ClottedRot

2007-09-17T18:34:00.000-04:00

1,000,000 and counting....

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=13794

2007-08-12T23:08:00.000-04:00

2007-08-10T13:10:00.000-04:00

The delicious pant stormer over at Consequence of Monkeys has just posted a great doc -

http://www.aconsequenceofmonkeys.com/?p=214

2007-07-27T13:38:00.000-04:00

2007-07-22T14:39:00.000-04:00

We're always in the middle of something. Somewhere. Or some-time. It's proof that everything is more connected than disconnected. Despite this, we have vocabularies that persistently designate divisions and rifts, fault-lines and borders. In language, time is bisected into the past and the future. The present is placed in between, like a temporal bridge, whose ends are impossible to discern. Perhaps words are to blame. Maybe words introduce stoppages, when otherwise we'd think in terms of continuities. Words can and do mark out spaces and territories.

- With/Without: Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East

2007-07-16T23:04:00.000-04:00

- From the Latex for Fun exhibition held in Barcelona in May, eetz another gorgeous Gaston Caba! I'm such a cheesy fan....

2007-07-16T20:42:00.000-04:00

It's the quiet religion that has grown to become the fourth-largest faith in North America and much of the Western world. With no crusades or jihads, nor even belief in a Creator, Buddhism has flourished in the West largely unnoticed over the last 100 years.
Always a dominant religion in Asia, the powerful appeal of Buddhism resides in its lack of dogmatism, its flexibility. With the charismatic Dalai Lama as one of its key spokespeople, Buddhism today has become nearly synonymous with inner peace.
Because Buddhism does not require practitioners to renounce other religions, many Buddhists in the West have adopted multi-faith identity, resulting in 'Jewish-Buddhists' and 'Christian-Buddists' who meditate daily and go to Sunday Mass. Many see it as a kind of open-source faith that can be learned and customized to suit one's needs, be it to relieve suffering for the dying or to promote simplicity for high-powered business execs.
With more than 450 million believers worldwide and no central leadership, Buddhism continues to thrive.

- Adbusters

2007-07-04T21:48:00.000-04:00

2007-07-04T21:47:00.001-04:00

roger, roger

roger that, over

roger, over

roger that, over

roger, roger

roger that, over

roger, over

roger that, over

2007-07-04T21:37:00.000-04:00

something interesting
soooommmme thing in ter est ing

hmmmm......

hello?
brain?

how long have you slept for christs sake??

Bluish gloom covered everything. Oddly uneven, that darkness. Lying on the sofa, I tried to remember what came next, but it was long irretrievable. Did the fox cub ever get the gloves?
I got up from the sofa, opened a window to air the place, went to the kitchen, and made myself some coffee.

2007-07-04T21:33:00.001-04:00

snap to it

2007-07-04T21:20:00.000-04:00

Fursten
Blasten
Owf 'n argh
fruits of labours
beauregaard

spank me pretty
drown me out
pick my eyes
and scream and shout

carnal cabbage
rain on skree
lay me yellow
rabbit me

punch me raw
break the rail
croon the maggard
feel me frail

stand alone
reach the maw
shut my eyes
heal me sore

hold my hand
and leaf my skin
kiss me quick
or kick my shin

tie my pickles
love my shame
empty mind
blown out again

An Interview for Lorne Nudel ...

2007-06-19T18:45:00.000-04:00

It seems that you're proposing a profligate ethos (i.e."whatever gets you through the night" or "give into temptation") as an efficient, forceful and above all engaging communicative structure. What are your thoughts then on the question of political correctness, and self censorship?

What are your thoughts on the uncanny, the human, or the monstrous?

The zeitgeist calls for a febrile dissemination of society. Do you view this as a sprint towards extinction or the most efficient of victories? Or both?

Can you tell us a little about the birth of your humour?

The public have entered a completely neutered state with regards to their ability to express genuine, considered opposition to government, what do you feel are the origins of this inertia? Do you propose any solutions?

Are there any conditions under which you would feel moved to war?

If called upon to defend an ideal, what moniker would you consider using to represent yourself? And would you need a mascot?

Given the opportunity to form a fully functional union, who would it speak for?

Let us suppose that you had been born a German, would you consider the introduction of goose fat to your diet at an early age a necessary step in the evolution of a natural citizen of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland?

Go read his blog....
www.aconsequenceofmonkeys.com

2007-05-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

Drunkenness, in its most common usage, is the state of being intoxicated by consumption of ethyl alcohol to a degree that mental and physical facilities are noticeably impaired. Common symptoms may include slurred speech, impaired balance, poor coordination, flushed face, reddened eyes, reduced inhibition and uncharacteristic behavior.

Shame is the consciousness or awareness of dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation.

2007-05-25T18:56:00.000-04:00

- Miki Kratsman

http://www.inguine.net/kufia/testomikiinglese.htm

Completion through Removal

2007-05-25T18:28:00.000-04:00

It may be harder to overcome the invisible walls separating neighbour from neighbour than to effect the removal of visible ones... however, even at a basic level, opening up spaces within other spaces and creating intersections will psychologically alter interpersonal relations, and corresponds to the will to displace what is rigid and fixed.

Bring down the wall....

2007-01-29T18:22:00.000-05:00

dasha shishkin

2006-12-10T21:25:00.000-05:00

..for those that may be interested - have decided to upload some of my photos to Flickr...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/72847129@N00/

2006-12-10T21:19:00.000-05:00

At the end of the day the most pressing question is how to live your life. It’s a difficult one to answer, particularly when you seem to live more than one life and to have more than one face and more than one friend, when you can do more than one thing, and when there are things that you can’t seem to do (yet) but that you insist on trying anyway. How do you inhabit the existential condition of your own possibilities and limitations in a culture you share with others? How do you go about celebrating, railing against, transgressing and laughing at your own potential and limitations in the public sphere of that shared culture? What is at stake is an ethics of creating a life for yourself and others that seems worth living, a politics of becoming a voice that speaks not just in the presence of but potentially also for and with others, and an aesthetics of operating from a position that is embedded in a singular practice of artistic production.

