Bored Neoclassical Guy

A Good Head for Mosaics (Testa Robusta per Mosaico)

2012-01-16T19:17:00.015-06:00

Hmmm, I can really think of no finer way to welcome you guys back after an excessively long blogging hiatus than to bore you all with a tale of woe and accompanying vacation photos. I've been super busy with my real job, artworks, and my oldmosaics.com (I'm trying my hand writing phone apps believe it or not). Don't laugh if you look at my website yet, it's very much a work in progress. Now here's your popcorn, and the story begins...

In September while boarding the train from FCO airport in Rome to the center of the city after a long flight from Dallas, I noticed that the overhead luggage rack for my suitcase was missing several crossbar supports, creating a large hole. Because there were not many places left in the car, I carefully wedged my suitcase up on the edge rails and the few bars that were actually there. Sitting down directly underneath the hole area (so no one else might accidently get struck with a falling suitcase), I resolved to keep an eye on it and be ready with quick hands to grab if it were to fall.

Unfortunately for me, a nice lady and her mid-twenties attractive daughter sat down next to me and we all struck up a conversation. Gravity took its course, and that coupled with my lack of baggage-related attention resulted in a surprise crushing blow to the forehead. At the time, I was thinking 'That's odd, my whole head moved back because of this crushing blow.' I still smile when I think of hearing all the normally reserved Italians in the train car simultaneously gasp at the horrific site. I laughed it off but I was worried about the possibilities of concussion because people in the street on the way to my hotel were saying things like 'cattivo bruschi' and such.

So, I resolved to just stay awake after putting my bag away at my hotel and took the train from Pyramide to Ostia Antica (which in all honesty, I was planning to do anyway). I had been to Pompeii and other archaeological sites around Europe, but had never made the time for this super close one even though I'd been to Rome several times.

I only had a day to cover so much ground, so I ran. I ran like Forrest Gump that day until there were enormous blisters on my little toes in spite of my comfortable hiking boots.

Ostia Antica was a treasure hunt maze of in-situ mosaics! The archaeological area covers a few square miles with so many uncovered and partially buried insulae, or city block areas with houses and shops.

Mosaics were not just reserved for the numerous public areas like baths and forums (the ancient equivalents of water parks and shopping malls, I guess), but many obscure ones were to be found in various houses scattered across the large archaeological area.

Below is an obscure mosaic from a small shop in the western part of the city. I think these look like leather working tools from the time, or maybe just meat tenderizing? It’s fun for me to try to understand what the artists were thinking back then when they placed the tesserae. That’s one of the reasons I like the ancient works so much because you can see the brush strokes in an ancient fresco or the choices about andamento from thousands of years ago and it’s like you are standing there right behind the artist from a different time, understanding how life was or how it was imagined.

I'm happy to report many of the mosaics were geometric in nature. I've been on a geometric mosaic kick lately with my triclinium background and it was great to see through the eyes of long gone artisans. Some of these forms were not covered in the usual mosaic history books.
Here’s what I’ve been calling a ‘sparse flower geometric’ from a house in the far north part of the site.

Check out the ‘meander-lozenge combo bordered by other meander and guilloche’ that can be seen near the entrance…

And below is a captivating but simple geometric from a home in the southwestern part of Ostia.

Occasionally, the driven visitor is rewarded with a random sectile work. The pavement below was especially interesting to me because of the ‘reused’ pieces of border carved marble in some of the triangle pieces (easy to see above the numidian yellow square at lower left).

The owner of this villa within the city must have been keen on the army because of all the shields?

Most of the mosaics left within ancient Ostia are monochrome, but even without colored tesserae, there is a world of information locked into these stone relics.
Here is the map of the area. The far reaches of Regione III and Regione I have some ‘off the normal path’ semi buried mosaics in hard to reach houses because of the overgrown brush, etc.

Speaking of semi-buried, sometimes the archaeological superintendents will place big mats covered with sand over some of the endangered and more important mosaics to help preserve them. Maybe I could have bribed some of these hard working archaeologists restoring a pavement near the Capitolinum monument to lift off one of the covers? Well, I did put some money in their tip jar.

In my opinion, Ostia is an underrated site for mosaics and is a wonderful mirror to the past and being an armchair archaeologist, I’m very glad to have visited.
Probably the best source of information if you are interested in visiting Ostia Antica is Ostia-antica.org.

Italy 2011 - A Few Photos (Un Po' Foto di Italia)

2011-10-11T18:25:00.008-05:00

Step right up and guess the name of the famous actress whose visage I've attempted to render in the ancient art of origam... uh I mean, mosaic!
Below is the result of my portraiture class with Luciana Notturni in
Ravenna, Italy, which is always a great time.

This time in Venice, I happened to stay during the 'Historical Regatta' right on the Grand Canal. Drinking wine and waving back to the race boats and looking out on all the plebs crowded in to seats at the Rialto market allows one to catch a glimpse from the vantage point of royalty, if only for a moment. Maybe it was more because the Count Francesco di Mosto's place was right next door?

In addition to the obligatory wine touring, Florence this time involved an awesome cooking school excursion called 'In Tavola' just on the south side of the Arno river. You go into the industrial kitchen with 20 or so people. Working on stainless tops, 5 professional chefs and a blur of cleanup people assist you in prepping a multi course meal. Then they throw it it the oven while you go down to the wine cellar and have some liquid refreshments. Then BAM, you're served! That is, food is served, not like someone showed you how to do something that you are bad at, or a lawsuit or something.

In Rome this time, I stayed in a great apartment (Palazzo Velabro) immediately adjacent to the world's oldest sewer, the Cloaca Maxima. It didn't smell bad though even though it was uncovered. The Quadraporte monument and various temples were super close. I probably could have spit watermelon seeds from the apartment into the surprised mouth of the famous Bocca di Verita because of the proximity. But, who would do that really? Watermelon tastes terrible.

I'll tell you all about Sardegna later, but let's have some guesses on that mosaic up there.

Meeting A Blogger! (Incontrato i Blogger Fantastico)

2011-09-18T06:18:00.006-05:00

It was very hot, not 'Dallas hot', but incredibly humid. It was the kind of humid which causes sweat to drip from your nose and wonder which it is that you are breathing, air or water. I had just arrived on the train and was making my way across the Italian town with my 60kg of luggage, sun beating down, trying to keep one eye on my outdated GPS in order to keep my wrong turns to a minimum.

Under normal circumstances, this would cause me to run to the nearest air conditioned room and order a cold drink. But, I was very excited that I was on my way to meet a blogger that I've admired for a long time. She has a fantastic eye for design, a respect and deep knowledge of western history, and is a true original in my opinion. You have probably guessed by now that it was Maggie from 'Mosaicology' who I was going to visit.

It probably sounds strange, but I had never met an actual blogger until then, so I was a bit nervous.

Luckily, I arrived early in front of the church agreed upon. Even more luckily, the bar in front of the church had outdoor seating and would sell cold water and wine to me. They never give enough wine in the church. :)

The bells struck the time and there was only one lady with family members meeting the description out there. She was looking around as if waiting for someone, but no, it was not her.

A while after the last echo of the bells were gone, I was relieved to see them appear. I waved them over to the outdoor bar. In a short moment we were all sitting there as old friends, discussing art and design, history, politics, and everything and nothing. They are such precious people to me, and we had only just met in person!

Time flew by as we talked and then sadly it was time for me to catch my next train to the Venice area. But, we have plans to draw up jewelry pieces using rare stones, and I can't wait.

I just returned home a few hours ago after so long on the airplanes, so now I will sleep for a few days...

p.s. - A., grazie per l'auto alla stazione!

Squirrel spirits and the Past (Storia con Scoiattoli)

2011-08-24T19:21:00.007-05:00

All of you, gather around the evening fire, and hear the story of 'Pale Face Walks With Stones'. It was a summer ugonawa, oh, I should say 'hot'. It was after many days until the ground cracked and the grass died. The mighty rivers turned dry and the swimming pool was down a good two inches a day.

Well 'Walks with Stones' was outside cleaning up stone pieces of many colors, colors like maize in the harvest, when he looked up and saw annoying squirrel spirit. Squirrel was climbing on the house and then on the fence, and had just previously caused much anger in 'Walks with Stones'. So, he leans down to grab a small stone from a pile of dirt recently displaced from planting a mighty tree. 'Walks with Stones' had the intention of scaring Squirrel Spirit off the damned fence and onto the open front yard plain stretching for blocks as far as the eye could see.

But he paused before casting the stone at Squirel Spirit. He thought it would be a pity to cast this weird randomly picked up stone at the squirrel. A pity mostly because it had strange markings, and wasn't an actual stone at all. It turns out that 'Walks with Stones' had inadvertently picked up a piece of prehistoric pottery with very linear brush marks, and an inner core more red and ceramic-ish than the outer encrusted face and back.

Shaking a fist at Squirrel Spirit, he excitedly looked up the archaeology department at the big university on his talking box from Motorola. Then as the call was dialed 'Walks with Stones' looks to the mighty west tree and sees the evil crow spirit (about 100 of them) looking at him. Then he utters a word and they all take flight as the 'dial' button is pressed. 'Walks with Stones' is creeped right the hell out, mostly because in the years living in the Dallas area, he has not had this vision except once before.

Anyhow, I'm sure there will be an update when the scientists at the University of Texas Archaeology field office come back with details.

The News (Notizie)

2011-07-12T23:26:00.010-05:00

Hello Blogchums!

What's been going on, you might ask? I reckon a few things, work is always a factor, but there are many moving parts to this 'macchina' called life.

My brother drilled his first oil well, bravo. Production is a little light at around 20 barrels per day, but well done regardless! He's diving that big reef off of Australia at the moment and has plans for many more in the near future.

My sister *still* hasn't found a job (she's 27 and lives with my mother). But, she makes good vegetarian food and smokes cigarettes more adeptly than most people I know.

As for me, I've been keeping up with my regimen of liking cookies, sculpture, mosaics, macro economics, archaeometry, reading your blogs, encryption, and ancient history. Note my use of the Oxford comma, which is a lifestyle choice much like the proper way of putting the toilet paper in which the end rests over the roll instead of under, the latter probably being the exclusive purview of of dog thieves, insurance salesmen, and Nazis.

This autumn, I'm heading to Italy to take another advanced mosaic class in Ravenna. This is brought on mostly by my desire to make the mosaic centerpiece I have planned outside appear better than stick figures. My enormous white marble deck is progressing slowly because of my other work, but I'd like to think it will be finished some day.

Also on the to-do list while in Italy is to visit the ancient island of Sardinia. I hope that they have the kind in olive oil and not just mustard or something gross like that. Kidding, everyone knows sardines are exclusively from Norway which is what you purchase in excessive quantity when you go there...

Lately, I've purchased some art by people whose technical abilities I admire. Andjelka in Serbia sold me her eye, well, not her real eye. Just an incredibly well rendered example of how mosaics should be. But now, I am busy fabricating a custom frame for it.

I hope that you all are having a great summer so far!

Keys (Tasti vecchio)

2011-05-16T22:30:00.004-05:00

In media and life, I've seen a coincidental confluence in the past few months of keys, both the physical kind that you might open a lock with and more abstract kinds. My brother misplaced his car keys, I generated an encryption keyset for a business client, then took a quick try at decrypting a note (published by the FBI) that was found in a dead guy's pocket (I was not successful, hah). The acting mayor of Dallas got into trouble for giving Michael Vick the 'key to the city' which I cartoonishly imagine as an enormous gilded key with a big 'D' on the end. But, I've never seen it and really think it's probably just a disappointing piece of paper with 'Key advice' on it. I guess there hasn't been anything in the news about Panama or the canal (also having locks). What kind of locks am I forgetting?

To take us in what I'm sure is a completely unexpected direction... the Romans made physical keys out of bronze and improved the Egyptian designs by replacing wooden components with metals. Of course, I guess if the Romans made keys out of cotton candy, there wouldn't be much evidence of it now... Keys and locks made in the shops back then were pretty much unique works of art as they didn't have ANSI standards back then.

Here is a photo I took in Arles, France a few years back of keys found in that area.

Also, from Aqueilia Italy, a relief sculpture of a Roman locksmith's grave showing him at work.

The ancients also had the abstract notion of logical keys (and encryption). The historian Suetonius wrote of an ancient shift cypher that Julius Caeser used to encrypt messages. The idea was just to replace an alphabetic letter with another letter farther down the alphabetical sequence. Thousands of years ago, it was good enough to guard important state secrets. Now comically, the acronym for the encryption is 'ROT-n', (rotten, as in 'not good' hehe).

Anyway, puns aside, the best encryption schemes I've seen involve combinations of modulus functions (remainders) which accomplishes compression and encryption at the same time, but for prearranged lengths of data in the overall stream to be encrypted.

If I needed to encrypt something, I'd be too paranoid to use RSABase because it's prime number based, and I think NSA has skeleton key for that (decrypts all).
It's probably best to do your own cryptography from scratch and only share it with those you want to receive your message.

For good reading on keys and locks in ancient times, check out romanlocks.com

A Moment of Silence (Un Momento di Silenzio)

2011-05-02T07:29:00.004-05:00

We should all pause for a moment's silence.

Silence in memory of 'Sportsman's Guide, Incorporated' based in St. Paul Minnesota, publisher and purveyor of shooting targets. Decreased revenues from their best selling products will surely cause the bankruptcy of the company.

Sometimes, Insects Decide (Decidere di Insetti)

2011-04-18T08:13:00.004-05:00

This past Friday, I had received a shipment of an extraordinarily expensive and rare stone from Rome to use in an art project. It was the legendary 'imperial porphyry' from ancient Egypt. Until locating this sample I was considering using a substitute stone from Trentino Italy, but that one was less brilliant red / purple and the white specks (phenocrysts) were less perfectly white. Since all of my other 'ingredients' were the authentic originals, using the lesser stone seemed like a compromise that shouldn't be made.

In order to make the work look authentic as the 1700 year old original pictured above, I tried to talk myself into breaking the center circle and putting it back together again. But, I kept thinking about the rarity of the stone and how I would be smashing (temporarily) something that costs so much. It was like when you are about to jump off a high-dive platform for the first time and the voice in your head is talking you out of it.

Yesterday afternoon, I carefully drew off the perfect 7" (17cm) circle, I set up my diamond saw outside with a 0.25mm (tiny) blade to avoid material loss of such a precious material. I worked intently, keeping my fingers out of harm's way (the blade is tiny and somewhat flexible since it is so thin).

The wind in Texas has gusted very strongly for the past few days. But despite the wind, about midway through one of the cuts to shape the expensive stone, a yellow jacket wasp bumped up against my leg. I tried to shoo it away with my foot, but it was not having any of that. It kept aggressively buzzing around.

It flew at my face on a final attack dive bombing run, and I had to concentrate on not losing fingers while this happened. Jumping back, but with hands away from the blade, the stone flew off the saw table and landed on the cement where it broke into three pieces. Satisfied with the mayhem it had created, the wasp flew off happily.

I pieced back together the rare stone pieces and finished shaping the perfect center circle. Sometimes, things work out just fine, don't you know?

Ouch (Mia Cicatrice Non Guariscono Per Sempre)

2011-04-06T10:18:00.005-05:00

Recently I was chipping dried mortar off the back of a small mosaic piece so I could reset it somewhere else. The chipping off was going great with a sharp new hammer (recently purchased from the Tabularasa company in Italy).

As I held the piece in my left hand, I struck for about the fifth time, but forgot to take into account that the mortar had a 'rubberized' additive in it. So, it was more of a glancing blow off the piece which allowed the sharp pointy carbide end of the hammer to nestle deeply in my left thumb.

Oh, the words I said when this happened... as much because of my stupid carelessness as for the actual pain. I can take quite a bit of pain, but this was absolutely 'stub 15 toes at one time' excruciating.

After wrapping it in a cold paper towel and applying pressure, the blood finally stopped. Without stiches, I now have a scar that still hurts a bit when I apply pressure in a wrong direction.

Scars can be a good metaphor for what happens in life sometimes. It made me think of a girl I knew when I was in my second year of high school, Lauren. We had been going out for about 4 months which was forever for a high school kid. She was beautiful with long black hair and bright green eyes, and possibly one of the smartest and nicest girls I knew. Summer nights at the waterpark, autumn mornings at band camp (no jokes), with so many common interests it was all perfect.

One November afternoon sitting around the dining table with sunlight streaming in the window, my father told us all that we'd be moving from Dallas to the middle of nowhere (west of Ft. Worth) to help my grandfather drill oil wells. Being a quick lad, I immediately calculated the impact of this catacalysmic event to my situation with Lauren with the lightning like efficiency of at least 100 Commodore 64 computers.

The days which followed were filled with a wistfulness that is hard to describe. As a final gesture, I bought her a jewelry piece the likes of which my 16 year old's allowance savings could just barely manage. It was 20F outside and ice and snow everywhere, but I walked it over to her house located about three miles away as a last Christmas present. All of my extremities were numb, even my soul. I understand why she was sad, but I was surprised to see her mom cry about it.
To this day, that scar still hurts if I move it the wrong way.

Hooked on Sardonyx (Affeto Sardonice)

2011-03-29T12:47:00.008-05:00

It's a cloudy dreary chilly day in Dallas, which is fine because it all goes well with my mood today. Downtown, the streets are filled with people on their way to lunch.

I've just ducked into one of my favorite places called Porta di Roma, a Chinese takeout place. Just kidding, it's Italian food. The name means 'gateway to Rome', but no matter how many doors I open here I can't see Piazza Navona through any of them.

The food is really authentic and the view is great because it's directly across from Neiman Marcus, the famous high end retailer. People watching is at its best in Dallas here. You can see millionaires pull up in chauffeured stretch cars, or maybe a homeless guy wearing a baseball cap with wings slowly pushing a shopping cart with watermelons dressed like Cabbage Patch Kids (tm).

As for myself, I need to stop back into Neiman Marcus today because:
a) my personal shopper there has rent due soon and keeps tweeting me
b) they finally have their secret cookie recipe for sale as in the urban legend, or
c) I want to see if the sardonyx bowls that were full price last year on sale now

As is the case when taking tests, 'C' statistically is the right answer.

Sardonyx is a type of onyx / calcite with just the right red / brown colorations that nice sconces and lighting fixtures try to copy with patinated glass. But, this is the real mineral deal that was used for thousands of years and usually worth more than gold.

In Venice, in the treasury of the San Marco cathedral, they have wonderful sardonyx treasure cups taken back in the fourth crusade like this one with the lower section in the rare stone.

Going back further, first century Romans created great works with it as the cup of the Ptolemies and 'Great Cameo of France' below.

I'm kind of a sculpture guy first, so you can understand my appreciation for a material that is so workable like this from a carving standpoint, and also has such beautiful color and translucency.

Some nice sardonyx sconces are called for in my media room. It's probably not a good idea though to just hang the Neiman Marcus bowls on the wall with duct tape and bailing wire? I think they were $11,000 last year.

Mongorians (i Mongoli, fanno carne buona!)

2011-03-20T21:06:00.004-05:00

Well, well, well my blogchum lovelies, it's been a busy week and a half-ish, but we meet again. I've chopped more mosaic marble pieces than I'm comfortable to admit. Also, I'm working on some top secret art projects that only a dear few know the details of, but in the meanwhile...

