Sunday, June 29, 2008

Rattner: From Henry Miller thru Louise Schatz to Itche Mambush in Ein Hod

"Tapestries of Abraham Rattner" is the current jewel among several shows at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art.
Abraham Rattner was a Jewish American painter, printmaker, poet and tapestry designer. He was a close friend of the writer Henry Miller. Miller's sister-in-law Louise Schatz (1916-1997), wife of Bezalel Schatz, lived and worked in Jerusalem and Ein Hod.
Nine wall hangings from the permanent collection have never been shown together at the museum. Rattner (1893-1978) worked on their designs for years, then oversaw their creation during 1971 at the Mambush Tapestry Workshop in Ein Hod, a vibrant artists colony in Israel. There, master weavers trained in traditional European techniques dating back to the Middle Ages interpreted Rattner's bold images into exquisitely executed tapestries.
We know that in the right hands, threads strung on a loom can be woven into an image as tonally nuanced as a painting or photograph. The Rattner tapestries mostly are more straightforward, the equivalent of abstract art with pattern and surface color made cohesive with strong black lines.
Five are devoted to dramatic moments in the life of Moses. Moses and the Burning Bush is the only nominally figurative subject, showing a crouching prophet as the angel appears amid flames and lightning bolts. Other stories, again about the burning bush and the tablets bearing the 10 Commandments, are conveyed in dramatic maelstroms of line and color.
The group has two secular tapestries, one an homage to the French writer and film director Jean Cocteau, who was an old friend of Rattner's, and the other titled Birds, to me the most beautiful of the group. Simplified white birds swirl on a blue background, forming a vortex above a "sun" made like prismed stained glass.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Latvijas Keramikas selling Pottery in 1982


"Latvijas Keramika A" Limited is one of the biggest ceramics producers in Eastern Europe. Established in 1963, and as of 2000 has been named a limited company. The factory and office are located in Jelgava, Latvia, about 40 km from the capital city Riga.
Utilizing Ecologically clean material, modern technology as well as precise handcrafting over 2000 different ceramic items can be created at any given time:
- Ceramic bottles for alcoholic drinks;
- Table serving dishes;
- Beer mugs and glasses;
- Steam dishes;
- Candlesticks;
- Vases;
- Flower pots;
- Decorative garden ceramics;
- Ceramic souvenirs;
- Presentation articles;
- Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter and Mid-Summer ceramic items;
- Cordierite for technical applications.
(read more...)

Wild Women Don't Have the Blues


The blues women rarely accompanied themselves. Instead of singing to a lone guitar or banjo as the folk singers did, women were accompanied by jazz bands that now were becoming popular, music hall professionals like themselves who were veterans of the theatrical circuit.
Ida Goodson was an African American Floridian whose career as a musician began when she was three years old. By the age of sixteen she began playing the blues, jazz, and gospel songs that are a part of her musical repertoire. Goodson was one of six daughters of a Baptist deacon—all of whom pursued careers playing blues and jazz piano.
In 1927 and 1928, she played regularly as an accompanist at the Belmont Theater, Pensacola’s main black music hall. In the early l930s, she began traveling with a New Orleans band which had relocated in Pensacola. Among her accomplishments, Goodson accompanied blues legend Bessie Smith in a performance available on the video Wild Women Don't Have the Blues. In the late l930s and 1940s big band swing replaced the earlier New Orleans jazz that she had played. From the1950s onward, Goodson turned her attention to gospel and played organ for several churches in Pensacola. Goodson’s performing style and repertoire reflected the many influences in her life. Her work appeared on an album issued by the Florida Folklife Program, Ida Goodson: Pensacola Piano Florida Gulf Blues, Jazz, and Gospel.

To Polish Sculptures

A research team of the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities under the leadership of Professor Max Bichler is engaged in identifying volcanic rocks from archaeological excavations. Georg Steinhauser, Project Assistant and Chemist at the Department of Radiation Physical Analysis and Radiochemistry of the Atomic Institute says: “Pumice is a foamy volcanic rock. Today, we know the rock that is floating on water mainly as a cosmetic remedy for instance for sole callus.
We were able to discover that pumice as a commodity (presumably seaborne) covered distances of up to 2,000 km in the Mediterranean Sea. The eruption of the volcanic island Santorini, about 1,600 B.C., represents a particular time indicator. It was so powerful, that the entire Minoan culture was obliterated. When we find today this layer of ashes respectively pumice in various archaeological excavations, this offers immediately a time marker and enables us to synchronize different cultures. This also enables us to determine which rulers were in power in different locations at a certain time,” states Steinhauser.
When a pumice lump from Santorini is found in an excavation, we can at least say that the Santorini volcano must have already erupted, and the time of the eruption corresponds consequently to the maximum age of the excavation discovery place.
(read more...)

