September 12, 2003
all these years you dream about marfa
David Chien's photographs from Marfa, a museum of minimalist installation art constructed and collected by Donald Judd. Someday, I hope to make it too. Meanwhile, last weekend, Sacha and I drove a day and half to see Centralia.
[ 12:31 PM | photography | notes (0) | link ]
MXDU in Sydney
Macromedia Developer Conference in Sydney. I'm excited about the possibility of attending. Maybe I should present something... but what?
[ 10:31 AM | geek out | notes (1) | link ]
August 17, 2003
The Observer -- The artist, the critic and a war of words
Tracey Emin vs Philip Hensher -- The Observer
Emin is the nauseatingly introspective graduate of the infamous Sensation show, which solidifed the ratpack of British modern art. Hensher is, apparently, an up-and-coming writer whom I've not read.
The whole feud seems juvenile and despite the slagging match, rather polite (one gets the feeling, if this were done in America, someone would have been attacked with a lead pipe and the other had their throat slashed): he wrote a fairly unspectacular personal attack of her questionable intelligence; she responded with rather unsubtle hints of retaliation; he got weird stuff in the mail and accused her of sending it; she said 'nah-uh'. If anything, Emin's poorly phrased, self-involved, loud interview answers, sprinkled with made up words like 'pervy' and 'wierdoland' just confirm Hensher's initial claim.
[ 01:39 PM | bitch | notes (0) | link ]
August 06, 2003
van Gogh's Letters
In the last letter which he wrote me and which dates from some four days before his death, it says, “I try to do as well as certain painters whom I have greatly loved and admired.” People should realize that he was a great artist, something which often coincides with being a great human being. In the course of time this will surely be acknowledged, and many will regret his early death. He himself wanted to die, when I sat at his bedside and said that we would try to get him better and that we hoped that he would then be spared this kind of despair, he said, “La tristesse durera toujours” [The sadness will last forever]. I understood what he wanted to say with those words.
On the subject of van Gogh's last words,
a letter from Theo van Gogh to Elisabeth van Gogh
Paris, 5 August 1890, drawn from the unabridged and meticulously catalogued van Gogh's Letters.
[ 12:11 AM | lit | notes (0) | link ]
July 12, 2003
toofpaste for dinner
toothpastefordinner is like a nice coffee flavoured pastry... that I would eat with my coffee. Yummy.
[ 09:58 PM | the new new thing | notes (1) | link ]
July 08, 2003
CSS Zen
Finally seeing some decent work being done with CSS, over at css Zen Garden. And I mean stuff that tries to integrate graphics into the content, rather than just boxy shit with everything nicely compartmentalized in solid 1px borders. This is really an aesthetic prejudice, but my soul does harden a little more everytime I see one of these sites.
Some my favourites:
the one linked above, titled blood lust.
rpm - holy shit, that's tight. maybe i just like the red.
dead or alive - boxy, but the images integrate well overall. nice theme.
meliorism - really nicely integrated blue tree.
I haven't really kept up with the CSS advocacy arguments here, but the real challenge, and one that will push CSS into mass-producing web-sweatshops, is still to take a professional design, done in Photoshop and turn it into a pure CSS page.
[ 10:03 PM | the new new thing | notes (0) | link ]
July 07, 2003
Is no one safe?
While the National Enquirer goes after visible celebrities like Demi Moore, The Sun appeals to a more... intellectual set.
A guest said: “Stephen watched the girls slide up and down poles all night. He took a shine to Tiger. He said she was wonderful.”
How reliable are these quotes? I certainly wouldn't put this past Robbie Williams:
He admits he was too shy to make a move on the Hollywood beauty when they recorded their 2001 duet Somethin’ Stupid.
He says: “At the time I felt I was just little me and she was this screen goddess. It scared me.”
But he adds: “Now I’m on really wicked medication and it stops me being shy.
“I think I’m great all the time. I’d have no problems this time if I got another chance.”
You go, Robbie.
[ 10:47 PM | gay porn | notes (0) | link ]
Pessimism, it makes us sick and keeps us sick.
Vacuous article from the New York Times detailing the battle between optimists and pessimists. With labels like 'curmudgeon' and 'grump' the role of the contratrian is relegated to that of a charming Ebenizer Scrooge, to be humoured in company, but ignored in private.
No distinction is made between the various classes of contrarians, and Mr St John freely associated Christopher Hitchens with Bill Maher with (fucking) Andy Rooney. The few times I've been unable to avoid Rooney on 60 Minutes, I've found his all-too-long list of gripes to be facile and completely pointless, betraying the prejudices of a man who longs for the "golden age" of American family values and whatever else the McDonald's trademark might represent.
The optimists get a raw deal as well. But these idiots certainly deserve it.
Ms. Hathy likens negativity to a plague. "It makes us sick and keeps us sick," she said.
When one takes on the responsibility of having an opinion,there is an inherent risk that it might differ from the opinions of others. This can hardly be considered a subversive streak in one's personality. And there is a very clear distinction between having an informed opinion (which may or may not differ from the general consensus), and having a personal preference for how things used to work back in the 1950s. We are indeed lucky for the contrarians among us brave enough to defend their opinions with reason and knowledge, and who have dedicated their lives to just such a thing.
[ 12:22 AM | misc | notes (1) | link ]
July 05, 2003
Let the Playground Pirates Rule
Guardian Unlimited -- Let the playground pirates rule
[ 09:08 AM | bitch | notes (1) | link ]
June 29, 2003
More Than Music Festival : Columbus, Ohio
Songs: Ohia is playing the MORE THAN MUSIC 2003 in Columbus. My desire to see them almost out-weighs my reservations about spending $300 on airfares to go see one show by one band (the other bands are likely worthwhile too). Unfortunately, not quite...
Won't you please bring your sublime sadness to Toronto? You can play the Horseshoe, or Lee's Palace. The Horseshoe would probably be better, because it is a bar setting and everyone can sit, underlit, hunched over their heartbreaks, their Jack 'n Cokes, their suffocating emotional baggage and secretly weep over something like 'At Certain Hours', or 'The Raw Stuff From the Heart'. Is this not a scene that you long to see? Or do they follow you everywhere?
We are, all of us here, waiting still...
Haiyan
