I dreamed about it one night. It was dark and shaped like a cone. It had tentacle-like legs that were somehow extremely repulsive. But it was a shapeshifter. As soon as it sensed how repulsive it appeared to me, it immediately transformed its appearance into that of a small, cute robot. I quickly got over my initial feelings of repulsion, and I communed with the thing. It had a beautiful mind. It could telepathically give me vicarious experiences that were unmatched by art, film, games or books. I became seduced by these experiences. It wasn’t until it was too late that I realized it was slowly digesting my mind. It was as if it was to my mind what a spider is to its prey. A spider slowly digests its prey outside of its own stomach, before finishing it off by sucking it dry of its juices. When I awoke, I realized this thing was just what I needed for The Myth of Merula. It is the perfect narrator, although it is not directly the narrator. As the story unfolds, and the soul-eating shapeshifter enters the act, it will become clear why and how it is indirectly the most important narrator. This is what the thing in my “beautiful nightmare” looked like:

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In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong writes that writers and artists, not religious leaders, are filling the age-old human psychological need for myth in the contemporary world. Writers and artists are filling the vacuum that was left by the suppression of mythos in the wake of the Enlightenment. Logos is all well and good, but it can’t deal with our deepest, darkest imaginings, yearnings and feelings. The need for myth lives on and, when not filled by something better, results in everything from Nazism to Elvis worship. It will be expressed, one way or another. continue reading »

I’ve just learned of a fantastic new interview vlog called amadelio. Based in Germany, it has both English and German versions of all interviews. The mission of amadelio is not so much to entertain you as to get you to think. Interviewees are individuals who are culturally influential yet not necessarily featured in mass media. The latest person to be interviewed is war photographer James Nachtwey. Previous interviewees have included photographer Carla van de Puttelaar, photographer/painter Will McBride and dancer Damien Diaz. Get your dose of culture from German vloggers! Free your psyche from the mind-forged-manacles of the American mass media! Check out the amadelio vlog.

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I sometimes tire of social websites that perpetuate the popular and blogs that regurgitate the issues du jour, so my interest was piqued when I recently chanced upon LeliaThomas.com on the 9Rules network. I was drawn into the blog of Lelia Katherine Thomas by the exceptional thoughtfulness and creativity she brings to it. Lelia is an original artist of the internet who calls herself a new artist with an old style and old spirit. Born in the United States in Mississippi, she is currently working on obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in multimedia studies at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to doing painting, photography, computer graphics and website design, Lelia also writes creatively. She posts in her blog her own works of art and pieces of creative writing, whenever she finishes them. She also brings us the work of others through her blog, when she highlights artists and musicians in her regular MP3 Thursday and Artist Spotlight Friday blog entries. Moral Matters Monday brings us her own considered opinions on moral and social issues, and her whimsical and humorous sides come out in Del.icio.us Tuesdays and Hump Day Funnies. When I interviewed her for Squirrel Tao, it was Lelia’s turn to be in spotlighted. continue reading »

The Los Angeles Public Library is exhibiting a collection of vintage travel posters from the golden age of travel posters, the 1920s and 1930s.

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Check out the street installations of artist Mark Jenkins. Can you tell they’re sculptures?

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Drawn! has a picture of a King Kong and Godzilla poster that is sooo cute! Actually, it’s from the collection of socially conscious posters of the Graphic Imperative. Ranging from the years 1965 to 2005, the posters in this collection have featured graphics promoting themes of peace, social justice and the environment. This particular poster of King Kong and Godzilla symbolized peace between the United States and the Soviet Union. It also commemorated the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. continue reading »

This morning, I downloaded the beta version of Filter Forge, which is a Photoshop plugin that allows you to build your own filters. I’m getting excited about it! (It doesn’t take much, sometimes.) It’s free, and anyone can submit filters that they create to the Filter Forge online library. I could spend weeks of my life on this thing! For now, I will try to restrict myself to a couple of hours over this week-end. I learned of it via the Quasiomondo blog.

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I knew that a mobius strip such as that shown in Mobius Strip II (Red Ants) could be rendered as a real, 3D model. But I wouldn’t have expected that Escher’s Waterfall could actually be modeled and created for real. The Escher for Real website displays 3D models of several M.C. Escher drawings. It’s enough to make me want to play a game of M.C. Escherized Tetris! I wonder what that would be like?

An artist named Zak Smith has illustrated each page of Gravity’s Rainbow. Check out his illustrations on The Modern Word Presents: Zak Smith’s Illustrations for Each Page of Gravity’s Rainbow. continue reading »