cigfrain

art question for the hive mind

2007-01-20T15:40:47Z

i just saw a painting of a woman in a white satin dress leaning against the chest of a french soldier, probably on his way to war, with a small framed copy on the wall behind him, of david's napoleon on a horse.

the drapework of that dress is astounding. definitely in the school of david, ingres, gros, etc.

does anyone recognize it by description, and know who painted it?

i'm going to master the triangle

2007-01-04T19:06:27Z

alison just came up with the name for a TBD collaborative music project, probably focusing on modern interpretation of the unique idiom of 70s TV adventure/cop show music:

Oscar Goldman's Tie

i don't want my tribe on your t-shirt

2006-12-24T16:52:23Z

i actually don't like the widespread diffusion of underground culture into the mainstream.

underground cultures serve needs that are very specific to their members, some of which are not really all that useful - or even healthy - in the larger society. broadcasting them reduces their semiotics to commodity and parody, and at the same time "normalizes" attitudes and motivations which may be empowering or usefully self-referential in context, but which are otherwise absurd at best, and truly ugly at worst.

this goes for hip-hop, goth, s/m, punk, paganism, extreme metal (which, like several of the prior examples, is much more than just a genre of music). people flaunt codes they know nothing of. the shock-value of a subculture's plumage is converted to mere spectacle, and its shocking attitudes are inflated by prurient (and prudish) attention to the point where they erase whatever consciousness shaped them.

i'm not saying that anyone should remain in any kind of closet, or pursue their own worldview with anything but visible pride and gusto. but i do think that people should examine themselves, find what's real, not just hip or cool, and live that, rather than what's in the tabloids, in the mall, or on VH1.

how to ruin a web design

2006-12-21T21:46:08Z

source: http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1230

season's greetings

2006-12-21T15:19:56Z

allocating the neurons

2006-12-19T12:50:10Z

now that i'm waking up again, i'm also beginning to actively resent the amount of time that my job rents my head.

this does not support a good work ethic.

i need to get better, both at conducting the normal swerve, duck and turn of my thoughts, and at giving that time not spoken for, over to my own productivity. i have a strong tendency to become passive after a normal day's work, as an escape from its demands. that passivity does not serve me well.

small blessings

2006-12-17T23:30:35Z

i'm so glad that rob halford never contracted HIV.

pragmatic personal mysticism 0.1

2006-12-17T23:15:12Z

there needs to be another word, distinct from both atheist and agnostic, meaning neither "i don't believe" or "i don't know", but "i don't care."

it's not that i have no personal belief or gnosis, but that i have no stake whatever in the "truth" of most metaphysical propositions, in any doctrinaire sense.

experiential ethic 0.1

2006-12-17T13:47:12Z

i would rather be constant than kind.

just because

2006-12-11T22:33:08Z

http://www.cowabduction.com/

spud

2006-11-09T15:04:31Z

i love this guy.

burn, baby, burn... disco inferno!

2006-11-03T18:39:50Z

Dance Dance Immolation

via Wired

fur pile

2006-10-25T14:33:11Z

kazooie sleeps on the beanycow.
totoro sleeps on kazooie.

a collection of walks

2006-10-12T19:58:38Z

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Crazy

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Pirate-esque

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Zombie-like

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Constantly Enforcing your Personal Bubble

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
'Dandy'

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Sort of like Kickboxing

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
The Result of a Ballet Accident

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Pimp/Thug Styles

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Possibly Influenced by Narcotics

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Full of Determination

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
All About the Disco Arms

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Curiously Proper

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

<td align="center">Your walk is:
Full of Arm Flailing

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

pooped

2006-06-07T15:04:46Z

a couple of times a week, we open kazooie's cage, let him climb onto an arm, then plop him down into a running area at one end of our apartment, blocked off by a pair of baby gates.

he runs, he hops, he chews, he skitters, he twirls in his dustbath, and usually winds up in Steve McQueen mode, where he's fixated on getting over those gates.

eventually, he winds down. then we scoop him up and put him back in his cage, where he's so tired that he scrunches himself up against the wire, hanging his body by his teeth and tiny paws, and passes out:

a little friendly evil

2006-05-11T16:13:54Z

i came into work this morning, to find that my friend's instant messaging name was online. figuring that it had been left so by mistake, i left her the following monologue, to find when she eventually returned to her desk:

up early? or did your cat reboot your computer again?

ok. i'll talk to the cat.

how ya doing, ted?*

loren feeding you regularly?

sucks not to have any apposable thumbs, doesn't it?

see that ceramic lamp over there?

no, not that one... the big one over there. the one that looks a little precarious.

go rub up against it.

yah, that's it.

good kitty.

now... find loren's box of vintage comics.

