Rumination + Illustration = Illumination

Artstrek, Fairview, Alberta, 1982

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:12:21 +0100

Artstrek, Fairview, Alberta, 1982

Even then, deep inside, I knew.

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:46:48 +0100

Even then, deep inside, I knew.

Duke Ellington’s Symphony in Black, starring a 19-year-old...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:16:36 +0100

Duke Ellington’s Symphony in Black, starring a 19-year-old Billie Holiday.

pasylree: #safetytipsforladies: A hashtag about how tired women...

Sun, 19 May 2013 10:00:11 +0100

pasylree:

#safetytipsforladies: A hashtag about how tired women are of being told to do stupid, ineffective, unrealistic things to avoid being raped.

Yet again Tumblr won’t let me post my own images no matter...

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:48:00 +0100

Yet again Tumblr won’t let me post my own images no matter which I choose, what the hell’s going on?

Here’s Mr Barnaby Pickles instead, enjoying the new toy I gave him.

Do the ends still justify the means when those in control of the...

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:08:00 +0100

Do the ends still justify the means when those in control of the means keep changing the ends?

explore-blog: Don’t tell us that it’s impossible and that...

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:45:16 +0100

explore-blog:

Don’t tell us that it’s impossible and that there is no budget for glitter. Give us a wheel to reinvent. … We are more than the sum of our parts. We get presidents elected.

Wonderful manifesto for the creative class, a term coined by Richard Florida in his 2002 modern classic The Rise of the Creative Class. Second only to the cinematic Holstee LifeCycle manifesto.

Pair with 5 manifestos for the creative life.

‘There is only one success … to be able to spend your life in...

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:57:00 +0100

‘There is only one success … to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.’

* Christopher Morley

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:11:00 +0100

November 1965. I was born sometime around 330 in the morning, I...

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:00 +0100

November 1965. I was born sometime around 330 in the morning, I believe, delivered at home by my father as I was in such a hurry to get out that there was no time for hospital or midwife. (I just read that being born at home increases the chance that you are a psychopath. How does that work, then?) I didn’t cry; after being swaddled up by my Dad and placed across my mother’s lap, I just Iaid there and stared at them.

I was born in the upstairs front bedroom of 33 Princess Avenue, Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, England, a small two-storey house built in the 1930s which cost my parents - I think - around £8000. They were both so young, only 24, and already they had 2 children and a mortgage. At nearly twice that age, as I write this, I have neither.

Princess Avenue. This makes my ‘stripper name’ Tinkerbell Princess. Oh dear.

I was born into a family of a mother, father, and older brother, a set of great-grandparents, one grandfather and two grandmothers - one Welsh, one English-Irishish - and already a fair few cousins and second cousins with more to come. I cannot put a picture of me at birth here, as there’s only one photograph of me under a year old that I know of - classic Second Child Syndrome: there’s an entire album of my older brother - and that is in my mother’s possession. As I haven’t spoken to her in years, I don’t even know if she still has it, or whether she has destroyed it.

Here’s a picture of the house I was born in, instead, taken as a screencap from Google Earth at the age of 47. Such a thing could not have been imagined on the day of my birth: that such a thing would be available to any old citizen, along with a connection to a global communications system called the internet, via a small piece of equipment called a laptop. In so many ways, I’m very fortunate to have been born when and where I was.

Photo

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:05:04 +0100

I now have an iPad. There goes what remained of my free time.

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:48:00 +0100

I now have an iPad.

There goes what remained of my free time.

Think I’m going to need one or ten today.

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:51:44 +0100

Think I’m going to need one or ten today.

Tornado storm coming, Wall, South Dakota, 2003

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:55:47 +0100

Tornado storm coming, Wall, South Dakota, 2003

Today is a special day. It feels like a fresh start. But then,...

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:46:47 +0100

Today is a special day.

It feels like a fresh start.

But then, as Epicurus said, every day should be like that.

“Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger,...

Tue, 07 May 2013 06:00:28 +0100

“Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?

* Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard

(This girl, on the other hand, is completely awesome).

It’s so beautiful outside today and there’s a...

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:04:00 +0100

It’s so beautiful outside today and there’s a wonderful summer holidays feeling in the air.

So here’s a reblog even though it’s Monday.

Have a wonderful day on this huge beautiful rock spinning in empty space, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:00:20 +0100

Enjoy the silence

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:00:21 +0100

Enjoy the silence

Short History of the GIF

Fri, 03 May 2013 06:00:17 +0100

Short History of the GIF