Turukhtan

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Night lights

Night photography is SO much better when you don't use a tripod ... not.

Posted at 12:37 pm by turukhtan
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Green

This is another piece in the ongoing series "unexpected holes with colour inside them". The previous one was blue.

Posted at 12:35 pm by turukhtan
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Thursday, September 22, 2005

Portraits are best in B&W

After Mihai watched Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, he wanted to have a beard just like the Japanese guy in Mr. Chow's sci-fi stories. I hope he doesn't shave it too soon ...

Posted at 5:24 am by turukhtan
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Monday, September 19, 2005

Anagrams!

Argh, I found an anagram generator. Here are my favourites of my name:

tenement girl
lettering men
green elm tint
green men tilt
termite glenn
enter melting
let me rent gin

Himitsu Nobara:

I'm Sir Autobahn
Abash - omit - ruin!
I hunt ambrosia
abstain him rou
nu rio samba hit
u + I = hot arab sin?
Ha, Boris, I'm a nut!
Aha, bums in trio!
Ha, I'm a turbo sin!

Sergei:

Gee, sir!

Posted at 9:26 am by turukhtan
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Sunday, September 18, 2005

Burning former synagogues

Why didn't the IDF tear down the synagogues in the abandoned Gaza settlements? Some say it was for religious reasons - a Jew can't destroy a holy synagogue. Others, including the PA, suspect the Israeli authorities left that task for the PA so that the Palestinians would look bad when people - inevitably, driven by the two factors 'revenge' and 'poverty' - would start scavenging and destroying the former settlements, including the former synagogues.

Foreign minister Silvan Shalom kind of wraps it up. "A Jew does not destroy a synagogue", he said, adding that if the PA cannot restrain Arabs from demolishing or desecrating the buildings, "The world will know with whom we are dealing." (Quotes from unitedjerusalem.org.)

Well, technically, the synagogues are synagogues no more, as all religious symbols have been removed.

Besides, some settlers left not only anti-disengangement graffiti, but also their welcome greetings for the Palestinians on the walls of their former homes and holy places. Lotta Schüllerqvist, in Dagens Nyheter 16/9, is one of the few foreign correspondents who has bothered to write about this graffiti: "Death to Arabs", "I will come back to kill you, motherfucker".

¤ ¤ ¤

Still, I have to say Islamic Jihad militants look rather kick-ass:

(Photo by Emilio Morenatti, AP.)
Black flags have traditional connotations of revolution in Arab cultural history. For instance, the rebellion in 747 that brought down the Umayyad caliphate started with revolutionaries flying black flags in Khorasan.

Posted at 8:49 am by turukhtan
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Why keep a blog that no one reads?

A lot of people ask themselves that question. So do I, although I know people do read my blog - certainly my family members and closest friends, and also completely unrelated people who find their way here on some more or less weird search string like "Asian hunks".

But this question makes me think about the Swedish newspapers I've been reading in great quantity since I started working as a newspaper distributor. More journalists should ask themselves why they are writing, and what it will do for the world.

For instance, Staffan Skott, who is most famous for having been an ardent (and maybe kind of witty) opponent of the Soviet Union, recently wrote a column about how great paper bags are. If you put one in another, they last for many weeks! You can even use them when moving!
Ehh ... ever heard of *textile* bags? They can last a lifetime. And what about boxes?
Anyway, if there was actually supposed to be some kind of deeper symbolism in that column, it escaped me.

Another example is that all four main newspapers in this area (Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Sydsvenskan and Skånska Dagbladet) pretty much write about exactly the same things, in almost exactly the same way. However, yesterday Sydsvenskan had to see itself defeated by the more professional and respectable DN.

A new political party has appeared in Sweden, which calls itself Feminist initiative (F!). It has had some amazingly negative media coverage, making you not really dare to believe anything you hear. One of the people depicted most negatively is Tiina Rosenberg, who has been described as utterly evil and mad. Finally on Friday, DN published an interview with Rosenberg herself, presenting a slightly different perspective on these things. Sydsvenskan wanted to do exactly the same, but Rosenberg didn't want to give them any interview, so reporter Anders Fagerström had to resort to googling together a one-page article about Rosenberg's background.
... I don't know. Why write anything at all, if that's the best you can do?

