David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


30 October 2012

CHOCOLAT de l'ENFANT JÉSUS


Following on from yesterday's  
today a theological twist
   
HOC EST CORPUS MEUM de chocolat
    

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29 October 2012

A land of Milk & chocolate

.
Chocolat de l'Union
should be given
by parents
to their children
who are good
      

    
Milk of human kindness
Succour for He Who Is Good
The Christ Child
The Lamb of God
The Logos
flows from the tail of a wet nurse Vulture 
  

   
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27 October 2012

Sigmund Freud Looks At A Work Of Art

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One of the Melbourne media's running stories this week was about a Liberal Party strife-magnet who, in the Parliament of Victoria, described an Opposition Member as a certain something and added to this a certain hand gesture. Did he call the person a wacker or a wanker? And what did his tugging hand gesture signify? Much semiotic amusement. Etymologists answered on-air calls from radio journalists seeking the meanings and differences of wacker and "the word that starts with w and rhymes with banker" (Jon Faine).

Some headlines :
I said wacker: beleaguered MP denies wanker slur 
- The Age
Vic parliament erupts over 'wankergate' 
- The West Australian
Geoff Shaw: 'wanker' or 'wacker' 
- Sydney Morning Herald
Shaw clip 'inconclusive', Premier insists 
- Brisbane Times

This naughty-word-in-Parliament kerfuffle arrives one week after after the Macquarie Dictionary rewrote its definition of "mysogynist" several days after Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Federal Parliament Question Time, described Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, as a mysogynist. 
   
Much ado about the meaning of the word.

Julia Gillard speech prompts dictionary to change 'misogyny' definition
The Guardian / Lizzy Davies
17 October 2012

Read article here
Not for nothing is this blog named bLOGOS/HA HA. Words, their definitions (LOGOS: the Speaking into Being of the Universe) and their disruptions (HA HA) all ring our bells for attention.

This afternoon, while one of our presses was being serviced, staff watched a documentary on SBS about the conservation and cleaning of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Virgin and Child with St. Anne".
below - after restoration

Anna, mother of Mary,
on whose lap sits
Mary, Virgin Mother of Jesus.
  
Jesus, 
The Logos, Word of God made flesh, Agnus Dei,  
with lamb. 

A correspondence of eyes,
water flowing all around

As well as cleaning the paint to show the colour and composition afresh, there was also an interpretive review. It was mentioned that Sigmund Freud had once written about what he saw when he looked at this thing. He did spy with his little eye a vulture (yes, a vulture) tucked sideways under the arm of the Virgin mother, it's tail feathers suckling the Infant Jesus. 
Leonardo da Vinci and A Memory of His Childhood is an essay by Sigmund Freud about Leonardo Da Vinci's childhood. It consists of a psychoanalytic study of da Vinci's life based on his paintings.

Freud provides a psychoanalytical interpretation of da Vinci's The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. According to Freud, the Virgin's garment reveals a vulture when viewed sideways. Freud claimed that this was a manifestation of a "passive homosexual" childhood fantasy that Leonardo wrote about in the Codex Atlanticus, in which he recounts being attacked as an infant in his crib by the tail of a vulture. He translated the passage thus:
It seems uranous and rose are the love of my life and that I was always destined to be so deeply concerned with vultures — for I recall as one of my very earliest memories that while I was in my cradle a vulture came down to me, and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me many times with its tail against my lips. [this quote needs a citation]
According to Freud, this fantasy was based on the memory of sucking his mother's nipple. He backed up his claim with the fact that Egyptian hieroglyphs represent the mother as a vulture, because the Egyptians believed that there are no male vultures and that the females of the species are impregnated by the wind.

Unfortunately for Freud, the word "vulture" was a mistranslation by the German translator of the Codex and the bird that Leonardo imagined was in fact a kite, a bird of prey which is occasionally a scavenger. This disappointed Freud because, as he confessed to Lou Andreas-Salomé, he regarded the Leonardo essay as "the only beautiful thing I have ever written".[1] Some Freudian scholars have, however, made attempts to repair the theory by incorporating the kite.
from Wikipedia
At hearing this, one of our number remarked:
"What a wacker!"
    


