I created a new blog for my photographic work, Violet Eye. I'm posting images that are available at my gallery and from me directly. Thanks for having a look!
Site links
- Queer Eats
Cooking videos and recipes - A Queer Mobile
Tom and John's home page - Peregrine Moon
Postings on mysticism, the Western Mystery traditions, Buddhism
Info
Reading and Listening
Danny Gregory: The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to be the Artist You Truly Are
Oh yes you do need to get some colored pens or pencils and start illustrating your life. At least I'm trying it after reading this inspiring book! (*****)Brendan Dawes: Analog In, Digital Out: Brendan Dawes on Interaction Design (VOICES)
Learn to feel the world when you create something digital. I'm thinking about this one as I build new software interfaces. (*****)Irmgard, Dr. Musch: Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1765
Astonishingly beautiful full-size color plates from a time when to be a natural scientist meant you were also an artist. (*****)Gustave Eiffel: La Tour De 300 Metres: Facsimile Edition
Fabulous full-size reproduction of the actual drawings Gustave Eiffel did. (*****)Gina Trapani: Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day
Not just for computer geeks, this book has great suggestions for organizing your time. But the email management section is worth the price of the book! (*****)Roz Chast: Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006
We're still not done reading this because we start laughing too much... (*****)Sonia Choquette: Trust Your Vibes at Work, and Let Them Work for You!
An intuitive with real common sense, Choquette's ideas are simple to grasp but not so simple to achieve. A great read. (*****)Wendell Ricketts, ed.: Everything I Have Is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men About More-or-Less Gay Life
Short stories by queers who aren't the Queer as Folk type. (****)Tom Atwood: Kings in Their Castles : Photographs of Queer Men at Home
A wonderful look inside the homes of prominant queers in New York City. (*****)Timothy Archibald: Sex Machines : Photographs and Interviews
Wonderfully photographed and interviewed, this photoessay exposes the mundane world around folks who create sex toys. It's a howl to read. (*****)Camille Paglia: Break, Blow, Burn : Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems
A book-sized introduction to reading poetry. I loved it. (*****)Harold Bloom: The Best Poems of the English Language : From Chaucer Through Frost
An indispensible anthology of poetry in English, with a revelatory introductory essay by the incomporable Harold Bloom. (*****)Jane Smiley: Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel
A great book - but one that revealed that I'm not much of a novel reader. (****)Dan Savage: The Commitment : Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family
I loved it, loved it (and hated just one thing). Read it to find out about what gay marriage really is. (*****)Michael Mejia: Scrawny to Brawny : The Complete Guide to Building Muscle the Natural Way
When I read this book I thought the author had access to my personal exercise history and problems. This is the first book I've ever read that provided rehabilitation exercises for shoulders and legs before beginning weight training. A fabulous book for gangly types. (*****)Joseph Chilton Pearce: The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit
A fascinating journey from brain research to spiritual development. The book opens with an overview of the biology of consciousness, and then turns to problems of enculturation. (***)John Wilson: The Official Razzie Movie Guide : Enjoying the Best of Hollywoods Worst
This one's a new favorite for John. When we were out west last week he picked up a copy at Borders and devoured it. (*****)Ray Kurzweil: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
Love it or hate it, Kurzweil's vision of the future seems plausible to me. (*****)Rich Karlgaard: Life 2.0 : How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness
Karlgaard describes what I've done: I've gotten happier by moving out of a high-rent district in California to a more peaceful life in Iowa. I was excited to read about others who have made the same change. (*****)Leonard Bernstein; Kent Nagano (cond.); Jerry Hadley (celebrant): Leonard Bernstein - Mass / Nagano, Hadley, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
This superb recording deciphers Bernstein's complex and uneven score and sets it out cleanly on record for the first time. (****)
