Coleridge & Turner

Old art becomes impenetrable (which is not to say, unenjoyable) when we no longer have the will or the knowledge to re-create the mindset of its makers and audience. The Goddess of Discord hangs high up (and abominably lit) in the Turner gallery of Tate Britain. The figures are hard to read, the colour dim. But mental distance is the real difficulty. The dragon high on the mountainous horizons that defends the Garden of the Hesperides looks absurdly like a huge crocodile – Ruskin estimated its length at about three-quarters of a mile. Thinking geology while retelling mythology, he also points out that the scaly wrinkles of its back are a very good representation of the broken surface of a glacier...

The man who invented the doner kebab has died

Kebab meat, consisiting of roast lamb and spices, had traditionally been served with rice but in a moment of inspiration Mr Aygun saw that the future lay in putting the meat inside a pitta bread.

That allowed customers who had been drinking to wander off into the night with their food and eat it as they stumbled home.

Mr Aygun once said: "I thought how much easier it would be if they could take their food with them..."

CSA presents:

Drawings: 2002-2007
Alison Yip

Curated by Chrisopher Brayshaw and Adam Harrison


February 21 - March 20, 2009

Opening Friday, Feburary 20th 6 - 9 p.m.

Alison Yip's new exhibition at CSA Space records her ongoing engagement with the act of drawing. Culled from a much larger image archive, the drawings on display speak to Yip's careful observation of the world around her, the people, animals, and objects occupying it, and her sensitivity to the subtleties of dress and gesture that define her human subjects.

Alison Yip is represented by Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver.


CSA Space
#5 - 2414 Main St., Vancouver, BC, V5T 3E2
www.csaspace.ca | info@csaspace.ca

splinter in your eye--a wonderful drawing & photography blog--

"The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass."
— Theodore W. Adorno

YouTube - Moondog — Fog On The Hudson (425 West 57th Street)

in all I write
in 27 different tempos...

some Hollywood trees from a recent visit by Pete Cummings...

in Seattle in 2005, my favorite DJ Theo Parrish talks & plays records...

from Edward Lear: The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Round the World

The Four Children then entered into conversation with the Blue Bottle-Flies, who discoursed in a placid and genteel manner, though with a slightly buzzing accent, chiefly owing to the fact that they each held a small clothes-brush between their teeth which naturally occasioned a fizzy extraneous utterance.

'Why,' said Violet, 'would you kindly inform us, do you reside in bottles? and if in bottles at all, why not rather in green or purple, or indeed in yellow bottles?'

To which questions a very aged Blue-Bottle-Fly answered, 'We found the bottles here all ready to live in, that is to say, our great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers did, so we occupied them at once. And when the winter comes on, we turn the bottles upside down, and consequently rarely feel the cold at all, and you know very well that this could not be the case with bottles of any other colour than blue.'

'Of course it could not;' said Slingsby, 'but if we may take the liberty of inquiring, on what do you chiefly subsist?'

'Mainly on Oyster-patties,' said the Blue-Bottle-Fly, 'and, when these are scarce, on Raspberry vinegar and Russian leather boiled down to a jelly.'

'How delicious!' said Guy.

To which Lionel added, 'Huzz!' and all the Blue-Bottle-Flies said 'Buzz!'

At this time, an elderly Fly said it was the hour of the Evening-song to be sung; and on a signal being given all the Blue-Bottle-Flies began to buzz at once in a sumptuous and sonorous manner, the melodious and mucilaginous sounds echoing all over the waters, and resounding across the tumultuous tops of the transitory Titmice upon the intervening and verdant mountains, with a serene and sickly suavity only known to the truly virtuous. The Moon was shining slobaciously from the star-bespringled sky, while her light irrigated the smooth and shiny sides and wings and backs of the Blue-Bottle-Flies with a peculiar and trivial splendour, while all nature cheerfully responded to the cerulaean and conspicuous circumstances.

