Comfort Eagle

Comfort Eagle
by CAKE

We are building a religion We are building it bigger We are widening the corridors And adding more lanes We are building a religion A limited edition We are now accepting callers for the pendant key chains To resist it is useless It is useless to resist it His cigarette is burning But he never seems to ash He is grooming his poodle He is living comfort eagle You can meet at his location But you better come with cash Now his hat is on backwards He can show you his tatoos He is in the music business He is calling you "DUDE!" Now today is tomorrow And tomorrow today And yesterday is weaving in and out And the fluffy white lines That the airplane leaves behind Are drifting right in front of the waining of the moon He is handling the money He's serving the food He knows about your party He is calling you "DUDE!" Now do you believe In the one big sign The doublewide shine On the bootheels of your prime Doesn't matter if you're skinny Doesn't matter if you're fat You can dress up like a sultan In your onion head hat We are building a religion We are making a brand We're the only ones to turn to When your castles turn to sand

Take a bite of this apple Mr. Corporate Invents Take a walk through the jungle Of cardboard shanties and tents Some people drink Pepsi Some people drink Coke The wacky morning DJ Says democracy's a joke He says now do you believe In the one big song He's now accepting callers Who would like to sing along She says, do you believe In the one true edge By fastening your safety belts And stepping towards the ledge He is handling the money He is serving the food He is now accepting callers He is calling me "DUDE!" Now do you believe In the one big sign The doublewide shine On the bootheels of your prime There's no need to ask directions If you ever lose your mind We're behind you We're behind you And let us please remind you We can send a car to find you If you ever lose your way We are building a religion We are building it bigger We are building A religion A limited Edition We are now accepting callers... For these beautiful... Pendant keychains

Visit Cake's website: http://www.cakemusic.com/

Buy Comfort Eagle

Technorati tags: Cake, Music

Five, Seven, Five

Haiku, Japanese verse form, notable for its compression and suggestiveness. It consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables.

Traditionally and ideally, a haiku presents a pair of contrasting images, one suggestive of time and place, the other a vivid but fleeting observation. Working together, they evoke mood and emotion. The poet does not comment on the connection but leaves the synthesis of the two images for the reader to perceive. A haiku by the poet Bashô, considered to have written the most perfect examples of the form, illustrates this duality:

Now the swinging bridge
Is quieted with creepers ...
Like our tendrilled life.

The haiku evolved from the earlier linked-verse form known as the renga and was used extensively by Zen Buddhist monks in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the next 200 years, the verse form achieved its greatest popularity and success. In addition to Bashô, important haiku poets include Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Masuoka Shiki.

The precise and concise nature of haiku influenced the early 20th-century Anglo-American poetic movement known as imagism. The writing of haiku is still practiced by thousands of Japanese who annually publish outstanding examples in the many magazines devoted to the art.*

Read about haiku: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku


*Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99 © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation.

Technorati tags: Bashô, Haiku, Poetry

Simulacrum Of Life

Simulacrum of Life
by Robert Kallansa

She said, "Life
Was so interesting."
And I believed her.
She said, "I'm lucky."

Interesting and lucky.
Ten thousand times.
Tricking myself to feel
Some little thing.

Technorati tags: Poetry

One Speaks Of Totems

One Speaks of Totems
by Robert Kallansa

American hair, American shoes,
he wears blue jeans, faded, but new,
and a wool vest decorated in the Tsimshian style.
Sanguine wolves on felt,
pooling hotly around his fat hips,
bubbling from holes in his heart and his barrowed memory,
a squat woman figure on the back,
hairy and beaked—Tribal?
Lined with store-bought, mother-of-pearl buttons
sewn on with shiny, black thread.
Mother, mother, mother—Mother’s mother!
A matrilineal heritage swimming back ten thousand years,
breaching the blood and placentas of Tsimshian women.
Yet he talks of his Uncles, they raised him,
taught him to fish for publicity and Salmon!
Uncles under Mothers
teaching Potlatch and Salmon fishing
like it was before the liquor,
before Tsimshian meant three-quarters human being.
He doesn’t show his face when he talks,
eyes on his tools, splayed out for exhibition—
knives and chisels, some bent, some curled like talons.
He uses these claws to cut Cedar into Totems.
He represents the people of the Totem poles,
talks about his people to keep them alive.
He talks, and sings, and stutters, and they come to life,
lining their small, wind-whipped Alaskan beach like buttons.
Biting into Salmon backs,
feet painted hot and bloody, just out of mother.
Ten thousand. Five hundred. Fifty. One!
Three-quarters human being,
one quarter something else.

