for japan

If you havent already, please donate whatever you can to help Japan.

Visit Redcross.org or text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 from your phone.

Giant Pink Bunny

I was looking at google earth images after the tsunami in Japan and came across this giant pink bunny in the Alps. I can't believe i havent see this before. It was hand knitted by a group of artists called Gelitin. So dope. I love the giant gaping mouth, i would love to jump inside. I would love to walk along the legs and lay on it's huge tummy. It is expected to be on the Italian mountian top until 2025 so who know, maybe i will get my chance!


BTW: this is funny

Pier Pressure

Sole picks the West's five greatest myths

Read this...
And then read the things he is referencing...
and learn something....

Because Sole is not only intelligent, open minded, and on point...
He is DOPE! (and this guy knows his history, do you?)


Five Western Myths
by Tim Holland, a.k.a. Sole

1. Santa Claus

The modern Santa gets his roots from Sinter Klaas, the Dutch father of Christmas. Sinter Klass, with the help of his '"Zwarte Pieten," a.k.a. enslaved "black devils," brought gifts to children. He moved his residence to the North Pole, where he seemingly swapped out the Moors for Inuits. Today this myth lies at the center of our entire economy and arguably our way of life.

My biggest problem with Santa is that it teaches children that something comes out of nothing, and it gives them an early and tangible affirmation of the supernatural. Even during periods of relative prosperity, it's not uncommon for an American parent to take a second job around the holidays simply to perpetuate this myth. Maybe history laughs last, as yesterday's “Moors” are replaced the world over by today’s work force.


2. The Epic of Gilgamesh

The first epic poem ever written, there is something about the crudeness of the poetry, its repetition, and style that really floors me. This is where much of "Genesis" in the old testament draws its roots, most notably the tale of "The Great Deluge." In the Sumerian version, the "gods" decided to wipe out mankind simply because we were making too much noise, not because the city was corrupted and perverse.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a story of a tyrant king created by the gods who seeks the leaf of immortality to be more like them. Although the leaf was stolen by a snake, Gilgamesh ironically attained immortality through the stone tablets that preserved this myth for 10,000 years. It is well known that Iraq/Babylon/Sumer is "the cradle of civilization," and this bizarrely written story speaks to the roots and motifs that pervade our "civilization."

3. Behold A Pale Horse by William Cooper

This is another story that has captured the imagination of conspiracy theorists, rappers, Tea Party members, and free thinkers alike. There are very powerful ideas in this book about how society is constructed. It explains how people are dumbed down, how information is organized, and how the world would be ruled. The basic premise of this “myth” is that secret societies control the world (on behalf of aliens), which wouldn’t be so annoying if so many people didn’t favor ready-made catch-all answers over researching history.

These stories were used for different ends by different groups in different times, but the result is always the same: “Do nothing; watch YouTube videos; you’re helpless.” I hate this myth the most, because it takes facts, twists them, and misleads the less educated. In the '80s, it was William Cooper. These ideas were then adapted by Alex Jones and are today being reworked by Glenn Beck on Fox News. Karl Marx said, “All that is solid melts into air”; in America, the reverse is also true.

4. The Matrix

Forget about the second and third Matrix movies. The original Matrix was inspired by the ideas of Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher inspired by OG situationist Guy Debord. Baudrillard believed that “man had ceased to be man and the world had ended when the spectacle took over.” The basic idea here is that the "spectacle" has its own agenda; it is an abstraction of power, finance, and media that grinds the Earth and its inhabitants down as raw resource. We are here as spectators — numbers in a giant machine that is controlled by little more than market forces.

Like in The Matrix, the modern worker is completely alienated from his labor and his reality. Thanks to modern technology and social networking, mankind manages to bypass both physical and geographical limitations. Technically, our bodies are not hooked up to giant fields that harvest us for energy to feed the machine, but we might as well be.

5. Revelations

America is a Christian nation, and even reformed Christians hold on to a lot of Christian beliefs. One of the most pervasive is Armageddon. Atheists hedge bets on societal collapse. Evangelicals don’t mind carbon emissions as long as Christ makes it back in time to rescue the pious. New-Agers wait for Atlantis to rise or 2012, when Jon Cusack will save a handful of whites. In reality, Revelations was about the fall of the Roman Empire, and it still is.

Soldier Poet

Since its veterans day, and i didn't get the day off, i was listening to NPR on the way home and heard Brian Turner reading his poems on the radio. I'm not very patriotic per se but i am a realist and this shit is real, almost surreal. I liked the one about the soldier in Lowe's seeing everything around him mimicking the imagery of war. I liked it because it is showing how humans do not just snap out of it once they leave or escape the trauma but rather carry it with them evermore and how that is true of negative aspects of life's experiences in general. I like what he is writing about now, about the value of human life en masse, on this planet as a whole, not just being the "good guys" and killing the "enemy".

The one from tonight isn't up yet.
ill try to find it later.

WASTE LAND

I can not wait to see this documentary. I missed the showing at the Arclight due to some "technical difficulties" as of late. But Im gonna check it on Netflix asap...

