late Roman times

Considering all the famine and hunger around our globe, such contests make me want to throw up.

Takeru Kobayashi holds the coveted Mustard Belt after winning the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition in Coney Island, New York. Kobayashi won his sixth straight title by beating his own record and eating 53 and 3/4 hot dogs within 12 minutes!!!
That's about 4 and 1/2 hot dogs a minute ... sick!
Is the US today all about copying the the latter days of the Roman Empire when people threw eating parties, went into the back-room, threw up, went back to the main room ... and continued eating!?
Interestingly enough, the politics of the present empire parallel also with the end period of the Roman Empire. I wonder why nobody jolts up from their cushioned seat and proclaims: Enough is enough!
We have become a fatalistic, overfed and crumbling nation - sucking out resources here and there with a blind fold on, living on credit that doesn't even exists anymore.
What ever happened to the days of Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau?

Ian's request

Ian a little while ago requested some pictures from my whereabouts - so here are some I took today.
I live about two hours by car north from New York City. The area is rural, we still have pastures and cows here.
When you travel up the Hudson river that far, you will see the Catskill mountains on your left and the rolling hills of the Berkshires on the right. One of the pictures here, with the weeping willow taken on a driveway from my road, show the Catskills in the background. The first picture is from the south side of our house, including the studio which I built.
Life here is like in Hobbit-town, secluded, peaceful and uneventful although there is plenty of drama.
People live out their respective biographies whatever they are.
Albert Schweitzer crossed these meadows here and there used to be a little Museum for him. The Bash Bish falls are around the corner, a healing place of American Indian origin. The Tanglewood festival is near by as well, the retreat for the Boston Symphony during the summer.
Alas, all that is needed for a good hobbit to be happy.
Just hand me that pipe, will you?!

In defense of Saddam, the man who will be hanged alive

Oh yes, by the way I follow the trial of Saddam, it is ludicrous! Even though he was a murderer, torturer and tyrant - I have to say something in his defense. When the war between Iraq and Iran was going on, Kuwait (that stinking little peace of shit where the camel dung stinks and therefore the rulers mostly reside in my home-country Switzerland) gave Saddam millions after millions to fight the Iranians because they were afraid that their region to the straight in the Gulf would be hampered or that Iran would claim key access points, so therefore they supported Iraq ...
Right after the war (both Iraq and Iran were a mess and badly needed reconstruction) these slimy bastards (Kuwait) demanded back all the money they had given the Iraqi leader, immediately!!! Saddam was broke and they knew it. Nevertheless, they insisted and threatened to put high interest penalties on their loans. It was then, that Saddam freaked out and declared: "You little wretched monkeys, I show you how and when I can pay you back, I supported you, you supported me and now you want to see me bleed to death? Fuck you, not long ago you were not that little independent entity as you are now, you had been historically part of Iraq!"
And so, with the blessings of the US ambassador in Iraq, the first Gulf war was started.
Can't blame the man for that.
Now what happened afterwards is a mystery to me. Bush senior changed his mind, hence the first Gulf war. After that he imposed the famous sanctions on Iraq, with no fly-zones and all.
Then the inspectors came in, and they came out, and then in again. But there was no gratitude in that for the US empire. So they fabricated the myth of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The inspectors had to quit. Scott Ritter rebelled and went back to visit Saddam, Scott having been the chief inspector for quite some years, stating to Saddam that a dialog is needed. The US government cut Scott Ritter short, they didn't like his move and therefore fabricated some shit that he was into kiddie-porn on the the internet, that put a damper onto his reputation (unfounded of course).
So what did Saddam do? Well, he played his last card and declared that Iraqi oil would trade from now on in Euro's and not in Dollars. I strongly believe that this move did "brake the camel's back" and as a result the US government freaked out again.
For decades the oil market was based on the US Dollar, actually from the beginning of the exploitation in the Middle East. Now suddenly, this one country who claims the second largest oil reserve in that region, defies the US currency. What a riot, what a bummer. That could lead to disaster! The US dollar would plummet to it's actual value!!!!!! No way!!!!!!!!
Understandably, the "Empire" would not let this happen and invaded Iraq again. The sale ticket to the folks at home was "terrorism", because it was so convenient after 9/11 - but the real reason was to maintain the status quo of the Dollar ... it wasn't directly about oil at all - though it could have been a convenient "desert" if it had worked out smoothly.
But it didn't.
Now the US is stuck in a "Green Zone" in Baghdad, a city by itself - while the different fractions outside massacre each other.
Is the "Green Buck" worth all this trouble? Or is there a hidden agenda I have never heard of?

And was this angst worth to create a thousand and one more BinLadens?

I suppose Bin Laden's mission could be described as: "Mission accomplished!"

the new generation

The new generation is just impatient, not forlorn
impatient with the old style - blow out the candle
put those issues to rest that bring us only scorn.
Lighten up the path instead with brightness to us unknown -
to us, who have struggled in the dark - clear out the fog, reveal a new morn'.

