blub

KinoVida

Full Circle and Back

Again, on time, by braisturbator + McKenna

It was McKenna who started this off, and I feel obligated to let him have the last word. “Time must be well used: this is a basis for a possible theory of ethics.” I’ve always been pretty fond of that one, mostly since it resonates with my own War on Sleep and the obsessions that make my dreams feel like a surrealist extension to my regular workday. (This is not “unhealthy” and I am not complaining.) For the big finish, though, I’d like to share one of the best riffs McKenna ever gave about time, during the course of an interview with Boing Boing Magazine:

So this process of complexification is going on in nature. When you look at it you realize that it happened faster and faster. It took a long time for there to be life, or just for planets to form, and stars to settle down. Then once you get life, you get a very rapid proliferation of form, and by rapid I mean in scales of hundreds of millions of years, and then you get higher animals. After that you get animals like ourselves, and you get language, and culture, and writing, and electronic media. Each of these steps occurs more and more quickly, leading to the conclusion that human history and the presence of tool making, poetry making, and thinking creatures on this planet have something to do with being caught, or you might otherwise say, fortunately positioned very close to a kind of anomaly that is haunting space and time. You can think of it as a collision with a hyper dimensional black hole.

We and our universe and everything in it are being sucked closer and closer into the presence of something which seems to be made out of pure idea. It’s very hard to English, but it explains basically what’s going on on this planet - why it is that 50,000 years ago, shit-hurling monkeys decided to set off on the long march toward the space shuttle, and an integrated global economy, and toxic pollution, and the whole ball of wax? A process of some sort unique in nature was unleashed 25-50,000 years ago. From that point on there was a tremendous push into symbolic expression and the cultural consequence of symbolic expression which is technology. And now, we’ve run the nut right off the end of the bolt, and the planet’s finite limits are being reached. But the process shows no sign of slowing down. So rather than see it as some apocalypse or some terrible flaw of human fate run amok, I see it as a natural phenomenon. Human history is not our fault.

The world is getting weirder and weirder by leaps and bounds. It’s moving faster and faster. It’s very science fiction. You have potentially human life-extinguishing epidemic diseases, at the same time that you have whispers of cold fusion and journeys to the stars. Meanwhile people are meeting little rubbery beings in their bedrooms in the middle of the night, and having rectal examinations. All this crazy shit is going on which is called the melt-down of Western civilization at the end of the second millennium. Then if you toss psychedelic drugs into the mix, shamanic plants and this sort of thing, and make journeys out into the architectonic superspace of the culture, you quickly realize the cosmic egg is cracking.

Via http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/the_quest_for_the_elusive_chronon/#continue

Ask a Bald Scottish Lunatic

"...and they explained to me what time is all about: the Universe we live in is designed to grow larvae, right? They explained to me that, beyond space and time, we have our actual selves. These things that we’re experiencing right now are sections through time. Everyone in here is a section through time, but in actual fact, you’re not experiencing your real body.

What is your real body? Your real body is a process, it starts when you’re born and it moves forward until you die. That is you, seen from outside...you look like a giant centipede. Think of “ourselves” as processes through time, that’s what we actually are. We all know we were 12, but where is that? Point to it. Show me!

So these things said to me, “This is whats going on. We use time to grow larvae, because outside of space and time, you can’t grow anything. It’s timeless. If you want to make one of these higher dimensional beings—which is actually one of us, already—is you grow it in time. So, you make a Universe.”

And how you make a Universe is that you plug a little bit of yourself into the information world that they live in—which is what I seemed to be experiencing, a sea of pure information."

From Grant Morrison’s classic genius freak-out at the 2000 DisInfo Convention

Via http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/the_quest_for_the_elusive_chronon/#continue

Arctic seas turn to acid

Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009

With the world's oceans absorbing six million tonnes of carbon a day, a leading oceanographer warns of eco disaster. Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an unprecedented rate, scientists have discovered. Research carried out in the archipelago of Svalbard has shown in many regions around the north pole seawater is likely to reach corrosive levels within 10 years. The water will then start to dissolve the shells of mussels and other shellfish and cause major disruption to the food chain. By the end of the century, the entire Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic.

