New Year's Eve was... painful.
As almost everybody knows, I have a dog. He's huge and fat and strong as a bull. He's my best friend. So. Last night, from 6 pm and even before up until midnight and past it, my best friend was so afraid of the world outside the house that he couldn't lie still, couldn't look me in the eyes, couldn't urinate even. All last night my best friend wandered inside the house, trying to find a place to hide, a place where he would feel safe from the noise outside. He was trashing blindly in little corners and under furniture, knocking things over, stepping on things. He was jumping against walls and doors, searching for another corner of the house he hadn't yet checked. He was so in panic that he bit me, just because I wanted to stop him from climbing up my bookshelf because he thought there might be a door there. He never even jumps at door handles, knowing very well that people open the doors for him. It's like I didn't even know him anymore, like he was a whole different person. And he certainly didn't recognice me or anybody anymore. New Year's Eve was over 6 hours of fear and agitation for him. Today morning he could barely get up, he was so utterly exhausted.

I do not understand what fun can a few crummy rockets give to a person: you go out to the cold, fire your explosives (that were hideously overprized) to the sky and that's it. I understand a professionally done pyroshow can be amazing, art even. A professionally done pyroshow, such as one most likely arranged by the city, would take place in city centre, not above my house. And fireworks arranged by professionals would last... how long? No longer than an hour? Definitely not 6 hours.

Next year, I would implore all animal-liking people to refrain from buying fireworks, and going to an arranged, professional show instead. A small grievance for an individual would make the world of difference to others.

So uhm, I hope you all had a happier start for the new year. Make a difference with this year, even if only to yourselves.

And here's my resolution: I will try my level best to eat something new (a dish, a brand of a product, or a something), something I haven't tried before, at least once every week. To keep an open mind, and to have a sense of adventure this year.

I'd have a kid if someone promised to be it'd be as cool as this one!
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Well I'll be... there is a klingon version of Wikipedia. o.O
http://tlh.wikipedia.org/wiki/ghItlh%27a%27

"There was a curious outbreak of contagious laughter in 1962 in Tanganyika that lasted for six months and affected thousands of people."

1. My dissertation research rules.
2. We gotta do that! Lets make contagious laughter! How utterly awesome would it be to laugh for six months!

Dissertation-link but no harm in you guys having a peepo:
http://www.aath.org/articles/index.html
AATH is the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humour. There are some wonderful essays and papers there about humour and laughter, looking from a healthy point of view.

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Fantastic. Might mean that I have to start watching Babylon 5 too.

More Yahoo!-radio updatage. :P
I was put in my place by Yahoo!-radio. >_>
A song I didn't know by a band I didn't know came up, and I went "whoa, hear that Sex Pistols influence on the vocals! This guy sounds like Johnny Rotten!"
The band was Public Image Ltd. >.<
*ish a bad punk*

From the series "100 reasons to love the Barenaked Ladies", entry #59, quote from their song "Pinch Me":
I could sleep under there /
I just made you say underwear /

XD It took me about 3 minutes to get that, and when I did I exploded. XD

Moomin

http://www.geocities.com/lindashippert/moomin/moominnf.html

Uff, yesterday's rant looks really snobbish when read in a not-murderous-rage -state of mind. So for the record, I wasn't meaning to be snobby, I just got defensive. The arty artists generally don't scoff at outsider art (individuals are a different case as always), since most of them/us started that way or still enjoy doing that kind of stuff or find it absolutely wonderful that there is all this unconventional work produced outside the canon, and for the life of me I can't understand why the amateurs don't return the courtecy. Art is thwarted enough by Very Important People as it is, it doesn't help that people of different viewpoints within the creative arts try to fuck each other over. Saying "I don't like this piece of work because..." or "it's good but just not my cup of tea" is fine, people have opinions; saying "that's not art, I deserve all the money and they don't" is utter shit and gets me on my hind legs.

On a happier note, I'm going to (try) stay in Coventry to do my Masters. :) So another year (at least) of England. :) Heck, wouldn't mind doing a PhD around here somewhere ^^;
And then I'd feed it to my non-guiding stupid twat of a guidance councellor saying "thanks for all the bloomin' fish" xP

Long rant. Get offended, then get over it. Or go do my new poll. :)

Comment from a wiki
... however it makes me mad to see people that go to an airport turn on a jet engine have a giant canvas sittng behind it and then throw buckets of paint into the jet stream and turn around and sell it for a quarter million dollars!!! THAT is the sort of thing that makes me upset... because in about 30 mins they can have a completed mess they dub art while i sit for 7-10 hours or more and draw a pic that is life like with my pencils and cannot get ore than $40.00 for it! sad! *gets off soap box and tries to cool down*

I just love it when people fail to see the point. When people are so busy being a smart aleck that they don't stop to think.
Firstly, go to an airport with an empty canvas and a bucket of paint. Did they throw you out for being a terrorist? Thought as much. Let's try again. Arrange the thing before hand. Call up some big-wig airport person to ask permission to come do your piece of art in their jet engine. What, took you 3 days to reach the right person, and they said no? You had to find someone else to call? They also said no? Bummer isn't it? Another go, you need to convince them. Sit on your desk, thinking and planning this particular piece of art. What does it mean to you? Why are you making a painting this way, letting a jet engine blow the paint on the canvas? Do you know about the other artists in history who have worked with randomness, machinery-creating-art and concepts of paint splatter? How does your work relate to that? How can you communicate your ideas, your meaning to the big-wig who needs to let you use their jet engine? I'll tell you how: you need to be professional: be serious about your work, communicate your idea and meaning to others, persevere and answer their questions. When you do that, and they let you lend their jet engine for 30 minutes (during which you will not succeed to get the painting you are making, and you will need to repeat the process 50 times - spending a lot of money on paint and canvasses), you are involving these people from a whole different industry in the process of making art, which they have never ever done before and their lives will change.
In the end the entire process took over 3 months, a lot of talking and arranging with other people, communicating, thinking. And that means a lot more than when you sit in your cosy little bedroom and make a doodle.

