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September 30, 2005

Drezign

"This site is a personal portfolio of Karoly Kiralyfalvi aka Drez. This is not a studio or a company."

Behind a "kinky-like" interface an extensive and flexible site illustrating the work of Karoly Kiralyfalvi. Check the Portfolio (allow for pop-ups in Safari and Firefox or you won't see it coming).

Posted by lck at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2005

How

Creative inspiration, business advice and tools of the trade.
Current Issue: HOW October 2005 Price: $15.00
Plus: get a free issue

Posted by lck at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2005

Petra Stefankova, Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

Petra Stefankova is a graphic designer and illustrator, born in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. She studied animation at Academy of arts, architecture and design in Prague, Czech Republic, Jiri Barta's Department of Film and TV Graphics.

Her vector-oriented material is one of the best I have seen in years. Child-oriented Illustration is beautiful, minimalistic and poignant, years away from the materic materials that has been mainstream for years. Astounding, really!

Brava Petra!

Posted by lck at 09:55 PM | Comments (2)

Experimental Design, Portugal. 2005

The most recent European design biennale is getting worldwide recognition thanks to the extreme professionalism of its organisers and conceivers. As only regular event in the field of design theoretical reflection and practical projects, Experimenta already plays an essential role in finding new forms of repositioning the design culture as a strategic point of leverage between economic capability and cultural identity.

Posted by lck at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)

A chair is a chair is a chair

Herman Miller Inc. is a global provider of office furniture and services.

An excellent website: easy to browse, consistent, with built-in search capabilities and shining back-end support. Research and Design/Ergonomic issues and solutions are well documented, product presentation is excellent and a working online retail locator is provided.

You may not like chairs but no question that one day you're going to need one or even sell one. Both ways the Herman Miller website is an excellent destination.

Posted by lck at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

A good nose job

It may have looked hair-raising on tv, but the pilots who successfully landed their damaged Airbus jet Tuesday at KLAX Los Angeles International Airport did exactly what they were trained to do.
The JetBlue A320 carrying 146 people made a safe emergency landing after pilots discovered the front landing gear was stuck with the wheels turned sideways and aborted the flight to KJFK New York.

Although there were reports that the JetBlue plane was dumping fuel during the more than three hours it circled the airport before landing, the pilots were simply burning off fuel. There is no fuel-dump system on the A320.

The pilot holds the nose gear off the ground until the plane's speed is reduced to about 65 or 70 knots, or about 50 knots below the landing speed. Then the pilot gently brings the nose wheel to the runway and hits the brakes and deploys the engine thrust reversers to slow the plane as quickly as possible.

Good job.

Posted by lck at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2005

The Night Clerk - Chapter 2

I've got some pot with me to support myself on tonight's mission that I've swiped from the circle of maniacs at 351, a bunch of retreats. They're all attending some exotic congress but they're enjoying better stuff at night while supplies last. In exchange for this tiny subtraction of veggies I'm filling their iPods by encoding a whole library of CDs on their portables. It is the boring job people hate to do, requires little human stress and music is needed as much if not more than wallpaper. In the end a little skunk burning by the gate while I'm chasing passers-by glowing in the dark is a tiny disturbance for which I'll forgive myself twice. My friends go in and out of 351 for refills, impending needs and to visit friends off location, all plugged in their white ear-buds and soul-fitting, like going for jogging. They can hear me and I assume they're never too deep into their private cloud or blitzed off their head too far. I appreciate their sense of consistency and maturity, head over heels with firm a sense of the network lying in close proximity. Smooth pushers in white suits a good investment.

I love people as much as I hate myself for being a spectator. But I guess that's the game at play, dispatching the keys and not getting enough private entertainment to care for.

The power went out last night in a breathless moment. A group of insomniac women uneasily gathered in the lobby asking for candlelight. I turned a battery-powered camping neon light on and hoping it wouldn't be long. Apologies and glasses of cognac were offered and accepted.