A perfect life, but I don’t have a knife. ...


Benjamin Zander's presentation takes an audience on a journey that offers a startling new perspective on leadership. Through stories, music and concepts, it causes a radical shift in perception. This is not a speech, it is an experience!
In this new model of leadership, the conductor sees his job as awakening possibility in others. The orchestra is a group of highly trained individuals poised to coalesce into an effective whole. Passion, creativity and the desire to contribute are basic human instincts that need to be released.
World-famous conductor Benjamin Zander uses the metaphor of the orchestra and a lifetime of experience conducting, coaching and teaching musicians to work his magic to overcome barriers to corporate productivity. His presentations source fundamental changes in organizations.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Carlin Dies at 71


posts on my blog

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...
...and you finish off as an orgasm
.”

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Rome forces every man to become a pederast

“Long live the knife, the blessed knife!” screamed ecstatic female fans at opera houses as the craze for Italian castrati reached its peak in the 18th century—a cry that was supposedly echoed in the bedrooms of Europe’s most fashionable women.The brainwave to create castrati had first occurred two centuries earlier in Rome, where the pope had banned women singing in churches or on the stage. Their voices became revered for the unnatural combination of pitch and power, with the high notes of a pre-pubescent boy wafting from the lungs of an adult; the result, contemporaries said, was magical, ethereal and strangely disembodied.
But it was the sudden popularity of Italian opera throughout 1600s Europe that created the international surge in demand. Italian boys with promising voices would be taken to a back-street barber-surgeon, drugged with opium, and placed in a hot bath. The expert would snip the ducts leading to the testicles, which would wither over time. By the early 1700s, it is estimated that around 4,000 boys a year were getting the operation; the Santa Maria Nova hospital in Florence, for example, ran a production line under one Antonio Santarelli, gelding eight boys at once.Even Casanova was tempted. (“Rome forces every man to become a pederast,” he sighed in his memoirs). His most confusing moment came when he met a particularly lovely teenage castrato named Bellino in an inn. Casanova was bewitched, going so far as to offer a gold doubloon to see the boy’s genitals. In an improbable twist, when Casanova grabbed Bellino in a fit of passion, he discovered a false penis: it turned out that the castrato was a girl, who historians have identified as Teresa Lanti. She had taken up the disguise to circumvent the ban on female singers in Italy. The pair became lovers, but Casanova dumped her in Venice; after bearing a son that may or may not have been his, Lanti “came out” as a female and went on to become a successful singer in more progressive opera houses of Europe, where women were allowed on stage. (read more...)

החמישייה הקאמרית-ספרים

Friday, June 20, 2008

The hoopoe: In Hebrew Duchifat, In Arabic Hud Hud


The idea that birds can be emissaries to a battered world like the dove and raven sent out by Noah motivated Israel’s decision to adopt a national bird as part of its commemoration of 60 years of statehood. In Hebrew the name of the bird is duchifat. In Arabic it is hud hud. And in English hoopoe is a word that sounds, as Emily Dickinson noted about all feathered creatures, strangely like hope.
The news was announced at the official residence of the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, who in the late 1940s changed his name from Persky to Peres because he saw a giant lammergeier, or bearded vulture (in Hebrew, a “peres”), circling overhead. Legend has it that the lammergeier, which no longer breeds in Israel, killed the Greek tragedian Aeschylus by dropping a tortoise on his head. Birds can be dangerous, which is precisely why the United States chose the bald eagle, though Benjamin Franklin complained, in a letter to his daughter, that the eagle was a cowardly bully while the turkey was nobler and feistier and therefore a more apt symbol for America.(read more...) via Forward

Pictures at an Exhibition: Raanana Pottery 2008



Sunday, June 15, 2008

Prājapati Means The Creator

Kumhār, Kumbhār. The caste of potters, the name being derived from the Sanskrit kumbh, a water-pot. The Kumhārs numbered nearly 120,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911 and were most numerous in the northern and eastern or Hindustāni-speaking Districts, where earthen vessels have a greater vogue than in the south. The caste is of course an ancient one, vessels of earthenware having probably been in use at a very early period, and the old Hindu scriptures consequently give various accounts of its origin from mixed marriages between the four classical castes

In the Kritayuga, when Maheshwar (Siva) intended to marry the daughter of Hemvanta, the Devas and Asuras2 assembled at Kailās (Heaven). Then a question arose as to who should furnish the vessels required for the ceremony, and one Kulālaka, a Brāhman, was ordered to make them. Then Kulālaka stood before the assembly with folded hands, and prayed that materials might be given to him for making the pots. So Vishnu gave his Sudarsana (discus) to be used as a wheel, and the mountain of Mandāra was fixed as a pivot beneath it to hold it up. The scraper was Adi Kūrma the tortoise, and a rain-cloud was used for the water-tub. So Kulālaka made the pots and gave them to Maheshwar for his marriage, and ever since his descendants have been known as Kumbhakār or maker of water-jars.”

