Eye of the Tiger

I am putting you all on notice...

The Year of the Tiger is coming up, according to the Chinese calender.

It is going to be awesome.

Like a tiger.

I will be listening to this song for the entirety of The Year of the Tiger.

Because it is awesome.

I am talking constant repeat.

For the whole 365 days, or however long a Chinese year is.

If you are planning on hanging out with me, in the next year or so, let me just go ahead and say -

No, I will not change the music. We are listening to Survivor. This song is awesome.

Chinese New Years starts on February 14th, I think.

While you are getting all kissy-smootch-faced, you should play this song.

You will, most definately, score.

This song is that awesome.

Year of the Tiger!

The Eye of the Tiger!

No Time for None

Robbing the Rainbow

Words

"The mere word freedom is the only one that still excites me. I deem it capable of indefinitely sustaining the old human fanaticism. It doubtless satisfies my only legitimate aspiration. Among all the many misfortunes to which we are heir, it is only fair to admit that we are allowed the greatest degree of freedom of thought. It is up to us not to misuse it. To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery—even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness—is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself." – Andre Breton

27

Taco Truck Tuesday

So You Think You Can Dance?

The Ultra edition.

Barbara Kruger

Time for another art post.

I saw that there is a retrospective of early work from Barbara Kruger up in London.

Kruger may be my super-favorite visual artist.

I could talk about that myself, but I will allow the exhibit promo to reduce my keystrokes.

Using contrasting layers of text and image, Kruger’s work has for almost three decades probed the nature of a media-saturated society in late capitalism, and the significance of highly evolved cultures of consumerism and mass politics to the experience and making of social identities. In addition to offering acute, indeed often piquant cultural insights, Kruger’s work also presents a serious conceptual exploration into the relationship between language and image, and their dynamics as collaborators and antagonists in the bearing of meaning. The artist’s unique blend of conceptual sophistication and wry social commentary has made Kruger one of the most respected and admired artists of her generation...

How could I not like it?

You can see much more here.

Go Write a Novel

Just something to think about-

...everyone (with the least bit of inclination) should write a novel, and society would be much better off for it. Like so many forms of introspection (in many ways the enemy of fundamentalists and political zealots of all stripes), it can be one of life’s great pleasures, but (unlike many others) is not one that falls into the category of immediate gratification (like say, that mammoth black-and-white cookie I just scarfed down). It’s sort of like running a marathon; you have to train to build up to it and maintain some discipline, but ultimately, when you cross the finish line (even if you had to crawl the last __ miles or walk part of the way), you’re going to feel a great sense of accomplishment (even — or especially — if you didn’t win), and for at least a few seconds have some warm fuzzies about being alive and completing something that nobody will ever be able to take away from you. Whether the novel will be ‘good’ or not — much less successful, however you want to define that (but let’s think about it in crass, commercial terms as opposed to a sense of accomplishment) — is a completely different question, and I tend to think that not so many people have it in them to be ‘great’ novelists, much the way only a few runners can ever expect to win a marathon, because I think it requires a certain obsessive personality that falls way outside the boundaries of what most people would consider ‘normal’ and often borders on the psychotic. (Hey!) What I think NaNoWriMo demonstrates (and perhaps to echo Choire’s optimism) is that increasing numbers of people crave some justification to be alone and think about their shit for at least one month of their lives, because society in the modern (i.e., capitalistic) era demands a lot of fucking attention just to survive, and you can easily let your entire life slip away without pondering the (generally unproductive in the economic sense, but intellectually rewarding albeit probably depressing) questions of why we’re even here to begin with, what the purpose of life is, and so on. So yeah, writing any kind of novel is a tiny revolution, and that alone is a reason for hope (and there aren’t too many of those floating around in 2k9, n’est-ce pas?)

I found this through the Tomorrow Museum which found Matthew Gallaway rambling here...

I think maybe I should write a novel, after I finish building my own car and taking over the world.

Sunday Drive

Who wants to go?

Sleighbells

Are you listening?