Saltimbanco - Cirque du Soleil

I saw the latest incarnation of Cirque du Soleil’s Saltimbanco last week. Saltimbanco is the oldest major touring show of Cirque du Soleil, having run from 1992 to 2006. Saltimbanco’s last performance in its original form (under the Grand Chapiteau, or Big Top) was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  An adaptation of Saltimbanco started touring North America again on July 31, 2007.

Unlike the original show, this version is staged in arenas and is stopping in some smaller locations for shorter times. Which makes this an incredible opportunity to see a Cirque Du Soleil performance if you don’t live near a large urban centre or find travelling to see a show cost prohibitive.

The show is described as a celebration of life. Its creators say they developed it as an antidote to the violence and despair so prevalent in the 20th century. Saltimbanco offers its own vision of life, overflowing with optimism and joy. Saltimbanco comes from the Italian “saltare in banco”, which literally means “to jump on a bench.” Like all Cirque performances it is accompanied by a live band and performed to an original score. Both were as polished as the performers.

I have seen Cirque Du Soleil on television broadcasts before and always been a fan, but of course there is nothing like the experience of a live performance! It was truly a visual feast for the eyes and ears, during which I sometimes had to remind myself that these were humans performing these incredible feats. If you have not had the pleasure of catching a Cirque show yet and the opportunity arises I would highly recommend it as a truly worthwhile evening of top notch entertainment. I can only hope this is just the begining of their expanded touring stops as I look forward to seeing as many more performance by Cirque Du Soleil as I can!

For more information on the acts appearing in Saltimbaco, follow the links below!

The Acts

• Adagio
• Artistic Bicycle
• Boleadoras
• Bungees
• Chinese Poles
• Duo Trapeze
• Hand to Hand
• Juggling
• Russian Swing

This Tuesday. April 29th, 2008 saw the passing of the “father” of LSD, Albert Hofmann, aged 102.

The Swiss chemist created lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of an ergot fungus found on rye and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel, Switzerland. His discovery of it’s potent halucinogenic effects was made after he came in contact with a minute amount of the substance, probably absorbed through the skin of his fingertips. It is one of the strongest drugs in medicine – with just one gram enough to drug an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people for 12 hours.

Hofmann and his colleagues hoped that LSD would make an important contribution to psychiatric research. The drug exaggerated inner problems and conflicts and thus it was hoped that it might be used to recognize and treat mental illness like schizophrenia. For a time, Sandoz sold LSD 25 under the name Delysid, encouraging doctors to try it themselves.

LSD was elevated to international fame in the late 1950s and 1960s thanks to Harvard professor Timothy Leary who embraced the drug under the slogan “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Film stars like Cary Grant and numerous rock musicians extolled its virtues in achieving true self discovery and enlightenment.

Hofmann’s hallucinogen became embraced by millions of the 1960’s hippie generation. Then the U.S. government banned LSD in 1966 and other countries soon followed suit after (mostly false) horror stories emerged about people going on murder sprees or jumping out of windows while hallucinating.

For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention, maintaining this was unfair, arguing that the drug was not addictive. He repeatedly maintained the ban should be lifted to allow LSD to be used in medical research.

He himself took the drug – purportedly on an occasional basis and out of scientific interest – for several decades. “LSD can help open your eyes,” he once said. Even so, Hofmann readily agreed that the drug was dangerous if in the wrong hands, as was reflected by the title of his 1979 book: “LSD - my problem child.” Follow the link to the book to read the book as well as the entire account of the first “acid trips” experienced by Albert Hofmann.

As an artist and inner cosmonaut myself I think drugs of all sorts have contributed greatly to the art scene. I would also acknowledge that while enhancing the art it has NOT always enhanced the artist. Artists though are a special breed with more than our fair share of misfits, addictive personalities, pychological problems and risk taking.

My own experiments with LSD were something I don’t think I would ever do again, but I would not want to have not tried it. I do consider myself the more enriched for having done so. Maybe I should write or cartoon some of my earlier experimentations?

For now I will end with  a final goodbye to Albert Hofmann, and must add a personal thanks. As Jimi Hendrix once sang, “Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have.”