Let's talk about some Changs... On OWO's blog, I think I commented about a Mongorian Beef recipe that was pretty good, so maybe it is high time that it was shared amongst the blogosphere with its rich Mongolian goodness, oops Mongorian goodness. You can make this in the privacy of your place without having to see what's on the giant horses' end at the restaurant.

The Ingredients (stuff to put into said recipe)

The 'sauce'
2 tsp veg oil
2 tsp minced ginger
1.5 tbsp minced garlic
1/3 cup dark soy sauce
2/3 cup water
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

The 'meat'
1/4 cup oil
1.5 lb flank steak
1/3 cup cornstarch
large green onions

First make sauce by heating the veg oil in pan on medium. Add ginger / garlic and do a miniature stir fry for a few minutes, it makes you feel like a giant. 'HA HA HA, I'M A GIANT MAKING A NORMAL SIZED STIR FRY.'
Then, add the soy sauce and water mix (1 cup total) into the fray that is the wee stir fry.
Next, melt the brown sugar in as if it were the wicked witch of the west.
Boil it all for about 3 minutes until slightly thicker, then cut off the heat and pour the sauce off somewhere (like in a bowl or something).

Ok, now get out the steak and slice it all into quarter inch strips with a really wicked sharp knife against the grain of the meat and at a 45 degree angle to the plate (so there is more surface area of the beef).
Put the cornstarch over the beef and work it in as if you were Danny DeVito luckily getting to give a massage to Holly Hunter (it's totally extra credit if you get that reference). Let the meat with cornstarch on it sit for 10 minutes while the 'meat oil' heats up if you know what I mean (because oil was put in the pan and you turned the burner on).

When hot, throw the meat on and brown it a bit, then add the sauce (remember that bowl you saved), let that boil for a few minutes, and finally add the green onions.
Stir it around in the hot wetness until the onions go wilty (the metaphor is almost poetic in its simplicity).

Anyway, I hope this will be helpful until the next post in which I will put up something art and or neoclassically related in some form.

Deja Vu

2011-03-08T06:29:00.009-06:00

So I have to ask, have you read this blog post before?

Some years ago, I'd read a book called 'Innumeracy' by a fellow named Paulos. In it, he pointed out how most people don't have a good scale for measuring the probabilities of an incredibly vast number of possible events.

We tend to remember the one match of millions of things that we might have thought of subconciously. At that moment, we might have a strong sense of deja vu or enthusiastically inform people 'Yes, I dreamed this would happen!' So much input gets processed by our brains without really noticing what all is going in.

Still, it's hard to shake the notion that sometimes the premonitions (for lack of a better word) are a bit too accurate. It can be frightning at times. I'm sure that many others have these prophesorial visions that seem to come true also, but here are some of mine.

1) Mid-day December 23, 2010 - Driving to the mall, I switched the car radio and predicted the Mariah Carey 'All I want for Christmas' song would play. AND IT DID. Is she related to Drew Carey?

2) Afternoon of January 7, 2011 - I kind of thought the whole Charlie Sheen thing wouldn't work out well.

3) Morning of February 2, 2011 - Visions of Oriental Salad with Macadamia Nut Chicken at Kona grill appeared before me in my sleep. That very day, I found myself inexplicably at lunch eating the very same food!

4) March 30, 2010 - Dreamed that in my office, I had a very real increased gravity feel, and light became blindingly bright out the window, and I saw a face of the Ahmadinejad guy from Iran. Luckily this one has not come true yet.

What premonitions or deja vu incidences have you had? Do any of them repeat?

SAMA, Now With More Tesserae (Incontro di SAMA)

2011-02-21T13:18:00.010-06:00

Last week I went to the SAMA conference (mosaic stuff). It turned out better than expected because they had dropped me from workshops which I had registered for months before, so the legendary 'bar of expectation' wasn't set too high. Speaking of bars, that's how my family became so wealthy you know, we invented the bar that people set on the grocery conveyers to separate sales, it's all very lucrative.

On Wednesday, I took a class on micro mosaic taught by the famous Antonella Gallenda. The entire result was only about 4cm x 4cm. I like to think of it as the 'microfilm' which Roman spies had used thousands of years ago to smuggle out important state secrets. I've seen good results from some of my friends, but really, it was a major fail for me (partly because I picked an ambitious project, a copy of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michaelangelo, and there was not enough time to finish).

On Thursday, a silent auction occurred. This is the one time I like to do my own bidding, especially when I actually win something. I've done some auctions at the DMA in which the sheets get filled up too quickly, and with entirely too many zeros at the ends of the prices.

This is the work that I was able to win, 'Texas Souvenir' by Julie Richey. It's going in a bar area on the wall with a museum quality plaque(not just precariously leaned up as it is now).

On Friday night, there was a gallery presentation at the Mexican American Cultural Center. It was closed the day before and events were cancelled. They said something about not being able to find enough workers to scrub the floors. But, the floor was absolutely sparkling for the exhibition, so hats off belatedly to MACC.

Below, someone is tickling the toes of Carol Shelkin's work. The girl depicted in the mosaic seemed to laugh at this.

Besides good rendering, Carol does a good job with tonal relationships even though the hue choices are far apart. It's one of the things that makes her work interesting to me and I'm sorry that I missed her workshop due to the evil SAMA computers.

I also saw glass flavored ice cream...

Here is Julie Richey's 'La Corrente' behind bulletproof glass. The Declaration of Independence was over to the left of it as I recall.

The vendor fair was great, with good selection. I backed my chariot up to the entrance and loaded it all down. I had an opportunity to speak with the lady who formulates a new glass smalti from China, imported by 'Peace, Love and Smalti' in Dallas. Or, was that 'Piece, Love and Smalti'? I'll have to check, but anyway the glass scientist really knew her stuff and it's an exciting product.

Disturbed hand drawn general presentation notes of mine will follow...

Recent Films (Cigni Troppi in Film)

2011-01-26T05:33:00.009-06:00

Being quite busy at work lately, I haven't had time to see as many films as I usually do. Some friends recently told me about one that sounded really strange called 'Black Swan'. The tedium of a dancing 'chick flick' might be offset by seeing the lovely Natalie Portman running around in tights, but not so fast Hollywood...

I think we all have already seen this film! I distinctly remember Natalie in 'Red Swan'. And wasn't Lea Thompson also in 'Red Swan'? She had the most hilarious line after the invasion when the town was blown up and her character quite emotionally observed 'Things are *different* now!' Lea, if you ever read this, please send me a black and white PR photo signed 'Things are different now!', because that works on so many levels.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. Natalie also starred in 'Purple Swan'. Does the film industry have no shame? They didn't even cast a different actress!

But they don't even stop there, remember when Natalie Portman portrayed 'Blue Swan', set in sixteenth century France?

I just don't get why Hollywood feels the need to recycle all of these films. For example, how many 'Batman' films do we really need?

I did get a chance to see 'The Tourist' recently, and sure the plot was predictable and it was a bit silly. But, it was set in Venice, and it was fun, and Angelina was in it, and did I mention it was set in Venice?

2011-01-02T18:44:00.004-06:00

Happy new year to all! I unfortunately was reminded recently that my personal champagne consumption is not, in fact, unlimited. It was nothing that a few Advil and hours in the spa couldn't cure though.

Santa duck below was still drinking a tasty beverage while I was recovering.

A few days ago I was excited to find a book about painting for sale by one of my favorite contemporary artists, Juliette Aristides. The Classical Painting Atelier goes through the logical curriculum of the way that painting was taught before modernism and 'concept' art (Sorry Mr. Pollock, but I will never see the incoherent scribbles as art). It's been out there for a while, but I had not seen it in the store.

I'm already through four chapters, and the painting exercises are great. Juliette's book has the forward written by Mr. Ross at the Art Renewal Center (listed over there as my favorite art group for some time now). Mrs. Aristides uses very little superflous writing, it's all to the point. And many of those points are made very quickly, I've found myself rereading some sections to make sure I don't miss anything.

I need to ask if any of her students at Gage Academy have some old practice paintings of casts they wouldn't mind selling.

Holiday Tradition Mixed With Archaeology

2010-12-20T13:22:00.011-06:00

The sterling cuff links in the Cosmati style using authentic green porphyry are back from the jeweler. I think they turned out well, and I’ll be giving them as a gift for one of my stone suppliers. Before giving them away, I have to confess that I wore them out to dinner one night recently. I might have to hire Wendy Brandes to come up with a more inventive design so I can have my own pair?

All this talk about gifts makes me stop for a moment and consider the real meanings of the holiday season. Of course there is obviously a religious reason for Christmas, so here I will awkwardly bridge a gap between the secular and traditional.

St. Nicholas (aka Santa), was a bishop in 3rd century Roman controlled Myra (in modern southeastern Turkey). Legend has it that he was the son of a wealthy family who gave gifts to help the poor. He’s not my favorite though, because he is reputed to have destroyed the Temple of Artemis rather than converting it to a church as they did with so many other pre-existing structures back then. In a recent Archaeology magazine, they had a good write up on him and the town of Myra.

Here are some old photos of Santa.

Santa living in southeastern Turkey in the third century actually raises more questions than it answers. Might it be possible that the North Pole was actually located in Turkey instead? Has the earth’s axis changed in a mere 1700 years?
Could this beautiful church have been Santa’s workshop, an astounding 1700 years ago???

Well, at least we can answer the age old question of whether St. Nick is real, as attested by these bones lying in the Archaeological Museum of Antalya. Apparently, his remains were stolen out of the Myra church and taken to southern Italy. Later, in the eleventh century, these bones were returned to Turkey.

Maybe it takes quite a bit to frighten you all, but I think I might be terrified if a skeleton were to climb down my chimney, either with toys for me or not.

More interesting reading on St. Nick:
http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/belge/2-20266/santa-claus.html
http://www.livius.org/ne-nn/nicholas/nicholas_of_myra1.html

Merry Christmas (Buon Natale)

2010-12-14T07:51:00.008-06:00

In the late nineties, way back before the turn of the century, I was friends with some professional musicians around the Dallas area. Todd and April were brother and sister playing bass and drums respectively in a popular alternative rock band.

One day going to lunch, Todd queued up a song with Dennis (the frontman singer in their group) and a girl he had just started going out with. If I recall, it was the song 'Whole New World', which was a duet between Dennis and his new girlfriend who was singing her part exceptionally well.

I only seem to have three super powers, and on this occasion I invoked the first one. My first superpower is the ability to recognize a singing voice of anyone that I've heard singing before regardless of the context. This is in fact well documented among my friends. And it works on the hard to identify singers, not just the easy singing voices like Sheryl Crow or Gilbert Gotfried.

Anyway, the woman's voice I recognized as Lisa Layne from Vince Vance and the Valiants. It was quite exciting since Lisa some years earlier had recorded my favorite Christmas song ever. Click on Lisa's link here to see the video in case you might have been living in Myanmar helping the poor for the past 15 years, or perhaps in a coma.

Here is the video.

Dennis and Lisa eventually parted ways and she is now in Branson, Missouri. Other artists have tried to recapture the magic of the original recording, but to me the clarity of her voice and production values of the first can't be matched. I told her as much in an email, and she got a good chuckle out of that. Maybe I can get my friends on city council to hire her for an acoustic set for the tree lighting next year? I'll put in more than my fair share.

I hope the season is good to all of you, and Merry Christmas!

Cosmati

2010-12-08T23:09:00.008-06:00

In a very minor way, tonight I took a few small footsteps in the journeys of the great Cosmati. Who were the Cosmati, you might ask? If you answered 'the secret society in the film Tomb Raider', that is not correct, however you get extra credit for making me think of Angelina Jolie in shorts with pistols.

The Cosmati were families of artistic stone workers sharing the name 'Cosma' around 1000 years ago. Several generations of people in the family made very mathematically complex mosaics. Many of their works are geometric styled with triangles, circles, parallel-o-grams, and yes, even rhombuses.
Some typical examples of their work...

Not only known for just architectural mosaics that had the effect of showing you what you see when you rub your eyes way too hard, but they were also well known sculptors and art dealers.

The wealthy and powerful revered their work in the early and even late middle ages. Well heck, even now if I count myself, right? For example, Pope Iulius II had his logo done in their style (he was the 'warrior' pope who layed the first brick of the brand spanking new 'St. Peter's Cathederal' in Rome around 1500).

All manner of medieval palaces used their flooring, for example Ca d'Oro in Venice, not to be much outdone by St. Marks cathedral, had a nice Cosmati styled floor put in on their canal entrance.

An art mosaic project I'm working on requires traditional stones that the Cosmati used once upon a time. I have had some tiny pieces of green serpentine left over, so I've made some of these into triangles like those typically used in the pavements of the Cosmati. I was thinking of making a replica Ca d'Oro floor, but for now, I will just use these triangles for making some 'Cosmati' cufflinks.

That's the kind of thing Bored Neoclassical Guy would do, right?

All My Style Went Into the Sweater (Tutti i Miei Moda per il Maglione)

2010-11-28T21:02:00.006-06:00

So I went clothes shopping not too long ago. I'm the kind who goes into the store, gets what I need and am out again with the surgical precision of a special forces commando. I don't go often, but when I do I like to buy everything that is necessary for at least half of a year.

In Italy, I was very impressed with their clothes shops. Of course without a discount, some of the clothing in the window can be quite expensive. I've always admired Italians and their love of clothes and fashion, from people walking on a Saturday afternoon in Salerno to strolling the wide avenues of Pompeii in 79 AD. Sometimes I wish that there was no need in the US for websites like this.

All that being said, I've recently found a blog which combines two great things, style and ancient mosaics. To take some style cues from Maggie at Mosaicology, I have painstakingly handcrafted a sweater with guilloche.

Are my color choices great, or do I need to go back to the mall?

It's Cold Outside (Il Suo Freddo)

2010-11-09T07:48:00.009-06:00

Global warming and rising ocean levels were a problem the ancient Romans might have dealt with to a degree. They were a few shades closer to the last ice age and didn't build as frequently as the 'strip malls' which go up here in the modern US every day. I worry about water levels in Venice destroying great architecture and history whenever I go to Italy.

Modern handwringing about the loss of ice caps and glaciers prompted me to think about the situation.

People say 'global warming' but really the only observable phenomenon I see are less ice and some upper atmospheric changes. Since my 'junk science' thinking can't come up with anything at the moment for the upper atmosphere, indulge me my ramblings about ice today...

When fresh water is floating around in salt water, what is the actual mechanism for melting scientifically speaking? Well if you are like most people and said a rise in temperature, then you are partially correct, on the surface. But consider that the ice is floating in near freezing cold salt water, which is actually colder than freshwater ice (back in ancient times, they say the Romans made ice cream with salt water to make things even colder).

And, there is no shortage of volume of that colder-than-ice salt water compared to the thin ice crust. Even large glaciers are not nearly as tall as the depths of the Arctic Ocean, right?

So I understand the melting of freshwater ice in salt water to be related to the edges (of the ice that is). The salt particles contaminate the freshwater ice and lower its freezing point, which if the temperature is just under freshwater freezing, the freshwater ice melts away. The ice on the caps is replenished with weather systems (dropping fresh water rain, aka 'snow'), but maybe that's not enough? What if there are other particles (air delivered chemicals or residue) which lower the freezing point of the polar ice like salt does?

My half-baked solution to all this would be create enormous desalinization / filtration plants at the poles to remove contaminants; a kind of 'Santa's Workshop' of fresh water. The fresh water would then be pumped onto remaining polar ice where it could refreeze because it is still colder than freezing in those places.

To do this on such a large scale to affect ocean levels would require enormous power, and nuclear fission springs to mind. Of course, that generates large amounts of heat which could be counter productive unless it was used really really efficiently. Does anyone have a cheap limitless power source that operates at low temperatures to be used in this project? Will you give that to me for free?

The First Pitch Service (il Primo Tiro)

2010-11-02T07:01:00.008-05:00

I would like to take this opportunity to announce the availability of my official 'First Baseball Pitch' service which will be available to any major league baseball game held in a stadium with projected attendees of 35,000 or more.
Sure, you could go with a President of the US, a former hall of fame athelete, or some other celebrity, but why do that when Bored Neoclassical Guy could bring a stunning 57.5 mph fastball high and away?

For an extra $5000, I'll even ride out to the pitcher's mound on a two horse chariot.

Way to go this season, Texas Rangers! And, SF Giants, not bad either!

Bees and the Birds (Api e Uccelli)

2010-09-30T17:51:00.010-05:00

Do you ever stop and think about bees?

I don't usually but I was prompted to as I was doing a bit of late night sleep-inducing reading through 'Georgics', a relatively new bestseller* by Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil).

*relatively, in geological time

Whilst he was busy making his 2000 year old points about how weather can affect a hive, I started thinking about how hot it gets here in the Texas summers. Do their wax cells give way and the bees all ride out in a tsunami of hot honey and melted wax? Is this one reason there seem to be fewer bees now? Does 'hot honey and melted wax' sound like an adult film title?

These and other questions were now keeping me awake, thoroughly counteracting the tranquilizing effect the book had on me just moments before.

I guess people have been using the fruits of bee labor for a while now. After artisans of thousands of years ago painted fresco walls, Vitruvius recommended using wax mixed with olive oil over it. I do this for all my pompeii style frescoes.
Wax seemed to have many uses back in antiquity, as an adhesive additive, flavorless and odor free chewing gum, a disinfectant, a carving medium for bronze casting, the list goes on.

I like to eat honey, particularly over Greek style yogurt for breakfast, what about you guys? Greek legend said that Pythagoras (the triangle dude for the geometrically challenged) ate only honey.

The symbolism of bees is ever present through history, sometimes at the highest levels. Napoleon used it on his coat of arms, and before him the Merovingian (French) monarchs going way back to mid fifth century. Even the Egyptians used the bee symbol as a hieroglyph and to indicate lower Egypt.

The ancient Greeks at Delphi had a beehive shaped stone that the priestess sat in front of as she alledgedly divined the future (some scholars indicated she was refered to as the 'bee of Pythia'). To digress, I've actually seen that stone. Not the original one, which hasn't been seen in years, but the replacement ordered from the Omphalos Store (tm).

Near Valencia in Spain a cave drawing made before recorded history was found with remarkable detail, especially for back then without Photoshop or Etch-a-Sketches or anything.

For more interesting esoteric bee-and-honey-in-antiquity knowledge and postulations, check out Andrew Gough. He draws an interesting link between bulls, bees, and stars, and there's even a Latin lesson in there somewhere.

While you are doing all of that, I might go have a Michelob Honey Wheat or two, you know, like Pythagoras would have done. But if I'm in a hurry, maybe a Mickey's?

ps - Is it just me or is there a resemblance between beer and honey?

Fore! (Davanti?)

2010-09-17T15:49:00.007-05:00

It was a sunny pleasant afternoon riding along in the golf cart on the oceanside course, Punta Borinquen. Four of us had decided to play, and so far we were all shooting well. Except for that one guy who had only played once before and was having trouble.