"This is extremely worrying," Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso, of France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, told an international oceanography conference last week. "We knew that the seas were getting more acidic and this would disrupt the ability of shellfish – like mussels – to grow their shells. But now we realise the situation is much worse. The water will become so acidic it will actually dissolve the shells of living shellfish."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/arctic-seas-turn-to-acid

In the Nature of Things

Terrorist subtitles

Actual children’s answers to the question “what is love?”

“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.” - Billy, age 4

“Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.” - Karl, age 5

“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” - Chrissy, age 6

“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” - Terri, age 4

“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” - Danny, age 7

“Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.” - Emily, age 8

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” - Bobby, age 7

“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,” - Nikka, age 6

“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.” - Noelle, age 7

“Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.” - Tommy, age 6

“During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.” - Cindy, age 8

“My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.” - Clare, age 6

“Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.” - Elaine, age 5

“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Brad Pitt.” - Chris, age 7

“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” - Mary Ann, age 4

“I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.” - Lauren, age 4

“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” - Rebecca, age 8

“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” - Karen, age 7

“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” - Jessica, age 8

Middle Kingdom

Chinese don’t understand the concept of privacy, and I like it very much. The Chinese guy travelling beside me on the way to Beijing stares at the form I’m filling with the details of where I’m staying. “Wushu! Wushu!” He repeats loudly, nodding and smiling at me. He knows I’m going to a martial arts academy, and that’s kind of cool to the Chinese. 35˚ in Beijing, off we go to eat meat on a stick. It tastes great! The streets are very messy, dirty, colourful and poor looking, very much like some suburbs in Brazil. One of the streets was being redeveloped but we could walk around the building site just like the workers, the health and safety nightmare. Coming from England, you can imagine my euphoric happiness and the satisfaction I felt jumping on pipes and kicking bits of concrete in the middle of the street. Yes! Freedom! I can break my bones in peace now!

I feel at home, and they keep smiling at me. A family with 2 cute little Chinese girls with flags in their hands stop and ask (I guess) if they can take a picture with me. I’m loving it. I wish I could squeeze their cheeks but they take a picture and bounce away, giggling and waving their random flags in the hot air of Beijing. They all seem so happy! ☺

But I’m pretty disappointed. I was expecting little Chinese dressed in proper Chinese clothes and those triangular hats, planting rice everywhere, even on the squares and gardens, but NO! They dress like motherfucking westerners! Just like us! And they want to sell us everything, and they have huge supermarkets, three, four-storey full of herbs, pills and acupuncture. At least that fits in my stereotype box.

The next day we’re off to the village where we are going to live for the next 5 months. Everything looks simple, very poor, yet people seem quite content. I wash my clothes in buckets, eat with chopsticks and shit in holes on the ground. Little kids stumble around with their little pants open in the back. No nappies, they just squat and do it. Chinese farmers drive around in their little truck motorbikes, the truckcycles, carrying their harvest, bits and pieces, and lots, lots of sweet watermelons.

Training is great but I feel this horrible pain down my back and it’s been there for 2 weeks now, so Sifu takes me to village hospital for some real acupuncture. The hospital is as you would expect: simple, full of Chinese with no sense of privacy, many of them being treated in the same room with no sign of shyness or discomfort. They don’t seem to be aware of their individuality, and I quite like that, in a weird way. Sifu introduces me to the doctor, who seems to be an old friend of his, just like everyone else in the village, really. Doctor opens a metal box, takes a few needles, wipe them with cotton buds dipped in alcohol and without hesitation, sticks them needles 2 inches in. Ouch. Can’t describe how it is to feel all the nerves and channels connecting the points where he stuck them needles in. Never felt anything like that. That’s real acupuncture, not that wussy thing I had all my life. I feel the needle he stuck near my thumb in the back of my hand almost appearing in the palm of my hand. Do you get me? Yeah! He stuck it through my hand! He spins and turns the needles inside me, leave them for a few minutes, takes them out, and that’s it: I’m cured. That ended up being a little sample of what China is doing to me, a little illustration of what awaits me in this journey. Pain and cure. Miscommunication and connection.

Anti-desertification Architecture

For an ambitious landscape design project, Magnus Larsson, a student at the Architectural Association in London, has proposed a 6,000km-long wall of artificially solidified sandstone architecture that would span the Sahara Desert, east to west, offering a combination of refugee housing and a "green wall" against the future spread of the desert.