 Having trouble getting you Pay Pal Donate Button to validate properly? I have read a few people having such problems after doing a search to try to fix my own.
Not one of the sources offered any advice that worked for me, or the article was written too long ago to be relevant any longer.

 Please check the code below. Example #1 is a code suggested by Pay Pal. Not the one that I got through the step by step create a button process. It was even worse. This code was posted under advanced. A whole lot of errors come up when I try to validate this block. Enough to make me think I didn’t really want it on my page.

SO with a little luck and trial and error I got mine to validate! Remember if you try this to replace the coloured text below with you own email and company name as registered with Pay Pal

Example #1 - does not Validate

<form name=”_xclick” action=”https://www.paypal.com/row/cgi-bin/webscr” method=”post”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”cmd” value=”_xclick”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”business” value=”yourname@yourmail.com“>
<input type=”hidden” name=”item_name” value=”Your Company“>
<input type=”hidden” name=”currency_code” value=”CAD”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”amount” value=”0″>
<input type=”image” src=”http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif” border=”0″ name=”submit” alt=”Make payments with PayPal - it’s fast, free and secure!”>
</form>

It turns out fixing it is easy than I first thought. All lines that began with the tag <input> need a closing tag after each line, not just one at the end of the block. Maybe there is another way to do this but it worked for me. I also had to remove the line: border=”0″, I do not know if it was as a result of my css style sheet, so is specific to my case, or if this is a problem for all.

Example #2 - Validates

<form name=”_xclick” action=”https://www.paypal.com/row/cgi-bin/webscr” method=”post”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”cmd” value=”_xclick”></input>
<input type=”hidden” name=”business” value=”yourname@yourmail.com“></input>
<input type=”hidden” name=”item_name” value=”Your Company“></input>
<input type=”hidden” name=”currency_code” value=”CAD”></input>
<input type=”hidden” name=”amount” value=”0″></input>
<input type=”image” src=”http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif” name=”submit” alt=”Make payments with PayPal - it’s fast, free and secure!”>
</input>
</form>

(Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip)

a manga series by Ashinano Hitoshi.

An Awesome manga commonly reffered to as YKK series. It was such an inspiration for me. I can not begin to describe it. I hadn’t particularly analyzed how it lodged itself so firmly in my heart, I just accepted it there, and it always gives me a warm feeling to read this manga. Writing this blog has helped me reflect on the qualities that drew me to it. Quiet, thoughtful, and meticulously constructed, the story unfolds with engaging characters, grace and elegance. It is beautifully illustrated in a spare pen-and-ink drawing style. Oh and it is science fiction, I just keep forgetting that because it is so different than any I have previously experienced.

It is set in a peaceful, post-cataclysmic world where mankind is in decline after an environmental disaster. What happened is never explained, but sea levels have risen significantly, inundating coastal cities. The reduced human population has reverted to a simpler life, it is the twilight of the human age. Instead of fear or anger at their fate, humans seem quietly accepting.

Alpha Hatsuseno is an android who runs a coffee shop, Café Alpha, on the lonely coast of the Miura Peninsula of Japan, while her mysterious human “owner” is on a trip of indefinite length. Though she spends much of her time alone, Alpha is cheerful, gregarious, and—unlike the slowly declining humans—she is immortal.

Most chapters are self-contained slice-of-life episodes depicting Alpha in mundane daily activities, either alone, with customers, or on occasional trips through the countryside or into Yokohama for supplies (thus the “shopping log” of the title). Whole chapters are devoted to brewing coffee, taking photographs, or repairing a tiny model aircraft engine, sometimes with only a few lines of dialogue. Through Alpha’s experiences, we see the small wonders of everyday life and are aware of their passing: the rising ocean encroaches on her coffee shop; the neighborhood children she loves grow up and move away. In evoking a nostalgia for this loss, Ashinano follows the Japanese tradition of mono no aware (sadness for the transience of things).

Though often self-contained, the stories have continuity—relationships grow and change, and seemingly insignificant details reappear later. Ashinano explains few details of Alpha’s world, leaving mysteries to engage the reader as the series unfolds in a meandering progression, by turns funny, touching, and nostalgic.

