Rotating Irritations

I have some recurring typos, which must be irritating for readers. They are mostly, if you have observed, related to my "i," "k," the comma and the single quotation. "Spell Check" doesn't catch all of them, so I use an on-screen keyboard to correct them. Sometimes, though, I press the wrong key, where, for example, "it" becomes "ot."

And sometimes I get hilarious Spell Check suggestions: "irritating" becomes "rotating" which kind of makes sense since this is all a rotating irritation!

But I am writing fast (I have other pressing projects to finish), and some of my typos are simply my neglect at proofreading. So my apologies!

Ready for Summer

Photo By: KPA

We are still a few days away for the official beginning of summer, but the Holt's window designers are impatient.

The stylized yellow Muskoka chairs are before a backdrop of what look like fir trees, which are actually reflections from the surrounding foliage. The pickup truck gives the scene a rural feel, where dirt roads and small towns are part of the northern Canadian landscape.

The Brave New World of Unidentifiable Faces

Caleigh Alleyne With her Father

Who is she? Who is her family? What are they?

No-one asks (or dares to ask) these questions anymore.

Caleigh Alleyne was on CTV's estrogen power show The Social yesterday (June 18) as a travel guide.

Her input was interesting but nothing one would find by watching the far more informative The Lonely Planet or Rick Steve's Europe.

What was far more intriguing was her presence.

She is a large woman (plus-size she is called now) while in reality she is close to obese, but with a full-cheeked pleasant and cheery look that is the saving grace of heavy-weight women.

I forgot to write down her name at the beginning of the show and had to watch a re-run to get to it.

Caleigh Alleyne.

She looks like she could be Indian (from the subcontinent) or yes even the Native type. But what about that curly hair? Some Indians (from southern Indian) do have very curly hair. Maybe her mother is Indian.



No. And neither is her father.



But her Dad has that same slightly large and flat nose that could indicate negroid origins.

I did the usual google search in variations and found this:

I Asked 13 Black Women a Question I Needed to Answer Myself
"When did they feel that unique sense of #blackgirljoy?"
By: Celeste Little
Online Magazine: Man Repeller
02.01.18

Caleigh Alleyne, 27
Travel journalist, Toronto

“One of my happiest moments as a biracial woman was truly accepting that my curls were beautiful.

Growing up, popular culture and others around me constantly told me my hair was ‘so much nicer’ when I straightened it, or suggested that I get it relaxed. But I am glad I never did. I love how every little curl is unique and my own and changes as much as I do. I proudly wear my natural hair curly and I am not afraid for it to be big and beautiful.

I saw the shift when I finally decided to wear my hair ‘naturally’ on TV more often, and how freeing it was to me not to flatten it with heat every time I was interviewed.”

However "multicultural" Canada is, people will still ask questions. And it will always add another notch to the disappointments Caleigh and all her cohorts will accumulate over time.

Her obesity surely must be more about her "identity" crisis rather than just her mother's cancer scare.

The Art that Contemporary Kids Know

My CTV News anchor ended off the late night (11pm) newscast with this story (it is mentioned at the end of the program):
Boy 'hugged' $132,000 sculpture at OP community center [Kansas City]. Mom says city seeking damages.

Here is the "artwork" the boy hugged.

All I can say is: "Bless his soul."



Aphrodite di Kansas City
Bill Lyons

There is no date indicating when the sculpture was constructed, and no information on the material used for the sculpture at the Bill Lyons' official website.

I guess he doesn't want to "share"



The real aphrodte goddess of beauty
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_of_Venus_(Aphrodite)

In bloom

Taken in the Jubilee Garden, Mississauga
[Photo By: KPA]

Song of Solomon 6:11

I went down to the grove of nut trees to look at the new growth in the valley,
to see if the vines had budded or the pomegranates were in bloom.

Classic Mindy Kaling

I recently posted on Mindy Kaling, the successful and popular comedian, who was invited to Dartmouth University, her alma mater, to give the graduation ceremony speech, and the example she uses to the students.

I wrote:

[S]he chooses an alumni: "Poet" Dr. Seuss, of The Cat in the Hat fame is an alumni!. Well we can give her that bit of nostalgia.