The potter is not particular as to the clay he uses and does not go far afield for the finer qualities, but digs it from the nearest place in the neighbourhood where he can get it free of cost. Red and black clay are employed, the former being obtained near the base of hills or on high-lying land, probably of the laterite formation, and the latter in the beds of tanks or streams. When the clay is thoroughly kneaded [7]and ready for use a lump of it is placed on the centre of the wheel. The potter seats himself in front of the wheel and fixes his stick or chakrait into the slanting hole in its upper surface. With this stick the wheel is made to revolve very rapidly, and sufficient impetus is given to it to keep it in motion for several minutes. The potter then lays aside the stick and with his hands moulds the lump of clay into the shape required, stopping every now and then to give the wheel a fresh spin as it loses its momentum. When satisfied with the shape of his vessel he separates it from the lump with a piece of string, and places it on a bed of ashes to prevent it sticking to the ground. The wheel is either a circular disc cut out of a single piece of stone about a yard in diameter, or an ordinary wooden wheel with spokes forming two diameters at right angles. The rim is then thickened with the addition of a coating of mud strengthened with fibre.6 The articles made by the potter are ordinary circular vessels or gharas used for storing and collecting water, larger ones for keeping grain, flour and vegetables, and surāhis or amphoras for drinking-water. In the manufacture of these last salt and saltpetre are mixed with the clay to make them more porous and so increase their cooling capacity. A very useful thing is the small saucer which serves as a lamp, being filled with oil on which a lighted wick is floated. These saucers resemble those found in the excavations of Roman remains. Earthen vessels are more commonly used, both for cooking and eating purposes among the people of northern India, and especially by Muhammadans, than among the Marāthas, and, as already noticed, the Kumhār caste musters strong in the north of the Province. An earthen vessel is polluted if any one of another caste takes food or drink from it and is at once discarded. On the occasion of a death all the vessels in the house are thrown away and a new set obtained, and the same measure is adopted at the Holi festival and on the occasion of an eclipse, and at various other ceremonial purifications, such as that entailed if a member of the household has had maggots in a wound. On this account cheapness is an indispensable quality in pottery, and there is [8]no opening for the Kumhār to improve his art. Another product of the Kumhār’s industry is the chilam or pipe-bowl. This has the usual opening for inhaling the smoke but no stem, an impromptu stem being made by the hands and the smoke inhaled through it. As the chilam is not touched by the mouth, Hindus of all except the impure castes can smoke it together, passing it round, and Hindus can also smoke it with Muhammadans.
-
It is a local belief that, if an earthen pot is filled with salt and plastered over, the rains will stop until it is opened. This device is adopted when the fall is excessive, but, on the other hand, if there is drought, the people sometimes think that the potter has used it to keep off the rain, because he cannot pursue his calling when the clay is very wet. And on occasions of a long break in the rains, they have been known to attack his shop and break all his vessels under the influence of this belief. The potter is sometimes known as Prājapati or the ‘The Creator,’ in accordance with the favourite comparison made by ancient writers of the moulding of his pots with the creation of human beings, the justice of which will be recognised by any one who watches the masses of mud on a whirling wheel growing into shapely vessels in the potter’s creating hands.
from The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV Kumhar-Yemkala Author: R.V. Russell
(read more...)

Gell-Mann With Five Brains


He's been called "the man with five brains" -- and Murray Gell-Mann has the resume to prove it.(read more...)

Saturday, June 14, 2008

J. Views and Ein Hod Ties

The J.Viewz project was established by Jonathan Dagan mid 2002. Whilst working with the band Violet Vision on their 2nd album, Jonathan used his spare time to record a solo project. Taking many diverse musicians into the studio, The J.Viewz project started to metamorphosize into ‘freestyle chill’ – blending elements of soft breakbeat, trip-hop, 2 step, jazz and more, all in a mellow groove.
The first J.Viewz track was released on the “Chillout sessions 2” compilation by Blanco y Negro Music of Spain (alongside Sinead O’Connor, Sneaker Pimps, Mike Oldfield, Paul Oakenfold, Massive Attack, and more)
The Live act performs with the following line-up:
Noa Lembersky - Vocals
David Adda - Piano & Keyboards
Danni Makov - Drums & Percussions
Urijah - Trumpet, Guitars, Vocals
Jonathan Dagan - Programming, turntables, guitars
These days the second J.Viewz album is in the making, not much can be revealed at this stage other than this album will feature some interesting guests (Big-bands, orchestras) including the Three-time Grammy award winning master drummer Glen Velez, and will be well worth the wait!
A new EP by J.Viewz, called “The Besides” was released early 2008, this EP also includes a new edit of the Nina Simone remix, and a couple of live recordings.
The captivating experience of J.Viewz Live features new interpretations of their tunes with a unique combination of live instruments, Vocals, electronic drumbeats, live drums and Turntables.(read more...)