In many long-after years, the four little Travellers looked back to that evening as one of the happiest in all their lives, and it was already past midnight, when - the Sail of the Boat having been set up by the Quangle-Wangle, the Tea-kettle and Churn placed in their respective positions, and the Pussy-cat stationed at the Helm - the Children each took a last and affectionate farewell of the Blue-Bottle-Flies, who walked down in a body to the water's edge to see the Travellers embark.

As a token of parting respect and esteem, Violet made a curtsey quite down to the ground, and stuck one of her few remaining Parrot-tail feathers into the back hair of the most pleasing of the Blue-Bottle-Flies, while Slingsby, Guy, and Lionel offered them three small boxes, containing respectively, Black Pins, Dried Figs, and Epsom Salts: and thus they left that happy shore for ever...

Local trees

Blinky sitting in the empty buffet

in Portland, Oregon--Eco Baroque - Warlord Sun King

Warlord Sun King: The Genesis of Eco-Baroque is an installation being developed by Bruce Conkle and Marne Lucas and will be shown at Marylhurst University's The Art Gym in Gallery 2 from February 22 to March 25 2009

The Pursuit

There is a line of reasoning which accepts that totalitarian ideologies were shaped by apocalyptic and utopian thinking, while insisting that liberal humanism is entirely different. They - the Nazis and communists - may have been deluded and irrational; we - enlightened meliorists - have purged our minds of myth. In fact, the belief in progress in ethics and politics, which animates liberal rationalism, is itself a myth: a view of history as a process of redemption without the Christian belief in a single transforming event, but nonetheless a faith-based narrative of human salvation. It is obvious that human life can sometimes be improved. Equally, however, such gains are normally lost in the course of time. The idea that history is a process of amelioration is an article of faith, not the result of observation or reasoning.

Local & Lower Mainland trees

Explore Roald Dahl's Writing Hut

Careful With That Axe: Pink Floyd Reappraised

Famously, on the last night of the tour, he beckoned a fan to the front of the stage and spat in his face (though bearing in mind the reverence and docility of Floyd freaks by 1977, it's possible that this fan never washed again – if, indeed, he had any plans to in the first place). The incident is ugly enough on its own terms, but it gets worse: a shame-faced Waters used it as inspiration for The Wall, an album so revolting on every level that it might be oddly compelling, were it possible to listen for more than ten minutes at a time. The Wall is the pinnacle of Waters' conceit, not just for its unsparing inverted narcissism, but the lumbering grotesqueness of the music – like third-rate New Wave swollen to the size of a gas giant, a would-be symphony almost devoid of melodic invention. It spawned the least spontaneous live shows in history, choreographed and stage-managed, performed to a click-track to stay in sync with Gerald Scarfe's hysterical cartoons. This is the Pink Floyd most people think of when you mention their name. It's a terrible shame...

via excellent sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy

Stephen Rodefer, the MC5 & Isola di Rifiuti

Is it possible to make a bigger contrariety between, though, Edna St. Vincent Millay and John Sinclair?

new books on Lincoln

“The greatness of Napoleon, Caesar and Washington was only moonlight by the sun of Lincoln ... He was great through his simplicity and was noble through his charity.”

Welcome Back To The 1982 Depression

Never has an American president been so sneeringly contemptuous of the poor. Never has an American president so openly despised the vast majority of Americans. Ronald Reagan was stupid, dishonest and just plain mean. The heavens rejoiced when that piece of shit finally died...

Secrets of Charcuterie

By six o'clock we had prepared four jambons, over 200 boudins noirs, a similar number of saucisses, and 30 jars each of pâté and rillettes. By common agreement a glass of wine seemed well deserved – the têtes and rillons could wait until tomorrow!

Blossom Dearie on Schoolhouse Rock--YouTube - FIGURE EIGHT

farewell Blossom Dearie

YouTube - I like London in the rain

YouTube - The Good Life

YouTube - Surry With the Fringe on Top