You should learn something new every day.

Unfortunately, many of us are at that age

where what we learn today,

we forget tomorrow.

But, give it a shot anyway.

 New Language

          The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

          As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

          In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

          The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

          There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

          In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

          Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

          Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

          By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

          During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a riel sensi bl riten styl.

          Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

          Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

 I Love This Doctor! 

          This sounds like our family... we're all following Dr. Wu's advice!

          To my clients, I am often asked for advice on Exercise, Diet & Nutrition and while not being a Nutritionist I have always done my best to impart common sense advice.

          However I recently attended a confer­ence and met Dr.Wu and I found someone who has the medical background to back up my common sense approach to Diet and Exercise. Please take a moment to absorb some Eastern wisdom and then put it to good use.

Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?

A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it...don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out even­tually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?

A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recom­mended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?

A: No, not at all.. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the good­ness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?

A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good!

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?

A: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!!!"    Foods

are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from get­ting a little soft around the middle?

A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?

A: Are you crazy? HELLO Cocoa beans! Another vegetable!!! It's the best feel­good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?

A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?

A: Hey! 'Round' is a shape!

One Last Thing to Remember

If You Follow my Advice (and you should),

You Will Have

the Body of a God

Twenty-nine Palms, California.

Valentine the bull and a patient buzzard are waiting for the artist to awake.

Main Street, Los Gatos, California.

Even the woman peering into the ruin is part of the mural.

Bay in a Bottle, Santa Cruz, California.

The passer-by is part of the mural.

Taylor Hall, California State University, Chico, California.

The Doric-style columns are actually nothing but paint.

Looks like a nice spot to rest your weary feet 

on a sidewalk 

in front of the Sarasota County Health Center, 

Florida.

Honolulu, Hawaii.

This mural took two months of studio work to plan 

and another six months to execute with the help of 11 other artists.

Featured are Queen Liliuokalani, 

the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands,
and Duke Kahanamoku, the ultimate father of surfing.

"Slowin' Down to Take a Look" in Winslow, Arizona.

Included, of course, is "a girl, my lord,

in a flat bed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me."

This mural at the Cafe Trompe L'oeil, San Jose, California, 

is entitled "Art Imitating Life Imitating Art Imitating Life". 
This customer doesn't leave at closing time.

John Pugh Biography

     JOHN PUGH has been creating mural artistry since the late 1970s. He attended California State University Chico, receiving his BA in 1983 and the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2003. He has received numerous public and private commissions in the United States, Taiwan, and New Zealand. He lives in Santa Cruz, California. Visit www.illusion-art.com 

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Murals-of-John-Pugh/Kevin-Bruce/e/9781580087759

Personal Artist Statement

          I am a trompe l'oeil artist focusing primarily on mural painting. I have found that the "language" of life-size illusions allow me to communicate with a very large audience. It seems almost universal that people take delight in being visually tricked. Once captivated by the illusion, the viewer is lured to cross an artistic threshold and thus seduced into exploring the concept of the piece. I have also found that by creating architectural illusion that integrates with the existing environment both optically and aesthetically, the art transcends the "separateness" that public art sometimes produces.

          It is important for me, as an artist, to interact with the community, formulating concepts based upon a multitude of viewpoints. Artists must be continually aware that their work can serve as a bridge between diverse cultural backgrounds. Public art is of great interest to me; providing me with a sense of purpose as it is a very powerful form of communication. It can link people together, stimulate a sense of pride within the community, and introduce the viewer to new ideas and perspectives.

          When developing a mural, I also respond to aspects of the location such as its architectural style or the natural surroundings. Often, I like to play with the art's context by contrasting these environments with another place and/or time. This paradox or juxtaposition of environments transports the viewer on a journey from local reality into a new space. During this "voyage", the viewer may experience sequential discoveries as my compositions are designed to unfold in narrative layers.

          While most of the time I respond to existing architectural settings, I have also had the opportunity to take part in the development of the architecture itself; modifying the design of the structure to marry the painting to the site. This bridge between art and the architectural can effectively erase the transition point between reality and illusion. The art thus becomes integrated into the real world of architecture and lends credibility to the illusion of the painting. Together the sum is greater than its parts.

http://www.illusion-art.com/bio.asp

Trompe-l'œil

          Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English, (French for 'trick the eye', is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions, instead of actually being a two-dimensional painting.

          Although the phrase has its origin in the Baroque period, when it refers to perspectival illusionism, use of trompe-l'œil dates back much further. It was (and is) often employed in murals. Instances from Greek and Roman times are known, for instance in Pompeii. A typical trompe-l'œil mural might depict a window, door, or hallway, intended to suggest a larger room.

          A version of an oft-told ancient Greek story concerns a contest between two renowned painters. Zeuxis (born around 464 BC) produced a still life painting so convincing, that birds flew down from the sky to peck at the painted grapes. He then asked his rival, Parrhasius, to pull back a pair of very tattered curtains in order to judge the painting behind them. Parrhasius won the contest, as his painting was of the curtains themselves.

