Easter is another one of those holidays with a colorful history, a lot like Halloween. On Easter Sunday the churches in America will all fill up. New clothes will be worn for the very first time. Christ is said to have arisen from the dead. A parade on Fifth Avenue has been announced. A long tradition of women wearing great big hats persists. Pastel shades of pink and yellow and blue will dominate the day. Little boys and little girls will hunt for gaily painted eggs and run about on perfect lawns. The menu promises a ham!

Scratch below the surface, though, turn back the book of time, and you’ll discover that Easter is a very different beast than we pretend it is today. Long before the name of Jesus Christ had e’er been uttered by a living soul, a lively bunch of European bon vivants (The Pagans, if for want of a more specific name) invented Easter. They called it Oestre, and for them the holiday was all about The Spring. To celebrate they danced, they took their clothes off, and they fucked like bunnies in enormous, flaming orgies in the middle of the night. It is funny that the bunny is an Easter symbol, still.

It seems fitting that the first new wallpaper of the year should be an image from the past. It was my birthday three years ago, a humble affair, a small group of friends and good cheer. One notable extravagance was the cake. It was expensive and exquisite, conceived and executed by a person with a special appreciation for chocolate. An artist, to be sure. It must’ve had at least 8 layers ranging in density from mousse to fudge. The chocolate flowers that covered the top were so delicate, the mere warmth of your breath would melt them. It was a masterpiece more ephemeral even than an ice sculpture or a castle made of sand. It inspired in all of us a reverential urgency to consume it as quickly and as completely as we could. We did. But I escaped its delirious influence momentarily as I was eating my slice. I realized with a deep pang of loss that I had not taken a picture of the cake as it looked when it first came out of its box. That opportunity was gone forever. But I set down my plate on the table and captured the image above, just as it is. The room was dimly lit, but I refrained from firing the flash. Instead, I drew from my pocket a nifty little halogen wand that a friend had just given me. I’d been fucking around with it all night, taking unusual pictures by its unusual light.

A tree does not grow in Union Square, but one has been erected there and festooned with colored lights. This is a close-up of that tree. I’ve made a habit of visiting the Square to see the Christmas tree pretty much every year since I moved to the Bay Area. I’ve put up some trees of my own in my adulthood. But they cannot compare to the ones I remember from childhood back in New York. My mom trimmed those, and they were a gaudy spectacle when they were done. But they were warm, that’s for damned sure. As a boy, I’d spend some time in December curled around the base (where the fake polyester snow perfected the illusion of a real tree growing in the living room)… not just because that’s where the gifts were piled, but because there was a kind of bleary magic there, up close. Growing up usually means giving up most of that sort of magic. God knows I’ve fought it tooth and nail, lol. It’s funny. I find that if I press my nose up close to the monitor I can almost… Fill in your own special blank. It’s Christmas time. Fulfill a dream… your own or someone else’s, if you can. Merry Christmas!

Neon signs are meant to be read at a distance. Come too close, and the symbols and letters become irrational patterns, or else mundane things, like glass, metal, rubber and plastic.

Of all the environments on Earth, the desert seems the least hospitable to life. It’s hot and dry, and unprotected things do not survive. Because we know that deserts exist, we have a keener measure of the value of our lives. And because life is often difficult in patches, like the traversal of a desert, we have a great, romantic metaphor with which to better understand the difficulty in our lives. That there should ever be flowers in a desert, seems outrageous and inspirational in the extreme. Flowers are pretty. Flowers are frivolous and temporal. Flowers bear no responsibility, save for the inescapable requirement that they compel us to wake up and smell them.

Are you standing at the edge of a cliff with a stone in your hand? Have you drawn a breath and tensed the muscles of your throwing arm? Are you feeling strong and brave? Throw then, but take well your guard. For the smooth and perfect stone of your careful selection is racing around the planet to strike you on the back of the head!

The big philosophical questions are inevitably this way. The more zealously you pursue your answer, the more likely you are (if you are very talented and very child-like in your thinking) to finish right where you started, to get hit on the back of the head by the very stone you threw. Math is that way too. Logic is the heart of both. “If this, then that”, and so forth. Run enough iterations, step closer or farther away enough times, and you’ll see yourself, eventually, in the picture you have found - cocky bastard - with that stone still in your hand.

I’m on record as a believer. So it may just be that faith begets proof. I may be seeing only what I want and expect to find. It’s easy to see God in Man, because we want to. But how ’bout Man in God? That too, I’ll bet. Reflections, even from a mirror, are made of more than light. There are those lovely themes, which nature does recur, in scales as grand as small. Things which spin round things, and such. But how much smaller than an atom can our solar system be? Oh, we are great in our ken, but not so great as He. Our sight goes up as well as down, but always to a ceiling and a floor, and never more.