But why not evoke (invoke) the spirits of another Dartmouthian poet, the deceased white male laureate and Pulitzer prize winner Robert Frost, who wrote "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference," highlighting the adventurous character of (dead and alive) white men who take on those less travelled worlds out of CURIOSITY! To see where the adventure would lead them! Then they build things like universities.

Well Kaling was a Classics student who - briefly - majored in...Latin!

Kaling began as a Latin major, but decided to pursue a degree in playwriting instead...[Source: Dartmouth.edu

Yes what are you going to do with a dead white language?

Her Facebook page has this introduction:

About

Mindy Kaling is an actress, comedian, writer, producer & shopper. She can translate Latin...

I studied Spanish in Mexico for a full two years (I went to language school and earned a Spanish Language diploma, I read books difficult books, written by Mexican poets, philosophers and politicians, I worked in an all-Spanish research centre, I lived in a rural outpost several weeks at at time, I travelled the country where people thought I was Mexican, and I still don't say I can translate Spanish on a public site! My resume reads:

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
- English: Excellent speaking, reading and writing
- French: Good speaking, reading and writing
- Spanish: Moderate speaking, reading and writing
- Amharic: Moderate speaking, reading and writing

Kaling makes some quote about the superbowl as a case for her Latin proficiency on her twitter post:

AM I THE ONLY LATIN NERD OUTRAGED BY THE SUPERBOWL DROPPING ROMAN NUMERALS?! LUPAE FILIUS!!!

In a New York Times interview, Kaling is asked:

Whom do you consider the best writers — novelists, essayists, critics, journalists, poets — working today?

She answers:

Cormac McCarthy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Gillian Flynn, Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen.

See here my posts on:
- Cormac McCarthy
- Jhumpa Lahiri
- Zadie Smith
- Salman Rushdie

I argue that they are not the greatest.

And about her Latin moments, the New York Times interview:

NYT: You studied classics at Dartmouth. What was the best thing you read there?

MK: I loved translating the “Aeneid” from Latin. Poor Aeneas and his pietas. That guy could not catch a break. I also love stories within stories, and the “Aeneid” is full of that.

Yes as a homework assignment.

I did that. I studied Latin for two years during my highschool years. It is tough and requires the utmost dedication! If Kaling had said that her brief Latin exposure helped her with the English language as I say it does (including French and Spanish - and by the way German too - all that GRAMMAR!) then it would have had a ring truth to it.

Now she just comes off as a show-off who wants to dig in how much of the white man's world she can say "boo" to in her usual infantle comedy.

So much for a Latin (dropped) major.

"Boo, white males!"

Below is the full speech by comedienne/actress/#metooer/Oprah-fan Mindy Kaling.

Kevin Michael Grace tweeted a link to at it his twitter page @KMGVictoria with the comment:

#MindyKaling's commencement address at her alma mater Dartmouth was rather good. I'm disappointed (but not surprised) to see her engaging in this reflexive "Boo, white males!" agitprop in response to the reviews of #Oceans8

A few comments:

1. Why is KMG surprised to see a brown woman diss white men? That is par for the course now as in "those racist, oppressive, anti-women" white men. The whole world is against white men, including a large percentage of white men themselves.

2. How does Kahling's "rather good" Dartmouth speech" exonerate her from "'Boo, white males' agitprop?" That's not what KMG means really and "excuse" might be a better word. But we're talking about big stakes here, as in the the future generation. "Good" at one point meant worthy and responsible and exemplary.

3. And how good really is Kaling's speech? She spends the better part talking about Dr. Seuss!!! How is Dr. Seuss showing these university graduates to be worthy and responsible and exemplary? Or did Mindy Kaling get the venue wrong and she's at a preschooler's graduation? So much for intellectual stimulation and words of wisdom to those 100+ students hanging on to the every world of this famous television personality!

But this is Dartmouth, and she chooses an alumni: "Poet" Dr. Seuss, of The Cat in the Hat fame is an alumni!. Well we can give her that bit of nostalgia.

But why not evoke (invoke) the spirits of another Dartmouthian poet, the deceased white male laureate and Pulitzer prize winner Robert Frost, who wrote "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference," highlighting the adventurous character of (dead and alive) white men who take on those less travelled worlds out of CURIOSITY! To see where the adventure would lead them! Then they build things like universities.