          With the superior understanding of perspective drawing achieved in the Renaissance, Italian painters of the late Quattrocento such as Andrea Mantegna (1431 - 1506) and Melozzo da Forlì (1438 - 1494), began painting illusionistic ceiling paintings, generally in fresco, that employed perspective and techniques such as foreshortening in order to give the impression of greater space to the viewer below. This type of trompe l'œil illusionism as specifically applied to ceiling paintings is known as di sotto in sù, meaning from below, upward in Italian. The elements above the viewer are rendered as if viewed from true vanishing point perspective. Well-known examples are the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua and Antonio da Correggio's (1489 –1534) Assumption of the Virgin in the Duomo of Parma. Similarly, Vittorio Carpaccio (1460 – 1525) and Jacopo de' Barbari (c.1440–before 1516) added small trompe-l'œil features to their paintings, playfully exploring the boundary between image and reality. For example, a fly might appear to be sitting on the painting's frame, or a curtain might appear to partly conceal the painting, a piece of paper might appear to be attached to a board, or a person might appear to be climbing out of the painting altogether—all in reference to the contest of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. In a 1964 seminar, the psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan (1901 –1981) observed that the myth of the two painters reveals an interesting aspect of human cognition. While animals are attracted to superficial appearances, humans are enticed by the idea of that which is hidden.

          Perspective theories in the 17th-century allowed a more fully integrated approach to architectural illusion, which when used by painters to "open up" the space of a wall or ceiling is known as quadratura. Examples include Pietro da Cortona's Allegory of Divine Providence in the Palazzo Barberini and Andrea Pozzo's Apotheosis of St Ignatius on the ceiling of the Roman church of Sant'Ignazio.

          The mannerist and Baroque style interiors of Jesuit churches in the 16th and 17th-century often included such trompe-l'œil ceiling paintings, which optically 'open' the ceiling or dome to the heavens with a depiction of Jesus', Mary's, or a saint's ascension or assumption. An example of a perfect architectural trompe-l'œil is the illusionistic dome in the Jesuit church, Vienna, by Andrea Pozzo , which is only slightly curved but gives the impression of true architecture.

          A fanciful form of architectural Trompe-l'œil is known as quodlibet which features realistically rendered paintings of such items as paper-knives, playing-cards, ribbons and scissors, apparently accidentally left lying around, painted on walls.

          Trompe-l'œil can also be found painted on tables and other items of furniture, on which, for example, a deck of playing cards might appear to be sitting on the table. A particularly impressive example can be seen at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, where one of the internal doors appears to have a violin and bow suspended from it, in a trompe l'œil painted around 1723 by Jan van der Vaart. The American 19th century still-life painter William Harnett specialized in trompe-l'œil. In the 20th century, from the 1960s on, the American Richard Haas and many others painted large trompe-l'œil murals on the sides of city buildings, and from beginning of the 1980s when German Artist Rainer Maria Latzke began to combine classical fresco art with contemporary content trompe-l'œil became increasingly popular for interior murals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe-l'%C5%93il

Artist John Pugh

Click on photo to download John Pugh Video

VISITING AUTHOR-ARTICLE

OCTOBER 2009

AMERICAN AID SOCIETY

And Now Its Joke Time

By Richard Gunther

AAS Seniorengruppe Representative

Forwarded by American Aid Society, Chicago

          A police car pulls up in front of grandma's Susie's house and grandpa Fritz gets out.  The police officer explains that this elderly gentleman said that he was lost in the park and could not find his way home. "Oh Fritz," said grandma. "You've been going to that park for over thirty years! So how could you get lost?" Leaning close to grandma so the policeman couldn't hear, Fritz whispered. "I wasn't lost, I was just too tired to walk home."

          Trouble in marriage often starts when a man gets so busy earning his salt that he forgets his sugar.

          A foolish husband says to his wife: "Honey, you should stick to washing, ironing, cooking and scrubbing. No wife of mine is going to work."

          Many girls like to marry an army man.

                   - he can cook, sew, make beds, and is in good health

                   - and he is already used to taking orders.

          It is hard to understand how a cemetery raised its burial costs and blamed it on the cost of living.

          A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

          I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

          When you go to court you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

LOOKING FOR A SUPPORT GROUP

Submitted by Laura Stein

AAADD ?

KNOW THE SYMPTOMS !

....PLEASE READ!

          Thank goodness there's a name for this disorder. Somehow I feel better even though I have it!!   Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D. or called Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder

This is how it manifests:

I decide to water my garden.

As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.

As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys on the table,  put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.

But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left.

My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Pepsi I'd been drinking.

I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Pepsi aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over.

The Pepsi is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the Pepsi, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye—they need water.

I put the Pepsi on the counter and discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning.

I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I'll be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to  put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

          At the end of the day: the car isn't washed, the bills aren't paid, there is a warm can of Pepsi sitting on the counter, the flowers don't have enough water, there is still only 1 check in my check book, I can't find the remote, I can't find my glasses, and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.

          Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all day, and I'm really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get some help for it, but first I’ll check my e-mail....

          Do me a favor. Send this message to everyone you know, because I don't remember who I've sent it to.

Don't laugh — if this isn't you yet, your day is coming.