Justified Web Culture

My seemingly lowbrow interest in the Achewood ubercomic- here, here and here- has been endorsed in the Economist's seemingly highbrow lifestyle magazine Intelligent Life.

Two flavours of Achewood. First the direct.


And then in layers of meta-weird.

When It's Good...

The Last 48 Hours Of Single-Handedly Rocking Istanbul Has Been So Damn Incredible It Deserves To Be Capitalized. I Just Traveled Between Two Continents, Danced To Midnight Reggae On A Roof Terrace Cityscape, And Saw A Throne Taken From A Moghul Emperor Defeated In The 16th Century. It's 32 Degrees And I'm Fairly Sure I Will Be Watching The Sun Set From The Hotel Pool Overlooking The Sea Of Mamara.

Different Ways of Laughing

The February edition of Guernica magazine features an interview with Coleman Barks- the translator of "The Essential Rumi"- the Sufi poetry that has been speaking so clearly to me these past months.

Guernica: Rumi’s poems constantly loop back to emptiness and silence, “that disciplined silence,” he calls it. Do you have to cultivate that silence in order to translate his work?

Coleman Barks: If I'm not in the receptive place, [it won't work], but it seems like a place I want to go. It's like going to sleep when you're tired, you just do it. You fall into it. It's a beautiful lucid dream that has language that I can fiddle with.

Guernica: How might he [Rumi] respond to the many kinds of religious fundamentalism which are rampant all over the world?

Coleman Barks: He didn't like there to be religious boundaries. He said if you think there's an important difference between being a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Buddhist, then you're making a division between your heart, what you love with, and the way you act in the world. That was such a wild and extreme thing to say in the 13th century with the Crusades coming across that peninsula. It's pretty wild to say even now. We're all the same species. We all have children. We fall in love. We all have an impulse to praise and to worship. He says it's all "thing," it's all one song that we're singing...

"Another Place" by Antony Gormley.

First Passed the Post

ARTHUR (V.O.)
People were always asking me, did I know Tom Gara.

TOM: yo
ARTHUR : yo. way to be online at the same time.
TOM: its almost as if we are using the internet to facilitate some kind of "chat". i reckon there's a business model in this
ARTHUR : nah man.. i figure most people want to chat about rolling that old timey steel wheel down a road. and on the internet its just not the same.

ARTHUR (V.O.)
Wait. Back up. Let me start earlier... You wake up in Egypt...

TOM: i had an awesome glimpse into writer life today. Went and interviewed this analyst from TNS.
ARTHUR: whats TNS?
TOM: Big finance/global trade kinda thinktank/research group he's based in singapore and is responsible for all their emerging market stuff and just talked to him for like 2 hours about the rise of asia and what it means for africa and the middle east it was this totally awesome fun conversation with a genius that i would have gladly enjoyed doing in my spare time..
ARTHUR: freakin awesome...
TOM: In fact, that is what i would like to do with spare time except it was my job.

ARTHUR (V.O.)
You wake up in Sydney. You wake up in Ireland. You wake up in Sri Lanka. You wake up in Amsterdam... The list goes on. But the story is the same..

Two or three gentleman sit near the bar in a room of a thousand conversations. Introductions, polite enquiries, mispronounced "cultural" greetings fill the air- but not at this table. These men sip a fine beverage, savouring it against a myriad of beers from a myriad of bars/breweries/cities. Their discussion is different- but always the same.

ARTHUR (mid sentence): ...which will make all the difference upon the way, yeah?
TOM: Fundamentally.
ARTHUR: Fundamentally.. So anyway what's the story with you man?
TOM: Still the Middle East thing, if I can work it out. Obviously Egypt. Ideally journalism, but whatever it takes to get there. I can do the marketing thing if I need cash/money for a while- in Saudi or whatever- but whatever it takes to get writing for a living really.

ARTHUR (V.O.)
I think this is about where we came in.

"This month's Business Today Egypt magazine has my first ever cover story, which I am way happy with - it talks shit about new age garbage, name checks Machiavelli and Sun Tzu, quotes Taoist poetry and mentions hash smoking in its second sentence. Plus, it has as sexy a cover as any business magazine you will see this month. Check it out..."

"A Different Drummer" - Tom Gara's Blog. 07/08/07

ARTHUR (V.O.)
Let me tell you a little bit about Tom Gara

So without much fanfare a major vision was actualised. Cover story, major publication in a "hot" region, ancient wisdom translated to engage and challenge society. One year after leaving AIESEC International. Freaking brilliant. But that's a phrase you'll get used to, knowing Tom.

Congratulations brother, from everyone who every sat at the table and dared to dream. Keep blazing the trail. One love. Peace.

FADE TO BLACK
End

Animated Alan Watts

"South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and their pals animated several audio recordings of Alan Watts (w'pedia), an iconic philosopher and writer who turned scores of people on to Zen Buddhism."Link (Thanks, Anthony Hall!)
posted by David Pescovitz on BoingBoing and stolen by my cunning ctrl-v strategy.