YuriGoul's art and stuff

I collect old picture books - the oldest is from 1935, it shows beautifully printed pictures of Spain before the second world war, all sepia brown. I used to collect all sorts of picture books, no matter what, for inspiration I said, but I hardly ever used them. Among them were books with pictures of plants, machinery, animals, interior design, the pyramids and old medical books with the pictures of the terrible diseases and deformities caused by them, things we don't see in our daily life anymore. It used to be a common sight - seeing people with deformities. The French philosopher Foucault said things about that, about how with the birth of the modern age we simply tried to hide everything that seemed not rational from our daily lives and ban it to the rims of our world, where the irrational was placed in a container, to make us feel safe, and give us the feeling the world is a rational, predictable place.

Then I started limiting myself by just collecting old picture books, mostly cities and architecture, in most cases also people are in there to show how people looked and dressed themselves in other parts of the world.

What I realize when looking through those books is how much we have forgotten. And the most important part of it is that we have forgotten how much we did not know. Books like that were printed before television showed us live streams or almost live streams of people and cities around the world. All those people we see there drink coca cola, and if not changes are they are our enemies.

But imagine being 12 years old in 1935 and getting your hands on the book about Spain I have. Imagine the wonder at every page - not knowing what people in other parts of the world look like, what they do, and how they eat. Imagine reading for the first time about tribes in Africa who deform their bodies on purpose. We have seen that so many times that we don't care anymore - it is a footnote in our world view. "Remember that movie about the cap of a coca cola bottle that traveled all the way through Africa to a tribe that had never seen western civilization before, honey?" "Yes, I do, I heard about it, never seen it though, but I am tired now, I am going to sleep now."

Am I sounding old? Maybe, but I think of myself as someone who never stops to wonder. Maybe those books help, they remember me to never take things for granted. I wish I could become a thousand years and see what the next centuries bring us.

When doing web design you should be aware of the fact that the it is very important to use DIVs combined with XHTML instead of TABLEs + HML to do your design. Well, I don't, you could call me old fashioned if you will, but I still use TABLEs. And here is why.

When doing web design it is very important to adhere to Muprhies Law: If anything could go wrong chances are it will eventually go wrong at some point. Using DIV's is - in my opnion - an accident waiting to happen.

When doing design I try to adhere as close to the standards as possible in order to be sure that every browser shows approximately the same thing. I test my sites using the W3C validator so I think of myself as being one of the good guys.

At the CSS Zen Garden project people try to convince you that you should use the DIV + XHTML combination. But when you look at the code, they have to do the most absurd things to make it work in all browsers. You have to fool the browsers into rendering your site the way you want it and every browser has its own approach. And the things that can not be done using DIV + CSS + XHTML are done using Javascript. The result is a site that is well organized and has a good syntax that should in theory help people to better evaluate the contents of the site - and in theory it should also help computers to better understand the contents of that site. But the last part is largely something that is going to be realized in a distant future.

The thing is that with sites like these you not only have to worry about backwards compatibility (all past browsers have to be approached in their own way to make sure that it 'works') but you also have to worry a lot about forward compatibility. In other words: at some point some update or some extension or some combination of factors will mess up your website completely.

If I translate this to Murphies Law it sounds like this: If you create code that is on purpose to messy, you will pay for it at some point in the future. And in the present you are paying by making things overly complicated.

What I do is using old and proved 'ancient' technology (TABLE + HTML + CSS) and there are not many things that go wrong. I stick to that for a while until the browser market is more ready for this. Maybe then computers can also understand what a website is about, and maybe then screen readers will really need the syntactical info given them through the DIV + XHTML combination.

This morning I got a bit mad at a ticket vending machine in U-bahn station Kottbusser Tor because it refused to accept money. I was looking around constantly to see if any of the punks there had any tickets but this time they were of no use (they usually ask passengers leaving a station for their tickets and they sell them for one Euro while they are still valid). Then a Muslim woman wearing a big black Hijab appeared and gave me her ticket (she cam from Gesundbrunnen, and did not need it anymore). I was totally astounded byt the fact that a Muslima dared to talk to a western man who at that time was clearly bearing a grudge against everything mechanical. Anyway, I smiled at her broadly, thanked her and rushed for the U-bahn. At my destination I went out of my way to give the ticket to someone else.

What about a movie following a metro ticket. It starts with a man who buys a day ticket, and loses it. He is wearing a suit, his car is reposessed or something, his company is about to go bust, and because he lost his ticket he is arrested. The ticket is found by a punk, who sells it cheap because he needs money fast. At the end of that ride the ticket is given away, etc. People do not need to talk, but they could have conversations over mobile phones, with other people, they all have their problems etc, At the end we find the same man it started with sleeping on a bench in the subway, who gets the ticket from a drunken guy as a gift.