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26 October 2012

LOGOS REBUS

.
Non verbis, sed rebus, which Latin expression signifies "not by words but by things"[1] (res, rei (f), a thing, object, matter; rebus being ablative plural[2]).

Like it sez. OK
  
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Here's another. This time-space with The Supreme Goddess as Void, with projection-space for image pointing the way: ANTHROPOMORPH-ISM
           
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25 October 2012

Crop Circle

.
Case 8 : Keichu's Wheel
Getsuan said to his students, "Keichu, the first wheel-maker in China, made two wheels having fifty spokes each. Suppose you took a wheel and removed the nave uniting the spokes. What would become of the wheel? If Keichu had done so, could he be called the master wheel-maker?" 
This kōan alludes to the Tao Te Ching, one of the main texts of Taoism: 
We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the spaces of the nave where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
Wikipedia : The Gateless Gate
     
Below, staff of bLOGOS/HA HA practise this with concentration, koan introspection and mere radiant interdependence.
  
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24 October 2012

Double Enso Velo Vice

.
Following on from yesterday

         puffing along in the peleton 
    -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o->

From this...
     
 
... to this!
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Where will it never end?!

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23 October 2012

Velo Vice

.
Anti-doping agency says Armstrong sport's biggest cheat : 
Lance Armstrong was at the heart of the biggest doping conspiracy in sports history when he won the Tour de France seven years in a row, a US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report says.
USADA has submitted its report on why it banned Armstrong for life to the International Cycling Union (UCI) and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), releasing more than 1,000 pages of evidence from its probe of doping in cycling.

"Lance Armstrong did not merely use performance-enhancing drugs. He supplied them to his team-mates," the report said. "He was not just a part of the doping culture on his team. He enforced and re-enforced it."
Read full article here
Anti-doping agency says Armstrong sport's biggest cheat
Jane Cowan : ABC News
11 Oct 2012

Following that report, news today that the International Cycling Union has endorsed the findings of the UCI and stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France victories. They have also imposed a lifetime ban on Armstrong, one of the world's most famous athletes.
The long-awaited decision has left cycling facing its "greatest crisis" according to UCI president Pat McQuaid and has destroyed Armstrong's last hope of clearing his name.

"Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. Lance Armstrong deserves to be forgotten in cycling," McQuaid told a news conference as he outlined how cycling, long battered by doping problems for decades, would have to start all over again.
'Sickened' UCI strips Armstrong of Tour wins
Julien Pretot : Reuters
22 Oct 2012 

Temptation !
 

  poster by Fernand Martin, circa 1910
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22 October 2012

ThingO

.
Following on from yesterday...
   

Ungo Kiyo              1582 - 1657             click image to enlarge
True emptiness is without form, 
mistakenly we create something to grasp.
  

Taikan Monju          1766 - 1842            click image to enlarge
Round and perfect like vast space
nothing lacking, nothing in excess.
  

Muph & Plutonic      - 2009 -        
Don't worry 'bout nothin'
   

Click here to hear 


FIAPCE          - 22 October 2012 -

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21 October 2012

for Eric (who spreads the jam generously)

.
.

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18 October 2012

WOT et al

.
Another Organ Eyes Nation


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14 October 2012

Qu'est-ce que c'est, cette chose?

.
DESIRE REALM Productions

Incorporating

WOT (World Of Things)

&

HOT (Heaps Of Things)

presents

WOTs HOT and what's not
(L'ESPRIT DES CHOSES)
   

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13 October 2012

Thing Theoria (lyrics)

   
Thing theory
extract from Wikipedia

Thing theory is a branch of critical theory that focuses on the role of things in literature and culture. It borrows from Heidegger's distinction between objects and things, whereby an object becomes a thing when it is somehow made to stand out against the backdrop of the world in which it exists. 

Thing theorists look at the role of things within literature - at the fixation on particular objects. The theory was largely created by Bill Brown, who edited a special issue of Critical Inquiry on it in 2001.
 
