mondrian’s neon fantod

Today’s NewsHaiku comes from across the sea…

link

Starting today, I’m going to do a haiku a day on something that caught my eye in the news. This is totally experimental and may not make it past tomorrow. Oh, and there’ll almost definitely be a break while I’m away for this Thinaksgiving thing. But if I manage to restart it when I get back this might really become a regular feature. But for now, here’s today’s:

And if you don’t know what that one’s about, here’s a hint.

Here’s one you probably won’t see on Faux News:

Door thwarts quick exit for Bush

Hail the leader of the free world, baby.

Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller fame, takes a stand on NPR’s This I Believe segment…

There is No God

Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Now there’s something to consider. And maybe it’s even something to be thankful for…

Sony’s BS stealth DRM got you down? Check this action:

Gartner: piece of tape defeats any CD DRM

So, it would seem that DRM really is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig. Way to go, RIAA and Sony!

Mondrian’s Composition (1921)

image gleefully stolen from MoMA

Piet Mondrian, source of part of the name of this site, was a Dutch painter whose works (specifically the later bits) sing to me. Of course, “Mondrian” is also just a really great name and sticks in my head. But still, the artist deserves his due. So here, dear friends, are a couple of links to things Mondrian-y…

• The Artchive’s entry on Mondrian. Includes biographical/critical text from David Sylvester.
• The Artcyclopedia’s entry on Mondrian. Includes a boatload of links to Mondrian works online.
• The Mondrimat – a fabulous flash “game” where you can play Mondrian and make your own fabulous works.
• Mondrian – “An applet to randomly generate modern art in the style of Piet Mondrian.”
• And finally, the obligatory wikipedia entry.

Sometimes Mondrian’s works make my head hurt. But a lot of the time I find them soothing. That’s probably the two halves of my brain at war with one another. See, I tend to come out ~50/50 on online right/left brain tests, so I guess it’s only right that Mondrian intrigues me.

And that is your art history/yongi psychology lesson for the day.

Class dismissed.

Cheney says war critics ‘dishonest, reprehensible’

No sir, I’ll tell you what’s dishonest and reprehensible. It’s torturing people and goddamned lying about it. It’s flouting the rules of the Geneva Convention. It’s lying the United States of America and the rest of the world into a war for personal and crony gains. It’s sending our soldiers off to die when you and the vast majority of this administration and the republican congressional leadership ducked, dodged, bullied and begged your own way out of ever serving your country anything but a load of bullshit.

You see, it’s you, sir. You and your associates are the ones who are dishonest and reprehensible. That’s all I have to say. Please return to your undisclosed location at this time.