Playing Pinochle. Watching, trying to make sense and promising to study lawyer next time. I've got all kind of excuses. Walk away spinning round the block starring at my black shoes and thinking my girlfriend is lying in deep sleep, unconscious of troubles and dreaming that by morning it will be Sunday and she'll only be needed dead-walking the dog to the Starbucks on Vesey for cappuccino and croissants. Sometimes life is nothing more but waiting. But the waiting is not part of life. Go figure. Not now in the stinky cloud of fish restocking in the neighborhood. Empathy is more than required back onto these ladies, needed now more than ever. I walk back for a call to the power station help desk hoping our westerns rights get a fix before a refund is due. The boss may have to spend the next couple weeks responding to hundreds of enraged emails publicizing customer service gone horribly wrong or that the place is ghost-infested, which would be fun. They may love to invent a set of stories from the ages and a couple of close encounters to spice up the advertising.

When power comes back two hours later only four of the ladies are still playing. Some are raping the magnolias by pulling baby flowers off and sniffing them as if a good trail to a newfound lysergic experience, others oozing on the couches and some have left altogether for a safari around the block, comforted only by the sound of police cars roaming the area. One young, distressed at not being able to get emails, for which she had to recharge her 'book, was invited over to one of the friend's portables still running on cells (and encoding) and she was nice from there on. She explained that was running some tourists package auctioning and awaiting on client's confirmation. Truth is she's spying on someone's mail. A private eye and a liar calling for a spare battery pack.

Getting away at 3 a.m. I get a girl at the reception that's a regular:
“Welcome back, Laura. Where have you been?”
“Up, down and all around.”
“Lots of pictures?”
“Truckloads.”
“Always interested in news trends?”
“Yep, what you got? Uh, iPods? That's all? A bit short of taste my friend.”
“No, this is just their muzak. Room 352 for you, you'll have fun. By the way, Newsweek wants to talk to you.” I handed her a piece of fax paper as she unfolds it and inside the tiny purse. A short but ominous message: Spiked you. Van McCann. Call for appointment.
The tiny elevator groaned to 352 with its girly payload.
She called back around 5 barking at me and scaringly asking if I had anything to do on the evening next. An invitation to a place called Touraine was the matter. Now I'm thinking of herb salads and mushrooms poached in red wine. That will do me fine. Don't know about the rest. But she had an idea.

I hung up and suddenly the funny time lapses and washed out colors induced by the smoke are gone. Sunday morning sidewalks are turning gray, heavy and wet. Eyes are sticking onto the poles and staying there. Mushrooms start growing. Poles start swinging.

© Fortunato Caragliano

Posted by lck at 05:45 PM

September 18, 2005

The Commi Pub round the corner

The Nevsky bar described by a passing New Yorker sounds like this:

By day Via Crociferi is the hallowed center of Catanian spiritual power. By night it's... um... a big party. On the staircase leading from Via Crociferi towards the center there is a bar called Nevsky. It features a diverse crowd but they work to attract the socialist youth element, and they succeed. The bar itself is too small to accomodate and the staircase has become an extension of it and the other bars on the street. Positives: never seen anything quite like it, hundreds of people, lots of drinking. Negatives: the drug scene is here also. The staircase itself also gets pretty filthy by four o'clock. Those looking for a quiet romantic passeggiata should look elsewhere.

Back to local, I won't work it for the movie guide but I can get close. Foremost, I live just a block away from it and I normally walk to the place from top to almost midway stairway level, which is where the Nevsky is located. I would remember to go down slowly and cold enough to be able to screen the geography, which is always slightly different. It is true the stairs are a natural extension of the pub, a very small pub, and the outer can hold close to 250 scattered bodies.

A place like the Nevsky can essentially be described as a behavioral orgy.

The bar/place/service is irrelevantly standard if not for the Che-Che covered walls, no Red Bull (they serve a natural substitute energetic based on sugarcane) and filo-cuban menu, flags, outer walls and a few quirks in the drinking range. They have no pretty dancing bartender girls, only solid tanned and a bit aged socialist faces. Since the stairs act as a bowl for standing consumers and a few of the quirks are pretty constraining a stew of micro-competitors, some fake, flourished all around. These "other-places" serve Red Bull, shit beer (the draft at the Nevsky is excellent while bottled is limited) and more exotica (chill-out and the revival vodka-bacardi range).

The lower part of the stairs, bordering to a small hotel, holds for local mature regular couples or groups who may exploit the round tables & chairs and munch snacks, salads and have cocktails.

