Posts Tagged ‘Angst’

Save the Internet, Stop SOPA/PIPA NOW!

01.18.2012 | Author SMS

I am thrilled to tell you that the internet-wide protest was a great success and both the SOPA and PIPA bills were dropped by Congress yesterday (the 20th). The protest was seen by huge numbers, check them out at SOPA Strike. Thank you to all who participated and changed what was thought to be a sure thing!

The LongLocks HairSticks Boutique and Style & Angst blog are participating in an internet-wide protest against two bills currently being considered in the US House and Senate. Called SOPA and PIPA, these bills threaten to destroy the internet as we know it.

If either one passes, your favorite sites could disappear forever.

CLICK HERE TO ACT NOW

CALL YOUR SENATOR AND ASK THEM TO VOTE “NO” FOR PIPA

JOIN US

Filed under: Angst

Posted in Art, News | Tags: Angst, bills, blackout, Congress, internet, LongLocks, LongLocks HairSticks Boutique, PIPA, protest, SOPA, Style & Angst | 1 Comment »

The Importance of Fighting the SOPA and PIPA Bills

01.17.2012 | Author SMS

I was going to write an extensive post explaining exactly why it is so terribly important to support the fight against SOPA and PIPA but in the end I decided just directing you to Fight for the Future would be a better idea, as their video explains it much more eloquently than I ever could, and they provide you with a form to sign the petition voicing opposition to these bills that will be sent to Congress. I implore you to please visit Fight for the Future and sign the petition. If you are on the internet reading this post it pertains to what is vitally important with regard to you and your rights, as well as mine and my ability to run this site. Censorship in any form is never a good thing, and in no way reflects the basic foundations on which this country was built.

As an artist and webmaster, I am obviously very concerned about copyright and intellectual property rights, and actively work to protect mine. However, as an artist and webmaster I am also among the group that will be most affected by and supposedly “protected” by these bills, and I am vehemently opposed to SOPA and PIPA.

On Wednesday, January 18 much of the internet will be going black or displaying their support of the fight against passage of these bills, and longlocks.com is no exception. I hope you will join me in fighting against that which aims to break the foundation of the internet as it exists today.

-Susan Maxwell Schmidt

Filed under: Angst

Posted in fashion | Tags: Angst, artist, blackout, Congress, copyright, Fight for the Future, Janaury 18, LongLocks, longlocks.com, petition, PIPA, protest, SOPA, Susan Maxwell Schmidt | 2 Comments »

Hope

10.10.2011 | Author barbaraanne

She has the wisdom of angels
Well loved, fed, cared for, and adored.

Her mother speaks fluent English and works.
Her father stays home
to care for her and three sisters.
The prodigious strength in her face
demands our faith.

So I will pray:
May you find a soul mate.
May you find the love of reading, numbers, art, and music,
Travel to beautiful places,
Realize the potential of your intelligence,
Have it recognized,
Do not miss a possibility –

Dance.

Filed under: Angst, BarbaraAnne

Posted in Art | Tags: Angst, barbaraanne | 2 Comments »

Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011

10.06.2011 | Author barbaraanne

By BarbaraAnne:

He had no fear.

How many of us give up our dreams to change the world so society won’t think us mad? Is it better to have lost everything following a dream, than having been afraid to try? The latter makes the child inside us cry, forever.

Steve Jobs corrected the mistaken impressions of Don Quixote. He showed us how to live, how to be that girl in the Orwell commercial, who throws the hammer at conformity and introduces the elegant revolution.

He knew he was going to die, so he said…

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Everything else is secondary.”

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something.”

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Genius or madness?

Genius.

iThankYou.

Filed under: Angst

Posted in Cover Stories | Tags: Angst, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs quotes | No Comments »

Sotheby’s, CEOs, and Union Workers

09.24.2011 | Author barbaraanne

By BarbaraAnne:

While we worship the art that is sold at auctions, fantasize wearing diamonds in our mind’s vacation, luxury establishments hide another reality: how they treat their workers. Without people to move priceless art from place to place, there would be no glittering world. Pieces are heavy, or have to be moved with such care, the skill involved takes years to learn.

So we find Sotheby’s Auction House in a dispute with its art handlers, who belong to a union. As recession looms over the world, riots ensue in London, Greece is on the verge of collapse, Germany is furious it has to bail everyone out, and America… well.

The company made $680 million last year. The CEO gave himself a 125% raise, while asking for over 100 concessions from IBT 814, the Art Handlers Union. Now, Sotheby’s has locked union workers out and hired the desperately unemployed, who will work for less. It is just another nail in the coffin of the middle class. Craving escape, we are vulnerable — we, who want beauty to shut out the wasteland of predators. How easy is it to give up empathy for a glance at Monet?

We can’t do it. We must touch the people, who touch the art.

Filed under: Angst

Posted in Art, Cover Stories | Tags: Angst, Sothebys | No Comments »

Isabel Allende: Of Love and Shadows

09.04.2011 | Author barbaraanne

By BarbaraAnne: Sometimes, you just need to curl up with a good book. I recommend “Of Love and Shadows,” by Chilean writer Isabel Allende.

She is the niece of Salvatore Allende, who was overthrown in a violent coup by Pinochet in 1973. As a journalist, she listened to many stories about “the disappeared,” believing if you can carry memory in your heart, no one really dies. That is why she weaves Pinochet’s crimes against humanity into her fiction.

In this novel, a reporter and photographer find love in the shadow of death, as they discover a mass grave, where police have dumped the bodies of their tortured victims

She says, “This is the story of a man and a woman who save the memories of a vulgar existence. I carry real memories with care, so time won’t wear them out. Alone, in the silent nights of this place, I can finally recount them. I wrote this for the families who confided their lives to me and told me, “Capture, write, so our stories won’t be erased by the wind.”

This paragraph is breathtaking in its original Spanish. “Esta es la historia de una mujer y un hombre que se amaron en plenitud, salvándose así de una existencia vulgar. La he llevado en la memoria cuidándola para que el tiempo no la desgaste y es sólo ahora, en las noches calladas de este lugar, cuando puredo finalmente contarla. Lo haré por ellos y por otros que me confiaron sus vidas diciendo: toma, escribe, para que no lo borre el viento.”

Allende has been translated into many languages.

For more of her art, please examine:

Isabel Allende’s books

Filed under: Angst

Posted in Art, Reviews | Tags: Angst, Isabel Allende | No Comments »

Amy Winehouse

07.24.2011 | Author barbaraanne

By BarbaraAnne:

Genius is the infant twin of Beautiful Mind. Embraced by the safety of darkness, they sleep in a crib nestled together. Language is neurotransmitted in a dream no one else can understand. In this cocoon, they live. Outside it, they die.

And so we come to Amy Winehouse.

Society looked at her art and saw money. They tried to make her perform at a certain time and place to conform to their administrative and profit planning. That her masterpiece, “Back to Black,” made millions meant nothing. They wanted more. “Get out of the cocoon. We distributed your record. Now we own you. ‘ Walk this way, Talk this way ‘ ”

She couldn’t do it. “Rehab” became a much more terrifying metaphor. She told them again and again. She sang it again and again. Everyone danced but no one listened.

“They tried to make me go to Rehab, and I said, “No, No, NO!”

Yesterday she said, “No,” in the only way she could.

She died.

“Who’s bad?”

Filed under: Style, Angst

Posted in Cover Stories | Tags: Aerosmith, Amy Winehouse, Angst, Back to Black, Michael Jackson, Style | No Comments »