Stage6.com has been killed. It was the best video site so far, because it over high-quality viewing (based on the great DIVX codec) and - let’s be honest - tons of excellent pirated stuff.

What attracted me was the fore mentioned quality and many great user groups full with documentaries and arty stuff. It’s all gone now. So I have to do some housekeeping and delete the video links on my blog as well.

Goodbye Stage6 - you will be missed.

PS: I am pretty sure all that stuff will come back on another site.

The final destination of all spiritual journeys is the great big nothing.

Nothing - everything dissolves, there are no needs, no wants, no pleasures, no objects, no people, no you. There is no need for eternal bliss, because you, the need for it and the very concept are dissolved as well.

But is this really spiritual - or rather natural. Death dissolves you as well - totally and eternally.

So as a spiritual person do you really need to comfortable with death and the big nothing? It will happen to you if you want it or not. If you prepare for it or not. If you are at peace with yourself or not.

Maybe preparing for the big nothing is a waste of your lifetime. Life while you life. Death will take care of itself and you. Big nothingness indeed.

It’s madness around here: some good jobs and once again a fight against the taxman. I don’t mind working hard, but I do mind giving too much money to the government for nothing. So I fight for every penny.

Many sculptures have an eerie presence that goes way beyond the power and energy most paintings posses. It is a magnificent mixture of grace and reality that overwhelms.

Before the industrial revolution there was plenty of work for everyone - not always pleasant and nice - but there was a huge demand for muscles and brains.

Mechanization took most low level, handcraft, agricultural and production jobs away, so humans had to train to be smarter than machines to keep working. Most of today’s productive work (= producing goods) is done by machines, while we have kept and expanded the so called service industries and administration (and boy, do we love our bureaucracies).

I wonder: when we run out of oil and don’t come up with an adequate supply of alternative fuel if human work might be back in demand? There are six billion of us and not everybody fancies burger flipping and filling out forms & papers.

Note to woman: even external things get slippery when wet. Please remember that for your own safety.

The Turkish invasion into Iraq is a deadly joke. Most Kurdish resistance fighters had left their hideouts anyway, because of the harsh winter in the mountains. And the attack has been expected for months - so nobody was caught in surprise.

Most of all: Turkey is lacking a big professional Army to do the task. So inexperienced conscripts are used to wage a war against experienced guerillas. Many of the first Turkish causalities have been young conscripts. The Turkish generals and politicians should be ashamed to start this war just for mostly propaganda reasons.

The overall situation is such a tragedy as well: the Kurds have been America’s ally from the very beginning in their fight against Saddam. They have suffered decades of suppression from Saddam AND Turkey. America should support these peoples struggle for their own country Kurdistan.

Instead America doesn’t want to embarrass it’s important NATO ally Turkey (who has a VERY strong lobby in the US and is also one of the few Muslim countries that supports Israel). But the US also wants the Kurds to be part of that artificial country Iraq.

The Kurds should have their own country and run their own affairs. If small Kosovo can be it’s own state, so can Kurdistan. Iran and Turkey should part their chunks of Kurdistan - so peace can be made for all.

I always said humanity should be exterminated to save the planet!

My dear Americans: are you sure that your country’s infrastructure is oke? Seems like you should spend more money on improving your electricity grid. It has been known for some time that most parts of the grid are in a bad shape.

Change? Make power companies invest more in the grids they own instead of giving all the money to it’s stockholders. Electricity is way to essential to leave it in the greedy hands of corporations.

Even here in Germany some electricity grids are in bad shape, because they have been privatized and neglected by big ass companies.

Water, Sewers, Electricity, Streets, Rail, Telephones and Internet access - all these components of modern life have been sold in many countries to private companies. And all the promises of cheaper pricesses, better service and constant innovation haven’t been fulfilled. But these companies ALL made huge profits.

Public necessities should stay in public hands. 

I still prefer my Easter Bunny in it’s original shape & material - like Jesus intended: in chocolate!

I love the simplicity and essence of this poster. All the important elements of the main character and the movie plot are there. Brilliant!

It’s about time that fairies join the equal rights movement. Most male fairy creatures are rather means and grumpy (Leprechaun, Rumpelstilzchen, etc.).

Why are all these good jobs mostly reserved for yummy and charming woman?

We old farts also want to appear in children’s bedrooms in a cloud of pink fairy dust - and wipe the tears of little faces.

But I am pretty sure someone will sue male fairies for sexual harassment as soon as the first wish was granted!

*Thanks Judefa for that lovely picture*

All American presidential candidates always reinforce that national mantra of a strong defense and military against all these evildoers out there. The US spends more on defense and espionage than the rest of the world COMBINED.

But there is little or no reflection that the most expensive security and military apparatus has totally failed to destroy Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and Al-Quaeda. Instead America has helped with it’s bad policies and military failures to drive young Muslims in droves to suicide squads and terrorist groups all over the world.

So if Americans really want change - change your military doctrine, reduce the amounts of “security, intelligence agencies - and bases all over the world. If you do that you could CHANGE the current miserable state of your education, social systems and crappy state of your infrastructure.

Change would mean getting rid of that insecure bunker mentality - and accepting that no super weapon can stop hate. Friendship and diplomacy can make friends and sympathy - and this will protect you much better in the long run.

Osama is only dangerous, because people support his cause or are willing to look the other way.

BBC News: Anti-depressants ‘of little use’

The label “Depression” includes a wide range of mental conditions, reasons and cures. A new study found out that most Anti-Depressants only help a few people - which made the drug companies very unhappy.

