Octopus Angel

It is now hat season!


The Max Ernst exhibition at Moderna Museet was great. My prior knowledge of his art was close to zero, but I really, really enjoyed all the beautiful underwater-ish paintings in blues and greens. If Giger's work had been enjoyable, it might have looked something like that. And L'ange du foyer, which I have seen before, but never in person. It was utterly fantastic. The sculpture above is his creation. Security stopped me from taking more pictures, even though we were not inside the exhibition itself.

I also saw a Lars Lerin exhibition at Waldemarsudde. I had no idea it was possible to create such paintings with just watercolours.

Of course, if you compare any other artist to the wondrous beauty I drew above, you will understand that the truth, beauty and light I can imbue into the paper is superior to that of all other human beings. Incidentally, this is what my notes looked like at a recent master's thesis presentation at school. I only have to attend two more to get my M Sc!

I just realized that I have been a vegetarian for almost ten years. It was, I recall, sort of a new year's resolution I made in the last trembling, fluttering hours of 1998. Then I ate some sort of hunted down, killed, frozen (as a part of the recipe, I kid you not, they call it tjälknöl here in Sweden) and heated wild animal steak. After that I watched a bit of fireworks and stayed off the meat. I did for some reason eat chicken (I recall it tasting horrible) a few times during 1999, and I think I could not resist gobbling down a few pieces salmon sushi (I recall it tasting great) either. Except for a few accidents like when I swallowed an octopus tentacle in Japan, and probably a few involuntary ingestions of gelatine, carmine and what have you, I have stayed completely vegetarian since. Vegetarian as in "still drink milk and eat cheese etc" that is.

In the beginning my vegetarianism was an ethical decision. Then I got older, colder and a bit less interested in the fate of cows and chickens suffering pain unspeakable in the giant factories. Nowadays I am just not really interested in eating meat. Of course, the ecological implications are a major factor, too. Not eating meat decreases the resources necessary for my continued existence quite a lot, which is all good.

I did sort of expect that I would have a bit of a problem, what with vitamins and all, but none of my medical checkups have ever revealed any deficiencies. Yay for that.

In game news I tested out Red Alert 3. It felt no different to Red Alert 2. Or Red Alert 1. The new, ingenious thing is the option to build your base in the water. Wow. Other games have developed and evolved the genre, even without any fantastic new features, such as Company of Heroes, which was much more beautiful and involving. Red Alert 3, though, is like a cow having been milked so much its udder has become a rotting, bloody mess. I suppose its aimed at gamers half my age (and I sure did appreciate the first Command & Conquer when it was released), but I will still take this opportunity to say Red Alert bores me. Right now I am considering whether to give Dead Space a try, or if I should get a cheap Xbox 360 to play Gears of War 2 and other stuff that seems fun.

Eris

I have met a nice young lady who paints for a living. Since I have no disposable money to speak of at present, I offered her a bunch of highly-specialized art books in exchange for making a fantastic painting of the Goddess Eris, chief deity of Discordianism. I think it turned out quite well, despite a minor incident where I smudged the cat. It will hang in a place of honour in my new apartment as soon as I get it framed.

Stalked by Mucha

Recent times have seen me doing more worthwhile stuff, spending less money on crap and I guess generally growing up. I have started going to the gym, thrice weekly. This is nothing short of incredible given the fact that I am usually a lazy bastard who deftly avoids any and all exercise except for very, very long walks. Having been rather skinny all my life, I never felt the need to exercise for the sake of my looks, which I guess is sort of a bad thing, since I have started having back problems due to sitting to much in front of computers all the time and not moving around enough. Ergo, lifting weights! It has become sort of fun, actually, and I have hitherto not missed a single day of training in three or four weeks. Yay!

In other news:


This is so great it is almost silly. Mucha's "Moon" as a backpiece. Of course, as you can see it is not a completely finished tattoo, but getting there.



I bought these great litographs by Hans Viksten at an auction for a shamefully low sum. I have always loved his art, and I suspect that is all about imprinting during my childhood.


This is the piece (another litograph) that was hanging in our home when I was a wee child, and now decorates my bedroom. It rocks.



I must admit I bought the two paintings above only for the very nicely made frames. I thought they were prints or something, but upon closer examination they were actually oil/ink paintings from 1881 by K W Westerberg, whoever that is. They are actually rather nice, so I kept them.