The top side borders to the renowned chock full of churches Via Crociferi, a Baroque nightmare, and holds locals, younger, loose or inarticulate groups, only apparently lacking a rigid hierarchy, that may look and act like punk gangs but have nothing in common with what you remember using the "punk" tag for. Here you'll find pot available, skunk and sometimes hash. Angels and cocaine-sniffers must be hiding well within the mess.

The mid-section is the largest, it holds drinkers from about everywhere and the draft-lovers, hard beer drinkers and expert survivalists. Survivalists are drinkers that are into the routine so much and well that you may spot them having Moretti for breakfast, then Heineken up to late afternoon and several naps and double-espresso strategically placed in between to stay alive until the evening.

Only the category living atop of the stairs can be seen really blitzed here, the rest enjoys a stoic machismo that is rule in socialist mythology.

Aggressive gay groups can be found laying on the side self celebrating their best screening abilities. These guys can scan deeply, select, make fun of obsolete trends, emerging ones or simply laugh at the tacky stuff passing by. Gays successfully encroach on neighbor's land if istigated. Lesbian couples, on the other side, exhibit a very traditional attire here, both formally and behaviorally these girls span/exhibit low interest in social intercourse outside the couple's range and can mostly be found at corners and edges. The mid and, god knows why, heterosexual bunch, inhabits the in-betweens. Here I've found simply tourist types, English collages and stranded hooligans (Manchester United especially), mid-milky and very uncertain boy groups and returners. Returners are those you have not met in forever and happen to meet again. This is the noisiest.

Sum'd up, best is the draft, vodka cocktails, which you can custom-order from the young-bold bartender my wife loves and some more exclusive touches I won't anticipate. Wine is present but, again, irrelevant. The local Nero sucks eggs. All in all the place is extremely enjoyable, lacking a few middle of the road, offering some cuban surprises, forcing sociality between foreigners like no other place and, by the way, music is never louder than the crowd.

Posted by lck at 12:07 AM | Comments (6)

September 17, 2005

Money down the Wormhole

There are several awful ways to waste taxpayers' money. One of the most creative I ever stumbled upon is a $25,000 report, titled "Teleportation Physics Study". The US military has a long history of funding research into topics that seem straight out of science fiction, even occultism. These range from "psychic" spying to "antimatter"-propelled aircraft and rockets to strange new types of superbombs. Read it on and laugh or cry, I can't say. (Respect to Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom who pointed this tragic one out first)

I don't mind people who, because of their (super)position in the administration, take huge piles of cash for a retour onto friends, clients and supporters. That's politics and, as such, inevitable. To the silly types who praise Star Trek class mythologies, I'm glad the series was killed off finally for good and your DVDs won't survive 3 more years of (de)lusional stress.

Monday, August 29, 2005
by Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
© 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

Frustrated that terrorist kingpin Osama bin Laden is still on the loose nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, a few military types and their scientific advisers are pondering a "what if" solution straight out of TV's "Star Trek."

Wouldn't it be neat, they ask, if we could nab bin Laden via teleportation? In "Star Trek," the characters traveled between spaceship and planet by having their bodies dematerialized, then "beamed" to another locale -- hence, the characters' familiar request to the ship's engineer: "Beam me up, Scotty."

That's teleportation.

Although many physicists think such ideas are claptrap, it would be ideal if the United States could teleport U.S. soldiers into "a cave, tap bin Laden on the shoulder, and say: 'Hey, let's go,' " said Ranney Adams, spokesperson for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base in the Southern California desert. "But we're not there (yet)."

Not for want of trying, though. Last year, the Air Force spent $25,000 on a report, titled "Teleportation Physics Study," to examine possible ways to teleport humans and objects through space.

The military has a long history of funding research into topics that seem straight out of science fiction, even occultism. These range from "psychic" spying to "antimatter"-propelled aircraft and rockets to strange new types of superbombs.

Military-watchers have long argued over whether such studies are wastes of taxpayers' money or necessary to identify future super-weapons, weapons that a foe might develop if we don't.

In recent years, many physicists have become excited about a phenomenon called "quantum teleportation," which works only with infinitesimally tiny particles. It might lead to new ways of transmitting cryptographically secure messages, some speculate, but not human beings for a long time to come, if ever.

"Experts in the field can foresee using teleportation in the area of data encryption but not (at least not in the near future) for the purpose of 'beaming' macroscopic (e.g., human-size) objects across" space, said Phil Schewe, a physicist, chief science writer at the American Institute of Physics and author of a forthcoming book, "Bottled Lightning," on the history of the American electrical grid.

