The Blog

This photo was taken by myself on a nice summer day last year from the balcony of our apartment, right here in South Western Ontario. This is the 7th in a series of 20 photos with the same theme. The photo is taken by a panoramic lense so click on it to enlarge into its full size.

He was the father of German Expressionism, of norwegian nationality. In 1885 he was in Paris and developed his own approach from the exciting styles that surrounded him. These were the major movements of the later 19th century: Impressionism and Symbolism. From 1892-1908 Munch was living in Germany where he came to maturity as an artist. He was a major influence on German Expressionist art.
His paintings and prints were literary and mystical, with a scandinavian presence, and tempered by his dark and tortured personality. Sickness and death were recurrent themes in his work. Other subjects he passionately portrayed were the awakening of sexual desire, and women in opposing states of child and vampire. Munch’s emergence as an artist coincided with Freud’s theories in psychoanalysis; the artist’s obsession with sex and death in his work created a visual play of Freud’s explanations of the human psyche. Scenes of death and decay, the woes of life, along with the display of obvious phalic symbols, are prevalent in his pieces.
In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Munch’s work showed explicit symbolic content; constant, curving line movement of the art nouveau; and an emphasis of colour that was dark in hue, but brilliant in intensity. He was a major graphic art and began his well-known etchings and lithographs in 1894.
I think Munch’s works can be disturbing to say the least.

The Dance of Life by Edvard Munch

The question of Muslim women wearing the Hijab/Niqab or the veil has been a much talked about item for a long time. Its also a pretty contraversial topic in the muslim world. There are a few schools of thought surrounding the subject of wether its required by Allah (the God) for women to wear the veil. The prevailing opinion has been that its better to wear it than not to wear it, although, in my humble opinion, its not one of the fundamental requirements of Islam. I think modesty in general is the fundamental requirement. But I am not a scholar, so I am not going to go into the details of why I think so. I may change my mind about it once I hear a really convincing argument that it is indeed required by Islam. For excellent resources about this subject, please visit sister Al-Muhajabah’s web site. Read the whole store here and then comment.

Ever notice the rude freaks you run into in the elevator occasionally? I guess the people you meet in the elevator represent an average of what people’s personalities are really like in the rest of the world around us. Except in the elevator, you tend to be in closer contact with them. Either that or people just get possessed by something when they are in an elevator. (And why do they call it an ELEVATor if you are actually descending to the ground floor?). I am particularly concious about who you are with in an elevator, ’cause it makes or breaks your whole trip. And what if the elevator were to get stuck: do you really want to be stuck in an elevator with just any freak? Or worse still, if the elevator were to break and fall to the ground floor, do you want to die with some weirdo? Elevators illustrate how unimaginably helpless we are as human beings: I don’t care who you are, once you are inside an elevator, you are at the mercy of the cables.

We watched this masterpiece of a movie just recently. I can’t begin to imagine how this is based on a true story. How can someone pretend to be a freakin’ pilot, doctor and a lawyer – all before the age of 19 – and fool the FBI in the process? Tom Hanks is great in this movie, as he usually is…Leonardo Di Caprio is also pretty good, though not one of my favorites. Even though I never really believed that his character was really getting away with the impersonation of a pilot – of all occupations – I still liked his performance. Christopher Walken was also very interesting as the father. I really like the way the movie is made. Its almost artistic Not a movie you want to miss.
I think we may get a chance to watch Matrix 2 tomorrow evening. Tennis was bad today – my shins were killing me and it got extremely cold and windy. I hated it. We lost. Again. Dammit!