The manga was serialized in Kodansha’s Afternoon magazine from June 1994 to February 2006, with a concluding postscript episode in July 2006, and collected in 14 tankōbon volumes. Parts of the story were adapted as two OVA anime series of two episodes each. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō won the 2007 Seiun Award for best science fiction comic.

Unfortunately, YKK has gone largely unnoticed outside of Japan. Ideally, a US publisher would license and translate the series but I understand that is unlikely. Although I have found a great site where someone has taken it upon themselves to translate the work, it is unfortunately incomplete and has not been updated for awhile. I have all the chapters that have been translated so far and will be putting them in a zip file for download and linking to it here. I will update this page when it’s done. Meanwhile you could visit http://ykk.misago.org/Contents for as long as it remains up and download chapters there.

If you enjoy this story, please consider buying it. (Sasuga Books will sell it to you online.) 

A now international day of awareness, protest and freedom for marijuana users! A time for marijuana users to gather  publicly in a show of civil disobedience toward draconian laws that persecute an extremely useful plant and the people that use it.

If you are one of the uninformed, uneducated, or already indoctrinated into the anti-marijuana camp, this blog is not for you. Re-education takes a lot of information, an open mind, and time. This blog is for my fellow freedom fighters.

History

The term 4-20 originated at San Rafael High School, in 1971, among a group of about a dozen pot-smokers that called themselves the Waldos. The term was shorthand for the time of day the group would meet, at the campus statue of Louis Pasteur, to smoke pot. To get even more detailed, the story is that they originally met there the first time to go looking for a marijuana plant rumored to be growing wild in the area. So they met, got high, and had fun looking for but not finding the plant. They then added 4-20 to their own slang, a discreet code for “let’s go get high” and its use has spread among members of now multiple generations!

Myths

• It’s the Los Angeles or New York police radio code for marijuana smoking in progress.
  It’s not police radio code for anything in California or New York, let alone that.
• It’s the number of chemical compounds in marijuana.
  The number of chemical compounds in marijuana is 315, give or take depending on variety, soil and other conditions.
• April 20 is the date that Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, or Janis Joplin died
  Though these performers were strongly identified with drug use during their brief lives, none of them died on April 20.
  Morrison died on July 3, Hendrix on September 18, and Joplin on October 4.
• The 20th of April is the best time to plant marijuana.
  There’s no one “best time”; that answer would change from one part of the country to another, or even one country to another.

Interesting Coincidence

The very first intentional ingestion of LSD took place at 4:20! From the notes of Dr. Albert Hoffman:

•  April 19, 1943: Preparation of an 0.5% aqueous solution of d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate.
      4:20 P.M.: 0.5 cc (0.25 mg LSD) ingested orally. The solution is tasteless.

4:20 is the time of day an H.P. Lovecraft character cites for having become sober after succumbing to the intoxication of a “mirage-plant”:

“I had encountered at least one of those curious mirage-plants about which so many of our men told stories. Anderson had warned me of them, and described their appearance very closely—the shaggy stalk, the spiky leaves, and the mottled blossoms whose gaseous dream-breeding exhalations penetrate every existing make of mask…Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right direction and hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant’s pervasive influence. Gradually the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience could have consumed little more than a half-hour.”

Today 

Hats, t-shirts, stickers, news articles, and protest gatherings have now made it a not very discreet way of telling the world you belief in freedom. By extension April 20th (”4/20″ in shorthand) has evolved into a counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate cannabis and it’s many uses.

Last year, on April 20th 2007, at 4:20pm PST more than 700 people gathered at City Hall in Victoria, BC to celebrate Victoria’s 10th annual 4/20 celebration. Victoria police were not visibly in attendance and no arrests were made.

Let’s have another safe and peaceful April 20 2008 and I’ll see you at 4/20!

Hello? Yes! My youthful instincts have proven right on some occassions?!

I was a fangirl of Savage Sword of Conan when I was young. Conan is of course the most famous creation of  author Robert E. Howard with stories written in the 1930s. Savage Sword (1974–1995) was Marvel Comics large format, black and white rendition of Howard’s stories.