Azure and light green water lapped up the beaches on the north and west sides of the seventh hole. The views were amazing, even with the nearest edge of the hurricane hundreds of miles off to the east. The golf course itself was located next to an old US airbase now being used as a small commercial airstrip. I looked over my right shoulder to see a twin prop taking off. Just a great time on a fantastic course.

Two of us had teed off already and were leisurly driving up the fairway. I took a swig of the local beer when suddenly the roof of the golf cart seemed to collapse on my head. With excruciating pain and finding it difficult to breathe for a few seconds, I jumped out of the cart with hands on head. 'Stunned' and 'disoriented' were the words which best described my state of mind. Once I realized the roof hadn't collapsed and I had not been either shot in the head or struck by lightning (there were dark clouds to the south), my attention turned to the novice player who had just teed off.

Newbie was 50 yards away and had hit the ball extremely hard. The ball had rocketed at precisely the correct trajectory both underneath the roof of a moving cart, yet above the back windshield with a godlike precision that would shame NASA, JPL, and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories combined.

We are talking about a moving target less than the size of a dime, because the ball had struck the middle back part of my ballcap right where the little metal brad thing was located. The little metal thing in the center of the ballcap functioned much like a chisel to focus all the energy of the golfball to the one spot on the back of my head. I can take quite a bit of pain, but that was just ridiculously bad.

I pieced together that it had riccocheted off the metal brad and had hit the plastic top of the cart with enough force to make a large 'bang' sound. So that was why I thought the cart top had collapsed on my head. Within seconds, I had a huge lump and was a bit worried about concussion or brain swelling. Luckily, I still had some room in my skull, particularly evident since I went golfing with a newbie and didn't think to stay behind the tees when he was dealing this sort of death and destruction.

What Are Rabbits Good For Again? (Coniglio Nate Casino)

2010-08-30T18:54:00.010-05:00

I don't know about you all, but occasionally I find myself at odds with wild rabbits. Sure, they are cute and fluffy, but around these parts I'm convinced that they have an evil attitude. Allow me to explain.

I've been working outside on some tile and mosaic around the house (yet another reason for being kind of sparse with postings). Part of all that involves leaving cut pieces of marble in a handy spot to mortar down. Well, I'm sure Mr. Bunny thought it would be so hilarious to leave a single rabbit poop right near where all my brown marble pieces are located. Not several, just one well placed round rabbit leaving.

Why wouldn't the rabbit go here instead, on the nice freshly laid marble in an exotic pattern? I know I would, you know, if I were the 'go to the bathroom outdoors' sort.

The first day it happened, I chalked it up to random chance. Dumb animals walking around doing their business where ever the moment found them? I used an old broom to brush it away.

The next fresh dewy morning you could imagine my surprise as I found another single piece of joy left for me in about exactly the same spot. Well at that point I was starting to get a shadowy glimpse of the evil intellect I've been up against. I then angrily sealed off the trails under the fence with various slabs of limestone, thwarting the cottontail's return.

Two days later, after the little bastard managed to dig another entrance, I find a poop not in the 'normal' spot, but directly on an aluminum architect square it had seen me measuring mosaic layout with over by the marble pieces. Oh, now it's personal! They are horrible little plague carrying pointy eared rodent-monsters. I'm convinced they are smarter than people give them credit for.

Concentration (Ricordando)

2010-08-08T18:05:00.004-05:00

Do you remember the game played as a child in which a large group of cards had images of different objects printed on them?
The point of the memory game was to turn one over and remember the location of the matching card (there were only two of each).
Unless a player was just freakishly lucky, it would involve having seen the matching item on a previous guess.

Well, I used to be the world champion at that game*.
All my life I've been blessed and cursed with a really lucid and complete memory. I can remember early things like standing in a crib crying when I was almost two and the lightning outside scared me. Minutae of things that happened at various times in my life are easily accessible.

* not really certified by an independent auditing firm, I just speculate
based on my performance relative to everyone else I had ever seen play.

Anyway, the memory has been helpful in my academic and professional life, but sometimes it creates awkward situations, as a few months back at a friend's wedding in a historic mansion in Dallas.

While the bride and groom were getting photos done with their respective families, everyone was milling around the open bars outside. I noticed a dark haired lady who appeared to be a single mom having trouble keeping her daughter from running around all over the place at the fancy event. We talked for a moment, and then I recognized her.

You see kids, sometimes, on the internets and in magazine publications, racy photos of scantily clad women sometimes *ahem* appear. It was not as fun as you would think meeting someone that you've, um, observed in a different setting.

When dinner was about to start, I noticed that I was seated at her table. She seemed like a fairly well grounded lady, even though she complained about her ex a bit too much in a wedding environment. The uncomfortableness of knowing a bit more about her than the rest of the people at the wedding soon faded.

If you ever find yourself in a comparable situation, don't say a word about it. Are you wondering if I did, because of the way I just said 'don't say a word about it'?

I did not!

Strategy of the Famous (Strategia Famoso di Scipione)

2010-07-20T00:19:00.007-05:00

I've been thinking about strategy lately. Some people think of strategy as being the best and most foolproof way to pick lottery numbers, others think in terms of winning methods for sports teams, or how to get to the last level on some video game? Maybe some think about exactly how many apple-tinis bought for a lady at a bar will tip the scales in his favor.

What kind of strategy do you guys think about?

Um, me, well I've been pondering military history, and how lessons of the past could apply in modern times. This past week, I'd read a biography on one of the great military minds of all time. The book was 'Scipio Africanus' by Hart who drew heavily on the ancient biographers Polybius and Livy.

Written back in 1929, it covered the battles at a detailed level and known life of the one general who put Rome on the path to greatness, Scipio. He's even mentioned in the Italian national anthem because of the legendary battlefield antics, both tactical and strategic.

He was a master of keeping strategic intention hidden from the enemy, and also of adapting to the situation. For example in Carthage when facing off against Hannibal who had numerical superiority and war elephants charging forward to tear up the lines, Scipio had instructed soldiers to blast trumpets to panick the advancing elephants. This caused many to run back and kill the enemy.

As a conqueror of Spain and Africa, Scipio used near perfect economy of force to get the job done and win a lasting peace. He always had the 'grand strategy' big picture in mind. Unfortunately in Rome, the politicians were usually more of a problem-creating force than a help (they broke treaties that Scipio gained with all the great battles). Come to think of it, politicians tend to mess things up generally speaking anyway.

The recent US controversy about Gen. McChrystal resigning might have had a deeper root of pure successful strategy being hindered by politicians. There you have a general that is somewhat successful and getting things done, but something caused a lapse in respect of the chain of command. People in positions like that don't just shoot off thier mouth to mock leaders unless something else is going on. In my opinion, McChrystal should have respected the position if he didn't respect the man, but we'll never know now.

If we are actually in wars (not some stupid police action), we should be in to win them. Not just lip service to winning, but kill them all and let someone sort them out kind of war. The kind of war that Scipio would fight, having clear objectives in his grand strategy, not a war by committee.

Anthropomorphists and Clouds (Personificazione della Nube)

2010-07-08T19:03:00.008-05:00

A few days ago, I looked up from my outdoor mosaic work into the evening sky and instead of the usual bright blue that usually accompanies extraordinarily hot Texas summers with a drought, I saw clouds. But not just any clouds! They were the kind of clouds that are worthy of a JMW Turner painting as in Hannibal Crossing the Alps* here.

*Not to be confused with Hannibal from 'The A-Team'

They were the kind of clouds whose tops rise for miles but patchy enough to interplay with the light of a setting sun. The kinds which beckon your hands to gingerly yet lovingly caress and squeeze them in a way that shows you respect them.

Uh right, I later thought about how ancient peoples viewed natural phenomenon like this. Not many programs were on their satellite television sets back then, so weather displays like this must have been one of the best entertainment values of the time.

So many cultures through time have personified (anthropomorphised) these natural forces of clouds and wind. Meso-American cultures had their Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, Turks had an elaborate wind / weather personfication hierarchy that still kind of baffles me because of the complexity. The Greeks and Romans had different 'people' for each damned direction that the wind blows. The last available subdirection of 'South by Southwest' was named 'Avstin', I think.

In Mérida Spain (Lusitania for those of you with really old gps files) they have a nice imaginative mosaic showing the personification of the south wind (Notvs) pushing along clouds depicted as a woman (Nvbs). Check out José Luis Santos Fernández's blog who took these great photos of the archaeological site and describes the personifications of the Mithraeum house Natura mosaic.

I can only hope that some day an ancient mosaic or fresco will be found showing a tornado, tidal wave, or volcano, with accompanying text that trails off 'Arrggh!'. Or, maybe more acurately, it might read 'vae mihiiiii!!!' Until then, don't forget to stop and look up once in a while. You might miss something interesting.

COPS is Better Live (Distretto di Polizia è Meglio in Reale)

2010-06-29T13:29:00.006-05:00

Recently, I was driving home from a film, 'Get Him To the Greek', at around 1 am last Saturday. The film wasn't the greatest, but some parts were mildly amusing.

On the way back home, I happened to take a road that was three lanes on each side, yet had a very slow 30 mph speed limit. At about the time I realized I was going somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% too fast, I see the cheerful blue and red police lights behind me.

Resigned to getting a speeding violation of some sort, I signal and get over to the right. The police officer then shoots past me on the left (metaphorically by driving, no guns were involved) and turns off the flashing lights. So, I think 'Great, I get a lucky warning from the lenient officer tonight.' This notion is particularly reinforced when I see him stopped at the intersection light down the road in front of me, because if he was on a call surely he would have kept driving.

By the time I begin to catch up with him at the light, it changed green and the police officer drove on ahead quickly. As I'd just been warned, I decided not to push my luck and drove comfortably under the limit.

A few moments pass as the officer disappears from sight. I then see a white pickup truck rapidly overtaking me on the left. The truck barrels past me, zooming along at least 45% over the speed limit. Surely the officer was not going to be as kind with a whole 15% more over the limit speed compared to my transgression.

Well, I get to the top of the hill in front of me just in time to see the officer's vehicle parked in the median turn on all of his lights. Incredibly, the truck speeds on and jumps over a curb to the right and drives down below a bridge into a nature park area with trees and dirt and things like that. I can't say that it was unexpected to see the police follow the truck down, but it was still shocking to witness.

When I get on the bridge, my headlights are illuminating a figure in a brown tshirt running as fast as I've seen anyone run in a long time (away from the ditched truck). The officer quickly adjusted a spotlight on the runner and drove after him. I'm pretty sure that he gave the suspect a gentle bump to persuade him not to run anymore, but I couldn't be sure because of all the dust that was billowing up. It was very much like watching an episode of COPS from my vantage point on the bridge above the action.

It eventually dawned on me that I had been slowing down to see the events unfold. I began to wonder if having a running car stopped very close to a possible violent felon on the run from the police was a good personal safety lifestyle choice. Carefully weighing the alternatives of seeing an excellent chase vs. getting violently carjacked, I decide to drive on and read about it in the paper the next day. Unfortunately, as of yet I haven't seen the story printed.

So was this all good karma (not getting the citation) because of my bad experience (having to see 'Get Him To the Greek')? I may never know. Anyway, congrats to the local police for being on the ball and willing to risk life and limb to protect and serve. Although, in this particular case, I'd imagine they were risking the suspect's limbs a bit more than their own. I guess the important thing to remember is do not run from police, you will not win.

Fun 'cops' show in Italian.

Here is a fun police chase.

Another love tap to stop the suspect.

Snake Between the Tanks (il Serpente Tra Serbatoio di Stoccaggio)

2010-06-23T19:11:00.015-05:00

It's hot outside here in the Lone Star state today and the scientists who study snakes (herpetologists) are conjecturing that they become more 'bitey' when it's hot. The slithering lizards have never bothered me as much as say, spiders. Just look at that smiling smug scary bastard...

But, I still shun snakes in the wilds on the extremely rare occasions I actually see them.

Even though I'd lived for a while in a tiny oil drilling town west of Fort Worth as a teenager where the snake-to-people ratio was around 3:1, I had only seen one water moccasin (Agkistrodon piscivorus) in the three years there. And that was just at my granddad's artificial fishing lake I went out to to fish all day and play guitar (they call them 'stock tanks' round these parts).

Just for future reference, at 80 yards, it is really difficult to peg a snake in the water with a .22 lr. Or at least it was back then, but I might be a better shot now.

I had heard rattlers in the scrub brush while out on dusty oil leases, sure, but never actually met up with one. My uncle was not so lucky.

One hot day he was out on a lease adjusting pressure at two of the wells flowing into a group of 'tank batteries'. The tank batteries are basically huge steel silos connected to the flow pipes from the wells, whose primary reason for existence is to hold oil until a local processing company drives a truck out to purchase the oil. Sometimes there is also a balsamic vinegar tank so you can make a huge salad with the farmer's lettuce.

Anyway, getting back to the story, another purpose of the tank batteries apparently is to attract diamondback rattlesnakes. My uncle went walking by the point where two tanks came together towards the stairs up top so the fill level could be checked (all part of making sure the oil purchasing trucks are not getting a free lunch of any kind). He heard the rattling noise and when he instinctively turned towards it, he saw the snake partially coiled between the tanks.

From the snake's perspective, the distance to my uncle must have been too far away for a reliable strike. My uncle stared at it for a fraction of a second which I'm sure seemed like forever, and the snake *rapidly* slithered out towards him. He described it as one of those instances in which you don't have time to get turned around because the snake was moving towards him so fast.

He started running backwards to keep the snake from closing the distance too quickly. The snake slowed enough where my uncle could turn around and finish running away properly. After that, my father usually checked that particular lease.

At this point, I'm compelled to mention that in ancient Pompeii, snakes were typically painted on the walls as a weird sort of guardian spirit for the family painted or sculpted around the 'house shrine' called a lararium.

I think I'm ok with ancient art snakes, I'll just be avoiding the Copperheads and other living poisonous snakes this weekend. You guys do know that a pointy or triangularish snake head / skull usually (but not always) indicates that the snake's venom is toxic? What snake stories do you have?

Oh also, Heather gave me a meme for six things I'm a 'master' at.

I guess I have to pick in no particular order:
1) sculpting / carving things (I really wish I could paint and draw better, but still working on it)
2) music related stuff - I compose, have perfect pitch, etc.
3) I have inexplicably strong curl strength, being able to do several sets of 160lbs (and not just with my dominant arm, haha).
4) I have uncanny balance, skateboarding, snowboarding, it's all innate, init?
5) I love anagrams and completely dominate any game of scrabble I'm in.
6) Because of my time working with restaurant managers in a large corporate office, I can grill and cook better than most.

Advertising and Drinks (Alcolico e Pubblicità)

2010-06-16T17:22:00.014-05:00

Another hot summer day is winding down in Dallas. As I look out my window, I can see the swimmers are out in force at the downtown Sheraton. I have the strangest urge to mix a martini with ginger Skyy vodka, but I can't exactly put my finger on why.

Ohhh, right, probably because of the twenty story outdoor banner in the right section of the photo with the gorgeous red headed girl with her dress apparently up behind her head?

When did these monumental banners become standard? Sure, in antiquity, emperors like Augustus and Constantine had ginormous statues and monuments made (and probably banners which have long since disintegrated). But, I'll bet they were not visible from Arizona like the one I'm looking at this afternoon.

Computers, die sublimation, and massive vinyl printers are making billboards out of everything. Surely it's only a matter of time before the moon itself is used to sell beer or something. I wonder if advertisers realize that I'm not really going to be paying attention to that ad for toothpaste wrapped on the Hummer in traffic two lanes over. Mostly because there are several other cars with the same type of overly colorful commercial spew all over them before my eyes ever get to that.

Maybe huge monumental advertising and banners could be North Korea's primary export going forward. They must be well positioned for it from a capital equipment and labor standpoint with all the propaganda banners everywhere.

With all of that being said, I still want to buy a die sublimation printer and reams of 52" vinyl so I can adorn my sedan with topical subjects every few days, maybe even every few hours. Imagine the fun of leaving a professional sporting event with the printout on your car with the exact score and some verbiage like, 'I can't believe that Romo threw three touchdowns in the last quarter, suck it Eagles.'

What gigantic advertising have you seen? Or do you just block this stuff out now like I try to? If you are a 'blocker', try my rocks margarita this week to help:

5 parts Sauza Three Generations tequila,

10 parts Sweet & Sour mix (NOT the stuff you dip eggrolls in, the greenish mix such as Jose Cuervo brand, sheesh, really???)

2 parts Triple Sec

2 parts Cointreau

1 part Dole pineapple juice

Lots and lots of crushed ice so it takes away the tart / sweetness.

ps - Increase the tequila parts if you've seen more than 20 monumental ads today.

and stay cool

Consider the Ivy (Pensiamo di Edera)

2010-06-08T16:51:00.009-05:00

I've had quite an ivy problem outside these days, the stuff is everywhere.

Here is a picture of poison ivy, have you ever been affected by it? I think MyLittleBecky posted a while back that she had a brief foray into the exciting world of urushiol oil and poison ivy.

One place on the web claims to have a plant product preventative / cure called jewelweed. To me though, that sounds a bit like some sort of illicit plant substance coveted by a blonde singer with an acoustic guitar.

I think that I might have affected by poison ivy once, but it was probably not from the vegetation. Is that her hair, or is Princess Leia happy to see you?

I've tried Roundup (tm) and other herbicides, but it never seems to affect the ivy like it does the other plants. I even jumped up and down on it in hopes of slowing it down, but it just keeps growing. I've never encountered a two dimensional plant that is so resistant to all the usual control methods, it's as hard as stone.

It looks like a very old vine. And, speaking of that, I think I'll pull a nice old Zinfandel from the cellar this afternoon.

Local Television Production (i Bravi Ragazzi)

2010-06-01T12:02:00.004-05:00

Driving up Greenville Avenue in Dallas at happy hour time one hot afternoon not too very long ago, I happened to notice a boom camera, police directing traffic, dodgy 'roadie' types standing around with microphones and wires, and several 'gawkers' along the opposite side of the road.

Individually, any of these things could be dismissed out of hand. But, all of these items taken in together pointed to some sort of organized activity, a 'production' if you will...
It seemed to center around a local nightspot and this bizarre 1970's style F-body car. So I put down my right window and snapped a quickie with my phone cam.

I supposed it was a motion picture production because we haven't had adult television* produced here since 'Walker, Texas Ranger'. I think the lady that produced the 'Barney' kids show was from Plano, just northeast of Dallas, but I haven't been keeping tabs on those sorts of programs and whether or not they are still being churned out.

* adult television not in the sense of 'plain brown wrapper'... Also, I realize that some people did not consider 'Walker, Texas Ranger' as adult television, although purportedly some people over the age of 18 viewed it somewhat regularly.

It turns out that Dallas has attracted production of 'The Good Guys', which was supposed to be shot in Los Angeles originally. The series seems to be a throwback to late seventies early eighties buddy cop shows.

Despite not usually viewing much television, I feel compelled to watch it because they'll drop in various landmark references like 'Highland Park' and other things which make me chuckle. If you recall the film 'X-Files' they showed Dallas as some sort of West Texas desert plain. It's green people, there *are* trees and grass here.

It's kind of weird that Tom Hank's kid is in this. I hope at some point in the series that he will yell 'WILSON!!!!!' in a vague reference to 'Castaway'. My hopes are not too high, but it's interesting to see that television production has increased close to 100% around Dallas this year.