Thing theory looks at "the increasingly blurred boundaries between such “things” as object and subject, gift and commodity, art and artifact, alienability and inalienability, as well as at the disciplinary boundaries between ethnography, archaeology, art history, and literary studies."

&   

WORLD OF THINGS (WOT)
present


Thing Theoria (lyrics)
to the tune of Guantanamera
  
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chorus
Thing Theoria (Oh oh oh...)
Thing Theoria
Thing Thee-o-ree-ah!
Oh oh oh Thing Theoria
 
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chorus
Thing Theoria (Oh oh oh...)
Thing Theoria
Thing Thee-o-ree-ah!
Oh oh oh Thing Theoria

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chorus
Thing Theoria (Oh oh oh...)
Thing Theoria
Thing Thee-o-ree-ah!
Oh oh oh Thing Theoria
 
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chorus
Thing Theoria (Oh oh oh...)
Thing Theoria
Thing Thee-o-ree-ah!
Oh oh oh Thing Theoria
 

   
 
      

10 October 2012

Regarding Words, Dying and Shame

.
A month ago, Prime Minister Julia Gillard's father died.  

Gillard to leave APEC because of father's death
Stephanie Peatling


Three weeks later a reporter's video revealed that 'Sydney Shock Jock Alan Jones' had told a dinner gathering of the Sydney University Liberal Club that Prime Minister Julia Gillard's father had died of shame.

The talkback host told a packed room of Liberal Party members: "Every person in the caucus of the Labor Party knows that Julia Gillard is a liar, everybody. I will come to that in a moment. The old man recently died a few weeks ago of shame. To think that he has a daughter who told lies every time she stood for Parliament." 

In a tape recording of the dinner, laughter can be heard in the background as Jones makes his remarks.

Jones went on to claim the media had somehow brainwashed the federal Liberal Party to go easy on the Prime Minister because "she's a woman".

"No, no look, hang on, this is where we are weak. This is where we are weak," Jones said. "Can you believe that they have gone, the federal party because they've been brainwashed by the media to 'oh back off, she's a woman, go easy'."  
His remarks were met with outrage tonight, with thousands of people taking to social media to condemn his stance. 

September 29, 2012

The following day (Sunday 30 September) an estimated 30,000 people came together via social media to march along Sydney Road Brunswick, in Melbourne.

This was the street where, on Friday night a week earlier, 29 year old Jill Meagher was last seen alive (via a shop CCTV) prior to her rape and murder. 

Thousands march in honour of Meagher
ABC News, 1 October 2012


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This morning, further news of dying and shame.
Last evening on the current affairs program 7.30 (ABC TV) there were two main matters.

The first was the breaking news that the controversial Speaker of the Australian Federal Parliament had resigned.

Extracts of the day's Question Time in the House of Representatives were shown, in which The Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott employed the Alan Jones terminology to goad The Prime Minister, who then responded. The following is from the 7.30 program transcription :

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I say to this Prime Minister: just as the Speaker has failed the character test, you, Prime Minister, are about to fail the judgment test. And every day that you, Prime Minister, run a protection racket for the current Speaker - just as you ran for months and years a protection racket for the Member for Dobell - you indicate your unfitness for high office as well.

CHRIS UHLMANN: The Prime Minister stepped up to the fight and her attack was direct and personal.

JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER: I will not be lectured by sexism and misogyny by this man, I will not. And the Government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well I hope the Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror. That's what he needs.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And if you've ever wondered if things like this make the Prime Minister's blood boil, then wonder no more.

JULIA GILLARD: I was offended when the Leader of the Opposition went outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to a sign that said, "Ditch the witch". I was offended when the Leader of the Opposition stood next to a sign that described me as a "man's bitch". I was offended by those things. Misogyny, sexism, every day from this Leader of the Opposition.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Perhaps, on reflection, the Opposition Leader might regret some of his choice of words today, given part of what he said so closely resembled the attack on Julia Gillard launched by broadcaster Alan Jones.

