All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. —T. E. Lawrence

Ferenc Pinter (1931 – 2008) was an Italian painter and illustrator. He was born in Liguria to Hungarian father and Italian mother. His name was spelled Pintér Ferenc in Hungarian and he signed most of his works with the Hungarian name order; however in Italy he was known as Ferenc Pintér. In 1940 his family […]

(Art) The Pulp Drama of Ferenc Pinter — Curiomancy (fantastic art + fiction + curiosity)

I’ve been lax in showing off my current crop of ridiculous songs. Here’s the latest three, two of which appear to be part of a larger work.

Eyes Like Walls: soundcloud.com/mysterios…

Their Plan for Us: soundcloud.com/mysterios…

The Click and Rattle of the Abacus: soundcloud.com/mysterios…

First this:

Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707) was a German composer whose organ music is still played today. He was a major influence on a far more famous German composer, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). When Bach was a young man, he decided it was crucial for him to experience Buxtehude's music first-hand. He took a leave of absence from his job and walked over 250 miles to the town where Buxtehude lived. There he received the guidance and inspiration he sought. In 2015, I'd love to see you summon Bach's determination as you go in quest of the teaching you want and need.

And then this:

"If you have built castles in the air," said philosopher Henry David Thoreau, "your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." That may seem like a backward way to approach the building process: erecting the top of the structure first, and later the bottom. But I think this approach is more likely to work for you than it is for any other sign of the zodiac. And now is an excellent time to attend to such a task.

By Silverfish Imperetrix whose incorrupted eye Sees through the charms of doctors and their wives By Salamander Drake and the power that was Undine Rise to claim Saturn, ring and sky By those who see with their eyes closed You’ll know me by my black telescope

Your green tree mantle from which these things derive A lens of quartz and refract scope That crystal lens whose crystal rope once Bound me to those doctors and wives When my vision was oh, so cloudy And I saw things through two eyes

I am a sailor on the raging depths And I know a thing or two Back to the corner, mates, and over the side Yes, I know a thing or two

By Silverfish Imperetrix whose incorrupted eye Sees through the charms of doctors and their wives By Salamander Drake and the power that was Undine Rise to claim Saturn, ring and sky By those who see with their eyes closed You’ll know me by my black telescope

Before my great conversion when the ridge was closed Before my visit to the workshop of telescope

By Silverfish Imperetrix whose incorrupted eye Sees through the charms of doctors and their wives By Salamander Drake and the power that was Undine Rise to claim Saturn, ring and sky By those who see with their eyes closed You’ll know me by my Black telescope

Further to last, I have remedied my computing woes. Results at this link: soundcloud.com/mysterios…

Sunday was a pleasant day to spend around the mostly deserted Thompson dry dock.

Here's some photos of the dry dock and the pump house.

Maybe not worth the tenner the bus tour company are charging, but an unavoidable expense now that the area is all fenced off.

This week’s horoscope is an odd one:

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

If you live on the Danish island of Mando, your only hope for driving your vehicle to the mainland and back is when the tide is low. During those periods, the water often recedes far enough to expose a rough gravel road that’s laid down over a vast mudflat.

Winter storms sometimes make even low-tide passages impossible, though. According to my reading of the astrological omens, Sagittarius, there’s a comparable situation in your life. You can only get from where you are to where you want to go at certain selected times and under certain selected conditions. Make sure you’re thoroughly familiar with those times and conditions.

This week’s horoscope is an odd one:

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

If you live on the Danish island of Mando, your only hope for driving your vehicle to the mainland and back is when the tide is low. During those periods, the water often recedes far enough to expose a rough gravel road that’s laid down over a vast mudflat.