Big Round Numbers (Un Centinaio e C’ho il Dente Avvelenato)

2010-05-26T11:28:00.006-05:00

Well I checked the count thing and this is my 100th posting. I don't usually make a big deal out of large round numbers, because if people only had nine fingers I would have been celebrating my 81st post as if it were something special. And the year 1458 (9^3 * 2) would have been when all the computers probably would have had trouble. Calixtus III might have died in a related airplane crash.

Other than the extent to which other people's superstition about big round numbers affect me (like stock market indexes, for some dumb psychological reason), I don't really give much thought to them. I do maybe believe in a bit of karma now though.

Yesterday while driving to work, a road crew stopped their work trucks in my lane and started placing cones immediately. It was annoying because they didn't wait for the light to change, which would have given people the ability to change lanes and continue on with life. So I was stuck behind the trucks and the grinning idiot worker placing down 5 feet of helpful road cones.

Like anyone in this situation, I indicated that I needed to get over to the right into the next lane of traffic. So as the cars whizzed by, eventually the light at the next intersection changed and everyone started slowing down as the line of traffic to my right built up. About to turn in behind a car just in front of me to the right, I did one last scan of the mirror and saw a gigantic white SUV speeding up and cutting off my only escape. On purpose. Because they were being sociopathic. Really.

So like a good ticked off individual, I layed into the horn. They thought it was funny, one of them pointed. I got behind them in the right lane as the light ahead changed to green and cars started moving. They are looked back at me, so it was most unfortunate that they didn't notice the light changing yellow, then red.

But, I'm pretty sure they saw the bright flash of the camera controlled intersection as they accidently ran through the red light. I waved.

Recent Race (Gara Ubriaco)

2010-05-18T22:10:00.009-05:00

On Saturday night, I went to an outdoor wine tasting at a local doctor friend's home. It was a great event with about 50 people, a live band, and strung party lights on the enormous porte cochere (that's a big driveway, not a portable WC or something like that). I'd played cards with this guy before and as things were winding down, a group of us made arrangements to play a cash game this coming Friday.

Someone changed the subject from going out to the rifle range to try out so-and-so's 50 caliber semi-auto rifle to the subject of betting on car racing (you know, typical Texas chit chat). The esteemed doctor host then said 'Hey, you all should check out my son's four wheeler ATV, maybe we can race that?'

His neighbor and coworker at the hospital was in, and then reluctantly, all of us were. I don't know if it was the thirty bottles of previously bagged and numbered wine talking, maybe the tequilla shots after, or even the expensive cigars, but we all made our way out to the street following the host pushing the gasoline-powered knobby wheeled ATV out to the street.

It was kind of late (1 AM) and the crowd had thinned out, so four of us stood there, ready to impress the women of the party who still remained safely listening to music in aforementioned porte cochere (Note to self for future reference: impressing the women after drinking is precisely how all kinds of jack-assed things happen). It was dark, of course there was no helmet, because, hey you didn't want to be labled a pu$$y.

The objective was to race from a starting point at the curb around the block in a rectangle about .75 mile or a bit over 1km. The doctors fired up the IPhones with timer apps down to the millisecond. The first guy pulled down to the curb with the engine sputtering. Apparently he knew everything about ATVs so he was going for the quick intimidation win.

At the mark, he was off! At the first left turn about 80 meters / 250 feet, he almost fell off the danged thing with a sharp turn. We stood there for a while and didn't hear or see a trace of him, then we heard the lawn-mowerish engine whine of the ATV and between some houses we caught sight of the headlight and a crouched silhouette on the ATV. After a few more seconds he came back into view and the doctors clicked off the timers at one minute and three seconds. Everyone was duly impressed.

Unfortunately, my turn was next to follow the speed demon. It had been forever since I'd been on one of these, I think the last time being a bonfire / drinking party in the small oil town west of Fort Worth where I went to high school.

After some embarrasing searching, I finally found the thumb throttle (it wasn't a throttle like on a motorcycle), everyone shouted go, and I 'floored' it. Halfway down to the first turn, I stood up on it as I was racing along (so if I had fallen, at least people would have had a good laugh about all of my trial). Then I quickly crouched down for the first turn. I remembered from way back that extra stabilization on the turns was beneficial, so I put down my right leg and my foot was out to the side scraping the ground as I made the left 90 degree turn.

I did this a few more times barely reducing the throttle on the turns and going all out full throttle on the straightaways. Everyone said I clocked in at 58 seconds, and at first I didn't believe them. But then I watched everyone in sequence trying to beat my time, the doctor who owned the ATV, even the first guy with a second try, but my record stands until this day (of course, it's only been three days).

Delayed Un-gratification

2010-05-17T07:32:00.006-05:00

So on Friday I was checking through a particularly large pile of mailbox leavings.
Throwing out the small book's worth of ads and credit card offers, I noticed the rare gem of a real piece of correspondence. Well, not actually, it was from Hertz. For those of you in a different country, oh wait, I guess you have Hertz there too.

Opening the letter, my eyes fell on some charges and official looking documents from the municipal police of Como and Venice. The pages had their logo anyhow. I started daydreaming about how incredibly scenic both of those places are, but then quickly snapped out of it. It had been around seven months since I was over in Italy. My first thought was that this was some sort of scam and I quickly doublechecked the postmark for 'Nigeria' or some such place.

Unfortunately though, these infractions were real and the kind of thing those of us from the US are not familiar with. More specifically, I had driven into some limited traffic zones (ZTL) while touring around with my hired car. The ZTL areas are accessible to local drivers only, and only during certain times and moon phases.

The signs themselves are quite small and sometimes difficult to spot. Luckily, they used the red circle on a white background so it's a bit like 'Where's Waldo' (Wally for the UK types). Of course this finding game will cost you around 100 euro per infraction automatically enforced with computerized cameras. 'Where's Waldo' never kicked me in the nuts like this...

*Actual size of sign...

These limited traffic zones seem nefarious to visitors because as you are driving along trying not to be hit or get completely lost, the tendency is to follow other vehicles. You know, so you don't end up driving demolition derby on the floor of the Colosseum, or maybe floating behind a gondola in the Venice lagoon.

The actual purpose of the Zona Traffico Limitato is noble, it helps keep the old monuments in the town centers less exposed to pollution and not as many cars actually on the road so it looks nicer. But, it can't be ignored that this is a major money maker for the cities of Italy. I read a statistic that just the city of Firenze (Florence) rakes in 53 million euro per year in ZTL tickets.

Trying to remember the specific times of my infractions, I thought of driving in Como and remembered cutting across town to avoid driving out in the wrong direction (I had to get to my rented villa before dark and it was late).
I still can't remember what I did wrong in Venice. I have to presume it was on the land side (Mestre) because there aren't many roads on Venice itself and my rental car wasn't amphibious.

Since I remember being guilty on the first ticket at least, and it's impossible to fight the bureaucracy, I'll pay of course. I plan on paying my two tickets when the euro goes less than the dollar in a few weeks. Hah.

The weekend was great, the culmination of which was a wine tasting party which ended with time trial racing on a four wheeler ATV in an expensive neighborhood at 1:30 AM, but that is a post for another time.

Voting (Suffragium)

2010-05-11T05:51:00.007-05:00

I've experienced a political confluence since some of the bloggers from the UK wrote about the recent election, and this past weekend, two friends of mine ran for local political office to keep their seats as city council members.

My friends both won, partly because of my considerable influence in the local political landscape and also because they ran unopposed. For the UK readers, I had nothing to do with David Cameron's win.

After thousands of years voting has not changed all that much, computerized touchscreen voting booths with smartcard ballots were used this past weekend. It's written in ancient sources that ancient Greeks used a large show of hands to vote and that an estimator (who I'm certain was impartial in every vote) tallied it all up.

Romans were fond of giving everyone black and white pebbles so the voter could drop the color representing their choice into a voting pot. I wonder if when exiting the polling place (comitia), there were laws about not checking the pockets of voters? A candidate's thugs might have threatened to beat the tar out of people who still had the 'wrong' stone in their possession.

But luckily, the pot and stoner voting (smoothly increasing hits, oops there's another one) was usually used to pass or repeal laws instead of candidate selection. Leges Tabellariae moved the ancients away from pebbles and into paper or lead tablets for the votes, at which time the ancient Romans sneered at the slightly more ancient Romans and called them animals.

To change topics completely, has anyone ever had a sunburn so painful, it feels like you are floating down a 'lazy river' of fire on your back? Or maybe two hundred midgets are putting out their cigarettes on your back simultaneously?

I was out working on stone this weekend and forgot to wear a shirt, or sunscreen. And I'm paying for it now, still, dearly. Normally I notice the sun starting to affect me, but the cool wind kept me unaware that outside was actually a convection oven.

The Stars At Night (Stelle Della Notte)

2010-05-03T11:35:00.008-05:00

Last night poolside with a glass of wine in hand, I looked up into the night sky. The moon wasn't out yet, so even in brightly lit Dallas the stars were plainly visible. Dallas isn't the heart of Texas, so pay no mind to the song lyrics 'The stars at night are big and bright'.

First, I found the 'North Star', or Polaris as it sometimes called since the ancient peoples named it after a popular brand of automated pool sweepers.

They say that we might have a different North Star soon, in a few thousand years.

Then my eyes swept westward and I noticed an unusual star, or it might have been a small cluster of stars. The center one was white and got noticably brighter while I was looking at it. Then a green light emanated from the cluster, which I thought was fairly unusual. The white light in the center seemed to pulse at a steady interval, almost like a strobe light.

By this time I thought about calling NASA to report it, because it seemed so strange. I heard some faint noise coming from the direction of the star cluster and the light changed from a green to a red. While this was going on, the stars passed overhead and turned south.

In outdoor project news, I set out chalklines for more of my detailed tile work. A handy trick for making sure the wind and rain do not erase your elaborately laid and measured chalk lines is to put clear acrylic spray paint over the lines. I guess it wouldn't protect against acid or falling planes, but for normal events it's fine.

Is anyone having issues with pollen this spring? I put myself to the test this weekend at an outdoor art show called 'The Cottonwood Festival'. (At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to Cottonwood). Worth it though because I bought two works and found some higher than normal quality local artists. Ciao

Showdown at the Lowes (Scontro di Butteros)

2010-04-27T00:00:00.007-05:00

It was a a typical showdown in the old west town of Dallas. I was moseying out of the Lowes general hardware store with a 50 pound bag of mortar, and I looked up into the noon sun. Dabbing my brow, I knew summer was fixin' to be here whether I wanted it or not.

I started out into the open but busy street in front of the store, but a large white wagon lurched forward a bit catching me off guard. A middle aged Victorian lady was moving it forward, seriously, she looked like she could have been a LDS member. I figured she reckoned she could get where she was going fore I was all the way out in the street.

So I squinted and squared off with the wagon showing no fear, but the wagon just stood still like a hungry bobcat stalking a spring foal. The driver's eyes showed cold like death from a cold on a cold day. My foot twitched, then her hand went down to the gearshift... But then I just changed direction and walked around behind her to get to my car.

And not to bore with too much about my yard, but this weekend I proceeded to do some tile layout for the deck. Here it is some pattern layout pre mortar and leveling. Think of this like the paid advertising for the story above. In the afternoon sun the marble sparkles, it's like a monument or something :)

A Different Type of Hedge Fund

2010-04-21T10:30:00.007-05:00

In the interest of making the yard similar to the palace of Versailles in some small ways, I've recently aquired *many* shrubs. Despite some formal botanist training at an institute of higher learning, I worry that I'm putting the plants too close together. Sure, maybe they will be a bit uncomfortable, but that's what I've hired them for, to look good.

Unfortunately, the rain has been spaced out just close enough that it has been too muddy to dig. It's kind of like if you are driving your own car, and waiting for an opening in the traffic to pull out onto the main road, but every car is spaced out just the tiniest bit too close to each other to be safe about it. Well, it's not much like that, but you get the idea. And the mud. sticks. to. everything. After 30 seconds in Blackland Prarie clay based soil, you are clodhopping around with 25 kg sandals, sliding off the end of the shovel.

I know, I know... they have people called 'gardeners' to do this kind of thing, but I'm pretty much a do-it-yourself kind of guy. In fact, the step treads and faces in the image above were cut and hand chiseled by yours truly (I mean my image above, not the image of Versailles garden which is immediately above).

To digress, I don't always just go to the store and buy beer. Sometimes, I grow the barley, harvest the kernels, soak them, let them sit in the sun until the sugars of the grain malts, then I mash the grain, boil it, pour in the yeast and then let it ferment for weeks. Then go through an elaborate bottling and quality control process.

Sometimes if you want your plants placed too close together, you have to do it yourself.

Still Great After All This Time

2010-04-19T17:53:00.003-05:00

Has it really been so long?

My Bologna (Comune di Bologna)

2010-04-08T14:48:00.010-05:00

In Italy, there are two towns named after foodstuffs (or was it the other way around?) that I visited on my last trip. Quick, take a guess what they are! Ok, time's up, put your pencils down and read more. In some ways they were very similar, but in my quick first impressions, they couldn't be more different.

The first town was Bologna. As a food, I generally detest bologna, putting it somewhere between 'Spam' and 'Egg Salad'. But names aside, I met a great family from Bologna on the train from Rome. They were an upper middle class husband and wife travelling with a college age daughter and younger son. They commented on my GPS and I struck up a conversation with them, for a while in Italian, but then we switched to English. Being the cosmopolitan people they were, fluency in multiple languages was easy for them.

The Italian lady made her own sculptures which she showed me on her cell phone and I showed her some of mine which she graciously complimented. The husband was busy at first talking with his daughter who was just recently engaged to be married, yet you could still see he considered her his little girl because their family was super close.

Over the trip, we all talked Italian and US politics, art, business and what it was like to live around Bologna. And, that was before I even arrived in the city. By the time we were all there, I had made genuine friends with like minded people and was actually a bit sad to say goodbye. The city was clean, historic, and home to professionals and the affluent. As a generalization, it seems like people in the North are more career oriented and strive for a really high standard of living.

Bologna has been known for its superior universities and as knowledge center since the middle ages. Maybe long enough for all the smartest people's genes to have amassed more concentratedly in one location. Needless to say, I really enjoyed my time around the city of Bologna.

The other food named town, (Did you guess Pisa? It's not the same as Pizza...) was Parma, as in 'parmesan cheese' and 'parma ham'. At this point, I have to mention that I consider parma ham extremely gross as it is uncooked.

I'd been driving for quite a while on the highway after killing a large apple juice and bottled water in Milan. I arrived around Parma by car on Sunday afternoon on my way to Firenza, and had to go to the WC so bad my berries were about to fall off. So instead of going to an 'Automat', I pulled off the A1 and headed to the city center of Parma over by the museum (of course). I parked in the awesome parking garage and didn't find a public restroom there. So I headed in the direction of the museum. Walked up the stairs, but they were closed, on a Sunday afternoon. At 2:00pm...

Ok, so I thought it can't be that hard to find an open restaurant to order whatever so I could use the toilet. Well, it *was* that hard. I walked across the courtyard of the museum and down *several* long city blocks before I could find anything at all open. Along the way, there were sandwich counters and a few other things which had absolutely no restrooms. I must have painfully walked 2 miles in ever-widening circles like a Coast Guard pilot looking for a capsize accident survivor before I finally found a restaurant with the qualifications for which I was looking.

For this reason, I will forever have an unfair bias against the city of Parma and their evil 'shut everything down at 2:00 pm' ways. Where food named towns are concerned, I'll always go to the city historically more friendly, that is, to my Bologna.

Another Reason Why the U.S. Postal Service Is Lame (Il Servizio Postale è Male)

2010-04-05T15:33:00.013-05:00

Today, I found myself needing to mail a letter at the big post office downtown in Dallas. I was ordering some glass pieces for more mosaic work, but needed to send some light samples in the envelope for color matching purposes.

With stamped letter in hand, I walked across the street to the large neoclassical building. The building itself is very impressive, and the classical influences are everywhere. From the thick marble slab covered walls (cippolino green and white I think), to the frescoed ceilings, it's how I would build a post office. Notice how even the grate in the photo below has the window pattern of the Curia Julia (ancient Roman senate house)?

Even the lamp post footings outside are inspired by furniture thousands of years old.

Instead of just dropping the letter in the slot for mailing, I wanted to get a weighing to make sure there was enough postage. Since I didn't have an extra stamp just to stick on there, I decided to wait in the short line since there are no more stamp machines. Things were moving along as the postal worker would say 'next please' after each quickly served customer. But at few people before my turn, a customer with a big shipping request delayed the guy at the window.

People behind me seemed like they were in a hurry, so I walked up to the window before the worker called out 'next please'. I think this filled the guy with an irrational rage, the likes of which in lies the phrase 'going postal'. He started counting money and doing other clerical work behind the counter as the line of customers continued to grow. Waiting patiently, I thought 'Ok, I will play your little game.' So out comes my phone, annnnd I'm browsing.

Well at this point some of the other people in line are getting very agitated, so they open a second window. Of course, by this point, I don't want to just walk over in front of the person behind me who has also been waiting for a long time.

Unbelievably, the guy continues to do other tasks without looking up, I can tell he's teaching me a lesson. He was also teaching everyone else in line what government bureaucracy is all about, and how things will be worse with more of it. The manager even walked over to the guy behind the counter and asked if he was ok!

Fifteen minutes later, he takes a personal phone call and walks away from the window... I had just finished reading one of Gwen's blog posts, so the next lady in line for the one functional postal employee offers to let me go first. He blinked first, I won! I think.

I hope that with government healthcare, I never have to wait at the window for an MRI or surgery or something. If I do, I'll wait for the guy at the window to fully say 'Next Please'.

Also, the irony is not lost on me that by the standards of some other countries I would like to live in, this is not a terrible bureaucracy (think utility companies in Italy). But, if we are becoming as bureaucratic as those nations, I would rather live and work around ancient history and beautiful scenery...

Books About Ancient Water and Disaster (Libri di Acqua Antichi e Disastri)

2010-03-22T08:10:00.009-05:00

I've just finished reading a book called Pompeii by Robert Harris. Not *just* now, it's not like the book is still in my hand as I'm setting it down while typing this.The book was an imaginative story set in ancient Italy in the days immediately before the eruption of Vesuvius. It was extraordinarily well researched, and even though I caught two historical mistakes, the presentation of the story was very novel. Whoa is that why they call those things 'novels'?

It followed an hour by hour timeline interwoven with documented historical events from the era, which as you can imagine for me was a good read.I won't give away plot points, but there is a strong chance in this book that the volcano erupts at the end.

The main character of the story was a maintenance engineer assigned to work on the various aqueducts around the bay of Naples. I know a few things about the aqueducts, having spent some time around Pont du Gard just north of Nimes, France.

Here are some photos I took of the famous above ground part of the aqueduct. Most all of the aqueducts were below ground, except for these grand bridgey parts. The whole area around there is great, you can kayak on the river (great fun, I highly recommend Kayak Vert for both this place and Fontaine de Vaucluse) and the natural marble outcroppings are fantastic to look at.
Notice the huge shadow the 160 foot tall aqueduct casts on the river?

