Losing a lover is like
losing a limb
or a necessary organ;
take whatever drugs you want
to ease the pain,
it still hurts like hell
in the morning
alone.
Taking a new lover is like
another transplant:
the dose of anti-rejection drugs you need
just grows and grows.
And as the skin thickens
it takes a harder push
each time
for the needle’s point to pierce your cover;
and each drop of blood seems redder
and more precious
than the last
until you decide
at last
that the payoff is not worth the pain
and you consign that part
of you
to an oblivion
that is not complete
to a decision that is not whole-hearted
to a diagnosis that hurts
like a lover leaving.
Oh to be in New York, now that there is a new exhibition of Man Ray’s drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, “rayographs,” poetry, and short films! The show, and review in Fast Company, reminds us of one of the most original — and certainly free-est — artists of the last century.
The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows, 1915–16, oil on canvas
That most marvelous of European cities, Venice, is in danger of becoming little more than a post-modern simulacrum of its flamboyant past; a flat-screen tourist resort instead of a vibrant living city. The city’s population is now only around 60,000. As the AP reports:
A dozen gondolas snaked down the Grand Canal on Saturday in a mock funeral procession bemoaning Venice’s approach to the dreaded status of living museum, with a population now below 60,000. While the largely symbolic threshold is considered by some to signal the end of the city’s viability, Venetian officials say reports of Venice’s demise are premature, and even Saturday’s somber funeral ended with a surprise, bright hope for rebirth. In fact, while native Venetians have been fleeing the expensive lagoon city for cheaper and easier living on the mainland, the population of the historic center was officially 60,025 as of Thursday, up from the 59,992 it had fallen to in recent weeks. ”They will have the funeral in a living village, not yet dead. And it won’t die, even if it goes to 59,999,” Mara Rumiz, the city official in charge of demographics, said in a telephone interview Friday. She said the numbers don’t take into account the inhabitants of Venice’s islands — including glassmaking Murano and the Lido beach — nor the many who are not officially registered, including students. Together, they add another 120,000 souls.
That’s all well and good, but a core of 60,000 is certainly not enough to keep the city as a going concern, with necessary services for its residents. And living in Venice is not easy:
[L]ife in Venice is for the hardy and financially resilient. Housing costs and rents drop to as much as a third in the nearby city of Marghera. And consider the logistics of an everyday errand like grocery shopping. One would likely need a water taxi ride to a supermarket, another to get home with the groceries, and then with few elevators in residential buildings, there is a heavy load to lug upstairs. Historic Venice does not permit the comfort of a car parked outside the door … Venetians themselves would like to see more money put toward retaining natives, and are critical of such projects as the new Calatrava Bridge over the Grand Canal. Building the bridge, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, ran well over projected costs while doing little to ease the lives of average Venetians.
There is, I think, little anyone outside the city can do to help. Visiting the city more would simply add to the tourist side of the ledger and add to the pressures on the locals. This is all very sad and difficult to watch.
It was a slam bam thank you ma’am kind of night.
“It’s alright,” she said with a slight frisson of uncertainty perhaps
as she unwraps and taps the money-box on the dresser.
He pays to caress her, to possess her as she bumps and grinds
and too quickly finds the kind of passion paid for.
He wants more before he’ll leave: sixteen and still hard.
But she’s on guard, body barred against free love.
Push came to shove. Above his pleas she screamed and screamed
until the apartment teemed with neighbours and passers-by
who wondered why this nigger came by and by to be in a white girl’s room.
It’s a warm, hormone-rushing, mosquito-swarming kind of night.
Fox-fire bright, passions tightly wound and sprung.
No brass bells are rung, no masses sung, but masses gather to enjoy
the black boy toy with the last of his time on a slippery slope
as the hempen rope grips and gropes for his hopeless neck.
After a year of bad results followed by a rebound this Fall, it seems the high art market may have recovered its old nerve. I haven’t got the details yet but I hear via Twitter that Andy Warhol’s painting of dollar bills made a phenomenal $43.7m against an estimate of $8-$12m at Sotheby’s New York tonight! That’s bizarre and shows that common sense has failed in the art market once again. Plus ca change, plus le meme chose.
You were young men in the Guards
treading water in wretched trenches
swinging kitbags and rifles and broad silly grins
so young
that two billion volumes single-spaced wouldn’t be enough
to list all of life’s treasures
you haven’t experienced yet
and still you would die
right then
right there
doing right
or so you thought
as you lay where
no-one could tell where
mud ended and blood began
three and four generations removed,
we lay wreathes for your wraiths
on a hollow day in November
while the parades and the poppies
hallucinate
an annual landscape of memory
profound today, gone tomorrow
and for three or four days the flowers fade
and the greenery browns at your memorials
and then the work crews come
young men and women with guarded futures
treading water at minimum wage
swinging brooms and shovels and black plastic bags
and when the work trucks leave
your memory has turned once again
to cold undecorated stone
and nothing can ever change
the fact
that you died before you started living.
I was looking at this site’s statistics this morning. I wasn’t surprised to see that coverage of Lucian Freud over the last year has drawn most views — by many thousands: he is a popular and controversial painter.
What did surprise me, though, was how popular the Les Sapeurs du Congo post has been. They are a truly fascinating social phenomenon.
Here is a glorious find, with thanks to No Tech Magazine. With a publishing date of 1868 (republished 1908) and bearing the title “507 Mechanical Movements: embracing all those which are most important in Dynamics, Hydraulics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Steam Engines, Mill and Other Gearing, Presses, Horology, and Miscellaneous Machinery“, this doesn’t have all the hallmarks of a winner. But to me it is a joy to behold, for a few reasons.