Of course nothing is innocent when with adults, and I presume Kaling is on such. Seuss was a "reformed" racist who drew anti-black cartoons and was vocally anti-Japanese during the WWII years. Perhaps that is the morality in her speech: We may start out bad but we can all be reformed and redeemed.

And another poet from Dartmouth? "Robert Frost? Are you kidding?" would kid (half in jest) Ms. Kaling. "We cannot perpetuate the racist and oppressive America that was built on the backs of others [allusion to slavery and "globalism" here of course]. These riches should be meted out to the whole world [to these hypocritical globalists] to exonerate [there's that word again] those whom Americans exploited."

And I would retaliate:

The Western world built and elaborated by white men now is a refuge for people from all over the world who can take advantage of the structure and system. Kaling's comedy show and her other successful public projects are dependent on this success. She has talent. But so what? What would happen to her and her talent if she didn't have this set-up? What would happen to her back in India, which her parents - both with postgraduate degrees - fled for "a better life in America"? Actually they both went to Africa - to Nigeria - where they met and planned their migration and life n America. They abandoned TWO countries for a chance at the American Pie.

"My parents adopted a kind of Boston-by-way-of-India-by-way-of-Nigeria culture with some Indian flourishes" says Kaling.

No mention of why they abandoned their lucrative degrees (or not so lucrative back in their hometowns), but the prevailing word is "opportunity." Strange, I would think that people would prefer to build opportunities in their familiar places, their homes, where their ancestors have left a legacy.

I call it pure greed and envy, of the type where you say: "If they can have it why can't I/my family/my children?"

And here is some "factual" information:

[Kaling] was a classics major for much of college and studied Latin, a subject she has been learning since the seventh grade.
[Source: Kaling's (heavy edited and upgraded) Wikipedia page]

How does one go from studying Latin to giving a speech wth Dr. Seuss as the protagonist?

How many brown-skinned women do you see running TV shows? Whenever there is ONE successful minority, then he (she) represents hundreds of others. "Oh you know Mindy. She's Indian."

How many white men comedians are there? This is a rhetorical question.

I strongly believe that this is the kind of covert thought processes that lead "comedians of color" to hold deep-seated beliefs which are exposed in moments of seriousness. Like when giving speeches at graduation ceremonies.

The infantile examples of a dubious poet like Seuss come in handy at such critical moments of seriousness in a comedienne of color's juncture in public life.

Fire and Ice
BY Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

---

2018 Commencement Address by Mindy Kaling ’01

Good morning to the Class of 2018, the faculty, the parents, the grandparents, fellow honorees, and the paid laughers I have scattered throughout the audience.

It is an honor to join you this morning for this special occasion.

It is also an honor to speak to you today from behind this gigantic tree stump. Like some sort of female Lorax with an advanced degree. That’s right, you guys; I’m hitting Dr. Seuss hard and early in this speech. Because Dartmouth grads have a privilege unique among all the Ivy League: We will be forced to be mini-experts on Dr. Seuss for our entire lives.

On my deathbed, I’ll be saying, “Did you know that his real name was Theodor Geisel? Did you know he was editor of the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern?” And yes, while no U.S. Presidents have gone to Dartmouth, we can at least lay claim for the wonderful Dr. Seuss.

Another notable alumnus is Salmon P. Chase, the man on the $10,000 bill. A symbolically powerful piece of paper that’s largely useless in the real world. Like a degree in playwriting which I received from this very institution. Thank you for paying for that, Mom and Dad!

It’s a thrill to be back here in New Hampshire, the Granite State, known for two things: the place where you can legally not wear your seatbelt, and Adam Sandler’s birthplace.

New Hampshire has one of the best mottos of any state: “Live Free or Die.” For outsiders, it sounds like an exciting declaration of freedom; but when you’re here in January, “die” actually sounds like a pretty good option.

I remember the days when it was so cold your sneeze would become an ice sculpture before it hit the ground. In Los Angeles, where I live now, if I sneeze, I just call my doctor and have my blood replaced with that of a teenage track star. That’s normal there. I’m mostly track star right now.

Before I get any further, I should actually probably clarify who I am for the parents and grandparents in the audience who are thinking to themselves, “Who is this loud Indian woman? Is that the girl from Quantico? She looks so much worse in person.”