Read about the Tsimshian people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsimshian_language

Technorati tags: Native Americans, Poetry

The Art Of Lori Field

Lori’s collage and drawing based works begin as streams of consciousness. The mediums vary. Some are colored pencil drawings on vintage slate chalkboards or silverpoint renderings meditatively drawn on gessoed paper and panel. Other works are mixed media paintings that incorporate colored pencil drawings, hand colored, one of a kind prints, collage, thread, encaustic, and beeswax. The “creatures” or human-animal hybrids, which evoke subliminal, mysterious worlds, fit into the artist’s own peculiar, psychological landscape and evolving mythological context. Lori is drawn to depicting animals which don’t speak or cry out, like rabbits, deer, giraffes, zebras, and flying fish – as a way of addressing the question of vulnerability and emphasizing the hyperawareness that comes from listening intently without speaking. (All artwork copyrighted and courtesy of the artist Lori Field)

Little Summer in the Singing Woods*
Colored pencil drawing on rice paper,
collage, thread, encaustic, beeswax
on cradled clayboard panel
8" x 8" x 2"
Eastern Bonnet*
Colored pencil, collage, thread,
encaustic and beeswax on wood
8” x 12” x 2”
Unconditional Love*
Colored pencil drawing on rice paper,
collage, thread, encaustic, beeswax
12" x 6" x 2"
Door of Hope*
Colored pencil, collage, thread,
encaustic and beeswax on wood
16” x 12” x 2”
Pangea*
Colored pencil, collage, thread,
encaustic and beeswax on wood
8” x 12” x 2”
Crazymaker*
Colored pencil, collage, thread,
encaustic and beeswax on wood
6” x 6”
Quadroon*
Colored pencil, collage, thread,
encaustic and beeswax on wood
6” x 12” x 2”
Deer Bunny*
Colored pencil drawing on rice paper,
collage, thread, encaustic, beeswax on
cradled clayboard panel
6" x 6" x 2"
Blue Putti*
Colored pencil, collage, thread,
encaustic and beeswax on wood
6” x 12” x 2”
Mom Always Liked You Best*
Colored pencil, collage, thread,
encaustic and beeswax on wood
12” x 12”

Lori Field exhibits her work regionally, nationally, and internationally in many group and solo exhibitions. She is primarily self-taught, having had less than a year’s formal training in visual arts at S.U.N.Y. College at Purchase. Lori left school, moved to New York City, and earned her living first as a bartender, then as a freelance textile designer and illustrator for the next nineteen years. She began doing fine art again in 1996 after a series of events caused her to reflect and rethink the direction of both her personal and creative life.

View and purchase Lori Field creations: http://sixfingerrecords.com/lorifield/

View and purchase Lori Field creations: http://www.tagartgallery.com/

Visit Lori Field’s blog: http://www.myspace.com/moosedusty

*All artwork copyrighted and courtesy of the artist Lori Field

Technorati tags: Art

Monkey Business

From The Recursive Universe
by William Poundstone

The world’s staggering diversity seems to preclude any simple explanation. There is structure at all scales, from protons to clusters of galaxies. Even before unified theories of physics, the world’s richness seemed a paradox.

It is easy to show that the world is far, far more complex than can be accounted for by simple interpretations of chance. Take, for instance, the old fantasy of a monkey typing Hamlet by accident. If there are 50 keys on a typewriter, then the chance of the monkey hitting the right key at any given point is 1 in 50. There are approximately 150,000 letters, spaces, and punctuation marks in the typical text of Hamlet. Once the monkey has struck the keyboard 150,000 times, the chance that it has produced Hamlet is 1 in 50 multiplied by itself 150,000 times.

Fifty multiplied by itself 150,000 times (which can be written 50^150,000) is an unimaginably huge number. It cannot even be called an astronomical number, for it is much larger than any number with astronomical significance. Just writing 50^150,000 out would take about 255,000 digits.