You can see the flow chanel for the water here, look at all the sediment buildup on the floor. I wonder in ancient Romans had 'Evian'(tm) as an alternative?

As a quick digression about the area around Pont du Gard, did you know that the town of Nimes is the namesake of the mythological 'Nemesis'? A Greek goddess who personified vengeful fate against mortals who were excessively arrogant or tried to achieve too much. Hubris / blind ambition was apparently not appreciated back then, especially by the Roman generals who retired here and patronized the Nemesis temple. Maybe their patronage was motivated by a desire to keep people below them in line?

When Gravity and Marble Don't Mix (Quando la Gravità e Marmi Fatto Problemi)

2010-03-11T17:18:00.006-06:00

Last week, I had a delivery firm move my tile from the freight terminal to my residence, what some insiders of the industry refer to as 'Residential' delivery.

The truck operator had some trouble understanding the driving directions I gave over the phone, and that should have served as warning that this wasn't a top notch crack team of delivery specialists. The driver's obnoxious nervous hyena laugh and constant grabbing his lower back and muttering should have been the second and third indicators, respectively. I deduced that if he was not in the delivery business, he'd be a parking lot attendant's assistant or maybe a dog thief.

After the truck pulled up and the driver lowered the hydraulic lift on the back of the truck, we went aboard so I could count the boxes. The shipment was high quality Crema Marfil tile from Spain on four crates. All the boxes were accounted for and on a random sampling, it appeared to be very high quality unflawed material. Perfect.

Well, then the driver said 'Ok, let's get this tile off the truck' and that was precisely when the fun started. He couldn't get a manual forklift underneath the crates to move them to the liftgate, so he had to push slats of wood underneath the barely propped up crate, readjust the manual forklift, then finally get the crate on the lift. The first crate was successfully lowered to the ground and I happily began transfering the tile to a wheeled dolly and rolling it up to where it was to be stored. I think I was even whistling a jaunty tune, jauntily.

But then the second crate was placed on the manual forklift, the son of a goat kissing driver rolled that f'er right off the end of the liftgate onto the street. I was immediately and emphatically somewhat disappointed.

Perhaps I might have yelled out some expletives? I went inside to check with my lawyer and the guy who sold me the stone about what the hell to do when residential delivery gets personal like it just did. They advised noting on the bill of lading that the freight company dropped the tile, so I did that in ALL CAPS, so years from now, they could have a chuckle about how steamed I was.

The driver, understandably, felt bad. He called his dispatcher who indicated that we needed to go through each and every tile box to determine the damage. *more yelling*

But it actually wasn't as bad as it all looked. Only about 120 sqft of tile was destroyed, but there were however two more crates on the truck. The driver offered to offload them right then, but given his somewhat tarnished 50% success rate, I decided to wait and mull over the situation. Plus, I had to go to the Mavericks / Kings basketball game in an hour and it was starting to get dark, so I just told him to bring it back the following week.

Greece in the Frying Pan (Guai a Caldo di Grecia)

2010-02-26T16:43:00.010-06:00

I like Greece, sunny, usually friendly people for the most part, the birthplace of actual democracy and Olympic games. Nothing like a bit of retsina in the evening on a rooftop patio in my favorite section of The Plaka, but now there is a little bit of trouble. They spent more than they should have and the amount of their debt is supposed to be 20% bigger than all the goods and services they produce for a whole year. That would be like some people owing 1.2 million dollars.

Here is a photo I took on a boat off the Ia side of the Greek island of Thera which captured the intense reds of the sunset there. It reminds me of the money that the Greek government and bankers who allowed them to get in over their heads are hemorrhaging.

Oh, but back to the problem at hand... In a sense, Greece is dragging down the Eurozone with them too. That's kind of the issue which crops up when one doesn't keep international trade at arms length and comingles current accounts of nations.

Well fear not, I have an idea! We can just divy up and sell off the antiquities of Greece to the highest bidders. I'm almost certain that the UK would love to have the rest of the Parthenon in downtown London to go with the Elgin Marbles which already reside in their museum.

Me, I just want a couple of caryatides from Athens to build a pool bath / marble cabana with. What would you guys bid on?

The Rare, Beautiful, and Expensive at Ponte Vecchio

2010-02-17T05:15:00.009-06:00

In the Florence, there is an ultra touristy spot on the river Arno called Ponte Vecchio, or 'old bridge'. In its current form, it was supposedly finished in 1345, but a bridge had been there since Roman times. Here is a picture I took of it from the Uffizi museum.

On and along this bridge might be one of the highest concentration of expensive jewelry stores in all of Italy or the world for that matter, but on that mild October day, I was only interested in one kind of shop.

No, not a coffee shop, that would be later. The shops that held my interest sold pietre dure, also known as Florentine mosaic. If you are unfamiliar, pietre dure is stone art where the pieces are 'jigsaw' cut by hand with a little diamond bow lubricated with wax and special mud for extreme precision in fitting the pieces together. Some of the works look as fine as any painting because of the level of intricacy and careful gradation of color.

In one of the shops, I spotted what I was after. A modern table top utilizing an extrordinarily rare green stone used for palaces and noble residences in Roman times, lapis Lacedaemonius often erroneously called 'green porphyry' or 'serpentine'. I want to reconstruct a small part of the Roman senate floor using authentic materials, and this is the stuff I'm missing.

I talked with the sales lady and showed her some of my work and mentioned I'd be interested in buying any raw materials they could spare at double their cost. The lady seemed enthusiastic and took me to meet the owner at a different shop on down from the bridge.

The lady owner / manager of the shop conversed with the sales lady for a few moments (I couldn't speak Mandarin and she looked kind of mean besides), and the sales lady returned and told me that the materials I was interested in were not available at any price. Then she shrugged and pointed out that I could purchase the table top and break it up for the material.
Destroying 11,000 Euro worth of perfectly good pietre dure art to get a few square inches of a pretty stone didn't seem like a good idea, so I thanked the nice sales lady and went on my way.

Note to the annoying shop owner in Florence: I obtained some of this material and have a contact in Rome to get more. Deal with it...

Artist Statement (Esposizione di Artista)

2010-02-09T09:35:00.006-06:00

I was considering a recent question posed in a secret society website of mosaic artists of which I'm a member. The question was about the kind of typical marketing blurb you read when you go to a gallery and read about an artist whose work you are considering buying, and what if anything should be in it.

Many times, the artists throw in technical jargon that the average gallery patron won't understand. They also spend too much time comparing themselves to other artists that are maybe known a bit better. Or maybe they are a bit timid and don't sell / represent themselves well enough.

I thought I would put together a comprehensive artist statement to guide my own works; as much as to set goals and expectations as to advertise the quality of my works. I didn't want the statement to be flawed in any of the ways listed above.

So tell me what you think of my first draft here of an 'artist statement': (the mosaic group seemed to think it was spot on)

I strive to use all available methodologies and technologies of art to make unparalleled creations which will appeal to the very widest range of viewers imaginable. Even technologies that do not exist yet are effortlessly applied in the most creative manner possible with perfect efficiency of form and design. This will allow for the most lucarative and prestigious placements of my works, furthering my schemes of ubiquitous placement, licensing, and spinoffs / derivative works meticulously copied by slavish followers and carried forward for all of time.
In many cases, entire histories of civilizations will be rewritten to accomodate the grandness of my works. People will weep openly upon observing these unique creations, and other master artists will be obsessively plagued with burning questions such as 'Why couldn't I have made that?' The ultimate goal of the art is, of course, total world domination and complete mastery of everything and everyone throughout eternity.

Beef Island (Isola di Carni)

2010-02-04T18:46:00.010-06:00

It was a mild evening on the yacht moored in Trellis Bay, Tortola, considering the 3 meter North Atlantic swells we all had to beat back through earlier in the day to get back from Virgin Gorda.

A crescent moon lit up Bellamy Key (as in the namesake pirate 'Sam Bellamy') and the Last Resort a few hundred feet away where the night before we'd all seen Tony Snell's comedy and music extravaganza. And there had been tequila, which by many accounts, made the comedy better.

It was the third evening of the live aboard sailing training (ASA-103 certification) and the turn to cook for everyone fell on my brother and me. So into the icebox we went, bringing out six large steaks provisioned days earlier, delivered at the Road Town harbor in Tortola.

Up on deck, I had to figure out where the grill propane supply was to start up the gas. The aft grill was easy enough to find even though it was just a 12" diameter circle of grilling space. In Texas, a grill that is smaller than 24" is just a joke.

The wind started to gust just a bit, which made the tiny grill damned near impossible to light. But, we kept trying with various permutations of standing windward to the grill, holding up lifejackets and eventually with preserverence the Char-Master sprung to life. With the steaks on the grill with absolutely no room to spare, everyone top side watched a plane land over at the Beef Island airstrip and we all cracked open a bottle of beverage of choice.

We all continued with the evening limin' until it was time to flip the steaks. As I turned over a steak closest to me, with no apparent force (as witnessed and testified as true by my brother), the steak on the far side of the grill *jumped* off the grill and into the bay towards the airstrip. Wide eyed, we both wondered what the hell had just occurred. I'd heard stories of Ouiji boards and goofy things like that with unexplained motion, but this was a completely random freak occurrence of physics.

The captain climbed up from the galley and had a good laugh.
My brother said he thought it was trying to make its way back to 'Beef Island'. But with it only halfway cooked, I'll bet it didn't make it that far.

A Map You Can't Fold (Una Mappa Che Non Può Chiuso)

2010-01-28T18:38:00.020-06:00

Not too long ago I was driving around in my black sedan with dark tinted windows and observed another car to my right while waiting at a light. A lady was getting frustrated trying to fold up a map, which I'd think would label her from out of town. I don't usually have trouble folding maps, unless it has already been misfolded. Under those circumstances, I guess I understand the impatience and stress compounded when someone doesn't know where they are, have no GPS or prototype sextant, and are having trouble with basic eye to hand coordination.

If the lady had been around in late antiquity, she most likely would not have been having trouble folding her map in her car while waiting at a light. Back in those days, they had fancy mosaic maps like in Madaba, Jordan in the images below. It's just another reason that I find ancient frescos and mosaics interesting because maps written on skins and papyrus have long since been destroyed. Imagine folding one of these marble beauties up...

Concerning the Madaba map specifically, I've just read an interesting book from a fellow named Bowersock from Harvard who saw the map as a guide for religious pilgrims about 1450 years ago. Even in the relatively small space it had available to depict cities, it showed characteristic elements of the cities that are known to have existed (towers, walls, buildings within). It's rumored to have sourced some of the information from an earlier Roman map by a guy named Eusebius.

In the book, Bowersock goes on to point out personfication images of a few particular cities. It was kind of weird, but back in the day towns made images of how they would imagine (hmm, image and imagine are eerily similar words) that their city would look if it were a person. And, if that person was a female, seated, usually with a crown, holding a scepter, orb of victory, a television remote, or other item that more or less identified the place. These images are sometimes referred to as Tyche. The seated lady below is from the Tabula Peutingeriana drawn in the 12th century or so copied from ancient map sources that had not yet been destroyed.

In the city of Madaba, a mosaic of personified Rome (left), Madaba (right), and a city of which there isn't a definite record of existence called 'Gregoria' (center) were personified. Is there another 'Pompeii' buried out there? Under a landslide / earthquake? Maybe sunken deeply in a marsh? Notice that the Constantinople from the Tabula Peutingeriana above looks nothing like the 'Gregoria' mosaic below.

Bowersock supposes through tenuous evidence it might be referring to Constantinople, but no one knows. The supposition is that since Gregoria was the wife of Constantine III around 630 AD and Constantinople was her 'hood'. But, the Madaba map creation was about 60 years before the wedding because of buildings known to be created in Jerulsalem in 570AD were not present in the Madaba map, so it doesn't make much sense that the personification would be named that way. So it's time for a treasure hunt?

Ok, enough boring history stuff. I was tagged by Heather at Welsh Happenings to do a meme. I'm too busy to tag people, so if you feel like it, you know the drill (by that, um, I don't mean power tools).

Let's see... 10 things that make me happy.

1) Working with natural stone in various colors

2) Lavazza Blu lattes

3) Spending time in the spa / pool

4) Running while listening to rocking music

5) Traveling to distant lands

6) Speaking Italian and having native people get the gist of what I'm saying.

7) Buying tromp l'oeil paintings

8) Talking with artists I admire like like Andjelka

9) Composing music

10) Making sculptures

Edgy Guitar Playing and Ice (Sono Incapace Suonare la Chitarra)

2010-01-18T11:35:00.010-06:00

Did I mention that last week in Dallas was cold by almost anyone's standards? So cold in fact, it exposed a flaw in a city required safety device for the pool. Apparently, having two drain holes on the bottom of a pool to prevent kids and adult morons from getting stuck is not enough. There also needs to be a pressure sensor that prevents water from flowing if someone manages to cover both drain holes simultaneously at the bottom of the pool. Since these drain holes are really far apart, I'd say they were trying to end it all if this device is the one that will start up to save them.

Anyway, the device (with water in it) froze up and so did all of my pool equipment. They are fixing the last of it for free today (or I was going to file a complaint or two and have some fun in small claims court). Here is a photo of something you won't see often in Texas.

Last week also, Jenny Mac asked about a comment I made on her post. I realized most people don't know the secret to 'The Edge' guitar playing is to just turn on the 420 millisecond delay, so I thought I would record a video of 420 millisecond delay in action... Don't laugh on some of my messed up notes because I don't have time to play much or practice. Here is the patch in my guitar effects processor, aptly named?

And here is my awful guitar playing... Sorry MiniMac, no sunglasses today like 'The Edge'.

Ok, I hope ears are not bleeding now, you can stop laughing, this isn't American Idol or X Factor.

Conflagration (Conflagrazione)

2010-01-15T11:26:00.011-06:00

A recent post concerning fire from Molly Potter made me remember a fun filled fire story of my own.

When I was fourteen years old living in Dallas, my father commuted to a town out west of Fort Worth to help my granddad with the family oil exploration business. When not in school, my seven year old brother and I would stay home with mom and be bored, typically finding some sort of trouble to get into.

That particular autumn weekend of the 'conflagration', I remember very clearly it was two weeks before we were to pack up the house and move to a desolate town closer to where the current land leases on which the drilling was located. Mom had gone on an errand, and we were home alone and thinking of playing around with model rockets on account of it was too cold to swim.

By this point in my adolescence, I was no stranger to model rocketry. I had built and successfully fired multistage rockets using both solid and liquid fuel, some of which had gone a mile or so high (the altitude being inversely proportional to the likelihood of finding the rocket as demonstrated in the chart below).

So in effect, I was overly familiar with rocket engines and had unfortunately lost some of the respect for safety that most normal people might have for devices that create literally tens of pounds of thrust spewing out a firey wake of destruction.

On this day and true to form for being a particularly lazy teenager, I didn't want to go to all the hassle of firing an actual rocket, or even using a remotely controlled electrical igniter as was the fashion in those days. No, of course I did the expedient thing and reasoned out that a well placed lit match in the clay cone nozzle of the engine would do the trick. But I worked out that the thrust had to be controlled (no jokes OWO) so it would be an even burn, much like a NASA test firing of an engine.

So, I logically found the nearest knothole in the wooden fence separating our yard from the neighbor's yard. Behind this knothole was a fencepost that would absorb most of the thrust and prevent the engine from shooting through to the other side. Matches were at the ready and my little brother stood there watching wide eyed...

I have to mention that next to us lived a family with a mean and mischievous little girl. She was always the sort that threw rocks at cars parked outside and was caught by her parents playing with matches on the side of her house a few weeks earlier. I had never heard her parents yelling at her as loud as when that happened.

Anyway, after striking the match and deftly placing it right in the nozzle while simultaneously jerking back my hand in one fluid catlike motion, the engine was lit. And for those of you 'in the know' about model rocket engines, it happened to be an Estes model D-12-3, which is a long burning and high newton thrust engine with a three second pause before an ejection charge designed to clear out a parachute from the model rocket. My brother and I gleefully watched the engine shooting
out a trail of fire over our pool deck, and then it happened.

Something went horribly wrong six seconds into the burn. I had not anticipated lateral motion against the fence post, so the engine (with rocket-like speed) shot through the hole to the other side of the fence. Of course, the first thing I do is look through the knothole and see the sickening sight of the engine spinning around in a circle shooting fire everywhere over dry leaves that had accumulated in the neighbors' yard. My brother asked 'What's wrong?', to which I responded 'We have a problem.'

I had the presence of mind to immediately grab a bucket. I quickly dunked it in the pool, then scrambled around the gates to the neighbors' yard quickly throwing water down and stamping and stamping it out, even while the engine was shooting out it's last ejection charge. I ran back and dumped four more buckets of water on it all just to be sure everything was out. Then I was left with the minor problem of an eight foot diameter circle of charred earth that someone was going to find out about before too long. So I did the dishonorable thing and pushed adjacent leaves over the blackened area.

For the following week my brother and I said nothing. The next weekend as we were packing up the moving van to leave, I could hear the little girl's mother yelling at her and managed to witness some of the ensuing punishment.

Quando giovane, ho iniziato un motore di razzo con un fiammifero. Non è stato controllato!

Stone Cold Carrara (Pietre di Carrara)

2010-01-11T12:13:00.011-06:00

When in Italy back in October I took a train from Firenza (Florence to you English-city name-in-foreign-country insistent types) to Carrara (also called Carrara in English). This little coastal town is basically one of the best sources of marble and stone processing in the entire world. Michealangelo (Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti, no one ever knows his full name) walked these very mountains and quarries looking for likely pieces to carve famous sculptures in. Isn't it weird how the name Buonarroti kind of means 'good breaking' in Italian, and he was a sculptor? Whoa...

Here is one of the largest processors in town, Marmi di Carrara. Check out the comically large cranes for hoisting the blocks. They have gigantic saws too. I wonder if they ever sawed a car apart? You could make a stretch limo pretty easily there I think.

As a digression, here is an American sculptor I admire who picked out a *huge* piece of marble himself from a quarry in Colorado, then proceeded to carve a grand piano and a lady on it!!!

Back to Italy, Carrara has some of the best state of the art marble processing facilities and is one of the largest processors of marble blocks. Blocks are the form that they get the marble down from the cliffside in. They drill holes in the mountain, blast, and run like hell to avoid hundreds of tons of falling stone.
Here are some blocks that evidently landed perfectly on the back of a transport truck.

The city itself is small, but nice and friendly. Everywhere, the patios use expensive scraps of white marble tile. I felt like Augustus Gloop when he saw the chocolate river since beautiful stone was everywhere. I walked *all* over that town and I was able to make several industry contacts there, so it was a good trip.

Here is an enormous pot carved out of a single block (I hope I don't get any bad searchers because of using the words 'enormous' and 'pot'). You know how your shadow gets larger when the sun is behind you and casting forward? Well, think about how big this pot is now...

From the rough block form, marble goes through a few steps before it gets to the tile that you might walk across in your garage or coat closet. First, they saw these blocks down into smaller block pieces that they then further saw down into slabs (used commonly for countertops, etc). They then take some of the slabs and saw those down into tiles of various thicknesses and sizes. Typically, they'll put these tiles in a polishing maching to get that 'glossy' finish.