No, no, I’m not Priyanka Chopra, not even Padma Lakshmi. I’m the other Indian woman we have allowed to be on television, Mindy Kaling. Thank you, thank you.

You may remember me from my role on The Office as Kelly Kapoor, who internet commenters said was—quote—“shrill” and—quote—“took up valuable time that could have gone to Steve Carell.”

I then created and starred in my own TV show, The Mindy Project. Thank you, thank you very much. It was an uphill battle to get the show on the air, but it was worth it, because it enabled me to become Dartmouth’s most successful female minority show creator who has spoken at commencement!

Oh wait, no. Shonda Rhimes went here. Yup, and she’s created like 10 more shows than me, so great. No, cool. Cool, cool, cool, Shonda. Friggin’ role model, good for you.

But today is not about famous alumni. No, no. It’s about the men and women who have toiled in obscurity for years so that they might better our country. I speak, of course, of the 51 percent of Dartmouth grads who will go into finance—highest in the Ivy League! Look left. Look right. All three of you will be spending at least ten years in a white collar prison.

I know that going into the real world sounds scary, but it’s exciting too. Finally, you’ll be in control of your own lives. No longer will there be an irrational Board of Trustees telling you you can’t have hard liquor on campus, for the ridiculous reason that they don’t want you to die. Come tomorrow, no one can stop you from filling your apartment with $4.99 handles of Uncle Satan’s Unfiltered Potato Vodka. Go crazy.

It’s a real moment of reflection for me to be standing here speaking to all of you now, because it makes me harken back to my own time at my Dartmouth graduation. Madeleine Albright was my commencement speaker; and while I don’t remember any specific quotes she said, or even a general gist of what she was talking about, I do remember thinking: “I wonder what it will be like to have my own cell phone?”

How things have changed. For all I know, at this very moment, most of you are posting this speech on your Instagram stories with a GIF of Winnie the Pooh twerking. If you are, please at least use my official hashtag, MindyGoesBigGreenTwentyEighteen. Thank you.

I bet none of you remember a time before the internet. Hell, you probably don’t even remember a time before the Facebook page, “Dartmouth Memes for Cold AF Teens.” Yeah, yeah. I know about that. Made me feel like a real creep researching it. “Hello, I’m a 38‑year‑old woman who wants to join your teen Facebook group. It's for research, I swear!”

Meanwhile, when I was in college we didn’t even have Google. If you wanted to find out, say, how tall Ben Affleck was, you were out of luck. You just had to sit there, not knowing, and your entire day would be ruined.

Or, say I wanted to meet up with a friend—I couldn’t just text her. I had to walk outside and hope I accidentally bumped into her. Or, I “blitzed” her. Ah, BlitzMail. You know that feeling you have when you tell your friends that you “blitz” and they don’t get it and you roll your eyes all smug like “Oh, it’s a Dartmouth thing.” That ends today. You try to say “blitz” one hundred yards east of White River Junction and you will get laughed back to your one-room triple in the Choates.

Fun fact: In 2001, the year I graduated, a pinkeye epidemic broke out amongst my classmates because we were all using public BlitzMail iMac terminals and not washing our hands. Those are just the kind of the sexy stories indicative of my time at Dartmouth.

You have so many cool new things here now. Like, look at the new logo, the D-Pine. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of what college-aged Mindy thought a marijuana leaf might look like but I was too scared to actually find out. And this new House System sounds really cool! It's so Hogwarts-y! You know, you're sorted into your little Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, except they’re called … South House. West House. School House.

Okay, come on guys. School House? Really? We’re just saying what we see? That’s the laziest name I’ve ever heard in my life, and I've spent over a decade working on shows called The Office and The Mindy Project.

Still, I remember sitting where you’re sitting. I was so full of questions like, “When is this thing going to end?” and “How many friends can I invite to dinner and still have mom and dad pay?” And, most importantly, “Why didn’t I wear any clothes underneath my gown?”

Now we’re reaching the part of the speech where I am supposed to tell you something uplifting like “follow your dreams.”

In general, advice isn’t actually an effective way to change your life. If all it took to make your life great was hearing amazing advice, then everyone who watched TED Talks would be a millionaire.