I am not exactly sure what this is. It is from December 1930 and I believe it to be a sort of electricity switch which can be set to turn electricity on for stuff during certain times and certain days of the week. It is rather heavy, very nice, and will sadly be put to sleep to become a regular clock (unless I can find out a way to make it behave like one through bypassing all the weird mechanics).


But life is not all work. Some play must be involved. In hazard suits, with Disaronno. Sorry for the picture quality. We were one mask short, so I had to stick to the goggles.

Genius II: Awesome

Some things can only be explained by synchronicity, a higher power, fate or just sheer luck. How else could I explain the relation between the previous post and what I found at the local second-hand store today?


As you have doubtlessly realized, this... lamp thing, it is beyond awesome. Its awesomeness is so great that I cannot even express it. The battery pack weighs two pounds. Its heaviness is yet another testament to its awesome, awesome awesomeness. Regardless, I will be tinkering with it to replace the incumbent incandescents with a big heap of LEDs, given that I can get it bright enough. It would reduce the weight a bit and enhance the reliability a lot. I might be doing something with the ugly wiring, too. The optimal solution would be to be able to pack the batteries on the headband somewhere.

Anyway, I am now a new kind of awesome.

Speaking of awesome, I was reading Salingers Catcher in the Rye and started to think about rye in general, looking for interesting facts. Instead I found a great Russian artist who specialized in landscape painting.



Not only did Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (Иван Иванович Шишкин) look cool, he was a great painter, too! Yay for the fact that the rye field above is readily available for uses such as a desktop background. I did that.

Nine Lives

One more shopping update (even less money in my wallet...) and then I will move on to something pertinent.


New coat from the J. Lindeberg store in Sturegallerian. I managed to haggle a bit since they had two of (what I guess was) three sizes left, and my friend Jonny had bought the other one. Ergo, they had some real trouble selling these, which is not so strange given the rather hefty price tag and the fact that it will look utter shite on anybody shorter than, say, 195 cm. I know my upper body looks a bit long, but it really is not, I should probably just refrain from buttoning the lowest button. Jonny told me he would have to kill me if I got the same coat, so I guess he has to now. Never mind that we have some other identical clothes, bought both knowingly and unknowingly.

They still have the rather tight size 50 (US size 40) in the store. Go buy it if you are in Stockholm, it rocks!


My friend Anton wanted to get into the fray. He got this snazzy Diesel item. Of course it was on sale, we are such cheapskates, both of us.


This nice shirty thing is from a small Swedish brand called Nine Lives. Most of their stuff looks really good, and it is not exactly horribly expensive. Found at Focus on Nybrogatan.


This is a pretty deco drawing of Fritz Kreisler drawn by a relative of mine a very long time ago. If you like violinists, which Mr Kreisler was, give him a listen!


Finally, I finished the above book. The ending was very much like Halo 2 or Crysis. That is, a clean cut right in the middle of the action. Granted, the book's nature allowed or rather required that to happen in some way, but it was a bit too sudden for my taste, so I felt robbed of a conclusion. Still, a good read! Now, I will proceed to the next Murakami book in my pile.

Gorbachev's Tank

I just went out and got myself a bunch of art supplies. Easel, a bunch of acrylic colours (the only stuff I had left from last time was a pint each of red and black), brushes, the works. I just started on a painting which looks sort of like someone has regurgitated a mixture of absinthe and chocolate. It is supposed to be a forest, but firstly it is not yet finished and secondly I am probably the worst painter in the world. I am far too lazy to use different brushes, and I resent having to clean the brush, which leads to a lot of crappage. In a few years, this will hopefully be seen as a facet of my beautiful genius. I will, of course, keep you posted as regards my career as an artist.

I am haunted by some sort of sickness this week, and as always when I have a sickness that involves fever or fits of shivering, my dreams have been stranger than usual - I even had a nightmare!

I guess I am one of rather few people who almost never has nightmares, but at around 5 a.m. Monday morning, I woke up in a sweat from a dream of some sort of snake telepathically pulling me into a tv screen. Not that I usually fear snakes at all, so it was sort of weird. I will admit, though, that a snake pulling me into a tv would freak me out in real life as well, but not moreso than a badger trying to pull me into a toolshed or an egret pulling me into an episode of Frasier. I also fell asleep on the couch this evening, sleeping for more than three hours (which is so not me - I only sleep at night, in my bed) and dreaming of airplane restrooms in some sort of emergency situation and educating an acquaintance about the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. When I related this to her as I woke up, she asked "Who the hell is that?" so I had to repeat the process - how tedious! I remember having one fact wrong in the dream although all the others were spot on, and that was that I said that Yeltsin was riding Gorbachev's tank. Then I dreamed of a crying old lady in clown makeup, lamenting that her dog had just been run over by a train, so we sang about 40 things to do with a dead dog. Very odd. I hate having a fever.

