FINALLY

This has been driving me nuts, but mystery is solved. Menomena's latest cd cover was designed by Craig Thompson (http://blog.dootdootgarden.com/) and looks like this:


The picture does not do justice to the intricacy of the art (so you should just go buy yourself a cd). It reminded me of a German artist and it's been months of it nagging at my brain. I even saw a movie where a character was looking at one of his paintings...yet the man's name wasn't mentioned. Bach kept coming to mind, but obviously that was incorrect. Today, after several creative Google searches, I tracked down the man: Hieronymus Bosch. Such a catchy first name--it's a wonder it slipped my mind.



This is only a small portion of an entire triptych titled "Garden of Earthly Delights" c. 1504. Now I can rest easy at night.

Variations on Wrath

Dr. Faustus' (Christopher Marlowe not Goethe, though that one is good, too) interview with the seven deadly sins is one of my favorite pieces in literature. Check out Envy:

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I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books burned. I am lean with seeing others eat. O, that there would come a famine over all the world, that all might die, and I live alone! then thou shouldst see how fat I'd be. But must thou sit, and I stand? come down, with a vengeance!

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But the one that has rattled around in my brain the most often is Wrath:

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I am Wrath. I had neither father nor mother: I leapt out of a lion's mouth when I was scarce an hour old; and ever since have run up and down the world with this case of rapiers, wounding myself when I could get none to fight withal. I was born in hell; and look to it, for some of you shall be my father.

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The bit about wounding himself when there is none to fight with. That one. Today I was/am thinking about how we work up wrath (often tied to self-justification) to cover hurt. If I can be angry, find a reason that someone has done something against me, then I can deal more easily with the pain, because I have an object to vilify. But sometimes, like Wesley told Princess Buttercup, life is pain and "anyone who says different is selling something."

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I'm thinking the only way to subvert that very human and understandable reaction is to engage with the concept of humility; which is not self-abasement nor victimization, nor denial, but something more freeing and radical. Yup, that's what I'm thinking about.

Image courtesy of quite a fine blog: http://indexed.blogspot.com/

Oh, here's a way to find out which of the seven deadlies will be your downfall:

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/seven_deadly_sins.html

The best thing about imaginary children is they're just so easy to take care of....

Buddy Cole on his seven-year-old, six-foot-tall, imaginary daughter:

"She’s a handful. She hates school. Lately she‘s refused to go. She says she wants to be homeschooled, which I am completely against. I knew a girl who was homeschooled and she was a cannibal; she never learned that other people weren’t food."

And I thought I was the only one who had trouble with that!

Photo courtesy of Kyle Jones: http://justkyle.com/

Catty

Three choice quotes from a friend who 'gets' dogs and doesn't 'get' cats:

They don't make sense as creatures.

I don't understand their function.

They're just so, "F*ck you, very much."

Please, sir, might I have a guilt trip with that?

More amazing WWII "motivational" posters. It seems there was little room for self-absorption in this era. Interesting how advertising can shape a generation of thought.

Again, such a different approach to adversity than we now use. I believe our current mantra goes something like, "Ignore, ignore, ignore."

Loads more here: http://www.legion.org/whatsnew/posters

I Have An Owie

I totally biffed it while out on a run this morning. The sun was in my eyes and my brain was somewhere far beyond the here and now, when an elevated section of sidewalk became my downfall. What crossed my mind as I stumbled forward: "I think I'm falling " and then, "But I don't fall down!" Like I'm wayyyyy too grown up for that. However, after a few attempts to recover, it turned out that, yes, I was only delaying the oncoming sidewalk for a few paltry seconds. Hands went out, right elbow and knee went down. I did a slight roll, jumped back up and kept on going. Yeah, I meant to do that! Shut up!

I do hope someone was gazing out their window, coffee in hand, and got their morning snicker.

I've never done that. On a run, that is. And it's been quite a while since just a good flat-out tumble. As my hands dermabrasioned themselves across the cement my mind had flashes of the Riveria Elementary playground and picking gravel out of bloody palms after a frantic game of boys-chase-girls or a fall off the jungle gym. It leapt from there to seeing a college friend's bloody leg after she had come in from a run on a very late, rainy night. She ran with compulsion and without fear and took the blood and pain that night with a grim satisfaction. Much later I realized she had an eating disorder among other self-abuse problems. Funny how physical sensations can take you places you haven't thought of for a long, long time.