Larsson's project deservedly won first prize last fall at the Holcim Foundation's Awards for Sustainable Construction held in Marrakech, Morocco.
One of the most interesting aspects of the project, I think, is that this solidified dunescape is created through a particularly novel form of "sustainable construction" – that is, through a kind of infection of the earth.
In other words, Larsson has proposed using bacillus pasteurii, a "microorganism, readily available in marshes and wetlands, [that] solidifies loose sand into sandstone," he explains.

Read more on http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/

Filling the gaps

So the purple man left, and off I went in the search of this new reality. Uniting my jobless state to my newly found youth, I found myself soon after teaching school dropouts. Yes, me.

The report from the previous teacher said the most horrid things about Luke, my new pupil, and a few interesting ones like “he always does headstands and won’t stay still”. I quite like the idea of learning how to do headstands so I packed my lunch, filled my bag with papers and coloured pencils and left to the centre, looking forward to get upside down.

We clicked immediately. I could not see the person described on the report on that kid. Off we went to the park to exchange ideas on martial arts and acrobatics. The first thing he mentions when teaching me acrobatics is that the only thing to fear is the fear itself and yourself. Haha. From then on it was all uphill.

There is something about the way all the kids at the centre talk to me that make me believe even more that purple man. We connect, and that puts me right at the centre of the storm. I can see from where I stand that their most serious problems are their teachers and their schools, no doubt. It’s hilarious.

We tell jokes and laugh out loud until one of the very problematic female tutors screams some random abuse, telling them to be quiet (??) and sit facing her chosen side of the wall. I don’t get involved. Them females think I’m mad. Who cares? I orgasm! Woohoo. Hahaaaa.

It’s sad yet fascinating to be present at the very moment society fucks up their lives. It’s quite entertaining to apply them tutor’s little stupid diagnosis to their own fucking selves. Your arse is dyslexic, you’re a serious case of OCD with a pinch of disillusioned paranoia and you bum DOES look big in that!

I can’t tell any further for legal and moral (hahaha) reasons. All I can say is that this is quite a fulfilling job, England is a massively dysfunctional country, TV is rubbish, Tesco sucks, you’re fat and not that funny and women should all wank until they come so they stop throwing their shit on innocent kids. Word.

Dubstep

No more beers

You know beer is really bad for you? Scientists discovered it contains oestrogens, which make you talk shit and do silly things.

Yeah, what’s up with women? It’s so hard to work with them. Maybe it’s just me, maybe the women I know, but I find men particularly uncomplicated, and women specially tormenting.

We were, the 4 of us women, organizing this fairly big party where I live so I spent most of my time in the last couple of months having to cut through a curtain of emotions to get to the point. Very tiring.

Every object needed at the bar was like a death row wish, every customer an ordeal, every second an hour of misery.

A simple thing like looking for a pair of scissors becomes a huge undelayable mission. So I have this blond female sweating, shaking in front of me asking for a pair of scissors so she could hang some stupid flags. What do I do? Laugh, obviously. A man comes in, hears the emotional appeal and strolls to the next house, coming back with scissors in a few seconds. Nice.

It happened throughout the party, throughout my life, but it could be just a conurbation of coincidences. Maybe.

Later on I had to present the issue of no drum kit to all the bands, and the guys smiled at me saying they would try and sort it out, while the girls band spent hours screaming and running around like nuttas, cursing the late drummer bringing the drum kit, demanding we set them up in a different floor, just cos they like it. Haha. Madness. The MEN brought the drum kit later on and blew everyone’s minds with their magik music while the girls disappeared after blagging money from the till. So shit. Is it just another coincidence? Maybe I don’t notice men’s problems, or maybe I like them…

It’s funny how the limbic system takes over the whole of the female brain if we have any emotional issue to be sorted. I hate it in my own brain. I trust women to be clever, ingenious and all things good, if only we could rewire our brains into something more efficient. We must realise it ourselves in order to have some equality. We're not ready yet. I feel for men, really. I’m gonna campaign for them. Enough is enough.

http://womenfortherightsofmen.wordpress.com/

Playing with the wind

It happened on a full moon. These new state fell on me like a summer rain and impregnated my being despite years and years of serious active conditioning. I was, yes, working for Microsoft, but I did not feel like talking about Apple. Whilst promoting Xbox games I did not mention how great Wii was. Weird. They smiled at me and after a long speech thanking me for all my hard work in these 3 years together they promised me lots of things. Yes, my own console, my own bloody games, my own medals, my own little crew to boss around. I smiled back and thanked them, soon focusing all my attention on the cat playing with a piece of string. I’m not from this world, and now I’m not even subversive anymore. Time to go.