---

* ted is her 26 pound cat.

real politics is always about power. an example.

2006-05-10T14:07:43Z

i've read recently that the republican-led congress is in the process of passing out further tax cuts. for the most part, opposition comment has focused on the enormous current deficit and the regressive nature of the cuts.

i think, though, that these fiscally and/or socially rational concerns have little or nothing to do with it. i think the proposed deal is a ruthlessly pragmatic political ploy... a landmine, placed in advance of future electoral cycles. the republican party line against the democrats has always relied heavily on the "tax and spend" epithet. having lost a good deal of its force in recent years, mostly due to their own corruption and profligacy, they seek to recharge the term, by passing any large tax cut - and the more absurd, the better, because that will almost require the response - so that when a possibly-democratic-led congress seeks to reverse it, they can then be stamped with the "tax raisers" brand again.

convex

2006-05-10T14:06:57Z

even understanding the actual mechanics of the situation, i'm always a little surprised at just how amazingly round pregnant women get. i almost expect them to be embossed, with a big baby-shaped bas relief on their tummy.

single issue

2006-05-10T02:30:45Z

i just caught a few moments of mary cheney on hannity and colmes, explaining that she "doesn't have the luxury of being a single-issue voter" - obviously referring to her betrayal of the same portion of the populace she was once paid to shill corporate product to.

what single issue would that be, mary? the cynical welding of "conservative" ideas about governance, national security and fiscal policy, to a social doctrine that openly calls for your own erasure? the declaration by a sitting member of the supreme court that consensual adult sex furthers a radical agenda? the effort to bar, not just "gay marriage", but any kind of contract that does not reify a fantasy of "the american family" that has little to do with reality? the refusal or elimination of reproductive rights, childrearing rights, property rights, medical and legal proxy rights? extreme, punitive heterosexism that oppresses *everyone*, not just your own alleged community? the empowerment of hatred and violence?

oh, right... *that* single issue. the issue that your own privilege insulates you from. the issue of actually living and functioning as a real, full and equal citizen. the single issue over which most of our wars have been supposedly been fought, and that this country was founded on.

or maybe even just the single issue of having a conscience... which, if it were in working order, might just bring all those other issues into coherence with this one.

screw you.

alisonism.29

2006-05-03T11:03:49Z

a dermatological disorder breaks out in paris...

the french foreign lesion.

cigfrain @ 2006-04-27T11:53:00

2006-04-27T15:58:53Z

handwringing lurkers being what they are, here's an interesting and useful take from a modern/mature (as opposed to second-wave) feminist (mostly straight) perspective on what women want from men.

wayang kulit

2006-04-21T14:21:12Z

i seem, almost by accident, to have been born into a world tailor-made to my own neuroses.

-----------------

the internet is an array of ground glass screens, hung on an electric lattice, with little fisheye lenses at the interstices. i ramify myself across them, an unseen light the center of the magic lantern. personae flicker like candle-lit shadows. here and there, fragments of crystal clear anamorphic distortion. i shift a little, and giants glide across the screens, monsters swim past the lenses. too little detail and too much, nothing whole, everything mythic, in this liminal space between my body and your mind, through this electric glass.

----------------

i always wanted a soundtrack to my life, and now i have one, this tiny black matchbox shoved into my pocket, these tiny plastic cones shoved into my ears. i stride, and the music swells, the rhythm of my life my own at last. i don't have to hear your shitty music on your tinny 'phones, i don't have to listen to your brassy stupidity, if i'm also reading i don't even have to see your slack, dull glare. but i still have to smell you, and no amount of volume will drown out your unwanted touch.

go into your studio and make stuff

2006-04-16T18:50:25Z

cigfrain @ 2006-04-14T15:40:00

2006-04-14T19:44:55Z

i've said recently that this LJ account would probably languish, and indeed it has. these days, i use it mostly to keep track of those few folks i know or just find interesting, who use this system. for myself, i pretty much keep to my own blog, and have stopped bothering to even post copies here.

just in case anyone was wondering, here are links, in chronological order, to some of what's been on my mind for the past six weeks:

unzen

pride

so beautiful so dangerous

croatan

reflection on a small operation

soccer

hangin' with the orangs

masks and minds

fragments: culture and communication

we can be heroes

against the connoisseur

tharn

hedging the bet

wonderpets

black

like roy before the chase

pigwar

good st. david's day

2006-03-01T13:55:18Z

Fluellen:

Your majesty says very true: if your majesties is
remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a
garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their
Monmouth caps; which, your majesty know, to this
hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do
believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek
upon Saint Tavy's day.

Hank Cinq:

I wear it for a memorable honour;
For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.