Schewe thinks the government is sometimes justified in funding "offbeat research," but he is wary of the Air Force teleportation study, prepared by physicist Eric W. Davis.

If the Air Force really thinks such study could lead to actual teleportation devices, "then I would say that something is wrong with the way the Air Force allocates its research money, at least on this topic," Schewe said.

Pierre Chao, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said such seemingly bizarre research might be the necessary price that the United States must pay in order to guard its future security.

"The devil's bargain that you're going to take if you're going to exist in that cutting-edge (scientific) world and use taxpayer dollars is that you're going to be investigating some pretty goofy things," Chaos said. "I'm not advocating that 'psychic teleportation' is anything real, but I am willing to accept a certain amount of 'slop' in the system to ensure that I am investigating other areas of real value and interest."

Davis, who has a doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Arizona, has worked on NASA robotic missions. His 79-page Air Force study seriously explored a series of possibilities, ranging from "Star Trek"-style travel to transportation via so-called wormholes in the fabric of space to psychic travel through solid walls.

Now at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas, Davis reached both pessimistic and optimistic conclusions in his study. On one hand, he concluded that "Star Trek"-style teleportation faces enormous obstacles, partly because it would require the development of extraordinarily high-speed computers and would consume mind-boggling amounts of energy. Also, it would encounter all kinds of physics headaches generated by the principles of quantum physics.

For example, the computing-encoding of the entire contents of a human body would require 10 to the 28th (the number one followed by 28 zeroes) kilobytes of computer storage capacity. It would take 100 quintillion of the world's best commercially available hard drives "to store the encoded information of just one human being."

Also, "it will take more than 2,400 times the present age of the universe (about 13 billion years) to access this amount of data" from the computers, Davis writes. And "to heat up and dematerialize one human being would require . .. the energy equivalent of 330 one-megaton thermonuclear bombs."

Such teleportation also raises troubling moral issues: Would teleportation successfully reconstitute not only a person's body but their "consciousness (personality, memories, hopes, dreams, etc.) and soul or spirit?" Davis's study asks. "This question is beyond the scope of this study to address."

However, Davis expressed great enthusiasm for research allegedly conducted by Chinese scientists who, he says, have conducted "psychic" experiments in which humans used mental powers to teleport matter through solid walls. He claims their research shows "gifted children were able to cause the apparent teleportation of small objects (radio micro-transmitters, photosensitive paper, mechanical watches, horseflies, other insects, etc.)."

If the Chinese experiments are valid and could be repeated by American scientists, Davis told The Chronicle in a phone interview Thursday, then, in principle, the military might some day develop a way to teleport soldiers and weapons. In principle, it could teleport "into a cave in Afghanistan and kill bin Laden instantly, or bring him back to justice."

Davis' study was released by the Air Force Research Lab in August 2004 and, at the time, received only scattered press coverage. A Chronicle reporter decided to revisit the study -- and the larger political questions it raises -- after an employee of a U.S. Navy research lab confidentially sent a copy of Davis' entire report to The Chronicle.

In a phone interview last week, Adams, the Air Force official, said that at present, the agency is "not pursuing" teleportation as a potential military tool. "This was a study of overall physics phenomena or capabilities that might be deemed by many (as) futuristic ... . If you don't turn over the rocks, you don't know what's underneath. We didn't find anything (in the study) which was deemed pursuable (for a possible military tool).

"But if we don't explore these things," Adams continued, "we don't know when we might have a possibility of a near-term breakthrough, or something that we might be able to address for future needs that would help us (militarily) ... . That's our story, and we're sticking to it," he concluded.

In interviews, some experts on military funding policy suggested that maybe the Air Force doesn't take teleportation seriously, but wants any enemies to think that it does so they'll waste fortunes studying it.

"The strategy is to get China to waste money on things that we know are not feasible, while discouraging them from working on things that we believe to be quite promising," said John Pike, a veteran defense policy analyst in the Washington, D.C., area. He cites the military's bankrolling of research on an allegedly novel source of energy called hafnium isomers: "The U.S. continues to fund work in this field, despite the fact that it contravenes known laws of physics."

