Cardinal Sins

This is one of the last real paintings I made, in 1984; in acrylic on a bit of old board.

All the inner circle to the Pope:

Envy; Gluttony; Anger; Avarice; Pride; Lust, and Sloth.

Later, I did another larger version, with a background of a burning capitalist hell, and better versions of most of the faces, but I never could recapture that wonderful little envious Irishman, on the left. The original came to me in two minutes flat, and was finished. It's never a good idea to try and improve on what comes out first.

You'll probably notice that that was exactly what I did to Sloth, on the top right hand side. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the picture of laziness right.

Cat's Eyes and Digital Painting

This is my very first digital painting. A cat skull with the Cat's Eye nebula. Not very significant, but it makes for a satisfactory greetings card.

Well, it's actually about the umpteenth version of something I started out on this morning, after being inspired by Maria Guzman's site.

She has developed her paintings, (and all of them are wonderful) using digital methods with, mostly, Native American and architectural motifs, so I've just taken the easy path, and plagiarised her as much as I can.

She suggests that her paintings might be replicated using acrylic media.

She's probably very well aware, though, that brush painting, with bits of pigment in various sloppy media, involves a lot of intractable substances, a great deal of skill, and a degree of craftsmanship and knowledge that most of us, who didn't go through Leonardo da Vinci's school, could never achieve.

Take a look also, at someone who scans, paints, draws, and scans again. This is what I want to get into; truly multi-media expression.

And take a look at my next post, which is a memorial to almost the last painting I did in real physical media, Cardinal Sins.

Viktor's Famous Sunday Lunch

Viktor is mine host at the Flying Fox Bar, about 4 miles out of General Luna, opposite a small jungled mountain. Every evening at dusk, like clockwork, a colony of flying foxes sets out from behind the mountain to forage across the island. First, one, then two; then more and more, until hundreds are streaming across the sky in the semi-darkness.

They're big fellows, too. I haven't yet got a good photo of the fly-past, because of the lighting conditions, but you can see some of them that I kept as pets, here. They're not the most charming of animals, possibly because I obtained my specimens from the mananggutay, the man who climbs coconut trees every morning to tap the flower sap for tuba wine.

All my pet bats were alcoholics with hangovers. They got to the fermenting sap before the mananggutay, and were pissed as farts when he picked them up, comatose on the ground next morning.

Sorry about the diversion; back to Viktor. Every Sunday, he hosts a special open-buffet lunch; eat all you can. Price ? P175 - roughly $4 per head. It's the major weekly social gathering for the foreign community in General Luna, and sometimes even further afield.

His menu is, usually:

Roast, crispy-crackling pork or ham
(or sometimes both; Viktor cures his own hams)
Deep-fried chicken
Lambay - blue swimmer crabs
Local Black-Lip pearl oysters
Potato salad
Camote tops salad
Tomato & onion salad
Local cucumbers, pickled

Sometimes he throws in a few boiled camote (sweet potatoes) as well, but the final crowning glory of the meal is Viktor's German Pancake.

This could only be presented by a Bavarian; it's an impossibly rich and delicious pancake stuffed with chocolate sauce and ice cream.

I rely on Viktor's Famous Sunday Lunch for a weekly distillation of the town's gossip.

If you ever come to see our little island, please visit Viktor's Famous Sunday Lunch.

I don't get a commission for this, but sometimes Viktor pops me an extra oyster or two.

Pornography - Some Observations

I don't like pornography - at least, I don't like the stuff that's peddled for inadequates on the internet and in those top-shelf magazines in plastic bags.

If I want to see a c**t in all its great wonder, I really don't have to go to a Broadway movie house, as I once did, to be confronted by a magnified vagina in full, glorious, slippery Technicolor, forty feet high.

I can buy a girl in Cebu for less than the price of a 'Playboy' magazine, and see for myself.

But I do like subtle, arousing (in all the best senses, physical as well as sensual, spiritual, etc, etc) stories and pictures that lead me on to think and feel more ... and more.

One of the very first genuinely porno film scenes I ever saw (in the sense that it aroused real physical feelings in me, not just prurient ones) was the scene in Tom Jones (1963) where Albert Finney and Joyce Redman dine together. Their lip-smacking, smirking attention to each other, while they were only eating something, gave more than a few hints, and stimuli for the imagination, than could any pictures of 40ft high c**ts.

That wonderful scene can be seen here

CO2 Pollution Will Turn the Oceans Into Soda Water

I have seen, since I've lived here in Siargao (just 10 years now) the slow deterioration of the lagoon in front of us, with slimy green algae growing where none did before, shattered and bleached coral reefs, etc.

But I didn't know about this horror to come:

CO2 Pollution Could Erase Coral Reefs (from Wired Science)

It is truly a horrible prospect:
" While most of the attention on the impacts of carbon dioxide emissions has focused on its ability to act as a greenhouse gas, that warms the earth's climate, the changes CO2 emissions will bring to the world's oceans are receiving increasing attention. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more of it that dissolves into surface ocean water. That small chemistry change could cause huge changes in marine biology.

