Postcard Archive - 2. Antonio Piccioli flowers

By the Italian Antonio Piccioli (1794 - 1942). Fro, left: Passiflora holosericea, Pelargonium tetragonum, Orchis rubra.
Sent to me by J- in NYC.

Postcard Archive - 1. Choir of the Lions

Choir of the Lions by Okinawan artist Bokunen Naka. Sent to me by my friend P- in Los Angeles

Love it or hate it

• "You either love it or you hate it." You often hear this trite phrase said by afficionados of a certain work, and it is usually crap. The implication is that the work is so profound that one's reaction to it is extreme, one way or the other. And that just ain't the case. I've never known any work, be it music, film, or whatever, that had some that loved it, some that hated it, and a vast majority in between that more or less liked it to varying degrees.
  

From the oldie but goodie department

• Hopefully everyone is aware of this far-reaching white paper, but here is the link just in case: IP transmission via carrier pigeon.
  

Blood in ye olde Kiss comics

• When I was a young teenage headbanger, I loved KISS. The music was heavy (for the time) and the theatrics were entertaining. I grew to like them less as time went on, but still consider Kiss Alive and Kiss Alive II pretty good live albums.
  Then after listening to the infamous Fresh Air interview with Gene Simmons, I just gave up on him as an obnoxious twit.
  I saw an interesting piece of trivia today, though. Talking about the 1977 'Marvel Super Special' comic, which features a superpowered KISS, the io9 blog notes that the actual members of the band mixed in drops of their blood with the printing ink for that issue...
  Of course, they probably did it for the publicity. But even so it is a rather interesting magickal act.
  

Keeping track of everyone

• Wowsers.
  I primarily use the multitudes of social networking sites out there to find lost friends, keep track of current ones, and to not lose touch. Spokeo, which I have just started playing around with, seems like an amazing tool to accomplish this. It is both scary and impressive.
  

Feb 29 - Happy Birthday to Tim Powers

• February 29th is the birthday of Tim Powers, brilliant author and close friend of Philip K. Dick. I recommend pretty much all of his work, but Last Call has been particularly influential in my life.