2006-12-04T23:14:00.000-05:00

A Kursk thirst
An arthritic end to a novel idea
A bright melancholy
A northern odelay

2006-12-04T21:32:00.000-05:00

Dumb and Dumber
Have visual rants been turned into jingles?

Depending on which end of the telescope you look through, modern art has been a story either of boundless progress or of infinite regress. Actually it is both or neither until you subtract the hopeful or doom-laden adjectives added just to get us off to an apocalyptic start. Even then, the telescope collapses space just as linear historical thinking collapses time and contradictions, magically transporting eye and mind across vast distances while leaving the messy remainder of being in the here-and-now.

Periodically – when ‘mainstream’ culture falters because it has taken its own ‘inevitabilities’ for granted, despite the realities it ignores and problems it can’t solve – progress and regress are confounded. In that context the arrière-garde serves as the ideological and institutional catalyst for avant-garde breakthroughs. So it was with Symbolism, Cubism, Dada, Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and on into the late 20th century. Each ‘step forward’ was preceded by one or more ‘steps back’. Rebellion against the status quo was initiated by tactical withdrawals to the status quo ante that were rich in unassimilated challenges to conventional sensibilities. Before art could advance, it had to retreat; before its fruits could ripen, parts of the orchard had to over-ripen; before art could mature, it had to relive its infancy and adolescence.

Thus were modern primitivisms born, in protest against the failed miracles of enlightenment; thus the art of primordial societies, of children and of the insane were mimicked and celebrated as a retort to pompier taste; thus revolutionaries of left and right mingled in the demilitarized zone of the aesthetic a priori while dreaming their mutually exclusive dreams of bringing the house of bourgeois culture down on the heads of its smug architects and servile occupants.

Each unsettled era gets the primitivism its deserves, or the one it ‘discovers’. For example, the genius of the Pop artists was to realize that the ‘advances’ of consumer capitalism had created a ready-made aesthetic of delectably crude image- and object-making that was begging for appropriation. But just as futuristic styles date quickly, so too do retrograde ones. By now Art Brut is so period, which is also why, like Art Deco, its fast-forwarding counter-term, it is so collectable.

In the 1980s and early 1990s the way ahead for the neo-avant-garde seemed pretty clear: more texts, more reprocessed photos, more opaque exegesis all the way to the roseate horizon. The view behind was a jumble of ‘retrogressive’ post-Modernist painting and sculpture that was too heavy in the aggregate to keep pace with ‘progressive’ post-modernity but, example by example, not weighty enough in repressed desire to hold the neo-avant-garde back. Then along came Puerile Pop, the best of which word-master Ralph Rugoff tagged ‘Just Pathetic’. An art-school-savvy rebuke to the pretensions of Schnabelists and October-ists alike, it was a sure-to-offend, hence sure-to-please, mix of Neo and Retro, and its aggressively cheap qualities made it easy to ‘get’ and almost as easy to buy in bulk. Generally intimist, unlike graffiti, with which it shared much, Puerile Pop was graphic art down and dirty. And so, as style maven Roberta Smith reported in the New York Times, ‘drawing [had] become the new painting’.

Don’t get me wrong: as a critic I am fascinated by the paradoxes this work rudely expresses, and at a base level my id craves it in the way it used to hunger for the loudest, angriest music. (Cageian silence now occupies the void cacophony once filled.) In the learned, harrowingly disillusioned and correspondingly pitiless Raymond Pettibon this tendency has found its true, cursed poet. Meanwhile, the chiaroscuro imaginations of a handful of kindred spirits cast shadows and blinding visions on the walls of galleries and art fairs everywhere.

But lately the infernal glow of such work, and the frustration and fury driving it, has been bleached out or diluted by pale imitations and worse, glib commercial illustration masquerading as cheerfully perverse ‘kids’ stuff’ for which industrial-strength cute Manga and anime has much to answer. It is as though banks of white fluorescents were suddenly turned on in a club previously bathed in black light, revealing it as a showroom not a club, and the dancers as groomed professionals not punks.

If slumming were the only problem, there wouldn’t be much to worry about; you’d just look for a place with fewer tourists and different sounds and décor. The depressing part is that gut-guided regressions no longer seem to be the predicate for risk-taking leaps; ‘informe’ no longer presages new form; the pathetic no longer conceals the ambitious; the primitive no longer anticipates the never seen. Instead visual rants have been turned into jingles, hot spots of down-and-dirty have devolved into chequerboard panoramas of dumb, dumber and dinky. It’s enough to provoke a Nauman-like tantrum of ‘No! No! No! No!’

- Robert Storr - Director of the 2007 Venice Biennale.

2006-12-04T20:00:00.000-05:00

Caba again - from his 'people posing as a definition of group personality' site

http://www.gastoncaba.com.ar/bizarre/index.htm

2006-12-04T19:45:00.000-05:00

..growling

2006-12-02T23:55:00.000-05:00

siddown and stump up the bloody dollars
whaddya think this is? Bush week?

money money money
leaking, dripping, dropping
from the ever widening holes
in the corners
of the pockets picked clean
sewn shut
then unravelled
pinched, squeezed
but no fucking use

2006-12-02T23:52:00.000-05:00

2006-11-23T13:01:00.000-05:00

jahhhh he's so gooooot...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gastoncaba/

2006-11-16T20:35:00.001-05:00

2006-11-16T20:26:00.000-05:00

In this 'information age', we have access to vast amounts of information, but the quality of what we have access to is increasingly questionable. Real news reporting is buried under a landslide of prepackaged news planted by corporate PR, ideological groups, government and other entities interested in manipulating how we act and consume. Real news is buried from one side by a river of PR and from the other side by pressure from the dominant media conglomerates to select news for its entertainment value.

Our sources of belief have become less trustworthy. Once they were mainly our parents, elders, teachers, neighbors, and other people we grew up with and spent time with personally. Those sources were sometimes right and sometimes sadly wrong, but at least they didn't systematically exploit or deceive us by the millions, for purposes unrelated to our own well-being.