So don’t trust any one story of how how to become successful. As Madeline Albright said at my Commencement—see, I don’t remember anything. And I did just fine.

So here is some practical advice that you may or may not remember at the end of this speech because, hey, that’s the gig:

1. First off, remove “Proficient at Word” from your resume. That is ridiculous. You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel of competency there. This is how you become proficient at Word: You open Word on your computer.

2. Most of your post-college life is simply filling out forms. Car insurance, health insurance, W-2s. W-4s, 1099s. Guess what? None of us know what any of those forms mean, but you will fill out a hundred of them before you die.

3. You never need more than one pancake. Trust me on this. Cartoons have trained us to want a giant stack of those bad boys, but order one first and then just see how you feel later.

4. This one is just for guys: When you go on dates, act as if every woman you’re talking to is a reporter for an online publication that you are scared of. One shouldn’t need the threat of public exposure and scorn to treat women well; but if that’s what it’s gonna take, fine. Date like everyone’s watching, because we are.

5. And this might be the most important—buy a toilet plunger. Trust me on this. Don’t wait until you need a plunger to buy a plunger.

Commencement is a time of transition for parents, too. That empty nest you were enjoying these past four years? Gone as soon as this speech is over. I hope you like full‑time lodgers who don’t pay rent, don’t do laundry, eat all the food in your fridge, and binge Family Guy on your sofa for weeks. That is your life now.

Although some of your graduates will be making more money than you—51% to be exact. And to the parents of those investment bankers, consultants, and hedge fund analysts—congratulations. Your kids will be fabulously wealthy but still somehow sharing your cell phone plan because it—quote—“saves everybody money.”

Okay, now let’s get real. Let me rip off the Band-Aid for all you, the ’18s. Next year, the next year of your life is going to be bad. You have been in the comfortable fleece-lined womb of mother Dartmouth for four years now, and you’re gonna go out in the cold, hard world.

Out there in the real world, there will be a target on your back. People will want to confirm their expectations of Ivy League graduates—that you’re a jerk, that you’re spoiled, that you use the word “summer” as a verb. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. I mean come on, the guy from the ten-thousand-dollar bill went to this school.

You’re graduating into a world where it seems like everything is falling apart. Trust in institutions are at a record low; the truth doesn’t seem to matter anymore; and for all I know, the president just tweeted us into a war with Wakanda, a country that doesn’t exist.

So, Class of 2018, you are entering a world that we have toppled—we have toppled—like a Jenga tower, and we are relying on you to rebuild it.

But how can you do that with the knowledge that things are so unstable out there? I’ll tell you my secret, the one thing that has kept me going through the years, my superpower: delusion.

This is something I may share with our president, a fact that is both horrifying and interesting. Two years in, I think we can pretty safely say that he’s not getting carved onto Mount Rushmore; but damn if that isn’t a testament to how far you can get just by believing you’re the smartest, most successful person in the world.

My point is, you have to have insane confidence in yourself, even if it’s not real. You need to be your own cheerleader now, because there isn’t a room full of people waiting with pom‑poms to tell you, “You did it! We’ve been waiting all this time for you to succeed!”

So, I’m giving you permission to root for yourself. And while you’re at it, root for those around you, too. It took me a long time to realize that success isn’t a zero-sum game. Which leads me to the next part of my remarks.

I thought I might take a second to speak to the ladies in the audience. (Guys, take a break; you don’t have to pay attention during this part. Maybe spend the next 30 seconds thinking about all the extra money you’ll make in your life for doing the same job as a woman. Pretty sweet.)

Hey girls, we need to do a better job of supporting each other. I know that I am guilty of it too. We live in a world where it seems like there’s only room for one of us at the table. So when another woman shows up, we think, “Oh my god, she’s going to take the one woman spot! That was supposed to be mine!”

But that’s just what certain people want us to do! Wouldn’t it be better if we worked together to dismantle a system that makes us feel like there’s limited room for us? Because when women work together, we can accomplish anything. Even stealing the world’s most expensive diamond necklace from the Met Gala, like in Ocean’s 8, a movie starring me, which opens in theaters June 8th. And to that end, women, don’t be ashamed to toot your own horn like I just did.