It turns out that it is both sought after,  and thought to be the best of the Conan stories/series! I knew that back in the day! First read this blog on the series at Comic Book Bin.

Now ask me how much I want for my collection! I have found 83 issues so far and think I have more! That’s right, if you or anyone you know is a fan of the sword and sorcery genre, then you will want to get in on this offer! I have come to the conclusion that I just can’t store and keep these anymore. I actually have a collection of many comics I will be putting up for sale. Stay tuned to this blog for details.

If you are a collector and would like a list of some of the comics I have please don’t hesitate to contact me. For a full list stay tuned, I am working on it!

Germ

by Robert Liparulo

Synopses & Review

Publisher Comments:

Death is the only escape.

The release of the virus will usher in a new era of power where countries are left without defense. Where a single person — or millions — could be killed with perfect accuracy and zero collateral damage. Where your own DNA works against you.

The time isn’t coming. It is now. Pray the assassins get you first.

Rikki’s Review

Not the type of book I would normally pick up, but the cover caught my eye. As a graphic designer I realize that cover and content are not synonymous or even vaguely related at times. Was that the case here? Yes and no. It was a good read. It was fast paced. You could even say it had “white knuckle intensity” but I wouldn’t advise it as apparently his publisher has trademarked the term. I kid you not.

The book is well written, it has a good story, and some unexpected twists from a very smart female character. If it is the type or genre of story that interests you I would highly recommend it. I didn’t not enjoy it.

 Having said that I wouldn’t rush out to buy another Robert Liparulo novel or any more disaster, threat, terrorist, novels that play to our current world affair fears. I have read that 6 studios were wanting to make a movie about this book before it was finished. I should have waited for the movie. The reason being that for me this read like a Hollywood script. I prefer books heavy on dialog and character development. This was a lot of action and descriptions of things like a car chase and fight scenes. Pre-scripted for Hollywood that can’t make a movie without a chase scene. Curse you Steve McQueen! 

It is a common practice through most of the world to do a “Spring Cleaning”.

The origins of spring cleaning probably date back to the Norouz, the Persian new year, which falls on the first day of spring. Iranians still continue the practice of “khooneh takouni” which literally means “shaking the house” just before the new year. Everything in the house is thoroughly cleaned, from the drapes to the furniture.

In North America and northern Europe, the custom was found especially practical  due to those regions’ Spring climates. During the 19th century in America, prior to  the vacuum cleaner, March was often the best time for dusting because it was getting warm enough to open windows and doors (but not warm enough for insects to be a problem), and the high winds could carry the dust out of the house.

Spring started awhile ago now, but the weather here has not been very nice yet. So my spring (yard) cleaning just got done. I know for myself that it is definitely a satisfying ritual. See my new comic strip about my Spring Cleaning.

This is not my first attempt at a blog. I suspect it won’t be my last.

Yet it is a first, this being a Wordpress Blog that is hosted on my site, not just an auto pilot Blogger account. Nothing wrong with those this just seems more impressive (to me) because of the “mineness” of it. I know that is not a real word by the way. I had to learn a bit about all this geeky stuff, oh excuse me, techno stuff to install it and make it work and customise it. More ” mineness”!

The coolest thing for me about a blog is not that I get to spout off about something and hopefully find someone to read it. It is the feedback option of comments from you the reader that make it exciting. I have found that a static website is not as much fun for me as the designer, and there is no lack of evidence that that is true for viewers.

The biggest draw back I can see so far to my own hosted blog as compared to a community like Blogger is, how do I get noticed? How do people find my website, let alone my blog? I hope to discover some answers to these questions, as I certainly don’t have any yet.

I have started my research and have some ideas of the things I should and need to do. The list seems quite long and I was surprised how much I really have to learn. Those independents artists/designers or anyone really, out there with high traffic, successful sites that they have built on their own, certainly have my respect!

I know that without worthy content a site will not thrive. But just getting a site truly web ready with all the options that help you present yourself is a daunting task. Next comes the marketing to get noticed. Then finally you find out if your site content is worthy of notice. If what you had to offer was of any use or interest to anyone else.

Anyone with advice on getting a Wordpress blog seen? Tips on website promotion?