Friday, June 13, 2008

Dead Sea Secret: Horny Female Rats

The curative powers of the Dead Sea have been acclaimed for thousands of years, and have been widely used to treat acne, psoriasis and other skin disorders, as well as being used in the skin care regiments since the time of Cleopatra. Located at the earth's lowest point of elevation, the Dead Sea has a greater solid content than any other body of water. The salts and muds found here are abundantly rich in sodium, magnesium, potassium, calcium and bromine. The salt from the Dead Sea is unique for its high proportion of potassium and magnesium ions and its relatively low sodium ion content.
Sexual Arousal Dependent On Flow Of Potassium Ions In Brain Cells
When it comes to sex, a female rat knows how to avoid a communication breakdown. To announce her sexual readiness, she will automatically arch her back, deflect her tail and stand rigid to allow an aroused male to mount. Now, Rockefeller University researchers have figured out the precise chemical and physical mechanism in a group of brain cells that controls this swayback posture, a reflex called lordosis that signals one of life’s most complex yet primitive instincts the need for sex.The group of cells that generates lordosis behavior resides deep in the brain in a structure called the hypothalamus. When an aroused male touches the flanks of a female, these cells determine whether the female will present her rump. “By way of these cells, the female controls sexual reproduction,” says lead researcher Donald Pfaff, head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior. “That’s why these cells are so important.”(read more..)

The 2008 Raanana Pottery Show "כד וחומר"

June 17-20, 2008, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, from 6 p.m. till 11 p.m. around the lake at the Ra'anana Park. There will be 60 ceramic artists from around the country showing and selling their works. Naomi verchovsky from Ein Hod will show her new Salt Glaze work
"כד וחומר" - חגיגת קרמיקה ישראלית
בגלרית חוצות תיפתח תערוכה בה יציגו מיטב אמני הקרמיקה בישראל.
האמנים יציגו את מיטב היצירות במגוון רחב של עבודות: פיסול, קדרות שימושית, עיצובים ועוד ובטכניקות יצירה שונות והקהל יוכל לפגוש בהם, להכירם ולרכוש את יצירותיהם.
עבודות חדשות של נעמי ורכובסקי ( עין הוד ) - שריפת מלח
תאריך : יום שלישי 17 יוני 2008
שעות: 18:00-23:00
תאריך סיום: יום חמישי 19 יוני 2008
מקום: פארק רעננה
מסביב לאגם
עלות: הציבור מוזמן
פתיחה חגיגית יום ג' 17.6.08 בשעה 18:00
במעמד ראש העיר מר נחום חופרי
וסגנית ראש העיר הגב' רונית ויינטראוב

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

René D'Anjou: Le mortifiement de vaine plaisance

René d'Anjou was a storybook prince and a legend in his own lifetime. He was a dreamer and a romantic who through fame and misfortune managed to maintain an aura of romantic splendor. In addition to being a royal duke and a titular king (known as Good King René), he was an artist and a poet. René was intelligent, attractive, sensitive, tolerant, and fatalistic. He saw himself as a chivalric knight. He enjoyed jousting and even serious fighting. He planned many tournaments and wrote a famous treatise on the form and devising of a tournament. Throughout his life he was surrounded by outstanding women: his formidable mother Yolande of Aragon, his two wives Isabelle of Lorraine and Jeanne de Laval, and his daughter Marguerite, queen of England.(read more...).

The Mortifiement is an allegorical religious piece of 2666 lines, in prose, except for occasional verse insets. It commences with the Soul lamenting the tendency of her heart to fall victim to the vain pleasures of this world. The Soul is approached by two ladies, Fear of God and Contrition, who, in a dialogue, encourage the Soul to entrust her heart to them. The interaction of these figures is described by the Acteur, who is also present in the allegory, though chiefly as an observer and commentator. Fear and Contrition accomplish their task by instructing the Soul, mainly through presenting and interpreting three protracted exempla. The Soul then voluntarily commits her heart to the two ladies, who subsequently take it to a paradisaical garden where four additional ladies--Faith, Hope, Love and Divine Grace--nail it to a cross, in imitation of Christ, to purge it of its sin. Following this sacrificial bloodletting, Fear and Contrition return the purified heart to the Soul, who is moved to joyful and ecstatic expression of her love for God.
Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 144
René D'Anjou: Le mortifiement de vaine plaisance
XVe siècle

