(Source: recklesselectric, via theanimalblog)
"Twenty years ago no one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: entire relationships flourish, friendships prosper…there’s a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not to mention the weirdest porn. The entire human experience seems to unveil itself like the surface of a new planet."
J.G. Ballard (via bookshavepores)
My words exactly. Or almost.
(via booklover)
(Source: enders-shame, via choucroute)
The Nubian Giraffe by Jacques-Laurent Agasse, c.1827. I remember seeing this piece in an art book when I was younger and loving every single aspect of it. I find that there are certain pieces like this from childhoods, pieces where you don’t necessarily remember the title or the artist but the image is as vivid as ever. The Nubian giraffe is a subspecies of the African mammal found in the north east of the continent.
Artist Henrique Oliveira was looking for ways to bring texture to his art when he had a breakthrough: He noticed the plywood fence outside his window had begun to deteriorate, revealing layers of color. When the fence was dismantled, Oliveira collected the wood and used it to create his first installation. His use of weathered wood to evoke the strokes of a paintbrush has become Oliveira’s trademark.
14 artists with a green message
Cool!
(via eegrejyus)
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
<3
Fantasy Names with Normality Potential.
Pet Peeve of Mine:
I have observed a phenomenon that mostly occurs in the fantasy or science fiction genre, or any other fiction where original worlds and cultures different from the ones we know are invented.
Either there are character names that sound like perfectly normal names from our (Western) cultural background, but have some ridiculous exotic spelling.
Or there are character names that are ridiculously exotic but conveniently contain one or two syllables that allow them to be shortened to an incredibly common nickname from our cultural background.
So meet my alien friends Uyllyum and Jondalumbumgrum (you can call him John). We’ll have so many adventures together.
I am not in favour of this phenomenon. It’s irritating, and seems somehow condescending (as if the author couldn’t expect the readers to memorise names they hadn’t heard before.) It’s also philologically shallow.
Take a leaf out of Tolkien’s book. Besides the various Elvish languages and the other more exotic languages in Middle Earth, he also imagined a sort of standard lingua franca, which would have been spoken, f.e. by the Hobbits. This language is represented in the book by English. So while the original names of the Hobbits are something rather more exotic, for us they have been translated into names with an English etymology. I seem to remember that Meriadoc is actually called Kalimac, which would’ve been shortened to ‘Kali’, which means happy, gay or ‘merry’. Now I don’t know if Tolkien actually went as far as to imagine the ‘original’ name for every character, but it is not unlikely, because he was thorough/obsessive like that.
My point is that he gave so much thought to the whole thing that it actually all made sense. His name have plausible etymologies that are linguistically consistent. That’s just so much more dedicated than taking a Christian name and spelling it weirdly.
Johann Wenzel Bergl, Bergl Rooms at Schonbrunn Palace (Austria), 1766
I should really go there some time …
(via fckyeaharthistory)