Victor J. Stenger, a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii, said: "I didn't realize that President Bush's faith- based initiatives have reached so far as Air Force research projects ... . None of the three forms of teleportation of large objects discussed in this (Davis) report are anywhere near being practical in the foreseeable future and (are) probably ultimately impractical, as a trained physicist can see by just plugging in a few numbers."

As for the Chinese psychic research, Stenger said the articles on the "Chinese experiments ... . have not been translated into English and so (have) not yet (been) subjected to critical reviews by the scientific community at large."

Likewise, Michio Kaku, a noted physicist and author at City University of New York, said "the only way to use (teleportation) as a secret weapon is to allow our enemies to bankrupt themselves thinking they can produce a teleportation machine."

"The Air Force is to be applauded for investigating technologies that may have value for national security," Kaku added. "But wormholes, negative energies, warped space-time, etc., require futuristic technologies centuries to millions of years ahead of ours. The only thing going down the wormhole is taxpayers' money."

Posted by lck at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

ZoneZero

ZoneZero is dedicated to photography. Its name intends to be a metaphor for the journey from analog to digital image making. One of the references comes from "The Zone System" a fine example of the analog heritage in photography made so famous by Ansel Adams. From the analog dark room we are now moving to the digital one; where everything analog is transformed into digits represented through the infinite combinations of either zeros or ones.

Pedro Meyer, with a an excellent staff of 17, does an excellent job.
(English and Spanish spoken)

Posted by lck at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)

Mono

Typing on the new aluminum typewriter (not true, the PowerBook will arrive next week).

Slow and slow eastbound design & attitude are maturing distinctively different from (and lacking the seriousness of) our westerner everyday routing advisors, which is appreciable. Planning for an out at the "stairs", mid section, between the aged and sleepy Margarita drinkers and the die-hard young skunk smokers on top.

Austrian's monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group of basket weaving enthusiasts and theory do-it-yourselfers having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is the super-affirmation of the globalization trap. monochrom has existed in this (and every other) form since 1993.

monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism. publishes the book of the same name in addition to its activity in other areas. international art scene, panel discussion event technology, souls bought and sold, game and shame shows, readings of the dreariest sort, theory cocooning, film short processing, website squatters' consultancy, alternative space travel projects, do-it-yourself surveillance courses, riddle rallyes, ecumenical field services, overhead projector comics, circumstantiation, Power Point fairytales, layouting and decomposition, propagandistic summer camps, monumental puppet theater, aesthetic pregnancy counseling, producing, promoting and destroying music, party service, expressional dance, Biennial brawls, GDR rock, DJ events.

The Deutsche version is the default: here.

Posted by lck at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2005

What the !@#% is Microsoft doing with Vista?

Some ten years ago, when I was ten years younger and not as wise as I pretend and enjoy being today, playing anti-Microsoft was not just a mandatory game nor a convenient empowering psycho-bubble but a religion and dealing with the enemy was very much forbidden, as many can remember. Now God's dead, Bill has got shares and hooks into Mother-ship (stupid if he was not), Stevo publicly claims Office to be an essential piece in any decent mac's office software library and we still hate Windows.
Why?
Were we just right when we were wrong?
Let's look at what the next Windows is going to look like and let's look at it with the eyes of a very broad-minded apple user (but let's get a glance at just few details, ok?).
Read on here and don't be surprised if you find yourself in good company... in the end you were just right when you were wrong, kids :-!

Posted by lck at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2005

Google hates George W. Bush

Are not the people at Cosmic Variance the wildest bunch? This may have been rectified by now or the clowns at Google are purpurtely doing it but... with Krzysztof's own words: "Ok. Now listen closely: Go to Google. Type the word “failure” into the search window. Initiate the search and see what comes up. Do it soon, as I don’t know how long this will last."

That is correct: today, searching in Google for the word "failure" returns the official biography of George W. Bush (as hosted at the White House website) as the top finding. Ah, the cruel geeks!

The same geeks (at Cosmic Variance) also brief us on Pragmatic Quincuncial Cartography, a mapping system developed by a philosopher, funding problems related to the recent New Orleans disaster and an updated wine list (with prices) from the 2005 SLAC Summer Institute.

Physicians are invaluable.