Winter storms sometimes make even low-tide passages impossible, though. According to my reading of the astrological omens, Sagittarius, there’s a comparable situation in your life. You can only get from where you are to where you want to go at certain selected times and under certain selected conditions. Make sure you’re thoroughly familiar with those times and conditions.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The Hebrew word *chalom* means "dream." In his book *Healing Dreams,* Marc Ian Barasch notes that it's derived from the verb "to be made healthy and strong." Linguist Joseph Jastrow says that *chalom* is related to the Hebrew word *hachlama,* which means "recovery, recuperation." Extrapolating from these poetic hints and riffing on your astrological omens, I've got a prescription for you to consider: To build your vitality in the coming weeks, feed your dreams. And I mean "dreams" in both the sense of the nocturnal adventures you have while you're sleeping and the sweeping daytime visions of what you'd like to become.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The Hebrew word *chalom* means "dream." In his book *Healing Dreams,* Marc Ian Barasch notes that it's derived from the verb "to be made healthy and strong." Linguist Joseph Jastrow says that *chalom* is related to the Hebrew word *hachlama,* which means "recovery, recuperation." Extrapolating from these poetic hints and riffing on your astrological omens, I've got a prescription for you to consider: To build your vitality in the coming weeks, feed your dreams. And I mean "dreams" in both the sense of the nocturnal adventures you have while you're sleeping and the sweeping daytime visions of what you'd like to become.

I love this kind of story, where a mother tells her wide-eyed child tales of her own youth, putting all the child’s rebellion in the shade…

I love this kind of story, where a mother tells her wide-eyed child tales of her own youth, putting all the child’s rebellion in the shade…

I mean Tragedy in the sense of not an Epic or a Comedy.  Tragedies tend to be meditations on death, loss and suffering but without any final redemption, whereas Epics, though they touch on the same subjects, end with the protagonist learning an essential truth, becoming stronger for it, and experiencing some form of redemption.
Forgive me if I’m offering you a pre-sucked egg here.

Tragedies can be difficult to sit through and, forgive me for saying this, often seem to be taking themselves far more seriously than necessary.  To quote an esteemed colleague, movies that are hard-going for hard-going’s sake just seem to defeat the purpose…much the same [as] “earnest” movies.
Bill Murray, as one example, has an amazing knack for taking serious, “earnest”, complex roles and injecting both humanity and humour, allowing the viewer to watch and enjoy (because let’s be plain here, we’re not talking about documentaries, we’re talking about work that is designed, marketed and consumed primarily as entertainment) the movie, but which also serves the process of the art much better in that it communicates the human experience involved, adds extra levels of communication between actors and audience and forms connections, bonds, between actors and audience granting those unspoken dimensions a presence onscreen.

As another example I think Deer Hunter was more in the “hard-going for the sake of it” camp, although perhaps it was intended/received as a necessary catharsis for Americans from the Vietnam era, ‘cos heaven knows such a thing was necessary given what the vets experienced both in service and on their return home.

This is in stark contrast with another war movie, Apocalypse Now, which is one of my favourite movies (especially the 45 min longer Redux cut), and, y’know, it barely seems like a war movie at all to me.  I’m a bit of a Joseph Conrad fan, and I really really like the exploration & exposition of personality that his storytelling deals with, and I think Coppola reflected this brilliantly.  The war aspect was just a distracting device through which to explore the otherness of white guys going crackers in the jungle (amongst slightly more weighty topics ;> ).
Better than Romancing the Stone, anyway.

But here, if you fancy some luscious cinematography, find a Russian movie called The Return.  so good.  Also an Epic.  Or its successor, The Banishment, a Tragedy.

I mean Tragedy in the sense of not an Epic or a Comedy.  Tragedies tend to be meditations on death, loss and suffering but without any final redemption, whereas Epics, though they touch on the same subjects, end with the protagonist learning an essential truth, becoming stronger for it, and experiencing some form of redemption.
Forgive me if I’m offering you a pre-sucked egg here.

Tragedies can be difficult to sit through and, forgive me for saying this, often seem to be taking themselves far more seriously than necessary.  To quote an esteemed colleague, movies that are hard-going for hard-going’s sake just seem to defeat the purpose…much the same [as] “earnest” movies.
Bill Murray, as one example, has an amazing knack for taking serious, “earnest”, complex roles and injecting both humanity and humour, allowing the viewer to watch and enjoy (because let’s be plain here, we’re not talking about documentaries, we’re talking about work that is designed, marketed and consumed primarily as entertainment) the movie, but which also serves the process of the art much better in that it communicates the human experience involved, adds extra levels of communication between actors and audience and forms connections, bonds, between actors and audience granting those unspoken dimensions a presence onscreen.