From one hotel to another, from a beautiful view to a picturesque little town, band gigging in the whole of the country, promoted, recommended, tagged, pointed at, life went on like a dream while I stared at ladybugs. It’s been always quite dreamy, but that night at the festival the whole thing went out of control.

My boss: Debbie, I need to speak to you.

Debbie: Me too. Wicked.

My boss: I really like having you here, you know.

Debbie: I’m sorry. I quit.

Leaving a flabbergasted boss behind, I walked slowly but surely towards the green fields, feeling my whole body expand and contract with my breathing, shivers up my spine. I swear I could hear the grass giggle. The breeze felt so good I could not stop walking against it, dancing with it, and the sky was just the way you’re imagining it now. How I love the twilight.

My dance with the breeze took me pass the green fields into the woods where I finally sat down on a stone looking outwards into the festival, happy to be. I could see the flashing lights in the distance and what to me looked like my bosses with their hands on their heads, puzzled, but that bit was probably just my imagination.

Speaking of the devil... Right before my eyes, a purple little being with greenish brown clothes and a funny squeaky voice emerged from a pile of hay, singing, and stared at me as if he knew what I was thinking. I told him I knew he didn’t know what I was thinking, particularly cos I wasn’t thinking about anything. You know if you’re an only child you’ll have the tendency to think people know what you’re thinking but that goes with time. I don’t think people can read my thoughts anymore. Only serious Yogis can catch our thoughts and that little purple being didn’t strike me a serious Yogi. Nothing against purple beings, let me clarify.

He stopped singing (thank fuck) and sat by my side, slightly freaking me out. His skin was rough yet shinny. Really weird. He said he came to congratulate me for what I’ve done, and to welcome me back. Welcome me back?? Back to??

He looked surprised, and asked me if I had not noticed the changes in my life. I told him everything was getting lighter, softer, easier, but that was just the result of my lifestyle. I told him I didn’t feel like subverting things anymore and that was weird, but maybe it was just me getting older. He shook his head in disappointment and fell silent for a while. I kind of lost my patience and felt like shaking him into speaking again, but his skin put me off and I just gave him my Tomb Rider kind of look. Than he spoke:

“I’m not an epiphany Debbie. I’m just a child being who’s happy to welcome you back. I welcome you back into your life. I’m glad to announce you’re officially “growing younger”, skipping will be your new walking, singing and dancing will be your elixir once again, and you should leave this place and play with the wind.”

And so I did.

I Met The Walrus

Religulous

http://www.supernovatube.com/play.php?viewkey=2bf4699ca1c062980545

Summit

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/protests_at_the_g20_summit.html

Bruno

http://thevibe.socialvibe.com/index.php/2009/04/02/the-bruno-movie-trailer-is-finally-here/

The Primacy of Consciousness

http://www.peterrussell.com/index2.php

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Found on Malung TV News

Smashing Telly

"Smashing Telly is a hand edited collection of the best free, instantly available TV on the web. Not 30 second clips (now with added clips, good ones) of a dog on a skateboard, or the millionth person to mime the Numa song, but classic clips and full length programs, with a focus on documentaries and non fiction. Smashing Television, not Gimmick Television.
Each entry is like a postcard, a short piece of text which describes a moving picture."
David
http://smashingtelly.com/

As Slow As Possible

Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) is a musical piece composed by John Cage and is the subject of the slowest and longest-lasting musical performance yet undertaken. It was originally written in 1987 for organ and is adapted from the earlier work ASLSP 1985; a typical performance of the piano piece lasts for about 20 to 70 minutes.[1] In 1985, Cage opted to omit the detail of "exactly how slow the piece should be played". The current organ performance of the piece at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, began in 2001 and is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years, ending in 2640.

