In a moment of clarity, Pavement wrote/threatened “You gotta pay your dues before you pay the rent”. The following artists did just that, soldiering on when most would forgive them for choosing a quiet life out of the public eye. I can’t guarantee you will like all the artists on this list, but you may come to respect each a little more, knowing what they had to contend with.

Many consider Perlman the greatest violin player of the 20th century. He contracted polio at the age of four, but made a good recovery, and learned to walk aided by crutches. Today, he generally uses crutches or a scooter to get around. He plays violin while seated, which you may have caught at American president Barack Obama’s inauguration. Charlie Daniels calls him “Sir”.

Winter is an American blues musician. An adventuresome multi-instrumentalist at home on keyboards, saxophone, percussion, and vocals, Winter was most successful in the 1970s with The Edgar Winter Group. He is easily recognized by his albinism. Due to the lack of pigmentation in their irises, many albinos are very sensitive to light. Yet Winter has made a career on brightly lit stages playing “Frankenstein” from his great album, “They Only Come Out at Night”.

Stanley Eisen (stage name Paul Stanley) is the rhythm guitarist and lead singer of the marketing juggernaut/rock band KISS (estimated album sales, 100 million). Stanley was born with Microtia, a rare congenital deformity where the fleshy part of the outer ear (the Pinna) is extremely underdeveloped or absent entirely. His solution to avoid schoolyard teasing was to grow his hair long, and that kind of chose his later profession. Stanley is also the spokesman for About Face an organization that provides support and information to individuals with facial differences.

Poison’s lead singer Bret Michaels was only six when diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, a disease that renders the pancreas unable to make insulin, a hormone essential for converting food into energy. At ten, he went to the Kno-Koma diabetes camp, met other diabetic kids, and learned to legally shoot up and eat correctly. After that, he joined Poison and sold 25 million records by constantly touring a frenetic stage show. He’s in his forties now, still tours, and can be seen on his own reality TV show, courting loose women.

Asthmatic Kenneth Gorelick is a Grammy-award winning saxophonist once rejected from the University of Washington music program. Today he could buy the University of Washington. His smooth jazz expanded the jazz market exponentially and sold 48 million records–making him the 25th highest selling recording artist in America. One of his most successful albums is titled “Breathless”.

Charles is an American treasure/musician who mixed gospel, blues, and country in the 1950s and 1960’s. The son of a sharecropper, his version of “Georgia On My Mind” was proclaimed the state song of Georgia in 1979, only a decade and change from the days of Jim Crow. Rolling Stone ranked him number ten on their list of “The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time” and their readers voted him number two on the list of “The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time”. He was the last artist to arrive for the “We are the World” recording sessions, and when he entered the studio, the room finally had soul. You could hear a pin drop.

Jacqueline du Pré OBE was a British cellist, acknowledged as one of the greatest players of the instrument. She is particularly associated with Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor; her interpretation of that work has been described as “definitive” and “legendary”. Her career was cut short by multiple sclerosis, which forced her to cease performing at the age of 28, and led to her premature death. Watch the video clip above to see one of her astoundingly masterful performances. There has never been a cellist like her and her early death is a tragedy.

After an accident in a sheet metal factory, 17 year old southpaw Tony Iommi lost the tips of the middle and ring finger of his right hand. He considered quitting music, but a record by similarly-injured jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt encouraged him to keep playing. After failing at playing right-handed, Iommi strung his guitars with banjo strings and wore plastic covers over the two damaged fingers. He made the covers by melting plastic bottles and dipping his fingers in while the plastic was soft enough to be shaped. He then completed the easier tasks of forming Black Sabbath, selling 20+ million albums, and becoming a highly influential guitarist himself.

Driving to a 1984 New Year’s Eve party, Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen was thrown from his Corvette, severing his left arm. Doctors initially reattached the arm, but were forced to remove it due to infection. Soon after, Allen and some engineers designed an electronic drum kit allowing his left foot to play the snare. Drum manufacturer Simmons built a kit to the needed specs, and Allen returned to the stage in 1986, only two years after the accident. In August 1987, the band released their fourth album, Hysteria, which sold over 20 million copies.

As a child, he practiced to stop his father beating his mother. As a man, his name is synonymous with musical mastery, and he wrote the most famous notes of music in the history of man. According to FlameHorse (who knows his classical music), “(Beethoven’s) finest works are also the finest works of their kind in music history: the 9th Symphony, the 5th Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the Late Quartets, and the Missa Solemnis. And he achieved all this despite being completely deaf for the last 25 years of his life”. I have selected the third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata because most people familiar with the sonata only know the first movement.

