Happy Valentine's Day!

Kaiser Maximilian I and his family,
painted by Bernhard Strigel in 1515.


In that year, the Kaiser was 56 years old, his wife, Mary of Burgundy, on the right, had been dead for 33 years, and their son, Philip the Fair, (standing between them) had been dead for nine years.

In the front row are Philip's sons Ferdinand 1 (12 years old) and Charles V (15 years old). The young man on the right is Louis II of Hungary (9 years old), who married Maximilian's granddaughter, Mary of Habsburg about the time of the painting.


The imaginings of history.

Tea Room, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien

Women of all ages seem to delight in having their picture taken as they grasp this adolescent 

boy's penis. 

Giggle.

What would their reactions be, were it a statue of a very young girl and men posed sticking 

their fingers in her shiny vagina? 

I wonder.

Support in Opposition

I agree that PIPA and SOPA (did I get those right?) are bad, and the people behind them are bad, and the government(s) frighteningly stupid to do what they are doing.

I have not purchased any new music (CDs or downloads) in years. Practically all my reading is either material online or in used books. I go to maybe one movie every five years, dropped Netflix, and don't stream anything. Rarely watch television. My mobile phone isn't smart at all. I don't have any computer games or devices, and what software I have is always obsolete.

Perhaps that is my message to the industry.

Certainly anything I say or do on my wee blogs won't be heard—might as well stand out in my backyard holding a little sign up towards passing airplanes.

Someday, I suppose they will try to claim that everything I look at, or include in a picture, is their "intellectual property" (Some museums and galleries are doing that now, by prohibiting photography.)

Oy vey!