The Japanese writing system has a long and deep history, tracing back to the scratching on Oracle Bones in ancient China. This depth of history thus carries a huge weight of etymology behind it. This etymology is not just frivolous either. The old forms of chinese are used in Chop Seals which are effectively signatures of legal documents.

The difficult thing with the etymology of a given Kanji is actually quite problematic. When Han'zi characters were imported to japan, they were (generally) imported as their "traditional" version. During the communist revolution in China, the government simplified a great number of characters. Thus, there are currently two versions of a given Chinese character. For example, the character for "see" is 見 in Traditional Chinese, and Japanese, but 见 in Simplified Chinese. To make it even more confusing, there are a few characters of exclusively Japanese origin (called Kokuji). Finally, the Japanese went through their own simplification process.

What this boils down to, is that if you are wanting to study the Etymology of a Kanji character, you might have a couple of places to look. The first step is to take a peak at this great Chinese etymology database put together by Richard Sears. You can feed it a simplified or traditional chinese character, and it will come back with results. The only time that it doesn't come up with any results, is when you try and input a kokuji, or even just a Traditional Chinese character that the Japanese simplified (if that is the case, you can search for the kanji you are looking for at the link I just provided).

On a completely different angle, the writing of Kanji has progressed in a different direction, which is to say, calligraphy. I'll be talking about that more in another post, but I thought I would mention 2 great calligraphic dictionaries I have found:

http://www.font.com.cn/fontzd/

http://www.9610.com/zidian/index.asp

Both dictionaries are on Mainland China, which means they are exclusively simplified Chinese. This means that if you want to look up a traditional chinese character, you need to find its simplified equivalent. This isn't too hard, because Thats where Richard Sears saves the day again. It provides a good amount of information on any Chinese character you feed it. Simplified or Traditional.

Even if you are not studying Japanese (or Chinese!) you should go have a look at these sites, some of them have quite beautiful imagery, and it it is quite interesting to see the etymology of a few different characters. If you need some example characters, you can use these (you'll just have to copy/paste them):

• Sun 日
• Moon 月
• Mountain 山
• Stream 川
• Tree 木
• Gold 金
• Soil 土

I just finished a remix of Nine Inch Nails "Dicipline". It took maybe a total of 8 hours from start to finish, which is an incredibly short time.

As it just so happens, Mr. Reznor has released his entire catalog under a Creative Commons license. This is pretty awesome for some pretty obvious reasons. On top of that, for select tracks, he has provided either the multitrack format, or the component pieces.

Enjoy: www.jonnay.net/music/AcidTechno/Nine-Inch-Nails-Dicipline-Jonnays-Infinite-Acid-Mix.mp3

New Selenemacs packages are here:

• selenemacs.js
• selenemacs.el

I fixed some of the more obvious and glaring bugs.

For now the Selenemacs main page will be Here. If/when there is more interest, I'll put up a proper SVN repository and a page on bunnywiki.

Check out the cool ass the essence of rabbit mandala.

Cool Ass. (thanks Nat!)

Phil Corbett is a pretty amazing artist of the disturbing-cute variety that I enjoy so much. His Kitten Parasites project is very cute, weird, and wrong. Quite nice. Check his main site for twisted-cute-bunnies.

I also particularly enjoy it when an artist picks a theme, and runs with it. Variations on a theme can be a real creativity boost.

The subject, seen as a whole, is of a man (representing me) lying on a barren plain before a wheatfield, with his head split open. The point of view is from the top of his head. The subject is then roughly divided into the left hand side of the picture, [with] the thoughts made in his head represented as a maze; and the right hand side, the view of the rest of his body. The hands and feet are seen through the eyes, nose and mouth, tapering off into the distance and the outside world.