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For thousands of years cities have been the manifestation of humankind’s artistry, imagination, and instinct to succeed. They embody our strong social desires and longing to create grand masterpieces. London, Constantinople, Paris, New York, Ancient Rome, and Tokyo have been just a few of the dazzling trophies mankind has built. But there have been many cases in which someone’s vision for a better, more efficient, or more fantastic city collapsed into a heap of broken dreams. These are ten cities that were never built, ten cities you will never visit.

Just a couple of months ago it was reported that China’s planned city of Dongtan would not become a reality. It was highly publicized and anticipated since it was to be the first mega eco-city of its kind.

Slated to be twice the size of Manhattan, the site was an island near Shanghai and was to change the way humans interacted with their environment. The exodus of individuals from the countryside to cities in China, therefore creating more environmental waste, spurred a movement for more environment-friendly projects, and Dongtan was by far the most ambitious one.

The self-sustaining city would have produced its own energy from solar, wind, and bio-fuel power, and recycled city waste. Public transportation would have been powered by clean technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, and a vast network of foot and bicycle paths would have substantially cut down on vehicle emissions. In addition, organic farming methods were to be used inside the city limits.

It was to be a green model for the entire world, but, like most projects of this scale, resistance and problems arose. Many considered it a pipe dream which was never really plausible, while others claimed China’s rapidly developing cities would negate any benefits Dongtan presented. When Shanghai’s mayor (the project’s biggest supporter) was arrested for property-related fraud in 2006, the plan fell into further disarray with permits lapsing and enthusiasm waning.

Eventually, the global recession all but sank the undertaking and the innovative ideas planned will have to be put on hold.

Buckminster Fuller was a brilliant visionary, scientist, environmentalist, and philosopher who, in the 1960s, developed a bold design. It was dubbed Triton City and was intended to be a floating utopia for up to 5,000 residents. His giant, floating city was designed to encourage people to share resources and conserve energy.

Fuller was initially commissioned by a wealthy Japanese patron to design a floating city for Tokyo Bay. He died in 1966, but astoundingly enough, the United States Department of Urban Development commissioned Fuller for further design and analysis. His designs called for the city to: be resistant to tsunamis, provide the most possible outside living, desalinate the very water that it would float in for consumption, give privacy to each residence, and incorporate a tetrahedronal shape which provides the most surface area with the least amount of volume. Everything from education to entertainment to recreation would be a part of the city. Fuller also claimed that the low operating costs would result in a high standard of living.

HUD eventually sent the plans to the U.S. Navy where they were dissected and analyzed even further. The city of Baltimore, upon hearing of the project, became interested and petitioned to have Triton City moored off of its shores in Chesapeake Bay. However, as municipal and federal administrations changed, the project languished and was never brought to light. Today, there are derivatives of Triton City, such as the artificial island Kansai and its airport in Osaka, Japan, but they pale in comparison to the scope of Triton City.

Originally designed by one of the most famous and respected architects in history, Frank Lloyd Wright, in 1932, Broadacre was meant to be a “New Town” utopia. It did not fit into its own category because it had many characteristics of a conventional city of the time as well as incorporating the principles of an agricultural nation which Thomas Jefferson championed. In essence, he wanted to abandon the crowded, machine-age, industrial city, but avoid a rural community.

Just like Jefferson believed every citizen should have their own “vine and fig tree”, Wright planned the city so that each denizen would grow their own food on their one acre plot of land. In what was a controversial characteristic, citizens of all social classes would intermingle much more than in any other city or town of the day. Wright also despised centralization so it was essential that the city be sprawling and widespread, which severely differentiated itself from a city. In Broadacre, homes, factories, offices, and municipal buildings would all be separated by large expanses of parks planted with lawns and trees. Cleanliness was paramount and there was to be only light industry and all utility wiring would be buried underground.

Opponents of Wright’s city were vociferous however. Because he believed that the automobile was “the advance agent of decentralization” he envisioned extremely little mass transportation which many city planners vehemently disagreed with. Wright’s vision never was realized, and the closest thing we have today are the sprawling suburban communities that blanket much of our planet.

These are not cities by definition, but anyone who has been to a Disney resort knows that they are basically self-sufficient cities in their own right. Considering the amount of real estate the conglomerate already owns and operates it’s amazing how many other things they planned that never came to fruition. It’s also interesting to realize what we could have had from the world’s largest entertainment company since most of these would have been great places to visit:

Mythia: A Greek and Roman myths and legends-inspired park planned to be built near Disneyland.
WestCOT: A West Coast EPCOT Center planned for California.
Disneyland East: A large park to be built on the site of the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, NY.
Port Disney: An American version of Tokyo DisneySea planned for California.
Disney’s Asian, Venetian, Persian, and Mediterranean resorts to be built near Disney World.
Disney America: A patriotic theme park that was to be built in Virginia.
Discovery Bay: A land inspired by Jules Verne‘s various works. Some ideas were later incorporated into Disneyland Paris.
Beastly Kingdom: A mythical beings land planned near Animal Kingdom in Florida.

