Pick A Number - Cognitive Teaser

I just found an ingenious number puzzle at http://www.milaadesign.com/wizardy.html

Follow the prompts through and then try to figure out how it works. It's very logical and doesn't depend on the computer somehow 'judging' where your eyes are looking!

Bet you'll love it.

Time Travel or Parallel Universes

Yesterday and quite without thinking about it, my family's old home phone number popped into my mind - WL 1833. It's of a form that doesn't exist today. And my parents haven't had the number for over 20 years.

I began to wonder what would happen if I dialed home. Now, at 4.30pm.

And imagined my mother would answer, asking when I'd be in for dinner. Was I still at school? I needed to be back soon to at least start my homework. What would I answer? She'd been an economist and wouldn't readily receive a call from the future! So I'd probably have to pretend I was still 10 years old. Would I be able to carry it off? The challenge excites me, now. My voice has deepened - I'd need to raise it to be convincing. And use a less sophisticated way of speaking. Without sounding too studiedly juvenile.

What was I doing at that age? Still at primary school - Grade 6.

Miss Hartigan was teaching me history. She had introduced me to Marco Polo and his travels to China. James Henry Breasted 'Ancient Times, A History of the Early World'. She had a funny way of clicking her hips side to side when she walked. Equally fascinating with the history.

And Mr Ackford for Maths - the school cutie. Very pretty in exactly that Randy Wayne way. But blokey. With beautiful muscular hands. Covered with a network of pulsating veins. And chalk. Who was being aggressively pursued by the highly-painted over-padded Miss Someone or other - funny what you remember and what you don't!

And Martin Davies for sex after school in the Old Boys Library. He was more developed than me - solid hairy legs, and furrier crotch. Just touching his hard hot thick dick and firm fat buns was overwhelmingly erotic. We'd only stop to go home - at 10, no ejaculation, premature or other wise to reduce our libidos.

...

But what if I get caught out? How would I explain the unexplainable?

And what if I answered - parallel universes? Remember in movies or somewhere there is an immutable truth that if you confront your different selves there'll be some kind of cataclysmic annihilation.

So I haven't dialed yet - I don't wanna be disappointed! But I will. The urge is becoming irresistible!

The Portland Vase - Another Kind of Sensual Beauty

Base of the Portland Vase, Rome 1st Century BC

I used to wander round the British Museum to while away Saturday afternoons. And often ended up in front of the famous Portland Vase.

Such a cameo was created when a partially blown piece of glass was dipped in white glass, and the blowing continued. Resulting in an object with two layers. The outer white layer was then carved away to form images on a darker background underneath.


This cameo glass vase was made in Rome between 30 and 20 BC. And was possibly cut by Dioskourides, due to stylistic and technical similarities with gems known to have been carved by this craftsman round the same time. The meaning of the various scenes depicted is much debated and it is accepted by many that they do not represent a single unified set.

The vase is said to have been discovered around 1582 by Fabrizio Lazzaro, excavating the tomb of the Emperor Alexander Severus. Latterly, it was inherited in 1786 by William Cavendish-Bentinck, third Duke of Portland, who loaned and then sold it to the British Museum after it was smashed to pieces by a drunken vandal, William Lloyd, in 1845.


The refinement of the carving is exquisite, as seen in these details.

The modeling of the forms of the bodies and their overlaying with draperies has none of the awkwardness you would expect from a small piece of sculptured glass. It is 25 centimetres in height.

The base is the result either of a repair or of a conversion from an original amphora form. In antiquity. It shows Paris, son of King Priam, an attribution due to the soft conical cap worn by inhabitants of Phrygia, central Anatolia.

The extraordinary beauty of the vase reminds of the silver Warren Cup (1st century AD Rome), which I posted on, in this blog, 7 March 07. There is a similar calm easy sensuality. Though it is homoerotic and more directly sexual in the Warren Cup.

Bill Travis - Photographer

Bill Travis kindly emailed me the three photographs of this post. Rather than go to his website to investigate his work more fully, I thought it might be interesting to use only what he sent. So a few personal impressions.

What strikes me initially is that the images are in degrees 'indistinct' in that you are not exactly sure of all that is being presented, particularly the first and last. You fill in 'gaps' with your own ideas, as modeled in gestalt of psychology. In the final work and from my concerns and obsessions, I am persuaded something oral and sexual is occurring. In the first, I seem to see another guy/s at the foot of the bed, suggesting interacting sex. But perhaps this composition is constructed of two separate images.

Then there is a sense of the images being across-media - the last photograph for example has a nice parallel sense of being a fresco, something on an old, weathered and cracked wall.

The works seem contextually multi-layered. The guy in bed in the initial photo seems overlaid by a seascape, this second context enhanced by green coloration/wash. Sexuality is again brought into play by the nude body in bed, and particularly the focus on the model's butt.

Water then runs on into the second image, which strikes me as having more conventional iconography - the beautiful and erotic man observed but apparently unaware. The sea is also presented in the 'sun-baking' composition. With this activity being over-layered with another closely-related one - cooling at the sea's edge, here water drips down the man's pecs. There is a curious tension in the overlay here - one is not so relaxed sunning semi-submerged.



Art with gay content is often an exercise in some sort of (usually soft) pornography - the work of Bill Travis is not. I'm not playing morality here - simply stating the situation!

I'm not sure/have no idea what Bill was considering or had in mind when producing the images he sent, or indeed the intellectual framework in which he positions himself (post modern, ... ?), but I take view, from literary criticism, that art work has an independent life once put out by the artist, and can be interpreted in ways that may not have been intended.

Anyway, now I'm off to Bill's website (www.billtravisphoto.com) to see more of his photography!

Politically Correct Humour, Not?

Not sure this joke is at all PC. Not that I'm worrying myself unduly about posting it!


Q: What did one condom say to the other, as they walked into the gay bar?

A: 'Let's get shit-faced!' '


Okay, what do you think?

If you think it's non-PC, did you laugh?

Phillip Togni and the Transitoriness of All Things

While I was away overseas recently, a casual friend developed a brain tumour and died.

I was stunned.

And have been catching myself repeatedly thinking about the transitoriness of all things.

I usually drift (happily) from day to day without the sense of time passing or of moving unavoidably and finitely forward. As probably do we all. I have the feeling of things being cyclic and for ever, emotionally not cognitively of course!

The last time I was powerfully taken by these ideas was while and after watching the Bertolucci film 'The Sheltering Sky' (1990), based on the Paul Bowles 1949 novel. Set in the Moroccan desert, the central protagonists are New Yorkers Port and Kit Moresby trying to resolve their marriage, and their friend Tunner. But in this arid landscape, many of the comfortable and necessary illusions they have constructed for themselves are stripped away.

I was struck by the recurring theme of never knowing, when you are doing a thing, whether it is for the last time. There is the sense that there always will be another time/s - otherwise life's transitoriness can be unbearable.

So I began to wonder when I last saw Phillip. And couldn't. And the thought is uncomfortable. For more than one reason.

Sore Throat Cure

Ever tried this cure? Bet you have!

Did it work?

More to the point, did you get caught!