My brother-in-law Paul who is in Seoul sent me this link to some interesting North Korean comics today.

Browsing around led me to this link with North Korean propaganda posters.

I've long been fascinated with Communist propaganda and have been collecting Chinese posters for years. If you want to kill some time, check out Stefan Landsberger's vast collection of Chinese Propaganda Posters. Stefan wrote the book (literally) on the subject. His collection contains images that will blow your mind.

I used to have this image on my old website with the caption, "fun for you and your lady" it's from a Chinese poster (1980's).

The other must have book on the subject is by photographer Michael Wolf. His book is a bit easier to find than the other: Chinese Propaganda Posters: From the Collection of Michael Wolf

So this was the scene this evening over here in Brooklyn:

Jenn was out at one of her writer's workshops. The baby was fussy, so I went down and held him in the darkened living room until he went to sleep. People always complain about time moving fast, but time can also be deliciously slow. Lying back on the couch, baby as warm as comforter on my belly, soft breathing... I see him going into REM sleep and then his body goes slack and floppy as he moves into deep sleep. No need to move. Just watching the shadows on the ceiling. I click on my ipod, shuffle play. First song . Out of season, but perfect for my mood. And then this. :)

Flickr user Neil Kandalgaonkar aka brevity has created a script to average photos in the manner of artist Jason Salavon. Cool stuff.

Some links:

Brevity
Eiffel Tower
Photographer's Own Shadows
The Seasons
Salvon
Every Playboy Centerfold from the 1970's
Top Grossing Film of All Time
Class of 1967 vs 1988

This Kodachrome slide was marked "March 18, 1970. It's me and my dad in a park in Houston... my guess is it's the park near the art museum. The bonnet is embarrassing, but give me a break. I was 3.

I own two Tibetan skulls. Both were at one time used for blood ritual. One was bought by my dad in Venice from a Tibetan ethnographer who travelled in Tibet in the 50's. The other was given to me by a monk in a monastery in Dege in 1992 after I pointed it out as a match to the one my dad found. An artist named Benedict Carpenter does drawings based on descriptions of things. He then posts the results on the net. I submitted a description of the skull and he came back with this drawing. Surprisingly accurate considering the description.

While I wish it would AND multiple tags instead of ORing them, the Flickr postcard Browser is still cool.

I had dinner a few nights ago with Jakob Lodwick of College.Humor.com and Busted Tees fame. I think he's on to something big with his new project vimeo.com. It's ahead of the curve, and very unfinished, but when video phones finally take off here as they have in Japan this site is going to break out. Our dinner topic was metadata and content tagging, a subject I've been sort of obsessed with for a long time. Just talking out loud about this stuff forced me to organize my thoughts and Jakob had some interesting insights that have kept my brain charged for days. I've started to write a small manifesto which I will be posting with a wiki-type interface at some point in the future. If this subject is compelling to you, check out: Folksonomies. And be sure to go through all the links in the references.

Anyway none of that was the point of this post. I was surprised that Jakob had never heard of Edward Tufte and in polling some other design/web friends of mine who are Jakob's age, I found they had also never heard of the guy. Tufte has written 3 of the best books out there about the visual display of information, all written pre-web. The must-have books are The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations. If you are a designer or web person, you need these books on your bookshelf. While the titles are dry, the text is not and the books themselves are a delight, full of graphically interesting illustrations. Find them cheap on half.com.

This is my Tio Raul on one of his ranches near Paras, Nuevo Leon in Mexico. The picture is circa 1984 right before he died. He was tough and many people were more than a little scared of him. He would always refer to me as a criminal or as that "no good" "gringo viejo".

One of his ranches had a big orange orchard. I would travel out there with him in the back of his truck (along with the dogs) and once we arrived I would go deep into the orchard and climb one of the trees. At lunch he would come out and try to find me. This was never difficult as the dogs always slept under my tree, but he would make a show of it, cursing my name while I tried to sit very very still. Eventually he would spy me and shout at me while I would laugh hysterically. Then he would say, "I guess you have to eat." and throw up tacos wrapped in foil. He would sit under the tree and eat his lunch keeping me company. I would ask long questions from up in my perch. He would respond with short gruff answers. Afterwards he would toss me a pocketknife so I could cut some oranges and mutter that only monkeys liked trees so much. Then he would go finish his work and I would stay up in the tree the rest of the afternoon reading and daydreaming...

I miss that world sometimes. I miss the long ride in the back of a dusty pickup. I miss the smell of orange trees on a hot day. And I miss being cursed and called "el gringo viejo" by my Tio Raul.

Check out this new Adidas ad directed by Spike Jonze. Dreamy song by Squeak E Clean with Karen O on vocals.

We needed to be legally married in advance of our Mexican wedding. So we drove to Vegas in the Mini and got ourselves hitched. We expected the drive through service to be silly... it ended up being kind of emotional. I'll admit we both teared up.

Do found photos fill you with nostalgia for other eras? Check this page out. You won't be sad.

It is some ungodly hour. I hear screaming outside and go to the window. There is an elegant older woman wearing a long dark coat with a hood standing in the middle of Sidney Place braying at the trees. She catches sight of me in the lit window, throws back her head, and lets out a deep howl that sends chills up my spine. Then she runs towards Joralemon her coat flapping like a cape in the wind. She is silhouetted against the snowy streets and runs until out of frame. I hear her screams fade in the distance and decide it is definitely time for bed.

And they say nothing interesting happens in Brooklyn Heights.