Category Archives: Art

Good Old Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Mark Twain

… better known as Mark Twain, whose stories of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn I LIVED when I was a kid.

Here’s a bit of his wisdom:

“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”

“A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.”

“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”

“All generalizations are false, including this one.”

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”

“Do not have sex with a girl who is too strongly attached to you. If this attachment is not mutual, trust me it ends breaking plates on your head.”

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

“Don’t wrestle with pigs. you both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

“Each man is afraid of his neighbor’s disapproval – a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.”

“Every person is a book, each year a chapter.”

“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

“Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.”

“Human beings are the only creatures who blush – or who need to.”

“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.”

“I deal with temptation by yielding to it.”

“I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not.”

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. if you do, you’re misinformed.”

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

“If you want love and abundance in your life, give it away.”

“It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.”

“Its not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

“Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use.”

“Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that makes you smile.”

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

“One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it.”

“Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value.”

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

“The more I know people, the more I love my dog.”

“The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of book teaching, but of experience.”

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.”

“The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.”

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”

“When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.”

“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.”

“You meet people who forget you. you forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can’t forget. Those are your friends.”

“You want to be very careful about lying, otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught.”

Love for a dead BLOG

Blogs sometimes die, or are so far abandoned that they are dead for all intents and purposes. 

But there are still visitors as long as it shows up in Google, and some of those will enjoy the content immensely, so much as to write a comment. I don’t subscribe to the idea of nay sayers who assume that those visitors only leave these comments because they hope for a back link to their spammy sight – or worse, that they are evil AI bots!

I just believe that they really like my content – even if that content might be simply “coming soon…”

Here are a few of those cherished comments (unedited, only removed the link to their own website):

  • you’re actually a just right webmaster. The site loading pace is incredible. It sort of feels that you are doing any distinctive trick. Furthermore, The contents are masterwork. you have performed a fantastic job in this subject!
  • I’ve recently started a blog, the information you provide on this website has helped me greatly. Thank you for all of your time & work. “If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.” by Hal Borland.
  • Unquestionably consider that that you said. Your favorite justification seemed to be on the internet the easiest factor to bear in mind of. I say to you, I certainly get annoyed whilst other people consider worries that they plainly do not recognise about. You managed to hit the nail upon the highest as smartly as defined out the whole thing without having side effect , people could take a signal. Will probably be back to get more. Thanks
  • Great stuff, you helepd me out so much!
  • Hi and thanks for the info, and the web page definitely looks great. Just what wordpress design are you using?
  • you’re truly a excellent webmaster. The site loading pace is incredible. It sort of feels that you’re doing any distinctive trick. Furthermore, The contents are masterwork. you’ve performed a magnificent task on this matter!
  • That’s the smart thinking we could all befeint from.
  • im obseesed with cars i run path the residence suchlike lightning mcqueen and attempt kachow. and i song my somebody sherrif the constabulary car from cars and i enjoin him apolice car. i wiah i? could meet raidator springs
  • Thanks for sharing excellent informations. Your web-site is so cool. I am impressed by the details that you’ve on this web site. It reveals how nicely you perceive this subject. Bookmarked this website page, will come back for more articles. You, my friend, ROCK! I found simply the information I already searched all over the place and simply could not come across. What a great site.
  • I cherished as much as you’ll receive carried out right here. The cartoon is attractive, your authored material stylish. nevertheless, you command get got an nervousness over that you wish be handing over the following. ill unquestionably come further previously again since precisely the similar nearly a lot ceaselessly inside of case you defend this increase.
  • I am extremely inspired together with your writing abilities and also with the format for your blog. Is this a paid subject matter or did you modify it your self? Either way keep up the excellent quality writing, it is rare to look a great weblog like this one nowadays..
  • Wow! This could be 1 certain in the most beneficial blogs We’ve actually arrive across on this issue. Basically Excellent. I am also an expert in this particular topic therefore I can understand your hard do the job.
  • SOH CAH TOA Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your weblog and wanted to say that I’ve truly enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again very soon!
  • I enjoy you because of all of the labor here. My mommy loves focusing on investigations and it is simple to understand why. Many of us learn most regarding the highly effective means anyone create useful items via the web blog and the cause contribution from another people on this area of interest whilst our own basic princess is certainly learning a whole lot. Take pleasure in the remaining portion of the yr. You are usually performing a fantastic job.