Dark Kingdom (Shadowlands): A park near Disney Word that would have showcased all of Disney’s villain characters and be the antithesis of the Magic Kingdom. Maleficent’s Castle would have been in the center of the park.

Sci-Fi City: Planned for Tokyo Disneyland, this would have been an immense park with an endless amount of science fiction rides and attractions. If built it would have been the most extensive and impressive “tomorrowland” ever created.

Disney’s Snow Crown: A Disney-themed ski resort situated at the Mineral King glacial valley in northern California which was ultimately prevented by preservationists.

These are the biggest resorts and parks that were conceived by Disney but never built. There are hundreds more attractions, rides, restaurants, etc. whose ideas were put to paper but never became reality for a multitude of reasons.

Sir Ebenezer Howard was the father of the garden city movement, which is a suburban town near a large, metropolitan city that is designed to not be reliant upon its bigger neighbor. Garden cities were intended to provide a pleasant environment with open public land while at the same time contain industry and agriculture. He succeeded in spearheading the building of many garden cities, beginning in the United Kingdom, to mixed results. But his vision of the slumless, smokeless cities model has gone unbuilt.

His design is very interesting, and if one is to peruse his self-drawn diagram, the aesthetics appear quite pleasing. A number of characteristics are notable. The entire design resembles a big wheel, with the Central City being the hub with six smaller, surrounding garden cities. Each city is surrounded by a circular canal, and one large circular canal, the Inter Municipal Canal, connects each of the six outer cities. Continuing with the canal theme, independent straight canals cut through all six cities and run directly into the Central City. Roads also ran along these straight waterways. Running inside the outer towns would be the Inter Municipal Railway. Inside the Railway, Howard planned for such things as farms, an insane asylum, reservoirs, an agricultural college, industrial homes, cemeteries, and a “home for waifs”.

The overall design was to relieve the huddled crowdedness and dirtiness of big cities but still have the feeling of connectivity. Since it would have been such a daunting project, and there wasn’t quite enough support for Howard’s plan, these connected cities never materialized.

While this is a city that you can visit, you will never see its original plan fulfilled. Nat Mendelsohn was a developer who had a dream of developing a city that would rival Los Angeles in terms of grandeur. He ambitiously began building on a 320 square kilometer piece of land in the middle of California’s Mojave Desert complete with a huge park and artificial lake. If one were to look at a satellite picture of the city it may seem like Mendelsohn had at least come close to realizing his dream. However, if you are to look closer you would notice something conspicuously missing – houses.

Although hundreds of streets, complete with cul-de-sacs, crisscross in one continuous, gigantic grid, the network is just one, prodigious ghost town. But at least ghost towns have structures; these streets are lined with absolutely nothing, not even a telephone pole. It kind of looks like an intricate crop circle mysteriously made in the middle of the desert or threadbare hiking paths run amok twisting through the dirt and sand.

Mendelsohn had the same idea as many real estate developers of the time. He would buy a vast amount of land, divide it into thousands of home plots, then sell them to families who longed for a piece of property to call their own. The gamble did not pay off for him however, because 50 years later decaying streets still lie there empty. One reason is that dust storms are a common occurrence in the area, but he mainly overestimated demand.

The city is not empty though. It has a population of roughly 14,000 people comprising a small town. The entire town, however, only takes up a small corner on the outskirts of the boundless, barren grid. Although it’s a town with services, it will never be a large city the likes of Los Angeles that Nat Mendelsohn conceptualized.

The Minnesota Experimental City (MXC) was the brainchild of a private partnership between the University of Minnesota and the Federal Government in the 1960s and would be intentionally open to observation and evaluation by urban studies experts. Like its name suggests, the city would be a combination of experimental ideas never before tried on such a large scale.

The city would accommodate about 250,000 people, and it would focus on open spaces such as parks, farms, and wilderness. Only one sixth of the area would be paved and the city would be partially covered by a geodesic dome (designed by Buckminster Fuller). This design is extraordinarily strong, is hurricane and tornado proof, and is widely used today. The city would be car-free, with cars parked at the edge and people-movers whisking people into the center of the city. A futuristic and highly advanced automated highway system, in which magnetic, driverless cars were used, would connect people to the outside world.

