yep&lt;blockquote&gt;Man, there are a million fine girls in the world, but not all of them bring you lasagna at work. Most of them just cheat on you.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;- Silent Bob, in Clerks&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Silent Bob Quotes - Literary Quotes About Silent Bob and Practically Everything Else&quot; href=&quot;http://quotes.prolix.nu/Authors/?Silent_Bob&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;136QuotableDaniel2004-01-30T12:43:45-05:00publish...wrecks art exhibit, sidebar: systemic systems, pt 2&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=117&quot;&gt;sidebarpart1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=000116&quot;&gt;part 3&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=102&quot;&gt;part 2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=91&quot;&gt;part 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The second poster that caught my eye was this one:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eng.davno.ru/posters/propaganda1/poster-61.html&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/tate/london_04_01_40.jpg&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; style=&quot;border-color:#ccc&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It says:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Don&apos;t Talk! Be alert. In days like these, the walls have ears. It is a small step from gossip to treason. (1941)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This one of course got my attention because of my recent experience of being condemned for telling the truth (the truth about myself, the truth about others). I thought for some time about why the truth was withheld, why blatant lies were held up as gospel, why I was made to feel inferior for telling the truth. I thought: was it a shame-based culture (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0374279284/ref=sib_rdr_srch/103-0245156-7671850?v=search-inside&amp;keywords=shame&amp;x=0&amp;y=0&quot;&gt;also explained in Trickster&lt;/a&gt;)? Was it the professional risks that the truth created? Was it just plain and simple pride? Of course the real answer is a combination of all those, plus many factors I am not able to consider. But seeing this poster enlightened me as to another possible factor, a cultural one.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to come out of one culture, into another (be a third culture kid, essentially), but adopt the worse parts of both cultures and not the best parts (leaving the bad bits behind)? Of course it is. Just as it is possible for two different groups to espouse the same core beliefs from seemingly disparate political viewpoints (communism vs. capitalism as described in the first part of this sidebar). The idea that there are more basic paradigms that guide our lives than just ideas about politics, economics or the value of art, or having a religious doctrine vs. spiritual beliefs. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This culture of secrecy in Eastern Europe, that I experienced first hand, is so magnificently demonstrated in this poster, which was to be taken seriously at the time. Now it comically exposes the stupidities in both a culture and a political doctrine. I wonder if in a few decades time, the cultures of nations that provide a sustainable alternative to rampant consumerism will amuse themselves with advertisement posters on the walls of their museums, relics of a by-gone era when foolishness took itself so very seriously. &quot;Pepsi--the choice of a new generation!&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Heheh.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Of course, the artists already make art out of those advertisements, the most brilliant ones make that art while the ad is still installed in public under its original purpose.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;We are the new generation, and I ain&apos;t talkin&apos; &apos;bout no fuckin&apos; new market sensation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/art/music/media/Daniel_Miller_Band-Americana_EP-Track01-Comon.mp3&quot; alt=&quot;3.8M mp3 of comon by the daniel miller band&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;postscript: it must be said that the US had similar posters during WWII...albeit w/o the scowling woman.&lt;/p&gt;135CommentDaniel2004-01-30T12:25:10-05:00publishConservatives Deconstructed&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Conservatives Deconstructed by Joel Bleifuss&quot; href=&quot;http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/Conservatives_Deconstruct.html&quot;&gt;Conservatives Deconstructed by Joel Bleifuss&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Numerous studies have also shown that conservative policymakers entertain less cognitively complex thoughts than their liberal or moderate counterparts. &lt;p&gt;...The authors write that the fact that conservatives are &quot;less tolerant of ambiguity, less open to new experiences, and more avoidant of uncertainty. may help explain why &quot;congressional Republicans and other prominent conservatives in the United States have sought unilaterally to eliminate public funding for the contemporary arts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;From an early age, conservatives demonstrate a personal need for order and structure. One study has shown that conservative teens are more likely to say they are &quot;neat, orderly and organized&quot; than are liberal adolescents...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;framing events in terms of potential losses rather than gains leads people to adopt cognitively conservative, as opposed to innovative, orientations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Of course, the greatest personal loss is death. Studies demonstrate that the people who most fear death are the most conservative. More generally, the fear of death and the resulting protective posture that such a threat engenders cause people to become conservative and to strongly &quot;defend culturally valued norms and practices&quot; and &quot;to distance themselves from, and even to derogate, out-group members to greater extent.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;134ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-29T17:18:38-05:00publishindeed&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;irritant&quot; href=&quot;http://www.irritant.dircon.co.uk/archive/2004_01_01_archive.html#107330832126849832&quot;&gt;irritant: &quot;God is not a right-wing zealot.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;133ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-29T15:30:50-05:00publishyeah<a title="gapingvoid" href="http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/hjsdert10.jpg">Glorious past. Fab future. Present tense kinda sucks but I've got my best people working on it.</a> <p><a title="gapingvoid" href="http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/">gapingvoid</a></p>132ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-29T15:21:08-05:00publishInstructions For NH Caucusgoers&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;defective yeti&quot; href=&quot;http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000815.html&quot;&gt;defective yeti&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;127ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-28T12:08:20-05:00publishtidbits&lt;p&gt;What&apos;s weird is looking at code I wrote in the summer of 2002 and thinking, &quot;I wrote that?&quot; not really being able to read it, and knowing that by this time next week I will be coding stuff that makes that look like kids play.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Also funny that I am finally doing a project that I started on in 2002. Gotta love this crazy life, and gotta love this crazy industry. Two crazy industries actually: tech and surf.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt; I&apos;m not saying he&apos;s low on &lt;a href=&quot;http://google.com/search?q=define:Emotional Intelligence&quot;&gt;EQ&lt;/a&gt;, but when I&apos;m on the phone with people that know him and I say, &quot;The asshole just showed up,&quot; they know who I&apos;m talking about.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2003_11.xml&amp;id=130&quot;&gt;definately vouch&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hypericumbuyersclub.com/mahoney.html&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt;. That and the {love} is returning...both the bud-um-dum-heartbeat love and the general love for everybody. That and I&apos;m moving into a new cycle of actualization and general goodness.&lt;/p&gt;126MinutiaDaniel2004-01-27T18:25:52-05:00publishok i know who i'm voting for in the primary&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Ronnie James Dio for America: Home&quot; href=&quot;http://dioforamerica.com/&quot;&gt;Ronnie James Dio for America: Home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Just BTW/FYI, I had ONE response to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=94&quot;&gt;my request for good information&lt;/a&gt; regarding the dem candidates, and that was from a Canadian who&apos;s basic sentiment was, &quot;WTF is up with your political system?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;125ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-27T11:29:15-05:00publishah yes improving the divorce rate&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;MSNBC - Report: Bush backs $1.5 billion marriage plan&quot; href=&quot;http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3955715/&quot;&gt;Bush backs $1.5 billion marriage plan&lt;/a&gt; -- people aren&apos;t getting friviously married and divorced enough already--let&apos;s spend $1.5 &lt;strong&gt;billion&lt;/strong&gt; to make it worse!! W00T!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lancearthur.com/archives/000189.html&quot;&gt;lance arthur proposes an alternative&lt;/a&gt; -- pay peps NOT to get married. now we&apos;re talking.&lt;blockquote&gt;Frankly, I think I&apos;m extremely lucky not to even have the opportunity to be joined to the man I love, and show the world that I never want to be parted from him, and to live with him, two as one. I appreciate that my government and the people of this land believe my entry into wedded bliss will signal the end of humanity.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;124ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-27T11:19:56-05:00publishSSE/SSJ&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;kuro5hin.org || Supply-side Economics Explained for k5ers&quot; href=&quot;http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/1/22/164856/449&quot;&gt;kuro5hin.org || Supply-side Economics Explained for k5ers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;which of course reminds one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beliefnet.com/story/132/story_13245.html&quot;&gt;supply-side jesus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;123ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-27T11:03:24-05:00publishwhat is IR?&lt;p&gt;I get a lot of questions now about what IR is. I&apos;m still struggling to put it into terms people can understand w/o a lot of context, so here&apos;s something I just thought of:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;IR is like if the &lt;a href=&quot;http://osafoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Open Source Applications Foundation&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rhizome.org/&quot;&gt;rhizome.org&lt;/a&gt; had a kid that played on the same basketball team as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medialabeurope.org/hc/&quot;&gt;Media Lab Europe Human Connectedness research group&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://turbulence.org/&quot;&gt;turbulence.org&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://altx.com/home.html&quot;&gt;altx.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;of course there are many more pointers, but these are a good start.&lt;/p&gt;122CommentDaniel2004-01-26T19:49:32-05:00publishshowandtellmusic.com&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;2 cigarettes&quot; href=&quot;http://www.showandtellmusic.com/pages/galleries/gallery_a/2cigarettes.html&quot;&gt;2 cigarettes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.showandtellmusic.com/pages/galleries/gallery_a/smoking.html&quot;&gt;smoking (music to help you stop)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.showandtellmusic.com/pages/galleries/gallery_a/happypeople.html&quot;&gt;happy music for happy people&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;121ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-26T19:31:02-05:00publish...wrecks art exhibit, miscellanea&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve spoken about the systems upon which we build our worlds, but where do these systems come from, and how do they become ingrained into the marrow of our essential paradigms? As an armchair/aspiring sociologist, these questions have always intrigued me. Perhaps trained early on to have astute self-perception in regards to my fundamental paradigms, perhaps just blessed/cursed with a Monkey of the Mind on my back, I take note when I see patterns or connections between different environmental data, and in this particular case I think the connections integrate into the current discussion with some curiosity.