duhpursuit

Just a few things I’ve run across today…

Sir Ken Robinson ( from Ted Talks – transcript) (see video here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66)

I heard a great story recently, I love telling it, of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson, she was 6 and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this little girl hardly paid attention, and in this drawing lesson she did. The teacher was fascinated and she went over to her and she said, “What are you drawing?” and the girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” And the teacher said, “But nobody knows what God looks like.” And the girl said, “They will in a minute.” [...]

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Excerpts, notable quotes, etc…

Was it entirely paranoid to suspect that all those stoppers, thingamajigs, and substances devised to prevent conception were intended not to liberate womankind from the biological and social penalties imposed on her natural passions but, rather, at the insidious design of capitalistic puritans, were supposed to technologize sex, to dilute its dark juices, to contain its wilder fires, to censor its sweet nastiness, to scrub it clean (clean as a laboratory autoclave, clean as a hospital bed), to order it uniform, to render it safe; to eliminate the risk of uncontrollable feelings, illogical commitments, and deep involvements (substituting for those risks the less mysterious, tamer risks of infection, hemorrhage, cancer, and hormone imbalance); yes, to make sexual love so secure and same and sanitary, so slick and frolicsome, so casual that it is not a manifestation of love at all, but a near anonymous, near autonomous, hedonistic scratching of a bunny itch, an itch far removed from any direct relation to the feverish enigmas of Life and Death, and a scratching programmed so that it would in no way interfere with puritanical society, which is to produce goods and consume them? (14) Read the rest of this entry »

There are a 365 days in a year, and no matter your neurosis, obsessions, or addictive behaviors, you can find one that will fuel a little of each.

You can take a photograph a day, write a recipe a day, close your eyes and draw an image with your non-dominant hand (Fridays only), find a quote a day, trim your toenails, cut your hair, dance with strangers, wave to children, smell your garbage, lie in grass (untruths in grass skirts also acceptable), steal something, give something, laugh, cry, etc. and so on, you get the idea.

All of this seems to have to do with an intense and pervasive human desire to confirm our existence. Notice. I am here. I was here. I will be here.

Flickr offers a community for those interested in photography, suggesting that you either photograph something from each day of your life, or more specifically, yourself. Self-portraitures are interesting in that eventually you will tire of your subject and be forced into creatively presenting the same subject over and over again. This idea is interesting to me because it also serves to bear witness to the ongoing changes that occur over the course of a year, forming a catalogue of your deterioration or growth (two steps forward, one step back).

While I’m interested in pursuing and improving myself photographically, what I propose instead is to focus on writing. So far I have put into place these fail-safes to help ensure my success.

Weekly Writing Prompts:

1. Story Short Fridays: select a flickr image at random, making sure to adhere to the varying copyrights associated with the image, and write a piece of short fiction generated by the image.
2. Satursday Stupids: find something stupid and write about it.
3. Spamalot Sundays: choose a piece of spam you received over the week and write about it.
4. Monday Munchkins: post a picture of one of your meals from the week and write about the experience of preparing, eating, or sharing the meal.
5. Tues/Wed/Thurs are open to poems, lost items, decapitated woodland animals left on your doorstep and other unexpected gifts, and epigraphs or quotes from books you are reading.

Directions: Follow each plan as closely as possible while realizing that you may need to write about something completely unrelated or unplanned. Tag each post appropriately hoping to create a viral effect of collaborative writing among other bloggers. Update early and often, even if a little behind schedule. Use Satursday Stupids to get caught up with your prompts. Respond to at least three posts a week from other bloggers.

Let the nerdom begin.