Posted by lck at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)

A good portfolio is a good portfolio

A good portfolio is a good portfolio. An exceptional portfolio is better and Sven Kils beats anything you can find right now. Outstanding work. Never be in a hurry when you build yours.

Posted by lck at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2005

Times speaks Nano

Steve must have been wondering for ages what the little pocket on the right side of every pair of Levis 501 was for. I guess he does not smoke or he would know that is the size of a Zippo lighter. So, what you, non-smoker nerd-geek-almost can put in there? The article on Times Mag. gives you the answer. I point out Times because the article is very very well written. Drool at will.

Stevie's Little Wonder
Honey, he shrunk the iPod. How Jobs and his team of Apple innovators created this season's must-have gadget. By LEV GROSSMAN/SAN FRANCISCO. Copyright © 2005 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Kanye West is doing his level best to rock the house, but it's not an easy house to rock. He's onstage at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, it's 11 in the morning, and his audience is largely white and overwhelmingly nerdy. West rips through All Falls Down and Gold Digger, but he barely gets a head bob out of those people. When he raps, "If you aint no punk, holla 'We want prenup!,'" not a single, solitary soul hollas back.

Direct link for more here

Posted by lck at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2005

The Night Clerk - Chapter 1

Look on the Hotel's website, on the FAQ pages halfway between Lost and Found and the ID Card program, two rows of arial black, "evening" misspelled and responsible for the so-called "dining facility features", which ain't true. A copy from Delhi on big students discount did it. I'm here by chance and to pay for Health Insurance and food and housing.
It is a simple job.

On this job you normally have these responsibilities:

· Monitor the front desk of the hotel. (Hours 22:00 p.m. to 8 a.m.)
· Monitor hotel hall entrance security.
· Enforce hotel policies.
· Report incidents or concerns to Hotel Manager.
· Maintain neat appearance of lobby area.
· Report maintenance problems.
· Respond promptly to emergencies and phone calls.

but in some areas may also need to pass these qualifications:

· High School graduate or GED
· General clerical skills
· Good communications skills
· Computer knowledge
· Pass a background check

Between me and you, enough.
The place is the Ambrosia, a respectable second-rate on West Side street in Manhattan.

In the late hours when all returners have returned I like to dream. I have a good memory for dreams. And I dream of going back and forth and around thru these alleys and corridors where clients have established themselves with their habits and friends and furniture in their self-contained nanoverses barely sharing room-service hours, a list of credit cards, a pair of elevators and a brand of linens. I know all these guys as much as I know myself. Others I don’t know. Some live in the hotel, one is my girlfriend, another is a hooker that is now in catering services and wakes me up with a loud ringtone, another sells real estates around here and believes mustaches are a mandatory sales tool.

In these dreams I always wake up in a suite over a cliff on the ocean and go out roaming by myself in the crashing waves passing from a night blue to a pale cyan of clouds and shoes shine.

I love to entertain myself on a nightshift.

I know everybody who has a job says they hate their job, so let me put that in context. I work three nights a week for ten hours a night, I commute as many as five hours a day and make 450. Before that I was starving, broke and bleary-eyed but happy. That’s right, happy. Before you start thinking that this is a bitchy, that I’m going to start filling with complaints about customers or my boss and leave you wondering let me explain to you that I know what I’m doing and had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into when I moved here and when I took this job. The fact is, I didn’t have a choice. After failing out of a private college and then a public state university, I had to go to a community college. And my community college is one of the best in the country. Now I feel like I’m in the unusual position of being an articulate loser, uniquely capable of describing the colorful and seedy scenery that surrounds me inside and outside of the light-filled bubble that I inhabit ten hours a night.

I have no specific agenda, I’m not smart enough for that. Retrospectively, a lovely advantage.

Holding a pencil with two fingers and embracing a view from the dwarf-magnolia tree to the entry curtains, I can feel both the life and waves between my fingers bordering to abyss and the dying quakes of cars going by.

My girlfriend is not my girlfriend. She lives in 404 and does not drive. She is thirty-one years old, and had been married eight years. A rather small woman but resolute bearing, she came down in the July, and in the September expected her third baby. She loves to say she works as a manager for Burger King. Can not see anything worse than piling up grand-totals all day on a dying Dell and falling asleep on shift schedule drafts. Speaking to me from a rain-world with dropping tunes and creeping in the morning blues and disappearing in the city carpeted with cars. She leaves just when I’m getting ready but never at the same time and I bring her broken and watering voice with me and save it for the day next.

