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this week on the avant guardian | samhain

October 25, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian | samhain

“you’re going to reap just what you sow…” Samhain, from the old Irish meaning “summer’s end.” Its celebration marked the end of the harvest season and the coming of the cold winter months in which one hoped to whatever god or gods they believed ran the world that the food they brought in would be enough to sustain them and their own during the harsh months that followed. Back in the days where we had a relationship with the earth, a give and take where foods and other goods were “processed” by our own hands and where we understood that we had to reciprocate for that which we took, it was well nigh impossible to take for granted the fact that the earth was a living, breathing entity that held our destinies in its hands as much (maybe more so) as we held Hers.  There are things the earth could say and do that we have no control over, and there was a time when we respected that. The festival of Samhain ends the period of time in which we take from the earth and reminds us that she can just as easily take from us.

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this week on the avant guardian|exploration & discovery

October 11, 2010
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a sailors life for me!

I forgot about Mr. Colombo when I chose this week’s theme, but I guess there are no accidents. Since Columbus Day is this week I will begin with a little shout out to the souls of all those who were slaughtered, raped, or taken from their homeland in the name of discovery. That’s not the kind of exploration and discovery I’m looking to celebrate this week. As thinking, feeling people we have so much opportunity to go out and find new things, places, people. We can go out into the world and learn, learn about ourselves, learn about other cultures and beliefs. There is still so much left to discover on this little planet we call home. Just reading about far away, or for that matter near by places, is not enough. Go out into your own back yard, take road trips out West, get lost in the desert, or in the Northeast, see what it’s like to walk around Salem at night. If you can go farther, go! Down to Patagonia, over to Abu- Simbel and around the isles of Venice.  Explore as much as you can and share your discoveries with as many people as possible. People want [...]

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this week on the avant guardian | fall

October 4, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian | fall

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. - Robert Frost Image Credit: JuliaY

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this week on the avant guardian \/\/ heart

September 27, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian \/\/ heart

"He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder." -- M.C. Escher "This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."  -- Dalai Lama "Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup." -- Ludwig van Beethoven

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this week on the avant guardian \/\/ mourning

September 20, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian \/\/ mourning

Freud once said that when we lose shit, we get sad. Or something along those lines. Way to go Freud. And sure, the loss of a loved one, an ideal, a people also usually means the loss of a little bit (or a large bit) of our self (our soul, our being, whatever), but life goes on. We find a way and we push forward, and we do that by mourning, i.e. paying due respect to the thing that was and is no more. As the avant guardian slowly marches on towards its death I’m sure there will be plenty of occasions where some of us might reminisce and remember the past year or so that led us towards what can’t help to be anything other than a pretty amazing venture. Mourning the past expresses itself in a whole bunch of ways. Let’s see what happens… Photo Credit: New Orleans Ladder

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this week on the avant guardian\/\/fa-fa-fa-fa fashion

September 13, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian\/\/fa-fa-fa-fa fashion

We here at theavantguardian.org like to keep our collective finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, so there was no doubt in our minds as to whether we should coordinate our own fashion week with the Spring-Summer 2011 collections on display in New York for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Expect the usual avant garde fun along with some hard-hitting reporting from behind the scenes at all the shows, parties, and on the streets. We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town…..beep beep! Photo Credit: StyleHop Blog

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this week on the avant guardian\/\/forgetting

August 30, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian\/\/forgetting

Things fall out of my head all of the time.  Where I put the keys.  Where I put my wallet.  A phone number.  The name of a film.  I try to look out for a future version of myself who will eventually forget something, and I make lots of lists.  This is the list about the forgetting. Short term memory loss. Long term memory loss.  Selective memory.  Inattention.  Amnesia.  Collective forgetting.  Never forgetting.  Elephants never forgetting.  Trying to forget.  Forgetting fears.  Forgetting things.  Forgetting someone.  Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  Forgetting about Dre.  Forgetful Jones.  Forget Paris.  Forget-me-nots.  Fear of forgetting.  Fear of forgetting anniversaries and birthdays. Forgiving & forgetting.  Forgetting and aging.  Forgetfulness.  Being forgotten.  Being The Forgotten.  The end of forgetting.  The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. So, what else am I forgetting? Image credits:  alexis mire

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this week on the avant guardian\/\/nightmares!

August 23, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian\/\/nightmares!

This is from a sketchbook about a nightmare. The water didn’t stop forever and I couldn’t take a bath.

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this week on the avant guardian\/\/hiccups

August 16, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian\/\/hiccups

“I have the hiccups. I wonder if I might have another drink.” - James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story So I just learned this — a hiccup is also known as a hiccough or, in medicine, as a synchronous diaphragmatic flutter (SDF). Hiccups are interesting, because it’s not really known what purpose they serve; annoying, because they can last for up to 68 years; but most of all funny, as evidenced by the following video. UPDATE: Some real cool guy named Tyrone Johnson removed the video due to some copyright claim (read: wants money). Below I’ve included another video with a cat because there aren’t enough funny hiccup videos on the Internet. Alright, so the fart enhances the hilarity, but a cat hiccuping is undeniably funny. Just leave us be with our cats, copyright claimers. And I’m pretty sure that’s the way it is. Want more Crunkite? “Like” me on Facebook. “Follow” me on Twitter.

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this week on the avant guardian\/\/hats

August 9, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian\/\/hats

Ever since the invention of angels, wearing things on one’s head has been a solid way of defining who one is in the overall scheme of things. Angels were invented, of course, by the Greek God Apollo, soon after Zeus and the other Olympians created the idea of a single “God” so that they could take some much needed vacations. Apollo thought he could use some helpers (flying ones at that) and to differentiate them from other winged people, he decided to give them glowing things on their heads. Yet even with depictions of haloed angels all around us, hats weren’t invented until one spring morning in 1542 in Venice, Italy by none other than Napoleon I. He was sitting in a bakery pondering how and when to try to take over the world, all the while absent-mindedly drawing a stick figure on a piece of paper and drinking his coffee. When at one point he lifted the coffee cup, he looked down and there was a ring of coffee atop the stick figure’s head, and the sheer possibilities of hats overtook him. He jumped up and darted outside to his carefully hidden time machine, which he’d stolen from a [...]

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