"Now I can be choosy." Abandoned storefront window, Oakland Chinatown

Holiday still life with lemons and apples fresh from the garden

ye olde yule logge

Merry Christmas!

fishface

"fishface" by Doug Millison. 11 x 14"; newspaper, acrylics

Book 146 by Brussels-based artist, JS

by JS. Click image for more options.

A Fire in My Belly

David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" Original from ppow_gallery on Vimeo.

Spike Jones' "Nutcracker" part 1 of many

Rockport, Texas. Spring 2007

I didn't know…

…that the mystery of the Mona Lisa's identity had been solved:

Mona Lisa's identity is no longer mysterious – it is known from a solid piece of textual evidence found in Heidelberg University's library in 2007. This note records that Leonardo was working in 1503 on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. No other theories are needed – and anyway the chief theories down the years have all seen this as a 16th-century work. It would take a lot more than some arcane codes to make this high Renaissance masterpiece look like a work of the 1490s. Still – theories about the Mona Lisa are fun, and there is no harm in them.
…read it all:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/dec/14/eyes-mona-lisa-leonardo-da-vinci

Wave Hello!

Wave Hello
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

People don't seem to know how to adjust and accept the new reality, like scales falling off their eyes. 

The "news" they've been consuming these past many years turns out to be something different from what the people in power report to each other about what's happening in the world, it's a jolt, understandable that many react by clinging all the more tightly to the familiar government propaganda. 

People are just beginning to realize that passive consumption of this government propaganda is only one option. 

The same platform that makes possible the mass hypnosis can also be used to expose the manipulation for what it is. 

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

…Despite the arguments that Amazon, PayPal, and others make about the illegality of the leaked documents, it's not clear that Wikileaks has broken any law. It is clear that some politicians and pundits wish it to be so, most often invoking the  Espionage Act as justification. The Espionage Act makes it a crime to interfere with military recruitment or to convey information dealing with national defense. Since its passage in 1917 (Red Scare, anyone?), the law has been challenged a number of times in the courts, most notably with regards to the  Pentagon Papers when the Supreme Court ruled that The New York Times was within its rights to publish the leaked information. "Conveying" government secrets is a crime; "publishing" them is not. It is protected by the First Amendment, and for the government to intervene to prevent that from happening is unconstitutional.…
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_weakest_link_what_wikileaks_has_taught_us_abou.php

It's a freedom of the press issue, pure and simple.

…more than anything else, WikiLeaks is a publisher — a new kind of publisher, but a publisher nonetheless — and that makes this a freedom of the press issue. Like it or not, WikiLeaks is fundamentally a journalistic entity, and as such it deserves our protection.…
 http://gigaom.com/2010/12/04/like-it-or-not-wikileaks-is-a-media-entity/