Perhaps the most drastic and controversial departure from conventional cities was that there would be no schools. Instead, the practice of lifelong learning would be practiced. Lifelong learning states that everyone is a teacher as well as a student and that education takes place through social interactions, observations, and joining groups and clubs among other things.

Budgetary problems as well as logistics quashed the city’s groundbreaking.

Welthauptstadt Germania (World Capital Germania) was to be the jewel of the Third Reich. Adolph Hitler, unmatched in his hubris, was convinced that Germany would become the center of Europe, and perhaps the world, and had begun to plan his capital city, which was a rebuilt Berlin, even before World War II began. His goal was to exceed the quality and splendor of other world capitals such as London, Paris, and Washington D.C.

Plans for this grandiose city included a stadium that could house 400,000 spectators, a Chancellery with a lavish hall twice as long as the one at the Palace of Versailles, the Triumphal Arch (based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris but much, much larger), and a giant open square to be surrounded by large government buildings. The centerpiece of the new city would be the Volkshalle, or People’s Hall, which would include a humongous domed building designed by Hitler himself and chief architect Albert Speer. If this domed building was built it would still today be the largest enclosed space in the world, being sixteen times larger than the dome at St. Peter’s.

Even though the War began before construction could begin and put a halt to commencing building, all the necessary land was acquired and engineering plans were developed. Hitler’s plan was to win the war, finish construction on Welthauptstadt, hold an extravagant World’s Fair there in 1950, then retire. Needless to say, the crushing of the Nazi regime and Third Reich at the hands of Allied forces put an end to the future of the great city.

One humorous aspect of the planning of Welthauptstadt is that the marshy-like ground of Berlin never could have supported the monstrous structures Hitler wanted as the showpieces of his city.

A planned city across the bay from Anchorage, Alaska, the name was a reversal on “Seward’s Folly” which was the name bestowed on the transaction that Secretary of State William Seward made when he purchased Alaska from Russia. It was to be a city unlike any in the world.

First and foremost, it was to have a colossal, glass dome covering it which made it completely climate controlled. The city would have amenities for 400,000 citizens including a sports arena, mall, schools, and petroleum center. Transportation would be quite innovative and included moving sidewalks and an aerial cable car line that would shuttle people around the city and to nearby Anchorage. Skylights and large windows would give people the sense of openness but would not compromise the climate-controlling properties of the dome. Cars would be nonexistent inside because it was a city “for people, not cars”, and all energy used in the city would be provided mostly by natural gas. Later, plans called for a subway under the bay that would also lead to Anchorage.

Failure to make lease payments on the land, and the impracticality of it all, ensured that Seward’s Success would, in the end, not be such a success.

No, this was not an insincere idea concocted by someone just to garner attention. Back in the 50s it was the dream of one man who doggedly fought to make it an actuality. It was to be a resort city completely centered around the culture of drinking, where alcohol would be embraced, loved, and revered.

Mel Johnson loved to drink. As a young man he traveled the world to see the great drinking cities: Dublin, New York, Havana, Rio, Barcelona, New Orleans, and Paris. But the drinking culture of these cities just wasn’t enough for him; he wanted something more. He was a very intelligent man who dropped out of Harvard University and served in the armed forces, but after World War II he had his epiphany and set out to create BoozeTown.

His city would be comprised of dozens upon dozens of bars and nightclubs, all with different themes. He was meticulous in his planning and fleshed out every detail. Street names would allude to alcohol, such as Gin Lane, Bourbon Boulevard, and 21st Amendment Ave; there would be a moving sidewalk and an electric trolley system which would help escort staggering drunks home (or to another bar); much of the alcohol would be brewed or distilled inside the town which would produce revenue; every bar and liquor store would be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week; drinks would be allowed everywhere, even banks and places of worship; the city would have its own currency, BoozeBucks; there would be a police force, the Party Police, but instead of harassing drinkers they would be there to assist them; the BoozeTown Bugle would keep citizens abreast of the current news; and no children would be allowed inside. There would be a big daycare just outside city limits for visitors. Johnson figured that the permanent populace would consist of “retirees, artists, and goof-offs”, people who wouldn’t be responsible for children in the first place. He believed that famous artists, writers, and actors would in time flock to the city to live. In the middle of the city would be a towering building shaped like a martini glass in which Johnson would have his home and headquarters.