Since I like old looking stuff, I always use the back side of the tile and sand that down to where it's smooth, but not glossy. This state of marble is called 'honed'.

Some chunks of the big blocks are left in larger pieces which they carve fireplaces and things like that from. In the industry, these pieces are called 'cut-to-size'. I need to get some of these pieces for some statuary that I want to do, but it's a bit costly since even a piece big enough to carve a lifesized head would weigh around 300 lbs.

Oh, it's on...

2010-01-07T15:53:00.003-06:00

I could probably bore you with a chariot race story or something, but I'm about to watch the *said in the voice of the assistant coach on the film 'American Pie'* culm-i-nation! of a great year of college football. Of course by that I mean my university's football team playing in the national championship bowl.

So if you are from Alabama, you can just go to hell. To everyone else, come on in because I'll be watching the bigscreen...

Ta

Making Gulasch With Control (Fatto Guilloche e Telecomandos)

2010-01-04T10:29:00.008-06:00

I hope that everyone had a great holiday weekend. Mine involved a lot of time in the hot spa under a 6 meter column of steam while having either a nice latte or champagne, depending on whether it was early or late in the day.

I saw the 'Avatar' film in 3D IMax format. It was fun to look at, but I couldn't figure out why they kept talking about Ewoks in the dialog though, wasn't that in Star Wars?

Also on the agenda was mosaic work, so I started operation 'triclinium' with a vengeance. I made mosaic bordering which will go around the actual 'art' mosaics in the center section of my three couches. I followed the Roman provincial style (Arles) of guilloche border (staying true to the colors of the ancient ones).

And finally, advancing the illogical tie between religion and rampant consumerism, I purchased the best thing ever. I'm now the proud owner of a Sony AX4000 remote control. This little device allows me to stow away the 13 different remotes which were littering my home like little unfortunate tsunami victims washing up on the couch or countertops. I even retrofitted some infra-red light dimmers in a few rooms so I could use it to swipe my finger across it to set the mood, if you know what I mean.*

* that is, suavely set the lights in the media room so I can watch the University of Texas Longhorns defeat Alabama this Thursday.

Lo scorso fine settimana, ho fatto i confini del mosaico per un triclinio. Inoltre, ho comprato un telecomando super!!!

Green States vs. Blue States

2009-12-24T14:40:00.007-06:00

Partisanship, the likes of which we have with modern day US congressional democrats and republicans, has been around for quite a while. The Romans had a long-standing tradition of circus factions identified by their colors. The 'big two' were the blue and green factions, the other two being the red and white. I guess in the US we have donkeys and elephants, but the idea is not new. Below is a rare ancient mosaic of a blue faction member.

Emperors Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Verus, and Commodus supported the greens (note, the greens back then didn't really have the 'tree-hugging' reputation that the green party today has). Caracalla and Vitellius backed the blues (no police reference, the emperors were the police). Marcus Aurelius is on record as having supported neither party, and I think I identify most with him. In truth, the factions were/are set up as a distraction for the masses; a way to make common plebs forget who is really pulling the strings of power.

In no place was this truer than Byzantine Constantinople. There, at the center of the political world were games in the hippodrome. The Constantinople Hippodrome was a horse racing track about 450 meters long and 130 meters wide with occupancy of about 100,000. In other words, think of it like a 1500 year old NASCAR, but with congress, the president and executive and the judicial branches all present.

People were so wrapped up in the goings on within the hippodrome, a civil war within the empire almost started in 532 (Nika Revolt). Speaking of civil wars, hopefully we won't have one against the state of Nebraska because of the residents there not having to pay any Medicare tax at the expense of citizens in the other 49 states in a sleazy vote for payoff deal. I'm pretty sure the rest of the union could probably take those arrogant bastards down in a war, even with their stockpiles of corn.

Regardless of which color faction of the day you might favor... As the current US faction in power is rushing through a massive healthcare mandate that over the holiday behind closed doors, I'll leave you with this thought from Procopius written in his 1500 year old 'History of the Wars'.

"In every city the population has been divided for a long time past into the Blue and the Green factions; but within comparatively recent times it has come about that, for the sake of these names and the seats which the rival factions occupy in watching the games, they spend their money and abandon their bodies to the most cruel tortures, and even do not think it unworthy to die a most shameful death. And they fight against their opponents knowning not for what end they imperil themselves, but knowing well that, even if they overcome their enemy in the fight, the conclusion of the matter for them will be to be carried off straightway to the prison, and finally, after suffering extreme torture, to be destroyed. So there grows up in them against their fellow men a hostility which has no cause, and at no time does it cease or disappear, for it gives place neither to the ties of marriage nor of relationship nor of friendship, and the case is the same even though those who differ with respect to these colours be brothers or any other kin. They care neither for things divine nor human in comparison with conquering in these struggles; and it matters not whether a sacrilege is committed by anyone at all against God, or whether the laws and the constitiution are violated by friend or by foe; nay even when they are perhaps ill supplied with the necessities of life, and when their fatherland is in the most pressing need and suffering unjustly, they pay no heed if only it is likely to go well with their 'faction'; for so they name the bands of partisans....so that I, for my part, am unable to call this anything except a disease of the soul."

Your Glass is Crass

2009-12-17T11:18:00.016-06:00

Seasonal activities have kept me busy as a one fingered feather plucker before Thanksgiving, so I've been a bit lax in recanting the rest of the Italy trip. I'm about to start a few art projects now though and am faced with a dilemna. Maybe some of you can help me out with it.

The subject which I'm doing a mosaic of has very intense purples (violet cobalt manganese oxide pigments), but the only commercially available glass I can find with the color intensity of the object I'm trying to represent would be cobalt blue. So I've been hitting the color theory books and websites, trying to figure out placement or backgrounds that would make intense cobalt blue seem more like a shade of rich purple in context.

Here is an example Roman model boat of a cobalt blue glass in the British Museum from the first century. It's blue, but kind of purple as that glass often is. I like to think that 1900 years ago, someone served gravy from this.

While wading through all of the color theory information, I've come across some examples of how the human mind processes color and shape. Some of these examples involve motion, but many are just how the colors and shapes are processed.

For example, check out lilac chaser on Michael Bach's site.
This guy has collected several other visual phenomenon examples that are fascinating to me.

I'm leaning towards giving the cobalt blue a background of its inverse color in green. Given an unsaturated background of green, because of the way eyes process color with their red and green cones and rods, it should trick the mind into attributing more saturated red in the object done in cobalt blue (which is what I want, to play up the violet elements of the cobalt blue).

What do you guys think?

Another thing that I discovered while pouring over glass chemistry was a complete surprise. Back in the 20th century, they used to make glass with uranium dioxide in it (completely radioactive). This sounds like a horrible cancer causing express train to legal liability, right? Well it turns out that glass is a great radiation shield, so this radioactive glass is not the deadly killer I first suspected it might be.

Shining an ultraviolet light (as above) on glass made like this causes it to flouresce in a manner that even Monty Burns would be proud of. I've now taken to carrying an ultraviolet light with me everywhere to check for *ahem* flourescence.

Carving the Christmas Lamb (Taglio il Agnello di Natale)

2009-12-07T08:41:00.007-06:00

This weekend, I thought it would be nice to carve a marble relief of a sheep, since a parent of some neighborhood friends really likes sheep. By like, I mean this lady completely loves sheep to an obsessive and freakish level with sheep images all around her house (not the kind of obsessive and freakish love that people who are making fun of citizens of Arkansas reference).

The carving still needs a bit of clean-up, particularly around the hindquarters, but it looks like it will be ready in time to be a Christmas gift. I was thinking of including a note with it like 'Bah-aahhaaahhh Humbug' or maybe '...ohhh this was a white *elephant* party'.

Speaking of sacrificial lambs, I feel sorry for all the Nebraska college football fans whose team was completely dominated the entire game by the University of Texas team this weekend. It wasn't even close as the kicker made a 46 yard field goal to ensure a healthy 8.3% point total lead to win the game. Nebraska had 12 points.

Hot Piece of Glass

2009-12-01T11:19:00.008-06:00

Not much new going on around here except work and being nominated for the highly distinguished Drysdale Award for the dullest blog over at Grant Miller Media so vote for me if you aren't too excited and drawn to my blog.

In unrelated news, I'm committing an excellent book to memory, 'The Arts of Antioch: Art Historical and Scientific Approaches to Roman Mosaics and a Catalogue of the Worcester Art Museum Antioch Collection'. This book delves deeply into the chemical makeup of the ancient pieces of the mosaics found in Antioch, or modern Antakya, Turkey.

I might just get a friend with a kiln to cook up some of the recipies that this book has (especially after spending about 800 euro on art glass last month). More importantly though, being able to control every aspect of the glass creation is what I find as the most appealing. Here is the furnace at the Orsoni factory in Venice which I saw in October.

Finding this place in Canneregio was particularly difficult for me because 1) my GPS had the wrong address to begin with, 2) I had to go under the Sottopassageo Vedai, which was basically like a literal hole in the wall down an alleyway, 3) I didn't see any kind of sign other than the little bronze plaque by the doorbell (I blame this problem on US advertising where the signs are all at least human sized for every place of business), 4) I had had a half liter of red wine prior to starting out.

Most people don't know that many ancient Roman mosaics contain quite a bit of opaque colored glass. Usually wind dirt and erosion makes it look kind of like stone. Also, they put so much calcium and lime in some of the colors, it really does look more like a stone-based glass paste than the highly reflective mirrored glass of the Hubble telescope.

As a quick refresher, glass is made by heating up silica (sand), soda as a 'flux' which lowers the required temperature to melt the sand (sodium based, not soda like a coca cola), and lime. Sometimes other elements like calcium, copper sulfates, lead oxide, and stibnite were added to make the glass more opaque or to get certain colors.

The other variable in obtaining the colors is the controlled time that it takes for the glass to cool, or 'annealing'. For reds and oranges, the internal crystals have to grow just right. Several hundred years ago, only certain specialty shops had the knowledge to make red and orange glass. Lawrence Becker who is a co-author on the book above, conjectures that some of the pale blue and green glasses were actually failed attempts at producing finer and more expensive red glasses.

One of these glasses used by the Romans was the 'Natron' based glass, so named because of the place where the soda stone was found in Egypt (Wadi Natron). Did you realize that on the periodic table of elements, sodium is 'Na' because of this? I thought so.

You also have the low magnesium / high potassium glass, or LMHK, which they've traced the source of the soda in this one back to certain plant ash.

For your amusement here is a video of someone pouring a small amount of glass.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be pouring a wine glass for tonight.

Venezia 2009 - Part I

2009-11-22T09:16:00.016-06:00

Arriving at San Marco Airport after 13 hours of flying from Dallas with a connection through Frankfurt, we collected the luggage and made our way outside to the middle of a perfect sunny day.

You know that feeling where you've been somewhere before and you know where to go? Well, I was experiencing that because I had been to Venice and this airport two years earlier. Finding the way to the water transport, I made the easy decision to take a water taxi.

You see, last time here I had taken a water bus, which is great if you have lots of time to kill. But with me carrying mom's luggage, I didn't want the hassle. As a warning on the water taxis, people cram in like sardines and it is easy to miss a stop, especially if you are carting around four pieces of luggage.

The water taxi had us to the White Lion on the Grand Canale within 7 minutes. I wish I had remembered to bring my water skis because it was an incredibly fast ride. I also wish I had the foresight to call ahead and have the owner meet us at the canal entry. Most of the buildings in Venice have a door directly on the water side and a door on the 'dry' side. I think it's supposed to be more fancy if you arrive at the water side. Oh well, next time. As you see below, it wasn't a super fancy entryway on the canal side... At least there were no visible four legged carriers of the black plague or anything.

A few doors down from my hotel was the Ca d'Oro, which had a considerably more elaborate canal entry court. It was slightly more expensive to book this ancient museum palace, so I went with rustic charm instead.

Before we were completely out of the water taxi, an annoying man walked up and asked the driver how much to go to St. Mark's square. The driver responded '95 euro', and the man stormed off indignantly because he thought he could get a cheaper rate since the water taxi was already there.

Rounding the corner to the hotel, I noticed right away that the building was ancient. This was great because I enjoy carrying heavy bags up several flights of stairs. No, really.

The White Lion was ideally situated on the Grand Canale, with my balcony having views of the Rialto market and the Bridge. In other words, a perfect place for 1) purchasing a bread, fresh tomatoes, cheese and a bottle of wine and 2) consuming the aforementioned goods while soaking in the incredible architecture and history and chuckling at the occasional tourist floating by in a gondola. This location coupled with a prime location on Strada Nuova ensured a fun stay.

After checking in, I still wasn't tired because I was in Venice! So I went walking through the characteristic back streets until I was good and lost.

I play a game in Venice called 'find the bridges with no handrails'. This time I only found two, here is one...

Leaving the Lake Area (Quando Lasciato il Lago Como)

2009-11-16T05:04:00.008-06:00

The day we left Como and started the trek to Florence was best described as 'absolutely perfect' weather. You know, that kind of crisp clear autumn morning that demands even the laziest person to go out for a walk just to enjoy it. So I locked up the Bellagio villa, rolled down windows, then drove up the hill to the Eastside 589 highway.

Well, highway is not exactly the best way to describe it. In some sections, I might have been able to touch both sides of the road at the same time. But that didn't matter, we were enjoying this perfect morning with no traffic or stressful situations. So, I picked up the pace and drove a bit faster.

Then, a car approaching on the other side of the road that looked like a police car waved me over to the 'side' of the road authoritatively (there wasn't much room since I was driving next to a mountain cliff). Was I speeding? I was wondering how much I'd have to pay. My imagination quickly ran with enormous sums and I couldn't help but wonder if it would have been better to have just taken the train.

After a minute the car that waved me down didn't turn around, so I decided to chance it and just start driving again. I cover less than a kilometer and then two cars dart past and both are pointing at my right side of the road next to the cliff wall frantically. Huh? Falling rocks? Danger? They were pretty convincing, so I reason that maybe I should just stop and wait for a few minutes.

I couldn't really see around the curve because of the mountain, so I stopped and waited.

Not twenty seconds later, about three bicycle riders *zoom* by. And then about twenty more, quickly followed by what had to have been hundreds of cyclists. Not just the 'wannabe' amatuers who try to emulate Lance Armstrong that I see around where I live, but honest to gosh professional atheletes in a real race.

I finally had the presence of mind to raise my camera and take a picture of the spectacle on that Lake Como cliffside on an otherwise perfect morning. Eventually, the number of cyclists dropped and finally the support cars and ambulance drove by, followed by a little red caboose.

In retrospect, I'm really glad that I pulled to the side of the road. I'm not sure the windshield wipers could have handled it otherwise.

Quando lasciato il Lago, uomini in auto puntano a ciglio della strada. Perché? Non capito... Era una gara di bicicletta! Nessuno è lesi :)

Sirmione - Ancient Lake Fun, Part II

2009-11-09T05:34:00.015-06:00

While driving from Venice to Lake Como, I had to make a long lunchtime stop at a unique spot in all the world. Sirmione is a geological oddity, a very narrow strip of land jutting about two miles out into the ancient Lake Garda.

It's kind of strange to walk for so far in one direction and see water on both sides. Last time that happened, I was on a cruise ship treadmill.

It was rumored to be the location of a villa of Catullus, a close friend of the family of Gaius Julius Caesar, but it was probably a different Roman dignitary who lived here in those days.

It makes military sense that the original villa builders would pick this spot because it is supremely defensible. Well, except from attacks of a flying or swimming enemy. The ancient Romans wouldn't have stood a chance against a nuclear submarine, right?

Here I am standing in the main 'foyer' of the villa. Behind me, as you might guess, is the lake. Apologies for my shoddy state in the photo, but I'd just been driving in Italian traffic half the day when this was taken.

Below, you can see the 'marble beach' view out the 'front door' of 'the' villa... I'll bet they had some great parties out there, even though it would be tough to use a jet ski loaded down with a case of beer because it's so shallow.

The size and scale of the Roman villas makes my house seem so small...

They also had a neat little museum with a diverse collection of implements, mosaics, frescos and such.

I promised some glass and smalti images a few posts back. Here is some off my 'stash' of mixed colors and an Orsoni sample board showing the standard pallette with a pretty large range of value and hue.

And here is the actual result (from my class) of that mosaic from the 6th century. I accidently put up a photo last time of just my empty easel with just the image I was copying in mosaic. Strangely, no one called me on it.

Ancient Lake Fun Part I (Divertimento di Lago Antiche)

2009-11-04T18:03:00.010-06:00

Driving through rush hour traffic is never fun in any city, but in Milan it can really grind to a halt. We had left Venice earlier that morning by rent car and had lost a bit of time with a fun stop at Lake Garda's ancient city of Sirmione that I'll elaborate on later.

The lady I was renting the villa from in Bellagio was expecting us at 5:00pm, but a helicopter would be the only option which could have made that happen. Luckily, I didn't have to sit in the Milan traffic for the full 360 degrees of the loop around the city, after only a few miles of a parking lot, I saw a workable exit to the north.

Trying to read the road signs in Italian on a big highway system you've never been on with many impatient drivers zipping around is not exactly the relaxing part of the vacation. The trusty GPS guided us to the correct road north for Bellagio after a few wrong turn missteps in the city of Como itself. Up the mountains we went on the narrow twisty east side 589. Suddenly, the lake came into view off to the left (and way down there). Flashbacks to driving in Santorini Greece came to mind, but this was much easier by comparison.

Lake Como (Larius to the Romans) has long been a resort. Pliny the Younger had written about stays in a villa here for hunting and fishing around 2000 years ago, but mine was going to have running wat... nope he had that, a sewer sys... nope he had that, um, electricity! Which was going to be very handy soon since it was beginning to get dark as I was driving on up around the twisty mountain roads.

I gave the owner Francesca a call when in town. She dropped everything and drove up the awesome hill where the villa is located to let us in and give information about the rooms and the area. I knew it was going to be a nice place, but I was surprised at exactly how nice it all was.
My mom loved the view and the balcony, and there was an olive orchard and an infinity edge pool which were part of the property. There was even a nice little cobblestone parking area behind an automatic iron gate.

Speaking of fancy pools, for the record, even as nice as my pool is, I'd gladly trade my house for this villa any day of the week because there are just no views like this in Texas. Francesca is a great business woman, she and her sister run a shop in town and the nice villa in the pristine location was handed down in their family. She had restored it to a very high standard. Although I don't use the term lightly, it was 'chock full' of amenities.

The town of Bellagio is small and pleasant, well except for the 1960's style band bleating out old rock and roll in Italian at one of the hotels. It is by necessity a compact center of town and everything is pretty much within a few minutes walk.

If you go, I recommend stopping at Villa Melzi and by all means, take the boats around and explore. If you want to spend obscene amounts on shopping, I'd recommend taking the boat over to Mennagio and catching a bus to Switzerland.
Or if you just want to relax, you can do like I did and have a few bottles of wine in your own villa while looking over the same awesome lake Pliny did 2000 years ago.

I think I'll be back here soon.