I like the view through the main gate, a nice framed and layered low angle view of the ground at the bottom. But I hate cars. In the morning, it's all people walking their dogs, homeless still hang out at Logan as they do in many other NYC plazas and cars and I feel like a plain fool with the sun trying to keep me from going to bed, twirling and jumping.

A fire broke out on the second floor at 251 at 6:15 a.m. while some guy who left a candle burning was taking a shower. The fire started when the candle, placed upon a 3-foot plastic stand, tipped over and nearby papers caught on fire. According to the police, he received second-degree burns on his hand while trying to put out the fire. There were no serious injuries but the fire and rescue squad expressed their disapproval at the fact that during the evacuation, nobody pulled the fire alarm.

Two hours before the heat I was quietly going thru thin blue corridors enjoying casual parties with this group or the other and I remember that we drove a boat with two blond haired Norwegians who do water processing in Amsterdam and a dark Chinese girl passing by and sketching each one of us in the fog towards the edge. We set up a fire under a tree and spent the night there breathing a mix of weed and red mangroves. Then one of the boys walked right into the water and disappeared and I don’t know why we did not care.

I went into the front garden, feeling too heavy to take myself out, yet unable to stay indoors. The heat was suffocating.

Looking ahead, the prospect of my life make me feel as if I am buried alive. But there are books, sleep, places to go and a deal I cut for at around four tonight and I’m going to look into it.

Relax. For awhile.

© Fortunato Caragliano

Posted by lck at 07:12 PM

An Italian festival

The first of its kind on an international scale. Site is in good English, Italian, Spanish and French. An embarrassment of riches made possible by massive sponsors. Not widely advertised on the net, 3 days from Sep 30th to Oct 2nd in Ravenna, Italy, will pack a rainbow of talents active in several areas of Illustration. Details "inside"

Exhibition: Komikazen: International Festival of reality comic-strips
Curators: Elettra Stamboulis and Gianluca Costantini
Locations: Ravenna's "Museo d'Arte" at "Loggetta Lombardesca" in Via di Roma 13, Ravenna; the "Almagià" in Via dell'Almagià, Ravenna; the
"Centro Giovanile" in Via Chiavica Romea n.88, Ravenna
Organised by: The Mirada Association and Ravenna's Local Authority for Youth Initiatives.

Inauguration: 30th September, 6 p.m.

Dates: 30th September - 2nd November 2005

On Friday 30th September at 6 p.m., the Mirada Association in collaboration with Ravenna's Local Authority for Youth Initiatives will present Komikazen, the first International Festival of reality comic-strips, hosted by the city of Ravenna at three different sites: the "Museo d’Arte" of Ravenna; "Almagià", the former sulphur factory; and the "Centro Giovanile" in Via Chiavica Romea.

After the success of exhibitions entitled "Per Ventiquattromila baci: fumetti dall’altra Europa”, “Joe Sacco: Nuvole da oltre frontiera”, and “Marjane Satrapi ovvero dell’ironia dell’Iran”, that centred narration around real life accounts, the Mirada Association wanted to provide the public with a greater opportunity to make contact with, and get to know, the most internationally important authors to recount reality through words and pictures.

The Festival, the first of its kind on an international scale, is arranged by Gianluca Costantini and Elettra Stamboulis and will last three days, while the planned exhibitions will be open to the public throughout October. At MAR (the Office for External Relations and Marketing), there will be an exhibition of original storyboards from the winners of the International Competition La Battaglia di Algeri: racconto a strisce di una storia in bianco e nero as well as the works of authors already established in their respective countries, such as Phoebe Gloeckner, Nicole Schulman, Felipe H. Cava, Tomaž Lavric and Kamel Khélif.

The festival will intersect with other methods of communication, such as journalism and photo-reportage, thanks to the collaboration of the magazine “Internazionale”, a partner in this project.
The festival will above all, however, be an opportunity to meet the guest authors, including Marjane Satrapi and Joe Sacco, who will both meet the public. The show will also offer associated workshops for school groups relating to autobiographical comic-strips.

