New photos page

Here are the rest of the hometown photos. Go to stobblehouse home page and go to
Karrebæksminde Deux medium - large
(select medium or large images).
As you can see from the large images especially, the quality is pretty amazing from a camera you can have in your breast pocket. The Fujifilm F10 especially has much better low-light capabilities than other compact digicams. If the performance of this chip will spread to other cameras, big and small, it will change the field.

Spaceman

"What are you doing, Charlie Brown?"
"I'm a poor, lonesome cowboy."
"Why are you so lonesome, Charlie Brown?"
"Because all the other kids are playing Spaceman."
From Peanuts by Schulz

A New Year's Story

A New Year's Story
By Eolake Stobblehouse

I had a dream I was chased by a horrible, half-dead monster through a big house. The house was mine, but much more complex. I was getting away from the monster, but I was still afraid, and I could still smell its rotten stench of death. I thought maybe that is just because the monster is dying.

I caught glimpses of somebody ahead of me, always disappearing. It seemed to be a beautiful woman, and she was glowing. Maybe she even had wings, I could not be sure. I followed her as best I could, and I was tired.

I went past big windows showing the world outside, and it was stormy. Big bat-winged things haunted the people, and the sun was under the horizon, but rising. And the air was clearer than it had been.

I almost caught up with the beautiful woman, and she went through a door I had not remembered. I followed her.

It was a glowing landscape, and I could not see it clearly yet, for my eyes had not evolved to see such energy. It felt like something amazing, something wonderful.

I sat down patiently and tried to evolve faster.

The end

Fate or not

Zeppellina said...
I have never believed that life is pre-determined.
Circumstances happen, and what comes next is determined often by our individual reactions to them.
I think we have the ability to decide how other people view us by the way we respond to them, and this often again changes what can happen next.
Creative people often suffer from self doubt, and, depending on their individual personalities, can adapt this self doubt into a destructive force in their lives.
I have many artist friends, some are victims, and unfortunately, will always be, and some are survivors.
Those who are victims have made themseves that way, as they have wrapped their problems around themselves like a comfort blanket, and wear their status as victim like a badge. When someone acts like a victim, others immediately treat them this way, and so it continues.
It`s a self-destruct switch which has been turned on.
Everybody out there has had really bad times in their life, artists and non artists.
It`s the ability to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves down which is the major difference.
I have an artist friend right now who I know will be more than likely, dead this year. He is beyond help, and it is a tragedy. Everyone has tried to help at every juncture, and all help has been rejected.
When he dies, as he will, there will be only a small band of us there to say goodbye. His work will be forgotten, as will he.
It is a tragedy beyond all reason.
But no-one will glamourise his life, it is just too dirty, smelly vomit ridden and beatings ridden.
He is just a poor soul who switched on his self-destruct switch and wrapped his suffering around himself like a blanket.
And I, for one, will miss him, it was a wasted life for one with such talent.
---
Yes, quite so.
I think it may be a while before mainstream humanity lets go of the idea that we are helpless in the winds of the Universe. For it is a very beautiful idea. Poets have made it so over the ages, I am not sure why.

Karrebæksminde photo

I visited the ole homestead over Christmas, and took some pictures (with the excellent compact-digicam Fujifilm F10), and this is one of the best results.
Fetch a large version (1000 pixels wide) or a very large version (1600 pixels)
It is the view from my sister's house. The church was one of the visual stable points of my childhood, and for many years I believed that churches always looked like that, they are that design, and white. Also (not visible in this picture) next to the church is a wonderful old windmill, and I also believed as a kid that a church and a windmill belonged together. Two things in close proximity are perceived as a unit.
By the way, my dad was the house painter master of the town, and he once renovated the whole church outside and inside, including the gilding of the clock and painting and marbling of the benches inside.

Living with uncertainty

It seems to me that there are periods in the development of a person or a species where uncertainty is inevitable, and you gotta live with it.
When you are changing from a great world view to a completely different world view, and they are incompatible, then there is a period in the middle where everything is swimming, when you have lost the old, comfortable moorings in your reality, and you have not yet found the new ones. And it is very unpleasant.
And I think it is very important to learn to live with it. To say "OK, so I can't find the bottom with my feet at the moment, and the water is choppy and cold, and I don't know when things will change... but it will be all right soon, it always is."
Because the alternatives are either to never let go of the old moorings, meaning you never progress, or to panic, and you drown. So just relax and keep swimming.

