Buddhamonkeydevil
Decoding Jackson Pollock
It was my wife, Marianne Berardi, who first saw the letters.
We were looking at a reproduction of Jackson Pollock’s breakthrough work, Mural, an 8-by 20-foot canvas bursting with physical energy that, in 1943, was unlike anything seen before.
The critic Clement Greenberg, Pollock’s principal champion, said he took one look at the painting and realized that “Jackson was the greatest painter this country has produced.” A Museum of Modern Art curator, the late Kirk Varnedoe, said Mural established Jackson Pollock as the world’s premier modern painter.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Decoding-Jackson-Pollock.html#ixzz0S9OBlgMn
Study: Belligerent Chimp Proves Animals Make Plans
STOCKHOLM — A canny chimpanzee who calmly collected a stash of rocks and then hurled them at zoo visitors in fits of rage has confirmed that apes can plan ahead just like humans, a Swedish study said Monday. Santino the chimpanzee’s anti-social behavior stunned both visitors and keepers at the Furuvik Zoo but fascinated researchers because it was so carefully prepared.
According to a report in the journal Current Biology, the 31-year-old alpha male started building his weapons cache in the morning before the zoo opened, collecting rocks and knocking out disks from concrete boulders inside his enclosure. He waited until around midday before he unleashed a “hailstorm” of rocks against visitors, the study said.
Madoff Victim, 90, Is Back In “The Market”
(CBS) At the supermarket in Ben Lomond, California, the newest employee is also the oldest – though you might not believe just how old.
“I’m 90, and I’ll be 91 in May and, uh, so what!” says Ian Thiermann.
At 90, after 30 years of retirement, Thiermann is back at work for $10 an hour, handing out the weekly specials, reports CBS News correspondent John Blackstone.
Thiermann is here because he lost, big time, when Bernie Madoff was arrested for running his Ponzi scheme and Thiermann’s investment manager called to say: “I have lost everything! You have lost everything. And he just almost fainted on the phone,” Thiermann recalls.
Geronimo’s Kin Sue Skull and Bones Over Remains
HARTFORD, Conn. — Geronimo’s descendants have sued Skull and Bones — the secret society at Yale University linked to presidents and other powerful figures — claiming that its members stole the remains of the legendary Apache leader decades ago and have kept them ever since.
The federal lawsuit filed in Washington on Tuesday — the 100th anniversary of Geronimo’s death — also names the university and the federal government.
Geronimo’s great-grandson Harlyn Geronimo said his family believes Skull and Bones members took some of the remains in 1918 from a burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to keep in its New Haven clubhouse, a crypt. The alleged graverobbing is a longstanding legend that gained some validity in recent years with the discovery of a letter from a club member that described the theft.
Joe Bageant: Skinny Dipping in Reality
“There’s nothing better that 250 mics of good acid to kick start the cosmic coonhunt for Enlightenment. It takes juice. After all sonny boy, you don’t knock down stars with a bee bee gun.”
—Mad Dog Howard, Hippie Doper/Philosopher
First LSD trip, 1965: Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling inward with eyes closed, I could hear the spider plant hanging in the basket overhead singing in its green subatomic plant language, a hymn to the sunlight charging my bedroom atmosphere. On the back of my eyelids spun a great wheel of existence, turning both ways simultaneously generating an unearthly mournful chant that seemed to be composed of every human voice on earth. It rose in some unknown universal tongue singing, “Wheel of life, wheel of death, Bangladesh, Bangladesh. Wheel of life, wheel of death, Bangaladesh, Bangaladesh.” Millions of starving faces, young men, girls, old men, babies, crones, materialized in uncountable swarms, each face transfigured by…
When It is Okay and Not Okay to Lie to Congress
Houston Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada was charged Tuesday with lying to the US Congress about taking a performance-enhancing substance. Tajeda is expected to plead guilty to lying to a Congressional investigation about taking steroids and about knowledge of other players taking steroids.
Tajeda’s alleged lies about the steroid usage did not result in one person, and certainly not 1.3+ million people, being killed.
The Federal Bank of Chernobyl
I have sympathy for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. As I listened to him unveil the latest iteration of the bank rescue plan this morning an image flashed into my head. It was the image of Soviet troops, dropped by helicopter onto the smoking roof of the Chernobyl reactor, furiously dumping ton after ton of sand onto the molten reactor below.
Like those poor Soviet troops, the last guy who held Geithner’s job, was so politically radio active by the time he got off that roof he’ll probably glow in the dark for the rest of his life.
Now it’s Geithner’s turn.
Eventually the Soviets got the fire out, but the mother of all toxic waste dumps remained. And, assuming Geithner can get control of the banking meltdown, he too will have even a bigger, and more difficult, job on his hand – dealing with the trillions of dollars in toxic waste those under-regulated…
Joe Bageant: A Commodity Called Misery
Our authorized sanities are so many Nembutals. “Normal” citizens with store-dummy smiles stand apart from each other like cotton-packed capsules in a bottle. Perpetual mental out-patients. Maddeningly sterile jobs for strait-jackets, love scrubbed into an insipid “functional personal relationship” and Art as a fantasy pacifier … And we all know this … Slowly, very slowly we are led nowhere.
— San Francisco Digger Papers, 1965
HOPKINS VILLAGE, BELIZE — Sitting down here in Central America happily abusing my health, occasionally, between the hangovers and the bouts with sand fleas and mosquitoes comes an insight or two, or at least what passes for insight in my lowbrow take on life.
The Overachieving Dude: An Interview With Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner would be The Dude from The Big Lebowski if The Dude had done something with his life. Krassner is a holdover of 1960s hippismo, a laid-back stoner-for-life type with a quick wit and irreverent attitude. He wears his ideology on his sleeve, and that ideology is decidedly anti-”The Man.”
But while The Dude bowls, Krassner keeps himself much busier. Political activist, prankster, writer, and avid pothead, Krassner has been an inextricable part of American culture, helping mold it for over 50 years by fighting the hypocritical standard-bearers of decency, and advocating for truth, openness, and “liberated communication” in the public debate.
