Bo's Request (an Art Thread)

[pan]

Been writing cover letters for job applications (two submitted yesterday). More of a movement artist than a wordsmith but, to get things started, here is something I wrote for Migrant, my section in Train.

Where is home?

Moved twelve times in the last 16 years. The transient in transit. Pierce Transit runs through it. Before I came here I was in Rush Limbaugh’s home town before I was surrounded by corn fed Norwegian bred Lutherans singing praise in perfect four part harmony to that Home on the Plain before I’m taken Home – Praise Jesus. I grew up in Iowa, Little Town on the Prairie an island afloat in the ocean of corn. Lived in SoCal, in the Desert where golf and plastic surgery reigns, might have the grit to stay in rainy Tacoma, but, I always say I’m from San Francisco - though I rarely visit anymore.

Home, where is home?

Home is where you are. Correction, home is where you and the two cats are.

What is home? That safe place. That place with love. I love that old car, it always brought me home. The ’75 Westphalia could be home. Or rather, the place that used to be home. Too old, too unreliable to be trusted anymore. Baling wire and duct tape. Just like the U-Haul I drive to the next place, hoping for home.

Searching for home. Migrants with heavy furniture. U-haul. Our orange travois with wheels keeps getting bigger. Full of stuff. Heavy Stuff. Stuff that anchors us. To a home of nostalgia. Anchors to a home that never really existed. That place. This is the place! Well bully for you Brigham Young. Bring ‘em young. Not young anymore, with more stuff each move to stuff in the moving van and every move leaves behind anchors that are mourned in passing.

A house burns down and the anchors are cremated and the past has passed on.

The bubble is burst. The house is on the market. The anchor is weighed. The trees we planted are left behind. Do the new owners love that Japanese Maple we planted as our 10th anniversary gift to our dream of home? Have they maintained the landscaping? Have any of the plants, the dreams, the love we planted been cared for in our absence? Or have they been torn up by the roots to make room for the next owners’ dream of home?

Where are the anchors? Is there a home port? Adrift. Without a home. Drift wood is picked up for beach fires to warm the beach rats without a home. Their shacks have been bulldozed like West Bank ancestral olive groves to make room for more condos and home-loving dreamers blowing a bubble. Pop!

[pan]

I highly recommend War, Inc... It is very much in the vein of Dr. Strangelove. Out in DVD.

[pan]

Just viewed Kenny, a pseudo-documentary about a guy who is a "plumber" who installs, services and cleans rental porta-potties. The character is an immensely likeable guy in spite of the shit he has to deal with from family and strangers about what a crappy job he has. Thoroughly enjoyable - I found myself smiling throughout.

[BO]

I'll have to check out 'Kenny' next time I'm in a crappy mood. ;-)

Here's one of the best movies I've seen in a long while...

Mister Foe, AKA Hallam Foe (European release)

'Bout a kid who works through his feelings of abandonment after his mother's suicide. It's actually a comedy with a freudian message every male can identify with. A kind of 'Risky Business' set in Edinburgh. Sophia Myles plays Hallam Foe's love interest. Yummy.

So few good movies to see these days. Seems like the ones worth watching aren't getting the attention they deserve.

[BO]

Photographer Annie Leibovitz pawns her life's work for a £10m loan to pay her mortgage

Photographer Annie Leibovitz has borrowed £10 million against some of her most famous pictures to pay the mortgages on all her homes.

The artist, 59, has become so concerned with her mounting debt, accumulated on properties she inherited in 2004 after the death of her lover Susan Sontag, she has turned to a company that lends money with fine art as collateral.

Documents seen by the New York Times reveal she secured the funds by giving the company, art Capital, ownership of all her work - past and future - until the loan is repaid.

Link

[curt]

I would say she was stuck with choosing between her properties and her work. It must have been a most difficult decision to make. Either way, you lose. The properties are surely worth a bit themselves but this being a difficult time to sell....especially if they're run down. And here I was imagining fields decorated with quaint cottages....one in Scotland, one in Wales, on near Durham or Bishop Auckland.

[pan]

Just finished watching Children of Men - oh my fucking gawd! very intense, the director/screenwriter is a dark as any of us are.

[BO]

Here's an incredible website worth checking out...

