Godstaff's Oasis

Suits of the deck, the french deck definition, are strangely based on the Spanish deck. I don't know which came out first, but this is so.

Spades= Swords

It's, clearly, the point of a spear, a lantz, not a sword. Why is it named after a sword? Maybe because they are both hand helded cutting weapons.

Its Spanish counterpart is actually a sword

Clubs. It's a cloverleaf, not a club.

What is actually a club is another suit of the Spanish deck

Diamond

Its Spanish counterpart is also a valuable comodity, used as commercial exchange too: Gold

Finally, Hearts

Don't know why, perhaps you can only know the true heart of a person when it's drunk, the correspondent suit of the Spanish deck is the chalice

I must commend the simplicity of making the colors red and black, and the addition of the queen

which in the Spanish deck is a horseman or a knight

Rather unpopular opinion: I'm glad they fnally finished La Sagrada Familia, after 144 years, but the adition of the final tower, La Torre de Jesucristo, made it look kind of generic. Look:

Since it was unfinished it had personality, potential. Now it looks just like any other Gothic Cathedral, only taller and more rounded. It's still beautiful and a master piece, but lost all that what made it different. Truly different.

Some things weren't meant to be finished. Some spaces weren' meant to be filled. Maybe they should've taken the cranes away and clean up the best they could and let it be.

Remember Notre Dame's flat top twin towers?

What if they had tall, elaborate peaks laike most Cathedrals of its time?

It would certainly not had been the same.

La Sagrada Familia was unique. It had surprise. Not anymore.

I must admit I admire the moderation of most orchestra directors. It takes discipline and concentration not to joyously jump and wave your arms like a monkey at certain passages of music purposely made to ignite the spirit and slap your composure. I'd be slipping out of my tux or tails at selected high spirited movements.

They are people who obviously love music and understand the intentions of certain passages, so it's commendable their professionalism and dedication. Making music it's a tricky craft. There's a song saying: "he who plays, never dances". It must be true.

Instead, they choose to express their joy through the instruments they command.

I'd be more like the Mozart in the movie Amadeus

singing every lyric and jumping at every step, like a child.

I have this observation about MacLennon. No, it's not that I'm opposed to it. Who cares. There are people who need it to reaffirm their own choices, identity and such. Okay.

I'm curious because it seems that Paul, being the prettiest between the two, he's automatically assigned the mostly feminine role in drawings and stories. I didn't know gay people was ruled by such stereotypes, like straight people are. I hoped their vision was broader.

It's like in SuperBat: because Batso plays the tough guy 24/7 and Supes is nicer, Batso has to be the man in the couple.

I know very, very pushing, combative, hard and forwardly straight women who are still rather girliesh and sweet inside their couples. Even submissive at times.

I also knew many gay couples in which both were tough machomen and sweet fairies at the same time.

Whatever.

Anyway, I suggest fans of the two unofficial alterverses to revise their conception of what a role in a couple is, so they don't perpetuate arcaic paradigms.

Without a profound analysis, anyone can see Americans are in love with their billionaires, their idiots and their weirdos. They made movies about them, write entire libraries about them, talk about them on TV. They analyse the phenomenon, legislate about it, dedicate countless hours thinking about them. It's their passion. They also love money, but if they know someone who can put a rein on the beast, they turn that person into a god. Billionaires are heroes, even more than the founding fathers. I.e.: the creation of the assembly line is a more epic event than the crossing of the Delaware.

More profitable too.

In that spirit, anything a rich person does and says becomes tendency, example and gospel.

As for idiots and weirdos, there's an entire culture created upon them. Tons of movies and TV shows. Very successful ones. There's almost no comedy without an idiot or a weirdo.

It's only natural, a simple matter of time, to elect one for office.

There you have him: Donald, First of His Name and Last of what remains of this Civilization. Perfect amalgamation between billionaire and idiot.