Influences

Bands on Myspace are asked to identify their influences. Sometimes their answers make sense, sometimes they don't, sometimes they are evasive, sometimes full of vainglory. But The Beautiful Clarks tell it like it is:

INFLUENCES
box springs, running water, cheap motels, mix tapes, BC powder, RC cola, Waffle House @ 3 a.m., BBQ, lightening bugs, screen doors, fishing poles, rubber boots, Gibson's Donuts, CK's coffee, road maps, argyle socks, knit caps, polaroids, burning candles, mint juleps, 3rd and Vance, huey's, compostion books, new ink pens, thick erasers, pencil shavings, pork rinds, root beer, Dickel, silver dollar city, pontoon boats, greers ferry, bug spray, trash barrels, green tomato relish, rotel, asphalt in a thunderstorm, zippo, atomic fire balls, flannel shirts, gold bond powder, uno, wood burning stoves, mothballs, quilts, kites, garden weasel, big league chew, leather gloves, american spirit cigarettes (blue), window unit air-conditioners, crock pots, 2 stroke, lightning, bluegill, flip flops, lawn chairs, fabric softner, lip balm, treble hooks, carp, yo-yo's, milk jugs, 5 alive, t.v. trays, wood paneled dens, formal living rooms, hall closets, kerosene space heaters, oak trees, Osage Orange trees (horse apple, 'bodoc'), toaster ovens, coca-cola in the glass bottle, seeing rock city, shiloh, clay pigeons, 12 gauge shotguns, grandpa hatcher's bible, electric blankets, wooden docks, diesel trucks, mudflaps, burning buildings, fireworks, hay stacks, cobbler, mothers perfume, biscuits,

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=54184623

Exactly

I've dealt with numbers all my life, of course, and after a while you begin to feel that each number has a personality of its own. A twelve is very different from a thirteen, for example. Twelve is upright, conscientious, intelligent, whereas thirteen is a loner, a shady character who won't think twice about breaking the law to get what he wants. Eleven is tough, an outdoorsman who likes tramping through the woods and scaling mountains; ten is rather simpleminded, a bland figure who always does what he's told; nine is deep and mystical, a Buddha of contemplation. I don't want to bore you with this, but I'm sure you understand what I mean. It's all very private, but every accountant I've ever talked to has always said the same thing. Numbers have souls, and you can't help but get involved with them in a personal way.

The Music of Chance by Paul Auster

I've always thought that the number eight was the Buddha-like digit. But I'm too pleased with someone writing on the subject to quibble.

A Different Kind of Deadness

I saw this article on a hospital website. It's about a woman on their staff who moved her family from Beirut, Lebanon to Newton, MA.

She remembered seeing a CNN story featuring Newton as the safest place in America, so she set her sights on the suburb.

Naturally, the transition has been a bit jarring. "It's so much quieter," she says. It's so quiet, that when they first moved in, they thought their neighborhood was deserted. "We never see people on the streets or kids in their yards or on the porches," she says. "And you don't hear people, either. It's scary, it's so still. Sometimes we'll see a light on in someone's house so we know there must be somebody in there."

How strange to move from a community alive with children and families and activity, even in the midst of danger and violence, to a non-community where, if anyone is home there is no connection to the someone right next door. I am tempted to think it would be more unnerving and depressing than potential bullets and bombs. At least then you would have proof others are alive and want to stay that way.



I read a book a while back about the development of the suburbs during the post-war boom, Home From Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler. A recommended read.

Variation on Blade Runner

I read medical journals for work and cull them for topics relevant to our industry. This article is not relevant to anything we do, therefore it's interesting:

...colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hacked their way into implantable medical devices, seizing private patient information, including name, disease diagnosis, birth date and medical record number.

...researchers were able to change the demographic data and also compromise patient safety by turning off settings stored in the device, rendering them unable to respond to cardiac events. Commands were then uploaded instructing the device to deliver an electric shock capable of inducing ventricular fibrillation, a potentially lethal arrhythmia.

It was all an experiment, but is the first known breach of wireless implantable medical devices, such as pacemakers and defibrillators. --

“People are running around with unsecured computers in their bodies,” says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. “Hospital CEOs need to push vendors harder on security. Device manufacturers need to understand that health care is not the retail sector.”

That noble line, "healthcare is not the retail sector." I have begun to think that pretty much everything is the retail sector.