In contrast, all of the large numbers encountered in physics can be written out easily. It is estimated that the number of fundamental particles in the observable universe is (give or take a few zeros) 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Vast as this number is, it is nothing compared to 50^150,000.

In view of this, it may seem remarkable that anything as complex as a text of Hamlet exists. The observation that Hamlet was written by Shakespeare and not some random agency only transfers the problem. Shakespeare, like everything else in the world, must have arisen (ultimately) from a homogeneous early universe. Any way you look at it, Hamlet is a product of that primeval chaos.

If every particle in the universe were replaced with a monkey and a typewriter and all the monkeys had been striking keys since the big bang, the chance of producing Hamlet would still be negligible. Yet Hamlet was produced from a series of physical processes that (initially, at least) were even more chaotic than monkeys banging at typewriters.

Copyright © 1985 by William Poundstone

Technorati tags: Probability

Looking Beyond

The Hubble Space Telescope hovers at the boundary of Earth and space in this picture, taken after Hubble’s second servicing mission in 1997. Hubble drifts 353 miles (569 km) above the Earth’s surface, where it can avoid the atmosphere and clearly see objects in space.*

This image is courtesy of the new Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), which has taken its first peek at Saturn. The false-color image—taken January 4, 1998—shows the planet’s reflected infrared light. This view provides detailed information on the clouds and hazes in Saturn’s atmosphere.*

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen, NGC 6543, nicknamed the "Cat's Eye Nebula." Hubble reveals surprisingly intricate structures including concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas and unusual shock-induced knots of gas. Estimated to be 1,000 years old, the nebula is a visual "fossil record" of the dynamics and late evolution of a dying star.

This color picture, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera-2, is a composite of three images taken at different wavelengths. The image was taken on September 18, 1994. NGC 6543 is 3,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Draco.*

NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes joined forces to create this striking composite image of one of the most popular sights in the universe. Messier 104 is commonly known as the Sombrero galaxy because in visible light, it resembles the broad-brimmed Mexican hat. However, in Spitzer’s striking infrared view, the galaxy looks more like a ”bull’s eye.”

M104 is a rich system of globular clusters, estimated to be nearly 2,000 in number—10 times as many as orbit our Milky Way galaxy. At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light years from Earth.*

In January, 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy. The mysterious star, called V838 Monocerotis, has long since faded back to obscurity. But observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of a phenomenon called a "light echo" around the star have uncovered remarkable new features. These details promise to provide astronomers with a CAT-scan-like probe of the three-dimensional structure of shells of dust surrounding an aging star.*

Read more about the Hubble Space Telescope: http://hubblesite.org/

*http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/

Technorati tags: Astronomy, Hubble, NASA, Telescope

Ten Books

Ten Books
by Robert Kallansa

Blah, blah, blah! She rambled on about her wonderful husband. Yadda, yadda, yadda! She grumbled about her unreasonable sister. I could be starting a book, rather than sitting in this dump of a Mexican restaurant, providing an audience for this therapy session. So distant. Reading, running, drowning—just about anything would have been far preferable to that scene.

I’m going to start reading a book every week, I thought and took out a pen to start a queue of reads on a napkin. The second book in the Dune series by Frank Herbert. Paradise by Toni Morrison.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Writing myself a note to email you after Christmas.”

She only briefly interrupted her story about the terrific way her husband designs golf courses to agree that I should email her immediately after the holidays.

* * * * *

I am always astonished when someone tells me, “Oh, I don’t read.” What? Sometimes I hear, “I haven’t read a book since high school.” It’s a concept that I don’t comprehend and an unfortunate reflection of the American lifestyle. Television triumphs over and tramples on the written page. I love to read. It’s a singular joy.

Scanning the bookshelf in my apartment, I fished for the napkin in my back pocket, but it was gone. Already read it! Don’t care anymore! Is this mine? Ah-ha! John Updike’s Trust Me. This will be number one on my new list—a collection of short stories, all by Updike, exploring the theme of trust. I bought this book twenty years ago, for whatever reason I can’t recall. If I’d only read one paragraph a day, I would have finished it while Reagan was still in office.

