flying

this just blows my mind!!

Wingsuit Basejumping - The Need 4 Speed: The Art of Flight from Phoenix Fly on Vimeo.

and ps. how beautiful is the scenery :)

growing a pair

why do we do things we don't like doing?
...
why do we wake up early,
wear clothes we don't feel comfortable in,
are pleasant to people we don't really care for,
sit at a desk, when we want to be outside,
pay retardedly high bills at restaurants for mediocre food,
then feel criticized for not tipping enough,
need so many things, stuff and more stuff,
blame ourselves for things that just fucking happens,
eat things we don't like because we "should",
don't smoke cigarettes or pot, when it's nobody's business but your own,
feel fat, ugly or too small,
pay taxes and don't know what the money is used for,
live in a democracy, but don't have a say,
live up to other people's expectations when they are not yours,
why don't we do what makes us feel good? fulfilled? alive?

fear, my friend, fear.
well, this year i am going to 'grow a pair' and fucking do what feels good.

cross my heart and hope to die.....cause why else bother?

the shoelace

by Charles Bukowski

a woman, a
tire that's flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard...

it's not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he's ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood...
no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse...

not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left ...

The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
licence plates or taxes
or expired driver's license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink's stopped-up, the landlord's drunk,
the president doesn't care and the governor's
crazy.

lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill's up and the, market's
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it's
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.

then there's always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they're
your friends;
there's always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm's on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady's purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

blue gold & no-impact man

i watched 'blue gold: world water wars' last night [why not learn something while painting]. and 'no-impact man' the night before. both are interesting in their own rights - my preference being "blue gold'. wait, i'll go on a tangent of 2 now....

i think most of us are well aware of the fact that water is now, thanks once again to human manipulation of mother earth, a finite resource, but as with all other environmental, social, political or health problems, we like to forget about it 'for now' and deal with it 'when we really can't ignore it anymore'. well, that times happens to be now.

i am not sure what i am most appalled about: the privatization & control of water, the cowardly gov't's [including ours!!] willingness to take it up the a** by big corporations, the sickeningly ironic & controlling love affair between africa & coca cola [satan] the farmer who stabs himself in the heart [yes, i cried], the limitless corruption or the shamelessness with which we are poisoning our future generations, not just physically, but in every other possible way of life.

what kind of examples are we setting? oh, right...how could i forget; murder, rape and pillage.

i guess why change our habits now?

no-impact man.....well, right off the bat i didn't like this wife. i know, i know, don't be such a bitch and give the woman a chance to show her true....cuntiness. yes, that 's the right word. $945 boots and those retarded iced frappa-whatever-the-f drinks?? c'mon. for real? anyway, the guy, colin - he's cool; he wants to help the world, through his own actions. how noble [it kinda is]. his mission: for his family of 3 to live life in nyc as 'green as possible' for 1 year. throughout this whole shebang there is a constant struggle between himself and his caffeine addicted, reality tv and consumer luxury dependent wife. she whines and complains about all the hardships, and he's the one doing all the work, enthusiastically, and adoringly evolves their daughter in every step of the way.

i don't get her, or people like her.....i don't get most ppl. i like to think that i have come a long way from, say, 10 yrs ago. a little revolution happened in my brain - the synapses stood up in revolt to my lifestyle and thinking about the world - with their little fists in the air, they cried, "hey you! stop feeding me rubbish, using toxic products from a-z, wasting everything and being blind to what is going on around you!"...it took a lot of reading, continuous learning, experimenting and countless discussions with ppl to change my ways. all in all, it takes effort to be 'natural'; being a hippie is a full-time job nowadays, if you still have a 9-5 and live within our society, reading labels, cooking from scratch, avoiding, avoiding and more avoiding.

but i think it's worth it in the end...a little change, bit by bit, is a good thing. trust me - if colin's wife can can come around, chances are so can u...she's a lot less cunty in the end ;)

anyway, here's the trailer:

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/

'How to be a 20-Something'

By Ryan O’Connell (a 24 year-old writer based in the East Village, New York).

Be really attractive. Your acne is gone, your face has matured without having wrinkles and everything on your body is lifted naturally. Eat bagels seven days a week, binge-drink and do drugs: you’ll still look like a babe. When you turn thirty, it’ll become a different story but that’s, like, not for a really long time.

Reestablish a relationship with your parents. You don’t live with them anymore (hopefully) so start to appreciate them as human beings with thoughts, flaws and feelings rather than soulless life ruiners who won’t let you borrow their car.

Go from eating delicious food at your parents’ house to eating Ragu tomato sauce over Barilla noodles. Develop an eating disorder to save money.