Back to reality: The book Cowboy Angels which I am currently reading is one of the best, how shall I put it, stories about men doing things together. A Tom Clancy-esqe action-packed novel about covert ops and guns, that is. Plus a bit of time and space travelling. The difference is that Cowboy Angels is one of those books I found quite hard to put down. I am almost finished with it, and I must admit I was a bit disappointed by a few details, but all in all it is an essential read for those who want a few hundred pages of Adventurous Male Story.

War-knitting

It has been quite a while, but my business has been great. Apart from having a full-time job, I have also been working quite a lot on my thesis and searching for an apartment. The latter task, I am happy to say, is finished. I found a very nice two-room apartment in central Stockholm, in a house built in the late 1920s. It has a fireplace, a balcony and is damn nice. The problem, as expected, is that it will cost me a bloody fortune to live there.


Somebody has knitted here. I have no idea whether they made the whole thing right there, or if only the finishing touches were made at the site.


This is probably one of the best pictures I have ever taken. I am sure you will agree.


When taking a walk with a friend, I found this nice plank. It says "WE WALK SLOWLY" and I have no idea what it means.


Yes, I have been drinking again, as is painfully apparent.

I found The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to be the best Murakami book as of yet. Not only was it rock-solid through the whole story, but it also had an ending I did not dislike. I also read Hard-Boiled Wonderland, but it was really nowhere near as good. A Wild Sheep Chase which I am reading at present seems to be more like the former, which makes me pretty happy.

I took a pause in my Murakami marathon these last few days to read the latest Terry Pratchett book, Making Money. I found it to be very easy to read, but a little bit shallow. Of course, we are talking Pratchett here, and his books always tend to be rather shallow, but in a good way. Lots of archtypes and a few real characters, simple but effective stories, wonderful to read. It is not exactly a wonder why Homer (or whoever wrote those books) is such a famous guy. However, Making Money was somehow a little bit more shallow than usual. Only the main protagonist is given any character at all. Everybody else is just a cardboard cutout. Still a very good read, but I would have expected a wee bit more.

Today, I was a bit ambitious and went to Kulturhuset where I ambled around for a bit and looked at Martin Parr and Nobuyoshi Araki photo exhibitions. Parr was rather interesting. No fantastic pictures, no great art as such. However, he seems to be very gifted when it comes to capturing the spirit of a time and/or place, which sometimes counts for a lot more than the perfect composition. Araki seemed to like women who are tied up and have plastic lizards stuffed up their reproductive organs. It was a little silly, but there were some fantastic pictures of flowers and his beloved cat which made me forgive the rather tedious bondage bits.

The Damage Done

Today brought with it the quintessential The Sisters of Mercy-experience. I finally got my The Damage Done / Watch record! I spent far too much money on it, and my only consolation is that I can probably sell it for around the same price, should I later on understand the mind-boggling stupidity of paying a week's wage on a 7" vinyl that will never be touched by the needle. It must be those collector genes activated, much like love can make almost anything seem like a good idea.


There it is, the first single by The Sisters of Mercy, about as old as me and a fairly crappy recording. However, the lyrics were really very good, compared to those of most other bands in general, and for a first single in particular. What irritates me with a lot of bands is the "angsty fifteen year-old" syndrome and/or just plain bad lyrics. In some cases, it is so bad that I cannot even stand listening, even if the singing and music is good. Never with the Sisters, though, especially from Alice onward.

I also went shopping for cheap book sale stuff and came home with a Lena Ackebo book, a story about Jean Paul Gaultier's career and some odd little book about various political factions in Iran.


Lena Ackebo is one of my favourite female cartoonists and, perhaps not surprisingly, one of my favourite cartoonists in general. For some reason, there are either very few women (notable exception: Chynna Clugston) who manage to release good comics to the general public, or I just have a problem appreciating them. Maybe there is a male hegemony in the comics industry, or society brings up boys to be more interested in comics, hence a smaller population of female cartoonists? Anyway, I have no problem at all enjoying Ackebo's comics, much more for her storytelling and structuring than for the art, admittedly. Actually, the art put me off a bit at first, but I have come to appreciate it with time.