Okay, guys, you can listen again. You didn’t miss much. Just remember to see Ocean’s 8, now playing in theaters nationwide. Ocean’s 8: Every con has its pros.

Now I wanted to share a little bit about me, Mindy Kaling, the Dartmouth student. When I came to Hanover in the fall of 1997, I was, as many of you were: driven, bright, ambitious, and really, really into The Black Eyed Peas.

I arrived here as a 17-year-old, took the lay of the land, and immediately began making a checklist of everything I wanted to accomplish. I told myself that by the time I graduated in 2001, I would have checked them all off.

And here was my freshman fall checklist: be on Hanover crew, on Lodge crew, be in an a cappella group, be in an improv troupe, write a play that’s performed at the Bentley, do a cartoon for the D, and try to be in a cool senior society. And guess what? I completed that checklist. But before you think: “Wait, why is this woman just bragging about her accomplishments from 17 years ago?”—keep listening.

Then, I graduated. And I made a new checklist for my twenties: get married by 27, have kids at 30, win an Oscar, be the star of my own TV show, host the MTV Music Awards (this was 2001, guys; it made more sense then), and do it all while being a size 2.

Well, spoiler alert: I’ve only done one of those things, and I’m not sure I will ever do the others. And that is a really scary feeling. Knowing how far that I’ve strayed from the person that I was hoping to be when I was 21.

I will tell you a personal story. After my daughter was born in December, I remember bringing her home and being in my house with her for the first time and thinking, “Huh. According to movies and TV, this is traditionally the time when my mother and spouse are supposed to be here, sharing this experience with me.” And I looked around, and I had neither. And for a moment, it was kind of scary. Like, “Can I do this by myself?”

But then, that feeling went away, because the reality is, I’m not doing it by myself. I’m surrounded by family and friends who love and support me. And the joy I feel from being with my daughter Katherine eclipses anything from any crazy checklist.

So I just want to tell you guys, don’t be scared if you don’t do things in the right order, or if you don’t do some things at all. I didn’t think I’d have a child before I got married, but hey, it turned out that way, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I didn’t think I’d have dessert before breakfast today, but hey, it turned out that way and I wouldn’t change a thing.

So if I could impart any advice, it’s this: If you have a checklist, good for you. Structured ambition can sometimes be motivating. But also, feel free to let it go. Yes, my culminating advice from my speech is a song from the Disney animated movie, Frozen.

I’ve covered a lot of ground today, not all of it was serious, but I wanted to leave you with this: I was not someone who should have the life I have now, and yet I do. I was sitting in the chair you are literally sitting in right now and I just whispered, “Why not me?” And I kept whispering it for seventeen years; and here I am, someone that this school deemed worthy enough to speak to you at your Commencement.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something, but especially not yourself. Go conquer the world. Just remember this: Why not you? You made it this far.

Thank you very much, and congratulations to the Class of 2018.

Justin's Replacement Ploy and Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Via Full of Goy2

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

During an impromptu interview on the White House lawn with Steve Doocy of "Fox and Friends" on Friday, President Donald Trump ...offered his own account of his recent tiff with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

"We're hugging. We're saying goodbye. Everybody's happy," Trump told Doocy [of Fox News]. "I made changes to the agreement because I wanted it to be much better for the United States. I made changes. We're all happy. And then he got up and started saying that he doesn't want to be pushed around by the United States. Well, they charge us almost 300 percent on dairy products. So we can't do that stuff."

Source

By the way, this was no "impromptu" interview. Trump is a media guy. He knows how to handle those "fake newsers." He just showed on his big lawn to up the drama. And get his cowboy message across.


Via @realDonaldTrump

Who would play Trump in a Western?

Exhibition Suggestion for the Art Gallery of Mississauga

Exhibition Suggestion for the Art Gallery of Mississauga:

Marina Abramovic: Performance Artist
Contact at the Marina Abramovic Institute


Marina Abramovic
Nude With Skeleton
Marina Abramović
Performance
16 minutes
2002
Belgrade


Dragon Heads
Marina Abramović
Performance, 7 flat screen projection
60 minutes
1990

DESCRIPTION

I sit motionless on a chair with 5 pythons placed on my body. The pythons, 3 to 4.5 m long, have not been fed for 2 weeks before the time of the performance. A circle of ice surrounds me. During the performance the snakes move around my body following my lines of energy.