Luciana's Class (Scuola Mosaic in Ravenna)

2009-10-30T08:45:00.017-05:00

Ravenna is a paradoxical little Italian city. It is relatively small by northern Italy standards, yet it used to be the capitol of the Western Roman empire towards the end. It is considered the mosaic making center of the world, but everything is relatively inexpensive here. I've been here before, but I really enjoyed it the second time because of the class I took.

When I first arrived at the Luciana Notturni school in Ravenna Italy, I was a bit nervous. At first glance I just noticed a very feminine looking dress made of dainty glass in the window and the sign on the wall for the shop which was a bit girly.

But looking further in, I was relieved to see great executions of classic mosaic pieces, so then I knew I had come to the right place. I was also almost an hour too early because I lost my sheet with the begin time, so the locals were gawking at 'the stranger' hanging out on their street as they went to work.

Eventually, people from the school began to show up and I had a chance to talk with a highly experienced teacher at the school, Brunie.

The class itself was directed by one of the luminaries in the mosaic and art worlds, Luciana Notturni (pictured below). This lady has restored ancient mosaics and created numerous award winning works of art, the work from her studio is highly sought after. During the class, she would stop by and give practical lessons as work assignments were progressing. Notice the cool 'Gypsy Girl' mosaic copy from Zeugma, Turkey in the background there?

So for an entire week, several technical aspects, fundamentals, and 'best practices' of mosaic making were covered in the class. Things like transfering images to lime, gluing a temporary binder to lift the cut pieces, permanent binders were all covered.

A delightful and vivacious historian, Manuela, who's picture I don't have gave great background on the development of mosaics over time. She might well have been the most knowledgable person in the world about mosaic history, and her presentation was just a joy to listen to.
Unfortunately, I couldn't go on her tour on the last day of class in the afternoon since I needed to get back to Venice to pick up my glass ordered at Orsoni.

This was time (and money) very well spent, and I can't wait to work using some of the new techniques learned in the Ravenna class.

In the image below, a student cuts stone for the first time with the little hammer and hardie that we all used.

A very wide array of materials were available. Not just glass, but rare marbles and other stones lined several shelves in bins everywhere. Wow, I thought I had a pretty good color selection of materials until I went here...

Sometimes, when there were very large pieces, we'd use the 'big guns' cutter like below. I need to get one of these...

Here is the classroom environment, where we did our daily work.

Here are some of the great shop artists and teaching assistants.

One of the projects was to think of an idea to put into mosaic, and use a modern cement binding system. I put off my design for too long, so at 6am, I woke up and it occurred to me that it might be funny to put a modern object into an ancient looking mosaic. So, I sketched the television in my room quickly... I call the finished work 'Ancient Technology', which CRT televisions kind of are now. : )

Here is one of the great artist teachers, Anna, who is working on a commission for the shop here (it has been censored, because someone else owns the work, not because it contains nudity or something like that).

Here is the work that I copied in glass smalti, It's from the 600s in a church in town. I liked the colors. Note: this is not the correct way to set down the hammer (martelina).

Leaving Venice (Uscito Venezia)

2009-10-26T18:53:00.006-05:00

At 4:00am I hear a loud buzzing above and to the left in the darkness. I realize that it is my phone going off for the alarm I set the night before. Luckily, in Italy, the time change for autumn was at midnight so I had a healthy full five hours of sleep. As I'm getting ready for the day, it hits me that I need to redistribute the weight in my checked baggage and carry-on pieces. I have purchased about 80 kilos of hard-to-find marble and glass to bring back to the US for making mosaics.

So I frantically unpack one bag and shove little plastic bags of stone and glass into another lifting and carefully assessing the weight. Then, I get a bit nervous about the time because my flight is a very early one out of the Venice Marco Polo airport, which for sound and practical reasons is not actually on the chain of islands which make up Venice, but on the mainland.

So, leaving the key in the room I set off into the darkness of Venice at 4:40am. It is still a magical place as there is not a soul to be seen on the Fondamenta Misercordia. With my 200 lbs of various bags and a backpack, I fire up the trusty GPS (which at this point, I really don't need but just in case...) and cross the first of what would become several bridge crossings.

I set off south to get to Strada Nuova where the day before, I'd seen the signs for the airport water shuttle. After up and down a few more bridges and a kilometer of twisty streets, I find the water bus stop. Confidently, I stroll up to the waiting platform and notice on the sign that the first boat picks up at 9:00am.

If you do the math, this is something of a problem as my flight was at 6:30am. If you have ever seen the movie shots where the background seems to rush out behind the actor and the camera tilts at a 45 degree angle as the protagonist grabs his head and yells 'Noooo!!!', you'll have a pretty good idea of my frame of mind.

After I get through with my initial shock, I set off to the south thinking, maybe I can find a nice 100 euro water taxi along the way... But no, no such luck.
Apparently on Sunday morning, they are all sleeping, inconsiderate bastards. Anyway, there are several more nice bridges and the water bottle I'm carrying with the 200 lbs in luggage is getting annoying to carry loose, so I put it in a bag. After about 600 meters of twisty streets, I hear a pleasant gurgling water sound, the sound a water bottle makes after the lid has been twisted off inside your bag under the weight of 20 kilos of marble. So I have a nice little waterfall going in my bag which I have a grand time emptying out before trudging on happily to the south.

A few minutes later, I get to the train station and consider that I could buy a ticket to the mainland and then cab it to the airport. So I lug my bags up the steps to Santa Lucia station and go to the ticket counter, no, wait, I cannot believe that there is no hard working Trenitalia employee there at 5:00am eagerly awaiting my questions. So I check the schedules and it looks like a no-go.

I arrive at the conclusion that the logical thing to do at this point is to go to the only garage / bus / car entry point on Venice, Piazzale Roma. So in front of the train station after lugging the heavy bags down the steps again, I see possible salvation. A 100 euro water taxi is trolling for people, but no, he's going on to the north because he apparently has *too much money*. Sure, I understand, he needs a better quality of life. He can't be hauling troublesome tourists back and forth *all* day long, that's just silly.

Based on my GPS calculations, I stare down my opponent directly across from the train station. It is the mother of all marble bridges when you have luggage, 'il Ponte degli Scalzi' as pictured in the photo above except, in the dark with no people on it. I begin my ordeal already tired and almost certain my right arm has been stretched an inch longer after carrying the heavier of two bags for such a distance. Up the bridge I go and the trip down is only slightly less tiring. Another kilometer to the south and over another smaller bridge, I notice that a new larger bridge without a steep grade ran between the station and Piazzale Roma. I almost want to go back and cross over that easier bridge just out of spite, but coolness prevails and I go on to the bus stop, find a taxi, and make my way to the airport.

Finished Pool More or Less (Piscina è Quasi Completato)

2009-09-30T19:49:00.022-05:00

Even in Texas, it was too cool today to go swimming, and so it was that today was the day I finally moved ~~off my laz~~ the pool photos off of my camera. You can see my own version of a typical line of cypress trees in the background here. I keep thinking I should have bought larger ones, but the selection and quantity of the larger ones was severely limited. I'm also wondering if I should plant forward in between each tree to make a solid tree line. Also, I'm seeing life sized hand carved marble statues on either side of the spa. Or maybe just a gigantic hand and head reaching skyward, as if a giant statue was buried in the ground... No that would be lame, two statues it is.

Luckily, since the contractor would work with me a bit, they poured the deck substrate down about 5/8" to the coping stone. This will allow an anti fracture membrane to go on and also a healthy 1/2" thick tile that has a pre-cut (read: not much work for me) pattern. Unfortunately now though, I have substandard choices for the marble, so maybe I'll find something in Italy at the end of the month. I have to finish it fairly soon though as the building permit will run out and I'll have to file for an extension or something. Maybe some friends on the city council can help out if I drag it on too long? Nah, I'll be done before then.

Basically, I now have a 110 meter empty canvas to 'paint' on with marble and mosaics. It. is. cool.

Here is a side view of the steps to see how the mosaics catch the sun, even under water.

Here is one of them up close... I didn't realize that I was blatantly ripping off the Caesar's Palace logo until after it was done (Apologies to Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. But honestly, I left more than enough compensation on your roulette table this past March, guaranteed).

And here is yet another picture... Are you bored yet?

Everybody can stop by for a swim (best bring a wetsuit since it's a bit cool now).

Non credo che è quasi finito! Purtroppo in Texas, trovo che l'acqua si raffredda in autunno. Ho bisogno di comprare qualche famoso marmo di Carrara (ma non questa pietra economici ho campioni di altri luoghi).

How I Made An 'A' (Tentativo di Attentato Scongiurato)

2009-09-25T12:34:00.009-05:00

As I was leaving work from the center of downtown Dallas yesterday as I sometimes do, a lady that I can only describe as frazzled and unkempt walks into the parking garage elevator while I'm waiting on the lift. She said 'I can't believe the building was almost blown up!', which raised a bit of concern on my part. When you hear that something only almost happened, what are you supposed to think? So I pragmatically replied, 'Well, it was a good thing it wasn't then, huh?'

Then my mind raced on questions like, 'Well, if the authorities told this lady, why didn't our company hear about it?' and things like that. Apparently the distribution of terrorism control information is an imperfect system at best. While driving home, I get the real scoop on what happened.

A Jordanian illegal immigrant had purchased a fake bomb from the FBI, parked the truck carrying it next to a nearby downtown building, and even went as far as pushing the buttons on a phone which the agents said could be used to detonate it. Hahaa!!! And then Ashton Kutcher ran out and shouted at the would be mass-murderer, 'You were punked, dude! Hahhaa!' (in my mind that part happened, anyway).

I kind of wondered what happened when the number on the phone was dialed. Did an agent pick up and say something? Maybe he was patched through to the automated FBI feedback system so he could leave a big thumbs up for a job well done? Heheh, we may never know.

So no one was in danger from Hosam Maher Husein Smadi (or 'Sam' as his friends called him). Samadi = Sam reminds me that mjenks just had a post about a 'Sam' of Middle Eastern descent who was a social retard and was basically shunned. Hopefully, this guy wasn't the same Sam who read mjenks post and went over the edge (probably not, because of the whole time differential and other factors).

In college, I only crossed paths negatively with one individual from the Middle East. As some of you are familiar with, in college, there are not assigned seats. This fellow I'll call 'Privileged Iranian', had apparently sat in one of the seats up front the previous day in a biology class. He glared at me with the white hot hate of 1000 suns for sitting in 'his' seat. I honestly don't think I've ever seen someone with as much absolute hatred in their eyes about anything, much less something as trivial as not sitting in the same seat as yesterday.

It was humorous. Then he confronted me and shouted. I laughed (because it was funny since the situation was ridiculous to me) and then threatened to kick his ass (c'mon, I was young), and the next day he didn't show up. It probably had something to do with his twisted sense of honor or some crap, but if you go to someone else's country, play by their effing rules.

Sometimes I wonder if that guy might end up in a terror training camp or funding one. It's a good thing I'm not in charge of the military, because I would probably use horrific and atrocious tactics (the likes of which the world hasn't seen for thousands of years) for dealing with any cities filled with people like this. Am I alone in this type of thinking? Sure, I know several Muslim people from this part of the world, but all of them seem to be pretty well balanced. It is a shame that some crazies ruin things for everyone.

I have a bit of a story about that biology classroom by the way. The night before the final exam, I was persuaded to go on a drinking spree with one of the fraternities at the lake. Let's just say that the 'Coors Silver bullets' had wounded me a bit. It was cold out, so I threw on an ice hockey hooded sweatshirt that was exceedingly warm and headed out to take the exam.

As the exam booklets were being handed out, a guy to my right exclaimed 'Man, you smell like a liquor cabinet.' Shrugging it off, everyone started to take the final exam. About 20% of the way through the exam, I began to notice how warm the heater was in the room. Even the professor was shaking his head and commented about how hot it was. Being overly hot and hung over, I started to feel sick but choked it down for another 30% of the test.

After what seemed like an eternity of overly hot stuffy torment on a flipping stomach, I stood up, walked quickly to the door grabbing the little metal trashcan on my way out and proceeded to puke at least 120 oz. of Colorado beer into the trashcan just outside the classroom door.
Of course, it was highly embarrassing as other members of the faculty stopped by and with pity in their voices asked if I was ok. I mumbled yes thanks, picked myself up and went back into the biology final exam. I made an 'A' on the final.

Uomo pazzo comprato una bomba finta, è stato arrestato dalla polizia in Dallas.

Museum Fun (Museo con Tiepolo)

2009-09-17T12:53:00.010-05:00

A few weekends ago, I saw a unique exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The last great Venetian painter Tiepolo (Giovanni Battista) from the neoclassical era was featured by Philip Haas.

Haas was commissioned by the Kimbell to create something interesting based on two Tiepolo sketch paintings it has in its collection used as models for some of his frescos.

The film was shot from several angles to be shown in a specific viewing room set up with architectural elements from ancient times. The film was projected on the ceiling and four different walls simultaneously, and many times the projections interacted with each other.
For example, at his easel the actor playing Tiepolo looks at real people acting as mythological beings arrayed as if in a fresco and paints them. Mirrors in his studio reflect actions and points of view on the other walls and ceiling.

It wasn't very fast moving (that would make someone sick), but it was better described as subtle changes over time on the different projected panels.

At first it was a little strange being in a room where you can't see all the things going on, but you see some things changing. It was like being in a 360 degree media room that was showing neoclassical stuff. It was pretty high resolution, so it was different to be standing in the midst of all the crazy images.

I'm normally a Dallas Museum of Art kind of guy, but if you are around the Dallas area and have the time, Kimbell is well worth a visit (also, it is free).

Normally after such an interesting exhibit, I would normally be ready to get out the lime plaster and authentic colors and do a fresco now, but I'm getting ready to go to this place.

and this place...

and this place...

What? I Can't Hear Because of Water In My Ears (Che Cosa? Acqua Della Piscina è Nelle Orecchie)

2009-09-11T13:56:00.016-05:00

One of the following photos is a picture of part of my pool.
Is it:
A.

Does anyone know what all the above pools are? Any of them? Bueller? Bueller?
If you guessed 'D' you are not incorrect. At least you get a sense of how the custom gold mosaics shine in the sunlight.

Apologies for no complete pictures yet, but I've been busy swimming, landscaping, and stuff so I haven't had time to take a proper photo.

I've been planting authentic Cupressus Sempervirens (Italian cypress) along the fencelines. When I started digging the first hole in the mid-afternoon, I said to myself, 'Self, I'll surely have these six trees planted before dark.' Well that was before the spade I was using made a scraping sound across the bottom of the hole.

I thought for sure that I had found some old Civil War era treasure chest, or at least some 180 year old canned goods or something useful. But, no such luck, it was a rock-like clay that I can probably best describe as shale. You have heard of the Earth's crust? Well I had found one of the crunchier sections of it. I saw this as a good opportunity to drag out my ten pound sledge hammer and a crowbar (and even some goggles to shield the eyes from the flying rock chips). Does anyone else type 'Googles' when trying to type 'goggles'? Luckily, this strata of geological botanical prophylactism was easily pierced and the trees were quickly planted.

Some genuine gold leaf is now on order for the gilding of my carved sign letters, but not before I'll be painting an authentic cinnabar (red mercuric sulfide) and linseed oil primer to make the gold leaf shine.
Maybe you are contemplating the fancying up of a garden gnome or plastic flamingo outdoors? If that's the case, you should use genuine gold leaf. Typical gilding leaf found in stores in the US is what they call 'Dutch Metal', which will corrode when exposed to the weather (no offense Dutch Donut Girl).

You can also buy a variety of gold leaf that is called 'double', which is ironically only 10% thicker than regular gold leaf, but will last for a very long time. I guess there is something to the expression 'Giving 110%'.
I wonder what cheap pikey fellow came up with 'double' to describe +10% where gold is concerned?

Also on my mind lately are recreations of ancient couches with outdoor cushions. I'm working on carving couch legs (I'll need 12 of them for three couches).
The bronze they'll be cast in will need to be around 3mm thick according to UK sculpture expert Ailsa Magnus (check out her enormous iron balls).

That much bronze will still be fairly heavy for 16" tall legs with a 1.5" diameter and cross supports for the wood I'm going to connect it to. The endgame with the couches is to have three in a 'U' shape, which is a classical 'Triclinium'. The triclinium was how dining went down 2000 years ago, but I'll probably just put a fire pit on a mosaic pavement and have everyone drink wine there.

Have a great weekend and I'll really be posting more complete pictures soon (seriously, really, I promise).

Riuscite a indovinare l'immagine della mia piscina?

C'è una foto di tre divani voglio fare (triclinium antiche)

Those Kids Were Almost on the Short Bus (Autobus Quasi Disastro)

2009-09-04T13:41:00.010-05:00

I was driving to work this morning and couldn't believe my eyes, I saw a near collision! A large yellow schoolbus in a lane in front of me was heading the same direction I was. Out of nowhere, a white Toyota Camry sped directly towards the bus and nearly hit it and my car. My car and the bus were both heading South and the Toyota was heading North. Luckily the Toyota didn't cross the double yellow line that was between our vehicles or there could have been serious damage and maybe even loss of life.

In other news, whenever a pool contractor mentions that they will give you time between cleaning and plastering to do your custom tilework, be sure to ask about the actual window of time. Would it be wrong for me to have assumed, say, a day? Why yes, it was wrong. Maybe four hours of daylight (a half-day)? Wrong again!

My cleaners finished at 8pm and the plaster subcontractors were scheduled for 7am the next day. During this time, I had to lay the tile on thinset, let that dry, seal the stone, let that dry, then do the grout, and yes, you guessed it, let that dry also.

Normally when I do such tasks, I have the wonder of working in daylight where I can actually see the results. But instead, picture a guy awkwardly holding a flashlight on the neck like a mobile phone while frantically wiping grout at 2am. Yay. I'll post some pictures soon, you know, after I finish swimming because I don't want to take the camera in the pool.

I apologize that I've been extremely busy lately, and haven't had spare time to acknowledge awards and memes and stuff, much lest post. But here is a meme that I can get out of the way. The Jules has tasked me with describing seven traits, and I've seen some of you blog-geniuses out there doing this one so I will attempt to answer also. I wonder what happens if two bloggers simultaneously tag each other *looks up and to the left, resting head pensively on fist*? Would we have infinite meme recursion? Well I for one am not going to tag anyone, but do with this what you will:

1) Lack of patience on the phone is definitely a trait of mine. If someone can't communicate what they are trying to say in the first minute or two, they should just get *off* the phone.I'm not saying that you have to talk like '1920's Reporter Guy', but just say it already...

2) I make things and probably should have my own manufacturing company by now. Whenever I see something nice, my first thought is usually 'How can I make that?' Don't most *normal* people think something along the lines of 'Where can I buy that?'

3) Owing any institution or person money makes me extremely uncomfortable, so I live on the positive side with no debt and within my means. If you want to drive me crazy, buy me lunch and refuse to let me pay you back, ever (But I'll find a way to pay you back, even if you don't realize).

4) Whenever I see a puzzle (especially word or anagram scramble related), there comes with it an obsessive compulsive need to solve.Here is one for you that I just thought of:

'Manic Arranges' = '?' (source words are a clue to the answer)

5) Cold weather is much more enjoyable to me than hot weather, maybe it's just because I live in Texas and am tired of hot weather. Even on a boat, the cold is nice.