The score consists of eight pages, the tempo of which has been stretched to fit the wanted duration of 639 years.
The piece was commissioned by The Friends of the Maryland Summer Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts as a contemporary requirement for a piano competition. Cage employed an open format mainly to ensure that no two performances would be the same, providing the judges a break from the monotony of most competitions.

Full Wikipedia entry

It all ends on the 27th Century

Theremin

Hang Drums

Awakening for life

One waits until one can’t put any food on the freezer to defrost it. One waits until one’s girlfriend completely drives one crazy to set one’s life free, or not. One spends one’s life trying to prove one’s thoughts right until one notices proving and thinking are sometimes opposites and a whole life’s gone. One get morbidly fat, one get stupidly slow, one reads all types of news everyday until its muscles can’t function anymore, crippled with fear, until it realizes one is better off reading some books sometimes. Dead.

I found myself in a similar situation. I waited years to download the fantastic soundtrack of one of my favourite films. I don’t understand why. Really don’t. Did it today. If in a 2012 extravaganza, I had to transform myself into a music style, I’m pretty sure I would be tango.

Listen to Waking Life’s soundtrack

Light Graffiti created with torches and a camera

By Daily Mail online: An artist has swapped paintbrushes for torches to create a range of stunning works which are created entirely with the use of light. Welsh artist Michael Bosanko creates the amazing light graffiti effect using only five coloured torches and by leaving his digital Canon camera on a long exposure. The 39-year-old has spent the past five years perfecting his art which is created in a similar way to how people write their names with sparklers on Bonfire Night.

Based in Cardiff, he draws most of his light art either in the empty urban night spaces of cities like Newport and his home town, or in the more desolate landscapes of the Brecon Beacons hills. 'I use my torches like an artist would use a paint brush,' says Michael 'I employ an exposure that lasts from ten seconds to one hour and then try to let my art manage to create what I had imagined. 'What I feel I am trying to convey is a sense of an aesthetically pleasing shape that clearly does not belong in that particular place or area.'


See it all

Found on www.socialvibe.com

Khoda by Reza Dolatabadi

The 5 minute film below, Khoda, was created by graduate film student Reza Dolatabadi. Although it appears to be a digital animation, it is much, much more than that. The video is composed of 6,000 individual paintings shown at a rate of 20 per second. SIX THOUSAND INDIVIDUAL PAINTINGS that Reza had to paint! Not surprisingly, the film took over two years to complete. Also unsurprising are the amount of impressive awards it has picked up so far. See the list at Found at Vimeo.

Found on www.socialvibe.com


Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi on Vimeo.

$20 can give a person clean, safe drinking water for 20 years.

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault. Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water. Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old.


HOW WE WORK

Drilling a well can cost from $4,000 - $ 12,000 and many living on less than $1 a day can not afford one in their community, even if the money is combined. With the help of exemplary organizations on the ground, we can drill wells and provide people with this basic, essential need. charity: water partners with local organizations in each country where we work, choosing the partners based on expertise and the ability to impact real, sustainable change in the communities they benefit. For more information on how we select our partners, and who we work with, click here.


BUILDING WELLS

The local community is engaged in the well building process, carrying out small tasks for free to reduce labor costs. This also encourages community participation and ensures community ownership after the project is complete. When the well is built, a water committee is formed. It generally consists of 6-8 people, half of them female. In the case of hospitals, the committee will generally consist of nurses and hospital staff. In schools, the committee would likely be comprised of teachers. Since charity: was founded and began activity in August 2006, we have funded the construction of more than 1,247 wells that, when completed, will provide clean drinking water to 650,000 people. We're just getting started.

YOU CAN HELP


OUR PLANET IS 70% WATER.97.5% OF THAT IS SALTWATER.
THIS MEANS ONLY 2.5% IS AVAILABLE FOR THE 6 BILLION PEOPLE ON THE PLANET TODAY.

Baby-faced boy Alfie Patten is father at 13

According to his father, Alfie Patten is just your average 13 year old boy who enjoys computer games, boxing and Manchester United. At his age the last thing he anticipated experiencing was fatherhood, but that's exactly what he's dealing with.