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Stéphane Mallarmé&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freegorifero.com/adaptation/adaptation.html&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;I&apos;m fortunate - and unfortunate - enough to be surrounded by people that assume that an open mind is best. But I&apos;m pretty sure none of us really give it much thought. So, I found this description: &lt;blockquote&gt;So what is good about having an open mind? First, having an open mind does not mean that one never comes to any convictions in life. It is perfectly possible to have an open mind and live a very principled life, without holding one&apos;s beliefs dogmatically. Having an open mind means being prepared to question even your most central beliefs if there is occasion to do so. It means being open, when the time comes, to having your mind changed by an argument better than one&apos;s own. It means being able to think both sides of an issue, both the side you think is true and the side you think is false. It also means being able to suspend your beliefs, to play devil&apos;s advocate, and to detach yourself somewhat from your own beliefs, actions and feelings. Only living with an open mind gives us a chance to grow and change, for change is inevitable, while growth, unfortunately, is not.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/mason7.htm&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;This mostly sounds good to me, but I think that the type of distance or detachment described is a bit off. It seems to me that in order to be able to change in the broadest sense - a central aspect of having an open mind - one must become quite intimate and involved. Raw, vulnerable and uncertain, if you will. And I don&apos;t know many people who like to spend much time in that space. A wise friend once told me that we should never entirely rule out the possibility - but in order for the possibility to exist, we have to be open to it and engage it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you could engage any possibility right now, what would it be?&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2002_12_01_blogger_archives.php#90013632&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;120CommentDaniel2004-01-26T18:46:20-05:00publishfrom kevin sites&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Kevin Sites Blog&quot; href=&quot;http://www.kevinsites.net/2004_01_25_archive.html#107513392739823437&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.kevinsites.net/images/012604/th_curly-girl.jpg&quot; style=&quot;border-color:#ccc&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;119ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-26T18:42:58-05:00publish...wrecks art exhibit, sidebar: systemic systems, pt 1&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=000116&quot;&gt;part 3&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;amp;id=102&quot;&gt;part 2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;amp;id=91&quot;&gt;part 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;One exhibit at the Tate was of Soviet-era propaganda posters. Propaganda always interesting me, and the particular style of design used on the posters appealing to my sensibilities, I took some time to explore the work.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eng.davno.ru/posters/propaganda1/poster-20.html&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/images/2004_01/london/tate/london_04_01_39.jpg&quot; style=&quot;border-color:#ccc&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The first piece to really catch my eye, did so for obvious reasons--it was about art! This poster, from 1948, depicts on the left a dejected musician, presumably in New York City or perhaps London, and on the right a musician performing in front of a great crowd, we can safely assume in Moscow. On the left it says:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;In the countries of capitalism--this is the path of talent.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;On the right it says:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;In the country of socialism--all paths are open to talent.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;While my first reactions was &quot;That&apos;s true!&quot; I quickly realized that agreement or disagreement with its statements only indicated alignment with a core set of paradigms that stood strong regardless of a socialist or capitalist economic framework! Those paradigms revolved around ideas of success, desires for attention, comforts, social position, etc. You could have easily reversed the message of the poster and appealed to capitalists who believed their system to be more fair, open, or apt to bring out the best in everyone, because the premise of the message talks to human values more baseline than our preferred economic system.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&apos;m reminded of something I penned some time ago: &quot;I&apos;m not anti-capitalist. I&apos;m anti-greed.&quot; The greed/charity context transcends the socialist/capitalist. Governmental/economic systems all present their own common/unique advantages/disadvantages, and the way we choose to work towards sustainable existences within the context of an &quot;artistic life&quot; simply adapts to the structure we find ourselves in.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar&apos;s. Give to God the things that are God&apos;s.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;tbc...&lt;/p&gt;117CommentDaniel2004-01-26T11:37:49-05:00publish...wrecks art exhibit, pt 3&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=102&quot;&gt;part 2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=91&quot;&gt;part 1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Wake up naked drinking coffee&lt;br /&gt; Making plans to change the world&lt;br /&gt; While the world is changing us&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://nancies.org/music/lyrics/sol/&quot;&gt;Dave Matthews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So...ideas, thoughts, possibilities, theories about what art should be to consumers and creation to creatives. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;African-American trickster stories, in one context, are about a particular oppressed people&apos;s refusal to be marginalized; in another context, they are about the freedom of the awakened human mind, a freedom those in power have not necessarily acquired...This is a teaching story, then, meant to remind its audience that the symbolic world into which each of us is born and which, in one sense, has created us, is, in another sense, our own creation...human beings are created by their culture and yet that culture is also their creation. The way we live exists apart from us, but it does not exist unless we live it. We always inhabit a story that others have shaped, but we also always participate in the shaping. Great poets have come before us, but we can still be the poets of individual lives. The gods are above us, but they need us to protect them from hunger.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; When we have forgotten the latter portion of these paradoxes, when the way we live closes in around us, feeling like a web woven by strangers, a deadening pattern and not an enlivening one, then if we are lucky, the Monkey of the Mind will begin his mischievous chatter to wake us from our torpor. For those who are particularly thickheaded he will...show them how taking the code too seriously leads them again and again into a kind of self-torture.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; ...When we have forgotten that we participate in the shaping of this world and become enslaved to shaping left us by the dead, then a cunning artus-worker may appear, sometimes erasing the old boundaries so fully that only no-way remains and creation must start as if from scratch, and sometimes just loosening up the old divisions, greasing the joints so they may shift in respect to one another, or opening them so commerce will spring up where &quot;the rules&quot; forbid it...The Monkey of the Mind knows that human beings had a hand in articulating the world they inhabit and so knows that human beings can remake it when they need to. To wake that Monkey is to wake the possibility of playing with the joints of creation, the possibility of art. (pg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0374279284/ref=sib_vae_pg_278/103-0245156-7671850?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;keywords=278&amp;p=S083&amp;twc=4&amp;checkSum=u7WrvgHv5cAJDaw2QZzW6f3QeaM3FX8%2FEUjLF36m6oc%3D#reader-link&quot;&gt;278&lt;/a&gt;-80)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This passage leaves little to expand upon. My explanation of those offended by art, artists, or artistic organizations/ideals and its link to Hyde&apos;s &quot;torpor&quot; and &quot;thickheaded...self-torture&quot; should be obvious. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Individuals who never sense the contradictions of their cultural inheritance run the risk of becoming little more than host bodies for stale gestures, metaphors, and received ideas, all the stereotypic likes and dislikes by which cultures perpetuate themselves. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Andre&quot;&gt;Carl Andre&lt;/a&gt; once said, &quot;Culture is something that is done to us. Art is something we do to culture.&quot; (pg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0374279284/ref=sib_vae_pg_307/103-0245156-7671850?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;keywords=307&amp;p=S08W&amp;twc=8&amp;checkSum=1QJCVlMBmdTPjKselQvNyvqBT2Hcb%2FUE39mvkh%2BzfaY%3D#reader-link&quot;&gt;307&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a name=&quot;1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;As an artist and as someone who associates largely with artists&lt;a href=&quot;#artists1&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, it is difficult, in the throes of what I have come to refer to as &quot;the curse of thinking,&quot; to imagine a life that resists the &quot;Monkey of the Mind.&quot; Far from &quot;self-torture,&quot; the mind resigned to the mechanisms of a mentally regulated world often seems to me to personify &quot;ignorance is bliss.&quot; The prayer of the thinking is, &quot;God, can&apos;t we just get a break? One year is all I ask. One year without thinking, to be like the rest...that&apos;s all I ask.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Pinocchio&apos;s now a boy&lt;br /&gt; Who wants to turn back into a toy&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyrics007.com/Rufus%20Wainwright%20Lyrics/Vibrate%20Lyrics.html&quot;&gt;Rufus Wainwright&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As this prayer has yet to be answered, instead we explore others who have gone on before us, surviving in this spiritual world that disallows our attempts to ignore its contingencies and incongruencies. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/images/lists/artist_headshots/headshot_117.gif&quot; alt=&quot;http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/images/lists/artist_headshots/headshot_117.gif&quot; align=&quot;left&quot; /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/&quot;&gt;Bruce Nauman said&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.&quot; Of his work, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nga.gov.au/International/Detail.cfm?IRN=115577&amp;ViewID=3&quot;&gt;The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign)&lt;/a&gt; (1967), he &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/card1.html&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;The most difficult thing about the whole piece for me was the statement. It was a kind of test - like when you say something out loud to see if you believe it. Once written down, I could see that the statement [...] was on the one hand a totally silly idea and yet, on the other hand, I believed it. It&apos;s true and not true at the same time. It depends on how you interpret it and how seriously you take yourself. For me it&apos;s still a very strong thought.&quot; The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/card1.html&quot;&gt;PBS commentary on the piece continues by saying&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;Difficult to prove or disprove, it takes a leap of faith from the outset to believe that one person can help the world or that &apos;mystical truths&apos; even exist. Rather than write the statement in a journal and debate what it means in private, Nauman makes his uncertainty a public affair...the young artist was questioning what it means to be an artist (a maker of non-utilitarian objects)...&quot; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I experienced some of Nauman&apos;s art firsthand at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&amp;artistid=1691&quot;&gt;Tate&lt;/a&gt;. In a space so occupied with this artistic trickery, Nauman&apos;s seemed to be intent on ripping me out of any comfortable paradigms I held in my negotiations with the work held within...the extreme fetish section in a porn superstore. His focus on dissonance, the bizzare, juxtaposition and contradiction makes a walk through the room in which his work is installed a very uncomfortable proposition. No-one likes to be faced with the reality that is our humanity, particularly in a way that is making a way around our normal psychological defences. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&amp;workid=26988&amp;searchid=4588&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/images/2004_01/london/tate/london_04_01_38.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/images/2004_01/london/tate/london_04_01_38.jpg&quot; align=&quot;middle&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Art is a means of acquiring an investigative attitude. &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabeacon.org/exhibs_b/nauman/essay.html&quot;&gt;Bruce Nauman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;additional Nauman links: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Modern/pages/MOD_11.shtml&quot;&gt;Clown Torture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/nauman/index.html&quot;&gt;Vices and Virtues&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It seems that the struggle to consume or produce &quot;art&quot; in meaningful ways is not an either-or proposition, but one-in-the-same. And in that struggle are the market-dynamics of production/consumption, the backward-economics of making &quot;non-utilitarian objects.&quot; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It seems that the struggle to journey along a path that &quot;thinks&quot; and &quot;sees&quot; is not just linked or similar to a &quot;spiritual&quot; path, or the Gospels, or wisdom literature, or historical struggles for justice, freedom, and equality, it is as one with them as lovers locked in the sweaty, smelly bonds of intercourse. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/gemini.pl?transaction=2635639&amp;item=5&amp;command=image&amp;size=6&amp;imgnum=1&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.nga.gov/gemini/size3/d0047/00473017.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;http://www.nga.gov/gemini/size3/d0047/00473017.jpg&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;All of that to be pursued after one equally-important semi-personal tangent... &lt;/p&gt; &lt;hr noshade=&quot;noshade&quot; style=&quot;color: #cccccc; height: 1px; border: dotted;&quot; /&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a name=&quot;artists1&quot; href=&quot;#1&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;. At this point it may be helpful to say what my definition of an &quot;artist&quot; is, and I think it is one that falls in line with Hyde and others (like Anderson and Ray in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609808451/qid=1075069443/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-0245156-7671850&quot;&gt;Cultural Creatives&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;em&gt;Creative&lt;/em&gt; is actually my preferred word, but I have learned that term often evokes as much confusion as the term artist. An artist is sometimes considered only those who work in paints and the visual arts, and certainly those fall into my categorization. Others include musicians, writers, et. al. into their definition of artists. I include anyone who creates something new--which includes everyone from entrepeneurs, scientists, and academics to regular folk who simply have a passion for allowing that &quot;Monkey of the Mind&quot; to do its work on their psyche and paradigms. It could simply be someone who is an astute observer of culture, society, or science, and perhaps only later in life articulates his inner-artus work verbally to his progeny; it could simply be the patriarch telling stories to his grandchildren, the gardener sharing his brilliant homemade wine late at night with his visiting son.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; There are also those who believe the term &quot;artist&quot; can only be applied to those who find their economic sustenance in the sale of their &quot;artistic&quot; products. This particular paradigm has nothing to do with my definition of artistry, and in fact many of those with great financial success in &quot;art&quot; are not performing artistry at all, but are just reproducing for sale the &quot;stale gestures, metaphors, and received ideas, all the stereotypic likes and dislikes by which cultures perpetuate themselves.&quot; More on this later. &lt;a href=&quot;#1&quot;&gt;return&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;116CommentDaniel2004-01-25T17:21:57-05:00publishjust felt this was worth quoting&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Joi Ito&apos;s Web: Sir Martin Rees on global warming and other things&quot; href=&quot;http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/01/25/sir_martin_rees_on_global_warming_and_other_things.html&quot;&gt;Joi Ito&apos;s Web: Sir Martin Rees on global warming and other things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;...Sir Martin Rees told me that he thought it was probably true that global warming was happening and that CO2 emissions contributed to it. He said that his main concern with global warming with the possibility that something non-linear would happen. In other words, his worry was not just the melting of the ice caps or the increased heat, but that this would cause something unpredictable and significant, such as a change in the circulation of the oceans. &lt;p&gt;He talked about some of the interesting mail he got. He said that he once got contacted by a cryogenic company which wanted his opinion on the idea of &quot;the end of involuntary death&quot; by freezing yourself before you die. When he replied that he&apos;d rather be buried in a cemetery than a freezer in Calfornia, the company posted on their web site that &quot;Rees is a deathist&quot;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In a controversial book that he wrote called &quot;Our Final Hour&quot; he says that there is a 50/50 chance that our civilization will end this century. He mentioned that the original title of the book was &quot;Our Final Century?&quot; The British publishers took out the question mark and made it &quot;Our Final Century&quot;. Then the US publishers change it to &quot;Our Final Hour&quot;. ;-)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;115ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-25T16:56:02-05:00publishso i AM addicted to love!&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Reward mechanism involved in addiction likely regulates pair bonds between monogamous animals&quot; href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-01/euhs-rmi012004.php&quot;&gt;Reward mechanism involved in addiction likely regulates pair bonds between monogamous animals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;The reward mechanism involved in addiction appears to regulate lifelong social or pair bonds between monogamous mating animals, according to a Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) study...&lt;/blockquote&gt;114ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-25T16:50:23-05:00publishblogger has xml feeds, even for blogspot folks&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theyblinked.com/blog/atom.xml&quot;&gt;Theyblinked&apos;s ATOM RSS feed&lt;/a&gt;. I particularly like that they&apos;ve encoded a stylesheet that makes the feed display pretty even in a browser, and instructs pep&apos;s what to do. Gonna steal that feature. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://withadot.blogspot.com/atom.xml&quot;&gt;withadot ATOM feed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt; I &lt;a href=&quot;http://chuckpalahniuk.net/blog.html&quot;&gt;now&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.girlsarepretty.com/&quot;&gt;command&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://miniette.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;all&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://selfdeconstructingtext.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;to&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatbrokengirl.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;turn&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://baileysirishjean.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;on&lt;/a&gt; their RSS feed. It&apos;s freakin&apos; easy, yo.&lt;/p&gt;113ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-24T20:55:48-05:00publishSocial Computing Symposium at Microsoft&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Social Computing Symposium at Microsoft&quot; href=&quot;http://weblogs.asp.net/korbyp/archive/2004/01/23/62317.aspx&quot;&gt;Social Computing Symposium at Microsoft&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My wet dream is for Microsoft Research to silently absorb IR and fund us to do what we do indefinately. They&apos;z some smarties over there, they are.&lt;/p&gt;112ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-24T17:35:35-05:00publishi have a great title but she's probably reading this&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert20040112199524.gif&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;111ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-24T16:58:27-05:00publisham i done with london photos? not even close.&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the tate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;my pictures of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/eliasson/&quot;&gt;the weather project&lt;/a&gt; look just like every other picture of the weather project:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://danielsjourney.com/blog/images/2004_01/london/tate/london_04_01_34.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://danielsjourney.com/blog/images/2004_01/london/tate/london_04_01_35.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://danielsjourney.com/blog/images/2004_01/london/tate/london_04_01_36.jpg&quot; width=&quot;248&quot; height=&quot;330&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://danielsjourney.com/blog/images/2004_01/london/tate/london_04_01_37.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/p&gt;110ImaginingDaniel2004-01-24T16:08:13-05:00publishmore free mp3's&lt;p&gt;Two tracks from Adem: &lt;a title=&quot;Domino: Adem&quot; href=&quot;http://www.dominorecordco.com/artist.php?artist=167&quot;&gt;Domino: Adem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.echocentral.com/clips/faraway.mp3&quot;&gt;Faraway&lt;/a&gt; by Pristina, side project of The Echoing Green, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.echocentral.com/echolalia/&quot;&gt;more info here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(ben, wasn&apos;t the band that opened for Jimmy called &quot;Adem&quot;? This isn&apos;t the same band, if so.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(for my uk readers, this looks interesting: &quot;Adem will be playing his first set of 2004, at Eat Your Own Ears&apos; Hot Trees night, Feb 26th, at The Electrowerkz. Playing new music from his upcoming debut album, &apos;Homesongs&apos;, Adem will be joined by Fridge bandmate Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) on DJ duties. The night also features Live sets from The Zutons, Mountaineers, Aidan Smith, Ulrich Schnauss and Bloc Party, as well as DJs Andrew Weatherall, The Bees, DJ x DJ and Tomp (Warp), plus art installations and visuals from Modusforum.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;Doors 7.30pm - 3am The Electrowerkz, 1 Torrens Street, London (Off City Rd) N1 (behind Angel Tube Station) Tel: 0207 837 6419 Tickets £10.50 (adv+BKF) from: www.ticketweb.co.uk, T, 08700 600 100, www.wayahead.com, T, 0870 120 1149, NME Ticket Line T. 0870 1 663 663, and from the usual shops.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;109ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-24T14:39:50-05:00publishsacred/secular&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;next-wave.org - the church and culture: Word, Work, and Worship --- Moving Beyond Sunday-Centric Communities by Mike Bishop and T Freeman&quot; href=&quot;http://www.next-wave.org/feb03/sundaycentric.htm&quot;&gt;next-wave.org - the church and culture: Word, Work, and Worship --- Moving Beyond Sunday-Centric Communities by Mike Bishop and T Freeman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;...The Jewish people in first century Palestine defined themselves by Torah, Temple, Sabbath, Land, and Family. Wright argues that Jesus&apos; words and actions usurped these major Jewish symbols and offered a Kingdom alternative centered on himself, which of course led to his death on the cross. I want to argue that in many cases, Christians have defined themselves by the symbol of the corporate church gathering – &quot;I go to such-and-such church on Sunday…I’m a member at First Church of My-town…Yeah, I’m a Christian, I went to my Bible study just last night.&quot; This symbol has become just as strong in the minds of many Christians as going to the temple was to a Jew. However, going to a meeting where Christians are present no more makes you a Christian than going to the temple made you Jewish.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;...Are we, as the American Church, inadvertently subverting or strengthening the sacred/secular divide by our own practices and lives? Acting out a truth, not merely hearing it, is what subverts the kingdom of darkness within us and those around us and allows us to enter the kingdom of God.