We're stressed out by unprecedented levels of environmental and social destabilization: 500-year floods, devastating hurricanes, increasingly severe water shortages, unexpected crop failures, resurgent diseases and war. Often the reaction to such stress is to flee - not just physically, but emotionally and cognitively. People who have money often flee from the pain of their lives by consuming.

Our world has been turned inside-out by entertainment. Once it was built around work, now it's made up of thrills. In industrial countries, entertainment has become the kind of dominant business that manufacturing once was. The loci of our entertainments are artificial environments - stadiums and auditoriums and the interiors of cars, instead of canyons and vales and dells; earphones instead of the sounds of birds or wind; and the false fictions of TV ads and sitcoms instead of reality. If we're not astonished by the gradual extinction of our world, maybe it's in part because, being constantly cut off from it, we no longer have any strong expectations to begin with.

The disconnection is worsened by systemic misuses of technology. Consider, for example, the soaring dissemination of automated toys and games that provide the propulsion, conflict or imagery once provided by children's arms, legs and imaginations. In a Toys-R-Us world, we spend more and more to bring up kids who are less and less connected to what keeps them alive.

What to do? Good policy is not enough. It does for human behavior what end-of-pipe control does for pollution. So, just as pollution is more effectively attacked at the source, attitudes need attacking at their sources - in the education of kids by parents and schools, in the learning environment we grow up in, in the curricula of universities, in the accountability of media. We need to revisit how people learn (or don't learn) from the first gasp of life to the last, because today's average upper-middle class college grad, when you strip away what he knows about entertainment and technology, has a medieval understanding of the world. That understanding won't get us through the next century.

With thanks to.....

2006-11-14T21:30:00.000-05:00

2006-11-14T21:24:00.000-05:00

A paucity of principles
A plethora of ponticles
A pinch of purple pinnacles
A pudding for the brave

A burst of bronzed benevolence
A bash of brashed vehemen-ence
A barnacle of insolence
A birch for brighter days

2006-09-28T21:44:00.000-04:00

Bondi, Sydney, Australia

2006-09-17T21:42:00.000-04:00

Go to bed and read?
Or slather myself in goose-fat and throw myself from a second story window?

hmmmm....

2006-09-16T19:40:00.000-04:00

Freestyle Friends - Matt Furie

2006-09-15T22:16:00.000-04:00

This week Pope Benedict XVI, the most important Christian authority in the world cited an obscure Medieval text that characterizes some of the teachings of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman".
Expect the outrage wrought by a Danish cartoonist late last year to appear the most casual of Sunday rallies by comparison to the demonstrations of anti-Western sentiment this latest wretched piece of stupidity will cause....

And just to take added personal umbrage to yet another irony he proferred -

" In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. "

This statement calls into question all possibility of genuine human understanding from those of a secular nature...
A deep, intrinsic awareness of Identity, the nature of faith, of reason, morality, or the full spectrum of our diverse human emotions, is not peculiar to those of a devotional nature.

poi‧son /Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[poi-zuhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun

1. a substance with an inherent property that tends to destroy life or impair health.
2. something harmful or pernicious, as to happiness or well-being: the poison of slander.
3. Slang. any variety of alcoholic liquor: Name your poison!
–verb (used with object)
4. to administer poison to (a person or animal).
5. to kill or injure with or as if with poison.
6. to put poison into or upon; saturate with poison: to poison food.
7. to ruin, vitiate, or corrupt: Hatred had poisoned his mind.
8. Chemistry. to destroy or diminish the activity of (a catalyst or enzyme).
–adjective
9. causing poisoning; poisonous: a poison shrub.

—Synonyms 1. Poison, toxin, venom are terms for any substance that injures the health or destroys life when absorbed into the system, esp. of a higher animal.

2006-09-15T18:08:00.000-04:00

Two aging scarecrows
Ernest & Jeffrey
grow like Crooked Birch
amongst the wildflowers and grasshopper

Moose their muse
they eat hearty bowls
of chowder and baked potatoes

Dancing deer
cross roads
and desire
for a speeding zodiac
that will afford them a clearer view
of seal, whale, and pluvver
drawing them closer
to bald eagle
high above

2006-09-15T17:51:00.000-04:00

Top: End of the Skyline Trail, Cape Breton National Park
Bottom: Ingonish, Cape Breton

2006-09-12T19:16:00.000-04:00

2006-09-10T21:22:00.000-04:00

2006-08-31T14:32:00.000-04:00

Heads glued together
for sleeping comfort
Tattoo of a painted jesus
upon the lips
Your fear finds salvation
in false edens
Beyond this flat earth

2006-08-29T23:26:00.000-04:00

http://www.defekto.com/

2006-08-29T22:33:00.000-04:00

Fight banality - Do something unexpected today

2006-08-29T22:32:00.000-04:00

The City of Dreadful Night

The sense that every struggle brings defeat
Because Fate holds no prize to crown success;
That all the oracles are dumb or cheat
Because they have no secret to express;
That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain
Because there is no light beyond the curtain;
That all is vanity and nothingness.

James Thomson

2006-08-19T00:02:00.000-04:00

Wolfgang Tillmans - "Wohnung Koln"

pork pies and sabotage

2006-08-19T00:00:00.000-04:00

argumentative

2006-08-18T23:57:00.000-04:00

don't bother
your wit
flits
faster
than most

2006-08-16T22:47:00.000-04:00

2006-08-16T22:44:00.000-04:00

2006-08-16T22:12:00.000-04:00

2006-08-16T20:26:00.000-04:00

2006-08-16T20:06:00.000-04:00

Fresh from pink abandon
Face down but free of dirt
Washed away
all trace of sanctimonious boast