His 15 year old girlfriend Chantelle gave birth four days ago to a baby girl, Maisie. The infant was a result of one night of unprotected sex, that happened while Alfie, who is a mere 4 ft tall, was only 12 years old. The teenager became suspicious of stomach pains and paid a visit to her doctor, who suggested she take a pregnancy test. Upon receiving a positive result, Chantelle's initial reaction was something along the lines of "my parents are going to kill me."
Though both teenagers seem to be optimistic about their abilities as parents, both are obviously clueless as to the responsibility of a tiny baby. When asked what he would do financially, Alfie responded, "What's financially?"

He continues, "“I didn’t think about how we would afford it. I don’t really get pocket money. My dad sometimes gives me £10.....I didn’t know what it would be like to be a dad. I will be good, though, and care for it.”

Read more on... yeah... guess where? Yes. The Sun

Tamba Trio

I've been meaning to write this post about my last trip to Brazil and add some music to it and everything but every time I start listening to some brazilian music in order to choose the one to post, I end up having a little party here and forget to write the stories.

Here's one of the bands that stopped me from telling you all. Tamba Trio, a bossa nova jazzy cool little old band from Brazil :)

Tamba Trio - Avanco

Minds like water

What a singular thing it is to have a mind like water. Winter comes and it all gets cold, summer comes and it turns to clouds, four seasons in one day, what a singular thing. This morning it felt like candy floss, with thoughts of you intertwined to it, awkwardly, then it melted into a pink fluffy dough of love, condensing into despair, cut into suspicions to later on be shaped just the way we like: nothingness. And I nearly forgot about the mind itself. So curious a thing. I watched it. How can it be like water? What a weird thing this singular thing sometimes is.

I can’t use the verb to be the same way you do, not because I read Korzybski, but because my mind is like water. I am, now or ever, I was, I will be or won’t, I’m not sure. Is you mind like water? I sometimes think it is, but then a 2 minute spring rain washes this very thought away and I’m back to winter. I’m sorry I forget.

It’s good when two minds like water meet, sometimes each in a different state, mine liquid, yours solid, frozen, and we watch them exchanging heat till they merge, till they swap places, what an irony. Now we know we have minds like water, and that’s mostly because they met, cos water won’t watch itself, won’t turn itself from a stream into the sea fully aware of it, cos it flows and changes, cos it absorbs the world, cos it’s a big job to be water.

Tsunami, it all comes down like a deadly storm, I cry, and then a rainbow with 7.000 shades. I smile. It’s a big job to be water.

It’s hard to have minds like water, but we’re blessed cos we’ll have to be painfully honest, scrutiatingly aware and we’ll go that extra mile in life, towards the sea, always changing, strong and gentle.

Picture by Schrollum

Lux Interior dies at 60

By August Brown
9:39 PM PST, February 4, 2009
Lux Interior, the singer, songwriter and founding member of the pioneering New York City horror-punk band the Cramps, died Wednesday. He was 60. Interior, whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, died at Glendale Memorial Hospital of a heart condition, according to a statement from his publicist.

With his wife, guitarist "Poison" Ivy Rorschach, Interior formed the Cramps in 1976, pairing lyrics that expressed their love of B-movie camp with ferocious rockabilly and surf-inspired instrumentation.

The band became a staple of the late '70s Manhattan punk scene emerging from clubs such as Max's Kansas City and CBGB, and was one of the first acts to realize the potential of punk rock as theater and spectacle.

Often dressed in macabre, gender-bending costumes onstage, Interior evoked a lanky, proto-goth Elvis Presley, and his band quickly became notorious for volatile and decadent live performances.

The Cramps recorded early singles at Sun Records with producer Alex Chilton of the band Big Star and had their first critical breakthrough on their debut EP "Gravest Hits."

Read it all on LA Times

Download my favourite Cramps' song: Bikini Girls with Machine Guns

Mat made of moss stays alive with the help of bath water

A new bathmat made of moss is kept alive by the water that drips from your body as you dry.