&lt;/blockquote&gt;This article is a more tightly-composed compliment to my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.next-wave.org/jul01/deconstructing.htm&quot;&gt; Deconstructing &quot;Praise and Worship&quot;: The Myth of the Sacred versus the Secular&lt;/a&gt; in July 2001&apos;s Next-Wave. &lt;p&gt;T Freeman is &lt;a href=&quot;http://integrationresearch.org&quot;&gt;IR&lt;/a&gt;&apos;s legal advisor on nonprofit issues.&lt;/p&gt;108ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-23T16:56:03-05:00publishgive it away&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;GIVE IT AWAY :: RELEVANT magazine :: GOD.LIFE.PROGRESSIVE CULTURE.&quot; href=&quot;http://www.relevantmagazine.com/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=News&amp;file=article&amp;sid=1886&amp;mode=&amp;order=0&quot;&gt;GIVE IT AWAY :: RELEVANT magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;I remember once being asked to deliver a washer and dryer to a single woman. I rounded up a pickup truck and delivered the goods. When we got the appliances into her basement, we realized the givers had removed the hoses and power cords. This woman had no way to pay for them, I was broke myself, and my friend was wanting to get back to his family. So we left her on the porch with no way to use the gifts she had received. &lt;p&gt;For many of us, that is our understanding of giving it away. We give, but not everything. I&apos;m sure the people in the nice suburban house where the appliances came from felt good about their gift when they went to bed that night, but the Holy Spirit was most likely bewildered. If we are to &quot;give it away,&quot; we should do just that. Giving things that aren’t all there so we can save a trip to the store or a little money just don’t add up in kingdom currency.&lt;/blockquote&gt;by my friend &lt;a href=&quot;http://gatheringmyway.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;john&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;107ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-23T16:20:40-05:00publishreallygood gibson interview/article&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;[ t e c h n o \ c u l t u r e ] : Inventor of cyberspace steps back to the present&quot; href=&quot;http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966/stories/2003/04/25/inventorOfCyberspaceStepsBackToThePresent.html&quot;&gt;[ t e c h n o \ c u l t u r e ] : Inventor of cyberspace steps back to the present&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;His father died when he was six, and he has written that he only began to come into his own, and emerge from his collection of sci-fi books on their plywood shelves, when he was sent to boarding school. &lt;p&gt;A further jolt came when his mother died while he was a teenager. Out of such shocks are writers born, he says.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He is a writer of shocks, of devastating events that shift histories. His last novel centred on a character that can read history&apos;s &quot;nodal points&quot;, moments of striking change. September 11th was such a point, he says, and, therefore, had to go into Pattern Recognition.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;Every instinct I have in those directions responded to it as if it was a breakshot in a game of pool. There were balls that had been sitting in that triangle as long as I&apos;ve been alive. Everything moved, and then stopped again in new positions. I don&apos;t know where the game is going. In a way, it put the lie to my nodal points theory in earlier books because the present nodal points were unknown. They were behind a screen and could only be seen after. I was buying into the death of history. But that&apos;s not the case anymore. We&apos;re now doing history, big time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...He left the US to avoid the Vietnam draft, and has lived in Vancouver ever since. He rather likes the cultural displacement.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don&apos;t understand what it would be like to be fully of one culture or another. The interesting people end up between the various bits and become omnicultural.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He&apos;s about ready to start thinking of his next novel - but in order to do so, he says he&apos;ll have to give up his weblog (or &apos;blog&apos;), a highly popular website diary of sorts in which he&apos;s written almost daily since January.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;I do know from doing it that it&apos;s not something I can do when I&apos;m actually working. Somehow the ecology of writing novels wouldn&apos;t be able to exist if I&apos;m in daily contact. If I expose things that interest or obsess me as I go along, there&apos;d be no need to write the book. The sinews of narrative would never grow.&quot;...&lt;/blockquote&gt;(via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.langemark.com/node/view/281&quot;&gt;langemark&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;106ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-23T15:21:07-05:00publishfree music and culture; wait it's free, are these real artists?&lt;p&gt;friend and dallas-based comic superstar &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monkhouse.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;david hopkins&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monkhouse.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_monkhouse_archive.html#107480488239095008&quot;&gt;introduces&lt;/a&gt; us to irish san fransisco-based musician &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidhopkinsmusic.com/index.html&quot;&gt;david hopkins&lt;/a&gt;, who is quite decent. i vouch for every single mp3 avail on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidhopkinsmusic.com/music/index.html&quot;&gt;music page&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a title=&quot;davidhopkinsmusic.com - Notes &amp; Sketches&quot; href=&quot;http://www.davidhopkinsmusic.com/notes/index.html&quot;&gt;he also writes some&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; Jan is on the street for short stretches and at home for long ones. In dreams he flies with arms in front like superman in heaven. He can&apos;t wait to die to fly. &lt;blockquote&gt;Not counting the feathered scarves---and not counting the children&apos;s arms---and not counting the scared rabbits---and not counting the soiled woman---and not counting the amateur trumpet sounds---and not counting the angry Asian---and not counting......&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;By a building in Linkoping, Sweden, four Monks shelter from a hail storm.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jan is crying inside because monks don&apos;t have any fun and umbrellas are forbidden.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jenny waited for Bjorn, waited like winter for summer, waited like Bears for Spring, waited like Bjorn for Winter. Nothing goes more unnoticed than hopeless waiting. Hope is somewhere in a muddy puddle. Fate controls faith and fate has no faith for Jenny.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Justice comes swooping down on Bjorn like a Blitz, an internal justice sent by himself to himself, an unfortunate mechanism inherent to those with consciences. In his next life he wished to be beach grass.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.losingtoday.com/latest_mp3.php&quot;&gt;HELO mass amounts of mp3&apos;s!&lt;/a&gt; from a rad mag &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.losingtoday.com/index.php&quot;&gt;losing today&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boomselection.info/Strictly_Kev_-_Raiding_the_20th_Century.mp3&quot;&gt;Strictly Kev - Raiding the 20th Century&lt;/a&gt;, the cutups of all cutups. via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2004_01_01_blogger_archives.php#107486304284212661&quot;&gt;PLSJ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;104ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-23T12:59:34-05:00publishconsume more! it'll make you feel better! in fact, be as greedy as possible! it'll fill that huge gaping hole in your heart!&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;The Morning News - The Non-Expert: IKEA&quot; href=&quot;http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/the_nonexpert_ikea.php&quot;&gt;The Morning News - The Non-Expert: IKEA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;103ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-23T12:18:37-05:00publish...wrecks art exhibit, pt 2&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=91&quot;&gt;part 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So what is the deal with art? Why does it elicit such strong opinion, particularly negative opinion? Why are so many people &quot;offended&quot; by so much art? Why are things that, when experienced in day to day life, are no big deal, but when highlighted in artistic expression become reason for violent reaction?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Recently reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374279284/qid=1074797842//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i0_xgl14/104-6103382-9938325?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846&quot;&gt;Trickster&lt;/a&gt; had informed both this issue and helped me cope with the contingencies life itself has dealt me in the last year.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Cultures take their shape from distinctions such as &quot;gift and theft&quot;...&quot;the clean and the dirty,&quot; &quot;the modest and the shameful,&quot; &quot;essence and accident.&quot; These exactly are the joints of the cultural web and therefore the potential sites of trickster&apos;s play. (pg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0374279284/ref=sib_vae_pg_205/104-6103382-9938325?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;keywords=205&amp;p=S062&amp;twc=7&amp;checkSum=xN8S1FouoTP%2BMgw0sRXyhtmfxdxNXLLnEVIF0g6ZNT8%3D#reader-link&quot;&gt;205&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Most people in society, particularly the &quot;successful,&quot; &quot;established&quot; and &quot;powerful&quot; and those who wish to become so (i.e. as I said, most people), have a vested interest in the maintenance of this binary. Without these structures, without these ideas of in and out, the power and privilege which rests on them will have no bearing. This is what good art does: it shows you that things are not really as they seem. There is another law at work in the universe that doesn&apos;t fit into your political, economic, or psychological paradigms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Hermes [the trickster]...is the mottled figure in the half-light, the amnigoge [&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=amnigoge&quot;&gt;sic?&lt;/a&gt;] who simultaneously amazes and unmazes, whose wand both &quot;bewitches the eyes of men to sleep and wakes the sleeping,&quot; as Homer says in the Iliad. I sometimes wonder if all great creative minds do not participate in this double motion, humming a new and catchy &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theogony&quot;&gt;theogony&lt;/a&gt; even as they demystify the gods their elders sang about. (pg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0374279284/ref=sib_vae_pg_209/104-6103382-9938325?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;keywords=amnigoge&amp;p=S066&amp;twc=1&amp;checkSum=YTtraiQUxQBNueo5c%2FsZ3fJboSYZ8%2Fg0QflV5JS93lw%3D#reader-link&quot;&gt;209&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;...the cultural pattern collapses. It becomes senseless... Contradiction...reveals the material whose exclusion created the order in the first place, and its illusion of purity. Its dirt exposed, the code...no longer makes sense; it no longer &quot;means&quot; the way it used to. What seemed like noble truths...are discovered to be local and contingent fictions, if not outright lies. (pg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0374279284/ref=sib_vae_pg_233/104-6103382-9938325?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;keywords=233&amp;p=S06U&amp;twc=10&amp;checkSum=ooUnYHUmK1zowfCPpigs%2BV6x%2F4Wzh7WB%2F4L16%2B%2FK6b8%3D#reader-link&quot;&gt;233&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;When our psychological and economic well-being, our whole lives even, are built upon these &quot;noble truths&quot; that are &quot;discovered to be lies&quot; in the light of the artist&apos;s work, our reaction must be to protect those &quot;truths,&quot; maintain the establishment within which we have toiled, throw as far away as possible the trickster chiseling at the foundations of the structure upon which our lives are formed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But doesn&apos;t most art, for most people, actually inspire?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Ideally the experience of such a story leaves the listener not so much freed from all constraints as freed from their tyranny and therefore more flexible and open to change. The teller of the tale offers...open-ended symbols into which any listener can pour her own drama of transgression and containment and explore its possible resolutions. The audience listening to any trickster tale undergoes a kind of inner artus-work, then, a loosening and breathing of the psychic boundaries...the listener&apos;s psyche may have its functions related to one another (connected/not-connected, articulated without being divided) and thereby enlivened. It is not so much that trickster unifies the soul as that his polytropic commerce puts its powers in touch with one another across their necessary divides. (pg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0374279284/ref=sib_vae_pg_266/104-6103382-9938325?