-

cocks

2006-08-16T13:23:00.000-04:00

Burst!
and I'll hit nee heidi
I'll kick yer ass
And I'll run until I thirst

2006-08-15T21:32:00.000-04:00

Old and scritchy dangly bits
Loosey mingy hairy pits
Boonered mobied fringly tits
Apples for my tea

superhero - Ian Stevenson http://www.ilikedrawing.co.uk/

2006-08-15T21:25:00.000-04:00

fundamental justice?
hahaaaaaaaaaaa

2006-06-22T11:35:00.000-04:00

Pull my Daisy

Pull my daisy
Tip my cup
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts

Jack my Arden
Gate my shades
Silk my garden
Rose my days

Bone my shadow
Dove my dream
Milk my mind &
Make me cream

Hop my heart on
Harp my height
Hip my angel
Hype my light

Heal the raindrop
Sow the eye
Woe the worm
Work the wise

Stop the hoax
Where's the wake
What's the box
How's the Hicks

Rob my locker
Lick my rocks
Rack my lacks
Lark my looks

Whore my door
Beat my beer
Craze my hair
Bare my poor

Say my oops
Ope my shell
Roll my bones
Ring my bell

Pope my parts
Pop my pet
Poke my pap
Pit my plum

- AG, JK & NC - 1951 - 1961

2006-06-21T22:24:00.000-04:00

After a couple of weeks of feeling like an empty-headed, whining pack mule, I thought I should write/publish something - anything - so here is an unfinished post from the end of May... will now return to dishing out delicious love to those most deserving...

...Was reminded recently of yet another 'massacre' in which the US played a significant role - the fight for East Timorese independence following the annexing of their state to Indonesia in 1976..

The support of the US for Indonesia from 1975 - 1999 was originally given out of a strategically-motivated desire to maintain a positive relationship with a government whose anti-communist regime was seen as an essential bastion against the spread of communism in South-East Asia. During this time, it is estimated that up to 180,000 East Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops or died of enforced starvation and other causes resulting from the Indonesian occupation.
Whilst supporting roles were played by Australia, Portugal, the UN, UK and France, it was the considerable US political and military support, that were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor. Not until the intervention of President Bill Clinton in 1999 did the Indonesian government accept the deployment of an International force into the territory, finally paving the way towards East Timorese self-determination.
The idea was that this process of self-determination would take 10-15 years by which time a 'democratic' Indonesia would be able to persuade the East Timorese to stay Indonesian, with all the health, educational, security and transport services that entailed. The miscalculation was that the then Indonesian President - Jusuf Habibie would agree to this timetable. No one expected him to call a referendum in a matter of months.
Habibie's colossal miscalculation was that he would easily win it, that the East Timorese would vote to stay Indonesian. But they voted overwhelmingly for independence.
The UN's miscalculation was that it could rely on the Indonesian army to keep the peace and calmly accept defeat while the UN (East Timor was now a United Nations protectorate) ushered the new nation into being. Instead, it acted like a retreating army with a strategy of scorched earth - until stopped by Australian soldiers.

2006-06-18T13:43:00.000-04:00

I've never known

2006-05-22T21:55:00.000-04:00

2006-05-19T14:09:00.000-04:00

Mellifluous voice
Sings of feathered cock robins

2006-05-16T15:04:00.000-04:00

Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables....

2006-05-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

Ziggy Zen -
This is not a lie.
Once upon a time I was marooned at a beach during a huge storm.
I had driven 40km down a fire trail in an old Volkswagen. In the same few hours I arrived at the beach, my battery went flat and the hinterland behind the beach became flooded. I was stranded for a thousand days and never saw a human being.
I had no fishing lines but I did have underwater goggles. About 100 meteres off the beach was a reef. It was covered in lobsters. I could swim out and grab one in each hand and lie on my back and kick my way to the beach. The lobsters then made clicking noises that I believe sharks are pleased to hear.
Behind the beach were groves of banana trees. I cooked the lobster in my Volkswagen's hub caps. Then I had lobster and banana day after day. Meal after meal. One day I caught a crab that was so gigantic, I thought that it might maim me. But I won the battle and ate it for breakfast. Crab and bananas.
I think it was a thursday.

This last monday I was utterly spoilt with a wonderful meat feast by a man who loves bananas.
Black though. Who eats them once they're black?

2006-05-16T11:39:00.000-04:00

Morning ... my name is Herzog Ferzmuller... I am a highly technical, dominant, analyst...
Garage sale next Friday - all crayons, and expressive banter must go!

2006-05-11T22:02:00.000-04:00

This elephant walked the streets of London last week... where was I?

2006-05-11T21:05:00.000-04:00

The lovely Mr Elephant
Rode naked like a miscreant
To Arizona on a whale
His legs around his drooping tail

He'd found that snow destroyed morale
He wanted more from earth for now
Alas his mind had other plans
And plugged his gaps with shifting sands

But hopefully he's cleared a track
And started on his journey back
To fragrant winds and sweet potato
Or musings on his cognate Plato

A visit North is not for now
Although we'd like to nip his brow
With stories told to pass the time,
Martinis, and a glass of wine

But soon I guess, we must confess
That years have passed, and all that's left
Are elephants and olivers
Pork chops, cigarettes, and curs

What sad forecast....

I'm trying not to be such a desperate slacker with replies....

2006-05-08T19:49:00.000-04:00

Humans have been staring at the wall wondering about the purpose of their lives since time immemorial, urbanisation and industrialisation have made matters worse.
One leading ethnographer/sociologist has recently pushed the case that most people blessed with neither exceptional talent, nor the restlessness that drives ambition, make sense of their lives by believing that the accumulation of their experience over time counts for something and has value. Whether you're a cobbler or an IT consultant, you take pleasure in a job well done and believe that you get better with experience. Most of us want to be valuable in the eyes of others, but today's capitalism has turned the rules of humanity on their head. In a society in permanent flux, we are no longer valuable for what we have accomplished and the experience we have gathered, we're valuable for what we might be able to do in the future.
To embrace the future means to be the kind of person who, at the drop of a hat, will surrender the past, trash experience, and embrace the short-term opportunity. This is a world in which having potential is more important than having experience - It is argued that the cultural Rubicon that modern society is crossing puts us all in peril. Usefulness and sense of purpose are no longer achieved by steadily doing a job well, they are achieved by being permanently ready to live only in the present. So, as far as many people in cutting-edge industries - from television to software - are concerned, you are, in effect, redundant by 35... only the young can have no history and so be useful.
The phenomenon is largely cultural, the result, for most people, is an intensifying sense of their own uselessness.It was not like that in the recent past, even 25 years ago, the great multinational companies could hire somebody at 20 and offer them a predictable career. What's changed is less economics, more our culture.
However, William Whyte's - Organisation Man, depicting the lifeless, ordered 1950s world of the men who had given their souls to the company, was so influential because it captured a truth. Corporate life was a bureaucratic prison, however golden it might now seem, and it wasn't only a few radicals who thought so, but organisation men themselves - and their families.
What to do? Perhaps the search for renewed purpose should be part of our national conversation.
The service sector could certainly use an overhaul.
For whatever reason, it is ever harder to feel useful, to have purpose and to make sense of one's life. It's why volunteering is growing so rapidly, and why so many are attracted to public-sector work despite its many drawbacks.