Riding Your Horse to Work

MR. MOSSBERG: When I did my Kindle column, I got quite a lot of email from people who were talking about the tactile feel of the book -- the hard-to-describe intangibles around reading a paper book that you lose on an electronic device.
MR. BEZOS: I'm sure people love their horses, too. But you're not going to keep riding your horse to work just because you love your horse. It's our job to build something that is better than a physical book. The reason we love physical books is because we have had so many great experiences with that object in our hands that we have nice associations with it.
We're not trying to displace people's love of that physical object that is the book. It's a hallowed invention. The thing to keep in mind is what's really important is not the container, it's the narrative. Long-form reading is important for our society.
Over the last 20 years, most of the tools that we humans have invented have made it easier for us to be information snackers. If one of the outcomes of Kindle and other devices like it [is] making long-form reading more frictionless so that you end up doing more of it, I think that's a good thing.(read more...)

London, 1940

Monday, June 9, 2008

Jackson Pollock and Penguin Shit


Myhrvold is of Nordic extraction, and he looks every bit the bearded, fair-haired Viking—not so much the tall, ferocious kind who raped and pillaged as the impish, roly-poly kind who stayed home by the fjords trying to turn lead into gold. He is gregarious, enthusiastic, and nerdy on an epic scale. He graduated from high school at fourteen. He started Microsoft’s research division, leaving, in 1999, with hundreds of millions. He is obsessed with aperiodic tile patterns. (Imagine a floor tiled in a pattern that never repeats.) When Myhrvold built his own house, on the shores of Lake Washington, outside Seattle a vast, silvery hypermodernist structure described by his wife as the place in the sci-fi movie where the aliens live he embedded some sixty aperiodic patterns in the walls, floors, and ceilings. His front garden is planted entirely with vegetation from the Mesozoic era. (“If the ‘Jurassic Park’ thing happens,” he says, “this is where the dinosaurs will come to eat.”) One of the scholarly achievements he is proudest of is a paper he co-wrote proving that it was theoretically possible for sauropods—his favorite kind of dinosaur to have snapped their tails back and forth faster than the speed of sound. How could he say no to the great Jack Horner?(read more...)

Tyrnavos Cocksuckers


If you want to eat phallus-shaped bread, drink through phallus-shaped straws from phallus-shaped cups, kiss ceramic phalluses, sit on a phallus-shaped throne and sing dirty Greek songs about the phallus, then you should visit the little Greek town of Tyrnavos each year on "Clean Monday".
Come prepared. Passersby tend to be grabbed and rocked over a pot of boiling "bourani" spinach soup while a ceramic penis is placed between their legs. They must kiss the phallus, then drink tsipouro -- a strong local spirit -- from its tip, and then stir the soup before they're let go.
Phallus-kissers are rewarded with ash-streaks on their face, which presumably absolves them from having to go through the procedure again, unless of course they would like to.(read more...)

Thursday, June 5, 2008

No Arthritis for Her

The Scandinavian researchers base their findings on more than 2750 people taking part in two separate studies, which assessed environmental and genetic risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis.
Over half the participants (1650) had the disease and had been matched for age, sex, and residential locality with randomly selected members of the general public.
All participants were quizzed about their lifestyle, including how much they smoked and drank. And blood samples were taken to check for genetic risk factors.
The results showed that drinking alcohol was associated with a significantly lower risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. And the more alcohol was consumed, the lower the risk of rheumatoid(read more...)

Ein Hod: 05.06.1982 on Gotlieb's Roof

On 3 June 1982, the Palestinian militant group Fatah-The Revolutionary Council (headed by Yasser Arafat's opponent Abu Nidal) attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador in London, paralyzing him. Rafael Eitan, who was then the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, responded to in his famous saying: "Abu Nidal, abu shmidal. We need to screw PLO!" אבו נידאל, אבו שמידאל. צריך לדפוק את אש"ף
On 4 June and 5 June 1982, Israeli F-16 planes bombed Palestinian refugee camps and other PLO targets in Beirut and southern Lebanon. For the first time in over ten months, the PLO responded by launching artillery and mortar attacks on civilian centers in northern Israel.
On 6 June 1982, Israeli forces under direction of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon invaded southern Lebanon in "Operation Peace of the Galilee".(from wikipedia)
On the photo Zvi Garti,Bob Nechin and I- 10 minutes before being called to join my Army Unit.