Image and text source: Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović has already planned her own funeral...

[I]n Sydney during her 12-day residency for Kaldor Public Art Projects, Abramović – in good health at 67 – read out her manifesto, concluding that “an artist should die consciously without fear” and that “the funeral is the artist’s last piece before leaving”.


“I want to have three Marinas,” she said when an audience member pushed her for details. “Of course, one is real and two fake because you can’t have three bodies. But I want these three Marinas buried in the three cities which I’ve lived [in] the longest, which is Belgrade, Amsterdam and New York.” Nobody would know where the real body was interred, she added.

Image and text source: Marina Abramović reveals plans for her funeral, 'the artist’s last piece'

Note: I have never heard of this woman despite having been "exposed" to such bloodletting "artists" during my Ryerson University studies (Carolee Schneemann).

I got the information on Marina Abramovic via The Tomato Bubble: New World Order/ World War II/ Conspiracy/ News
In the post: What's in Libtard Robert De Niro's Closet

Canadian Politics: The Optics

Ms. Chrystia Goes to Washington
Via The Conservative Treehouse/ The Last Refuge

(Notice the Equal Opportunity Bodyguardess. Actually she looks a little more in control than that disheveled hair guy behind And the tweeter. What happens if at those precise 25 seconds he's checking his tweet-o-meter someone - waiting for that certain moment - runs up wth a gun?)

Chinese Taking an iPhone Photo...of ME!!!

Tiffany Glass House, Square One Mississauga
[Photo By: KPA]

Yesterday I went back to the Holt Renfrew exhibition of Tiffany's small "glass house" installed right before the department store's entrance (there is a full Tiffany section within the store). It is a lovely and enchanting magic box (but more on that later).

I was walking towards it from a few yards back when I saw a woman taking photos of the installation. But there was something not quite right with the way she had positioned her "iPhone." It seemed to be pointing towards me.

To avoid a "mall picture" (I had on my big orange sun hat and could be a Tiffany model - joke, but maybe not!) I walked a full half circle around the installation. By the time I arrived at the entrance of the glass house near where the woman was standng (I was checking her out), she was indeed taking a picture of me!!

She was Chinese but I figured she could speak English.

"Are you taking a picture of me?"

No answer, but continued picture taking of, now, the installation.

I guess no English either, or a pretense of no English.

I turned to a younger woman in her twenties standing by her, and who looked like she could be her daughter, there was definitely some connection.

"If she is taking any pictures of me make sure she deletes them," I said somewhat forcefully.

Who knows what they will do, but at least I made sure that it was unacceptable to me.

There have been a large number of Chinese speaking very little English and loudly filling the mall with their Cantonese guttural language.

These are the influx of "visitors" who are coming to survey Canada for the next big deal, whether it is real estate or diamond jewelry.

But I don't think they have much money. The Chinese government has been very secretive about disclosing its real economic state, and I believe that all these "visitors" are taking advantage of the more lenient government controls on travel, and planning to immigrate to Canada. I doubt they have much money at all.

Hence all that snapping to check things out.

The woman was unfriendly. She could have at least shown me what she was doing or somehow indicated that all was OK. But her subservient smile with no additional information tells me what the future holds for our wonderful, happy multicultural mosaic.


Tiffany Glass House Reflection
Square One, Mississauga
[Photo By: KPA]

Here s my more artistic version of a snapshot of "someone."

Gauging the Wind's Direction

Mississauga Civic Centre Clock Tower
Designed as a Windmill
[Photo By: [KPA]

City of Mississauga's Resources

I posted in my last entry about Mississauga security being on the alert for...me!

Don't they have better and more responsible use for their resources?

Exactly what harm have I done other than "exercise" my free speech rights (and I say this without any irony)?

The heavily congested Square One Mall has characters deemed suspicious just at a glance!

There are a million and one languages being spoken within the short distance from Walmart to the Bay. How do we know what they're saying? How do we know they're not plotting the next bomb attack?

We now have Chinese (straight from China!!!) taking selfies all over the mall. They are clearly staking out the mall. For potential businesses? For (near) future takeover?

