style your garage

these are cute... not sure I'd actually have the courage to hang one, but I like the idea of it... Want one? Get it at style-your-garage

humor break, time to get Bent Objects

time for giggles...? yessss...

Check out this interesting art from Terry Border at Bent Objects...

Described as what an artist can do if given wire and household objects ...

go buy the book at Amazon "Bent Objects: the secret life of every day things"

brilliant!

Egypt: what would Bastet do?

As recent as Jan 2010, they found new discoveries of ancient relics in Egypt. As pictured above: "This limestone feline is among some 600 cat statues from a newfound temple dedicated to the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet. The ancient temple was recently discovered under the streets of modern-day Alexandria, Egypt.

Egyptian archaeologists who found the temple say it was built by Queen Berenike II, wife of Greek King Ptolemy III, who ruled Egypt from 246 to 221 B.C.

Cats were important house pets in ancient Egypt and were often depicted in private tombs. In some cases, cats were mummified in the same way as humans and buried at temples.

"This is one of the most important discoveries in Alexandria in the last hundred years," said Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of antiquities of Lower Egypt for the Supreme Council of Antiquities and lead archaeologist for the find."

Bastet is "probably the most famous Egyptian goddess after Isis. Bastet was a wild goddess. To those who were in her favor, she gave great blessings, but her wrath was legendary and she was sometimes listed as one of Ra's avenging deities who punish the sinful and the enemies of Egypt. This is of course in keeping with her totem animal, the cat. Cats were sacred to Bastet, and to harm one was deemed a great transgression. Bast's importance in the Egyptian pantheon might be due to the great value placed on the domesticated cat by the Egyptians."

Would Bastet back the current Egyptian protestors? Or would she just want stability in her land? Are some in Egypt praying to her right now?

She was "a giver of blessings to the good and a deliverer of wrath to the evil, just as was Sekhmet."

The goddess may need to be appeased...

"In accordance with the complex conceits of ancient Egyptian religious concepts, powerful, and often destructive forces, had to be appeased and allayed in order to effect their transformation into benevolent, useful powers. In keeping with this conceit, feline goddesses were possessed of opposing characteristics often given visual form in the contrast between a lioness and a cat. The destructive forces associated with felines was often manifest in the lioness as Sakhmet whose belligerent characteristics could be soothed by the playing of a sistrum in order for her to metamorphose into a more docile pussy cat."

Which cat will prevail in today's egypt? The tamed pussycat or the ferocious lion...? I think the outcome is way beyond the paygrade of American pantywaists in Washington conspiring to get their CAIR bear pals into power...

This is out of their reach... Prrrrrr prrrrr... HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

* * *

Sultan Knish does some excellent debunking commentary on Egypt fallacies:

1. "Egypt has undergone a democratic revolution"
comment: Egypt has not undergone anything of the sort

2. "This is a struggle for freedom and democracy."
comment: Feedom and democracy are not synonymous except in political speeches.

3. "Mubarak is a dictator"
comment: Mubarak is certainly not your Uncle Fred, but Egypt is still one of the more freer and open societies in the region.

4. "As Americans we should support democracy in Egypt"
comment: Kefaya, the National Movement for Change, is an anti-American organization. It is already allied with the Muslim Brotherhood.

5. "It's in our ideals to support a people's struggle for self-determination"
comment: It's not in our ideals to support people who bomb churches and murder little girls.

6. "How can we support a dictator over a democratic movement?"
comment: Why do we have to support either one?

7. "We have to take the chance that everything will work out!"
comment: Is that how we make policy now by hoping for change?

8. "It's in our interest to remove Mubarak because dictatorships breed terrorism"
comment: Then how do you explain all the Islamic terrorists who were born in the United States and the UK.

go read the rest... meow, baby, meow

Declaration Entertainment

Declaration Entertainment: help change the world ... by changing the contents of Hollywood movies... good idea!

hat tip: iOwnTheWorld

Draw for Truth

Draw for Truth

Cool art at Studio40 by NZ artist Tracy

studio40.co.nz

studio40.co.nz

studio40.co.nz

I created a few web pages to display Tracy's art.

Go check it out...

Big, beautiful Wood Pigeons in NZ

Kereru (NZ Wood Pigeon)

New Zealand has a huge, gorgeous breed of pigeon.

They are about 2 or 3 times larger than "regular" city pigeons found all over Chicago or New York.

From the pigeon wiki:

Pigeons and doves (click for photos of other species) are distributed everywhere on Earth, except for the driest areas of the Sahara Desert, Antarctica and its surrounding islands and the high Arctic. They have colonised most of the world's oceanic islands (with the notable exception of Hawaii), reaching eastern Polynesia and the Chatham Islands in the Pacific, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Reunion in the Indian Ocean, and the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean.