This is a picture from the Jean Paul Gaultier book by Colin McDowell. Some of the stuff in it is totally insane, which is really what I like about Gaultier. There were books about most other fancy designers, but apart from the one about Roberto Cavalli, I found none I really wanted.

Oh, and before I forget. I just read the first 22 out of 24 issues of Girls by the Luna brothers, and I have no idea how I have managed to miss it until now. It is a fantastic comic, if you are not put off by rather graphic violence and nudity. These, however are definitely not what makes the comic interesting. Like any good zombie comic (which it is not, but closely resembles) such as The Walking Dead it is all about what people do together and to each other in a time of crisis. Anyway, I really, really suggest you get it now. It is that good.

Another recommendation while I am at it: The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster. Quite strange and not really exciting as such, but I am almost finished with it, and hitherto, I really like it.

The background at present is a modified version of some William Morris design I found on the web. Morris was a 19th century British artist (chiefly within tapestries and textile) whose designs I really love. Google Image Search is great for finding his art, and it is available in numerous museums. He was a poet and a very early socialist writer, too, but I cannot say that I know much about either of those careers.

Escher

Since I was a little kid, I have always loved the art of Maurits Cornelis Escher, especially the repeating patterns and impossible structures. Rather, I found the impossible structures mind-boggling, and the repeating patterns beautiful. Since I have far too much work right now, I decided that it was a splendid time to start trying to make some repeating patterns of my own. The advent of programs like Illustrator has made it shamefully easy, so I am working on one containing an Illuminati pyramid, a ghost and a squatting witch. It looks pretty funny already, but I will probably have to enlist one of my more artistic friends to flesh out the details of the figures, so to speak. More details when/if it ever sees the bleak light of day.

Speaking of bleak light, I just recalled that the homepage I had a decade ago was called "An Electronic Haven in a World Bereft of Colour". Boy, was I a pretentious little turd back then... On to more pictures!


And here is the Mackintosh brooch in all its glory. I know, it is way girly, but I believe I am man enough to carry it around for a while, anyway.


Mmm, my new book about carpets - Tribal & Village Rugs. It contains a plethora of patterns and pictures showing a lot of stuff I have never known or cared for, but it sure became interesting when I started reading about it. I will hardly become a carpet collector, though. They are big, cumbersome, and need maintenance.


This is Palestine back in the day, from the book Palästina I bought today. Some time in the early twenties, I believe.


This is a nice picture from the Mackintosh book, by Margaret Macdonald. Why are there so few people today who paint nice stuff like this? It seems everybody paints nude girls on dragons or glues chairs to walls.

Picture Post I

Today, I will just let my rather crappy camphone speak for itself.


This is what my notes in school have looked like for the past decade. In all honesty, I really am crap at taking notes. They always end up being deranged drawings with no signal to noise ratio whatsoever.


I visited a flea market today, and picked up some great books for about €2/each. Strindberg, Márquez, Slas and Gorkij/Pesjkov, as well as a nice photographic book about Palestine, anno 1925. The latter is full of really nice pictures of the region - city life as well as various scenic views. Whatever one might think about the political situation today, the land was definitely more beautiful then.

I also found a book about Charles Rennie Mackintosh at the annual book sale, and through mysical means I accidentally procured a brooch designed by the same man a few hours later.


Sometimes I just seem to doodle way too much. The big guy is Truth, and his two anorexic kids are Incomprehension and Divestitude. This might be some kind of notes from my studies.


This is an ad campaign by a Swedish labour union, Seko. They seem to have a bit of a problem conveying their message, and this campaign sucks big time. Not because I am against unions in general, but because they demand higher wages for everyone. Sounds more to me like they just demand inflation. However, it would surprise me if that was the case, even though surveys show that people actually become happier if they get a higher wage, even if the inflation eats up the whole increase (as opposed to the wage staying the same, and no inflation).

Is it more equal wages they desire? If so, then just say that, damn it. I also like the middle ad which is a parody of some standard sales campaign and says "Employ 3 - pay for 2", signed "The employers". Seko then writes with really small print at the bottom that "this is our interpretation about what the employers want".

Had I way too much money, I would run the campaign "We are Seko and we will eat your babies! Raaar!"