MONSTER LEGACY COLLECTION

I am a big fan of the classic monsters and monster movies. Interestingly, I am so without having seen any of them, practically! I mainly know them from later movies, from comic books, and from books. (I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, for instance.)
So I jumped at the chance when I found out of a great opportunity to get a whole bunch of the most classic monster movies at once on DVD, and even at a excellent price. It has three or four Frankenstein movies, and the same for Dracula and Wolf Man. And it has a couple of interesting documentaries. It also has small busts of those three gentlemen, in surprisingly fine quality. This is the MONSTER LEGACY COLLECTION.
The link above leads to Amazon USA. If you can get it, I recommend the UK edition, which has four extra films, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Phantom of the Opera, and The Invisible Man. It is not quite as easy to find, but I found it at Blah DVD.

I don't know why I, like many people, have such an affinity for monsters. They just be weally weally cool.
What is a monster? Is it an evil creature or person? Is it a deformed creature/person? Is it something inhuman? I am not sure what the basic of it is.

The Story of Civilization

I have just (on eBay because for some odd reason it seems to be out of print) bought The Story of Civilization by Will & Ariel Durant. It is eleven volumes.
It'd surprise the heck out of me if I actually ever will have read all eleven volumes. But I'd like to. And at least I'll have an excellent place to look up periods and people as I get interested in them, like Leonardo da Vinci. Will Durant is the best guide. He had such a love of life and respect and understanding for great people.

Amazon reviews

I buy a ton of books and DVDs, and whenever I hear of a new title, the first thing I do is go to Amazon and read a handful of reviews. With a little experience, that can make the "success rate" of buying very high indeed.

One hitch to it is that old classics usually have much better reviews than recent hits, because only those who are really interested actually find them and buy them!
The same is true for genre products. For instance I bought a couple of horror films and was disappointed. Then I realized that all those five-star reviews came from people who love horror, and I only have a passing interest.

Immortality

"The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever."
-- Anatole France

OK, that is good and funny.
But I don't think it is true. I never heard any normal say anything like: 'I really wish I was immortal.' I think only very extraordinary people have wishes like that. The normal person just wants a slightly better pay check, and for his parents to bug him less.

Further, I think most of those really extraordinary persons who might wish for something like immortality could probably put it to good use.

Personally I do believe we are immortal. But the death-cycle does break your concentration, doesn't it? It would be rather cool to have a 10,000 year life cycle under the same name and beingness.
Of course the real fun would be only if many others were the same. I'd love to run into Leonardo da Vinci in Amsterdam or whatever and say: "Leo! How are you doing, old pal? I haven't seen you for, gee, it must be 90 years!"

About wishes

My friend Foye had this comment to the Mind Over Matter article:
"Now to my really pessimistic comment: If the concentrated wishes, prayers, and longings of humanity indeed help shape events and configurations, then it's no wonder the world blunders along as it does, considering bell curve of the general level of human development."

... It is an interesting observation. I don't really consider it 'pessimistic', because it is an observation about the past/present, not about the future.
It is indeed true that if these things work like they say, then the planet Earth is in such a bad shape because most people wish it to be. No, strike that, it is because they expect it to be!
And therein lies the optimism. It is not because people really want to be miserable. It is because they believe they have no other choice. They can change it as soon as they change their minds.
Further, it is already going in the right direction. If you read the media, you'll think that the Earth is going to hell in a handbasket, fast. But more and more scientists have looked beyond that expectation and propaganda, and looked at the facts themselves, and have come to a startling observation: The planet is getting better, not worse. Economics are moving up on a long trend, poverty is falling, pollution is falling, etc.
In other words, we are not fighting against the tide, we are going with it. It is getting easier and easier.
Cheer up. Even if it is a lie, it'll do you a world of good. :)

New article

Aaaaaall right, here is the promised article about Mind-Over-Matter, I hope you enjoy. (This may be one of the most important things I could every write about.)