yardstick

This image has been making the rounds on facebook:

And it is annoying me.

Being able to recognize Carl Sagan is now the way we measure for intelligence? Really? Both of those people were made famous by television, correct? Being able to name some old turtlenecked astronomer you saw once in college on PBS while stuffing Cheetos in your face and stoned out of your gourd means you're smart now. Well, okay.

But I guess I must have different standards than some sci-fi hipster geek making LOL Sagans in his mother's basement. Allow me to demonstrate:

If you don't know who painted this (AND, for bonus points, the subject of the painting!)

But you do know who painted this:

Congratulations! You're what's wrong with the world!

(See how this works, internerds?)

bloglife crisis

Just as I'm thrashing around in the midst of a full blown "OMG, I hate the internet and blogs and writing and who cares anyway, screw you free ice cream" snit, Blogger goes and changes their interface, making it very minimalistic and...oh-so very blank. It's like the canvases that have been propped up on my easel for, like, ages and ages now, just taunting me.

But I picked up a paint brush yesterday for the first time since forever ago and, then suddenly...it's a landscape.

art of the gun

SayUncle posted about pistol-themed makeup kits, which are not makeup kits at all but one of the many gun related pieces in the body of work by Dutch artist/designer Ted Noten.

They are meant to be an ironic statement about women, on the warpath. Or whatever.

rhapsodic

Once upon a time, men would travel to far off lands in search of lapis lazuli. They'd carry the rocks back home and then grind them again and again, hoping for the tiniest amount of pure, clear pigment. Worth a king's ransom, it was reserved for painting only the most precious subjects and decorated only the most expensive goods.

(same color, different light, same, um...less than delicately girly hands.)

But now, thanks to the wonders of the modern age and for just a little more than the spare change at the bottom of my purse - that blue can be mine.

For more on pigments (from a woman as obsessed with color as I am) check out Color: A Natural History of the Palette. Great book.

art of the gun

I know it's kind of redundant to link to a post by SayUncle since everyone's probably read it already but look...painting with bullets! Multimedia with a bang. How cool is that, right?

Besides, I majored in art with a concentration in painting. I'd be completely remiss if I didn't link to it.

point, click & play!

Remember how I mentioned I was craving color?

This helped.

After the page loads, use your mouse to get the full effect. Enjoy!

hmm.

I'm sure the artist was attempting to make some sort of statement here but, um...

Yeah. I don't know either.

October blue

Firekites AUTUMN STORY - chalk animation from Yanni Kronenberg on Vimeo.

The NRA has created a beautiful new (flash-free!) website for their National Firearms Museum. Each gallery is full of super zoom-able photos for your viewing pleasure.

I was lucky enough to have been sent some exclusive photos (thanks, Lars!) of a gorgeous side-by-side Ferraglio 12-gauge engraved by Bregoli. They call it "the Picasso shotgun." I was absolutely delighted, since Pablo is probably one of my favorite artists.

The images are quite large, but I thought I'd leave them that way so that you can click to see more detail. (I'm particularly enamored with the faceted cubist-inspired accents.) Enjoy.

a white hat & that striped shirt

When Gary Cooper met Pablo Picasso for the first time in France, he said, "You're a hell of a guy, but I really don't get those pictures."

Picasso was delighted and answered, "That doesn't matter. If you really want to do something for me, get me one of those hats you wear in the movies."

Coop went one better.

(photo: Andre Villers, Cannes, 1958.)

in plain sight

Very sneaky. (more info here)

in a neighborhood in the 'hood

An artist walking home in the trendy Tremont area in Cleveland didn't "comply" - so clearly, getting shot was all his fault. (/heavy sarcasm) But, unarmed, what were his choices? Witness say he attempted to run away.

And for the money quote? "There were cops everywhere. And yet this happened."

Yep.

glyph

(NSFW-ish)

On my way into work this morning, I found this scrawled on one of the library's back doors. I laughed, heartened to see that naughty adolescent graffiti has remained consistent throughout the centuries.

shooting gallery

I hope Ria was able to try a real rifle, at least once in her life - the woman clearly loves to shoot.

worlds collide

Sometimes I feel like I'm traveling between two separate worlds while I'm surfing the web - there's the much visited 2A news junkie world and then there's the more eclectic design world, which is usually well outside of my political spectrum. It's no secret most artists tend to lean a bit left.

For instance, the run-up to the last presidential election was almost unbearable because quite a few of the sites I normally enjoy spent an inordinate amount of time cooing over the brilliance of the Obama propaganda branding. I admit that the entire campaign was slickly done but having someone design a hip hopenchange logo does not magically transform a community organizer into the savior of a nation, nor even something akin to presidential. (and don't even get me started on how often designers use gun imagery to make their otherwise crappy work "edgy")

Needless to say, I've become pretty adept with the scroll wheel but in my search for cool stuff I sometimes come across little surprises, like the last item in this list of miscellaneous links from NotMartha.

Great advice, considering my pistol has an easier time getting on an airplane than some of my appendages do.

pretty, but...

...I don't give my money to hoplophobes.

b-side by ken & dana - GUN reclamation project

9+ lives

A very long time ago, an Irish monk took a break from transcription practice to write an ode to his constant companion, a cat named Pangur Bán. It compares the author's search for knowledge to the cat's hunt for mice - work that they seem to joyfully do in each other's company.

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

It's a lovely little poem and through it, Pangur has become one of the most famous individual cats in history. No surprise then, that he has now found the sort of immortality the cats of ancient Egypt could have only dreamed of...the monk's little white mouser has been included in a beautiful new animated film called The Secret of Kells.



The film is up for an Oscar this year and will be in limited U.S. release starting March 12th.

p.s. Be sure to check out the clip where Pangur and the fairy Aisling save the day!

direct marketing

The way things were...vintage gun ads, by decade.

draw!

Amazing flip book animation
Uploaded by zbougz

cloudy, with a 50% chance of blog

(click for a closer look)

Make your own beautiful blog cloud at Wordle.