Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Heaven

via.

Disagree in the literal interpretation. Please see The Eternal Feminine, or, “Heaven is a hell of a party,” entry from Goethe Month (“the invisible stereo plays only ODE TO JOY, the good part, OVER AND OVER, forever and instead of the pastel cloud you are instantly transported to the front row of an endless big bang!, watching the universe eternally fling fire and stars at itself! for all time,” etc).

As for the other interpretation, that it is nothing happening which makes it heaven, because when things happen, it makes life messy and complicated? Yeah, maybe, but good christ, why do you want to be bored? What kind of dull, hidden life is immersing yourself in nothing? Way to spit in the face of creation. Get out there and set some fires, numbnuts!

So I disagree with this sign, no matter what.

But lights — shiny. Pretty.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: I’m getting mixed messages, here.

So, is that a “Happy Friday?” Or … what?

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Replace fear

City Hall Square, Copenhagen, Denmark. via unicornology on the tumblr.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I very much need to develop this skill. I resolve to work harder on this.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Depress the door handle in the usual manner

via oddlyspecific.

Just go ahead and bum that door handle right out:

“Door handle, did you ever stop to think about how we are all going to die and start from the moment we are born?”

“Door handle, Rolling Stone reports that Nickelback is back in the studio* and looking to record a new album.”

“There are so many doors that open automatically now. I think they work on sensors and advanced technology. Man. How does that make you feel, door handle?”

“Door handle, Mozart was only 35 when he died. What have you done with your life so far? Would you say you’re proud of your accomplishments?”

Open, sesame!





*As far as I know, a falsehood. God is gracious.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: He hasn’t forgotten you

Monterey, California, USA.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Breaking News — this time it’s personal, “Not gay” edition

He’s having surgery to get rid of the noise. What more do you want?

The man is clearly secure in his heterosexuality. Why do people even keep bringing it up?

I know I am a softie, but I do think this is another sad case. I even hope it is a joke. What if someone had That Much going on in their head? I hope not. I hope no one does.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Apaga la tele

via propaganda del odio on the fotolog.

Turn off/extinguish/erase your television.

Live your life.

William Blake Month: Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: “The Tigers of Wrath”

Berlin, Germany

The quote comes from “Proverbs of Hell,” a chapter in William Blake’s gnostic text The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The book has been interpreted as an anticipation of Freudian and Jungian models of the mind, illustrating a struggle between a repressive superego and an amoral id. It has also been interpreted as an anticipation of Nietzsche’s theories* about the difference between slave morality and master morality.

(the wiki)

*cf: in particular Nietzsche’s camel – lion – child model of human thought and behavior as outlined in Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen / Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (1883-1885).

Portions of this post appeared originally on December 5, 2009.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Beware of kitty edition

There are more people on this earth who believe in reincarnation than do not. True story. Count them.

This liberated space is by way of introducing today’s Blake, which I know it is crazy I have not got around to that One Particular Poem about striped big cats just yet. I can’t believe the weird oversight of it. Someone take back my useless degree, please.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: The Shining edition

All due respect, little dude, but your dad is in kind of a “mood” and I’m pretty sure now is hella not the time to start writing on the walls.

Danny isn’t here, Mrs. Torrance. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980).

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Ghost World Half-Day edition

Art by Daniel Clowes scanned by my lazy ass from Ghost World (Fantagraphics, 1997).

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Donnie Darko edition

via thechocolatebrigade on the tumblr.

I know this guy who claims controversially when drinking in a crowd that he doesn’t like the film Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001). This guy will say he happens to think that it’s a dumb, boring, pretentious piece of crap that tries too hard, and people only pretend to like it because they’re afraid of looking not-hip. I geniunely love the film Donnie Darko, but it’s okay, because I happen to think that this guy is a dumb, boring, pretentious piece of crap who tries too hard, and people only pretend to like him because they’re afraid of looking not-hip.

Haters to the left.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Qui è dove dormo

Florence, Italy.

You can see that the homeless person who wrote this had written on this spot in the past, and the building’s owners have painted over several times. The most recent repaint is just beneath this message, and instead of saying it is where he or she sleeps, it says “Qui è dove vivo.” What happened to make his or her “living”-place identity more fluid, so that he or she only associates this clearly well-liked spot with sleep now? I suspect it came as a result of being driven away during the day by whomever keeps painting over the writer’s small and painfully human attempt at address-establishment, some workaday person concerned with appearances and light, complaining to friends at a dinner at a restaurant about how he feels badly for the homeless people outside his building, but they drive away customers or reduce the value of the property so what can you do? and everyone clucks sympathetically; some mouthpiece of empty it-sounds-good-to-say-so pandering about the importance of charity who gives to collection at church and feels kind of good about it but is still secretly freaked out by the different and eager to shunt everything “ugly” off into the night where they don’t have to look at it and contemplate such ugly things’ place in their own life and God’s plan; some brainwashed apologetic dick who buys in to the system and has completely fucking forgotten that the whole world is half night.