Summary: Brazilian artist Vik Muniz creates photographic images of people using found materials from the places where they live and work. His "Sugar Children" series portrays the images of deprived children of Caribbean plantation workers using the sugar from their surroundings. When acclaimed filmmaker Lucy Walker trains her camera on Muniz, he is cultivating a new idea for a project. He knows the material he wants to use—garbage—but who will be the subject of the new series of works? Waste Land is a wonderfully resonant documentary that chronicles Muniz's journey to Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He collaborates with an eclectic band of catadores, or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials, and photographs these inspiring characters as they recycle their lives and society’s garbage. Walker gains fantastic access to the entire process and, in doing so, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the dignity that can be found in personal determination (Sundance).

1 YEAR

Its the 1 year anniversary since the loss of an icon.

The inspiration of millions of people.
I watched THIS IS IT the other day,

unbelievable...

The J5 stage

some of the freshest moves EVER!

The way you make me feel

The opening and ending were cool ...

"it has to simmer"

MJ's fresh Balmain blazer

earth song

i was sobbing all over myself be this point

its a huge reason i have always loved mj - above all his message

Wild Bird

Or Dream House.

This house built by architect Nat Owings in Big Sur California is the perfect blend of simple modern and cabin hideaway. It is nestled into a rocky cliff overlooking the pacific coastline as described in this 1959 Time magazine article. He built the home for himself and his wife, artist Margaret Wentworth Owings pictured here on Cathy of California'a blog (thx Cathy!).
The greatest thing about this pair is their activism and commitment to protecting the coastline and wildlife in and around Big Sur. They established the Big Sur Land Use Plan to do just that. Margaret Wentworth Owings established Friends of the Sea Otter and did extensive work to protect the sea lion and mountian lion population in that area. The two worked together, along with other conservationists, such as Ansel Adams, to established the notion of the ''scenic corridor'' - therefore no billboards or neon or intrusive decor were allowed and strict limits on roadside building were enforced along the winding road up the coast. California Route 1 was no longer part of the State Freeway and still remains a "Scenic Highway". The pair continued their environmental activism and she went on to write several books, "Voice from the Sea: And Other Reflections on Wildlife & Wilderness" released just weeks before she died.

The Cove

Oscar winner for best documentary. This film was very difficult to watch. It is the kind of thing i would usually have to turn off (like anything on polar bears) to avoid intense heart break and total sadness, but I needed to watch this to know. We all need to know and that is why I am so glad it won. See this film! Think! Feel it! Learn more! DO SOMETHING! Pledge NOT to go see Dolphin and Whale shows!

Dolphins and other small marine mammals are not protected by the ban on commercial whaling — but, as we shall see, the methods used are so nonchalantly brutal and gut-churningly primitive that Taiji officials are understandably publicity-shy. (And, we learn later, there are other secrets lurking beneath the town’s thriving tourist industry and cute, dolphin-shape pleasure boats.) Consequently, anyone straying too close to the kill zone — a secluded lagoon protected by steep cliffs, manned tunnels and razor-wire gates — is violently harassed by videocam-wielding fishermen hoping to record an imprisonable offense.



^Richard O’Barry, Flipper's trainer turned Dolphin activist

His drooping eyes and sagging shoulders testify to the bone-deep exhaustion of someone who has spent the last 35 years atoning, and when he gate-crashes a meeting of the International Whaling Commission, the video screen strapped to his chest is like a physical manifestation of decades of guilt.


You know there is a similar slaughter in Denmark's Faroe Islands as well as some sick sort of male right of passage. Read the article...
"I have seen the bays of the Faeroe Islands stained red with blood and I've heard the screams of mortally wounded whales pleading for their lives as insensitive brutes drunk on slaughter are showered in the hot blood of the whales, laughing and swearing as their vicious blades rape the whales repeatedly. It is a monstrous spectacle and it is an obscenity fully embraced by the Danish government and many of the Danish people.
When did concern for the environment and the protection of species become "cultural imperialism"? This is a ridiculous accusation from a country whose only claim to fame lately has been to publish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. Such is the cultural ignorance of the cartoonists that they did not know that Arabs do not wear turbans. Yet Denmark has defended the cartoons and Danes have expressed their belief that Denmark is defending Christian values in the face of Muslim extremism. This smacks more of cultural imperialism than the legitimate concern of European nations to stop the illegal killing of whales. Defending the rights of cartoonists as champions of Christian values while endorsing the illegal slaughter of whales and dolphins displays a warped sense of moral values."

I have not eaten meat in over 5 years for the reasons exposed in Fast Food Nation, Food, INC, and Meet your Meat. I refuse to eat beef, chicken, turkey, but I eat fish. Now I need to re-think my fish intake as well. Im not going to eat ANY seafood unless it is fairly local (alaska, because we cant eat fish off our coast due to heavy pollution). Horrible! This must stop! Im going to cut down on my main protein - tuna and salmon because tuna is already becoming endangered and risks harming other sea mammals and salmon because they are threatned and endangered now as well. MORE GOOD TOFU PLEASE!!!

I can not smile.

Our ocean is not meant to be RED!