... and with thanks to Will Hutton of the Guardian

2006-05-07T16:10:00.000-04:00

2006-03-20T09:38:00.000-05:00

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid

2006-03-19T17:56:00.000-05:00

2006-03-19T11:16:00.000-05:00

Freer than no one
on the edge
of this undulating sheet of soft cerulean glass
I let my bare feet wander at their will on the grey sand

Waves beat on the jetty with their whip
while the lone sun covers my back
Seagulls and sparrows fly at water level
tear it with their beaks
and snatch away from it
fresh fish thrashing about
in agony
Racket of parrots
a radiating uprising in the kingdoms of the sky
on this morning that shows its face
the bright disposition of a god
and on the clearness of its forehead
the blessing of the breeze
simultaneously ablaze
beneath my forehead
other mornings
mighty mornings of the earth
with their arboreal power
and their marine uproar

Freer than no one
on the morning of my thirtieth year
I dip the tip of my foot in the warm water
of the simmering marsh
in its froth
and the lobster offspring take off
slitting the water where my nomad feet
had splashed seconds ago
and the sand where
lie stranded
drooping jellyfish

shells of constellated tattoos
algae circling the ankle
sea snakes
snails
nautical cloisters
hermit crabs
urchins, the sentinels
of the marsh
and everything that the sea with its tide
obstinately pulls away from its vast domain

A fistful of winds punishes my back
in the same way that the gods
would goad
he whose luck it was to witness the miracle

My kingfisher eyes dive in the virgin water
Startled
soft-shell crabs
flee sideways on the ocean's green carpet
and translucent
octopuses
take shelter in sordid dens

The wind whistles through the coastal palm groves this morning
in which the sun
so as to wake itself
plunges into the water

All is open space
when dew climbs a ladder of ivy up to the sky
The light opens slits of gold
in the thick lemongrass bushes
and the river bank
canvas sails and feather rigging spread out as well

All the brilliance of the sky appears duplicated
in the water's olive mirror

On moss-covered logs
scab-skinned iguanas bask in the sun
while foxes scratch the brambly ground
and alongside the woods
one returns to the ocean
through a trodden path between the palm trees

On the beach
the royal egret tidies with its beak
the plumage that yet again
the wind
will ruffle

The starfish marooned in a puddle
and sand-frosted
shimmers in the sun
and so the tiny crabs shyly peek out
from the holes of their hideouts
and a new litter of turtles rushes forth in search of water

Heralds of the storm
northern birds
cross the sky
But life is a feast
this morning
in which the sun awakes
daydreaming

Twenty years ago I was a child
and I remember the sun
came out from sunrise to sunset
the sun came out every day
And everywhere
at the river's edge
in the shade of the guayo shrubs
under the thatches of houses
some complained about the sun

Ah the sun
the uttermost sun
is this sun
our daily sun
the dog days sun
the sun giving street dogs rabies
the sun that smudges the skin and braises the bones
the sun
that delivers free vitamin injections
the one rubbing the lamp of lust
the sun lying Maria and her boyfriend
on a mat at the foot of a sapodilla tree
and they
covered only by a soft poplin sheet
spend the whole afternoon completely entwined

Drop by drop sweat starts trickling down their legs
and a very penetrating scent beings to cloud them
and so he
who spies them hidden behind a star apple tree
stays there for a while
in ecsatcy and spastic
even if afterward
he'll go cool down
in front of the electric fan
or lying on his belly on the cool tiles
he is well aware that nothing can save him from contagion
day and night
he thinks of nothing but lying at Maria's side
so as to inhale her scent
between the blankets of her zeal

Ay the sun
the sun's sunniness
who could live without this sun? The sun
warming up the ponds of the frogs
and the coconut water
the sun drawing lizards from their caves
sun exploding
jugs of mead over our heads
and turning distance into its magnifying glass

Ay the sun
the sun's scorching heat
the uttermost sun
is this sun
our daily sun
that which we shuffle along with lottery cards
sun feeding its own hearth
with pages of the Mas antiguo Galvan calendar
and frosty beer labels
The sun crawling into bed
where very close together
and drowsy
me and my younger sister
toss in bed restlessly all night long
under the mosquito net

Ay the sun
that gets into bed
shrinks like a gnome
leaps
opens the window
and announces
another day of sun

Jose Luis Rivas - A Season in Paradise
- translated by Monica de la Torre

2006-03-19T11:04:00.000-05:00

Rare
Green
Beauty
Unadorned
by nights charade -
the daily porn of masquerade
Tips
Reflection
Pungent rotting
Rich cadavar
Fingers finding
Holes
In others
Fragile bindings
All towards the break
Filters
Layers
Veins

2006-03-15T13:23:00.000-05:00

Bull Riding is the most recognized and popular of all the rodeo events. It is also the most dangerous.
As with bareback riding, and saddle bronc, bull riders ride with one hand, and cannot touch themselves or their bull with the free hand. Doing so results in a no score.
Scoring is the same as in the other roughstock events. Two judges give 1-25 points for the cowboys performance and 1-25 points for the animals performance. 100 points being the maximum, and is considered a perfect ride.
To ride, bull riders use a bullrope and rosin.
The bullrope is a thickly braided rope with a cowbell attached. The cowbell acts as a weight, allowing the rope to safely fall off the bull when the ride is over. The rosin is a sticky substance that increases grip on the ropes. Bull riders wrap their bullrope around the bull and use the remainder to wrap around their hand tightly, trying to secure themselves to the bull.
Unlike the horse events, there is no mark out in bull riding. Cowboys can spur for extra points, but just staying on the bull for 8 seconds is the main priority. After the ride, bull riders are aided by bullfighters or rodeo clowns and barrelmen who distract the bull, allowing the cowboys to escape safely. A good score in the bull riding is in the 90's. There has been one perfect score of 100 in the PRCA.

