Blowing Out Lanterns

There is a New Years tradition in Germany that is hardly known in English speaking countries. This is ironic because the origins of this tradition are from England. An English cabaret act from the twenties was filmed in Hamburg in 1963. Even though it was filmed in Hamburg, it is an English script with English actors. For whatever reason the Germans have kept this tradition of seeing this every year alive. Even German airline flights will play the short on New Years overnight flights. The premise involves a Lady and her butler. It’s her 90th birthday and she has outlived all of her usual guests. Regardless tradition insists that the celebration must be followed the same way every year.

Tags: Videophilia by Gestalt
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The other day I came across a post on Drawn! with a wonderful website dedicated to the life and works of Gustav Klimt. Perhaps its because we share the same birthday, or perhaps because I spend so much time staring out the window, but I’ve always felt an affinity with the sense of quiet stillness I feel from his work.

iKlimt via Drawn!

Tags: Pictoriphilia by Etruscan
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What do you get when you mix 3D animation, an independent short film, and Kafkaesque paranoia? A really good short Canadian film that I really just had to repost.

Directed by Trevor Cawood and produced by Robin Hays.

Tags: Videophilia by Gestalt
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This is a very interesting video made by Alfonso Cuarón director of Children of Men. This is a promo piece for Naomi Klein’s new book The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein writes a regular column for The Nation and The Guardian and a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics and holds an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of King’s College, Nova Scotia.

I have been studying economics for a while and have read much of Milton Friedman’s works, and I have to say she’s not off base in her proclamations. Some of his stuff is very scary. After finding this video I followed the followed the www.youtube.com link and watched a couple of her speeches. If you have the time I strongly suggest check them out as well.

Tags: Politics by Gestalt
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Friday evenings are a dangerous time, full for fermented adrenaline and wild ideas. Sleep is oftentimes a luxury, and as much as I enjoy the onset of surreality, I do tend to wish I didn’t have to work the next morning.

Venetian Snares’s “Szamar Madar” from the Rossz Csillag Allat Született album. Gestalt introduced me to this ages ago, and it has served me well through many a long and restless night.

Tags: Audiophilia, I should probably go to bed by Etruscan
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‘The Amazing Screw-On Head‘ from Mike Mignola, who created Hellboy. I can’t believe I’d never seen this until only recently. Dirigibles! The pathos of a decapitated automaton! The fact that she makes a throne out of live rats! This is the pilot episode, and I wish, very dearly, that there were more. Perhaps if we are all very dark and broody for Christmas, then Santa (ever notice the anagram?) will one day grace us with a series.

Tags: Uncategorized by Etruscan
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I’ve just spent the last half hour reorganizing my Picassa files, my notebooks, and my feeds; and I’ve come to the shocking conclusion that I am generating nowhere near enough metadata. I find myself frantically trolling the interwebs for marginal content that I can, in turn, organize. Only 7 major feeds? Only 5 notebook headings? I can still organize my Miro video’s by genre? Gott in Himmel! I must be failing in my citizenly duties!

This drive to categorize, and track, and tag seems to me a blessing and a curse. In a distributed information society it becomes every individuals role to be a keeper of content, and in turn to be held responsible, not for, but to that content. Sort of the whole ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ scenario. Except that in this instance the responsibility is both personal and distributed. An aspect of ourselves becomes the patina that we have added to other’s content.

I’m curious to see if this sort of trend will reach a sort of ludditic critical mass of overstimulated technophiles. Will there be a rebuttal of content? Tagging for the sake of tagging alone?

If you’ll excuse me, I have to start in on my music collection…

Tags: I should probably go to bed by Etruscan
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Hifana by way of Youtube

Tags: Audiophilia by Etruscan
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