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;keywords=266&amp;p=S07R&amp;twc=4&amp;checkSum=oz41tr0FTRxucfmcpJZlnITxZM5CkpwIZoqWfDb0T50%3D#reader-link&quot;&gt;266&lt;/a&gt;-7)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;From my experience there are three general responses to the kind of authentic art that I am speaking of: &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt;Authentic response from consumers who directly relate to the story of the artist. Commonly, the outcast, rejected, downtrodden.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The ones quite literally tricked. While nominally entrenched in the system (but more likely being taken advantage of by those at the top of the systemic hierarchies), they occasionally aspire to a &quot;higher calling,&quot; and this aspiration allows subtle stories to work their way into the psyche in the name of &quot;entertainment.&quot;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The offended. Sometimes those from the aforementioned nominally systemized group, sometimes those who take the advancement of their social, political, and economic success so seriously that they calculate their reactions to almost every situation. Art, it seems, is able to deftly maneuver around these schemes, and as such, immediately elicits offense responses. To others in the establishment, these responses seem justifiable. To those nominally systemized, odd. To true tricksters, hilarious.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;...consider a line like the one with which Allen Ginsberg ended his early poem &quot;America&quot;: &quot;America I&apos;m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.&quot; This voice does not oppose &quot;America&quot; and does not oppose &quot;queer,&quot; but settles directly in the joint. It is the utterance of a patriot/ex-patriot, an insider/outsider who doesn&apos;t want to get caught at either pole. This balancing act was part of Ginsburg&apos;s talent, appeal, and art. In politics he managed to be one of the few modern artists to unsettle Communists and capitalists alike. The FBI and the CIA kept large files on him, but police agents expelled him from Cuba and Czechoslovakia as well. In the United States, the Federal Buereau of Narcotics once framed an attack on Ginsberg by borrowing language from an attack printed in Czechoslovakia (both sides declared Ginsberg had &quot;manners...which a normal man--sorry to say--spits upon&quot;), a rare collaboration of cold-war enemies united in their fear of anomaly. (pg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0374279284/ref=sib_vae_pg_275/104-6103382-9938325?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;keywords=275&amp;p=S080&amp;twc=14&amp;checkSum=lBw2grh9NYNDqMEHR%2Fn%2Fuu0p7Wx%2FGwupTPcu4x4Rc3w%3D#reader-link&quot;&gt;275&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;to be yet continued...&lt;/p&gt;102CommentDaniel2004-01-22T14:32:10-05:00publishwoot finally some liberal radio&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;MSNBC - &apos;The O’Franken Factor&apos;&quot; href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3980903&amp;p1=0&quot;&gt;MSNBC - &apos;The Franken Factor&apos;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Al Franken has modest goals for his new radio show. In a press release prepared after Franken signed the contract this week with Progress Media, the investment group launching a nationwide liberal radio network, the newly named talk-show host said: &quot;My goal is to change the political landscape in this country, get rid of the radical right-wing president and serve as a beacon of hope for Americans who work hard and play by the rules.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2001837810_liberalradio16.html&quot;&gt;additional&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;101ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-22T13:42:33-05:00publishdizzy&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Ours Dizzy lyrics&quot; href=&quot;http://www.musicsonglyrics.com/O/Ours/Ours%20-%20Dizzy%20lyrics.htm&quot;&gt;thank you mr gnecco&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;If we beat him down, will he stay?&lt;br /&gt; He&apos;s a little dizzy&lt;br /&gt; I feel it starting to take me&lt;br /&gt; Where did everybody go?&lt;br /&gt; I need them now&lt;br /&gt; To save me&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;We fell, when they choked the things that feed&lt;br /&gt; How come... we hurt the ones we need?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.musicsonglyrics.com/O/Ours/Ours%20-%20Bleed%20lyrics.htm&quot;&gt;rhymes with indeed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;But they didn&apos;t love you in our time&lt;br /&gt; Nobody wants you in your life&lt;br /&gt; Bleed and they&apos;ll serve you, alive&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/anim_bug.gif&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;99MinutiaDaniel2004-01-21T19:16:59-05:00publishlet's do something light and airy, shall we?&lt;p&gt;Still have pics from london, although I don&apos;t think the rest are as good...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/burbs/london_04_01_21.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;the condom machine in the bathroom of a pub i was killing time in while dan got job offers from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.londonbiblecollege.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;lbc&lt;/a&gt; (sort of) (figured you&apos;d want that disclaimer, dan). &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;now the interesting thing was the icons below each variety of condom package. after i got back and looked at the pictures, it took me a bit to realize they were packs of condoms, not individual ones. i was like, damn that condom has a lot of features! but even so, what &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; those features?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/burbs/london_04_01_21_i.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;ok, clockwise from top-left: ribbed?, strawberry flavored (that one is pretty easy), one that actually works?, lubricated?, regular?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;later (i was drinking some, hence the multiple trips to the loo), a maintenance man was working in the bathroom. with his gut hanging out and his head in the wall above the urinals, i tried to get a picture without being discovered/quickly killed in nasty ways.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/burbs/london_04_01_22.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;you can see he hung his coat on the condom machine.&lt;/p&gt;98ImaginingDaniel2004-01-21T13:44:45-05:00publishsystems&lt;blockquote&gt;I mistrust all systemisers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity. &lt;p&gt;- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;anne galloway [purse lip square jaw]&quot; href=&quot;http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/about.html&quot;&gt;anne galloway [purse lip square jaw]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;97QuotableDaniel2004-01-21T12:54:08-05:00publishThese forgettings must continually be contested&lt;blockquote&gt;These forgettings must continually be contested if they are not to acquire the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=imprimatur&quot;&gt;imprimatur&lt;/a&gt; of precedent and legitimacy.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;v-2 Organisation | news | Public space, and its negation&quot; href=&quot;http://www.v-2.org/displayArticle.php?article_num=620&quot;&gt;v-2 Organisation | news | Public space, and its negation&lt;/a&gt;96QuotableDaniel2004-01-21T12:27:39-05:00publishi'll give up on the greed&lt;blockquote&gt;Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. &lt;p&gt;Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, &apos;Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.&apos; But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God&apos;s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your &apos;Yes&apos; be &apos;Yes,&apos; and your &apos;No,&apos; &apos;No&apos;; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You have heard that it was said, &apos;Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.&apos; But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You have heard that it was said, &apos;Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.&apos; But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I will take righteousness over money.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I will bless those who curse me.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I will trust in God to provide for my family and my children. I will continue to bless those who I consider to steal from my children, even as I lift my child from his resting place and hold him gently in my arms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I will not be afraid.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I will fight off hurt, betrayal, bitterness and pride.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I will fight for love, trust, joy and brokenness.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I will find joy, happiness, hope and security in the one who spoke &lt;a href=&quot;http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=MATT+5&amp;language=english&amp;version=NIV&amp;showfn=on&amp;showxref=on&quot;&gt;those words&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I will keep reminding myself of all of this on days like today.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And it doesn&apos;t matter. The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. When we look to be rewarded in this life, we are looking in the wrong place. We have to have hope for something beyond this life, or we have no hope at all. And &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/insight/page.php?id=22&quot;&gt;Without hope you&apos;re in hell&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;95MinutiaDaniel2004-01-21T12:18:59-05:00publishMoore endorses Clark&lt;p&gt;With the Florida primaries coming up and a glut of information about the candidates, I am making a request to my readers for links to sites that can help me understand this race as quickly and as easily as possible.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My priority is removing Bush. I will vote for whomever I feel can best accomplish this. We need someone who will unify the left and the third parties. Last time there was terrible division in the left, and they still should have won; but maybe that division was the reason the electorate did what they did.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And if Nader runs again I&apos;m going to be like WTF? A few thousand more green votes down the tube.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Anyway, it was interesting to read this today. Scott and I have discussed our goal of ousting Bush, i.e. voting for whomever we think can win, not who we like the most, but that we both liked Clark at this point. That&apos;s what my gut says, but I have to go with the mind this time, because GW&apos;s gotta go.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Michael Moore.com : Mike&apos;s Message : Messages&quot; href=&quot;http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php&quot;&gt;I&apos;ll Be Voting For Wesley Clark / Good-Bye Mr. Bush by Michael Moore&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;I believe that Wesley Clark will end this war. He will make the rich pay their fair share of taxes. He will stand up for the rights of women, African Americans, and the working people of this country. &lt;p&gt;And he will cream George W. Bush.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is not about voting for who is more anti-war or who was anti-war first or who the media has already anointed. It is about backing a candidate that shares our values AND can communicate them to Middle America. I am convinced that the surest slam dunk to remove Bush is with a four - star - general - top - of - his - class - at - West - Point - Rhodes - Scholar - Medal - of - Freedom - winning - gun - owner - from - the - South -- who also, by chance, happens to be pro-choice, pro environment, and anti-war. You don&apos;t get handed a gift like this very often. I hope the liberal/left is wise enough to accept it. It&apos;s hard, when you&apos;re so used to losing, to think that this time you can actually win. It is Clark who stands the best chance -- maybe the only chance -- to win those Southern and Midwestern states that we MUST win in order to accomplish Bush Removal. And if what I have just said is true, then we have no choice but to get behind the one who can make this happen.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Clark &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/19/elec04.prez.main/index.html&quot;&gt;skipped Iowa&lt;/a&gt;, so it&apos;s hard to tell at this point if he&apos;s the Man We&apos;re All Looking For or not.