I must say, that at my daughters birthday yesterday, I revered her energy of optimism and positive outlook towards our future, an impulse that I can not easily generate myself anymore, perhaps an attitude that is lacking in general in our present grown-up outlook. It is refreshing to see this younger generation beholding the optimism that the world can still be as one. In our times, where fragmentation is the rule, I will cheer to this new generation who seeks to mend!

the sting, or the fake bees...

Apology to the Wasps

Terrorized by your stings,
I took out biochemical weapons
And blasted your nest
Like it was a third world country.

I was the United States Air Force.
It felt good to be so powerful
Until I saw your family
Trailing shredded wings,
Staggering on disintegrating legs,
Trying desperately to save the eggs.
You had stung to protect.

Sara Littlecrow-Russell

This poem was stolen from the link: Writers Almanac editided by Garrisson Keillor, a fine human being indeed who appears regulary on NPR (national public radio).

My comment: Are you a bee or a wasp?
Do you solely defend yourself, or do you also produce honey?

The tower of babble

Despite the rapid increase in communication, the acceleration in technology - we are being stunned with muteness.
Every teenager (adults too) spend time running around blabbing at a cell phone each day for hours on end, bloggers (like me) litter the virtual space we have created while the REAL space we live in and the person next to us is being more and more ignored.
Is the imagery of the "Tower of Babel" a re-occurrence or are we just on our way out as human species to become bio-energetic machines instead? Next time you look around, people will have a permanent implant in their skull, serving as phone, video and music generator.

P.S. ... at least BETA and REGULAR blogger seem to communicate now :)

Color

After all the black and white, color is showing
I was tempted to post erotica, a beautiful nude...
went to the garden; watched what was still growing
saw a butterfly amongst withered stems of corn
my pleasure couldn't have been more
I lost my scorn
and changed
my mind...






Think of the life of a butterfly, freedom in color and light
for just a short time, the chrysalis of being reigns,
how come we humans choose to perpetuate our pains
and never stop to fight?

The answer is not politics, god or any other justification
the wings we can fly with are made of pure light, definitely!
No steel will replace this situation -
of the urgent change in search of or own destiny

Where others have walked before ...

... is where I have to find my path

Don't you care for my love? she said bitterly.
I handed her the mirror, and said:
Please address these questions to the proper person!
Please make all requests to head-quarters!
In all matters of emotional importance
please approach the supreme authority direct! --
So I handed her the mirror.

D. H. Lawrence

Don't you care for my love I say - or must I also use that mirror I keep handing to you?
The reflections are not enough, reflecting is not enough.
Reflections about love, religion, states, governments, environment ... are not enough!
On an other blog I read (don't know which blog, it might have been Granny's) that life presently in the US is like the life of a Salami. Gradually thin slices decrease the size of the sausage, gradually thin slices of liberties are being eaten up. Nobody notices, nobody cares to keep track ... until it is too late.
Don't we have a "mirror", an image in the transition from the Weimar Republic to Hitler's Reich? Do we dare to look? Does history learn us nothing?
What are we going to do - who will save "our sausage"?
There is a German saying: "Es geht um die Wurst"! (... it is high time for change)

PEACE, yours - Salami

no, I am not going to fall into this trap (lap)

As you can imagine I have a bundle of opinions about the pope and the reaction to his speeches.

Aside from that particular issue, or shall I say adjoined to it ... it is striking to observe how - shall I say how oversensitized people have become these days. You can't say diddely shit anymore, can't have an opinion about anything without getting bashed as political incorrect, religious insensitive, socially inept, abusive, retarded or rude ... and so on.

We live in a world where the mute button rules.

Take the risk to speak out, always - despite all obstacles!

Beta Blogger

I am sorry that some of my friends have problems to post...
I changed the comments not to be on a pop up window, maybe that will help a bit.
Don't know what else to do at this point besides waiting for Blogger to streamline the procedures. Perhaps you can clear your cache once in a while ... that seems to help also. You can also log in with just your own name instead of the blogger ID and put (optional) your blog address into the link field.

Options

* We can disentangle politics and religion
* Separate state and economics
* Leave cultural life to work in freedom (arts, education, religion) and disconnect them from politics and economic pressures
(every child should be educated in order to free their mind and excel in independent thinking, and NOT to fit into societal rasters and limitations)

yayaya

I will put the links to your blogs into the sidebar again, don't worry. It just so happened that I converted to the new beta-blogger version and I choose to do some major redoing of my site simultaneously. So bear with me.
Thanks,
Zee.
---------------------

If I forgot to list you, leave a comment here...

have you ever ...?

Have you ever spiced up your erotic life by using body paint? If you haven't done so - try it out, your partner will be amazed about the living erotic "art-being" next to you. Irresistible!

On an other note, the "Primaries" in a few states in the US is conducted today. Will you vote?

On a second note --- are you happy?
And if so, why?

... The man who
has wandered pathless at night
in the mountain-range of his feelings:
is silent.

