Time

"...All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

-- Gandalf

(geeky quote, but very sage advice nonetheless.)

Test post.

Trying out my new phone. Plz ignore this.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Oh, Glenn Beck... WHY do you exist?

High School Notebook Remix-Redux

Title: High School Notebook Remix-Redux: The Thorns of Life
Year: 199? and 2009
Media: paper, ink, various newspaper and magazine clippings, cellophane tape, and digital re-composition
Dimensions: approx. 6 in. X 9 in.

Scanned an old collage from an old high school notebook, which I then disassembled & re-assembled digitally in Photoshop.

Sometimes

Sometimes I feel so much and it overwhelms me, and there isn't anything I can do about it except ride it out & know that it will pass.

'The Essential Kenny G'... must be a blank CD.

"Heavy is the head that eats the crayons." -- Tracy Jordan

Breaktime = Mostly pointless. Meh.

Nothing

Not sure I have anything to contribute to this dialogue, anymore.

Art in Second Life - Dying out?

Brooklyn Is Watching seems to be pretty much dead in the water (the former weekly podcasts just aren't happening, the blog updates are becoming less and less frequent).

Now the Not Possible In Real Life blog is being discontinued.

So, what's going on? Is the art community of Second Life just going through a slump - or has the golden age of art in SL coming to an end? Is this pattern indicative of a downturn of Second Life in general?

Paralyzed

"You do not know how paralyzing that staring at a blank canvas is; it says to the painter, You can't do anything."

- Vincent Van Gogh, Letter #378 (to his brother Theo), October 1884

Quote of the day

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

- Samuel Johnson

...and this is why I haven't been making art lately.

(Although this is about writing, the same principles apply to my current situation.)

So You Want To Be A Writer

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

-- Charles Bukowski

(P.S. -- I can't remember if I have posted this before. Blogger's being a cunt and isn't cooperating, so searching my blog to see if this is a duplicate post has proven futile... arggghhh.)

@ the Met this weekend

I'll be in NYC on Saturday, October 3rd, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If anybody else is going to be out that way & wants to meet there, let me know.

It is becoming clear to me that I have 2 choices (regarding art especially): EVOLVE or fucking DIE.

Etsy

Starting an Etsy shop:

http://www.etsy.com/profile.php?user_id=8125546

Nothing there yet, but there will be. Oh yes, there WILL be.

'The Lost Symbol'

Notice my 'optimistic' (read: sarcastic) prediction-- 1,000,000,000,000³

Maybe

Maybe someday soon I'll actually do a serious post about art... or what I've been up to in the past several weeks... or whatever.

Maybe.

Oeufs en cocotte recipe

I can't take credit for this recipe - my roommate-slash-BFFF read about it in the book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell and came up with this version. It's still one of my favorite breakfast-y things to make.

Preheat oven to about 360-ish F. I don't have a digital display, so I just estimate it to be somewhere between 350 and 375 F.

Gather stuff -- 4 oz. ramekins; a baking dish to put them in (for the water bath); butter; cream cheese (or whatever soft cheese-esque product you'd prefer to use); salt; pepper; eggs; herbs (here I've used fresh-snipped chives from the backyard -- mmm). There are endless variations you could do with this recipe.

Butter the ramekins and add a chunk of cream cheese to the bottom of each.

Spread the cream cheese around to cover the bottoms of the ramekins.

Crack an egg into each ramekin over the cheese.

Add salt, pepper, & herbs. The ramekins go in a bigger baking dish; add boiling water to the baking dish for a water bath. Fill it as high as possible without spilling too ridiculously & put into the oven. I usually set the baking dish onto the oven rack first and then fill it with boiling water.

Cook the eggs for about 13-15 minutes or until desired done-ness. Ideally, the whites should be mostly set but soft, and the yolk runny. Mmmmm.

Serve with whatever. I made toast and sauteed potatoes with onions & herbs. Oh, make sure to serve the eggies with a spoon; you'll want every last molecule, believe me.

Arthole is closing.

It is with regret we announce the closure of Arthole on September 30th 2009.

We are unfortunately unable to dedicate the necessary time to the gallery anymore, and for a number of other reasons feel it is time to move on and go our separate ways. We are enormously proud of what we've achieved over the last sixteen months and are very grateful for all the support from our members and the incredible talents of guest artists; Ichibot Nishi, Selavy Oh, Dekka Raymaker and Penumbra Carter.

Thanks also to Lysander Edo and Khamudy Mannonen for donating land, and Amy Freelunch for all her encouragement and enthusiasm.

We will continue to work in Second Life, keep an eye on our respective blogs for news on future projects and exhibitions -
Arahan Claveau
Nebulosus Severine

The final broadcast of Arthole Radio will be on Wednesday 26th August from 1pm Second Life time
(1pm US/PDT / 9pm UK/BST / 4pm US/EDT).

Listen live at the Arthole gallery in Second Life or open this link in your media player.

-Arahan & Nebulosus-