WineCraft Cabinets

It didnt take long for Canyon Lake United Methodist Churchs
new Christian Life Center to turn into the hub of activity church
officials hoped it would become.

We knew if we built it, people would come, said Richard
Wahlstrom, a longtime church member and the chair of the churchs
project steering committee.

The center, which opened a year and a half ago, is part of an
ongoing bundle of projects the church plans to raise money for this
year, said the Rev. Eric Grinager.

A capital campaign to raise $1.4 million started this month and
will conclude in February.

The first priority on the list is paying off the debt for the
building, which includes three classrooms, a kitchen, bathrooms and
a large multi-purpose room that serves as a dining room and gym,
and can seat 220 people for weddings, award ceremonies and other
activities.

That includes the first floor, Grinager said. It has provided
the church with more classroom space and the luxury of having all
main activities on one floor. Before construction, the dining room
and the kitchen were in the basement.

But that was just phase one of the plan, he added.

The second floor of the building, which is not completed, is
also on the list of projects. The second floor, constructed above
the first-floor kitchen and classrooms, will offer another 2,500
square feet for classrooms.

The church also hopes to update the current church facility,
which was built in the 1950s, and construct a new driveway.

The driveway will come up from Canyon Lake Drive about 100 yards
east of the current driveway, Grinager said. It would be
constructed on the current hill and come directly to the
building.

Church officials hope to finish the projects during the next
three years, but none of the work will begin until the debt is paid
off, Grinager said.

Pay the debt – thats our first goal, he said. Then well
finish the other projects.

If the church is not able to raise the money in three years, it
would have to re-evaluate the projects, Wahlstrom said.

Theyre all important and thats why we hope we meet our goals,
because then we could do them all, he said.

In the meantime, the heart of the Christian Life Center is up
and running, attracting church members and community groups.

It wasnt that way at first, Grinager said.

Part of the challenge was that it was on a pay-as-you-go
basis, he said. The church opened the center, but the kitchen
supplies were not purchased for another nine months.

Thats when the building really started getting used, he
said.

Since then, the church has held its weekly Sunday school classes
and Wednesday night meals and activities there. It also has hosted
wedding receptions, blood drives, mission events and meetings.

Were using it in ways that were never imaginable before
construction, Wahlstrom said.

Its been a great community outreach, Grinager said.

The nearby Montessori school uses the multipurpose room for its
gym classes on Tuesdays, Stevens High School used the room for an
end-of-the-year banquet and several local organizations have used
the building for events and meetings.

He expects to see even more use during the next three years as
the church continues to move on its list of projects.

Its going to facilitate opportunities to serve our neighbors,
he said. We will have more flexibility to offer more things to our
congregation, but also beyond that.

(UPDATED) More than half a century ago, author Aldous Huxley titled his book on his experience with hallucinogens The Doors of Perception, borrowing a phrase from a 1790 William Blake poem (which, yes, also lent Jim Morrisons band its moniker).

Blake wrote:

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

Based on this idea, Huxley posited that ordinary consciousness represents only a fraction of what the mind can take in. In order to keep us focused on survival, Huxley claimed, the brain must act as a “reducing valve” on the flood of potentially overwhelming sights, sounds and sensations. What remains, Huxley wrote, is a “measly trickle of the kind of consciousness” necessary to “help us to stay alive.”

A new study by British researchers supports this theory. It shows for the first time how psilocybin — the drug contained in magic mushrooms — affects the connectivity of the brain. Researchers found that the psychedelic chemical, which is known to trigger feelings of oneness with the universe and a trippy hyperconsciousness, does not work by ramping up the brains activity as theyd expected. Instead, it reduces it.

Under the influence of mushrooms, overall brain activity drops, particularly in certain regions that are densely connected to sensory areas of the brain. When functioning normally, these connective hubs appear to help constrain the way we see, hear and experience the world, grounding us in reality. They are also the key nodes of a brain network linked to self-consciousness and depression. Psilocybin cuts activity in these nodes and severs their connection to other brain areas, allowing the senses to run free.