Thank you. I must say I have a little help with my vision of the couple. My life partner is a very strong woman whose shield sometimes cracks to reveal a soft, empathetic and vulnerable interior. That doesn't diminish her stregth, it only shows how wrong it is to portrait only one side of a person. She's my rock, but allows me to be hers. "We contain multitudes" one wise person once stated. My characters contain multiverses. The true person reveals itself along many different circumstances. You only need to be patient and observant. And willing to do so.

Have you ever wonder why some people's greatness is recognized after a monumental body of work some others achieve the same status with just one master piece?

Two examples come to my mind and either and each person is regarded as a genius, no doubt about it. Because they are.

And in both couples, the protagonists are contemporary of one another.

My first example are Michelangelo and Leonardo. Buonarroti made many titanic works, feats of strength and mastery, like the 5 mts. David or the Sistine Chapel. Beauty and skill. Impossible feats. Will and power. A true Master. His works are so vast and there are so many of them, one can't encompass any of them at a glance. You can only appreciate them from a certain distance. Things only a giant woud achieve.

Da Vinci, on the contrary, is famous for a few masterpieces, like Mona Lisa or the Last Supper, and was deemed in his time as untrustworthy because he didn't finished some of them. Did that prevent him to be regarded at the same level as Michelangelo? Nope. You may like one more than the other, but their status as Geniuses is practicaly the same. No doubt about it.

My other example are The Bard and the One Handed Man from Lepanto. It is impossible to name all the works from Shakespeare from the top of your head. There are so many. Some believe it's not possible they all came from just one man. Immortal scenes and phrases, cultural icons. The greatest English writer. One of the greatest of all time.

To refer to Cervantes, you just have to name the Quixote, l & ll. The top of Spanish Literature, the greatest Spanish Author. Phrases and cites impervious to the passing of time. A story for the ages. How did one opus achieved the same status of Shakespeare's vast body of work? A mystery.

I don't know how to define or even name this phenomenon, it just came to my attention. Why a few compare to so many? It puzzles me.

Same as Spain is regarded as discovering a new part of the Word for one journey, and England has to plant their seed in countless countries to be considered both Nations as conquerors.

I live for the split second a band member, in the middle of the performance, says "Whoa!", surprised by something another band member or even himself or the audience did.

Whoa! These guys had seen pretty much everything on the road. Every excess, past every limit. "Whoa!" takes another meaning in that context.

That whoa! is unexpected, it's revelation. It's ecstasy, almost orgasmic. It's hitting a home-run blindfolded.

There aren't many images of Kal and Diana dancing together. These are the first drafts of a (kind of) bigger project (much bigger, like six or seven more images) but I was so happy with my first results I wanted to share. Anxious guy.

I think religions are no different from other focus of power, just like politics and money, or even military forces. they difer in methods.

The metaphore of the four horsemen in the book of revelations of the Christian Bible describe them quite well: conquest, hunger, war and death. Conquest (not pestilence) is politics, always looking for the next victory, hunger is the economics, because they decide who eats and who doesn't, war is the military, the brute force, the fear and death is religion, because it deals with the mystery of our procedence, in which we weren't alive, and the final destination after death, religions never refer about life, only in a circular manner, never specific. Life is not the center, this miraculous existence we have, but just the means to decide what will happen to us after it ends and what happened to us before it began. That's why there are so many: none of them want to relinquish power, joining another. And every day a new one is created.

Like the other three powers, the central foundation is "we are right, the others are wrong", with all the variants in between. The stability of a nation lies on the success of the negotiations between the four powers. They depend on each other.

Religions don't do evil per se. Not more than politics, economy and military. they are the four legs of a chair: the stability of the whole, depends on the stabiltity of each, that's why they always take good care of each other.

Diana: Kal? Do you read me? Sorry, no: Clark! Diana here. ETA 5 min.

Tell your parents I'm bringing Themysciran wine. I'm almost there. Oh! I've seen a brown cow with the Kent brand 6 clicks East from the farm, by the creek.

Chuck: I'll be back.