What a great gift! Queen gives you a free song - and wants you to donate some money to fight AIDS. Now that’s what I call a great deal!

From the official website:

It has not been that closely a guarded secret that Queen and Paul Rodgers have been in the recording studio for their first sessions together following their successful world tour of 2005/2006. Indeed, both Paul and Brian have been quoted on their websites as being "quietly excited" about the music that has been produced from this creative union.

Spurred on by their commitments as Ambassadors to Nelson Mandela’s 46664 HIV AIDS global campaign, on which the spotlight will fall December 1 with a World Aids Day awareness and fundraising concert in Johannesburg, South Africa, Brian, Roger and Paul have announced they have rushed to finish a track specially written for 46664 by Roger and have it available as a free download in time for this coming Saturday’s benefit concert.

The track, Roger’s "Say It’s Not True", originally came to light for the launch of the 46664 campaign back in November 2003. Roger wrote the song as a gift to Nelson Mandela (or ‘Madiba’, as he is fondly known), and performed it live for him for the first time with Brian and Dave Stewart at the inaugural 46664 concert in Cape Town that month. The song carries the message that HIV AIDS is something that can affect any one of us.

I like the song. But I also like the whole idea.

Thanks to Zichi for sending me this link.

Click image for more Death and Drama.

In the absence of mass media and the Internet in the old days it could take years or even decades before important scenes were framed and ‘archived’ for the public to see.

Word of mouth was often the only and the fastest ways to get the news. It must have been a strange time compared to our high speed lifestyles.

Just compare this ‘lonely painting’ to all the news, images, videos and dribble that has been written and broadcast about Princess Diana’s death.

No matter who much cuteness, pink and kitsch you stuff into your life - it will end. The question is: How much real substance do you want? How much effort are you willing to invest into you own life? And how much pain are you willing to endure to reach your full potential?

Sounds to harsh? Well then choose the way of modern consumerism and try to get the easy & fluffy ticket until death.

The easy way out will always be there.

I still remember trying to see Walkman for the first at a local department store (Karstadt). They were on display - but all chained to the counter. Bastards. Compared to today’s iPods or discmans they were pretty bulky and heavy. Most of all VERY expensive.

A few weeks later some privileged kids and youngsters had one of these. You could simply spot them by those glowing orange ‘rubber ears’ and their almost absent style of walking. These days it was VERY unusual for anyone to run around with headphones on.

I also liked the Walkman speech phenomena - people who talked while listening to their precious music always screamed - just like some people do today with their cell phones. Oh, what joy - made them always behave like idiots.

Similar the Walkman gaze - some people seemed to dream or stare at distant realms while listening to their music. Somewhere, some other sound planet …

With the Walkman also arrived the tape mixing frenzy. It was not enough to record any old record and just listen to it. You needed special remixes for special moments: one cool mix for jogging (another 80’s craze), one for video gaming (rush tapes) and of course for waking up in the morning on your way to work or school. Some of these tapes are burned so deeply into my memories that I still expect certain song combinations - just the way I banned them once on tape and listened to them a thousand times.

And the shitloads of batteries we consumed to keep those little buggers running. Plus the never ending quest how to transport it. The early ones were to big and heavy for your jacket - so you needed a special belt case, which was uncool. If you put your Walkman in your rucksack you might entangle yourself somewhere. Today we are used to have cables and electronic devices all around us - but in the 80’s hardly anyone carried anything ‘cable’ with them.

Also the world was a much quieter place then. The music anywhere revolution was just about to begin: MTV had to be invented yet and most stores didn’t feature roaring TV sets with ads or fast music videos. Hey, even McDonalds was a quiet place to crunch your burgers!

One thing I very much enjoyed was tape swapping with friends. You listen to mine and I check out yours dude. A few models had two headphone plugins - wow - that was cool to listen to great music together. Especially for couples …

Another rather uncool thing was reliability. I literally glued and taped some of these machines until they fell apart. And there was no way of fixing these broken jukeboxes. It was always cheaper to buy a new and smaller one.

Walkmans really made the phrase ‘My life is a Soundtrack’ possible and I still can remember certain moments in my life plus the tracks that I played that very instant. Crazy?!

What are your Walkman memories … drop a comment please …

One of the foundations of our modern lifestyle are fridges (even the ones without Internet access). Preserving food has always been a hard task - before fridges they used dark, cold cellars and for a brief period of time ice blocks delivered to your home.

A fridge is such a practical thing: just open the door and stuff your goodies inside. Done!