When we cast our minds into those darkly distant places of imagination, what light there is comes only from the candles we have brought. There is heaven here, too, and God in every face. Nothing is different anywhere. Infinity is no closer now, even from this prideful promontory. But, like an avid mouse, I have found her dispersed crumbs. Is this my own tail that smells so sweet as cheese? Or a ladder to another place? I see the steps! As can you, if will prevails. They go up and down, both ways to God, and never do they reach an end. These musings relate to musings on the Mandelbrot Set.

Did you ever dream of being invisible when you were a little kid? Did you think — and fantasize – about all the things you might do, if no one could see you? I know I sure did. As a child, though, I never considered the downside of invisibility. I think like most kids, I only thought of the greater power I would feel, if I new myself free to act without being seen. I never thought of the ways being invisible might diminish power, for diminishing effect. I believe there are things you can only do when you are prepared to be very visible… and that these things are far greater.

Few designers bring high adventure to mere clothing like Giorgio Armani does. It may just be brilliant marketing, but when you don Armani you must allow for the extraordinary in even the most mundane of circumstances.

Back in the late 80’s, I was stopped at a red light in the Village in New York City on my way to school when I spotted an unlikely Sarah Jessica Parker walking a small dog. It was early, and frankly she looked terrible. No make-up, tired face, baggy, frumpy sweats. I thought to myself “Dear God, Ferris… what the hell are you doing?!” Sarah is by no means a pretty girl, but her body is so fantastic that most men will make the effort to overlook her weaknesses and focus on her… err… assets — lol.

I like assigning images to things that don’t have them. Here’s an excerpt from Ferus Rex and an abstract wallpaper that brought it to mind.

“The pale disk of the moon slowly enlarged over the boy’s bed, casting the sleeping figure in a cold, yellow light. And when it seemed that the moon and stars were themselves in jeopardy of being drowned, there came from that blackest depth of the ocean a pulse of sound. The sound traveled up through lightless fathoms, the node of its meaning undiminished by the great distance, and it burst on the surface in a convulsive tremor of bubbles and spume… @

Here are a few wallpapers that make my brain dance:

3152	Clearly, some sort of forest. Or is it? The brachiations could be pulmonary, the crimson red could be the freshly oxygenated blood.
A bauble so appealing it could tempt the hand of a Czar. It sits nestled (or enshrouded) in an insubstantial gossamer of pink. They could be flames. Dare ye reach?	3113
3641	This is the sort of woman who would have the nerve to call you unexpectedly from a past life.
Hey, congrats. You’ve finally made it to the Big Hedge. Yes, that’s the Big Hedge, alright. It’s the big one you thought you’d never reach. Exciting, eh! Now, walk up slowly to the Big Hedge, and peek over. Lemme know what ya see, mmmkay.	4932

It’s always fun when words and pictures collide. For me the verbal is surely the dominant side. Yet, I embrace the opportunity to supplement and amplify the meaning of my own words with an image. Here’s one that brought into greater clarity for me a little allegory I wrote to describe my relationship with the Spider.

“People ceased to think of the king as a man. He was more like a “god”, whose intentions or thoughts could never be known. Some of his people were faithful “church-goers”, some were disillusioned, perfunctory practitioners of the faith, and some were patient plotters, investing the entire kingdom with a cancer of anarchy… more

Find more abstract images.

Whatever you may think of her lifestyle, her politics or her choices, Angelina Jolie is undisputedly one of the most gorgeous women alive on planet earth today. Her appeal packs movie houses, stops TV remotes dead in their tracks and has made her face one of the most recognizable in history. Because her fame has coincided with the ascent of the Web to its current dominion over all other mediums, we must consider that Angelina Jolie is very possibly the most “seen” person in all the history of our cvilization. If not her, who else comes to mind… more

Visit the gorgeous celebrity wallpaper gallery.

