Downtown Ditties

I am in love with the series of books called "Petit Pattern Books," published by a Japanese company BNN. Basically, books with tons of designs, complete with attached CDs of the different patterns in that book so you can manipulate them (if you want) using Photoshop. The creative possibilities are endless, and each book has a unique theme! (See some examples on Amazon).

I found them in the MOCA store after seeing the Murakami exhibit, as well as some really intriguing works by Gordon Matta-Clark. Really enjoyed both exhibits, and the happy colors Murakami used made me quite cheery in turn. How can you be sad when you see something like this?



However, my favorites were definitely Tan Tan Bo Puking and the animation, Planting the Seeds starring Kaikai and KiKi.

Kiki looks exactly like my sister, it's hilarious (minus the third eye).

Overall, a splendid day exploring Los Angeles and museum-ing. Time to go make some stuff.

50 Brasilian Songs You Gotta Listen to Before You Die

From a UK magazine, Jungle Drums, that I picked up in London.

Check out the playlist here.

I love Gene Kelly

It's Always Fair Weather (1955)




Watch the movie; Cyd Charisse's number in the boxing studio is wunderbar.

Also, I know I have lots to update on about Europe. Pictures to come...
Have a very Merry Christmas.

The Adoration of the Shepherds.
Anton Raphael Mengs

(And, read about the real St. Nick)

[Edit: The French subtitles in the clip were unexpected. But a nice touch.]

Moi, a published author?

Sort of.

Educate yourself here.
The 2007 issue of Geneflow, a magazine that promotes awareness of agricultural biodiversity.

There are a few articles I wrote in the climate change special section, and a majority of the remaining articles were penned by Megan. A definite labor of love :)

Important environmental issues affecting...everybody, really.

Czech it out!

mahler's ninth

"Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,

and let it divide the waters from the waters"

[oxford] thoughts

He walked with her to the station, passing through those streets whose serried beauty never bewildered him and never fatigued. The lovely creature raised domes and spires into the cloudless blue, and only the ganglion of vulgarity round Carfax showed how evanescent was the phantom, how faint its claim to represent England.

-E.M. Foster, Howards End

Mr. Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.