THE MAZE [left-hand side of painting] An exitless one, it occupies and divides the inside of the cranium into groups of thoughts, the passageways being calculated to do the grouping. The white rat curled up in the central cavity represents my Spirit (I suppose). He is curled up with frustration from having run the passages so long without hope of escaping out of this maze of unhappy thoughts. They [the groups of thoughts] proceed as follows:-

Group I [top and top right]
Home upbringing: a) I, as a small boy, rejected by my school mates; b) my fear of school bullies and the ridicule of the school girls; c) my fear of being rejected by my father and losing the companionship, food, shelter and warmth of a home; d) my father's philosophy, the survival of the craftiest, pointed out by the plight of the foolish fish.

Group II [top left]
Political: a) my one time attachment to Ukrainian nationalism, which is a cry of anguish at the Ukraine being raped by Russia; b) my subsequent association with members of the Peace Movement, a Communist front organisation; c) the end result of over-zealous political leaning, WAR (my physical fear of it).

Group III [middle left]
Sexual: a) the merry-go-round string of rag dolls and wallflowers represent my lack of feeling and direction for dancing; b) the bull, dragging along his impediment and galloping towards the cow in heat, represents my fear of the animal side of sex in me.

Group IV [bottom left]
My social relations: choice between a) the hospital, with its ordeal of the panel (I in the test tube), interpreted in turn in two ways:
1) [below] as a benevolent conspiracy, or 2) [above] as a malevolent persecution: or b) the outside world - I continuing to be the outcast, skirting the smooth level highway of life in the ditch behind the hedge, sensitive to being seen in the light.

Group V [middle and bottom right]
Life and death: a) [middle right] Museum of Hopelessness being life and b) [below] the conveyor belt bearing the victim (me) inexorably to be crushed by the roller Death, I being one third there by the clock; c) [bottom right] the last picture is of me trying to convince myself that I am really mortal, using second hand information (the drawing) rather than examining the skeleton or coffin.

OUTSIDE WORLD [right-hand side of painting] Grasshoppers and drought (sun before the clouds) represent the mercilessness of Nature, which bankrupted my father, a farmer, and brought out of him the cornered beast. The thorny, stony ground is a kind of T.S. Eliot Wasteland - spiritual and cultural barrenness: the pile of excrement with flies on it represents my view of the world and the people that live on it. The loosened red ribbon [linking the 2 halves of the skull] bound together the head of a T.S. Eliot Hollow Man, and was untied by psychotherapy (Dr Cormier), but since the outside world is still unappealing, the rat remains inert. Before the head was opened, burrs (bitter experiences) choked the throat and pricked the sensitive underside of the tongue, and when it was opened the sawdust and shavings (tasteless education) spilled out from on top the tongue: mixed with the sawdust are symbols of (to me) equally tasteless Art, painting, literature and music. The burrs also represent, in the eye socket, the successive evaluations of my character by any friend during the process of acquaintance, all repellent but hopeful till the last, when the heart is discovered to be a grub. On the tongue and in the throat, the Kurelek family (big burrs produce little burrs), representing my father as the hard domineering blue burr opening up the mushy yellow burr, my mother, to release a common lot of burrs, my brothers and sisters, and one unique orange one - myself. The last burr, spearing culture, is I at the university. The inverted one is I as a child, trapped painfully between two aspects of my father, the one I hated and the one I worshipped.

-- Kurelek's Interpretation of "The Maze"

Here are a batch of links to some closeups of the overall picture:
Top of the Sull | Kicked Out | Beaten Up |
Crows Attacking the Lizard |
Conveyer Belt | Spikes | Test Tube |
Coffin and Death

Over on the BPS Research Digest, they have an article on the Line Between Artist and Madman. Apparently artists and schizophrenics share a lot of similar experiences, with a single exception. Apparently the line which separates an artist from a mad(wo)man is introvertive anhedonia—a condition where one lacks motivation and emotion.

As an aside, check out the Art of Louis Wain, an Artist who started out "normal", but developed schizophrenia as he aged. Pictured to the right is a 'stage 2' drawing of a cat. Check the link for even crazier kitties.