This neon sign is making a brave bid. It’s doing the best it can with the letters it’s got left. Bravo, neon sign! Do not go gentle! And props to the person smart enough to leave you lit. I saw you from miles and miles away…

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

We’ve all heard the expression: “Can’t see the forest for the trees“, but what does it mean? I hear people use it all the time, with apparent confidence and certainty that they are saying what they mean. But, what DO they mean? A forest, as we all know, has many trees. A forest consists of trees. Hmmmm. I have just had the following exchange on the subject with a dear friend:

2HousePlague (01:32 AM) :
what is that expression
2HousePlague (01:33 AM) :
something something forest for the trees
Maureen (01:33 AM) :
can’t see the forest for the trees
2HousePlague (01:33 AM) :
what does that mean?
2HousePlague (01:36 AM) :
i’m serious
Maureen (01:36 AM) :
umm.. I’m so busy looking at the trees that I don’t realize it’s a forest
2HousePlague (01:36 AM) :
does that make sense?
2HousePlague (01:37 AM) :
do people DO that?
Maureen (01:37 AM) :
yes.. it’s missing the obvious
2HousePlague (01:37 AM) :
but, if all the expression was intended to mean was “you’re missing the obvious”, don’t you think that’s a pretty muddy example
2HousePlague (01:38 AM) :
kinda over-complex
2HousePlague (01:38 AM) :
i am so focused on a single tree
2HousePlague (01:38 AM) :
that i have failed to noptice that i am in a forest?
2HousePlague (01:38 AM) :
i don’t buy it
Maureen (01:38 AM) :
argue with the old saying people!
2HousePlague (01:38 AM) :
i am
2HousePlague (01:39 AM) :
:-D
2HousePlague (01:39 AM) :
i saw the membership in your wallet
2HousePlague (01:39 AM) :
card
Maureen (01:39 AM) :
An expression used of someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole: “The congressman became so involved in the wording of his bill that he couldn’t see the forest for the trees; he did not realize that the bill could never pass.”

Maureen (01:39 AM) :
no you didn’t
Maureen (01:39 AM) :
and if you did, get outta my wallet!!
Maureen (01:40 AM) :
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.

2HousePlague (01:40 AM) :
lol
Maureen (01:41 AM) :
from answers.com

Focus only on small details and fail to understand larger plans or principles, as in Alex argues about petty cash and overlooks the budget-he can’t see the forest for the trees. This expression was already a proverb in John Heywood’s 1546 collection

2HousePlague (01:41 AM) :
wow, that is OLDE
Maureen (01:41 AM) :
even older than me!
Maureen (01:41 AM) :
not by much however
2HousePlague (01:41 AM) :
hence the olde “e”
2HousePlague (01:42 AM) :
maureene
2HousePlague (01:42 AM) :
olde maureene
2HousePlague (01:42 AM) :
lololol
Maureen (01:42 AM) :
I want what you’ve had
2HousePlague (01:42 AM) :
lololol
2HousePlague (01:42 AM) :
i had a good day is all
2HousePlague (01:42 AM) :
i got clobbered over the head
2HousePlague (01:42 AM) :
and i feel better
Maureen (01:42 AM) :
I’ve heard that works
Maureen (01:42 AM) :
not
2HousePlague (01:43 AM) :
it does when it’s a hard head —

Forest for the Trees

For men, the attention of women is a strange and mysterious thing. When we don’t have it, we’re miserable. When we have it, we can’t decide whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I think a few men understand that women can see right through us. And those who don’t understand it, sense the fact on some deep and undeniable level of truth. There’s something about the image above that seems to evoke both the wonder and the distress of female scrutiny. The colors are intense, the lines a bit too finely etched. I am compelled by them (their eyes, especially) and some of my usual self-assurance drains away like water. I think they call that love —

The image below appears to have been taken during some sort of a live musical performance. Perhaps, a rave — lol. I like looking at it, not least for the amazing balance between red and pink that’s been achieved in the composition.

This is a celebratory wallpaper.

It’s not easy to find a plausible connection between The Fab Four and the approximately 60,000 insect species comprised by the order Coleoptera. The Beatles were a band of shag-headed Liverpudlians, who forged a magnitude of fame and cultural influence like no other “mere musicians” before them. Meanwhile, the humble little hard-shelled creepy crawlies we call simply “beetles” (note the double “e” and lower-case “b”), have exerted a much subtler influence over millions of years. They perform vital, if un-recognized, functions in almost all of the Earth’s ecosystems. Some of them fly. Some of them are as big as a small camcorder. Some as small as the head of a pin. Some roll dung into balls they push along without complaint, though they are 1,000 times heavier than themselves. Some will crawl into the ear canal of a sleeping man and eat his brain — lololol.

I loooooove people — lol. Of all that is unfortunate in human behavior, I would say that our most tragic behavioral tendency as a species is to over-persistently detect differences amongst ourselves, and then to find in those differences always something to hate. If we have developed this tendency over time because there has always been something to fear, then it may already be in our blood, and it will be hard to get it out. Our children are born with fear, in effect. To cure them, we should have to remove them from fear’s influence for several generations. That sounds a lot like a science fiction movie plot, doesn’t it?