The family has adapted to most of the habitats available on the planet. The largest number of species are found in tropical forests and woodlands, where they may be arboreal, terrestrial or semi-terrestrial. Various species also inhabit savannas, grasslands, deserts, temperate woodlands and forests, mangrove forests, and even the barren sands and gravels of atolls.

About Sep-Oct (spring) each year, Wood Pigeons come back to our neighborhood.

This pix from our back yard in October - they like to eat the Nikau Palm tree berries.
More information about this lovely bird: Auckland museum fact sheet.

From NZ Natural Heritage Collection:

Diet - Berries of the Puriri, Miro, Taraire and Karaka, supplemented by Nikau and Kahikatea are the Wood Pigeon’s favourite food all the year round. They also eat the berries and new growth of other species. Wood Pigeons can drink without raising their heads to swallow, which is unusual for a bird.

Breeding - The New Zealand Wood Pigeon breeds in spring and early summer. Mating is characterised by spectacular aerial displays of both sexes, particularly the male. The female lays a single egg which is very long, narrow and white. Both adults care for the egg during the 28 day incubation period, the hen through the night and morning, and the male midday till evening. The Wood Pigeon breeds very slowly and studies show that fewer than 15% of chicks survive to independence.

From the Kereru Awhina Project:

Kereru or (kukupa, kuku or native woodpigeon) is New Zealand’s only endemic pigeon. Kereru is also the only surviving bird since moa and huia capable of ingesting the large fruit and berries of the native trees of New Zealand and dispersing their seed. Trees such as miro, puriri, tawa and tairare are especially reliant on Kereru to disperse their seed so that they may naturally regenerate.

Both the male and female Kereru are similar in looks. The head, throat and chest of Kereru are a beautiful metallic, green and bronze iridescence. The breast and belly of the bird are white. The eyes, eye rings, beak and feet are a dark crimson.

Kereru is found in most lowland native forests of the North and South Islands , Stewart Island and many of its neighbouring islands. There are two sub-species of native pigeon, the New Zealand pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae) known to the Maori as Kereru, or in Northland as kuku or kukupa, and the Chatham Island pigeon (Hemiphaga n. chathamensis) or parea.

My attempt at a water color on Christmas day morning...

ummm.... well at least the table, deck & yard looks nice...

Here is a little 2 minute clip of what they look like in trees while feeding...

Conservative Endowment for the Arts

Hey conservative artists, check out Conservative Endowment for the Arts.

The "CEA is our answer to the ‘National Endowment for the Arts’, the far-left tax-payer funded organization that wants artists to create expressions of propaganda to push the agenda of an Obama White House. CEA is just one Conservative branch of the Blogsite Giovanni’s World.

So exactly what does the Conservative Endowment for the Arts do?

Glad you asked. We at Giovanni’s World believe in being pro-active, especially when it comes to combatting Marxist/Liberal ideology. We have partnered-up with some of our fellow blogging friends to form a Club of sorts. The left has their NEA to push the Marxist/Liberal ideology using art, so it’s only fair that we have a place to share art that does the same for Conservative ideology. The big difference, other than ideology, is the left using tax-payer money (NEA) to push their agenda, while we at CEA volunteer our own time, monies, and talent to promote Conservatism and Patriotism."

Read more and check out some of their art.

Iris watercolor

Iris - photograph printout

Here is a photograph, a bit blurry, of a single Iris in a cup of water.

Thought it might make a good watercolor so snapped a photo, printed it then did water color below...

How did it turn out?

Iris - watercolor by yours truly

Ode to Claude Monet

... by Monet

...& my loving attempt at recreating something similar
(OK, no, not very close, but I think the color combinations turned out pretty nice...)

I have always loved the impressionist style and paintings by Claude Monet. The colors are so soothing and beatiful. He had such a wonderful eye.

I enjoyed his technique of painting the same scene in several different color combinations, too, like the Japanese foot-bridge over the water-lily pond in Giverny:

I thought about buying a printed Monet poster, but then thought - HEY, it would be fun to make an attempt at copying one with colors I like which matches our spare bedroom... So:

• I put a screenshot of the very first Monet painting into a MS Word document.
• I printed out the document.
• I did a pencil sketch of all the petals, blossoms and grass - the entire thing.
• Using acrylics, I did my best and finished my little recreation.
• It hangs in our spare room now.
• I like it.

I am thinking of doing a Nikau palm tree next...