The fridge and cold warehouse allowed easier transport and mass storange of persihable goods and layed also a foundation for mass delivery and consumption of fresh veggies, fish and meat from far away places. Frozen food can last an eternity compared to normal storange.

But fridges are also responsible for fast food and so called convinience food: quick and dirty dishes without the pleasure to shop for daily needs, selecting stuff from your personal dealer and preparing it yourself (a typical mom job) …

Check also: the webfridge project

The last few winters we had catastrophic weather: loads of snow and extreme colds. Because of the high energy prices this cost many people a small fortune. Last years winter was incredible mild (I was sitting on the balcony just with a T-shirt).

Climate change is happening - but it’s effects are hard to predict in the short term. The weather systems seems out of sync - one extreme weather chasing another.

What is it with women and their panties?!

Life could be so simple! Everybody should have a green handler - so we can blame the slugs for our miserable life’s. I for one welcome our new jelly overlords!

Remember all these great space illustrations from your childhood: cities floating in space, generational starship sailing to the next solar system and moon stations. Although we finally get closer to creating these marvels the public is less and less enthusiastic about it. I guess it will change once there is the first zero-g brothel in orbit. Porn sells even science.

Romantic movies are for chicks and action stuff is for guys. Right? Wrong. There seem an incredible number of chick flicks out there and an even greater number of dumb violent stuff for youngsters - BUT hardly any good stuff for ‘real men’.

Dead Poets Society - or how it feels like to be a boy. One of the few movies who don’t turn growing up into a screwball comedy. This one shows how important it is to have a good mentor (sort of older guy) to introduce young gentlemen to art and higher principles - as an alternative to ‘just’ sex and getting a proper job.

Birdy - Also a story about growing up, but also about coping with tragedy, pain, madness and - mostly - about finding your own way. Friendship also plays an important part in this one. Great Soundtrack by Peter Gabriel.

About Schmidt - This movie kills me every time. About the tragedy of a guy, who discovers at the end of his life that he hasn’t lived at all. Very heartbreaking and a huge warning sign. To do what is expected of you (getting a good job, starting a family and retire to a nice home) isn’t life …

Broken Flowers - Whatever happens to old womanizers? The story of Don and his search for a son or better say a family or steady relationship he never had or could ‘create’. A great movie about lonely guys, who have achieved something, but have nothing.

Any movies my male readers like to add?

An interesting scientific article about the development of breasts. No easy reading, but excellent of you want to learn more about evolutionary biology.

Only one little LSD tablet for each of us. See you later on the other side Darling …

Nude act photography as well as painting and drawing are the grammar school of visual art. Here the visual artists studies and explore the human form - strangely enough mostly only the female form. You can find a gazillion of nude acts from great old master like Man Ray, Weston and Stieglitz. Still any young modern photographer has to go though the same positions, the same shots and compositions.

On the other side we viewers never seem to get enough of the human shape? People like watching people - no matter if they have seen that person only once of a thousand times. We are addicted to ourselves - our proportions and gestures.

So Man Ray once delivers another celebration of mankind.

I guess only the complicated western mind could develop such a crazy system of eating utensils? While other cultures are happy with a a knife, spoon, some bread and maybe chopsticks to pick up their food - Europe indulged into a complicated system of silverware.

From Wikipedia:

Cutlery refers to any hand utensil used in preparing, serving, and especially eating food. It is more usually known as silverware or flatware in the United States, where cutlery can have the more specific meaning of knives and other cutting instruments. This is probably the original meaning of the word. Since silverware suggests the presence of silver, the term tableware has come into use.

The major items of cutlery in the western world are the knife, fork and spoon. Traditionally, good quality cutlery was made from silver (hence the U.S. name), though steel was always used for more utilitarian knives, and pewter was used for some cheaper items, especially spoons. From the nineteenth century, Electroplated Nickel Silver (EPNS) was used as a cheaper substitute; nowadays, most cutlery, including quality designs, is made from stainless steel. Plastic cutlery is made for disposable use, and is frequently used in fast food or take-away outlets and provided with airline meals.

Two forms of utensil combining the functionality of various pairs of cutlery are the spork (spoon / fork) and knork (knife / fork). Cutlery gets its name from the term for a person skilled in making knives, a cutler. The Worshipful Company of Cutlers was one of the London livery companies, reflecting the importance of this trade in the Middle Ages.

Cutlery gained prominence during the Middle Ages.

Various artists - couldn’t find any credits, sorry!

The male shape is as ‘normal’ and beautiful as the female form. What annoys me is that often male act photography is only meant for the gay community (like many female acts border to normal porn). I am the last person lambasting porn anyway - but sometimes a great image of the human form is simply enough for me and amazing enough.

