Pallas Athene

Ultimately, this Athena is certainly more frightening than the idiocy to which the Medusa Gorgon is reduced by comparison. What is more dreadful, the monster or the goddess? Klimt seems to deliberately frame both faces with the same coppery hair to draw the comparison in the viewers’ eyes: the monster is only semi-divine whereas Athena’s power is fully divine. This is not a goddess to oppose in mind or in weapon, as Klimt’s Pallas Athene is the epitome of apotropaism: not just a mask to ward away evil but the real thing. Thereby any would-be besieger - or friend or even worshipper - of all that is Athens by her strength of wisdom and arms should be completely intimidated. Klimt has made her eyes alone tell one how sensible it is to lay down any weapons of futile resistance. These eyes bore right through mortals.

Link

What doesn't kill you...

...makes you stranger.

Originally including a paragraph about customizing your babies-in-the-making, hopefully not too much was lost in the final version of Strange Machine. Shaved down to the bare bones, I remember laughing into an empty room each time I checked the word count as it crept ever closer to hitting below the 950 mark.

(-_=)

Been ill for the past two weeks, which rarely happens. What started off as a simple upper-resp tract infection on the first week was followed by an opportunistic one on the second; a lonesome affair, the mind is certainly given over to entertaining all sorts of unpleasant thoughts during times like these. A strange start to the new year, here's to the rest of it!

Otherwise, with a little more than two months left to my stay here in Japan the pressure is certainly coming in from everywhere, and not the first time I wonder what made me decide on the name for this blog.

I'm sitting at the bench coaxing little cells to divide when Ian Curtis surprises me on the iPod, singing this interesting number made all the more curious because I've never heard of it before. That's nothing to go by, I'm not the biggest Joy Division follower, and might not know all their songs, although this one's catchy enough I can't believe I'd've missed it. The other thing muddly thing is that - and understand that I don't know what I'm talking about here - the track seems to have more layers to it than most Joy Division songs.

Turns out it's not Curtis, but an Alex Novak from the band Venus Fly Trap, singing 'Morphine' (link takes you to the myspace page, recommend the above mentioned track and '28th March'), one of the many songs from the free CD that comes with Dodgem Logic, the new underground magazine spearheaded by Alan Moore (interviewed here at Wired), who also has a track on it with Downtown Joe & the Retro Spankees. I'm going to have to ask you not to pass judgement based solely on this YouTube video recorded at the launch party, late last year:





I was going to write more about Alex Novak, but I'm afraid that I got a little sidetracked by this article on Amber Heard, what a talent! Damn you internet!

Take me to these Copenhagen delegates...

...or suffer death by cuteness.

look what finally turned up in the mail

Grown on and spoilt by the convenience of the internet makes holding a copy of an underground magazine from a town that's 9365km away a rather surreal experience.

The 'c' word

Well, writing about it certainly pushed me over a bit, so I ordered a pair and here they are, no, not the best of colours:



...but it was the only one I could find with my size (pardon the hairy appendages, I haven't had my monthly shave yet, see, and since we're on it, sorry about the crotch shot too).

Fits nicely around the toes with a bit of a pocket by the heels, I'm wondering if a size smaller might be the perfect fit, although at this point the toes are pretty snug; a size smaller (which is a quarter inch) falls into that gray zone of toe abuse that has confounded hordes of lawyers both alive and 6-feet under.