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It’s been a long time since the last post and painting. Here are the fragments that accompany and inspired the painting that developed over the last couple of weeks.

The surgeon says: Now I give you some “beer” to relax. He says: Ok, I give you some shots. Ah… maybe one more. Things become fluffy. The surgeon opens the hand, screwing-out the titanium. The screwdriver breaks. He says: I’ll be right back. He puts on his clothes - a nice three-piece suit. He takes the subway. It’s Friday afternoon. He borrows the screwdriver-set from a hospital across town. He takes the subway. Changes the three-piece suit to a more greenish garment. And two and a half hours later the titanium is removed. The patient enjoys the improved mobility of his hand and the amnesia.

Late “summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee, with a shower of rain“.

The kilogram got lighter, a bit. By definition, nothing changes. Just like it’s length.

Visited the documenta in Kassel. The city’s atmosphere is beautifully transformed by thousands of visitors from all countries and backgrounds. The art, a massive pile of average stuff. Iconic: An installation of guitars triggered by a wheel. The gain and volume of the amps glued to the 4 o’clock position. No feedback, no force. - And I never in my life want to see rugs from Afghanistan - or feminist rugs again. The tribal aesthetic of so many objects is nauseating. There is a market on a street nearby, showing the same globalized kitsch. Every room is clogged by people gathering in mindless herds around guides explaining the art. Contaminating the area around them with explicitness and the slime-like art jargon of the 80ies. So little stuff that reflected the spirit and problems of today’s art. Nothing that had to do with computers, media, information, the brain, the gene, terror and anti-terror-terror. But the security personnel was recruited from local high school graduates. Mostly girls. And people used them as their mediator, which added a nice naive and lively flavour.

Sometimes art is a hoax. Sometimes a serious hoax-device, that gets you arrested and nearly killed.

A guy from Florida is asking John Kerry questions. While Kerry answers them, the guy is tasered by the security personnel. But nobody around cares. Tasering somebody seems to have become part of our social fabric. Almost imperceptible, below the threshold.

With delight we watch a new bomb explode, we call her “father”, and point out that this weapon of mass destruction is environmentally friendly. A few thousand kilometers away, a new kind of fungi adapted to feed on nuclear radiation. And also neutrons are not so neutral anymore. While peeping toms peep peeping toms. But aren’t you too?

Open your ear-lids and listen to the new Modeselektor, Thurston Moore and Ween albums!

And the Pope may live in hell, by his own standards, ironically, by receiving a bit of euthanasia, that he decreed a sin and in a quite inhumane way denied others.

Gerhard Richter’s fantastic abstract stained glass window in Cologne Cathedral is revealed. We see the spiritual world as a field of random pixels, and we cannot get them into focus. A catholic cardinal is afraid of it: The window could be in a mosque too. And ornaments are dangerous. A beautiful demonstration, that randomness can be quite political. Like Poisson distributions, that may be a way the brain uses information.

B.F. Skinner, the behaviourist psychologist once made an experiment rewarding pigeons randomly. The pigeon reasons: ah, I guess I tilted my head a bit, when I got the reward, I guess I’ll do that. Hm… no reward…maybe I make two steps to the right…and there comes a reward…so it tilts the head, makes a few steps…and is disappointed…and makes three steps back, and is rewarded…and so on. And after a couple of hours of random reinforcement the pigeon dances in a most bizarre, frantic limbo. Consult these dance instruction manuals! But unlike the pigeon, some birds see true magnetic north.

And the facial expression robot grins his silicone smile. But actually faces are everywhere.

G.B. Shaw was asked: How do you spell “fish”? And he answered: “ghoti”. “Gh” like in “tough”, “o” like in “women” and “ti” like in “nation”.

Radiohead “sells” their beautiful new album (all videos plus bonus songs here) for free. And I face the prompt and wonder what I should pay - what do I expect others expect me expecting others… - where is the game theory book when you need it? What is permissible, when everything is permissible? The beautiful thing seems to be: not everything. Or in Dollars: 7$. But some pirate and some make money. What would A. J. Jacobs say to this? He lived a whole year according to the bible, wrote a book about it and gave an funny interview.

You meet a girl, she smiles. She has a website. You know her poems, her paintings, her stories, sense her infatuations. Infinite possibilities. A hermetic love-letter from me.

Enjoy the hermetic and open the pandemonium!

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