“The results seem to imply that a lot of brain activity is actually dedicated to keeping the world very stable and ordinary and familiar and unsurprising, says Robin Carhart-Harris, a postdoctoral student at Imperial College London and lead author of the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Indeed, Huxley and Blake had predicted what turns out to be a key finding of modern neuroscience: many of the human brains highest achievements involve preventing actions instead of initiating them, and sifting out useless information rather than collecting and presenting it for conscious consideration.

MORE: Magic Mushrooms Trigger Lasting Personality Change

For the study, the authors recruited 15 brave volunteers to receive injections of psilocybin or placebo, in alternate sessions, while being scanned in an fMRI machine. Taken intravenously, psilocybin alters consciousness in a mere 60 seconds, as opposed to the 40 minutes it normally takes when administered orally. And the high lasts a half an hour, not the five hours that typical users experience.

Provisions were made for the possibility that the participants might panic while high in the noisy, claustrophic setting of the scanner, but none of the volunteers did so. In fact, once they’d become accustomed to the noise and small space, “they quite liked being enclosed and felt secure,” Carhart-Harris says. All of the participants had previously been, as Jimi Hendrix put it, “experienced.”

Researchers had assumed that the hallucinations and bizarre sensations caused by psilocybin would have at least one part of the brain working overtime. But instead they found the opposite.

“The decline in activity was the most surprising finding, says Carhart-Harris, and anything that’s of surprise is usually important.”

Reducing the brains activity interfered with its normal ability to filter out stimuli, allowing participants to see afresh what would ordinarily have been dismissed as irrelevant or as background noise. They described having wandering thoughts, dreamlike perceptions, geometric visual hallucinations and other unusual changes in their sensory experiences, like sounds triggering visual images.

Indeed, if we always paid attention to every perceptible sensation or impulse like this, we’d be incapable of focusing at all. This is why its difficult to sit still and try to tune in all the feelings and perceptions we normally tune out, but why also, like psychedelic drugs, meditation can make the world seem strange and new.

MORE: Magic Mushrooms Can Improve Psychological Health Long Term

The particular brain regions that were silenced or disconnected from each other by the drug also provided insight on the nature of psychedelic experience and the therapeutic potential of psilocybin. Two regions that showed the greatest decline in activity were the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC).

The mPFC is an area that, when dysfunctional, is linked with rumination and obsessive thinking. “Probably the most reliable finding in depression is that the mPFC is overactive,” says Carhart-Harris.

All antidepressant treatments studied so far — from Prozac, ketamine, electroconvulsive therapy and talk therapy to placebo — reduce activity in the mPFC when they are effective. Since psilocybin does the same, Carhart-Harris and his colleagues plan to study it as a treatment for depression. “It shuts off this ruminating area and allows the mind to work more freely,” he says. “That’s a strong indication of the potential of psilocybin as a treatment for depression.”

The PCC is thought to play a key role in consciousness and self-identity. “The most intriguing aspect was that the decreases in activity were in specific regions that belong to a network in the brain known as the default network,” notes Carhart-Harris. “There’s a lot of evidence that it’s associated with our sense of self — our ego or personality, who we are.”

“What’s often said about psychedelic experience is that people experience a temporary dissolution of their ego or sense of being an independent agent with a particular personality, he says. Something seems to happen where the sense of self dissolves, and that overlaps with ideas in Eastern philosophy and Buddhism.” This sense of being at one with the universe, losing one’s “selfish” sense and vantage point, and feeling the connectedness of all beings often brings profound peace.

The researchers also looked for an effect on the language-processing areas of the brain, since users so often report that their experience is difficult to put into words. “There wasn’t any correlation between people saying that the experience was ineffable and any change in brain activity,” Carhart-Harris says. “It may just be because the way we symbolize the world with language is a constrained function. It has a degree of precision to it, really, and these drug experiences are so unusual we don’t have words to describe them.”