Marine organisms, like coral, that build skeletons out of calcium could find themselves unable to do so. If current emissions trends continue over the next decade, the world's marine creatures will be dealing with what's essentially an alien ocean. The last time ocean conditions like those predicted for mid-century existed was long before humans walked the earth".

Not only coral, but shellfish, would be affected. Imagine walking along a beach (if there are any after sea-level rises) and finding the only things washed up were plastic waste and greeny-brown scum, and no sea shells at all.

Shedney Being a Dam' Nuisance

Part of my reasoning for my extravagant investment in Shedney's new sari-sari store was to stop her sitting around like this beside my work desk, doing her devilish and seductive best to distract me.

Amimintiks Can See Round Light & 100,000 Colours

Update: 9 July 2008.

Original post here.

I've just learned that my tasty crustacean doesn't have quite the fastest movement of any animal (some ant can snap its jaws faster) but it is the only animal known to see Circular Polarised Light.

The story (I missed it when it came out in March) is at the Wired Science blog.

If you want to know what Circular Polarised Light is, then look at a related news story by the same writer, Brandon Keim, at Wired Science, where this photo came from.

Next time I get some, I'll look 'em right in the eyes before I cook ém.

Elephant in the Room

David Seaton's News Links has posted a link to a wonderful Dutch TV programme on the American-Israeli lobby. It's a must-watch; you won't ever see anything like this on American TV.

Elephant in the Room

David Seaton's News Links has posted a link to a wonderful Dutch TV programme on the American-Israeli lobby. It's a must-watch; you won't ever see anything like this on American TV.

New Supermarket in General Luna

It's not often that I get invited to open many supermarkets these days, so it was with great pleasure that I officially presided over the opening of Shedney's new sari-sari shop in a nearby street in General Luna.It's not often that I finance a supermarket, either, but I reckoned this was worthwhile project for Shedney, and would keep her occupied, with enough profit for her to buy some of the little absolute essentials that all women seem to need, like hair conditioner regular manicures, etc.




Hopefully, she will become quite self-financing, and my investment ($200) can be repaid, and might even return a profit.It's got all the usual wide range of goods that any sari-sari store has: canned beans, sardines, corned beef, tuna, shampoo and toothpaste sachets, snack packs, soft drinks, sweets, eggs, rum (junior lapad - 375ml at US75c), in other words exactly the same as any other local small shop has.

And she's working hard. She also makes bananacue, fried small bananas coated in sugar, yerma, a sort of toffee ball made with condensed milk and sugar.

Nice green leaf

This is just a nice photo, one of the best I've taken recently, of the underside of a garden leaf. I can't even remember what it's a leaf of, but if you click onto the photo, you'll go to a full-size version that has an extraordinarily calming effect.

Have I just discovered a harmless version of Prozac? Probably, yes. And probably my local postman will misdeliver, again, my royalties cheque.

Raided by Communist Rebels!

Life is so humdrum that there’s nothing much to write about.

Except, suddenly last Saturday night, something newsworthy happened.

We had a raid, the first ever, from the New People’s Army, the rebels from the mainland of Mindanao, who have been fighting the government for about 40 years. They came to General Luna by boat, and shot up the police station, wounding one policeman.

They also went up the road to Katangnan, near the Cloud 9 surfing spot, and had another little fire-fight at a local self-defence-force camp , very near the main resort facilities.

Another bunch commandeered 5 vans, and went to Dapa, about 14 km away, where they did the same, and trashed the municipal offices. They also blew up the connections at two communications towers, leaving us with no cell-phones or internet for a few days.

I slept through it all, of course, and didn’t know anything had happened until Sunday morning when my cell-phone and internet didn’t work. I got the gist of it at Victor’s Sunday Lunch.

It doesn’t worry me very much; the NPA aren’t interested in foreigners, only in corrupt politicians, and everyone’s general poverty, and I am not at all unsympathetic towards their ideals.

One detail was very telling. A policeman, probably drunk, in General Luna, tried to pull out his gun when ordered to kneel down. Someone fired a warning shot, intending to miss. It grazed his leg, so they immediately gave him first aid.

When they left (it was a quick raid), two of their five boats broke down on the way home, so about 20 of them holed up on a small island that is currently being attacked by, amongst other things, helicopter gun-ships.

Sounds to me as if the Philippine authorities have absorbed all the very worst from their American mentors.

If you want to see the official story about how our intrepid police and military chased the rebels, see, the official press release.

The NPA attacked, by name, two people.

Congressman Matugas - (congressman in the Philippines is very much an inherited title - big old Spanish-, or American-helping families were given enough rewards and now have enough cash to bribe voters - much the same as in the US)
Matugas was attacked (only by pamphlet) specifically because he has a 160 hectare farm (400 acres) in the south-east of the island.

There are notices all around it warning trespassers Not to Enter. To make an estate of that size (not very big, in American terms, but a helluvalot on a small island) you have to take away traditional land used communally (and not owned) since the year dot.

But he is pro-poor. That's mostly bullshit, and before you believe it, smell it.

The NPA's other specific target was the mayor of Dapa, Boy Ruaya, who's accused of helping the drug and gambling trades in his town. The NPA are probably right.