Number two? Wait a minute. There’s a book on the coffee table. What is it? Laura Coltelli’s Winged Words—a collection of interviews with Native American writers. (You know, they just call themselves Indians.) This book was originally due back to the library months ago. I renew it online every few weeks, hoping that I’ll have a moment to finish it. Definitely number two.

The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood will be third on my list. I almost didn’t see it there, hiding under a lamp. Not too long ago, I read Isherwood’s A Meeting by the River and was captivated by his campy, sardonic observations. River is on loan to me from a dear friend, though now estranged. Actually, he suggested that I make this list years ago. I should have listened.

“I can’t wait until you start taking classes,” he told me, “on top of work and friends and life. Then I hope you see what it’s like—never having time.” It was one of the last times we spoke.

* * * * *

There are two books in my bag: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez—both Oprah’s Book Club selections and numbers four and five on my reading list. I carry them with me everywhere—eternally optimistic that I’ll have a few moments to pour over them while I’m waiting for a bus or sitting in the park on some gray afternoon. Funny thing is I don’t take the bus anymore. It’s too loud. And I don’t go to the park without a reason.

* * * * *

Almost twenty years ago, I met Toni Morrison. She was lecturing on campus, talking about her experiences writing, reading from Song of Solomon, and signing books. I had just finished her first book The Bluest Eye. Listening to Morrison discuss her art, I was transfixed—awed by her presence. I blew off the rest of my day to follow her around.

When it came time for the book signing, I bought the four titles that I didn’t have and presented all five of them to her. (At that time, she had only published five books.) My copy of The Bluest Eye is paperback. It was a text for a literature class. That day I bought Sula, Song of Solomon, and Tar Baby in hardback, but I ran short of money and had to buy Beloved in paperback. It’s one of the great regrets of my life—my signed copy of Beloved is a paperback. But it’s precious to me nonetheless. On the other hand, having The Bluest Eye in paperback doesn’t bother me one bit. That little book introduced me to Morrison and cemented a budding love of literature that has carried me. I cherish that little book. When I loan it out to people, I’m all sweaty palms until it comes home.

* * * * *

Next to my bed are five titles. On top is Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula K. LeGuin. It’s a poetic translation of that spiritual tome that means so much to me. I’ve read it a hundred times, but it’s one of those books that you’ll never finish reading because you start it over before you’re done—a love affair. I keep a more scholarly translation by John C. H. Wu next to LeGuin’s. Wu’s translation has the original Chinese characters, which are beautiful. I sometimes smile at the awkwardness of Wu’s literal translations compared to LeGuin’s eloquent lines, but Wu’s book is not to be dismissed. Both of these translations will jointly comprise my number six—forever.

On the floor is a collection of science fiction short stories titled Redshift, edited by Al Sarrantonio. I nearly finished it a year ago, but the dust on the jacket is so thick now. What’s happened to my friend Janie from Elizabeth Hand’s story “Cleopatra Brimstone?” This will be my number seven, but I’ll finish it first since I’m so close to the end.

On the bottom of this pile are two erotic vampire books that I bought to complete my membership with a mail-order book club. Masters of Midnight and Vampire Thrall. I’ve read most of the former, but I don’t think I’ll revisit it—bad writing. As for the latter, the jacket boasts this enticement: “The vampire who loved Christ—is back. And he’s bolder and sexier than ever.” Neither of these will make my list—can’t spare the numbers.

* * * * *

My dear friend warned me about not having time for friends or reading and I thought he was judging me. I’d just come off a ten-year drunk, enrolled in college again, and was feeling like I had a second chance. Five years later, I understand what he was trying to tell me. What I wouldn’t give to have an hour or two for my personal reading or a cup of coffee with a dear friend, though now estranged.

What if? What if our lives were comfortably spent sowing our minds and experiences with the seeds of a golden crop of literature? What if instead of slaving away at pedantic jobs that don’t really matter, what if each of us could read a book a day? I suppose, realistically, that the machinery of our civilization would grind to a quick halt before I could get through the laborious introduction to Truman Capote’s Music for Chameleons—number eight on my list. Still, it’s a beautiful dream.