Carhart-Harris and his colleagues did find support for claims made by sufferers of painful cluster headaches that psilocybin reduces the frequency of their attacks. These headaches are known to involve overactivity of a brain area called the hypothalamus, and psilocybin calmed this region.

MORE: New Research on the Antidepressant-Versus-Placebo Debate

Interestingly, Natures Mo Costandi reports that another study of the effects of psilocybin on the brain found the opposite effect of Carhart-Harris group:

“We have completed a number of similar studies and we always saw an activation of these same areas,” says Franz Vollenweider at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “We gave the drug orally and waited an hour, but they administered it intravenously just before the scans, so one explanation is that [their] effects were not that strong.”*

Another neuroscientist told Nature that some studies find that lowered activation of the mPFC is associated with anticipatory anxiety rather than calmness or overall lack of depression. The researcher theorizes that the brain images in the current study picked up the participants fear, rather than their mystical experiences. But that conflicts with participants reports: they said their trips were mainly positive.

Carhart-Harris cautions against using psilocybin outside of a well-monitored therapeutic setting, however, particularly for patients with depression. “What we found was in healthy volunteers,” he says. “They liked the experience and didn’t have negative reactions, but during depression people are more sensitive to having a negative response to psychedelic drugs.”

In fact, that may help explain why psychedelic drugs are rarely addictive and why some of them may even have potential to treat other addictions. Unlike addictive drugs, which typically allow users to escape, psychedelic drugs have the opposite effect: instead of allowing users to avoid negative emotions, they magnify the painful feelings. Researchers believe this may help patients address their problems instead of fleeing them — in the context of an empathetic therapeutic setting — but it can also exacerbate distress. (Psilocybin is illegal in the US and is considered a Schedule 1 drug, a class of substances that “have a high potential for abuse and serve no legitimate medical purpose in the United States,” according to the Department of Justice. Other Schedule 1 drugs include marijuana, heroin and LSD.)

MORE: Why Kids With High IQs Are More Likely to Take Drugs

Indeed, the new research bolsters the idea of psychedelic as an accurate label for these drugs. The word was originally coined by Huxley, from the Greek psyche for mind or soul and delos for manifest. A growing body of literature suggests that these drugs can indeed help scientists understand the workings of the mind and brain, by revealing some of the underpinnings of consciousness.

Some have argued, for example, that the geometric visual hallucinations commonly seen by people on psychedelics (and by some sufferers of migraines) help reveal the architecture of the brain’s visual processing mechanism. “One hypothesis is that what you’re actually seeing is the functional organization of the visual cortex itself. The visual cortex is organized in a sort of fractal way [it repeats the same patterns in different sizes]. It’s the same way that fractals are everywhere in nature. Like tree branches, the brain recapitulates [itself], says Carhart-Harris. “You’re not seeing the cells themselves, but the way they’re organized — as if the brain is revealing itself to itself.”

*Updated to correct quote.

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer for TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthlands Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

Yesterdays news that the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) increased last month provides another data point to consider in the debate about recession risk. Looking backward doesnt necessarily tell us whats coming, but its clear that Decembers economic momentum strengthened. January and beyond, of course, are still open to interpretation.

Led by improvements in production- and employment-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index increased to +0.17 in December from 0.46 in November, according to an accompanying statement. The indexs three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, increased from 0.19 in November to 0.08 in Decemberits highest value since March 2011.

CFNAI is a weighted average of 85 indicators of US economic activity. The Chicago Fed recommends reading its 3-month moving average (CFNAI-MA3) as follows: a value below -0.70 after a period of economic expansion indicates an increasing likelihood that a recession has begun. By that standard, the December CFNAI-MA3 reading of -0.08 suggests that another downturn was nowhere in sight last month.

Thats no assurance that the coming months wont deteriorate. There are, as if we needed reminding, plenty of risk scenarios out there that might derail the still-fragile recovery. As I keep mentioning, the weak personal income and spending numbers are high on my list of potential trouble spots. Perhaps well learn if this worry is relevant or not when the January update arrives next Friday (Feb. 3).