6) When picking my passwords, I always **** * ** **** *******. **** ** **** * *******?

7) Under any circumstances, I will not eat watermelon. Or anything that tastes even in trace amounts like a watermelon including but not limited to cucumber, cantelope, honeydew melon, watermelon bubble gum, etc.

Everyone have a great weekend. I imagine all of the US folks will since it is a three day stretch...

How I Saved My Cup (Come Ho Salvato la Tazza Mia)

2009-08-27T13:32:00.006-05:00

A few Saturdays ago, I was having a great cinnamon flavored morning coffee as I do sometimes while going over things I want to accomplish for the weekend. I was drawing up sketches of mosaics, designing and things like that which spirit away attention from the tedious and mundane. So I take a sip of the coffee, and *bleh*, it's not at least 5 degrees above my body temperature.

Being a pragmatist, I'm thinking that the microwave might be a good way to remedy the situation. So I 'top off' the cup with even more coffee to the very edge of the brim, full because I love morning cinnamon coffee and reason very soundly that more is better where coffee is concerned. Then strolled over to the microwave oven and popped it in for a minute.

The friendly little beep soon told me that my coffee was ready, so I opened the microwave door (but not right away). I know it's irrational, but does anyone else wait for the 'riccocheting electrons' to finish their magical brain-tumor inducing flight for a few seconds before opening the door? Even the legendary Jack Kilby (the inventor of the integrated circuit) wouldn't have one in his house.

So I grab the handle of my expensive porcelain coffee mug that's part of a set that can't be purchased anymore and take out the coffee. But, not too carefully. You see, as soon as my hand holding the coffee mug clears the microwave oven and is over kitchen tile, a little bit of it splashes out on my hand burning the crap out of it. Remember? I filled that sucker up to where only the surface tension of the coffee was keeping it in the cup.

This would be all well and good except, my hand at that point has involuntarily jerked just slightly because of the extreme pain from the hot coffee, causing little bits more of the steaming and nearly boiling coffee to flow over the edge of the mug, setting off a cruel chain reaction of burn, spill, burn, spill, burn... etc.

After what seemed like several minutes of this spill burn cycle (tm), I had plenty of time to think about dropping the cup, but decided against that because the set was irreplacable. I had time to think about setting it down, but would spill even more in the process maybe causing a more serious set of burns. I wondered about whether biodiesel is a better solution than hydrogen for alternative energy. Then finally, I mustered the will power to stop jerking my hand around.

Inspecting the damage, I saw there were only red marks and tender skin. No visible blisters!

Good times.

Also, as training to see like an artist, take a look at the picture below. Your brain will try really hard to only see two eyes even though there are physically four. If you can see like an artist, it won't disturb you. What do you guys think?

Sigillum Salomonis (Nodo di Salomone)

2009-08-23T22:34:00.009-05:00

First of all, I wanted to thank anyone who might have called the Vatican this weekend and put in some good words for me, maybe called in some favors or something like that, because I have approval now to go on the Scavi Tour to see the gravesites under St. Peter's Cathedral!

This has been another busy weekend of mosaic making. I'm in a race with the contractor to finish my 'step spotter' mosaics. In addition to cups and grape leaves I've added lyres, which are harp-like things, basically the 'electric guitar' of 2000 years ago. I wonder if bands back then smashed their lyres after the concerts?

Also new are tridents (which are uncomfortably close to looking like dinner forks), and a close copy of an ancient 'Solomon knot' (top step, the one with interlocking links). You can kind of get a sense of what I have in mind for the layout with the picture below.

The photo below is of a 1700 year old 'Solomon knot' I took in an Italian cathedral. In my mosaic copy I stayed very true to these colors, using blue jasper and other semiprecious and rare stones.

The Solomon knot, or 'sigillum Salomonis' if you are MJenks / native Latin speaker, is a very old symbol. I like to think of it as the world's first 'M.C. Escher' style drawing. But, maybe a very simple 'For Dummies' style version of Escher?

It is found across many ancient and somewhat unrelated cultures. To some, it is supposed to signify eternity. To others, faith across all religions. The symbol has been associated of course with a King Solomon in the Bible, a son of King David. According to the account there, Solomon descended into some bad behavior and paid the price for it with the breakup of his kingdom.

Jumping to a completely different subject, and this is a bad picture, but my marble sign has been set in the spa wall (the stone around it is wet and appears darker, normally it is bright white plus the sun wasn't casting shadows on the letter the right way).

I was so paranoid it was going to get dropped or something right before it was done. But it's all good now. I'm entertaining the idea of gilding the insides of the letter forms or maybe casting actual bronze letters like they did 2000 years ago, but I think I'll wait until everything is done before I do that.

Cement Mistakes and the Grave of Peter

2009-08-20T07:51:00.010-05:00

Here are the mosaics for the first step of the pool as a set. I used botticino and Venetian green marble, porphyry and Orsoni gold. I'm glad that this won't be a twelve step program, or I'd have quite a bit more work to do before the pool is complete!

Despite my best efforts of hovering over the contractor and subcontractors this past week, they finally made their first mistake in variance from the plan! The cement 'water spillover' forms that go from the spa to the pool are too far towards the middle, which would leave the water spilling over the edges of the marble sign. You know, like watching a film in a theatre where the curtains were only 80% pulled back. My little message to the contractor is aout where the sign will go.

Anyway, the contractor assured me that it is nothing a diamond saw, mortar, and time can't fix. (Which I knew, but it's good to hear that they'll take care of it so I don't have to go all DIY on them). But, I'm looking forward to finally having a 1200 sq ft (110m) 'canvas' deck on which to paint in marble and glass.

Since the Italy trip is rapidly approaching, I sent away to St. Peters Basilica office of archaeology requesting an awesome tour of the ancient tomb of Peter. Hopefully my sincere pleading and inclusion of a photo of my mosaic (in authentic difficult-to-work porphyry as I imagined the ancients would have done it) might curry favor to get on the list of only 200 or so per day in the whole world that get to see the ancient buried site.

In other news, the great and highly regarded mosaic artist Julie Richey, whose work I admire because of her awesome small grout lines, great andamento, and color choices, gave me an invite to a website where other like minded folks congregate. She has just finished a great Rooster mosaic, which I'm sure that Mo Stoneskin would enjoy greatly given the history of rooster related commentary on this blog.

I trust that everyone is enjoying the last little bit of summer (or winter if you are in the southern hemisphere)?

What's With the Hole In My Yard? (Perché Un Foro Nell'erba?)

2009-08-13T15:54:00.012-05:00

I've been somewhat preoccupied the past two weeks with contractors and making sure a swimming pool to be built around my marble sign is progressing.

It turns out that doing your own excavation with a spork is not actually a cost effective way to make a pool, even if you put one between every finger you have. And several million of those 'twisty-tie' things which keep bread bags closed is not an acceptable substitute for tied steel reinforcing bar.

So, the professionals were called. And unfortunately for me, they are moving at breakneck speed. I have several design and art related tasks yet to complete, and I seem to be approaching the critical path.

Luckily, I have had a chance to finish my marble border around my marble sign around which the pool is being built. The ledge the sign will go into is two inches depth, so I needed a good transition to the two inch thick splitfaced stone that will surround it on the wall from the one inch thick marble of the sign. If I get really brave I'll try to carve a classical pattern into the border after it is already set into the wall (with manual tools, not electric ones what with water being so conductive and all).

The 'step-spotting' mosaics will alternate between grape leaves and cups. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish enough of them prior to plastering. Any other ideas for three inch mosaic subject matter? Don't say 'Little versions of the Mona Lisa' because I tried that and it turned out sub-par.

Also, I'm kind of ticked because, if I read a quote right, one marble vendor quoted me 4,000 USD just for *delivery* of stone. I'm pretty sure I could get a whole container load from Turkey delivered to my doorstep for the highway robbery they are attempting. So the search for material continues...

Plague (Peste)

2009-08-10T00:01:00.015-05:00

GHenry of Goldfish Broth dropped a plague reference a few weeks ago and it made me remember how much I like the subject. I've always had a keen interest in historical plagues and related archaeology.

The Bubonic Plague occurrences are some of the most horribly devastating, but fascinating, recorded events; even worse than the dreaded Swine Flu.

This cute little guy would be a prime suspect in an outbreak of plague occurring in the Southwest US.

It's a bit morbid, but one reason all this is interesting to me is that if we ever get into a situation where antibiotics are in short supply, or we have a drug resistant pandemic, we could all be in a very similar situation to our ancestors who saw the awful Bubonic Plague.

The crossroads of the East and West in terms of commerce in the Middle Ages was Venice. Along with Marseille and a few other busy shipping ports, Venice has frequently been a 'jumping off' point for infection. In Venice, most visitors know the story of the imposing church of the Salute situated across the Grand Canal from St. Marks square.

The year was 1630 and 46,000 people in the city itself and 94,000 in the lagoons had died in a most horrific way. The Republic of Venice vowed a bargain to build a church if the pestilence would take a hiatus. Strangely enough it did that very year, and the Venetians made good on their word by building a great church. There are also other older plague churches in Venice built as offerings, San Rocco (with its great Tintorettos), San Giobbe, and San Sebastiano.

At some point, the Venetians established the quarantine island of Lazzaretto Vecchio to place the infected who almost invariably died. So whether arriving in a ship as a lowly crew member or a wealthy lord from a palazzo, those with the signs of the disease were taken to the small island. The first graves were proper and they took time to wrap in cloth. But towards the zenith of the epidemic, those responsible for moving the dead (or almost dead) would just dump carts into trenches.

On this island in 2007, workers digging a foundation for a new plague museum uncovered mass graves. Archaeologists have found more than 1500 victims in just the areas dug so far. The new museum on Lazzaretto Vecchio is definitely on my list of things to see this Fall.

Another much older island now covered completely with water had been found in the 1960's with victims from the famous 1348 outbreak, San Marco in Boccalama. Near the same island in 1996, they found two 700 year old barges which might have been used to move plague victims to the quarantine island.

Don't be afraid to see the new Venice plague museum, or have fear of the catacombs in the major cities like Rome and Paris which undoubtedly would contain some plague victims. We are more resistant to the plague bacteria now because our ancestors were the ones who lived. Plus we have antibiotics to help out, for now. The World Health Organization reports 1000 to 3000 occurrences of plague each year.

Mi auguro che il museo di Lazzaretto Vechio sarà aperto da ottobre 2009. Storia della peste a Venezia è molto interessante.

Glass (Vetro)

2009-08-04T15:46:00.009-05:00

In deciding on a Venice itinerary for this fall, I made plans to stop by the famous Domus Orsoni in sestiere Cannaregio. This place makes the best glass pieces for mosaics, and is also famous for their gold leaf crystal. They have nice rooms to stay in, but there are more luxurious places with balconies and terraces on the Grand Canal.

But check out the great golden shower you can get in guest room four at Domus Orsoni...

I used some of this same 24k Orsoni gold leaf glass in some 3" mosaics I'm making for the new pool to be constructed. The contractor asked if I wanted 'step spotting' tiles so ~~drunk~~ uncoordinated visitors wouldn't fall whilst getting into or out of the pool. Being the hands-on type of guy I am, I decided to make several small mosaics as 'step spotting' tiles and just have those set in instead of boring one color tiles. I'd cover the whole bottom of the pool myself if I had the time, but I want to do the decking and probably carve some statues in carrara marble. So, maybe I'll just let that 'ultimate mosaic' pool part of the dream go for now.

Here is one of the mini-mosaics using gold Orsoni glass, marble and a bit of porpyry in a picture taken from atop a ten story parking garage downtown to make it more dramatic. *dramatic music plays*

Glass making in the Venice area has a long and profitable history. It has been made there for around 1000 years. From master craftsman to apprentice, the secret recipes of silica, lime, sodium oxide, arsenic, nitrate and coloring agents (or manganese oxide in the case of clear glass) in just the right proportions and in the correct order of processing have been handed down.

One of the Venice glass companies, Barovier & Toso, was formed in 1295 AD. They probably have one of the oldest corporate websites in the world too.

Hopefully, after Luciana's class in Ravenna this Fall, mosaic making with glass and smalti won't be so foreign to me compared with stone and marble. I tried using Leponitt cutters for the first time on the gold glass pieces on Sunday, and it was difficult. Leponitts are spring loaded pliers with two glass cutting wheels that come together to score the glass. Of course, I was using them more like tile nippers, handily crushing the glass underneath.

If you want to check out a modern glass artisan, go to Valerie's blog because she knows more about it than I ever will. Maybe I can pay Valerie to kiln up some smalti so I don't have to lug back 100kg of glass on the plane?

Does anyone else like the iridescence that occurs on ancient Roman glass? After thousands of years, some of the elements such as copper based impurities float to the surface of the glass giving it the rainbow and shimmer effect. It always amazes me that there is so much Roman glass left, what with glass being breakable and the ancients living with stone floors. Maybe it's thicker?

Ho fatto i mosaici per i scale della piscina. Usato lo smalti oro di Orsoni, lo spero non rende ciechi a causa del sole.

Wine Tasting, Ancient Style (Assaggio del Vino, Antiche)

2009-07-31T01:24:00.019-05:00

Who among us has never gone to a wine tasting party? We're talking about the kind in which the host wraps up bottles brought by party goers, then gives the secret bottles numerical identities, and paper and pen to the guests for writing tasting notes and voting for the favorite.

I enjoy being a bit bipolar in my reviewing technique, mostly for comedy, but if you are going to the trouble of reviewing something, why be bland about it?

If a wine happens to fall below average, I mock it relentlessly with the tasting notes. Things end up on my sheet like 'Old rotten saddle leather ridden by a leaky Cherry Kool Aid Man for weeks' or 'Everything that Cavit strives for, but worse and with a powerful cumin flavor and gorgonzola bouquet'.

But if a wine is better, I skew the results of comments wildly in the other direction. The prose on the notes quickly changes to the likes of 'A wine that thumps you on the head and demands respect. Complex lingering finish with vanilla and currant having just the right amount of French oak aging', that kind of thing.
All of it of course is rooted in a few grains of truth about the wine being tasted.

We have a wide variety of wine available today, but the ancients had a fair selection also. Wine came to ancient Italy from the Greeks at about 600 BC, and has been made there ever since. Pompeii itself was a major distribution port for wine, and if you go there today you can take pictures of the rows and rows of formerly wine containing amphorae like I did.

After Pompeii was destroyed in 79AD, the Romans got a bit protective of their wine trade a few years after that and had vineyards destroyed outside of Italy in 92AD under Emperor Domitian.

Here are some grapes I took a photo of in France near Chateau St. Maur last year that managed to escape Roman uprooting.

At this point, you might be wondering 'how did the ancients get the wine to ferment with no internet and readily accessible Home Booze Kit(tm) or yeast?'
Well, yeast occurs naturally on the grapes. There are recorded instances of birds eating overly ripe fruit and flying erratically into walls because they are over the legal intoxication limit for flying!

Anyway, as the Romans picked and stomped (not in the Country Western music sense), they left the skins in the amphorae with the juice and it happened all by itself. I would like to believe they were smart enough to just pour back part of a bottle into the new batches, so the strain of yeast would become more refined and specialized
over time.

Here is a picture of a remarkably well preserved ancient wine press in Israel, but some have also been found in Italy.

Some random Roman wine fun facts:

Senator Cato (contemporary of Julius Caesar) wrote extensively on wine, as did Pliny.

It's documented that sweet white wine was the most valuable in ancient times.

They used to sweeten some varieties of ancient wine with lead!

I think this weekend, I'll open up a really old vintage Italian wine, unleaded.

Hope yours is good too.

Quando vado a di festa vino (prova di assaggio), scrivo le osservazioni divertenti circa come i gusti del vino. La storia italiana del vino è affascinante.

Awards, Guitar Riff, and Signs

2009-07-28T16:33:00.007-05:00

There has been so much work, vacation planning, and tomfoolery going on for me lately. But I've been able to finally finish my old looking dedication sign.

Now I can have a pool built around it because, wow, it is really hot outside.

Also, one of my favorite people Zepo Lopez up in Oklahoma has awarded me the 'Blog it Forward' award. You know, now that I see the words 'forward' and 'award' so close together, it kind of freaks me out because they are so similar... It's a good tnihg I'm not dsylxeic.

Anyway, thanks very much Lopez, and I hereby pass the award along to some incredible *and* funny folks:

Grant Miller Media

GHenry at Goldfish Broth

Heather Cherry

Julia D at Homemade Hilarity

As you can see, I've restricted my choices to a narrow band of the available alphabet spectrum this time. So, please read them and comment favorably because if I send people, I might get a coupon or something. Just kidding about the coupon.

But everyone wait, that's not all... I recorded a little goofy guitar riff (not enough spare time these days to record the whole enchilada) for Lopez because she twittered that she was putting in some quality time at a casino. Let this abbreviated riff be a warning to not ever gamble what you cannot afford to lose (Animals House of Rising Sun).

Of course, she is a seasoned poker player from what I've heard. I kind of think that with enough card hands, poker is more of a game of skill than actual gambling. What do you guys think of skill vs. gambling where poker is concerned?

Strange Photos and Sundials (Fotografie Bizzaro e Orologi del Sole)

2009-07-23T18:12:00.014-05:00

My camera phone saw a few strange things today. An experimental street light at the Dallas Museum of Art's sculpture garden... Maybe they didn't think it all the way through.

On the way to work, I saw a horse getting hauled off to jail after obviously being arrested. I wonder what it did? It looked very guilty.

My elevator on the 48th floor was having all 660 feet of cable replaced because the old ones were fraying and about to snap (kidding, they were reclaiming the much more valuable copper, I think). Maybe I'll run down the stairs this afternoon instead of taking the elevator (stairs actually take 6 minutes and 30 seconds).

Over by Southfork Ranch, someone left a few stacks of gigantic number 2 pencils, they must have forgotten the sharpener.

Sunlight streamed in this morning and hit my muse bust in exactly the right proportions to make it light up as if intentional. This made me think of how that actually probably only happens exactly right once every year. Kind of like the Office episode where all the characters are watching the screen saver to bounce in *exactly* one of the corners in pure diagonal movement.

And this is the roundabout way of getting to the subject of time in the ancient world. In antiquity there were a few obvious ways of telling time better than looking up and just observing the sun's location.

One way was to burn accurate candles. In order for it to be big enough for a whole city to see, can you imagine the Roman equivalent of Big Ben being replaced each day? But it would probably be nothing but trouble, since Roman candles shoot firey exploding balls all over the place.

Another way to tell time which had been around for a while was the water clock. But its operation was somewhat sketchy in freezing weather, plus they didn't have electric pumps to refill the water all the time.

The sundials however, were accurate on most sunny days. They even used the sundials to calibrate the water clocks. So maybe it was sundial during the day waterclock at night? Plus, the sundials were portable. Imagine glancing down at this baby on your way to an important business meeting on the Palantine (Collis Palatium).

I might just be motivated enough to build me a proper sundial that throws down shadows and also points out mosaic months of the year. You know, in case my water clock goes dry. Ooops, its a shade past time to go...