Can’t we celebrate our own shapes without going all juicy? 

There are not many guns and rifles a normal person will know by name (unless you are a gun nut anyway). The Magnum .44 is something everybody knows - and the famous Winchester Rifle, which appear in any old western movie.

But capitalism is able to bring down even well armed icons. The company Winchester that produces the gun has moved abroad and no longer wants to manufacture this gun (BBC article here). It’s simply not profitable.

I wish that would happen to all guns and riffles!

More? Winchester Rifle @ Wikipedia and the movie Winchester 73

Another classic moment snapped by Maestro Brassai. Prostitution, Sex and naked Ladies have always inspired and attracted many artists. I think the idea of the Muses reflects that as well. Sex is creation, creativity is creation. Both can be highly uplifting acts with long lasting consequences. So every artist is also a parent - of ideas, concepts and eternal beauty …

I would love the world to be always that colorful!

He certainly is one of the real giants of the last century. He formulated and created a new way of looking at ourselves and exploring humanity. Many of his theories are now proven wrong - but Siegmund Freud wouldn’t mind that. He based his work on empirical evidence, not dogmas. He changed his several of his theories several times.

Too bad many people turned his theories and observations into dogmas - especially in contrast with the terrible events of world war II. Freud’s work gave many people the reason to believe that the human animal is bad, driven mostly by his deep sexual desires and needs. This is certainly a part of the human equation, but not the whole story.

Especially evolutionary biology has shown that the ‘selfish gene‘ in us is much more altrustic and pragmatic then Freud and many other prophets of doom want us to believe.

Perfect! Maestro Marc’s animal paintings are a dream. I love the strong colors and graphic style. But he still keeps the ‘nature’ of his subjects intact. Not many modern painters succeed in that.

Ragnar has a sharp eye for amazing moments! Visit his fascinating gallery for a shot trip to some harsher places and of our globe like the Faeroe Island or Siberia. Wow!

Gee, is it already over ten years ago that these oversized pocket calculators achieved the final breakthrough of the PDA? Together with the mainstream revolution of the WWW suddenly cell phones and personal digital assistants exploded everywhere.

Palm created 1996 a huge market that was invented by Apple with it’s Newton 1992. But the original Newton was a brick compared to the slender Palm (which would appear huge compared to today’s machines). And it played nicely with a Mac and a PC. Something Apple always hated until they finally ‘got it’ with the iPod.

Suddenly everyone wanted to have one of these organizers - in every meeting people would try to take notes with Graffiti - a special sign language to make the computer better understand human handwriting. Most people ended up using the keyboard map instead.

Today the PDA’s are slowly disappearing - or better say evolving into the smart phones. Today almost any cell phone offers an extended address book and scheduler. If you need more power - you simply use a notebook or small laptop. Especially since PDAs from Palm and Windows CE are bloody expensive.

The whole PDA market will be killed by smart phones. There is no need to have a small computer if you cell phone can organize your life as well.

More? Palm Pilot @ Wikipedia

Ah, another classic! I remember endless nights in front of my first PC exploring the universe. This was so cool. Click here for a great fan page.

I hardly can remember my first (cheap) stereo system which was all the rage back then. You simply had to had a decent HiFi system at home - just a simply tape and record player was not enough to grantee your social status. Every since the 80’s audio freaks have gone overboard with special preamps, super CD-Player and all that expensive boy toys.

In that context I find it cynical that most people are now hooked to cheap ass speaker system on their computers to listen to badly ripped MP3 files. So the new digital revolution actually was a downgrade in sound quality compared to audio CDs and a good stereo system.

But never mind. It’s small and portable or big and clunky on your desktop - but most of all it’s bloody convenient! So we see once again new high tech gimmickry to give is better sound. JBL, Apple and many others offer a gazillion highly evolved speaker system to play your hissing and badly compressed MP3 files in your living room.

Ah, the irony of high tech. But at least it looks cool when it sounds like shit.

Today it’s easy to find some erotic or pornographic photography on the net. Almost all photographers have some ‘hot shots’ in their collections. Bob Carlos Clarke also has a wide range of topics, but his erotic shots are often spiced up with dark humor and even criticism. Go watch his breath taking slide show here - and judge for yourself. Too bad this great master is already dead.

Click images for a more stunning Venus.

Once of the most iconic images of European art - and one of the greatest goddesses of all times. If you look around you we are surrounded by fit young and blonde Sisters of Venus these days.

Her breasts are a bit too small compared to the current beauty ideal and her facial expression is also a bit too innocent. We like our woman a bit more slutty these days.