OHM

I stumbled across a post feature the art of Tomas Schneider on a tech blog. I like this piece but some of his other works are really twisted (in a good way).

It's interesting to read about his source of inspiration which he describes as "a tiny space between the conscious realm and subconscious sleep, the wake of life, or the slipstream of consciousness." He also mentions this space as being linked to the origins of mythologies and where the mind slips into dreamtime which makes me wonder if there is not a connection between his work and that of the aborigines.

"Aboriginals believe in two forms of time; two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective activity, the other is an infinite spiritual cycle called the "dreamtime", more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal society. It was believed that some people of unusual spiritual powers had contact with the dreamtime." quote from the film The Last Wave (courtesy of Wikipedia).

Some of you thought the birdhouse was a joke...

Well the jokes on you! Cause sho'nuff I did build a birdhouse.

Let me 'splain...

For whatever reason, our townhouse is like the filet mignon of wood, for woodpeckers and a while back, woody bored a quarter-sized hole into the side of our house. That wasn't so bad, but then a squirrel thought, hey that looks alike a nice place to live, a bit small, but you know, with some renovations it might not be so bad. So the squirrel chewed a fist sized hole into the opening and decided to put in a back door for good measure.

My first solution was to temporarily fill the hole with expansion foam. I did. And the squirrel chewed it's way back in. My next solution, was a bit redneck, but acceptable in the short term. I simply hammered a piece of wood over the hole, like boarding up an abandoned squirrel flop house. I figure that would be ok until I had time to fix the problem the right way.

Well that was like a year ago. On my priority of things updating my blog supersedes home repairs, and you see how often I get around to updating this thing nowadays. In the summer, I thought, it's too hot to deal with this. Now we are in winter I am saying, that is the perfect summer project. After downing a big ole cup of piping hot realism, I decided that chances are good that this fix may not happen for quite a while. At the same time, I am really tired of that hillbilly piece of wood hanging on the side of the house. I am sure the neighbors are luvin what it does to our block's property values. Hell, I might as well get a camaro and set it up on blocks out front.

A few weeks ago, ghetto genius struck and I decided on a slightly more elegant solution. Much less redneck, far more rugged outdoorsy...obviously still in the same family, but far distant cousins, sort of like how Unilever owns both Ben & Jerry's and Slimfast.

Readers of topic15, I proudly present the great birdhouse cover up of 2008!

What did you do on your birthday topic 15?

Ate some cake, made a birdhouse, hung out with this guy...

We went to the fantastic national harbor and saw the fantastic Kooza. Randomly, this robot guy named Heimloss would pop up out of the stage and hold up an announcement or just look around. Well that's the french canadian circus for ya! Good fun nonetheless.

Ok, so I may have embellished the status of National Harbor. I think it has the potential to be awesome, but right now, it is basically a swank hotel/convention center, a swank parking garage, a swank harley dealership and a swank bunch of "coming soon" signs. Probably worth a revisit come summer though.

And then there's this...

Counter Strike vs. Van Gogh Mash Up

Wow, now this is an interesting example of the application of a Mash-up to art and video games. It is a custom map someone developed for the game Counter Strike based on the artwork of Van Gogh.

Origins

Pretty cool clip from the graffiti documentary "Bomb it!" where Shepard Fairey discusses the origin of the Obey the Giant campaign...

You can tell I am tough by the coffee that I drink: Questionable Brand Extension Part II

While doing some doo rag shopping at a local Harley Dealership, I spotted yet another blatant exploitation of a strong brand to push a totally unrelated product, Harley Davidson Coffee.

Can someone please enlighten me on WTF bikes and coffee have to do with one another?