So why is security wasting its scant resources on one small orange-hatted woman who openly writes about the issues of the day (of the millennium) on her blogspot blog?

Oh yes. I am funded by CSIS and the CIA! I am a plant!

Portrait of Mississauga

Our newest public art installation is underway! (See photos below.)

Portrait of M highlights the cultural and demographic diversity of Mississauga and seeks to communicate the stories of its residents [Mississauga Culture Facebook].

I thought I was being paranoid, but not any more.

I was taking photos of the "public art" banners (see description above) along the street by Mississauga's City Hall when I noticed a security guard walking back and forth near the entrance steps.

It was getting kind of obvious that she was watching me despite looking down at a phone gadget.

When I was done with the pictures, I walked towards the City Hall to take a shortcut through to the Mall. To do this I have to go past the Art Gallery of Mississauga, although nowhere close, and with no intention of going inside.

The security guard slowed down a little to make sure (!) I wouldn't go in. She then, I assume, went into the security guard's office, which faces the street with the banners. She must have seen me from there and come out (I'm not that hard to miss with my big orange summer hat!).

"NO INCIDENT" would be what she would write in her log book!

The banners are a perfect example of the "art" of Mississauga following the agenda of the AGM to be "multicultural" and "diverse." The faces on these banners are of all kinds of people: young and old, male and female. But I counted three whites in the dozen or so portraits.

That is diversity: whites slowly and surely getting pushed aside and away.

The AGM logo is circled in red (see third image down).








[Photos by: KPA]

Strength With Beauty

Presenter - KPA

Below is the paper I presented at the UN Sustainable Development Goals conference on March 19 2016, titled: Commission on the Status of Women: Women's Empowerment/Sustainable Development.

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How do we empower young women in the Third World?

What can we give them to make their worlds and their lives better?

Beauty.

Not Chanel, or Bergorf Goodman's Spring fashion.

Not the paintings of Michel Angelo, or the music of Mozart.

These are certainly beautiful, and young girls from around the world will surely appreciate, or learn to appreciate these beautiful things.

No, this simply means teaching them to understand their own beauty, and the beauty around them:
- of their mothers and grandmothers
- their villages
- their festivals and celebrations

And the beauty in their own lives

You might ask: Don't these young girls already appreciate what is around them?

Not enough.

Chanel and Mozart are the standards by which they judge, or are made to judge their own beauty, even if they don't know who Chanel and Mozart are.

And this may make them feel that what they have is not adequate for their growth and empowerment.

For their appreciation of their own lives and cultures.

A young Ethiopian girl, growing up in her 21st century village, will surely have seen many examples of European beauty. And a clever tailor in her village can reproduce dresses and skirts as close as he can to what those magazine models are wearing.

But, what about the shawl and dress, the netela and kemis, the hand-woven cloths, embroidered with familiar emblems? A dress she knows so well that she can discern to the fold of the netela who is wearing it correction, and who is not? And she can judge who is wearing it with a style superior to the others? The one who looks beautiful?

And it is not only the clothing, its folds, the embroidery that makes this image, but also the dignity of the girl that makes it all stand out.

The beautiful quality of the wearer, whether she is physically beautiful or not, her dignity and demeanor, her modesty and charm, will add more value, more beauty to the dress, as the dress also compliments her beauty
.
So, if a girl is so discerning of her surroundings, it is surely through her surroundings that we can expect her to follow guidance and directions to make her life better.

Her base is her culture and her environment. What she will do is influenced by what is around her. And her successes will reflect this, making her efforts all the more important and productive.

What if someone told her that this is what beauty is, and it is far better for her because she can discover from the colors she chooses for her embroidery and the way she wears her netela, her own culture's beauty, and her own confidence?

Beauty also will make her aspire to bigger and better things in search of that superior color, that fine weave, to make the best dress.

Since this young girl is willing to invest so much time in making her cultural creations and appearances as perfect as possible, we should help her in performing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in the same spirit.

We should convince her that these goals, when performed with the same care and diligence that she does with these things she cares so much about, will give her a successful life. That she already has the tools.

We can teach her that just as much as she wants to have a beautiful netela and kemis, she can also attain these important sustainable development goals through the same diligence that she has learnt since a child.

Her culture is her empowerment. Beauty is her tool.