If human life without fear is a hopeless fantasy, then let us LAUGH, as HARD as possible, and at EVERY opportunity!

I took the above picture earlier this year during a trip to Australia. I was hosted by some wonderful people who did their best to make me and Lauren “feel not the aliens” in a strange land. The picture is supposed to be goofy. The beetle is poised, but not elegant. The ramp is make-shift. The circumstances of his arrival are filled with excitement, and the dramatic sky echoes (comically) the drama the scene does not otherwise contain.

I think we are all of us tripping and blundering and arriving all the time. If we have any courage at all, some of the arrivals we make will be into territories we have not previously explored. Hooray the explorer, but let us who travel take manners with us wherever we go. And to those who may be called to receive the occasional alien to his house, I would suggest: “Just smile whene’er a stranger calls, and laugh out loud whene’er he falls.”

The simple desire to “get across”, to make it from A to B, to progress, to evolve… is centrally human. We all consider many challenges of different magnitude at many different moments of our lives. We pray we are sufficient to the task. We pray our struggles and our difficulties will be rewarded in some way… if only with greater understanding than we had before.

I really like bridges. Sometimes we build them just for ourselves. Sometimes we build them for others to use. Sometimes a bridge, once built, endures for a very long time. I know for a fact that some bridges have changed the course of history, as much for the traffic they permitted to flow as for what they inspired in the people who looked upon them.

I really like this bridge because it seems to so little disturb its gorgeous surroundings. There is clearly human work in evidence. But one must wonder, did the tree fall? Or was it felled, in order to provide this needful passage?

more gorgeous scenes from nature and the wilderness | san francisco bay bridge

I’ve been a certified SCUBA diver since 1994. And I can tell ya without any fear of contradiction whatsoever that SCUBA is the closest an earth-bound human can come to visiting another world. I know, I know, it’s plenty scary for lotsa folks… And I’m not gonna tell ya it ain’t scary, because it is! But it’s not scary in the usual way I think most folks are accustomed to. The scariness of SCUBA is not a fear of imminent harm to your physical self. Of course, you can die doing it. But you can die in bed, too, or get hit by the proverbial bus. What’s scary about SCUBA is that the experience, for literally transporting you to a circumstance unlike anything you have ever even imagined, will force you to conceive of yourself anew. In other words, your mind will form the question: “If I can be here, then what else is possible?” I encourage anyone and everyone to the sport. It’s great for families. It’s great for couples. It’s a great way to make life-long friendships, built on trust.

I am a PADI certifed SCUBA Master, which means I can tread water for hours and save yer ass in a pinch.

Here’s another wallpaper from the Red Sea.

Get in touch with your local dive shop for info about certification classes in your area, or to locate a resort. The YMCA also offers SCUBA instruction. Please visit their SCUBA Welcome Page | SCUBA | Red Sea | Egypt

“Now, to properly understand how this is possible, you have to let go of the idea that to get something good you have to spend a lot of money. You also have to break from the belief that free stuff sucks or comes with a catch. I know, it sounds unbelievable, even as I type the words. But it’s true. I’ll explain… more

firefox | your next browser

Image courtesy of: spaceweather.com | acts of nature image gallery

It’s his birthday today.

joan miro nocturne | joan miro | joan miro | joan miro | JOAN MIRO GALLERY

Psychedelic Stars and Planets | Astronomy | Psychedelic Wallpaper

The Automated Spider Wallpaper | Spiders | Spider on Web Wallpaper | Spider

Ever try to look through something thick and gooey? I sure have. They call it a glaucous moon, when it drips rather than radiates. Who knew!

Glaucous Wallpaper

In the middle of my having-no-fishlessness, I made this wallpaper. I started with a photo I had taken in Cozumel while diving, an illustration I appropriated long after, and some filters I brought to bear with Photoshop.

gaudy reef | animals wallpaper

plastic envelopment | cgi wallpaper

Ice on blue linen wallpaper | graphic design

My wife Lauren and I don’t have any kids, but we sure do love our pets. Well, I should say… Lauren loves them like they are her kids, and I love them for it. At the moment, we have a long-in-the-tooth leopard gecko that’s been with us as long as we’ve been together, which is more than six years. I have returned only very recently to fish-keeping, after a tankless spell of 7 years. It’s a modest little thing to the 300-gallon behemoths I once poured tens of thousands of dollars into. But it gives much pleasure and I love it much.

