RUBBER & REAL DUCKS GO VIRAL IN CHINA

COMMUNISTS AND OLIGARCHS HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR.....

JOSS WEDON, DIRECTOR

GRADUATES:  Action is more important than words....but words are more important than nothing.  Here are 13 minutes of funny, serious, true words than can help you, if you occasionally think of them.

The two professor-administrators at the front, who probably invited him, get his dark entertaining humor and agree. The professor in the back is probably bored and thinks he's a jerk.  You can make your own decision.  (The English is clear and non-academic.)

The problem is that at graduation ceremonies, students are thinking about partying, their dates, supportive and non-supportive families, no job, the terrifyng future, being hot or cold, holding on to their caps in the wind, eating, texting, boredom, and having a good night's sleep, hopefully with someone.

Still, the Graduation Speech Ritual is one of civilization's more useful inventions, too often unused.

http://www.upworthy.com/behold-the-bluntest-funniest-and-deadliest-graduation-speech-in-the-history-of-the-known-universe?g=2&c=upw1

POLITICAL ART CAN BE GOOD ART

ARTISTS: Self-promotion is not wrong and doesn't pollute art...if you have something worthwhile to promote.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/arts/design/ai-weiwei-dioramas-depict-his-imprisonment.html

WILL

SEARCHING

LITTLE SAIGON

PARIS BY NIGHT" has produced very professional live shows and 109 DVDs with almost every great Vietnamese singer and composer, for 30 years. They represent the history of Vietnamese music, some of the greatest, most moving in the world. Now they have been driven out, because fans steal the music free on YouTube......QUESTION: If you love a singer, should you steal their creativity, steal their spirit? Even great singers need to eat. They deserve to have their artistry, hard work, and vulnerable passion treated with respect by their fans.....Or else there will be no music, no films, no art. Fans lose, student artists lose, creativity and inspiration is killed, and culture becomes even more diluted, hopeless, meaningless....Nothing good is free in life.

Language isn't important. Listen with your heart to these great Vietnamese singers and composers:

Trinh Cong Son ~ Khanh Ly ~ Le Thu ~ Thai Chau ~ Elvis Phuong ~ Che Linh ~ Thai Thanh ~ Tuan Ngoc ~ Hoang Nam ~ Thanh Lan ~ Ngoc Son ~ Cam Van ~ Giao Linh ~ Jimmy Joseph ~ Dalena ~ Thanh Tuyen ~ Pham Duy ~ Hoang Lam ~ Ky Anh ~ Manh Dinh ~ Bao Yen ~ Tuan Vu ~ Don Ho ~ My Linh ~ Khanh Ha ~ Ngoc Lan ~ The Son ~ Duy Quang ~ Vu Khanh ~ Y Lan ~ Tran Tu Tien ~ and many others

CHILDREN & THEIR FAVORITE TOYS

Revealing, moving photographs of children around the world, by an Italian artist....

http://www.gabrielegalimberti.com/projects/toys-2/#

END AND BEGINNING

落日餘暉

WE ALL CHANGE

At the extremes, there are two basic kinds of people (aren't there always): those who ravenously crave any change because their lives are terrible or boring, and those who hate and/or fear any change. 

I'm someone who usually resists change, because I feel most of it are superficial diversions that keep us from confronting and changing ourselves, as well as working to improve political and social realities. Development changes are more often than not negative, destroying the life-giving beauty of nature and artistic creation, solely for the purpose of personal profit, power, and ego gratification. Technological changes severely harms healthy human feeling and human communication, intellectual exploration, unique individual expression, and the vital critical standards painfully developed at great sacrifice over hundreds of years of movement towards a civilized planet.

This article suggests why we may not be able to see, plan for, react to, or accept change....

BEING PRESENT

INTIMACY FATALLY ATTACKED 

The strong, but fading responses against interrupting personal real contact with technological virtual contact is comforting, although it is a losing battle.  The war has already been won, and those who support intimacy are already dinosaur zombies. 

In defiance of the robotization of culture and communication, some rebels still are able to summon the positive energy and courage to resist massive social and planned-obsolescence pressures to spend, update, and boast.  

ART VS. DEATH

   

    25,000 years ago, France

    38,000 years ago, Spain

GRATITUDE

BOOK OF GRATITUDE

This Book was started on Thanksgiving Day 2011. Then every day when I wake up, I visualize other vital people and things, feel their influence on my heart and spirit, and ritualistically write their names…..

NATURE

I am grateful for hummingbirds, rabbits, trees, clouds, rain, snow.

HEALTH

I am grateful for breathing easily, seeing, moving my body, crying, making love, sleeping well.

PEOPLE

I am grateful I lived in the same centuries with Bob Dylan,

Jackson Pollack, Walt Kelly, Federico Fellini, Maya Plisetskaya,

Akira Kurosawa, Doc Watson, Jorge Preloran, Ingmar Bergman,

BUDDHISM

All religions seek a Father who is all-wise and all-powerful, who will guide us, threaten us, condemn us, hurt us or reward us, according to our complete devotion to Him.

He controls everything and knows everything, but he will not tell us everything, insisting instead that we just have faith in Him, so that He eternally remains in charge, obeyed, feared and worshipped.

What a remarkable position to be in! And He did not invent the position…we did.