Here you have it – people just love my dead blog!

Kurt Vonnegut’s Commencement Address

(A little gem I found in the couch cushions of my hard drive)…

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’98:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much
possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.

Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

IFA Yoruba Deities

Each of the statues is around 2 feet tall – some a bit less, some a bit more. With the exception of one, they have their deity name written on the bottom of the stand and the following shows a photo of the bottom, and then a full photo from the front. As for size, the boards under the statues are standard 1×4 boards.

The Camera

Capturing a moment and freezing time has always been fascinating for mankind. It always required a skill to turn a moment into a lasting image. Cave drawings are the first known attempts to do just that. Over the millennia many great, and not so great, artist practiced this skill.

With the invention of the camera and film the game changed. It was suddenly much easier to trap the moment and make it last. The first photographers still had to be very skilled because you could not go to a store and buy a role of film – the first photographers made their own plates for their box cameras.

But by the 50s and 60s photography had become so easy that every American tourist traveling the world took his or her camera along. And in the recent years the prevalence of digital cameras has brought picture-taking everywhere.

The main areas in which photography is used today are snapping memory shots, documenting events and facts, and artistic expression.

Probably the most pictures take are from the first category – capturing memories. Here is the camera, especially the latest very small models, which can go everywhere and that fit into your shirt pocket. As there is, beside the initial cost for the camera, no cost involved in photo-taking, many, many photos are taken, many of which might only be looked at once before they are forgotten on a hard drive or deleted.

The second use of the camera for the documentation of events, facts and objects requires a much bigger skill level of the photographer if he really wants to create an image that tells a story or shows a situation. Point and click does not work any more. The photographer has to have the ability to isolate something specific from a sea of distraction. A wide-angle shot where, way in the background, you see the dog biting the kid while there are more prevalent objects in the foreground will not document the dog attack.

Artistic use of the camera requires a total synergy of camera and photographer. Just like the painter knows exactly how the brush will apply the paint to the canvas, so does the artistic photographer know every nuance of his tool of the trade – the camera. But just as a great painter will paint a great picture with an expensive brush or a cheap pencil, so is the great photographer able to even use a cheap camera to take great pictures.

The camera, in all three fields of application, has opened up the entry into the respective area to nearly everybody. But it still remains true that to create great pictures, great skills are required. Today’s advertisement tries to make it appear that if you spend bundles of money to purchase the latest and greatest camera, you will automatically take perfect pictures. This is certainly not the case as the photographer and not the camera takes the pictures. Lowering the bar to enter the field allows many more people to get started but only the person who sticks with it and trains himself in the art will obtain stunning results.

SciFi Anarchy

Mack&pipe60sFor many years I have been listening to sci-fi stories on Escape Pod. Great way to make your driving time more enjoyable. In the olden day when I drove much more I was always up to date with the latest episode but lately I have fallen seriously behind – not enough commuting (well, not too sad about that, though.)

On my last trip back from LA I listened to a classic, written in the 40s – Expediter by Mack Reynolds. Happy to report that there were anarchist that long ago.

Worst Youtube Videos Countdown

There was, apparently, somebody called Rocker 13666 on Reddit who created a list of the worst music videos uploaded to Youtube ever. I learned about this on GeekBeat but could not find the original post on Reddit, so, in order to preserve this list for posterity, I record it here:

  1. It’s So Cold in the D
  2. Beavis and Butt-Head – It’s So Cold in the D
  3. IceJJFish – On The Floor
  4. I Don’t Wanna be a Crappy Housewife
  5. Double Take – “Hot Problems”
  6. Zanger Rinus: ‘Met Romana op de scooter’
  7. Sateliti – Audi
  8. Wowowowow
  9. The Divine David ‘The World Is Burning Let’s Masturbate’
  10. Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up

So – how was the pain – you masochist!

Oh, just one little bonus – a GE light bulb commercial…

Female Beauty

A photo essay from http://imgur.com/a/HfFQq#OsjcN