&lt;/p&gt;94MinutiaDaniel2004-01-20T12:23:17-05:00publishclass&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Class (Ftrain.com)&quot; href=&quot;http://www.ftrain.com/ClassStruggleNowPlease.html&quot;&gt;Class (Ftrain.com)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;...dozens of rich kids are staring in jealousy at Paris and wondering how they too can turn their trust funds into international celebrity (the only currency really worth something). &lt;p&gt;...I sit around feeling that we are truly and deeply &lt;em&gt;fucked&lt;/em&gt;, fucked by glitter.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;93ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-20T12:03:42-05:00publish...wrecks art exhibit, pt 1&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;BBC NEWS | Europe | Israeli envoy wrecks art exhibit&quot; href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3406041.stm&quot;&gt;wow&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1125679,00.html&quot;&gt;wow&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/international/middleeast/18MIDE.html&quot;&gt;wow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Years ago, after returning from a particularly inspiring trip to Europe, we held a get-together at our home. We told stories and showed pictures via a projection onto a large wall. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As we moved into the photographs that I had shot with more &quot;artistic&quot; intentions, I stopped commenting and just allowed each image to remain projected onto the wall for a few seconds each.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;When what is now &lt;a href=&quot;images/2004_01/03_09_bratislava_prayingman_small.jpg&quot;&gt;one of my favorite images&lt;/a&gt; came along, my then-father-in-law immediately commented plenty loud for all to hear, &quot;Symbol of a dead religion.&quot;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/bratislava_prayingman_small.jpg&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I just so happened to be in counselling at the time, with a great psychologist. We spoke about the incident, and she said, &quot;Well, great art illicits a response, good &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; bad, and your art did just that.&quot; That really helped me reframe what was a very hurtful comment.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The event has informed and become a metaphor for my artistic journey&lt;font color=&quot;white&quot;&gt;, a metaphor that has reached its sad fruition and its cathartic climax in the ultimate rejection by that man&apos;s daughter, one of the rationales being the rejection of my pursuit of an artistic career, ironically while she continued in artistic forms I introduced her to, ...&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I have met many people in the last few years who seem to take offense at 1.artists 2.artistic organizations or 3.art itself. I have always puzzled at these people, at art&apos;s ability to draw out love from lovers but also hatred from haters. Somehow, because of the mysteriously spiritual nature of art, it cuts to the quick.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;more later...&lt;/p&gt;91CommentDaniel2004-01-18T11:48:41-05:00publishA Taste of Our Own Poison&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Wired 12.01: View&quot; href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/view.html?pg=5?tw=wn_tophead_6&quot;&gt;Wired 12.01: View: A modest proposal: Hold Hollywood hostage till we kill farm subsidies: By Lawrence Lessig&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/images/VW_109_lessig_2.gif&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;...The dirty little secret, however, is that we don&apos;t respect the free trade rules that we impose on others. While the US sings the virtues of free trade to defend maximalist intellectual property regulation, we poison the free trade that developing nations care about most - agriculture - by subsidizing farming in the industrialized world to the tune of $300 billion annually. Rhetoric about family farmers aside, most of that money passes quickly to agribusiness. This is not Adam Smith; it is corporate welfare par excellence. &lt;p&gt;...A block of powerful developing nations should first take a page from the US Copyright Act of 1790 and enact national laws that explicitly protect their own rights only. It would not protect foreigners. Second, these nations should add a provision that would relax this exemption to the extent that developed nations really opened their borders. If we reduce, for example, the subsidy to agribusiness by 10 percent, then they would permit 10 percent of our copyrights to be enforced (say, copyrights from the period 1923 to 1931). Reduce the subsidy by another 10 percent, then another 10 percent could be enforced. And so on.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...A principle is a principle. And a content industry keen to defend its &quot;property&quot; on the basis of that principle would then have an interest in defending principle more generally...&lt;/blockquote&gt;via &lt;a href=&quot;http://theyblinked.com/blog&quot;&gt;dan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;90ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-18T10:39:21-05:00publishmy latest mirror project submission&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;The Mirror Project | Daniel Miller | Grandfather Clock&quot; href=&quot;http://mirrorproject.com/mirror/?id=20794&quot;&gt;The Mirror Project | Daniel Miller | Grandfather Clock&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;89ImaginingDaniel2004-01-17T10:41:24-05:00publishmuniwireless.com - reports on municipal wireless and broadband projects&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Muniwireless&quot; href=&quot;http://www.muniwireless.com/reports/&quot;&gt;Muniwireless&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;IR conceived of a similar thing during our time in London. for our reference and your interest.&lt;/p&gt;88ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-17T10:40:43-05:00publishgrace&lt;p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/st_marys/london_04_01_11.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;last saturday we attended &lt;a href=&quot;http://freshworship.org&quot;&gt;grace&lt;/a&gt;. held in st mary&apos;s in ealing. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/st_marys/london_04_01_12.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;we had been hanging out with adam, so we arrived early and lent a hand in set up, and had some time to kill, so i ended up taking some pictures.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/st_marys/london_04_01_13.jpg&quot; width=&quot;248&quot; height=&quot;330&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;this is a giant sheet they hang across the balconies to project upon. don&apos;t let the pews fool ya, we sat on the opposite side.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/st_marys/london_04_01_14.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;adam and jonny contemplating the puzzle of rear-projection.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/st_marys/london_04_01_15.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;saints. coming through the walls.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/grace/london_04_01_16.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;131&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;part of the service was to write on paper chains what we are leaving behind in 2003 and what we are moving forward to in 2004. after we were through steve commented that the past regrets of 03 were less than the goals of 04. i didn&apos;t have the heart to tell him that if i had used a single link for each item, it would have reversed that outcome. but i considered the total weight of my regrets, although a longer list, equal to that of my future hopes and dreams.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/grace/london_04_01_17.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/grace/london_04_01_18.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/p&gt;87ImaginingDaniel2004-01-17T10:24:19-05:00publishThe Long Winters' ticket to heaven&lt;blockquote&gt;The Onion: Is this record your ticket to heaven? &lt;p&gt;John Roderick: Well, one of us is Jewish, and they don&apos;t have a heaven. Another of us is Norwegian, so he&apos;s going someplace on a burning boat that&apos;s full of sword-fighting and Wagner music. The third one is some kind of lapsed Episcopalian, which generally means that his heaven should be four gin martinis and an early tee-time, but in this one&apos;s case I would say that his heaven is in the basement of some Parisian art-cinema covered with a dirty blanket. And my heaven, well... I&apos;m living my heaven. Every. Damn. Day.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;at the onion, which is very funny but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theonionavclub.com/justify.php?jye_id=28&quot;&gt;doesn&apos;t let you link to specific content&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kungfugrippe.com/previously/002575.php&quot;&gt;merlin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;86ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T19:57:56-05:00publishmozilla.org Redesign&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;mezzoblue § mozilla.org Redesign&quot; href=&quot;http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/10/15/mozillaorg_r/index.php&quot;&gt;Godspeed, good lizard&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;85ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T19:54:04-05:00publishnew, improved semantic web&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;sweb.gif (GIF Image, 459x570 pixels)&quot; href=&quot;http://www.jroller.com/resources/deep/sweb.gif&quot;&gt;new, improved semantic web&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://freeroller.net/page/deep/20030624#is_the_semantic_web_hype&quot;&gt;deep:code&lt;/a&gt;. heheh. he said &quot;deep code.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;84ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T19:49:13-05:00publishinterfaces and authoring tools for the semantic web&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;headmap: mapping heads - Ideagraph, Tinderbox - interfaces and authoring tools for the semantic web&quot; href=&quot;http://www.headmap.org/archives/000152.html&quot;&gt;headmap: mapping heads - Ideagraph, Tinderbox - interfaces and authoring tools for the semantic web&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;yes indeedy. give us a couple years and we&apos;ll show you the &lt;strong&gt;killer&lt;/strong&gt; sem web app dude. heheh.&lt;/p&gt;83ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T19:46:34-05:00publishwillful infringement&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;W I L L F U L I N F R I N G E M E N T . C O M&quot; href=&quot;http://willfulinfringement.com/&quot;&gt;willful infringement&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;old news, but...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Willful Infringement is a feature film about the ways that copyright has harmed free expression and creativity. The movie features clowns talking about the legal threats they got for twisting balloon-animal Barneys, Negativland conspiracists discussing life after being crushed for making music out of samples, as well as lots of legal geniuses and iconoclasts talking about how we got here and where we&apos;re going… Fascinating.&quot; - Cory Doctorow&lt;/blockquote&gt;82ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T19:44:15-05:00publishBush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers&quot; href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,982976,00.html&quot;&gt;Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Good piece by Naomi Klein, &lt;em&gt;No Logo&lt;/em&gt; author. I worked for 2 days for USAID, after this article was published. Eh. The money was good.&lt;blockquote&gt;On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USaid, gave a speech blasting US NGOs for failing to play a role many of them didn&apos;t realise they had been assigned: doing public relations for the US government. According to InterAction, the network of 160 relief and development NGOs, Natsios was &quot;irritated&quot; that starving and sick Iraqi and Afghan children didn&apos;t realise that their food and vaccines were coming to them courtesy of George Bush. From now on, NGOs had to do a better job of link ing their humanitarian assistance to US foreign policy and making it clear that they are &quot;an arm of the US government&quot;. If they didn&apos;t, InterAction reported, &quot;Natsios threatened to personally tear up their contracts and find new partners&quot;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;For aid workers, there are even more strings attached to US dollars. USaid told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian contracts that they cannot speak to the media - all requests from reporters must go through Washington. Mary McClymont, CEO of InterAction, calls the demands &quot;unprecedented&quot; and says: &quot;It looks like the NGOs aren&apos;t independent and can&apos;t speak for themselves about what they see and think.&quot; ...