Biographies of guest authors

Phoebe Gloeckner: a reader at Michigan University, USA, is known in Italy for the now impossible-to-find "Vita da bambina" (Topolin Editions), an autobiographical account of domestic violence. Gloeckner has produced many comic books and has worked with authors such as James Graham Ballard; Robert Crumb is one of her fans.

Nicole Schulman: a young American designer, linked to the noglobal movement and to the alternative American scene, she collaborates with the World War III collective. Schulman designs posters, tattoos and illustrations for the political performances of activists and is characterised by her xylographic sign and strong interest in social issues. Together with Paul Buhle, she created Wobblies, a book about the history of American Trade Unions. Her work has been published in Italy in the magazine "InguineMAH!gazine".

Kamel Khélif: the work of this French-Algerian writer has been printed by publishing houses such as France's "Fremòk". The stories, of a very pictorial nature, are all linked to the transverse theme of the search for identity by "those born in other people’s countries". The sense of exile and of belonging is portrayed through short scenes set in the cities of provincial France and Algeria. These stories are a tribute to the lost youth of these countries and a homage to the nostalgic beauty of memory. He is, as yet, unpublished in Italy.

Felipe H. Cava: a Spanish scriptwriter (also of film), he has worked with many writers, including Raul. Cava is known abroad particularly for "Berlin ‘31" and "Ventana a Occidente" (unpublished in Italy), and he also coordinated the editorial initiative 11 Marzo, created by a group of Spanish scriptwriters, and concerning the railway attacks that led Spain to withdraw from Iraq. During the 70's he was part of the political-creative collective known as El Cubri.

Tomaž Lavric alias TBC: a Slovenian writer, he is known in Italy for Racconti di Bosnia (Magic Press Editions), that won various international prizes for best comic book, Tempi Nuovi and La Fuga di Lucertola, by the same publisher. He also created Il Decalogo IV for Panini comics. Lavric uses pictures to tell stories that describe his country as it reaches a junction between the past and the present, from a disenchanted and pitiless viewpoint.

Guests at the festival will include Joe Sacco, a reporter who draws comic strips regarding conflicts such as those in Bosnia and Palestine, and also an observer of the American internal political debate (published recently by "Internazionale"), who has already exhibited in a solo show organised by Mirada at the Museum in 2001, and Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian comic-stripwriter, of French adoption, known in Italy particularly for Persepolis, which was also published as a comic book supplement to the daily newspaper "Repubblica".

The catalogue published by "Coniglio Editore" of Rome, and produced for the Festival, will present stories, previously unpublished in Italy, by all the featured writers as well as a critical contribution by Elettra Stamboulis and Tahar Lamri and a piece by Felipe H. Cava on historic events and the comic-strip.

Press Office
MAR - Office for External Relations and Marketing
Tel. 0544 - 482017/482775 ufficio.stampa@museocitta.ra.it
Associazione Mirada
Tel. 0544 – 600825/61446 Fax 0544 – 590810 Mobile 3295372762 mirada@tele2.it http://www.mirada.it

Posted by lck at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2005

Carl Blender's Bendable Element

Specializing in work for the music industry and print, Carl sports an impressive portfolio. Take a good 30 mins off before start digging. Very effective site.

Posted by lck at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2005

Art Lebedev Studio

Art. Lebedev Studio, founded in 1995, is the largest design company in Russia. Industrial design, graphic design, web design and interface engineering.

Very impressive Industrial and Environmental design samples onsite and a good, large pack of Illustrators.

Posted by lck at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)

From Russia with (sudden) Love

Russian, minimalistic, extremely simple website, good and excellent print design, worth a look. Very young designer.

Posted by lck at 01:19 AM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2005

In the Navy

In Louisiana they are expecting to be swamped with refugees from the damage wrought by hurricane Katrina. The doctors there are turning their own homes into emergency centers. Steve know folks there, and he is gathering supplies and hauling them from his base in Lafayette to Mandeville. Mandeville is on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and is right across the lake from the city of New Orleans. If you can help, you can donate through paypal, all you need is Steve's e-mail address, which is expresley@cox-internet.com

Steve put up pundeteria, a blog that along with LGF is pushing efforts for donations and dispatching information.

Language is shaping around the disaster in a way familiar. Steve is reporting a quote by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on a local radio station that news outlets are suppressing as obviously can not be reported in its entireity. Here it comes:

mp3 here

Posted by lck at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)