In our history of keeping pets together, Lauren and I have one story of tragic loss. His name was Bello, and it is he that Lauren has sought to variously represent in her wallpapers here.

It was all my fault.

I have Kevorka, which is that thing that Kramer also has and which in one episode of Seinfeld he termed “The Lure of the Animal”. It seems to be effective on both genders and a large slice of Animalia. Bello was no exception. He rode on my shoulder wherever I went… to the crapper, into the fridge, ontoppa his momma… wherever I went. And so he went with me one day out the front door. I was unawares. I panicked on discovery. He leapt into the sky.

Had that been the end of the story, it would be far less dolorous than it is. After an hour of despair at the loss, during which our resignation to it had begun mercifully to grow, we “found” him calling to us from the tip-top of a redwood tree, three blocks away. We couldn’t see him, nor could he see us. We called to each other for about two hours. There was no way to climb up or reach him. It was getting dark. We were incredulous that the miracle of finding him could be turning into the nightmare of a worser loss. A bolt of lightening flashed. There must already be a storm over Tilden Park. We cried together Lauren and I… “Beelloooooo”. He gave a terrified shriek and leapt “towards us” as best he could. But all he could do in that enormous sky was fly. And so he did. He made a circle above our heads, like a confident child drawing on a sheet of paper, and was gone.

PSYCHEDELIC COCKATIEL WALLPAPER | PSYCHEDELIC WALLPAPER

They say that hardship inspires fantasy. I believe it. During that time together in our cramped studio apartment in Berkeley, Lauren and I indulged in Fantasy as much as we could. We had to. Among the ways I expressed and enjoyed in the fantasy realm was making desktop wallpapers for myself. I think I made about fifty of ‘em. They range broadly in subject matter, as well as in technique. Some began with things I put on the scanner, some with pictures I had taken, some with pictures or interesting graphics I found here and there. They are all present here among the wallpaper on this site, each in its appropriate section. I am, however, going to gather these into a category called “2HousePlague“, just to have them all in one place.

This one’s from the Through a Window in Berkeley collection. It merits special attention for the uncannily jet-plane-shaped cloud, visible between the power lines.

Cloud Jet over Berkeley | Through a Window in Berkeley | Berkeley Skies, April 2003

I was in a Miami Beach hotel room one morning, leaning out over the rail of my balcony. I liked the strong visual effect of the sea and the sand. I was trying to compose something interesting with my Canon Powershot, when suddenly this black crow flew in from the right and gave me the above photo.

This one is one of my own creations. I had been impressed by some sculpture I kept walking past near our apartment in San Francisco, in a gallery window. The material the artist used was sort of like a wire mesh that he shaped into different things. What was amazing was that the “thing” the artist had intended was not evident from just staring at the sculpture. To see his intent, you had to look at the shadow the sculpture was casting on the wall. Only there was the work of art revealed.

This one is fun. They are ruber duckies with horns!

More political and propaganda wallpaper.

Is it aesthetics or psychology? I am a Western Man who craves Eastern delicacies, like most. But, for the wife being demi-Chinese, I’ve had the opportunity to discover that all is not as advertised. If you wanna have a sense of how you’ll be treated in the marriage bed by an Asian, pay attention to an Asian mom scolding her son. “Screechy” is a word my wife and I seem to use, descriptively, a lot. So, all this makes me wonder whether the appeal is on the surface or relates to the, false, expectation that there is any above-average submissiveness at work. There ain’t.

illustrated asian woman wallpaper | illustrated wallpaper

Ever wonder about The Other Side? Most people do, whether they admit it or not. We all have fantasies about circumstances other than the ones we know. It’s natural. Well, I hope the wallpapers I am placing in the “fantasy” category will do justice to your dreams.

fantasy wallpaper | the other side wallpaper

I took this back in ‘97. Me and then-wife went there, rented a car and tooled around the place a bit. I see this incredible scene in front of me — these shallow temporary lakes that have formed in the volcanic fissures among these lovely green hills. We are so high up here, too, that the clouds are dipping down to just a few feet above the water. At sea level, they might have been called fog. But way up there, there was no way in hell they were anything less than clouds.

rolling hills of costa rica Wallpaper | gorgeous vistas wallpaper

Anime Wallpapers

Sarah Michelle Gellar Windows XP Wallpaper | Windows XP Wallpaper | Celebrity Blog

Psychedelic Mushroom Wallpaper | X-Ray Vision Wallpaper

Gold Coins and Bars Wallpaper | Gold Theme Wallapers