Move into an apartment on the corner of Overpriced and Dangerous. Sleep on a bare mattress with an Ikea comforter. Your mother talks to you about buying a top sheet and a duvet cover but feel like you’re not mature enough to own something called “duvet.”

“Date people who you know you’ll never be able to love.”

Read the New York Times piece, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” Feel exposed and humiliated. Share it on your Facebook with the caption: “Um….” Your friends will comment “Too real” and that will be the end of that.

Work at a coffee shop but feel hopeful about your career in advertising, writing, whatever. Remember that you’re young and that the world is your oyster. Everything is possible, you still have so much to see and hear. You went to a good school and did good things. Figure if you’re not going to be successful, who the hell is?

Date people who you know you'll never be able to love. See someone for three months for no other reason than because it’s winter and you want to keep warm by holding another body. Date a Republican just so you can say you dated a Republican.

Eventually all these nobodies will make you crave a somebody. Have a real relationship with someone. Go on vacations together, exchange house keys, cry in their arms after a demoralizing day at work. Think about marrying them and maybe even get engaged. Regardless of the outcome, feel proud of yourself for being able to love someone in a healthy way.

Start your twenties with a lot of friends and leave with a few good ones. What happened? People faded away into their careers and relationships. Fights were had and never resolved. Shit happens.

Think of yourself at twenty and hanging out with people who didn’t mean a thing to you. Think about writing papers, about being promiscuous, about trying new things. Think of yourself now and your face looking different and your body feeling different and how everything is just different.

Form the habits that will stick with you forever. Drink your coffee with two sugars and skim milk every morning. Buy a magazine every Friday. Enjoy spending money on candles, smoke pot on Saturdays, watch the television before bed.

Move into a bigger apartment on the corner of Mature and Gentrification and finally buy a duvet cover. Limit your drug-use. If you find yourself unable to do so, start to wonder if you have a problem.

Have your parents come to your place for Christmas. Set the table, make the ham, wear a sophisticated outfit; this will all mean so much at the time.

Think about having children when you stop acting like a child. This may not ever happen.

Maybe this is assuming too much. Maybe this is generalizing. Maybe society uses age as an unrealistic marker for growth. Maybe. Still feel the anxiety on your 30^th birthday and think to yourself, “Oh shit, I’m no longer a 20-something.”

iart

IKB 191, Yves Klein, 1962

i would like to consider myself an artist. one with a constant artistic block.

if i am not producing, creating or making anything, am i still allowed to call myself one?.....i hope so.

i think though, and this might be an excuse on my part, that the artist is within - in mind, body and soul. when i was young, around 3 or 4 yrs of age, standing in front of a giant blackboard i decided i would 'be an artist'. to me for all these years that always meant a painter, or at least an artist of the more traditional mediums; sketching, drawing in any form, painting, sculpture - anything involving the hands.

that is how i went through university too. when i discovered art's history a whole new world opened up to me and i felt i 'understood art', or at least its tangible history. after all it was in books. i was distrusting (and still somewhat am - more towards one than the other and those who know me can quickly point out which these are) of art that emerged in the late 70's, 80's and 90's...radical feminist, so-called installation art, video and performance pieces. i now understand that some of this distrust came from ignorance or simply naiveté, but i still pretty much have the same tastes as i did then. some things just irk you. i know my shit now. or so i think. my mother always says, hochmut kommt vor dem fall...so i may retract that know-it-all-comment sometime in the future when i am wiser, yet again.

i have changed my mind on a lot of things, as one does when you no longer possess the simple mind of a teenager or young adult in our times, but have we come to an end of artistic discovery? will it turn more and more 'digital' - into iart*? everyone's an artist?!

anyone can manipulate any photograph nowadays (photography itself being a huge point of discussion as it is, using film vs. digital) - even just the term 'manipulate' is so harsh - no experts needed anymore. painting is paint by numbers or taught by bob ross (ok, i kinda like him...it;s his hair and angelic voice) on tv.

i remember when i learned the difference between modern and contemporary art (google it, if i don't explain it well enough). it makes sense; modern being the style of the 60's & 70's - when it was new and modern, get it? - and contemporary art being that of the time (the now)....but here's the question: what is our contemporary art of today called? what is our word - our thing - our style - our mission - our rebellion - our purpose???

how many times can we 'recycle' duchamp, warhol, vincent & the gang - the originals that turned the art world on its head?

we cannot just be i-absorbed consumers, regurgitaters, creative looking, but nothing behind it....can we?

i cannot even say i am anything special either. what i produce isn't there yet....but it's in my mind.

* if this hasn't been patented yet - it's mine bitches!

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