The mat contains a total of 70 pieces of ball, island and forest moss measuring 2.4in (6cm) each in diameter.
It feels soft underfoot and does not smell when it gets damp.
Each piece of moss is cut into a foam frame, which prevents the moss from spreading or growing out of control.
Its designer, Nguyen La Chanh, from Switzerland, says the mat is very relaxing and needs little care.
She said: "The idea was to find a new way of having your plants inside.
"Not only plants in pots quietly standing in the corner of a living room but alive plants, evolving in the house.
"I think this mat would appeal people who miss a corner of nature in their appartment - perhaps if they live in an urban environment, far from parks and nature areas.
"It's relaxing, feels lovely and soft under the feet and doesn't need much care."
Miss Nguyen is looking for financial backing so she can mass produce the mat for less than the £220 it cost her to make.

Found on http://www.telegraph.co.uk

They want peace

Ohmmmmmmmm

My desk is a random mess. From where I am now, I can reach bananas, nuts, a magnetic poetry kit, creams, chocolate, bits of hardware, bread, books, two computers, chewing gum and so forth. I don’t mind my own mess. I know underneath all this the table is clean. I know I can eat the fruits cos they’re washed. It’s messy but clean.

But I live with 5 other people, and they have various degrees of awareness of personal hygiene, I would say ranging from 0 to 10, all shades. I used to go mad after a hard days work, getting home to find food crumbles all over every surface, dishes to be washed, and the remains of pasta glued to the stove, so pretty. Yes, the house changed. It’s our “new” housemate. Now I use this auspicious situation as an opportunity to practice my compassion, something I have very little most of the time.

Everything was going fine, and slowly I started to feel compassion was a constant companion. Yes, the old problems were too little. Who cares if the kitchen is filthy, innit? At least I have a nice kitchen... right...

Easy said than done, and much easier said after two long holidays. I arrive from Brazil and my “new” housemate is eating pasta in the kitchen. We smile and talk about our holidays briefly while I gather some food to take upstairs. He finishes eating, cleans his mouth on the kitchen towel we use to dry dishes and hangs it on the chair. I stare at him, my stomach turning upside down. I have to go. Bye. OMG. I think of all the things I dried with those towels. I stop thinking. Where is my compassion? Where is my sledgehammer? Compassion? Sledgehammer? Compassion? Sledgehammer?

Compassion? Sledgehammer?

Sledgehammer?

Yay, that's my hood! :)

London from above at night 1
London from above at night 2
http://www.jasonhawkes.com/

The Semmelweis Reflex

Mob behavior found among primates and larval hominids on undeveloped planets, in which a discovery of important scientific fact is punished rather than rewarded. Named after Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, ...physician who discovered the cause of puerperal fever, a now-obsolete disease which, in Semmelweis's primitive era, yearly killed a vast number of women in childbirth. Semmelweis was fired from his hospital, expelled from his medical society, denounced and ridiculed widely, reduced to abject poverty and finally died in a madhouse.

Timothy Leary, The Game of Life @ Deoxy

Hack your brain - How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio

From http://www.boston.com

Google search finds missing child

A nine-year-old girl, allegedly kidnapped by her grandmother, has been found using a mobile phone signal and Google Street View.

[...]

This requirement has led to GPS capability in most new mobile phones in the US.

Rose Maltais took the child during an arranged visit, say authorities
"This is very useful, although we can only use it in emergency situations such as when a person is missing or lost, or a life is in danger," said chief Anderson.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7820984.stm

I know what you're thinking...

PSYCHIC WARFARE from 1981-2008
“I never liked to get into debates with the skeptics, because if you didn’t believe that remote viewing was real, you hadn’t done your homework.”
--Major General Edmund R Thompson

The year I was born, in 1981, the US Government decided magick was real. Well, the “US Government” is of course an abstraction—specifically, Congressional Research Service was commissioned to do a report on psychic phenomena and offered the following conclusion:
“Recent experiments in remote viewing and other studies in parapsychology suggest that there exists an ‘interconnectiveness’ of the human mind with other minds and with matter. This interconnectiveness would appear to be functional in nature and amplified by intent and emotion.”

That sounds like a pretty accurate description of magick to me. Score one for the weirdos, right?

Read it all on Brainsturbator

Codex Alimentarius

Success Story

School Nightmare

Read Deschooling Society
by Ivan Illich