1. "Shipping Up To Boston" by the Dropkick Murphys. Heard this song a few times lately on Live 105 and it got stuck in my head
2. Stuff by Stefan Verstappen. I've been continuing to research sociopathy and have now watched A LOT of youtube videos about both narcissism and sociopaths/psychopaths. Super interesting stuff. I'm starting to figure out that the root of my (past) personal problems perhaps scale up and are the root of most of the worlds problems: apathy + psychopaths + complacency = all the world's problems. I mean, we all assume that people in positions of authority are doing their job properly and have people's best interests at heart, but what if they don't. What if a few of the people at the "top" are selfish jerks, in part because their brains are hardwired that way. Widespread awareness of the fact that some people truly lack a conscience (either permanently or temporarily), and how to recognize this could help make the world a better place for all life forms on this planet. I really dig these two videos:
Surviving Corruption - hands up if you're a "come from away" in Nova Scotia and this video reminds you of this province. Although to be fair it sounds like this is becoming true of politics across Canada and elsewhere.
This video is also great and explains so much about so many things:
Defense Against the Psychopath (Full Length Version)
3. All sorts of videos by Ross Rosenberg. Ross Rosenberg is the author of "The Human Magnet Syndrome: Why We Love People Who Hurt Us" which I haven't read but it sounds good. I found this video very interesting and helpful:
How to defend yourself from Narcissists. Observe don't absorb technique.
4. This video about narcissism cracks me up near the end "how dare you..." There are lots of these great xtranormal videos on youtube
5. This opinion piece by Ralph Surette in Saturday's Chronicle Herald. I had been growing weary of the Herald's backlash against the Nova Scotia Liberal's planned ban on fracking and was surprised and delighted that they published this piece which makes some valid, obvious points. Really, other Herald people, you know who you are, instead of crying over your lost billion dollars of imaginary frack money how about acknowledging the fact that, in some aspects, this province is pretty much a slave colony for a few rich families and working on the whole corruption issue? How about dropping the sibling rivalry for what Alberta has and showing some gratitude for what this province has in abundance: great soil, a long growing season, healthy local food and delicious fresh water. These things could be quickly ruined by fracking, is it really worth the risk to pad the wallets of a few oil and gas people? I'm just waiting for one of the pro-frackers to come up with the idea of razing all the province's forest in order to grow palm oil monocultures. Fortunately we're not tropical enough.
I still think there are more sustainable solutions possible to economic growth - eg, a large, dried kale chip factory that would make kale chips as affordable as potato chips. Kale is so easy to grow and you can harvest the leaves multiple times. What if everyone dug up portions of their yards to plant to kale to make its way to the kale chip factory. The exercise from the gardening might even save on provincial health care costs. People love kale chips but the only commercially packaged products I've seen are cost prohibitive to many. Up with kale, down with fracking.
6. Commissions. Speaking of the Chronicle Herald today I sent some re-purposed Heralds in the form of a commissioned papier mache sculpture out of province. It is a surprise someone ordered for someone so pics will follow after it arrives. I'm very grateful for this opportunity and have realized over the past few years something has shifted and I now enjoy making commissioned work - it used to stress me out when I first started selling sculptures. Now that I've been working on being all about 'process', commissions seem less daunting... especially papier mache commissions because it's easier to work on just one thing as opposed to working in clay where I feel obliged to fill my kiln. I'll be added a "sold artwork" page to my blog to give viewers an idea of stuff I've made in the past. I'll soon be firing more pieces too; summer is over, time to get back to the studio!
No comments:
Post a Comment