Theres also Europe to consider and the potential for economic blowback as the Continent struggles to keep its own recession risk at bay. The UK, meantime, has its own problems as it moves closer to a second recession as economy shrinks 0.2%.

Lets not forget that the festering troubles with Iran may wreak havoc on the global economy. With the European Union set to impose economic sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program, the Iranian parliament is threatening to halt oil exports to Europe. Theres no sign of panic in oil trading, at least not yet. But if this crisis rolls on, the possibility for substantially higher energy prices cant be ruled out.

Perhaps the economic outlook isnt as rosy as it appears by looking solely at the data in the rear view mirror. It wouldnt be the first time that focusing on recent history blinds us to whats coming. The problem, of course, is that modeling the future is challenging, to say the least.

If the US does slip into a new recession sometime in the near term because of an exogenous shock from Europe, Iran, or some unknown unknown, does that count as a win for the recession forecasters? We all know that theres always another recession lurking in the future. The timing and specific catalyst are usually the great mysteries. As such, should there be a time limit on recession forecasts?

A CLIPSTONE dad says an activity group for fathers and young children has helped bring his family closer together.

Ray Pinnock (33) attends the Clipstone based sessions of the Sherwood East Dads’ Group, which also operates in Bilsthorpe and Edwinstowe.

Ray said as a courier, he was often away from his family on long shifts and the Saturday sessions gave him a chance to spend some quality time with daughters Charlotte (three) and one-year-old Emily.

“I got involved around two and a half years ago after hearing about the group through my wife.

“It has been very beneficial because I get to do the sorts of activities with them that they might normally do with their mum. It means I get to see for myself the achievements the girls are making rather than hearing about them second hand,” he said.

“I can’t say enough about the staff who really go above and beyond to make the sessions fun and enjoyable.”

Ray said the sessions also gave him a chance to chat to other dads and gave his wife a break from looking after the youngsters.

“My wife has a very busy week and while we are taking part in the sessions; it’s a great opportunity for her to have some ‘mum time’.

Sherwood East Dads’ Group has been meeting regularly every fortnight on Saturday mornings for more than two years at Nottinghamshire County Council’s Sherwood East Children’s Centre, with sessions also held in Blidworth and Edwinstowe.

There are play and creative activities to encourage dads to join in with their children.

Last year outdoor activities included pond dipping at Vicar Water, a trip to Sherwood Farm Park, and a nature walk around the local allotments.

At Christmas the group went to Sherwood Pines, picked a tree for the centre and decorated it in time for the Christmas celebrations.

The group has parties too, the most recent was the ‘Autumn Party’ at which dads and children dressed up and played traditional games like ‘apple bobbing’ and ‘bran tub’, as well as parachute games and ‘feely boxes’.

All dads and male carers are welcome to come to the sessions with their children under five-years-old with older brothers and sisters.

To join the group or for more information ring Jeanne Raspin, Nottinghamshire County Council community involvement worker, at Sherwood East Children’s Centre on Mansfield 629203.

Scientists have developed a fledgling ability to predict monthly tornado activity in the US up to one month in advance.

The technique, which uses existing weather-forecasting tools, is not yet ready for prime time. But in initial tests, the approach showed statistically significant skill in predicting regional tornado activity during most months of the year, including the peak of the spring tornado season, the researchers say.

If the approach can be honed sufficiently, eventually it could allow forecasters to identify portions of states facing the highest risk for tornadoes in an upcoming month.

In addition, the technique could help scientists explore a potential direct relationship between global warming and tornado activity. So far, such efforts have focused largely on the relationship between global warming and conditions that can spawn severe thunderstorms, which may or may not trigger tornadoes.

Though the results so far are modest, this is exciting, because its a hard problem, says Michael Tippett, a researcher with Columbia Universitys International Research Institute for Climate and Society, who lead the team.

The effort represents an important early step along the road to seasonal forecasts of tornado activity, says Harold Brooks, a researcher at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.