* * * * *

I found that napkin in the laundry basket this afternoon. Herbert and Morrison—pushed back, rounding out a list of ten books.

Technorati tags: Books

Studio Glass Menagerie

Dale Chihuly is most frequently lauded for revolutionizing the Studio Glass movement, by expanding its original premise of the solitary artist working in a studio environment to encompass the notion of collaborative teams and a division of labor within the creative process. However, Chihuly's contribution extends well beyond the boundaries of both this movement and even the field of glass: his achievements have influenced contemporary art in general. Chihuly's practice of using teams has led to the development of complex, multipart sculptures of dramatic beauty that place him in the leadership role of moving blown glass out of the confines of the small, precious object and into the realm of large-scale contemporary sculpture. In fact, Chihuly deserves credit for establishing the blown-glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art, beginning in the late twentieth century and continuing today.

by Davira S. Taragin
Director of Exhibitions and Programs
Racine Art Museum

Dale Chihuly
Shell Pink Basket set with Oxblood Wraps, 1995
9 x 22 x 22"

Chihuly started making Baskets at Pilchuck. He made single Baskets at first, but later began to group the individual elements into nested compositions.*

Dale Chihuly
Palazzo di Lorednana Balboni, 1996
10'7" x 6'6"

Dale Chihuly
Orange Chandelier with Horns and Bulbs, 1997
9 x 5 x 5'

Dale Chihuly
Victoria and Albert Museum Chandelier, 2001
27 x 12 x 12'

Anemones are wall-mounted, tentacle-like clusters that appear to be animated, as if caught in the motion of waves. Chihuly often groups these sculptures in response to a specific environment.*

Dale Chihuly
Persian Chandelier, 2005
94 x 118 x 112"

This series’ title hints at associations with ancient glass styles and reflects the fusion of East and West. Historically, Venice has shown an assimilation of Persian, Byzantine and eastern ideas. When Chihuly worked at the Venini factory in Venice, he became aware of these historical ties and stylistic influences in Venetian art. Persians, with their gently fluted edges, are delicate yet powerful, and their jewel-like colors and sensuous curving forms make them some of Chihuly’s most glorious works.*

Dale Chihuly
Macchia Forest, 2002

Chihuly’s Macchia (pronounced mock’kia) are speckled with colors. Chihuly couldn’t think of what to call this series of works when he began it in 1981, so he called an artist friend, Italo Scanga, and asked what the Italian word for “spotted” (macchia) would be — hence the title. When you look at the Macchia, notice that the interiors and exteriors of the vessels are different colors. Each side is distinct because a layer of white, opaque glass separates them.*

Read about Dale Chihuly and his incredible art: http://www.chihuly.com/



* http://www.childrensmuseum.org/themuseum/fireworks_ofglass/glassforms.htm

Technorati tags: Art, Dale Chihuly

In The Beginning

Original Sin
by Robinson Jeffers

The man-brained and man-handed ground-ape, physically
The most repulsive of all hot-blooded animals
Up to that time of the world: they had dug a pitfall
And caught a mammoth, but how could their sticks
and stones
Reach the life in that hide? They danced around the pit,
shrieking
With ape excitement, flinging sharp flints in vain, and the
stench of their bodies
Stained the white air of dawn; but presently one of them
Remembered the yellow dancer, wood-eating fire
That guards the cave-mouth: he ran and fetched him,
and others
Gathered sticks at the wood’s edge: they made a blaze
And pushed it into the pit, and they fed it high, around
the mired sides
Of their huge prey. They watched the long hairy trunk
Waver over the stifle-trumpeting pain,
And they were happy.
Meanwhile, the intense color and nobility
of sunrise,
Rose and gold and amber, flowed up the sky. Wet rocks
were shining, a little wind
Stirred the leaves of the forest and the march flag-flowers;
the soft valley between the low hills
Became as beautiful as the sky; while in its midst, hour after
hour, the happy hunters
Roasted their living meat slowly to death.
These are the people.
This is the human dawn. As for me, I would rather
Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.
But we are what we are, and we might remember
Not to hate any person, for all are vicious;
And not be astonished at any evil, all are deserved;
And not fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.

Read about Robinson Jeffers and his poetry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Jeffers

Technorati tags: Robinson Jeffers, Poetry