dream harder

I t's always a shame when what could potentially be a very good subject matter or idea turns out to be marred by the ugly side of human nature. In my point of view there is no room for emotional bias in the world of academia. A research is published and facts are presented and - like my old teacher Murry Hope was fond of doing- if need be personal views are then presented in separate chapter at the end of the publication and most certainly unrelated to the research facts. But I digress, here is the story. I first spotted this book at the gift shop in the British Museum following the Viking exhibition and was rather intrigued by it as the subject of the evolution of myth and it's continued life through mutation in modern culture is one that interests me greatly. The book is well rounded in it's approach and the first couple of chapters alone are worth the purchase if nothing else for the richness in analysis and depth of information provided on multiple sources of Nor

Unless you are completely uninterested in how social media works or you are devoid of any friends that use a nom de guerre - i.e. authors, visual artists, performers, drag queens or goths - you have probably heard of facebook's "real name" policy and the problems it has caused to many individuals over the years. Most recently many drag queens in the USA had their accounts suspended due to this policy which is part of facebook's campaign apparently aimed at ensuring that people cannot hide under false names so as to curb bullying, online crime and terrorism! The company also maintains that this also helps them farm out our personal details to third parties to ensure targeted ads so that the revenue from these can fund facebook and all the server space and infrastructure required to support our ever increasing waist size of family holiday photos. All fair an good you may think as we all like our free social networking, and up until here I couldn't agree mo

As you well know if you even barely know me, mythology is one of the driving interests in my life - along with comic books but if you go by a rather interesting book entitled "Our Gods Wear Spandex" by Chris Knowles, the latter is a continuation of the former amazon/OurGodsWearSpandex Anyway I digress I am going off topic here. I have been readiing again about some pre-hellenistic deities recently and stumbled once again upon a goddess that has always interested me mostly because of her fierce nature - nothing like the later Olympian ladies. Britomartis in her guise of Potnia Therion - Mistress of Beasts- was the Minoan/Cretan nature. This lady was so fierce she suckleld griffins!!! Here's a link: Britomartis

The best thing to get some inspiration flowing is some interesting music and a book, ...today that means good ole Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and some gods of olympus.. because this little mess ain't going to sort itself out :P

if you have bbc player watch it! I love Frank's work - and his little studio is awesome! I always find it brilliant when fantasy and comic illustrators have to describe their work, the apprehension in their voice when they go "[...] and this guy can control peoples' minds and he is now trapping this guy [...]"  - I feel less alone when I hear others feeling sheepish too :P