Posted at 7:52 am by turukhtan
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Saturday, September 17, 2005

Feather canyons everywhere

I couldn't resist changing the brightness & contrast a bit, because they kick even more ass this way.

Posted at 7:33 pm by turukhtan
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Monday, September 12, 2005

Dagens dumheter

I Sydsvenskan idag:

Tydligen tror skribenten (och vederbörandes informant) att hela Europa är som Sverige. Sveriges kommersiella serievärld domineras verkligen av USA-producerat skit (och lite bra saker därirån också ibland).
Europas serievärld däremot domineras av den europeiska seriekulturen, som koncentrerar sig i Belgien, Frankrike, Tyskland, Nederländerna och Italien. Men det känner ju alltför många svenskar inte till.

¤ ¤ ¤

Mer till samma tema: en intervju med Andreas C. Knigge.

"Mang'Arte: Wie schätzen Sie die Lage des deutschen Manga im Vergleich mit anderen Ländern in Europa und der Welt ein?
In Deutschland ist der Comic immer ein sehr viel kleineres Thema gewesen, und diese Beobachtung trifft auch auf den Manga zu. Wo in Frankreich 500.000 Exemplare verkauft werden, sind es in Deutschland vielleicht 50.000. Das hat mit der Bilderfeindlichkeit der protestantischen Kultur zu tun. In Ländern mit überwiegend katholischer Bevölkerung sind visuelle Erzählformen traditionell immer sehr viel populärer gewesen als in Deutschland."

http://www.arte-tv.com/de/kunst-musik/Quiz_20_26_20Partner/677614.html

Posted at 10:18 am by turukhtan
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Saturday, September 10, 2005

I was featured in a boob magazine

I was interviewed a while ago about my menstrual paintings, for an article that was supposed to "dispel the myth that men should stay clear of women when they are 'on' just in case they attack them with a large meat cleaver and all the other rubbish people still consider 'fact' when it comes to periods". It was for a publication called Bizarre Magazine, which claims to be "dedicated to writing about the more extreme side of life and [likes] to present [its] readers with an unbiased and unflinching look at strange and unusual people/events/topics from all over the world", according to the journalist who interviewed me. As the magazine shows, she forgot to mention that their main interest is actually naked women. Anyway, I knew that already before I said yes, and I don't see it as any problem at all. ("There's no publicity that's bad publicity", and all that ...)

It's just that the two small pictures of my paintings kind of get lost in the layout, which is dominated by pictures of a woman who is a web... uh, model, and has specialised in menstruation porn.

Heh.

Posted at 5:55 am by turukhtan
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Friday, September 09, 2005

I experienced some Quizilla abstinence

You are an assassin.
That means you are a proffessional and do your
job without mixing any emotions in it. In your
life you have probably been hurt many times and
have gotten some mental scars. This results in
you being distant from people. Though many
think that you are evil, you are not. What you
really are is a person, trying to forget your
pain and past. You are the person who never
seems to care and that is why being an assassin
fits you good. Atleast, that's what people
think. Even if you don't care that much for
your victims, you still have the ability to
care and to generally feel. It is not lost,
just a little forgotten. In crowds you tend to
not get to noticed, and dress in black or other
discrete colours. You don't being in the
spotlight and wish people would just leave you
alone. But once you do get close to someone you
have a hard time letting go and get real down
if you loose him/her.

Main weapon: Sniper
Quote: "The walls we build around
us to keep out the sadness also keep out the
joy" -Jim Rohn
Facial expression: Narrowed eyes

What Type of Killer Are You? [cool pictures]
brought to you by Quizilla

haunted by the past

You cry because of the story of your past which
still haunts you. You can't forgive the people
who hurt you back then and this has caused you
to be angry and frustrated. You cry tears of
torture. You want revenge more than anything
because of the unjust pain other people caused
you. The resentment slowly grows, causing you
as much pain as it did back then.

What has made you cry? [pics]
brought to you by Quizilla

(It's not like I have any reason to cry right now (okay, maybe exhaustion?), but I just wanted to post that result, because it reminds me of Eva, except that the gun isn't a PM.)

Posted at 9:02 am by turukhtan
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