Culture of Fear

I do not have much to say about the anniversary of 9/11, but here you can read why I believe this incident still leaves many questions unanswered.
What I find startling though from my own present perspective, is that this event which happened five years ago gave the green light for the US government to fight three simultaneous wars. Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on Terror. None of them winnable except maybe the war on terror if the mindset of people in charge understood anything about history, culture and additionally would aim to work towards peace. Therefore it is this last one, the war on Terror that bothers me the most where all energy is funneled into an abstraction of fear instead of creating new thoughts and strategies. As the administration widens the front of conflict, it almost seems that they do this with a purpose. You see, all the actions now equal to that people must remain living in perpetual fear, fear from an invisible enemy they can't even address.
Dominance of fear amongst the population makes people act like slaves, following the demands that come from above.
"We have nothing to fear, but fear itself!" Which president said that?
I don't think that the founders of this country had oppression and fear in mind, at least I can't find it in the constitution - no matter how hard I look.

the cheesy future

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul

When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant


You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder

Things are going to slide ...
There'll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You'll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is murder

Leonard Cohen

I uploaded that charming song, the music is actually fabulous ... a bit poppy, nevertheless well crafted.

powered by ODEO

divided view

pictures: Coldwater Street Project and rain at my Studio

It is raining - and there was also hail today while the thunderstorm was passing by - but that is not the point. I realize that there is a division between up and down, wet and dry ... the image above, the image below. There is a division between the window panes, a raster of imagery, there is a downpour from the roof, a watershed and a division between earth and sky - or is it an attempt to mend lost connections?

ilumination

Couldn't resist to repost this from GARY's blog (see sidebar).

How many members of the Bush administration does it take to replace a lightbulb?

1. One to deny that a lightbulb needs to be changed;
2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the lightbulb needs to be changed;
3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the lightbulb;
4. One to tell the nations of the world that they either favor changing the lightbulb or support darkness;
5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new lightbulb;
6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner "Lightbulb Change Accomplished";
7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally "in the dark";
8. One to viciously smear #7;
9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong lightbulb-changing policy all along;
10. And finally, one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a lightbulb and screwing the country.


personally I favor the humor of #6, but the main question is:
Are you still in the dark?

after the exhibition...

I ate so much cheese, baguette, crackers, exotic nuts and other goodies at the reception that I felt very strange a bit later in the evening...
But the next morning was when I really had fun, helping to roll out those different Recycling Bin Enclosures to their final destination, the streets of Great Barrington, MA. This project was quite remarkable in the way that a whole community supported local artisans to supply a product that normally would have been bought from a national commercial supplier. Such a trend seems very encouraging: Act locally while thinking globally!
My bin enclosure landed across the street from a tasty Restaurant whose sign I had made and carved a few years ago.
Now both the sign and the bin can wink to each other. We'll see if they become friends...

pictures of an exhibition ...

as usual, you can click on the picks to enlarge them

just a quick note

I will leave religion, philosophy, airplanes, politics, flying, dyeing , crying and other cravings alone today. Tomorrow is "The Show" , the opening of the recycling bin enclosure experiment. Will post you a bunch of pictures after the fact.
Cheers, be well - and thank you all for being truthful and standing up to who you really are.

September

What shall I do with these magazines, sell them on eBay? They have been collecting dust for some years. I wonder what their value would be - and to whom!

Which reminds me to tell you that I will fly to Europe in a few weeks. Will be a sober flight, not even a water bottle allowed as carry on, thanks to our beloved muslim adolescent wannabe freaks. By them all fun to fly in an airplane has been positively eradicated. Why can't those guys ever come up with something better or more effective to voice their discontent? I mean for Christ's sake, even Mohammed wasn't trying to conquer Mecca in a day and instead retracted to Medina at his convenience to catch some breath while converting everything around him with the mighty threat of the sword.

Dhimmitude (compliance) of the so called Western world will never be gained by highjacking airplanes and/or using them as projectiles of destruction. Subordination (dhimmitude) of the "West" towards the "East" will never happen, especially not towards countries who adopted Islam in such a way that law, state, culture and religion are ruled as one and the same, namely by the Qua'ran.

I remember the first time I visited the US, I was still a kid then, just about seventeen. The stewardess came up to me and asked me: "Would you like to come to the cockpit and see how they fly a 747?" - "Sure!!!" So I went and got my portion of excitement. Those were the days!

Nowadays you can't even cough loudly, that might end up of your plain getting send back to the originating airport, escorted by two F-16 fighter jets.

My Arab friends, you must understand that you took away all the pleasures of flying. For that I despise you very much and also for your accompanied resistance and arrogance that "Mohamedanism" as represented by many Arab countries, is still an issue to be pushed forward in the 21st century.
It's destructive, a waste of time, it's retardation - and it only makes flying miserable.
Think about it.
For those who haven't followed my blog might assume that I unjustly wish to lash out against Arabs and Muslims. If you have payed attention, you must have noticed that I criticized Israel, the Anglo-Saxon empire and all others who impose the law of "dhimmitude", intentionally or unintentionally. The laws, rules and privileges of the superior to the lesser must find an end so slavery can be abolished for good . Any philosophy or religion contrary to such a move must either be tranquilized or eradicated .