The Ballad of Eskimo Nell

There are multiple variations to the poem and some stanzas are left out of certain versions but the basic narrative structure remains constant. It details the adventures of the generously-endowed Deadeye Dick and his gunslinging sidekick, Mexican Pete. Fed up with their sex life at Dead Man's Creek, they travel to the Rio Grande. There they visit a whore-house, but before Dick has finished with two out of the 40 whores, they are confronted by Eskimo Nell. She is described as something of a sexual champion, and challenges Dick to satisfy her. Dick accepts but Nell's skill and power soon gets the better of him and he climaxes prematurely. Pete attempts to avenge his mate's affront by sticking his gun up Nell and firing all six rounds but all this achieves is to bring Nell to her own orgasm. Disappointed, Eskimo Nell chides the pair for their poor performance. She expresses nostalgia for her home in the frozen North, where the men apparently have better staying power. Dick and Pete return to Dead Man's Creek, their pride severely dented.(more from wikipedia)

When a man rows old, & his balls grow cold
And the tip of his prick turns blue,
It bends in the middle like a 1 string fiddle
He can tell you a tale or two.

So pull up a chair, and stand me a drink
And a tale to you I'll tell
Of Dead-eye Dick and Mexican Pete,
And a harlot called Eskimo Nell.

When Dead-eye Dick and Mexican Pete
Go forth in search of fun
It's Dead-eye Dick that slings the prick
And Mexican Pete the gun.

When Dead-eye Dick and Mexican Pete
Are sore, depressed and sad
It's always a cunt that bears the brunt
But the shooting ain't so bad.

Now Dead-eye Dick and Mexican Pete
Live down by Dead Man's Creek
And such was their luck they'd had no fuck
For nigh on half a week.

Just a moose or two and a caribou,
And a bison cow or so,
And for Dead-eye Dick with his kingly prick
This fucking was mighty slow.

So do or dare this horny pair
Set forth for the Rio Grande,
Dead-eye Dick with his mighty prick
And Pete with his gun in his hand.

And as they blazed their noisy trail
No man their path withstood,
And many a bride, her husband's pride
A pregnant widow stood.

They reached the strand of the Rio Grande
At the height of a blazing noon,
And to slack their thirst and do their worst
They sought Black Mike's Saloon.

And as they pushed the great doors wide
Both prick and gun flashed free.
According to sex, you bleeding wrecks,
You drink or fuck with me."

They'd heard of Dead-eye Dick,
From Maine to Panama
So with scarcely worse than a muttered cur
Those dagos sought the bar.

The girls too knew his playful ways
Down on the Rio Grande,
And forty whores pulled down their drawer
At Dead-eye Dick's command.

They saw the fingers of Mexican Pete
Itch on the trigger grip
And they didn't wait, at fearful rate
Those whores began to strip.

Now Dead-eye Dick was breathing quick
With lecherous snorts and grunts
So forty arses were bared to view
And likewise forty cunts.

Now forty cunts and forty arses
If you can use your wits,
And if you're slick at arithmetic,
Makes exactly eighty tits.

Now eighty tits are a gladsome sight
For a man with a raging stand
It may be rare in Berkeley Square
But not on the Rio Grande.

Now Dead-eye Dick had fucked a few
On the last preceding night,
This he had done just to show his fun
And to wet his appetite.

His phallic limb was in fucking trim,
As he backed and took a run
He made a dart at the nearest tart
And scored a hole in one.

He bore her to the sandy floor
And there he fucked her fine
And though she grinned
It put the wind up the other thirty-nine.

When Dead-eye Dick lets loose his prick
He's got no time to spare,
For speed & length combined with strength
He fairly singes hair.

He made a dart at the next spare tart,
When into that harlot's hell
Strode a gentle maid who was unafraid,
And her name it was Eskimo Nell.

By this time Dick had got his prick
Well into number two
When Eskimo Nell let out a yell,
She bawled to him, "Hey you."

He gave a flick of his muscular prick
And the girl flew over his head,
And he wheeled about with an angry shout.
His face and his prick were red.

She glanced our hero up and down,
His looks she seemed to decry,
With utter scorn she glimpsed the horn
That rose from his hairy thigh.

She blew the smoke from her cigarette
Over his steaming knob
So utterly beat was Mexican Pete
He failed to do his job.

It was Eskimo Nell who broke the spell
In accents clear and cool,
"You cunt struck shrimp of a Yankee pimp.
You call that thing a tool?"

"If this here town can't take that down,"
She sneered to those cowering whores,
"There's one little cunt can do the stunt,
It's Eskimo Nell's, not yours."

She stripped her garments one by one
With an air of conscious pride
And as she stood in her womanhood
They saw the great divide.

She seated herself on a table top
Where someone had left his glass,
With a twitch of her tits she crushed it to bits
Between the cheeks of her arse.

She flexed her knees with supple ease,
And spread her legs apart,
With a friendly nod to the mangy sod
She gave him the cue to start.

But Dead-eye Dick knew a trick or two,
He meant to take his time,
And a girl like this was fucking bliss
So he played the pantomime.

He flexed his arse hole to and fro
And made his balls inflate
Until they looked like granite knobs
Up on a garden gate.

He blew his anus inside out,
His balls increased in size,
His mighty prick grew twice as thick
Till it almost reached his eyes.

He polished it up with alcohol,
And made it steaming hot
To finish the job he sprinkled the knob
With a cayenne pepperpot.

Then neither did he take a run
Nor did he take a leap,
Nor did he stoop, but took a swoop
And a steady forward creep.

With piercing eye he took a sight
Along his mighty tool,
And the steady grin as he pushed it in
Was calculatedly cool.

Have you seen the giant pistons
On the mighty C.P.R.
With the driving force of a thousand horse.
Well, you know what pistons are.

Or you think you do. But you've yet to learn
The ins and outs of the trick
Of the work that's done on a non-stop run
By a guy like Dead-eye Dick.

But Eskimo Nell was no infidel,
As good as whole harem
With the strength of ten in her abdomen
And the rock of ages between.

Amid stops she could take the stream
Like the flush of a watercloset,
And she gripped his cock like a Yale Lock
On the National Safe Deposit.

But Dead-eye Dick could not come quick,
He meant to conserve his powers,
If he'd a mind he'd grind and grind
For a couple of solid hours.

Nell lay for a while with a subtle smile,
The grip of her cunt grew keener,
Squeezing her thigh she sucked him dry
With the ease of a vacuum cleaner.

She performed this trick in a way so slick
As to set in complete defiance
The basic cause and primary laws
That govern sexual science.

She calmly rode through the phallic code
Which for years had stood the test,
And the ancient rules of the classic schools
In a second or two went West.

And so my friends we come to the end
Of copulation's classic
The effect on Dick was sudden and quick
And akin to an anesthetic.

He fell to the floor, and knew no more
His passions extinct and dead
And he did not shout as his prick fell out
Though 'twas stripped right down to a thread

Then Mexican Pete jumped to his feet
To avenge his pal's affront,
With jarring jolt of his blue-nosed
Colt He rammed it up her cunt.

He rammed it up to the trigger grip
And fired three times three
But to his surprise she closed her eyes
And smiled in ecstasy.

She jumped to her feet with a smile so sweet
"Bully", she said, "for you.
Though I had guessed that was the best
That you two poor cocks could do."

"When next, my friend, that you intend
To sally forth for fun
Buy Dead-eye Dick a sugar stick
And yourself an elephant gun.

"I'm going back to the frozen North,
Where the pricks are hard and strong.
Back to the land of the frozen stand
Where the nights are six months long.

"It's hard as tin when they put it in
In the land where spunk is spunk
Not a trickling stream of lukewarm cream
But a solid frozen chunk.

"Back to the land where they understand
What it means to fornicate,
Where even the dead sleep two in a bed
And the babies masturbate.

"Back to the land of the grinding gland,
Where the walrus plays with his prong,
Where the polar bear wanks off in his lair
That's where they'll sing this song.

"They'll tell this tale on the Arctic Trail
Where the nights are sixty below,
Where it's so damn cold that the Johnnies are sold
Wrapped up in a ball of snow.

"In the valley of death with baited breath
That's where they'll sing it too,
Where the skeletons rattle in sexual battle,
And the rotting corpses screw.

"Back to the land where men are men,
Terra Bellicum,
And there I'll spend my worthy end
For the North is calling: 'Come.'"

So Dead-eye Dick and Mexican Pete
Slunk out of the Rio Grande,
Dead-eye Dick with his useless prick
And Pete with no gun in his hand
.

The Impact of BS


Black swans were discovered in Australia. Before that, any reasonable person could assume the all-swans-are-white theory was unassailable. But the sight of just one black swan detonated that theory. Every theory we have about the human world and about the future is vulnerable to the black swan, the unexpected event. We sail in fragile vessels across a raging sea of uncertainty. “The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.”Last May, Taleb published The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. It said, among many other things, that most economists, and almost all bankers, are subhuman and very, very dangerous. They live in a fantasy world in which the future can be controlled by sophisticated mathematical models and elaborate risk-management systems. Bankers and economists scorned and raged at Taleb. He didn’t understand, they said. A few months later, the full global implications of the sub-prime-driven credit crunch became clear. The world banking system still teeters on the edge of meltdown. Taleb had been vindicated. “It was my greatest vindication. But to me that wasn’t a black swan; it was a white swan. I knew it would happen and I said so. It was a black swan to Ben Bernanke [the chairman of the Federal Reserve]. I wouldn’t use him to drive my car. These guys are dangerous. They’re not qualified in their own field.”(read more...)

