paintings + drawings

You f*cking Nazi.

I'm sure you've been around someone who does this, compares someone they don't like to Hitler: "Being a truly advanced white person means being able to speak with authority about pretty much any field of conversation- especially politics. In order for white people to streamline the process of knowing everything, all human beings can be neatly filed into one of two categories: People I Agree With, and People Who are Just Like Adolf Hitler.

Comparing people to Hitler is an easy way for white people to get a strong point across to the less enlightened, or the insufficiently white. Everyone knows who Adolf Hitler was. And everyone knows that Hitler was very, very bad. Therefore, if a white person really, REALLY, doesn’t like something or someone, he or she may angrily say something to the effect of, “This is exactly the same kind of thing that Hitler used to do!” accompanied by varying levels of profanity based on blood-alcohol content. No matter what your gut reaction may be at that point, do not disagree with that white person. Otherwise, well, you love Hitler."

Rest is here.

Photo: Ping News.

Today's photo.

Feasting and Drinking Went on Far into the Night

Feasting and drinking went on far into the night
but in the end we went home alone to console
ourselves  which seems to be what so many things
are all about  like the branches of a tree just after
       the wind  stops blowing.

-Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt, Richard Brautigan 1970.

Emeryville.

From a meat packing district to heavy industry to its current state as a live-work hell, Mike Rosen-Molina, in this month’s issue of The Monthly, gives a long nod to the gloriously sordid history of Emeryville.

Rosen-Molina touches on the moment when Emeryville was once an affordable haven for artists. “Semifreddi’s was only the first of the new businesses to come to Emeryville in the wake of its industrial decline when officials began to see the old warehouses not as a hindrance to redevelopment, but as a possible boon.

‘When we first opened up, Del Monte next door was shutting down, just crushing all their cans into scrap,’ said co-owner Mike Rose (the bakery’s self-proclaimed chief “mad scientist” who has worked in Emeryville nearly 20 years). “The area was much more blighted, just empty warehouses…

The first new tenants to arrive were artists and sculptors looking for cheap studios; many warehouses became loft-living for artist communes, like the 45th Street Artists’ Cooperative. The city still boasts the highest concentration of artists in the state. In days past, artists and locals would gather flotsam that washed up onto the mudflats to construct impromptu junk sculptures, like the giant scrap metal eagle built by the congregation of the Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church in 1980. (Some driftwood creations even achieved a modicum of fame after being featured in the film Harold and Maude.) The mudflats are off-limits today, designated as a protected wetland, but the city’s artists still make their presence known through a city program that puts public art in the plazas and parks.”

photo: pbo31.

Today's photo.

Two bits (odd edition).

Japanese rock celebrity impersonators tackle the personality laden "We Are The World."

I sure didn't know that the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne once aspired to be Frank Frazetta. (via Art Boobs)

More signs of system breakdown.

Bee colony collapse: For reasons yet unknown, the U.S. honeybee population is experiencing its most serious decline in history. First reported by beekeepers along the East Coast in late 2006, the phenomenon now called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) quickly spread across the nation and has now drawn the attention of the U.S. Congress.

If you think this problem is just about the honey, forget it. Far beyond honey, agricultural crops pollinated by honeybees accounts for about one-third of the U.S. diet. No bees, no crops. The monetary value of honey bees as commercial pollinators in the United States is estimated at about $15 billion annually. Worldwide, three-quarters of all flowering plants require pollination to reproduce. More here.

Plant migration: Climate change has caused plants to seek cooler conditions at higher altitudes, scientists suggest. A study of 171 forest species in mountain ranges of western Europe found that many plants had climbed an average of 29 metres each decade.

Smaller species such as ferns, which had shorter reproduction cycles, were the quickest to relocate, the researchers said. Read the rest here.

Today's photo.

Two bits (unrelated edition).

1. Headbangers pay attention to this: The herds of goats in the Oakland hills are not sacrificial, but prophylactic.
2. Louise Bourgeois's giant bronze spider (seen along SF's waterfront) is a prize winner says Americans for the Arts. Amy Trachtenberg's installation at a San Jose library is too.

Today's photo.