Overall we have to ask ourselves as a society why we haven’t come to grips with “happiness” and why so many people feel the need for medication or drugs to cope with life?

I don’t think we are unhappier and life is harsher than say in the Middle Ages - but people today “expect” to be happy all the time, while in most periods in human history we were just glad to be alive with some food and security.

Happiness is mandatory! So smile or medicate …

In our rich societies we are constantly bombarded with images, products and ideas about “happiness” - so reaching this stage seems the ultimate goal today. Just being alive, safe, clothed, feed, secure, educated, fucked and cared for isn’t enough anymore.

People with serious depressions need better medicine - and for the rest of us: we need better education and training how to cope with life and our own desires. Just because you are unhappy or can’t cope with obstacles in your life doesn’t mean you suffer from depression …

I am sure this is where you want to read books about GOOD interior design and a horror stories …

Our kids will looks great in technicolor!

Loads of machismo and inaptitude results in hilarious moments caught on tape. I always watch this video to reassure myself that I am not a total idiot … maybe it helps you too!?

The male of our species is … a bit odd sometimes.

At the moment the VERY painful video of Eduardo da Silva’s accident is all the rage on YouTube - and is a big hit with the kids. One has really to wonder why watching such a painful video is all the rage?

Scientists have long proven that we empathize and re-live such experiences simply by watching other humans doing (stupid) stuff. So I can only extend this idea in this way: we watch pain porn to train ourselves for such moments and try to cope with it’s consequences - even when it isn’t happening to us.

YouTube is full of fight videos that concentrate only on knock outs and bloody scenes, you can also find tons of accident and crash videos that show only the nasty bits.

Do we simply need some blood and nasty stuff from time to time? By watching terrible stuff happen to other does that help us to enjoy our less painful life?

In recent years we have seen an explosion of girly tech - gadgets specifically designed to appeal to woman’s sense of cuteness, styling and beauty.

But this new Sony Ericson phone in combination with it’s product website really takes the cake. A gold-pink cell phone is bad enough - but on a neon-green background?

Gimme a break. I’ll sue them for eye cancer!

But there are many golden, pink and other soft coloured gadgets out there - that are equally bad in terms of design and colour harmony.

Are woman really that hungry for pinkness in their mind? You girls know that pink is used to reflect your genitalia.

So in that context the Sony Ericson cell phone above ’says’: pink pussy below - and attracted to gold in the head, press the knobs to make her ring …

So Ladies - and don’t forget to ‘Bling’ your pink gadget to increase the girly ranking in your circle.

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

The Fake

Bert Stern shot in June 1962 the last session with Madame Monroe - the famous last sitting (there is a great book out there with all the shots).

The New York Magazine tried to recreate this great series (click Slideshow to see it) with less desirable Lindsay Lohan - and again Bert Stern as the Master of Light.

Sure Lohan and Marilyn are both addicts in their own way. But Miss Lohan is hardly in the same class as the great MM.

Please: if you can’t come up with great ideas for your own photo shot - don’t fake classic images. Remakes are usually weak and only show your own lack of creativity. Classics are simply classics. Leave them alone.

I think before robots will take over the world - it’s the Asians turn to be our beloved overlords.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution we have squeezed more and more yield out of the ground - and poured more and more dirty chemical into it.

Soil quality and pollution is a serious problem in almost any country. Plus climate change also has a strong influence on soil quality.

Our crops suck the nutrients out of the soil, it takes nature some time to ‘recharge’ the ground. We invented new way to speed up the process by using fertilizers - which include oil as one of it’s ingredient. So food production and oil are directly linked - not just for transportation.

This is taken from a great article from Dale Allen Pfeiffer:

In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).⁷ Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

• · 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
• · 19% for the operation of field machinery
• · 16% for transportation
• · 13% for irrigation
• · 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
• · 05% for crop drying
• · 05% for pesticide production
• · 08% miscellaneous

The modern way of chemical farming seems unsustainable to many - organic farming is better for the soil to ‘recharge’ itself and yield better produce.

So we face a serious combination of problems here: lower soil quality calls for more fertilizers - which will increase production prices, oil is already expensive so more fertilizer means more oil will be needed for food production - which again raises global oil prices.

Feed me loads of oil! Feed me yummy soil!

A small side note: we also use loads of fertilizer to produce biofuels - so in a matter of speaking we put oil in the ground to grow oil. Sure we get more out of the ground than we put in - but it is still an odd mechanism.

Since oil is a finite resource we should seriously push and make organic farming mandatory. We need sustainable ways of producing HUGE amounts of food for all six billion of us.

Another piece from Maestro Cagnacci.

I like the style of the painting, but compared to his other masterpiece ‘Lucretia’ this is pretty lame. The composition is weak, the drama rather pathetic and not worth the death of the great Cleopatra. And the snake is rather puny. The Lady looking at the snake looks more like eating or cuddling it any moment …

Overall this image is way to European and not very Egyptian. I can only suspect that the original buyer wanted to have something with many half-naked ladies?

Did McCain have an affair? Nah, not really interesting.

But I actually think such little squabbles will do him some good, because it implies that he still “got it”. In our hierarchical societies symbolism still is important - and nobody really wants an impotent leader. The countries top dog should also be a top sperm spreader.

How much ‘down to earth’ do you need to be to be ‘grounded’? How close to Mother Earth can you get without feeling ‘down’ or ‘falling flat on your face’? How dirty is getting ‘your hands dirty’? Or does ‘laying low for a while’ really help to ‘get both feed on the ground’?