As another example I think Deer Hunter was more in the “hard-going for the sake of it” camp, although perhaps it was intended/received as a necessary catharsis for Americans from the Vietnam era, ‘cos heaven knows such a thing was necessary given what the vets experienced both in service and on their return home.

This is in stark contrast with another war movie, Apocalypse Now, which is one of my favourite movies (especially the 45 min longer Redux cut), and, y’know, it barely seems like a war movie at all to me.  I’m a bit of a Joseph Conrad fan, and I really really like the exploration & exposition of personality that his storytelling deals with, and I think Coppola reflected this brilliantly.  The war aspect was just a distracting device through which to explore the otherness of white guys going crackers in the jungle (amongst slightly more weighty topics ;> ).
Better than Romancing the Stone, anyway.

But here, if you fancy some luscious cinematography, find a Russian movie called The Return.  so good.  Also an Epic.  Or its successor, The Banishment, a Tragedy.

I had no idea colour photography was so old, and to find it used in wartime, right in the trenches, has amazed me.
I’ve seen many, many wartime photos but since every single one of them has been black and white, so these colour images seem retrospectively staged. The colours imply a modernity that jars with the historic nature of the content. Perhaps it’s more difficult to believe they’re real because they seem too real, as if the subjects are actors in period costume, glimpsed on-set in-between takes.
Funny thing, perception.

Here’s the link: www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com.

As a post script, here’s Colour Photography on Wikipedia. I shoulda guessed that this was a gaping hole in my knowledge…

WWI, photography, historic

I've never ever known how a sewing machine works. Perhaps it was machine elves, who knew? This diagram finally opens my eyes.

 

When were sports cars last used for competitive sports?

Surely not since the early seventies? Le Mans and Grand Prix cars have evolved way beyond the possibility for production road versions, and as the 70’s progressed Rally cars also moved away from the sports car model into its current guise of the souped-up and heavily modified saloon car.
Similarly televised motorsport is dominated by the British Touring Car championships, and in States they have Nascar, again using souped-up and heavily modified saloon cars.

Is the sports car, long a classic icon of wealth, elegance and performance, an anacronism? Is it now just a dead-end and flat-out statement of disposable income with little or no redeeming aesthetic or social meaning?

When were sports cars last used for competitive sports?

Surely not since the early seventies? Le Mans and Grand Prix cars have evolved way beyond the possibility for production road versions, and as the 70’s progressed Rally cars also moved away from the sports car model into its current guise of the souped-up and heavily modified saloon car.
Similarly televised motorsport is dominated by the British Touring Car championships, and in States they have Nascar, again using souped-up and heavily modified saloon cars.

Is the sports car, long a classic icon of wealth, elegance and performance, an anacronism? Is it now just a dead-end and flat-out statement of disposable income with little or no redeeming aesthetic or social meaning?

Found this: wow.

strangegrrl’s LiveJournal 19 years ago today was a PD day at my grade school. I was seven years old.

19 years ago today at approx. 10:30am my mother dropped me at my aunt and uncle’s for the weekend.

19 years ago today at approx. 10:30am was the last time I saw my mother alive.

I was the last person in our family to see her alive. I was the last person she hugged and kissed.

19 years ago today at approx. 4:30pm, she died.

Today at approx. 4:30pm we will be receiving the finished books back from the printer.

Your mother used to love to write, dad said before it somehow became the unspoken rule that we couldn’t talk about the past. Today, on the 19th anniversary of her passing, I become an author with my first book in my hands. Your mother used to love to write, and this milestone (despite not saying such in the thank yous or dedications) is above all for her. I miss you, mom.

I don’t need to write the dedications out anymore. The fact that everything I write is for her, is already a given. I love you, mom