2006-03-13T13:06:00.000-05:00

....for when you take a moment off from conducting your horse-opera in the back lot of some Arizona dime-store... was this the one?

Whilst serendipity was busy furnishing next doors upstairs bedrooms
She stood here in this room of whirling dervishes
Finding solace in fruit

J Michael Sullivan - Joshua Tree (no, not Arizona)

Lisa Eisner - Miss Rodeo Idaho (no, not Arizona either)

2006-03-13T12:50:00.000-05:00

Please take the time to read the attached PDF, it lists many of the key policy decisions with regards to reproductive health enacted under the Bush administration.
These policies directly, or indirectly, affect the status of women globally.
This is an extremely important time for the rights of women, left undefended, the consequences will be profound and real for generations to come.
To lobby the new Conservative Prime Minister now in office within Canada, and ensure the rights of women within these borders please send your e-mails to :

Prime Minister’s office -
e-mail to pm@pm.qc.ca
or:
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa
K1A 0A2

..or if you're fond of deaf ears - president@whitehouse.gov

Key Points...
International –

Global Gag Rule –
In late August 2003, President Bush expanded his notorious policy on International family-planning programs, known as the global gag rule. This policy forces overseas health clinics to agree not to use their own, non-US funds to provide or counsel patients about abortion, or to take a public pro-choice position. Previously, the gag rule applied only to groups that receive grants from the US Agency for International Development’s family-planning program. Under the new expansion, the policy is imposed on the entire State Department budget – over $8 billion.
The gag rule has cut off shipments of USAID-donated supplies to 16 developing countries, because the only recipients in those countries were members of the International Planned Parenthood Federation which lost over $20 million in USAID funds because it refused to comply with the policy. Condoms procured with HIV/AIDS funds are not subject to the rule, but critics of the rule say that, in practice, organizations that refused to sign the rule have not been able to get funds earmarked for HIV/AIDS prevention. Hillary Fyfe, chair of the Family Life Movement of Zambia, asserts, "I think they are killing these women, just as if they are pointing a gun and shooting. There is no difference."

Blocked funds to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) –
The White House announced it plans to withhold $50 million appropriated by Congress for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). UNFPA provides reproductive-health care, including family-planning services, to the world’s poorest women, and specializes in caring for refugees and addressing other crises. Conservative extremists claim that UNFPA supports China’s coercive abortion and sterilization programs, although a State Department investigative panel convened by Bush last year reported that there was no evidence to support this. UNFPA estimates the lost funds will translate to 2 million unintended pregnancies, 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths, 66,000 cases of serious maternal illness, and 77,000 deaths of children under five.

US -
Impending Supreme Court Battle Over Roe v. Wade

http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/assets/files/Bush-Congress-Actions.pdf

2006-03-04T16:26:00.000-05:00

"An awareness of the past contributes to an imagining of the future." - Saskia Bos

Stills from the Video piece The Rape of the Sabine Women by Eve Sussman

2006-03-04T14:46:00.000-05:00

South Coast Australia...

2006-03-04T14:04:00.000-05:00

I love your rufescent quixotic soul
My darling in lederhosen
Sitting chewing oatgrass
Festive teacups in your eyes
Your mind ruminating in a gravy circumnavigation
Jacaranda mushrooms smiling from your platter
And a Kenyan licking dewdrops from your ears
Spotted ducks around lay sleeping
A thousand feathers on winds are swirling
Old static on a gramophone is growing
Buds of new ripe soul-stealing numbers
One ruby lip of moist words from me
Hides from this moment ephemeral
Stealing itself away
To hide amongst the oranges
Scattered in a hedonistic disarray
A smell of bluegrass
Lifts the yoke of love
And leads me dancing in a fashion meant for light

2006-03-04T13:51:00.000-05:00

Arms open wide to receive
A blessing from the stars
The air pauses
Twisted fingers
Reach
And miss
Fall
Switched off
Switched on
Switched off

2006-02-28T22:03:00.000-05:00

There is a fine line between representing other people’s suffering and perpetuating it.
The market demands a quick-fix solidarity, living-room worldliness and that cushy sense of ideological superiority. We all love being flattered by our own ideological credentials, and demand criteria that go beyond the rigid dichotomies of fascination versus critique, voyeurism versus empathy, help versus profit. The issue is particularly pertinent in contexts of heightened military violence, which usually elicit predictable examples of sentimentalized (counter) propaganda or even more depressing retreats into insular navel-gazing.
Ever since the Iliad, the spectacle has been part and parcel of the narratives by which human affliction has been communicated, and the artist has played an honoured role in this regard. To quote Tom Holert, the ultimate prize for any ambitious creative worker must be a war of one’s own, the way the Spanish Civil War will forever be Ernest Hemingway’s and Pablo Picasso’s.

For an example and an exception, please check out - Regina José Galindo - winner of the Golden Lion award for the best young artist at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
http://www.bombsite.com/galindo/galindo.html

...and with thanks to Tirdad Zolghadr

2006-02-26T18:20:00.000-05:00

... what sentences, paragraphs, poetry, or blurg can you create from these?

approach, scale, death, fiery, red, raw, investigate, rhythm, smear, would, cigarette, latex, instrument, capture, ism, sculpt, angry, waste, metaphor, joy, empty, throw, shard, never, open, shimmer, you, glorious, only, suffer, wild, scream, create, passion, break, aesthetic, absurd, see, our, junk, compose, through, ask, grace, say, subject, water

2006-02-26T18:01:00.000-05:00

The Monkey Fist

2006-02-26T17:39:00.000-05:00

- nellanutella

"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams

2006-02-21T21:55:00.000-05:00

The winters are sooo long in Canada.... the soles of my shoes are tired of being wet...