He scouted out areas for BoozeTown, such as somewhere in Middle America, northern Nevada, and an island off of the western coast of Mexico. Johnson had money from the death of his wealthy father but he needed much more capital and held numerous, lavish fundraisers in order to raise it. He printed up a plethora of trinkets such as maps, postcards, and matchbooks with BoozeTown’s logo on them to help persuade investors. At times, he believed he had enough money and set various opening dates for his city. However, very few people were actually serious about ponying up the money Johnson needed. This, added to the fact that he was acting increasingly more erratic and eccentric, and that the press was vilifying him, basically ended his dream of BoozeTown. In 1960 he gave up on the dream and was later committed to a hospital and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He died just a few years later.

You can almost picture yourself driving down an open stretch of road in the middle of nowhere then, suddenly, seeing a titanic martini glass pop up on the horizon beckoning you to come experience BoozeTown, “Where It’s Always Happy Hour”.

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Beberapa hari terakhir mata ane agak terpaku dengan foto – foto ritual ” pembersihan diri “ dari pulau Phuket negara Thailand ini gan.

Karena koran – koran di Belanda, Belgia dan bahkan koran The Sun asal Inggris juga menampilkan gambar ini.

Kalau koran The Sun asal Inggris memuat gambar – gambar ritual “pembersihan diri “ini, biasanya koran yang lain juga memuatnya. Karena The Sun banyak dijadikan nara sumber berbagai penulis berita.

Mungkin sudah banyak koran atau blog yang juga sudah memuat berita ini sebelumnya. Foto yang disajikan lebih mendominasi, dibandingkan dengan tulisan yang disuguhkan. Yang jelas, gambar – gambar ini bukan rekayasa dan bukan akrobat.

Tidak bisa disamakan dengan adegan ” Debus ” asal kota Banten yang merupakan pertunjukan semata. Karena kalau anda sudah membaca rahasia pertunjukan debus, anda justru tidak heran lagi , melainkan bisa ketawa terpingkal – pingkal.

Foto – foto yang dipertunjukan warga Thailand di pulau Phuket ini berkaitan dengan ritual keagamaan asal China. Sebuah ritual pembersihan diri. Berbagai benda tajam ditusukkan dipipi kanan dan kiri.

Tidak sakit ?
Kata sakit hanyalah melekat dengan tubuh jasmaniah. Karena didalam tubuh ditemukan susunan syaraf. Jika susunan saraf ini terganggu, maka seseorang dihadapkan pada rasa kesakitan.

Diberbagai ritual baik yang berbau tradisi semata atau keagamaan, seseorang dihadapkan pada proses pelepasan diri. Dimana manusia rohani menduduki strata yang lebih tinggi dari manusia jasmani.

Seseorang harus bisa melepaskan kedudukan badaniah untuk bisa mencapai keterikatan dengan rohani, dimana kesakita tidak ada. Jika seseorang bisa melakukan ini, maka orang tersebut mempunyai kontrol terhadap rasa kesakitan.

Rasa sakit tetap ada, tetapi bisa dikontrol, dan bahkan bisa dilepasakan. Karena dalam keadaan seperti ini orang tersebut tidak terikat dengan kekuatan badaniah melainkan kekuatan rohani.

Tidak heran, didalam berbagai ritual baik tradisi maupun keagamaan, seseorang berusaha mencapai puncak kenikmatan rohani atau orgasme. Jika didalam hubunga seks seseorang bisa mencapai orgasme, didalam ritual tradisi / keagamaan juga.

Prosesnya juga hampir sama. Didalam hubungan seks, jika seseorang mengalami orgasme, maka kesadaran orang tersebut dalam keadaan “mengabur. ” Perasaan kenikmatan yang mendominasi.

Didalam hubungan seks, seorang wanita bisa menikmati orgasme yang luar biasa jika wanita tersebut bisa mengalami orgasme G-Spot.
Bagi pria juga demikian. Seorang pria akan menikmati sebuah kenikmatan yang begitu luar biasa, jika pria tersebut mampu mengalami orgasme akibat rangsangan pada area G-spot di prostat.
Dalam proses ” pembersihan” seseorang akan menuju strata kesadaran yang disebut ” trance. ” Dalam kondisi ini bisa disamakan dengan orgasme rohani. Mengapa ? Karena area G-Spot di otak sudah tersentuh. Bandingkan dengan sentuhan pada G-spot di vagina atau area G-spot di prostat pada pria.

Yang namanya juga lagi orgasme, yang ada khan rasa kenikmatan bukan ? Memang ini membutuhkan latihan dan ketekunan. Kalau yang ditusuk dipipi bukan hal yang kebetulan.

Dipipi susunan syarafnya konon berbeda , sehingga tidak separah dan sesakit jika dibandingkan dengan bagian tubuh yang lain.






sumber: kaskus.us