The reason your scribble doesn't get more than 40 dollars is because it means nothing. People have scribbled on paper with pencil for hundreds of years. And they all did it better than you and had meaning. Yours is life-like? Fuck, I can take a digital picture of absolutely anything in less than 5 seconds and it's lifelike. Real art transforms us or the way we see our world or even the world itself. A pretty picture does nothing, it doesn't even make you think. Pretty pictures are like porn. Porn has its uses, prettu pictures have theirs. But neither is art. (They have potential to be art, but when they are made art, they cease to be porn/pretty pictures).

In the end, you, dear commentor, are not an artist, you are an illustrator. And there are five million professional illustrators who can do what you do, but they are better and they are professionals. What is the opposite of professional? Amateur. You are a sunday driver complaining about Ferrari not begging you to drive Formula 1 for them.

Did Marcel Duchamp smile or giggle when working on his hilarious picture, the Large Glass?
("The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, even" --> even = meme --> m'aime = loves me --> "the Bride, Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Loves Me")

What do I look like when working on my art?
Art transforms people. Does that apply to people making it as well as people looking at it, or only one or the other? If both, how has my work transformed me? (Duh, easy answer!)

Remember, the picture is not the end in itself, it is only a medium! What matters is my world communicated through that picture, so picture-making methods are irrelevant.

Biophilia. Pleasure of observing nature and it's quirks, unrepetitiveness.
Machinaphilia (to coin a term?). Pleasure of observing mechanical contraptions, perpetual motion machines (perpetuum mobile, ikiliikkuja), et cetera.

Is there a hierarchy? Which one is the greater pleasure? Which one is more divine? Which one is a more human pleasure: the pleasure or irregularity, or the pleasure of regularity?
From my point of view, it is of course machinaphilia that is greater, for the nature in all its intricate detail is not a work of art. A machine then is? It is at least man-made, and no other animal creates art. True enough, art can be created by natural means - a garden can be the work of art by its gardener, gardening is not a futile excercise in that sense. But a forest is not art. A garden created to appear forest-like is. It's intention that counts towards art, and nature has no intention, no meaning. It goes through its cycles without caring for anything it touches. It is aloof. Art is not, never. Art can't be made in a vacuum. If you create a masterpiece and put it in your closet and never show it to anyone, you are not an artist and it is not a work of art until it is seen. It doesn't exist before it is seen.
            But the machine is not created for the sake of art, it is there to fill a purpose. It is not meant to be seen.Yet when it is seen, it can be observed, it can teach. It has distanced itself far enough from the world to have the kind of perfection that nature can never have. It works its way through its cycles with a sense of purpose, for it was created to do what it is doing. If no one sees it, it still has a purpose. If someone does see it and if awed by its workings, it has become a work of art.
            If someone were to create a work of art that's purpose was to observe the sky (the viewer would lie down and observe the clouds or stars above him) - the sky in the context of art - would that be a greater piece of art than a machine? The sky would have the meaning of art, there for the viewer to receive if the he so pleases. And we accept that the machine inherently has this meaning. Which one would be the greater experience: the machine or the sky in context of art, sky that has meaning?

What is the most important piece of furniture in a home?

"There are, for instance, the simple pleasures of watching the movement of clouds across a sky, the play of ripples in water or the movement of wind in leaves. There are examples from many societies of people going to some lengths to contrive situations in which such pleasures can be visited at will or even to cultivate a sort of connoisseurship of their delights. How else can we explain keeping birds in cages or fish in tanks, or the many elaborations of gardening, both indoors and out, that most cultures have developed? Part of the joy of such spectacles is surely the tension afforded to the viewer between the expected and the unexpected. One can know the characteristic form of development of a particular plant, for instance, or the characteristic pattern of movement of a particular species of fish, or butterfly, but one can never anticipate quite how any given leaf or flower will arrange itself against its neighbor (Fig. 1), or precisely what direction any given movement will take. One may well know the cuteness of a kitten, and it is perhaps its very familiarity that endears one to the sight of it. Yet the chief charm of watching a litter of kittens at play is the unpredictability of their interactions with each other and their environment. In other words, one derives a great part of the pleasure not from capturing a passing moment in some near-eternal form but, on the contrary, from the continuing surprise of watching how each moment evolves into the next. The very evanescence of the event forms part of the attraction. This phenomenon, christened "biophilia" by biologist Edward O. Wilson..."

Biophilia. :)

The new emotion thing makes it easier to tell which people are cool. A lot of people have already proved themselves uncool.
*dislikes the jittery loadage of pages even more now since it has to load all those stupid faces that could just as well be represented with ASCII that takes half the time to load*

Whatev, but I'll delete all comments with emoticons on the wikis I own.

19:28:27 ******: you can check The badge reward system (if correct) for the number you need as [Hedda] said they need to be good but [Sunrose] hates people competing against eachother so dont do that either just my experience on the matter

19:46:51 Sunrose: Err don't say things on my behalf please. Reporting and badges are not about my personal preferences. If someone made enough good reports they will receive the badge because they earned it.
As for my personal preferences, I dislike it when members just do stuff to get the badges. Trying to make a competition out of who reported the most members also completely misses the point of reporting.
I don't think that that is what this member is doing though, that was you actually.



Owned! XD
(Sorry, couldn't resist it :P)

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