Painting - Byron Bay - Brett Whiteley

2006-02-21T21:33:00.000-05:00

A crucial yet overlooked aspect of the current debate re the publication of the Danish cartoons, is the balance of power between the offended Muslim communities and the media that have published the cartoons (and the socio-political elites that those media represent). In Denmark, where the row originated, Muslims largely inhabit a social underclass, experiencing real difficulties accessing employment and a stake in the economy more generally. In a country where an anti-immigrant right-wing is in the political ascendancy, bigotry plays no small part in determining the social status of Danish Muslims (for instance, it seems that one Danish MP described the Muslim presence in Denmark as a "cancer"). To many of them, the issue has as much to do with politics as it has to do with religion. The cartoons are an overt expression of the bigotry that has a material effect on their daily lives, and this experience is a common one in ghettos all across Europe. Add this to the historical record of Western foreign policy towards Muslim majority countries, up to and including the serious crises of the present day (Palestine, Iraq, Iran), and the context in which the cartoons are likely to appear from a Muslim perspective is hard to miss. The cartoons themselves figure next to nowhere on the scale of crimes committed by Western governments against the Islamic world, but they are, in the context, a puerile and gratuitous jab in the eye - the needless addition of another insult to a thousand injuries.

The posture struck by many in the European media has been one of brave defiance against the threat of religious dogma (though such bravery was in short supply three years ago when the Danish paper that published the caricatures of Muhammad refused to publish satirical depictions of Christ on the grounds that they might “provoke an outcry”). Given the balance of power between the media and the Muslim communities in Western countries, and between the West and the Islamic world internationally, the courageous pose is a hard one to take seriously. If the European media had a strong record in (a) documenting the relationships between their governments and autocratic regimes abroad, and (b) reporting on the lack of economic opportunity and consequent restriction of social freedom experienced by the domestic underclass, including Muslim first and second generation immigrants, then the current principled stand for freedom might deserve some credit. Again, the balance-of-power element of the issue, presented inversely by the newspaper editors who chose to publish the caricatures, is unavoidable. One can think of few less impressive sights than that of social elites affecting airs of heroism by valiantly standing up to the fearsome tyranny of those who reside under their boot.

But perhaps the most significant aspect both of the publication of the cartoons and of the subsequent reinforcing of the dichotomies discussed here is the effect they will have on the prevailing political discourse in the West and the government policies that emerge from or acquire legitimacy through the terms of that discourse. It is no coincidence that those who most enthusiastically peddle the fiction of a “clash of civilisations” also portray the opposing “other” as a force that seriously threatens to destroy “our way of life”, and therefore advocate an aggressive US-led military strategy across the Islamic world. Manichean rhetoric eulogizing the liberal idealism of “our values” and the necessity of defending them against those who “hate our freedoms” has been the very essence of Western pro-war advocacy in recent years. Observing essentially imperial foreign policies being depicted as altruistic endeavours aimed at bringing enlightenment to backward, inferior (if exotic) cultures, or at least at defending us against them, hardly places us in unfamiliar territory. Indeed, subjugation almost invariably goes hand in hand with the deliberate dehumanisation of those who are being subjugated by those responsible for or whose acquiescence is essential to the act of subjugation. And in terms of domestic social relations, the direct contribution made by stereotypical depictions of certain social groups as in some way inferior to the mistreatment of those groups by the majority is again a dynamic that's hardly unfamiliar, not least in Europe.

Meaningful dialogue between Muslims and Westerners is eminently possible. History shows that the common human values of freedom of expression, worship and conscience have emerged in both cultures at various points in time, to greater or lesser extents. The barrier to dialogue is not the necessary antagonism of two diametrically opposed value systems. Nor is the real question at hand one of whether freedom of speech should be curtailed by the demands of religious dogma. Rather, for us as Westerners, the question is whether we will continue to be complicit or to acquiesce in the denial of freedom to others. Declining to publish the caricatures, in light of the political context in which this issue has arisen, would not be a compromise but an affirmation of the values we in Europe purport to uphold.

- Extract from an article by David Wearing - ZNet -
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=9771

2006-02-21T20:44:00.000-05:00

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just toe me an inch, no -
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter -
Like my neighbours, taking no pleasure
In the million prefectly-chiselled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheek of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept like a bent finger.
The first thing I saw was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in a dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, an arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

- Sylvia Plath

2006-02-19T19:27:00.000-05:00

Charles Eames was once asked, "Does form follow function?" And he answered, "Yes, as long as your definition of function remains open." It is good if your definition of function remains open, but not endlessly open. There is some beauty too in the fact that objects are discrete entities.

2006-02-19T19:21:00.000-05:00

Photograph - Loretta Lux

http://www.sabian.org/alicech1.htm

2006-02-14T13:09:00.000-05:00

Of tight pursed cheeks
And humid balls
Goose pocked flesh
And baboon calls

Of leather cuffs
And strawberry jam
Of gimps, and
Lovers pushed in prams

Of goats and horses
Brash behaviours
Of men who pay
For womans favours

Of lovers spanked
For fun, for tears
Of whispered winds
In lovers ears

Of cherry centres
Lips so small
Of turgid romance
Steeped in gall

So Valentines
A winsome farce?
Or day to find
Some red-hot arse?

2006-02-13T12:10:00.000-05:00

Illustration - Dasha Shishkin

2006-01-23T20:12:00.000-05:00

The magic alphabet, the mysterious hieroglyph, come to us only in an incomplete and garbled form, garbled either by the passage of time or by those with a vested interest in our ignorance; should we retrieve the letter which has been lost or the sign which has been effaced, should we reconstruct the dissonant scale, we shall regain our authority in the world of the mind.

