Isidore Isou

"The God's Diaries" is above.

I was reading about Situationist Art when I saw these. Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In French, the movement is called Lettrisme, from the French word for letter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred around letters and other visual or spoken symbols.

Thoughts other people have about Judas

If Jesus only suffered while dying on the cross, and then ascended into Heaven, while Judas must suffer for eternity in Hell, then Judas has suffered much more for the sins of humanity than Jesus, and his role in the Atonement is that much more significant.

Does Jesus' plea, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do," (Luke 23:34) not apply to Judas? Is his atonement insufficient for Judas' sins?

The Roman Catholic Church has never officially stated that it believes Judas is in Hell. According to one Catholic writer, if he had not committed suicide but repented of his actions it would still have been possible for him to become a great saint, just like Saint Peter who denied Christ three times.

"I will not reveal your mysteries to your enemies, neither like Judas will I betray you with a kiss, but like the thief on the cross I will confess you."

Judas is the subject of one of the oldest surviving English ballads, dating from the 13th century, Judas, in which the blame for the betrayal of Christ is placed on his sister.

The Owl and The Nightingale

This poem was probably written by a nun: The Owl and the Nightingale offers no resolution, thus forcing the reader to interpret the highly ambiguous text for themselves. The debate itself covers a very diverse range, including religion, marriage, toilet manners, and song. This diverse range has led to scholars interpreting the text in very different ways. These interpretations have varied from a medieval answer to the portrayal of the owl in the Book of Isaiah, to the poem being used as a teaching method for teaching students the art of debate as part of the trivium. Various historical satires have also been proposed as possible interpretations; including a parody of the relationship between King Henry II and Thomas Becket.

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/trans/owl/owltrans.htm

Jane Goodall says:
"I know a parrot in New York called N'kisi (a Congo African Gray parrot) who knows 971 words. He isn't counted as having a new word until he's used it at least five times in a proper context. In other words, if he just repeats a word, that doesn't count. Before I met N'kisi, his owner, Aimee, was showing him pictures of me and chimps. When I walked into the room, he asked, 'Got a chimp?' Aimee broke a necklace, and he said, 'What a pity. You broke your new, nice necklace.' He uses grammar and initiates conversation (all skills once reserved for people). This bird even has a Web site [sheldrake.org/nkisi]. I don't think he's an exceptionally brilliant parrot; I do think we're only starting to understand how smart they are."

I want to learn the latin names of North American songbirds.
Resource: http://www.hbw.com/ibc/
Videos of songbirds from everywhere.

Jenny Haniver

I want to grow a minimum number of plants very well, maybe two or three, and I want to go birdwatching and fishing. I want to ride my bike a lot and attend public lectures and events. I am writing poetry again, something I haven't done in years.

Feet upon feet
Senseless distance traversed becomes a palm in prayer
We are waiting, skin says
In our wake is the code of weight and heft,
We have not stayed, only slept.
&
When I ride my arms feel the latent heat of the land,
I pass over bridges and hairs adumbrate a distant air that tastes like river.

So there's that. Also: I am going to miss Milwaukee and the senseless free things: afternoon tea on the house from Anopa, winning trivia at Stonefly multiple night for free beer, free toast brunch at Nomad, free bacon at Comet, free movies from the Oriental, free tea from Rishi, free vegetables from Outpost Coop, free books from the library, public days at the Art Museum and Science Museum, free dinners at Nessun Dorma, countless free drinks from Nessun Dorma and Circa and County Clare, free clothes from Annie's, free records also from Annie's. My town's a cornucopia. I relinquish my plenty, but only in hope that someone else will recognize the possibilities here and act.

from "The Grand Eccentrics"

The central preoccupation is plain: the dangerous and dominating Fatal Woman. More than half the oeuvre portrays triumphant and savage Circe, Salome, Helen, Delilah, Herodiade, etc. Even in work consecrated to the hero or the tragic poet, these central males stand confronted crushingly by womankind or her unconquerable surrogate imagery: Oedipus stands before the Sphinx, Orpheus is beleaguered and St. John decapitated, repeatedly. Indeed, perhaps only literature, and a process of careful personal anthologization, could have provided a so consistantly sinister collection of females.

Max Klinger: a glove

The Joys and Enigmas of a Strange Hour

Incorrupt

Clare loved music and well-composed sermons. According to those who knew her, she was humble, merciful, charming, optimistic, and chivalrous. She would get up late at night to tuck in her sisters who'd kicked off their covers. She daily meditated on the Passion. When she learned of the Franciscan martyrs in Morocco in 1221, she tried to go there to become a martyr herself, but was restrained. Once when her convent was about to be attacked, she displayed the Sacrament in a monstrance at the convent gates, and prayed before it; the attackers left. Toward the end of her life, when the was too ill to attend Mass, an image of the service would be displayed on the wall of her cell; thus she is called the patroness of television. She was ever the close friend and spiritual student of Francis, who apparently led her soul into the light.

Her body remains incorrupt.


On 11 February 1858, around the time of her first Communion, Bernadette was gathering firewood with her sisters when a beautiful lady appeared to her in a cave. She appeared a total of 18 times. Before the last apparition the Lady said to her " I am the Immaculate Conception" ,she asked her to pray for sinners and to have a Chapel built near the grotto. After the last apparition a spring of miraculous waters sprang from the ground.

Bernadette became a nun and died at the age of thirty six, her body remains incorrupt.


Imelda was a girl who died at the age of 11 in 1333. She loved Our Lord in the Eucharist but could not receive Him because of her age. One morning after Mass a consecrated Host miraculously appeared to her and after receiving it, she went into ecstasy and died. Her First Communion was her last!

Her body remains incorrupt.


St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: Her heart and brain are still incorrupt.


Anna Maria Gesualda Antonia Taigi .
She is one of the saints with incorruptible bodies. Daughter of a bankrupt druggist. Mother of seven. Prophet. Clairvoyant. Counsellor to cardinals.

Blessing of the Fleet

Edith Schiele

Death to the living, long life to the killers, Success to sailors' wives & greasy luck to whalers.

Borges: On Exactitude in Science

On Exactitude in Science . . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Jim Trainor

One of the best short films I have seen in recent memory was by Jim Trainor, magic marker animator extraordinaire. He renders the lives of animals in big bold lines: the choices they make seem fated by instinct, yet the brutal course of their lives is mediated by gentle self perception and sometimes god.

A tiny piece of one short may be found here: http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?TRAINORJ

Another absolutely amazing film maker is Jim Jennings who offers us "crystalline moments of observation and the most kaleidoscopic and revealing of abstractions" and "discovers boxes within boxes, frames within frames, new dimensions, new perspectives and wonder after wonder.”

Time Travel

This is what a road trip tastes like: