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Beauty,angst, stress, relationships, imagery, custard tart, what do you see ?

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

Hi everyone,
The time to relax is nice if I could get any, I am busy remembering at the things I need to do ;).
Amongst everything that has occured so far, in a brieft list of summary is shown below:

  • Returned in a much more concise way to Place of Much Chocolate Gorging (now on known as PMCG), on Roman corner. However the journey was spoilt be having to put up with the constant replaying of tape recorded insults.
  • Met with family friends at PMCG
  • Watched as friends and family enjoyed chocolate buffet (Which I don’t eat, as I don’t have caffiene), I also ordered nothing :), went home.
  • Went shopping with friends and family @ DFO, or more accurately watched as others shopped and got mad at lousy lunch (Subway. Tm) (Subway is normally enjoyable but the employees at this branch were in dodgy rush hour mode.) and at the fact I couldn’t be decent discount dictionaries (I mean $75 for a dictionary, gah) and that the Sony (Tm) store didn’t have headphones that could survive being slammed in car door. (the way my last headphone 2 pairs of died.)
  • Had adequate return journey with more insults, but with a friend who is staying at my house for a few days.
  • Felt like a fifth wheel giving happy birthday greetings is to a sibling (not the one with tape recorder) who is on a horse riding camp. (So many people looking at you funny.)
  • Came home, had dinner and custard tart for dessert and had interesting and angsty conversations via IM

Okay that is brief summary version for those who complain my blog is too deep and long. (This is a one off and only done because I wanted to write a summary.)

Beauty, angst, stress and relationships

One thing I have experienced since exams finished is slight freedom. I have spent time admiring the beauty of things and life, both simple and quite complex. I have thought about euphoria and self inquisition and wondered why people are the way they are ?

I have suffered laughter and irritance in numerous levels of relationships and conversations. From outside view these would seem like simple things, but with each relationship and conversation topic my mind has a wealth of depth and hidden dominoes that rely on what is occurring.

Having a relationship of any kind is one of the most complex and difficult task a human being can undertake. It seems society today has forgotten this and calls people who don’t engage in having relationships anti-social amongst other things. Their are numerous things which today’s society has lost or forgotten the importance of, I am sure that each of you, will be able to name at least 3 things that society has forgotten in this mists of eternity.

I am really interested the studying this world in comparison with supposed utopias and dystopias, especially those presented in fiction. They make me wonder if I was in their world instead of this world would my life be better, would relationships be easier, could my questions be answered ?

I read an interesting analysis / comparsion of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 (I have read both books) which summarises the entire thing as BNW’s world being an dystopia due to the things we love (even though it is portrayed as uptoptic, it comes at a terrible price) and 1984 being a dystopia due to the things we hate.

The quote the article made is below:

Social Critic Neil Postman contrasts the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1986 book Amusing Ourselves to Death thusly:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. (2006, Wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/Brave_new_world)

This lead me to examine our world, and wonder is what we hate and / or love ruining us or keeping us unspoiled ? Should we alter the balance of love / hate, should we change what we love and hate, does reality have the chance of becoming semi-utopic / semi-dystopic ? Is it ?

Imagery, Custard tart and what do you see ?

I mentioned early that I have setup gallery2 and the wordpress plugin. πŸ™‚ This is my test for that. I had custard tart for dessert tonight and whilst in didn’t look that nice it tasted beautiful (especially with vanilla ice cream.) Imagery is all around us, if we care to look, as is beauty, if we should only care ..?

Switching back to Gentoo is looking very tempting almost as tempting as custard tart.

This is a picture I made in GIMP (awesome stuff), I realease it under GNU GPL or the appriopriate Creative Commons License for images if GPL doesn’t suit the medium well enough.

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The source image (.xcf is avaliable from http://applemansigloo.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=25)
The image is titled What do you see ?, and it is exactly that, it is an abstract picture that can be interpreted in numerous ways. Please feel free to answer this any other questions posed :).
Best regards to everyone Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 =)

5 Responses to Beauty,angst, stress, relationships, imagery, custard tart, what do you see ?

Tim Morris says: June 30, 2006 at 2:58 am

I see the hand too, isn’t it trying to grab the bird? But wait… isn’t the bird a guy flexing his arm, and isn’t there someone looking down on him for showing off.

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