One potential audience for such forecasts would be federal and state emergency managers, Dr. Brooks suggests.

If you were able to say: The second half of April is going to be really, really bad, it could provide extra lead time to marshal emergency supplies or ratchet up efforts to ensure more people know how to respond to tornado watches and warnings when they are issued, he explains.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have created a new generation of fast-acting fluorescent dyes that optically highlight electrical activity in neuronal membranes. The work is published online in Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The ability to visualize these small, fast-changing voltage differences between the interior and exterior of neurons – known as transmembrane potential – is considered a powerful method for deciphering how brain cells function and interact.

However, current monitoring methods fall short, said the study’s first author Evan W. Miller, a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Roger Tsien, PhD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, UC San Diego professor of pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry and 2008 Nobel Prize co-winner in chemistry for his work on green fluorescent protein.

“The most common method right now monitors the movement of calcium ions into the cell,” said Miller. “It provides some broad indication, but it’s an indirect measurement that misses activity we see when directly measuring voltage changes.”

The new method employs dyes that penetrate only the membrane of neurons, either in in vitro cells cultured with the dye or, for this study, taken up by neurons in a living leech model. When the dyed cells are exposed to light, neuronal firing causes the dye momentarily to glow more brightly, a flash that can be captured with a high-speed camera.

“One of the tradeoffs with using voltage-sensing dyes in the past is that when they were reasonably sensitive to voltage changes, they were slow compared to the actual physiological events,” said Miller. “The new dye gives big signals but is much faster and doesn’t perturb the neurons. We essentially see no lag time between the optical signal and electrodes (used to double-check neuronal activity).”

The new method provides a wider view of neuronal activity, said Miller. More importantly, it makes it possible for neuroscientists to do accurate, single trial experiments. “Right now, you have to repeat experiments with cells, and then average the results, which is physiologically less relevant and meaningful.”

For Tsien, the new dyes address a career-long challenge.

“These results are the first demonstration of a new mechanism to sense membrane voltage, which is particularly satisfying to me because this was the first problem I started working on as a graduate student in 1972, with little success back then,” said Tsien. “Later, we devised indirect solutions such as calcium imaging or dyes that gave big but slow responses to voltage. These techniques have been very useful in other areas of biology or in drug screening, but didn’t properly solve the original problem. I think we are finally on the right track, four decades later.”

Source: University of California, San Diego

Scientists have detected signs of autism in babies as young as six months, leading to hopes of a test for the disorder.

They made the breakthrough by measuring brain activity and believe it could lead to identifying those infants most at risk at a much earlier stage.

Around one in 100 children develops the disorder but symptoms do not usually become apparent until the second year of life.

Low and high doses of clofarabine have comparable clinical activity for the treatment of patients with higher-risk myelodysplastic syndrome, according to a study published in the Feb. 1 issue of Cancer.

FRIDAY, Jan. 27 (HealthDay News) — Low and high doses of clofarabine have comparable clinical activity for the treatment of patients with higher-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), according to a study published in the Feb. 1 issue of Cancer.

Stefan Faderl, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues conducted a randomized study to evaluate the activity and safety of two doses (15 versus 30 mg/m#178; daily for five days) of intravenous clofarabine in patients with higher-risk MDS. A cohort of 58 participants (median age, 68 years), including 15 patients (28 percent) with secondary MDS and 35 patients (60 percent) who had previously received DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) inhibitors, were adaptively randomized between the two dose groups.

The researchers found that the overall response rate (ORR) was 36 percent, including 26 percent of patients with complete remission (CR). The ORR was 41 percent at 15 mg/m#178; and 29 percent at 30 mg/m#178;. Patients who had failed DNMT inhibitors had lower response rates (ORR, 17 percent; CR rate, 14 percent). The eight-week mortality rate was 19 percent, with a median survival of 7.4, 13.4, and 21.7 months for all patients, responders, and complete responders, respectively. For patients randomized to 30 mg/m#178; of clofarabine, some of the adverse events, including hepatic and renal, were more severe (grade #62;2). Frequent complications included myelosuppression and infectious complications.