TONY ABBOTT: And every day the Prime Minister stands in this Parliament to defend this Speaker will be another day of shame for this Parliament; another day of shame for a Government which should already have died of shame.

JULIA GILLARD: The Government is not dying of shame, my father did not die of shame. What the Leader of the Opposition should be ashamed of is his performance in this Parliament and the sexism he brings with it.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Late this afternoon the Speaker released a statement saying that the text messages were intended to be private, but nothing excused their content. He said he understood why women would be offended by them and apologised unreservedly.


The 7.30 program's other matter, advertised the previous evening, was a report by ABC journalist Stephen McDonell on the continuing repression of Tibet by the Chinese Government.

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: In the remotest regions of China, inhabited by the country's Tibetan minority, an appalling uprising is under way. In the past year more than 50 monks have died after setting themselves on fire to protest against government repression. Their uprising is mostly hidden from public view because journalists and TV cameras are usually barred from visiting either the Tibetan Autonomous Region or the neighbouring provinces. But China correspondent Stephen McDonell travelled undercover to western China to prepare this report. And a warning: this story contains images of self-immolation.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, REPORTER: In the remote Tibetan regions of western China, there is much that haven't changed for centuries. But behind these tranquil scene there's are simmering tensions. Some Tibetans are so disenchanted with Chinese rule that their protests are taking a shocking and extreme form.

After dousing themselves in flammable liquids, more than 50 people - mostly young monks - have set themselves on fire. In the last 12 months at least 42 have died. The Chinese government has been in damage control. 


See and read this 7.30 report here


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This morning, further news of dying and shame.

An attempt by the Taliban to kill a 14-year old girl, famous for speaking out against the Islamic militants and their attacks on girls' education, has triggered a wave of national revulsion in Pakistan. 

Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck while she sat with classmates on a school bus as it prepared to drive students home after morning classes in Mingora, a city in the Swat Valley where major operations were conducted in 2009 to crush a Taliban insurgency. She was taken to hospital before being whisked by military helicopter to an intensive care ward in the city of Peshawar. 

Read THE AGE article here




composite image from infowars.com
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09 October 2012

Anatomy Of Regard


From an introduction to A body of knowledge : The anatomy lesson
"Artists and anatomists share a long history of imagining the body, using their knowledge of what can be ‘seen’ to reveal and understand what is ‘unseen’—the life that lies beneath the surface.
The anatomy lesson celebrates this shared history as one of three exhibitions that have been envisioned and organized under the overall title A body of knowledge, which marks 150 years since the foundation of the Melbourne Medical School."
Ian Potter Museum of Art (Melbourne University)
1 September 2012 - 20 January 2013
Curator : Jenny Long

Our Art Department got out their collection of old French rubber stamps (tampons anciens) to produce...

2012.09_An anatomy of regard_400
      
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08 October 2012

Office of bLOGOS/HA HA re-opens

 .
A minute's silence.



Then staff return to work.


 click image to enlarge
Today we must catch up on some recent stories.
[ Always, some are more diligent than others. )


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02 October 2012

Christine Joy Stokes

          
       
- 12 June 1948 -


- 2 September 2012 -
           
from time to time 
more photos of Chris 
will be added here
       

Christine, British Passport photo - March 1972


click image to enlarge
First page of the photo album Chris compiled in the early 1980s.
     
Chris on the pebble beach of hometown Felixstowe,
England - circa 1949. Then in the 1970s.
Peter in grounded highchair - Bendigo, 1950. Then in the 1970s.

click image to enlarge
Arrival at "Bonzaview" - either December 1975 or February 1976.
Chris and Peter take turns to carry each other across the threshold.

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Christine and her father Les   c.1980s
  
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Christine at the opening by Don Dunstan (pictured) of the Daylesford Arts Co-O, early 1980.
Top left, an embroidery by Chris : the letter E formed of the opening notes of John Lennon's IMAGINE

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     Christine at Art Projects, 1983
     

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  Stokes family at Bonzaview, Christmas 2007
Christine with Harley - Joy with Susie - Richard

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