very interesting how upset everyone gets, mostly for the wrong reasons. In their ignorance, these poor souls take things literally. Paranoia causes panic and off they go again for yet another meaningless witch hunt.

Let's avoid being confronted by our inner selves and instead take the easy route to stoning someone else to death.

Vulgarity, rudeness and harsh sexual jokes have been an essential part of comedy every since the very beginning of time. Ancient literature, Greek comedy, French theater of the Middle Ages, etc. Look at the classic "Gargantua and Pantagruel" which is full of pissing, farting, shitting, voluptuous boobs, etc. all over the place.

Why should things be different in this so-called modern day and age? People are by nature quite stupid and have got it all so very wrong.

May God forgive us all and someday save us from all this sin.

Yet another suitcase can be found at Tulse Luper Journey.

Investigate the 20th century through Tulse Lupers life (about).

Set against the background of 20th century history, Tulses journey through life reads as a personal, subjective history of events and developments that shaped the world as we know it.

The Tulse Luper Network.

Hey wait a minute, is it really Valentine's today?

Oops.

Dear KG,

We received your contribution of $25.00 to Radio Paradise.

Thank you so much for your support of the station - we definitely appreciate it!

Our best...
Rebecca & Bill

When the film 'Deep Throat' came out, I must confess that I was a little disappointed. I had collected up enough courage and finally went to see it with my SAE fraternity brothers pushing each other nervously like a bunch of macho twits. I even had my leather cowboy hat and sunglasses on as part of the erotic celebration of boys coming of age in the seventies. And don't forget the fifth of good old Jim Beam whose purpose was to make things better than they really were or seemed.

Can you belive that Gilligan passed away today? Poor Bob Denver was only seventy years old. As a kid I must have watched Gilligan's Island about a million times. Good-bye Gilligan, we will all miss you and look forward to the reruns.

Someone told me the other day in passing that the noble pursuit of perfect communication is in fact a fruitless endeavor.

Hey wait a minute. I shouldn't be sitting here behind the computer now.

Time to go downstairs again and be social. There's nothing better then fostering the holiday spirit. Besides, there are too many tasty treats down there just waiting for me to enjoy, not to mention those family members who deserve my attention and caring.

Whatever, I send a very merry Christmas greetings to all those who just might be reading this today.

If you have never seen a perfectly symmetrical cone of a Christmas tree, then perhaps you should drop by our house.

At first glance you would think it is a real tree, but I am telling you now that it is artificial.

Just measure the angle that the sloping side of the tree makes between the floor and the peak, and then compare this value to the angle on the other side.

They are exactly the same value.

In order to cover up this deception, we attempted to distribute the ornaments in a completely random way. This turned out so perfectly random that the casual observer might think that each and every item was placed at exactly the right position and orientation in relation to the other glittering objects.

The holiday season has become overly predictable in more ways than one. Human nature makes it that way but at the same time tries not to impose too much order.

From order comes chaos, and even the most random chaos portrays a predictable pattern in one way or other.

In Holland it is traditional when parting that you tell the person you are leaving to give his family and friends your greetings.

In Dutch they say 'groeten' which means greetings. Doe maar de groeten...

While rummaging through my Stanford class of 1979 book for the 25th reunion, I was surprised to discover how successful all these so-called graduates had become in life.

One of the reasons J.G. Ballard is one of my favorite authors is because of creative sentences like this:

"Together they seemed like figures in a dream-play, trying to remind me of memories I could never recover." - Cocaine Nights (chapter four)

This has to be one of the most impressive pieces of multimedia technology I've seen in a long time. It's impressive, dramatic and deeply philosophical.

Ever wondered what 2001 was "really" about?

If you have the latest Flash plugin and a relatively fast Internet connection, then check it out for yourself at: Kubrick 2001.

Sure it seems to represent a bunch of buildings of various shapes and configurations. Notice how the arrows seem to be pointing somewhere, but not really anywhere special. Various directions to the right and to the left but all of them aiming upwards. At the top of the drawing, the sun and the moon are prominent, but not overly so. Some might say that the tallness exudes some form of erotic motion, that being the longing part of the painting. But I am not so sure that I agree. It is not an exaggerated form of longing in the physical sense of things, but rather a slightly spiritual inclination. Maybe even a soft mixture of the body and the mind melting into each other. Note the yellowish and dreamy colors. That reddish fog smeared across the bottom of the scene. A longing in the religious manner which forms the platform, the structure, those pointing buildings, which define our very nature. In some ways not directly visible, but in a creative urge to attempt to define and/or describe that which does not lend itself very easily to such a process. Just a bunch of buildings around a temple and that's all.

There is this wonderful painting to which I have always felt a special intuitive attraction, and it has been hanging in our house since the first day we moved here. Everyone says the same thing the first time they see it. Politely, as if they are knowledgeable and I am a sorry ignoramus they tell me, "I think you hung that painting upside down." Whenever I try to explain to them that that is how it is supposed to be, that in fact the title of this famous work by Joan Miro is called "Upside Down Figures" they just shake their heads back and forth as if I am crazy. Strange how people often think that they know things better while at the same time they are being limited in their openness for new and creative ideas. Too bad for them. I will leave the painting just as it is and was always meant to be.