Both the lower and higher doses of clofarabine have comparable clinical activity, but the lower dose appeared less toxic, the authors write.

Several authors disclosed financial ties to Genzyme, which manufactures clofarabine.

Abstract

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Copyright #169; 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

What the Hell Are You Doing? The Essential David Shrigley, a compendium of his
drawings published in 2010, has sold more than 20,000 copies. In 2003 he
animated the music video for Good Song by Blur. Between 2005 and 2009 he
produced a weekly cartoon for The Guardian; more recently he was the
political cartoonist for the New Statesman.

You can buy Shrigley T-shirts, badges, guitar plectrums, duvet covers and
greetings cards (though it is hard to imagine sending one without causing
offence). Next month, a retrospective, David Shrigley: Brain Activity, opens
at the Hayward Gallery in London. The organisers are expecting substantial
crowds.

The intriguing thing about Shrigleys work, though, is that unlike much
popular art, it is rarely easy on the eye. His reputation rests upon a
corpus of more than 7,000 works on paper: deranged, abortive little drawings
often accompanied by wobbly text full of spelling mistakes and
crossings-out. Crude, scratchy and instantly recognisable, they appear
animated by ferocious mental distress, like the outpourings of a madman with
no formal art training whatsoever. (In reality, Shrigley graduated from
Glasgow School of Art in 1991.)

Shrigleys pictorial world is a strange, benighted realm. Death and despair
loom large. Decapitated heads, swords, flies, ants and mangy, misshapen
creatures defying every known biological category are recurrent motifs. The
atmosphere is supremely nightmarish, nihilistic and bleak. The novelist Will
Self once compared Shrigleys drawings to the scribblings of a serial killer.

Why then is he so popular? The answer is simple: because he is an exuberantly
gifted humorist. His message may be pessimistic, harping on about the
pointless absurdity of existence, but the manner in which he conveys it is
gloriously funny; there is always laughter in the darkness. As Shrigley puts
it, If you start talking about death, mayhem and misery and it isnt funny,
then it would be quite a hard pill to swallow.

Judging by his drawings, it would be unsurprising to discover that Shrigley,
43, lives in a hovel down some alleyway in the back of beyond. The reality
is somewhat different.

It is a sharp December morning when I arrive at his 19th-century flat in
Glasgows well-to-do West End (he has lived in the city since he was a
student). His wife, Kim, lets me in, because he is still showering after a
morning session of yoga.

When Shrigley, who is 6ft 5in tall, comes downstairs, he is clean-shaven and
dressed in a cosy cable-knit sweater. He wears sandals over white socks,
like a right-on Christian preacher an impression reinforced by his soft
voice and meek manner. There is no flicker of the anarchy I assume must lurk
within.

Im just an actor, he jokes, pointing to the ceiling of his sitting-room.
Theres a dribbling, paranoid wreck who lives up there. He pours us both a
coffee. I dont think Im clinically depressed, he continues with a wry
smile. So I dont know where the darkness comes from.

Born in Macclesfield in 1968, Shrigley grew up in a redbrick suburb of
Leicester after his family moved there in 1970. His father was an
electronics engineer, his mother a computer programmer. Both were practising
Christians.

My dad is a Christian fundamentalist, Shrigley says. He didnt get into it
until I was a teenager, but it really freaked me out. During his teens
Shrigley decided he no longer wanted to go to church. There are so many
contradictions within Christianity. Why is the Church so interested in the
congregations sexual behaviour? Why do they give homosexuals a hard time?
There are a number of things that I have never been able to reconcile with
organised religion.

Despite this, he is reluctant to call himself an atheist. Im definitely not
a practising Christian, he says. But I have sympathy with religious
belief. People who need to disprove that there is a spiritual life somehow
it spoils the magic of being alive. Richard Dawkins is like an annoying
sixth-former saying, Yes, but I think youll findhellip; All right, Richard,
whatever. You win. There is no God. Religion is bad. Except I dont think
that religion is necessarily a negative thing. I think that humanity is
endemically predisposed to do bad things, and religion is sometimes used to
justify those bad things. Ultimately, though, religion is a positive thing.
There are other forces in the world that arent positive like capitalism.