"To celebrate the release of the new album “The Trouble With Flying” Orba Squara takes a cross country adventure and documents the entire thing on a 430 foot long side scrolling website.

This website is a true exhibition of typography and what the web can do. If you have 10 minutes or even an hour today, spend it here."

Check it out. (site scrolls to the right)

[waldopaper]

"Is this Real Life???"

So... if you were going to spend $2-300 for an axe... (!)... would you get one from these guys: http://www.bestmadeco.com/ or from these guys: http://www.gransfors.com/htm_eng/index.html (using the word "guys" in the generic gender-neutral sense of course)? Which is "art?" Both? Neither? Or are they both about the same?

Bo- you've probably seen 10 Things a Web Designer Would Never Tell You.

[pan]

I wouldn't buy an axe with custom paint bands - defeats the whole beauty of functionality. And the signature "X" on each axe - if it were Malcom's signature maybe but give me a break. When it comes to buying a tool that will, in all likelihood, have its handle broken because I am not a woodsman with years of practice, I would lean towards Craftsman with their lifelong replacement guarantee. At $24.99 I could buy some paint to put on the handle and carve X into it.

Actually, I rarely use my hatchet anymore - find the Sierra Saw far more useful too.

[Mouse]

Are you making a website Waldo? It can look impossible, and I found it beyond a joke after ages of going round in circles in my head, so I think I did it the easy way, a very simple one which seems to work.
Oh, the axe, I'd say they're different, and I'd like to know how much the gransfors axes cost, no prices on the site. You remind me I should get mine out of the shed and give it a sharpen . Then I can lean it tastefully against the wall.

[Mouse]

W3C Core Styles

The W3C Core Styles offer authors an easy way to start using style sheets without becoming designers. By adding a link in the head of your documents, a CSS browser will fetch the style sheet of your choice from W3C's server when it encounters your document. A non-CSS browser will display the HTML document like it always did.

To start using the W3C Core Styles, do the following:

Pick your favorite style sheet from among the eight offerings: Chocolate, Midnight, Modernist, Oldstyle, Steely, Swiss, Traditional, and Ultramarine.
add a LINK element to the head of your documents.

Check the HTML source of this page for a real example.

The W3C Core Styles have been designed and implemented by Todd Fahrner with help from colleagues at (at that time) Verso [link back to 1998]. This is an ongoing project to explore shared style sheets over the Web, and we encourage you to start using the Core Styles. When doing so, you should be aware that:

Most HTML documents are not valid according to the HTML specification. Invalid documents, in combination with the Core Styles, may lead to unexpected results. W3C offers a way to validate documents. Also, for best results, the HTML markup should be non-presentational (avoid e.g. tables for layout, FONT tags, overuse of
, etc.) and structural (e.g. use H1-H6 for headings). As of August 2002, there are complete implementations of either CSS1, but not yet of CSS2. Most implementations have problems handling certain CSS property/value combinations on certain markup elements. Therefore, during a transition phase, we are using browser sniffing to make sure browsers aren't sent style sheets that they can't handle. It works like this: the W3C server detects what browser you are using (through the User-Agent HTTP header field) and removes stylesheet modules which your particular browser has problems with. This solution will be phased out as browser support for CSS improves.
For technical or aesthetic reasons, the W3C Core Styles may change over time. However, the general look and feel of each style sheet will be preserved.

[BO]

Guess it depends on what you plan on using the axe for.

If you're going to murder and chop up your family, I'd go for the pretty painted ones. Maybe it's because there's just something about a painted axe handle that just seems odd to me -- in kind of a fetishy sorta way. Like something Jeffrey Dalmer would have wanted to use.

But, if you plan on going into battle, I'd probably get the other brand. The double headed axe looks especially intriguing. You could chop off limbs on both the up and down strokes.

Kidding aside, I suppose the way the axe head is forged could be a factor. But I wouldn't know how to make a judgement call on that. Saw an interesting show on TV recently on how the old masters make samurai swords. A very technical process--all done by hand. Many factors determined the quality of the sword including how they manufactured in the different carbon-content layers and controlled heating and cooling during the forging process. The bend in the sword is actually created during the final cooling cycle. Truly a work of art.

But then, the art of warfare is more sophisticated than chopping wood. Albeit a well-made tool is a beautiful thing. My old Craftsman circular saw is still going strong after 35 years.