Sunday, August 15, 2010

All art is quite useless.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner
or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode
of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt
without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things
are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things means only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of
Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the
rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of
the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect
use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove
anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy
in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is
the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling,
the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work
is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he
does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless
thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.


- Oscar Wilde

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Crap. It's August.

Totally had a dream within a dream last night. Crazy stuff.

I wonder who the first person was that, after tasting alcohol, decided to keep drinking enough of that sh*t to get a pleasant side-effect and tell all his (I'm assuming it was a man) friends to give it a shot. (bad pun intended)

I wonder who the first person was to find out that kissing feels good.

I wonder who the first person was to say, "This will be the year 1!"

I wonder who the first person was to create sand boobs for their buried friend at the beach.

Sometimes it's hard to remember a relative's age, even a sibling. Unless they were born in the year 2000. Then I'm pretty good at remembering.

Is it weird that I find it weird that people have birthdays after the year 2000? I can't imagine writing a birthday like "6/21/00" or even "01" or "02." I had to register for random forums for advertising for my internship, and to check if the user is of "suitable age" (13), you have to agree that you were born before July-whatever-date of 1997. Being born in '97 makes you qualified for something?! Goddamn. I feel old. It already feels weird to know I was born in the 80's. '89 shouldn't count.

Speaking of time, I think everyone should have a countdown clock constantly reminding them how much time they have left until they're, let's say 60 years old. I feel like it's harder to disregard time when you see it ticking down, and there's nothing you can do to stop it... People might be less inclined to waste it.

Anyway, I wonder who decided that there would be 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, and 24 hours to a day.
Actually I kind of know. The word on the street says it was the Egyptians. They had a base-12 counting system and were the ones who invented the sundial. Instead of counting their 10 fingers, they used their thumbs to count the 3 creases where the joints are in each finger (12 on each hand). Since a sundial only works during the day, they only had 12 units (hours) to the day, so to get a full cycle of day and night, we just have to double that number to get 24.
Betcha didn't know THAT.


//edit:
What I wrote above was from what I remember learning a while ago, but I found an article that seems to explain it better. I'm just speculating though, I'm too lazy to actually read the article right now, but here it is for all the nerds like me out there:
Why are there 60 mins in an hour?