&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;81ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T19:40:51-05:00publishA Pinhole Documentary&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Tom Lindsay, Diagnosis: Cancer&quot; href=&quot;http://www.pinhole.com/exhibits/cancer/index.php?page=intro&quot;&gt;Tom Lindsay, Diagnosis: Cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;going to catch up on a little bit of queued blogging...&lt;/p&gt;80ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T19:34:03-05:00publishphone->email&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;photolist&quot; href=&quot;http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/photolist&quot;&gt;photolist&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://lightningfield.com&quot;&gt;david gallagher&lt;/a&gt;&apos;s photos, delivered straight to your inbox. very cul concept. a little too voyer for me to enact. heh.&lt;/p&gt;79ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T18:41:53-05:00publishpowazek's ephemera.org&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.ephemera.org/stuff/fly.gif&quot; align=&quot;left&quot; /&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Ephemera: Photos by Derek Powazek&quot; href=&quot;http://www.ephemera.org/&quot;&gt;Ephemera: Photos by Derek Powazek&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;amazing stuff&lt;/p&gt;77ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-16T12:50:46-05:00publishintegration research kickoff at fifteen&lt;p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/fifteen/london_04_01_03.jpg&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fifteenrestaurant.com/fifteen/index.html&quot;&gt;fifteen&lt;/a&gt;. no &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamieoliver.co.uk/diary/&quot;&gt;jamie&lt;/a&gt; though.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/fifteen/london_04_01_04.jpg&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btinternet.com/~smallritual/&quot;&gt;steve&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://theyblinked.com/blog&quot;&gt;dan&lt;/a&gt; discuss something profound.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/fifteen/london_04_01_05.jpg&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;love&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/fifteen/london_04_01_06.jpg&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;blurry interior of the bar area we were in. i never did make it downstairs to check out the proper restaurant.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/fifteen/london_04_01_07.jpg&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adambaxter.co.uk/&quot;&gt;adam&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://christianconnection.co.uk/&quot;&gt;jackie&lt;/a&gt;. it was an all-&lt;a href=&quot;http://freshworship.org&quot;&gt;grace&lt;/a&gt; crowd at the kickoff. but we had a blast.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_01/london/fifteen/london_04_01_08.jpg&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;it&apos;s the one at the end.&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/p&gt;76ImaginingDaniel2004-01-16T11:11:04-05:00publishsmallritual: The visit of the Magi&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btinternet.com/~smallritual/magi.html&quot;&gt;The visit of the Magi&lt;/a&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&amp;passage=Matthew+2%3A1-12&amp;version=NIV&quot;&gt;Matthew 2:1-12&lt;/a&gt;] &lt;p&gt;what do you read for signs of god&apos;s presence?&lt;br /&gt; does your interest go down as well as up?&lt;br /&gt; can you spot a good investment?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;have you outsourced your spirituality?&lt;br /&gt; do you call in consultants to tell you where the christ might be found?&lt;br /&gt; do you really want to know?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;how far would you go to see god?&lt;br /&gt; would you come down to the ground floor lobby?&lt;br /&gt; as far as the tube station?&lt;br /&gt; as far as brighton?&lt;br /&gt; would you stand all the way?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;would you switch off your phone in the stable?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;how much would you spend on presents?&lt;br /&gt; would you give christ a golden hello?&lt;br /&gt; 10% of pre-tax earnings?&lt;br /&gt; a tip for the markets?&lt;br /&gt; a few more stables and a derby winner?&lt;br /&gt; would you buy shares in his suffering or sell him cheap when the market falls?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;how far would you go to oppose god?&lt;br /&gt; who would you kill? and how many?&lt;br /&gt; is your intelligence good?&lt;br /&gt; do you know which safe house the christ-child is in?&lt;br /&gt; do you ask how many others are in the building?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;in whose game are you a pawn?...&lt;/blockquote&gt;fucking brilliant stuff from Steve...&lt;/p&gt;75ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-15T19:51:48-05:00publishthoughts, memories&lt;p&gt;Waiting for the plane to taxi and depart Heathrow. Thoughts; memories.&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Writing by hand blog entries, on the back of print-outs of others&apos; blogs.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;It&apos;s not journalling anymore. It&apos;s &lt;em&gt;meatspace blogging&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Writing markup while meatspace blogging. Just &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; time.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Probably my first trip in years w/o my computer. Withdrawal.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;PDA-accessed wifi from somewhere in the center of Victoria station mall.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;My habit of mimicking the local speech wherever I am annoys me in England, where the accent tends to default to pseudo-high-english. I don&apos;t mind picking up phrases and such (like &quot;right&quot; or &quot;isn&apos;t it&quot; or &quot;rather&quot; or &quot;quite&quot; or &quot;and such&quot;), just want to talk like my own damn American self.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;British people/society has at least as many annoying characteristics as American. European even more. And similarly, despite their beauty, Eastern European woman will break your heart.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Need a new fucking pen this one is total crap!&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;No serendipitous moments this trip. None. Which is a first. Did fall in love at first sight w/ some European on the tube. She had the most perfect lips I have ever seen. I wondered if she was a good kisser. I fantasized about finding out, and then 30 years later sitting on our veranda in southern Spain with our 12 children.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I never made eye contact w/ her.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;Now back in the States.&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Maybe Americans do annoy me the most still.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;But God it&apos;s nice to actually be able to buy something with your money!&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Time to dispense with the foolish fantasizing if life is really about to take the dramatic turn it looks like it&apos;s making&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;That is all.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Do I really look like a copper?&lt;/p&gt;74MinutiaDaniel2004-01-15T19:39:58-05:00publishoutside spirituality&lt;p&gt;And what of this spirituality of/on the outside? What is a spiritual life? Dan mentioned an Abrahamic spirituality:&lt;blockquote&gt;Live your life. Move around. Have children. Let Pharoh fuck your wife so he makes you rich. Do the crazy stuff like cut off your own foreskin!&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;color:white;&quot;&gt;(I was paraphrasing there.)&lt;/div&gt; The thing that struck me was, Abraham didn&apos;t hear from God any more clearly than we do. We have what I believe to be a misconception that back in the day, God spoke to the old testament dudes clearly, audibly, in a way infinately less deniably the voice of God than in the manner we &quot;hear&quot; from him now. But I don&apos;t think that was the case. Abraham committed dramatic and violent self-mutilation with the same amount of direction and from the same level of faith that is available to us today. That&apos;s pretty wild when I think about it, and it has dire consequences for living by faith today. What might the spirit lead us to do in 2004? Undoubtably to just live our lives, and do crazy shit.&lt;/p&gt;73MinutiaDaniel2004-01-14T19:27:42-05:00publishinside/outside&lt;p&gt;Saturday we attended &lt;a href=&quot;http://freshworship.org&quot;&gt;Grace&lt;/a&gt;. There was a service, abeit a guest presenter (for lack of a better word), as January is a difficult month for which to prepare something. At the conclusion there was the sale of merch, &quot;The book is a tener,&quot; sheepishly spoken from the platform. There were ample amounts of wine and brie, my favorite cheese, afterwards.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sunday we didn&apos;t attend &lt;a href=&quot;http://vaux.net&quot;&gt;Vaux&lt;/a&gt;. We met for a few pints, there were apologies and talk of christmas/new years hangovers and not wanting to simply be in the &quot;service industry.&quot; We spoke of informational dynamics, creative analytics, fundamental structural subversion, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0865475369/qid=1074212437/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-5757096-9752165?v=glance&amp;s=books&quot;&gt;trickster&lt;/a&gt;, divorce, babies.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div style=&quot;color:white;&quot;&gt;From which experience did I leave abuzz with inpiration and peace? That isn&apos;t even a rhetorical question. There is no answer.&lt;/div&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theyblinked.com/blog&quot;&gt;Dan&lt;/a&gt; can say it much better, but there is a fundamental truth that those in and supported by established structures cannot enact true change because their identities are at least in part constituted by their sustainment by the system.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;After the pints, as Dan and I prepared to return to our dive, we spoke of the trajectories of our particular communities stateside, and I commented, &quot;The last thing we deconstructed was that we had to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; anything at all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Note to self: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684838273/qid=1074212084/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/102-5757096-9752165&quot;&gt;Letter and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Both Kester &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; Dan can say it much better, but these structures, these institutions, must be completely broken down and disseminated, spread out into and through individuals. &lt;div style=&quot;color:#ccc;&quot;&gt;I say must, but don&apos;t really mean it.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;There surely is a place for the Jonnys and Andrews of the church, for the Sharptons of politics, for the U2s and Palahniuks of culture. The insiders. But true change, lasting creativity, will be formed from the outside, where there are no resources to maintain, no power to be wielded. It is a paradox not easily dealt with, a party line with no party, a belief with no religion, a culture with no constituency. But I have come to understand that, at present, I am called to be outside. Eventually, of course, that outside will be assimilated, as all those mentioned have been. I hope that starting out on the outside will build a mental trickery that never really allows for a complete and shameless absorption.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://integrationresearch.org&quot;&gt;IR&lt;/a&gt; is all about creating new structures for sustainability on the outside; but eventually its success will mean that they simply become the new inside. I guess we&apos;ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime we are called, in the meantime we will enact. &lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;72MinutiaDaniel2004-01-13T19:23:23-05:00publishpics&lt;p&gt;If you go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btinternet.com/~smallritual/&quot;&gt;smallritual&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;, you can see some pics of dan and i.&lt;/p&gt;71MinutiaDaniel2004-01-12T13:15:09-05:00publisheurope, greed, selfishness, etc.