If Looks Could Kill - Graphic Art & Design

Not one of my personal favorites, but there’s no denying his talent, the misunderstood Vincent Van Gogh fancied himself a realistic painter, rather than the expressionistic one he was labeled as due to his complementary colors and pronounced strokes.

Though “tragically brought down by incomprehension and madness, Van Gogh himself aspired to serenity and happiness.” It eluded him. He snuffed himself at 37, suffering from the seizure disorder and hallucinations, exacerbated by alcohol and probably syphilis as well.”

(Source) - Slideshow on Van Gogh with detail

Of further fascination to me, is the fact that if people were eventually “scanned” for perceived mental illness, we wouldn’t have work like his. The line between madness and creativity is hardly there - afflicting not just artists, but scientists, raising the question:

Do the mad have access to hidden worlds of imagination, denied to the sane? Is madness the final frontier of art and science? Is genius only a step away from insanity?

(Source)

Better organized and far easier to navigate, I present my overhauled Gallery - thou shalt go stare.

• Illustration
• Paintings
• Miscellany
• User Icons

Over & Out!

Perpetually fascinated by the subconscious, this intrigues me:

• Rats deprived of sleep die faster than rats that are deprived of food
• Some sadist actually implemented and tested the aforementioned bullet to the point of death.
• Memory consolidation takes place (defragmenting)

…if our brains did what they do during dreams while awake, we would be diagnosed as mentally ill. Yet we enter into this cousin of delirious insanity every night. “Do we go mad at night to prevent ourselves from doing so in the day time?” Hobson has asked. “Or do we go mad because the brain temporarily gives up certain of its controls in order to regain them, in better order, when sleep ends?” - Harvard sleep researcher, J. Allan Hobson

(Source)

It is now thought that he may have been poisoned by spiritualists, psychic mediums whose claims he’d debunked, even mocked - profusely.

There has been much speculation surrounding the death of Harry Houdini on Halloween of 1926. Now, his great-nephew wants the body exhumed to answer questions that persist.

• No autopsy. Appendicitis triggered by a gut-punch was accepted as cause of death.
• Death certificate filed post-burial
• According to forensic pathologists, the certificate listed his appendix on the left side (it’s on the right) and found the diagnosis listed “very unusual.”

On an aesthetic note, I love this photo of him, always have, from a visual and symbolic perspective of a man straining to escape from under lock and key, the chains that bind, but also because he was an all-around bad-ass.

SOURCE | INFO

As if there was ever any doubt, Procter & Gamble has won $19.25M in a suit against Amway distributors who had defamed them with this rumor. For Amway, to cast aspersions is shocking to me, with THEIR secretive and cult-like meetings. They actually have to misrepresent these gatherings as a party of sorts, in order to lure unsuspecting victims into long-ass sales spiels for their MLM pipe dreams. Loons!

Personally, I never noticed this logo when it was in use, but I like it. As a logo, I probably would have simplified the lines, less swoopties and curliques because it repros like crap at smaller sizes. Also not feeling the unicorn look to the points.

I have such a crescent man-in-the-moon fetish, my only tattoo is along these lines, though in desperate need of retouching and repair.

For the topmost example, one has to reverse (horizontally flip) the image to perceive the 6’s in the hair. The 2nd one’s a real stretch, difficult to even form 6’s from. Then there are the negative connotations with the number 13, the count of stars.

SOURCE | ORIGIN

Not only is this a bad-ass AC/DC song, but also a compelling question raised in this article, “Who Made Who?” Does God exist outside of our minds, meaning he created us, or did we create God?

Spirituality and belief don’t have to equate to religious faith, Newberg said. The feelings of enlightenment and well-being some derive from religion can come to others through from artistic expression, nonreligious meditation, watching a beautiful sunset or listening to stirring music.

Scientists studied the areas of the brain stimulated by the activity of prayer, meditation and speaking in tongues (glossolalia) with interesting results:

1. Both prayer and meditation showed “decreased activity in the parts of the brain that have to do with sense of self and spatial orientation — which suggests the description of oneness with God, of transcendence sometimes experienced in meditation or prayer.”
2. Those speaking in tongues were shown not to have control over their own speech, but they were unable to locate another area of the brain as responsible for it, you can imagine the implications here.

The Center for Spirituality and the Mind is “bringing together some 20 experts from fields including medicine, pastoral care, religious studies, social work and bioethics” to explore the relationship they have demonstrated and proven via brain scanner images, and how to integrate this with treatment to complement medicinal treatments.

P.S. If you like the icon shown above, you can nab it here.