Interviewers often emphasise Shrigleys religious upbringing, as though it
offers a key to unlock the meaning of his work. Shrigley, though, is less
sure that it had such a strong impact on his imagination.

It wasnt some crazy Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit-type scenario where I was
brutalised by my parents, he says. There were things we werent supposed
to do when I was a little kid like I wasnt allowed violent comic books.
Obviously, though, I was obsessed with violence and death and mayhem. I was
really keen on making torture chambers and places of execution for Action
Man out of cardboard boxes from Tesco. Its just what little boys do, isnt
it?

Shrigley also spent a lot of time drawing. I was the kid who could draw
dinosaurs better than anyone else in my class, he says. Even when I was
four years old, I was making peculiar little drawings with speech bubbles.
In a sense, Ive been doing the same thing my entire life.

After completing his art and design foundation year at Leicester Polytechnic,
he enrolled on the influential environmental art course at Glasgow School of
Art in 1988. Angry with his teachers after he was awarded a 2:2 in finals,
though, he decided that he no longer wanted to become an artist. I was
always being given a hard time for making art that was a bit stupid and
funny, so I decided to become a cartoonist even though I had no
interest in cartoons or comic books.

To catch the eye of prospective editors, he carefully reworked his initially
scruffy sketches to imitate a professional finish. He did sell one
cartoon, to Punch but it wasnt printed before the magazine closed in
1992. At the suggestion of the conceptual artist Jonathan Monk, his friend
and former flatmate, Shrigley reconsidered becoming an artist, and began
presenting his drawings as they first appeared, instead of polishing them
up.

In 1994 he produced a book called Blanket of Filth which were just the
drawings as they came out. He made about 100 copies, which he sold to
people at art openings or in the pub. From that point on, I was making a
book every few months. In the years that followed, he didnt feel any
urgency about his career. He was content to be known as the guy who made
these interesting, funny, oblique drawings.

The breakthrough came in 1995, when his work was featured in and on the cover
of the art magazine Frieze. It was like going from being nobody to somebody
in the art world overnight, he says. Suddenly you are stamped official
artist. Before long he was offered solo exhibitions in Britain and across
Europe. I remember feeling slightly guilty because I hadnt worked as hard
as everybody else. It wasnt my intention to become the kind of artist who
would be on the cover of Frieze.

Shrigley may have started out as a slacker, but over the past decade and a
half he has fashioned a sustained career for himself as a successful fine
artist. Both the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art in New York now own
examples of his work. The new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery will
demonstrate the extent of his oeuvre. As well as paintings and drawings, it
will feature several deadpan sculptures, including a stuffed Jack Russell
holding a placard that states, Im dead (a Surrealistic joke that would
surely have pleased Magritte). There will also be a selection of
photographs, and some short animated films such as Sleep (2008), a burlesque
of Andy Warhols 1963 experimental film of the same name, and Light Switch
(2007), which alludes to the Turner Prize-winning work of the conceptual
artist Martin Creed.

Does Shrigley hope that the Hayward exhibition will remind his audience that
he is a proper artist as well as a cartoonist? I dont mind how people
perceive me. I am very resistant to being defined as an illustrator, but I
am a cartoonist of sorts. I call myself an artist because the term
encompasses everything I do. Also I make a living as a fine artist, I dont
make a living as a cartoonist.

Shrigley does not sell work for as much as some of his contemporaries (from
what he tells me, I get the impression that his own prices have yet to reach
tens of thousands of pounds). At the core of what I do are drawings, and
because there are so many of them, they only acquire a certain price, he
explains. I drive a Honda, put it that way. But I have nothing to complain
about. We have a very nice flat, and Kim doesnt have to have a job.