That got away from me. Sorry. Carità è veleno. Except when it’s not, because I know that’s not true, and not everyone is false or a liar or hypocrite, they’re just struggling with problems so big that even Eleanor Roosevelt’s small group of thoughtful, committed citizens cannot change this thing. It has to come from the top, who would never choose it for themselves, so must be rushed by barbarians at the gate, as has always happened throughout history to the elite (who get conquered by the rough who then form over time their own elite whose own rough rise against them in turn and on and on, so what’s the point of any of it?). Now I sound like an anarchist. Which I’m not. Mainly. Blargh.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day — William Blake Month: A Proverb of Hell

One of the “Proverbs of Hell,” from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

“Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.”

I think the door does protest too much. Like, I didn’t even ask, dude.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day and Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day: R. Crumb

The awesome underground comic genius and supafly beanpole hottie R. Crumb poses in the ’70’s with a wall liberated by some of his creations. You might understand the artistic admiration yet still be asking “Realistically, you picked R. Crumb as a ‘Hot’ Man Bein’ Hot of the Day? Up against former category-entrants like Viggo Mortensen, James Dean, and Sean Bean, doesn’t that seem like a stretch?” Okay — NO.

For one thing, I mainly do not discriminate against body type in either direction (except for manorexics in girls’ skinny jeans: you may go take sepia pictures of yourself with knives at your wrists and then write in your livejournal about how mean ol’ E made fun of you). Because for the second and more important thing, hotness does come from within. It is a complex mix of partly physical characteristics that ring your bell but more resonantly it is a response to personality, charisma, mental agility, and weird energy, and yes it can be partially deduced from a photograph, interview, quote, or film clip. (Hence celebrity crushes are sane — ish.)

With wife Aline Kominsky, who actually postdates his character Honeybunch Kominski and is an awesome comix artist in her own right.

That mix: does it mesh with your unique mix? Are you drawn to it? Do you fall in to genre-based-romance and like the class clown, the bad boy, or the quiet type? Do you not care about any of that if the guy smells like a certain brand of shampoo or has a particular timbre to his speaking voice?

It’s not physical so much as something in the eyes, the face, the click, the smell, the deeds and words that make up what a person really is on a plane beneath the physical. That’s why judging hotness results in different outcomes for everyone. And for me personally, R. Crumb’s type of crazy is blazing hot.

Almost bought Crumb’s Book of Genesis in Arcata with Katohs this April, but I changed my mind at the last minute, instead opting to blow all my liquid assets on plates of cheese, to which I am basically allergic, and overpriced vintage records even though both my record players are in Portland — please excuse me while I blow ya mind with my mad rad cash-management skills.

It is 100% a possibly true fact that I am a genius with money, and I encourage you all to attend my smash-hit traveling financial and motivational seminar, “Just Kidding, I’m Broke — Will You Buy Me Potato Skins? No? Split A Cheese Plate, then?” when I come soon to a town near you!

Girls like a boy who reads … his own comics.

Final Thought: Eat spaghetti. Don’t you want to be like Sophia Loren and R. Crumb? What are you waiting for? A sweet rack and emotional relaxation are just a pot of boiling water and a jar of tomato sauce away. Through away that ass-nasty rice cake or low-carb yogurt and welcome back to loving life! You’re welcome.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: “every night, every day” edition

San Francisco, CA, U.S.

What intrigues me is that it does not seem like English is the artist’s first language but he or she expressed their sentiment in that language because it is the first language of most of the people who might see it. It is an argument for the intent of this lovestruck and lonely artist’s writing on a wall being a case of strongly motivated self-expression, powerful and inescapable emotion that needs to be explained so the one experiencing it can at least have an illusion of being understood; it is an outpouring of frustration and love and grief — it’s in stabbing distance of Wordsworth’s definition of poetry, really. I mean, say what you want about some graffiti, but this man or woman needed to share and they needed it badly enough to work outside their linguistic zone of mastery to do it. That is impressive, and achingly human. Everyone around us at the grocery, or on the bus, or in the library, has a sentence like this that they are secretly screaming in their heads all day long. What have we done in the world that’s cut us off so much from one another, that we howl in paint and print instead of to one another about our loneliness? Is that why the increase in liberated negative space? Or just better paints and busier cops.

Liberated Negative space o’ the Day: First time/Last time edition

Modest Mouse lyrics.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: En francais edition

Rue de Coutance, Geneve. Photographed by biphop on the flickr.

“In the black hole, no more assholes.”

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: RIP, AK edition

via yawp barbarian on the flickr.

Cheez-balls — May 16th totally snuck past me. I’ve had a lot on my mindgrapes but I’d planned to throw some things up about Andy Kaufman because he died that day in ’84. Yes, he did. Up there is some referential liberated negative space in his honor to at least partially atone for the oversight.

Screencap of Andy Kaufman taken by me.

And here he is selectively lip-synching the theme song to “Mighty Mouse” on the premiere of SNL, October 11, 1975.

RIP, A.K.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Fibonacci prophecy with a side of insult

Looks like some special vandal finally got around to reading the Da Vinci Code.

To recap the bummer aspects of this liberated space:

You are retarded (ouch, not cool),

— little,

— and a shit.

The world is ending …

… soon.


But, on the bright side:

Math.

Live for today.

I think I just may.