GERARD DE NERVAL

2006-01-21T19:24:00.000-05:00

We suffocate beneath the yarns
Home-spun wrongs from simple spindles
Drapery for the frontal lobe of man

2006-01-21T19:10:00.000-05:00

The design of contemporary film posters tends to be driven by the assumption that potential audiences favour the bland. Photographic-montage portraits of the major stars dominate the field, with backgrounds reserved for the indication of genre. A bunch of heads placed against a feathered, swirling setting usually denotes fantasy, but the same set of mug-shots put in a frame of plain white space could be a sign of a Stiller-esque caper. Promoting uniform experiences dressed up in so many ways, these images sell commercial film at its worst.
From the mid-1950s to late 1960s, illustrated posters and handpainted hoardings, by contrast - although often the products of pure economics - added a dimension that is missing from most of today's cinema advertising.

Posters above -

Rancho Texas - Jerzy Flisak
Someone to Watch over me - Andrzej Pagowski
Le Petit Soldat-Der Soldat (Jean Luc Godard) - Jan Lenica
Polish and Czech film posters have a long history of using hand-crafted images as a means of cultural emphasis. Foreign film screenings were relatively rare and needed no advertisement, so, from the state’s point of view, rather than being promotional images, these posters were intended to recast film scenarios in symbolic, often abstract terms, rendering them appropriate for a socialist audience.

The astounding She Monster - artist?
Throughout the hey-day of B movies, an illustrated, or painterly style was the norm.

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock) - Saul Bass
Arguably the very best proponent of the graphic style for Western audiences was Saul Bass, who over the course of 30 years, created some of the most iconic movie posters of all time - Vertigo, Psycho, and The Man with the Golden Arm, amongst them. His most successful movie partnerships included those with Alfred Hitchcock, and Otto Preminger – Preminger in fact was famed for the vigilance with which he policed cinemas, making sure they promoted his films with the authorized Saul Bass-designed symbols rather than snatched images of their stars.

Baiju Bawrai - artist?
The very last outpost of the illustrated film poster was Bollywood, but unfortunately, even there, the traditional painted image has begun giving way to photography. India's taste in film may remain local, but their graphic taste seems to be veering in a global direction.

2006-01-18T22:32:00.000-05:00

For my desert dwelling comatose friend and his bloodied cat...?

MESCALINE, PEYOTE AND THE LAW
Both mescaline and Peyote are illegal under the statutes of the [U.S.] Federal Government and most States. Members of the Native American Church are permitted the ritual use of peyote because they established it as a religious sacrement long before these laws came into existence. Members are not permitted to use mescaline, however. Several other cacti such as San Pedro also contain mescaline. Technically it would be illegal to possess these, but because they are common ornamental plants it is permissable to use these cacti for normal horticultural purposes. If a person should attempt to use any of these plants for a psychedelic experience, prosecution is possible. If he were to extract the mescaline from these, the alkaloid would definitely be contraband material. It is important that this point be made clear because the mescaline extraction process is given in this guide. To extract the alkaloids from Doñana and other non-mescaline bearing cacti is not illegal. The information in this guide is presented for the sake of furthering knowledge. The Author can assume no responsibility for how anyone may apply it.

2006-01-18T22:06:00.000-05:00

An excellent spot of blending....

2006-01-18T21:03:00.000-05:00

N is for Neville who died of ennui.

2006-01-18T20:47:00.000-05:00

In capitalism, slowness is either expensive and a privilege - relaxation, bought with inherited or earned wealth - or free and a stigma: the dawdling days of the elderly and the unemployed. The difficult task then is to understand slowness not as an obstacle to production but as a valuable mode of perception in its own right. If the mantra directed towards children used to be 'behave!' now it seems to be 'hurry up!' Although this represents a sort of progress - at least it shifts the attention from sitting up straight to engaging in the everyday buzz around you - it negates what little kids have a real sense for: those suspended moments in time when, for example, they stop to marvel at a bug for minutes at a time. Artists, like kids, for centuries have resisted the demand to behave. Now they can play up their efficiency at resisting the demand to hurry up.

Not to be confused with – indolence, insouciance, torpidity or neglectfulness.

2006-01-16T20:24:00.000-05:00

Shenjia Alley - Fairy
Yang Fudong b.1971, Beijing. Lives and works in Shanghai

Art is definitely not my profession, but it has become an integral part of my life. It’s like going to sleep every night and dreaming. It's something that is always going to happen, something that ends and then begins again. It’s like when you wake up in the morning knowing that you had a dream last night, but you cannot recall what it was that you dreamed. Still, a feeling lingers in the back of your mind that you had a strange or even frightening dream last night. You know if you try to tell the dream to someone else, they just won’t be able to relate. So you can only keep it inside you.You live in a big city, hiding in your little corner, and it’s doubtful that even a few people know of your existence. Yet you are a part of the city. It's you and a lot of other such people that make up this city. The feeling of the city depends on all of these people living in their own dreams. My relationship with society to a large degree is a kind of metabolic relationship. Society needs ever-changing relationships, just like those that are occurring today. I too am ever-changing. I was unable to choose which generation I was born into, yet I have to learn to adapt to the times. — Yang Fudong

2006-01-16T19:44:00.000-05:00

Let's
take a hole and fill it
Let's
bury them with lye

Let's
burn their homes
down to the ground
and watch their children die

Let's
raze their hopes and memories
Lets
hang their dreams to dry

Let's
make a wasteland of their birth
then boast instead of cry

2006-01-15T19:45:00.000-05:00

Intellectual whimsy is a widely shared attitude, at least among a certain segment of youngish writers and creative types. It is, as Susan Sontag once wrote of camp, a common sensibility, a brand of taste that unites those who have it against the norm. If, in Sontag's words, ''the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural', the essence of whimsy is its flirtation with the insignificant and random. Flirtation, though, not love, because unlike, say, Dada, whimsy triumphs when the import of the apparently insignificant and the relevance of the random are discovered.

With thanks to Charlotte Taylor

2006-01-15T19:16:00.000-05:00

A pogonophobe
And optophobe
Ran naked and blind
Into a phasmophobe
They blushed then saw
An ereuthophobe
And thought better of their shame

2006-01-15T18:18:00.000-05:00

2006-01-15T18:15:00.000-05:00

"A Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy."

Benjamin Disraeli, Mar. 1845