7.19.2

a lot of nooks and crannies featuring various creative endeavors in various stages of completion and/or confusion. can you relate? i can.
artnetweb HOME

7.18.2

the FBI is checking out library patrons and what they have been reading. no information will come of this misguided and unamerican activity, only noise, thank god. more files somewhere. maybe some of them will wonder into the stacks and pick up a book or two. who knows?
Zara Gelsey: Who's Reading Over Your Shoulder?

you've got to logon to this site, but the breadth of the reportage and the detail of current inanities is mind-blowing, no matter how bad you think our current "situation" is, you ain't seen nothing yet.
kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches

7.17.2

things i've learned in the past couple of days:

the army spent 10 days recently investigating an enlisted man who called our president "a joke" in a letter to the editor in a newspaper.

in the world of academia, there are courses taught with titles like "transpersonal psychology", "conciousness", and "introduction to tibetan buddhism". maybe some of the extra-curricular activities of 40 years ago had more of an effect than i realized. i thought the only result was the reagan revolution. i wonder what goes on in these classes; are there questions like "will that be on the test?"?

the culture is in denial about the changing climate.

the next 20 years will see the largest migration of peoples worldwide in history (and prehistory).

it's an open question whether the turn against bizzness will translate into realization that we are living in disney themepark. pay your money, stand in line, get thrilled/tittalatted/adrenalized, feel proud you did it.

systems cannot save the system. there is a feeling of dread in the air (not to mention tangible pollution in the smokey mountains), everyone feels it, nobody knows what to do about it.

"crypto-fascisism", an offhand phrase coined i believe by gore vidal, may enter the lexicon. but it will be spoken very quietly. "star-chamber" may creep in too.

people are alarmed by the invasion of privacy, but the demise of the inner concious life has not hit home yet. there is no privacy to invade where there is no inner life.

it's been a couple of days like that.

7.16.2

A collection of good-looking websites that are built with minimalism in mind. Spare, sparse, elegant. Fast-loading. Good idea:
Textbased.com - minimalist web design, theory and discussions

"New York and Milpitas, Calif.-based Nielsen//NetRatings also found Mac users are 58 percent more likely than the average surfer to build Web pages and 53 percent more likely to seek out product reviews.

"The Apple elite also have a higher propensity to purchase online than the average surfer, with the most popular purchases falling into the computer hardware, software and music categories.

"On the other hand, Mac owners are less likely to read horoscopes online or play any kind of online game."
enuf said. from
Mac Users Rule Says Study

7.15.2

haven't posted in a day or so, i must have taken a few bad turns. so here:

7.13.2

This is a book i did the cover for, newly published. it is also a good read about a time and place that have slipped away.

to buy the book send a check or money order for $14.00 ($12 plus $2.00 shipping and handling) to:

barbara scott
481 Turkey Ford Rd,
Dobson, NC 27017.

it will be available at select bookstores and a website soon. i'll post these when it happens.

7.12.2

i've spent a lot of time lately lost in the wilderness of digital audio production. here's my first MP3: give it a listen and have fun wondering what the hell i am doing.

7.11.2

a conversation the other night i had with richard about the nature of the workplace started me looking for an article i found many years ago in a short-lived magazine, don't remember the name. i found it and link is below. amazingly prescient for it's time, all i remember about the author is that he was not some kid, but worked in the technical field. this is my favorite article of all time, read it.

"Directly or indirectly, work will kill most of the people who read these words."
from
The Abolition of Work

starter went out on truck, delayed malfunction from a few months ago when i broke down in son eli's boondok house i think. meanwhile more flowers:

i've been so unverbal lately. politics, the economy, the corporate oligarchy, the changing mental-world (no, not mental-ward) that we inhabit, they all seem pretty distant. i've been painting flowers.

fat band people, poke around in this: the head-space project : v5

blogger is down, don't know when this will appear. BUT i had a very nice 4th, potluck at the reily's, thank you tom and cathy. plus when i got back no fireworks extravaganza at the grove park inn, thank you whomever.

at the library today, due to lack of funds they can't purchase "shaky", neil young bio i'll read one of these days.

about the corporate oligarchy we live in today: it's new, it's different, and it works because the public buys into it (literally) because they get something in return. like the 9th century serf who got something in return. "Feudal lords protect underlings in exchange for obedience and labor. The basis of feudal empires --power and glory" from A Shambhala Interview with Ken Wilber.

what we get today is the illusion or hope that we can be "our own boss", plus glitter, glitz, and adrenalin. in exchange for a world where there is "no room to be anybody" (bob dylan).

the 2 g. bushes and laura are on the cover of "the nation" this week wearing crowns.

early morning thunder outside, i guess i'll shut this thing down soon. here's is a noble weblog experiment i stumbled on, lot's of potential implications. i guess it's necessary but not sure why.
RAM otherwise known as Random Access Memory. lives up to it's title. could probably use a javascript button that randomly grabs and displays a content selection.

really frustrating day. working on a watercolor that is just not going anywhere, but i gotta go with it. then long hours twitching midi software, getting down to kinks and bizarre crashes, self-generated sequences combined with aliatory audio tracks. fascinating stuff but i think i better step away for a day or two. pleasant phone call from friend jim, the only voice i heard all day. until this evening when i got out of the house and attended a small discussion group concerning the work of ken wilber who nobody can understand. pleasant interesting bunch of folks, thanks richard.

if you are curious why noone understands wilber, try this. the interesting thing seems to be that somewhere in there he is articulating something many of us feel but have not figured out how to say - because we don't know what it is.

"Moreover, for the last several decades, the various Third World groups, factions, insurrectionists, and even terrorists have actually adopted the postmodernist lingo coming out of American universities in order to justify their actions. Green pluralism maintains, in its extreme--and most common--forms, that culturally there is no good or bad, no better or worse: there are no universal standards by which we may judge one culture to be better or worse than another. In fact, we cannot say anything about an Other that the Other would not say about itself. Period. To attempt to speak of the Other in terms other than those of the Other is to commit a horrible crime known as a 'metanarrative.' Rather, all cultural values are essentially equal..."

from
Ken Wilber Online: A Summary of Integral Psychology

"Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future; we enter it with the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open to the riches and the glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by it's content, but by what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere."

-- The Eye of Spirit, p. 135-136
The world of Ken Wilber

"Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Kanter, in her book World Class, tells us that the future belongs to those who are willing to give up their loyalties to community and nation to seek personal financial success in the global economy. She warns that those who remain loyal to people and places will be left behind."

that's what i'm afraid of.

from
cj guidebook citation

i wish i could comment on the politics of the day, but words fail me. a populice ruled by corporate oligarchy almost totally involved with electronic bread and circuses and easy ignorence. the biggest problem i see is the acceptance of the status quo and the need not to know. the only faint hope is, it seems to me, the slowly increasing visceral discomfort people are beginning to feel. feeling, not thinking. as if there is...something wrong.

"this i want to give to you because i wrote it down this morning. [he laughs as i read the the paper he hands me.]

judge me not by the number of times i have failed, but by the nunber of times i have succeeded, which is in direct proportion to the number of times i've failed and kept on trying."

from
Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith
by Studs Terkel

Happy Birthday Eric & Nicole