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Egypt's Jews

Georges is in his late 50s and lives in Misr Al-Qadima, not very far from the heart of what was once the quarter of the not so economically well- off Egyptian Jews, the better off living in the upscale neighburhoods of Heliopolis, Maadi and Zamalek. He runs a small business and sits in his favourite spot outside his small store, where a painting of the Virgin Mary hangs on the wall opposite one of the area's remaining synagogues. Georges looks across at the synagogue as he speaks.
Georges was born and brought up in the neighbourhood and has always lived there. However, his initial reaction was simply to refuse to answer questions about the lives of the Jews who once lived in the area, or questions about the relations between Jews, Muslims and Christians in this neighbourhood that was once home to some 30,000 to 50,000 of Egypt's then 70,000 Jews. Even those Jews who term their leaving Egypt an experience of "coerced uprooting" never call the area a ghetto, instead insisting that "in Egypt Jews, Christians and Muslims were all best of friends and neighbours."
This week there was an attempt to bring back at least a glimpse of that past, when the "First International Conference of Jews from Egypt" was scheduled to open in Cairo last Sunday. As part of the conference, a group of elderly Jews, mostly those who left Egypt for Israel in 1948, almost one third of the nation's Jewish community, or afterwards up to 1967, along with their children and grandchildren, was planning a four-day visit to Egypt.However, the conference was cancelled on Thursday when the five-star hotel that was to host the gathering and some of its meetings "sent its apologies" to the organisers, saying that it would be too difficult to host. Other major hotels in the city also turned down requests to host the group, Zamir told the Weekly in a telephone interview. As a result, "the whole thing was cancelled," she said.
Official sources in Egypt said that the government had not interfered "directly" with the hotel's decision, but said that it had been made clear to the hotel that hosting the conference at this juncture might not be advisable. (Read more in Al-Ahram)

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Protection fo Girls and Pleasure for Boys

Following 119 premature babies in Buenos Aires through their first year of life, researchers found that breast-feeding not only offered more protection to girls than boys, but also that formula-fed girls had the highest risk for severe respiratory infections.
The findings, reported in the June issue of Pediatrics, cast doubt on the theory that immune system chemicals contained in breast milk and passed directly from mother to newborn are responsible for preventing the infections. If this were the case, researchers say, both boys and girls would likely derive equal protection.
In addition, breast-feeding did not appear to affect the number of infections, but rather their severity and the need for hospitalization, meaning that breast milk does not prevent a baby from getting an infection, but helps a baby cope with an infection better.(read more...)

Monday, June 2, 2008

Bo Diddley dies at 79


Alongside Chuck Berry, Diddley is recognized as one of rock's most influential guitarists, expanding the instrument's vocabulary with a crunching, tremolo-laden sound. He played a rectangular "cigar box" guitar of his own design, an instantly recognizable visual counterpart to the distinctive chank-a-chank, a-chank, a-chank-chank
Diddley's most famous songs -- "Who Do You Love," "Mona," "I'm a Man" and "Bo Diddley" -- are the foundation of a huge catalog of songs that have been covered by the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, the Grateful Dead and the Doors and even sampled by rap group De La Soul.

In fact, Diddley is considered by some as a pioneer of rap with his 1959 Top 20 hit "Say Man." On that track, Diddley and his maraca player Jerome Green trade jive-talking insults over a percolating beat, a precursor to rap performers' fondness for dissing one another. "That came out of the black neighborhood way back," Diddley told The Times in 1989. "We used to call it 'signifying.'(read more...)

Shut up and Feel Better


The researchers compared people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings versus those who chose not to express.
If the assumption about the necessity of expression is correct that failing to express one's feelings indicates some harmful repression or other pathology then people who chose not to express should have been more likely to experience negative mental and physical health symptoms over time, the researchers point out.
"However, we found exactly the opposite: people who chose not to express were better off than people who did choose to express," Seery says.
Moreover, when the researchers looked only at people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings, and tested the length of their responses, they found a similar pattern. People who expressed more were worse off than people who expressed less.(read more..)

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Remembering Babushka


For Babushka in Ein Hod click HERE

Małgorzata (Margalit) Krasucka in Ein Hod


Malgorzata Krasucka – MARGALIT, was born in Warsaw in 1952. A pupil of Professor Zygmunt Madejski - a painter and pedagogue – she also apprenticed at the studios of professors Janusz Przybylski and Stefan Gierowski at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (1971-1974).
A 1973 individual exhibition in Lund Sweden marks her professional debut. Although most of her creative work is dedicated to painting, she also draws, illustrates books, designs posters and signs, and includes photography in her artistic work.
Margalit developed her very own painting technique on canvas and on paper. Her works follow a convention of figurative abstract with a clearly surrealistic treatment of the subject.
The Ein Hod showing is the twenty-third individual exhibition of her artistic achievements.
Over thirteen hundred of her paintings can be found in private collections and galleries in Poland and abroad.