First and foremost, it shows that virtually any mechanical problem can be solved by careful thought and precision engineering. The vast arrays of industrial might and computational power we throw at issues today perhaps hide a lack of genuinely personal creative thought. Not so in earlier days. The thought processes required for this kind of solution making had to be transparent in the drawings and descriptions. It is a reminder of what we achieved without all the trappings and destruction concomitant with modern consumer-capitalism.
Second, the book is laid out exactly as required for this kind of information. Images on one side, relevant text on the other; no jumping about. And that good design is carried forward in this virtual representation. The images are crisp and clear and navigation is a breeze (just click on a page to move forward or back).
Thirdly, having been manager of a technical writing group for many years, I appreciate the clarity of the text. Everything that needs to be said is said well, and nothing that is irrelevant is allowed to intrude.
To me, this book is as well planned and well constructed as the movements it describes. I am glad to have found it. Thanks again to No Tech magazine.
This week, Fast Company has featured a new book: New Packaging Design by Janice Kirkpatrick. The book reviews packaging design from around the world. The Fast Company review includes pictures of several of the designs, including the one I like best:
This is a campaign image for Nepia tissues.
Wonderwall, a Japanese interiors firm, and Groovisions, a graphic-design firm, brought a high-concept approach to a tissue box for Nepia. Each one looks like a mottled brick; when stacked, they look like a wall. The fluffy tissue contrasts with the industrial-looking tromp l’oeil.
I am a marketer at heart, and I really appreciate those who extend themselves in thinking of novel and memorable marketing ideas. Thus it was impossible for me not to be impressed when a German group recently used banners tied to houseflies to send their message. The report and video from Wired:
The banners, measuring just a few centimetres across, seem to be causing the beleaguered flies a bit of piloting trouble. The weight keeps the flies at a lower altitude and forces them to rest more often, which is a stroke of genius on the part of the marketing creatives: the flies end up at about eye level, and whenever a fly is forced to land and recover, the banner is clearly visible. What’s more, the zig-zagging of the fly naturally attracts the attention because of its rapid movement.
The problem is not that there is a lack of good roads – enough of these exist to bike from here to Mars and beyond. The main problem is that these are occupied by automobiles that are not only dangerous but also very inefficient both in terms of energy use and floor space.We don’t need any new infrastructure, what we need is to clear the existing infrastructure of inefficient vehicles and replace them with efficient ones. In other words: give all streets, highways, cloverleaves and motorways exclusively to bicycles and all other human powered wheeled vehicles. Get rid of cars. Why make things so complicated if the solution is so simple?
How could we live without cars, I hear those trapped in skepticism say. The answer is clear:
Picture this for a second. If cars are gone, we are left with pedestrians (on the sidewalk), pedal powered vehicles (one part of the streets and the highways) and public transportation (another part of the streets and the highways, separated from pedal powered traffic, or underground) … For long distance passenger transport, we have trains. For long distance cargo transport, trains again. Short distance cargo transport could see the revival of cargo trams (streetcars). Electric vehicles could be a part of the solution, too, both for cargo transport and for the disabled, provided they keep the same speed as bicycle traffic.
The whole article is well worth the read, and the possibilities should be lightly discarded.
Here’s a really good socially-responsible idea that saves energy and returns the night to the dark it should be. Reported from the Guardian:
The lights are going down in Toulouse. Tomorrow early-rising residents of the Allée Camille-Soula in the south-western French city will have set out to work with the morning gloom held at bay by radical new technology which turns on streetlights only when pedestrians pass. Installed on a 500-metre section of pavement last weekend, the lampposts double the strength of the light they cast when they detect human body heat. Ten seconds later they revert to normal.
“It’s a prototype. Nothing like this exists anywhere in the world. We pretty much built the technology ourselves,” said Alexandre Marciel, the deputy mayor in charge of works, highways, sanitation and lighting. The aim is to cut energy consumption by around 50%, first on the busy street which runs between a sports stadium and university halls, then more widely. If it is a success, it will be rolled out across the city of around 450,000 people, France’s fourth largest …
There is a growing campaign in France against nocturnal light pollution. Last weekend saw countrywide demonstrations against the contamination of the night sky by urban lighting. “Concern started just among astronomers and other specialists but is now getting much more mainstream attention,” said Clara Osadtchy, one of the organisers … Cash-strapped and increasingly environmentally conscious communities are now trying to cut electricity consumption. Many cities have changed streetlight bulbs for less wasteful models. After years where cheap tariffs and plentiful power meant all-night lighting, smaller rural communities are returning to earlier practices and turning off streetlights after midnight …
Earlier this year the German town of Dörentrup started turning off its lights at 11pm, with its 9,000 residents able to illuminate a specific street for 15 minutes by dialling a special mobile phone code. The local utility company estimated the scheme would cut Dörentrup’s carbon emissions by 12 tonnes a year. Early trials showed that many streetlights were switched on only two or three times a night. Marciel, an elected official from the Radical Left party, has grand ambitions. “Imagine if instead of thinking of movements in town as consuming energy we thought of ways they could generate energy instead. The possibilities are without limit,” he said. One project under consideration is to connect dynamos to the thousands of free bicycles available in Toulouse. The energy they generate could then be “harvested” overnight and used for streetlights or the national grid, Marciel said.
Posted by jakking 
Posted by jakking 
Posted by jakking 
That most marvelous of European cities, Venice, is in danger of becoming little more than a post-modern simulacrum of its flamboyant past; a flat-screen tourist resort instead of a vibrant living city. The city’s population is now only around 60,000. 
I was looking at this site’s statistics this morning. I wasn’t surprised to see that 
Low-Tech magazine looks at bicycles 
