St. Pete’s Museum of Fine Arts is hosting “Splendors of Meiji Japan”, an exhibition of pieces from the emerging modern/commercial period of Japanese art (1868-1912). It’s running until October, and you can be sure as shootin’ that I’ll be catching it. I might even go this weekend.

The piece shown here:

Taiso Yoshitoshi, Midnight Moon at Mount Yoshino, 1886, woodblock color print. From the artist’s series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, more than 100 images created between 1885 and 1892. This one is from a folk tale in which a princess exorcises a ghost. During the Meiji period, artists began using synthetic dyes imported from the West, which were more brilliant than their customary vegetable dyes.

This represents some really intriguing art style. You can see the antecedents to today’s manga in the linework here. I’ve always been a sucker for drawn illustration as opposed to painting, so this kind of show is really up my alley.

Maybe those whiney MySpace users were onto something. News Corp.‘s recent purchases of the aforementioned online social networking community, and sports-addict site Scout Media, portend a big push by Rupert Murdoch to expand online media holdings.

An imminent big move: The acquisition of a search engine. That should certainly make some noise.

As long as Rupert has the checkbook out, I’d like to remind him and his flunkies that the “For Sale” sign is always up here at Population Statistic. Blogging’s the Next Big Thing, yo. Make me an offer (minimum six figures, please — a man’s gotta eat) and get in on the ground floor!

So how do you define “surreal”?

Does the job for me, because I can’t think of a better one.