It would be akin to films like "les favorites de la lune" (by Otar Iosseliani, a movie following the owners of a nude painting and a set of chinaware that get stolen, sold, auctioned etc), or the Dutch movie 'The Dress" (by Alex van Warmerdam, a story following the owners/wearers of a ... dress).

For me the punks selling tickets and people giving each other tickets at vending machines are a sign of the economical crisis we are in and at the same time it shows how people try to cope with the loss of the social structure at the hands of neo-liberalism (everything has to make a profit to have a value, forgetting that some things have broader economical value than bringing direct profit, things like the U-bahn for instance function as grease for an economical system as a whole, but try explaining that to our neo-liberal overlords (I, for one, do not welcome them...)).

Well, it is not the commercial kinda stuff you need to get into Hollywood to start earning millions and dating starlets but who cares.

At ease in the Esprezzo Ambulance - a coffee shop with WiFi access at the end of the street I ride my bike through ever day as a small fish amidst the big shiny fish from the VIP Lounge of the Rich Club (I know that club, it is near Unter den Linden in a small street, I've been there incognito - girls smile at you when they see you standing there because in theory you should be a rich big fish to be allowed there).

Some fish move in mysterious ways (especially in traffic). I am going past the big stores in Friedrichstrasse past Snack Point Charley (this is NOT a joke) into the poorer parts of Berlin where I live and a girl I start to call my girl also lives near there. I bought a magazine to find a real job here so I can continue to stay - maybe I ask the ex-East-German woman who gave me a ride about half a year ago for a waiter job (she somehow thought I would be fit for it because she offered me one). But the question is: am I outgoing enough for this city? I see the beauty of it, that is true. Someone explained to me that the numerology of this city (name?, latitude, longitude?, who knows) explains why there are only very short relationships here - but isn't that true for every major city? So is my relationship with the city also a short term? I don't want that, I have known that from the beginning.

I will find my way, I will find new ways because that is what I am good at.

The first time I was in Berlin I remember driving around with a group of people and among them was this French (?) girl who called herself 'Virgine' with a big smile on her face. And to my ears trained in the feminist gospel of the early 80s this sounded so absurd. It was sooooo obvious that the reason her name was chosen was pure sexual. Her smile, the twinkle in her her eyes, her (fake?) French accent, it all showed the same sexual energy - mind you, it was not horney energy, it was sexual energy, which sometimes is a completely different thing. But I know that now, not then, I was not even 20. The wall had not fallen, East German military where hiding themselves behind pillars in subway station when they saw someone photographing them when the train passed by (West-Berlin U-bahn had to pass East-Berlin Stations sometimes, but they did not stop of course).

Now I am riding my very own Dutch bike over the Friedrichstrasse filled with exclusive shops (used to be east), with a hard on as big as the newly build buildings here for the woman that left me (but I expect no 'Wiedervereinigung' for us, no sir, no) and everything is kinda different now. Twenty years have passed. Life is so short. Life is to short not to love and not to be loved.

Berlin is the city of love (forget Paris!)

I am living in Berlin now. A big reason to go here involved a woman. But the woman left me a month later (she still lives in Groningen - complicated story, don't ask).

It will take a fucking long time before I will love anyone that deeply as her. If she knew what pictures I love the most of her, she would be utterly ashamed because it are those she looks the most like a clown - not the one I used to create art from. It is where she is grinning her happy grin, not being able to hold back. It is the same grin she has when she is looking at sheep - her favorite animal.

Anyway, I know I will try to stay here as long as I can, because I like it here. But sometimes it gets very lonely here.

"Wanted: Financial Professionals for Projects with the Government," the advertisement said. and underneath that the people responsible for the advertisement where happy to explain every word they used.

PROJECTS = Advise, Manage & Execution.
Nothing wrong with that. If that makes your juices flow, be my guest.

GOVERNMENT = The major league.
Why not: go work for the government, make yourself useful for a change. Your country needs you!

PROFESSIONALS = People who want to work above their own level.
...
...
WHY ON EARTH DO YOU WANT TO DO THAT?

I want to excel in what I do and I want people to notice that I am good at what I do (and pay me a shitload of money while they are at it). And of course I want to learn new things and become better at the things I do. But most of all I want to be happy. So why oh why would I take a job that will guarantee unhappiness because the things asked are out of my reach?

The possible ramifications of taking a job like that are:

• no sleep for the rest of your career and a severe coffee addiction
  
• a broken marriage
• a very empty and very expensive house filled with expensive stylish garbage but no laughter will ever be heard there
• a heart attack at the age of 39 and/or several suicide attempts
  
• a mid-life crisis so deep you need antidepressants for the rest of your life

I always considered myself to be a professional, but seen the above explanation of the word I need to reconsider. So please note that I am no longer a professional, I just want to do a good job, give it all I've got, be happy and have a life.