&lt;p&gt;Well it&apos;s safe to say my European fetish has expired. As much as I wanted to live here for the last 10 years, as much as I planned on moving to London if BiH/{} didn&apos;t work out, I have changed so much since August, my life has changed so dramatically since then, things that seemed important then or before seem so petty. I don&apos;t care where I&apos;ll live, and I still don&apos;t know where I will live. It could be the cold and dark of London, it could be the hot and bright of Florida. I just want to live a simple life. I just want to share that life with someone who loves me, and to love them in return. I just want to pursue my &quot;art&quot; (&quot;heheh&quot;), do my part to make this world a better place for all people, not just myself. And as soon as I begin to think that I need this particular person, thing, a certain amount of money, or to live in a particular place or culture, then I am looking no further than my own self, my own selfishness and greed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I started to realize this as soon as we moved to BiH. We (and {} still is) lived an upper-class life of excess and privilege. And I wasn&apos;t more content or happy for it. In fact I was less so. I found myself drawn to the lower-class everyman, making friends with the artists and cultural creatives of SA. Amazingly, like in the US, there is a vibrant subculture of just such subversive tricksters in BiH, throwing contingencies into the national culture of betrayal and violence.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Now that I find myself at the crossroads of God&apos;s contingencies for my life, unsure from what I shall earn my living, where I will reside, with whom I might be able to share the rest of my life with &lt;font color=&quot;white&quot;&gt;(for all I can hope from God is that I am never thusly betrayed again, He knows my heart is too weak)&lt;/font&gt;, as I am haunted by the ghosts of the past, the dreams and plans of yesterday, the lives that will no longer be lived, I find myself with, again, these simple desires, this deconstructed life, this broken man thrown on the mercies of God.&lt;/p&gt;70MinutiaDaniel2004-01-12T13:05:04-05:00publishand nothing like the subject of this quote&lt;blockquote&gt;...Florida is like all these jagged pieces thrown into the same bag.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theyblinked.com/blog&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;69QuotableDaniel2004-01-10T13:00:50-05:00publishit's quite nice here&lt;p&gt;Love is a finicky beast. Tame it.&lt;/p&gt;68MinutiaDaniel2004-01-10T12:40:58-05:00publishgreetings from the UK&lt;p&gt;The flyer on the right should say January 30, &lt;strong&gt;2004&lt;/strong&gt;. --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;67AnnouncementsDaniel2004-01-10T12:33:31-05:00publishrlp&lt;blockquote&gt;Let&apos;s do life. We&apos;re going to be fine.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/2004/01/07.html#a248&quot;&gt;rlp&lt;/a&gt;66QuotableDaniel2004-01-07T19:35:54-05:00publishsong for the meanies (prelim)&lt;p&gt;song for the meanies&lt;br /&gt; © 2004 daniel miller&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;how do they sleep at night?&lt;br /&gt; how do they live with themselves?&lt;br /&gt; it don’t matter that they think they’re right&lt;br /&gt; cuz they’re gonna end up in hell&lt;br /&gt; but&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;we’re gonna go to heaven&lt;br /&gt; gonna have a good time up in heaven&lt;br /&gt; gonna mix up spirit bread with soul leaven&lt;br /&gt; cuz we’re gonna go to heaven&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;this is a song for the meanies&lt;br /&gt; this is a song for the proud&lt;br /&gt; always makin the scene rea-&lt;br /&gt; sons drowned out by their loud,&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;over powering voices&lt;br /&gt; never worried bout the dreamers&lt;br /&gt; they’re hurtin&apos; with their choices&lt;br /&gt; but they’re welcome to their schemers&lt;br /&gt; cuz...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;good souls and prophets&lt;br /&gt; who stick their fingers into sockets&lt;br /&gt; we’ll never see our love till we’re out of this plane&lt;br /&gt; we’ll never be considered entirely sane&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;so until that day circle the wagons&lt;br /&gt; avoid the greed like frodo baggins&lt;br /&gt; dance around naked like the kings of lore&lt;br /&gt; it don’t matter if we’ll always be poor&lt;br /&gt; cuz...&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;65MusicDaniel2004-01-07T18:50:33-05:00publishold lady death&lt;p&gt;We were just chillin&apos; in my apartment, affectionally known as &quot;the hole,&quot; but made much less so by her presence. It was about three in the morning, and we sat on the bed next to each other, I writing lyrics on the computer, she with her head on my shoulder, quiet thoughts no doubt bouncing around the infinite depths of her mind.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And then, a shadow appeared at the door.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;That shadow wasn&apos;t there before, was it?&quot; I inquired.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;No.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ok.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I tried to ignore it while I continued with my writing, but it was difficult--the shadow was clearly seven feet tall, thin. I imagined &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=63&quot;&gt;the song I had written my first night in the hole&lt;/a&gt; was perhaps becoming a reality. Not that I would have cared either way.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;After completing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=000065&quot;&gt;lyrical composition&lt;/a&gt;, the shadow remained. Wilco&apos;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005YXZH/qid=1073518950/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/104-1597650-4722308&quot;&gt;YFH&lt;/a&gt; was playing on the ipod, through computer speakers, and all its noises and tweaks ran through my brain like a halloween soundrack.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So I opened the door.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Standing outside was an incredibly old woman, no taller than 5&apos;6&quot;, with ragged clothes and a huge blonde bird-nest for hair. Her facial features were completely exaggerated; her nose practically touched me with its reach, her chin stuck out (not unlike my own), her fingers dangled long and loose.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We examined each other for a few seconds.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;She spoke. I am still not sure what she said, all I could process was the fact that her voice was horrible, like a septic breeze by the highway; and she was threatening me in some way.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I said, &quot;In the peace and name of Jesus my Lord, please be on your way.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;She, in that same voice, &quot;No. That is in whom I come to you now.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I, &quot;Ok.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;She, &quot;Come with me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I stepped over the threshold of the hole and directly into a diner. It was &lt;a href=&quot;http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~mriddell/docs/spirituality_jesus_at_the_diner.doc&quot;&gt;strangely familar&lt;/a&gt;. A dilapidated man in his early 30&apos;s sat alone in a booth by the window, and somehow I knew I was to join him.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We chatted for some time, like those who meet for the first time but have a certain affinity.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He, &quot;{}&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I, &lt;em&gt;&quot;I know, right?!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He, &quot;{}&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I, &quot;I know, what the fuck was I thinking? That is so fucking low. So low. God.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He, &quot;{}&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I, &quot;Cool. Thanks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And then it was time to go. He motioned to the waitress to put it on his tab, and she nodded knowingly. I followed him through the opposite door.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As we took the first few steps through the parking lot, I saw the old lady standing on the far side. She waved as a delivery truck rattled down the road behind her. I noticed that she was as ugly as ever, but no longer frighteningly so.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I had the thought, That will be the last time I see something so ugly, or so beautiful, ever again.&lt;/p&gt;64FictionDaniel2004-01-07T18:23:32-05:00publishthe man in black&lt;p&gt;The man in black (is comin’ for me)&lt;br /&gt; © 2003 daniel miller&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The man in black is comin’ down the road&lt;br /&gt; He don’t carry no sickle, ain’t dressed in no cloak&lt;br /&gt; But I know why he’s comin’ this way&lt;br /&gt; I know with his type there’s nothing left to say &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He’s right there, knockin’ at my door&lt;br /&gt; He’s not mad or sad, no need to be sore&lt;br /&gt; Pullin’ that six shooter out of its holster&lt;br /&gt; Blowin’ my insides back all over that poster&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sorry, pin-up girl, my time had come&lt;br /&gt; The man in black is blockin’ out the sun&lt;br /&gt; Now I’m already halfway ‘cross the river Styx&lt;br /&gt; When it comes to life and death, ‘aint nobody picks&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;He’s comin’ for me&lt;br /&gt; Man in black, can’t you see&lt;br /&gt; We don’t choose the time or place&lt;br /&gt; We don’t get no time to plead our case&lt;br /&gt; He’s comin’ for me&lt;br /&gt; He’s comin’ for me&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Now after Jesus I hope to see&lt;br /&gt; Johnny Cash, Sid Vicious and Jeff Buckley&lt;br /&gt; But if a darker, more fiery place is for me&lt;br /&gt; I’ll be cryin’ next to Hilter and president 43&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;63MusicDaniel2004-01-07T18:10:57-05:00publishthe moon<p>I had just pulled into the parking lot. <a href="http://www.alwaysontherun.net/coldplay.htm#r5">Coldplay</a> was playing on the radio, so I sat and absorbed. The sunroof was closed but the inside cover was open, and I looked up to find a full moon pouring light into my small cabin. </p> <p>I stared at it.</p> <p>The Man In The Moon winked at me. At first I didn&apos;t see him. Then his eyes formed, then nose and mouth...he has blotchy cheeks like an old man or a drunkard, or both. I just smiled at him, wondering what he was thinking. He stared me down, telling me with his eyes that he saw everything and that Everything Was Going To Be Ok, Figuratively Speaking.</p> <p>Then it happened. The moon began to grow. It was subtle at first--I could blink my eyes and it would go back to its normal size. But after a few blinks it was undeniable--the moon was growing.</p> <p>Or more accurately--getting closer.</p> <p>Its trajectory was definitely in our direction, and its velocity increasing exponentially.</p> <p>I thought: "This is great! Something no one could predict! A major trick the universe played on all our brilliant minds, on all our brilliant plans...the moon is just going to smack right into the Earth!"</p> <p>I enjoyed watching it grow closer and closer. The Man On The disappeared into a number of large craters and canyons. Mountain-like topography became clear to the eye.</p> <p>And somehow, it continued to glow, bright as ever. It never occured to me at the time that more of the earth should have been interfering with the sun&apos;s reflection.</p> <p>But it wasn&apos;t. The moon just continued to come at us--come at me--although honestly not directly at me, it was hard to tell if the surface area of its impact would cover my at-present geography--in all its bright glory.</p> <p>Brighter and brighter and closer and closer. </p> <p>And I just grinned in pure enjoyment. </p> <p>Bring it on, baby.</p> <p>And that was it. The day the moon crashed into the earth. January 6, 2004.</p>62FictionDaniel2004-01-06T20:59:22-05:00publishalso please note&lt;p&gt;daniel miller band, friday jan 30 at the red lion -- &lt;a href=&quot;images/2004_01/redlion_flyer_01_04.jpg&quot;&gt;flyer&lt;/a&gt; over there --&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;-- if i die, my will is now in the friggin&apos; menu. i won&apos;t care cuz i&apos;ll be DEED, but just thought it would be a good idea to update. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;also, vaux is NOT doing anything jan 11th (this is in regard to the IR invitation flyer thingie below), except having a couple pints with us...heheh...so don&apos;t show up in Vauxhall expecting anything more than that.&lt;/p&gt;60AnnouncementsDaniel2004-01-04T22:14:15-05:00publishu r invited&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://integrationresearch.org/images/invite2004_big.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://integrationresearch.org/images/invite2004_small.png&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;59AnnouncementsDaniel2004-01-04T15:44:31-05:00publishtech predictor success matrix&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;ongoing Technology Predictor Success Matrix&quot; href=&quot;http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/01/03/TPM1&quot;&gt;Technology Predictor Success Matrix&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;mostly for dan and my future reference...&lt;/p&gt;58ElsewhereDaniel2004-01-04T13:28:32-05:00publishregret&lt;blockquote&gt;Show me someone without regrets and I&apos;ll show you someone with a memory problem.&lt;/blockqu