Sitting serenely on his sofa, a neatly folded green mohair rug beside him,
Shrigley seems pleased with his comfortable existence. Most days, he works
for eight hours in one of his two studios making sculptures or drawings (he
discards three out of every four of the latter). He and Kim, a former
graphic designer whom he met in the late 1990s and married in 2010, are
thinking about moving to Brighton: Ive always loved the sea. He seems
relaxed about the fact that they are unlikely to have children. Were
getting a bit old for it. Were going to get a dog. Were thinking
about a miniature schnauzer. All my friends have kids, but if you want to be
really environmentally friendly, dont have any.

It is easy to be charmed by Shrigleys gentleness, as well as his witty line
in self-deprecation easy, in fact, to forget that he has published almost 30
madcap books with titles such as Ants Have Sex in Your Beer and Kill Your
Pets (I worry for his future miniature schnauzer). Even Pass the Spoon, the
sort-of opera that Shrigley wrote last year with the Irish composer David
Fennessy, has a sinister quality. Like a deranged version of the BBCs
cooking competition MasterChef, the production, which ran at Glasgows
Tramway Theatre in November, features two celebrity chefs, a cast of singing
vegetables that eventually get chopped up, and a banana hell-bent on
escaping its fate of becoming banana custard. (It will have its London
premiere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in May.)

Does Shrigley concede that his work is dark? I am aware that theres quite a
mordant world view, he says. Sometimes I feel the work is a bit
relentlessly dark and nasty, and I try to pull back a little, but Im not
really in control of the content it just comes out in a very intuitive
fashion. Being an artist gives you a voice and that voice is cathartic.
Youre purging yourself. He smiles. Im a pretty happy, well-balanced
person, really.

But if he is so happy, then isnt his unruly vision inauthentic? Isnt he
cheating his audience? After all, he draws like a sociopathic amateur, but
operates as a balanced professional. His work has the stamp of outsider art,
yet hes an art-world insider friends, for instance, with Richard Wright
and Martin Boyce, who have both won the Turner Prize. For the first time,
Shrigley slightly bristles. You say all these things and, to be honest, I
dont care. My work is not autobiography, thats for sure. But that doesnt
mean its not authentic. Graphically, theres no artifice. All the mistakes
I make are real mistakes. I never draw anything twice. Im not interested in
making aesthetic, beautiful drawings.

He draws breath. Look, Im not a lunatic, whereas the voice in my work is
pretty lunatic, Ill readily admit that. But I want it to be because you
cant be a lunatic in real life. Whats the alternative? Does anybody make
happy art? He sips his coffee. Maybe there is something endemic within
humour that has to be cruel in some way. But at least my work is funny. I do
laugh at my own work. It does amuse me. That means its sort of happy.

David Shrigley: Brain Activity is at the Hayward Gallery, London, from
February 1 to May 13 (southbankcentre.co.uk)

Foreclosure activity in Tennessee increased in December compared to a year ago, according to a report from RealtyTrac

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Tennessee foreclosure filings– including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions– were up 20 percent from December 2010.

One in every 885 houses in the Volunteer State were in some stage of foreclosure for the month. In Davidson County, one in every 769 were in foreclosure. In Williamson, the rate was one in every 763.

For all of 2011, foreclosure activity was down 33 percent in Tennessee.

The total US foreclosure rate in 2011 was at its lowest annual level since 2007.

Foreclosures were in full delay mode in 2011, resulting in a dramatic drop in foreclosure activity for the year, said Brandon Moore, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. The lack of clarity regarding many of the documentation and legal issues plaguing the foreclosure industry means that we are continuing to see a highly dysfunctional foreclosure process that is inefficiently dealing with delinquent mortgages — particularly in states with a judicial foreclosure process.

There were strong signs in the second half of 2011 that lenders are finally beginning to push through some of the delayed foreclosures in select local markets, he said. We expect that trend to continue this year, boosting foreclosure activity for 2012 higher than it was in 2011, though still below the peak of 2010.

Nevin Batiwalla covers commercial real estate, construction, residential real estate, manufacturing and retail.