June 02, 2009
Have I mentioned the weather's great in London right now?
MCCORQUODALE ( pause, weary). In the closet you'll find a rope.
CAULFIELD opens the cupboard.
I bought it a month ago. I intended hanging myself.
CAULFIELD. What stopped you?
MCCORQUODALE. The weather turned nice.
Funeral Games, Joe Orton
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March 13, 2009
Unfinished theses
The Romanticizing of Motherhood: how men are being shut off from equality in parenting by self defeating pseudo-feminism.
inspired by: essay about breastfeeding in the Atlantic and all the feminist movements who strive to accentuate the differences between the sexes rather than what binds us together. And a conference I once attended where the chief apron wearing person of the Portuguese Freemasonry (I forget the title) said women weren't allowed in because they already contained in themselves the secret of life (undervaluing semen is fair game when it comes to prejudice).
*****
The animistic stockbroker: how the stock market is fueled by superstition disguised as statistics and by the need for symbolic milestones to transmogrify a Bear into a Bull.
inspired by: stocks soar as Maddoff pleads guilty and, as some financial news agency put it, "marking the end of a negative cycle". Also, the superbowl indicator, irrational fear of the month of October, "Madoff rally", "Obama bear market", etc, etc.
*****
Analyzing the contemporary Portuguese essay: is the lack of writers who actually get to the point an exercise of subtlety as a narrative style or is it a historical product of repression?
inspired by: reading an article in a portuguese magazine from 1968 and realizing that the subtle allusions, use of irony and noncommittal about anything, essential for it to clear the censorship office, made the piece completely unreadable. Which pretty much describes a big chunk of opinion pieces in newspapers these days, minus the censorship office. The thesis should be inconclusive and vague.
*****
Hacking Ecclesiastes: keeping God out of Epicureanism.
inspired by: reading that some think the pious, ominous bits were introduced by an editor to compensate for the continual doubt about the fairness of God's justice and appeals to joy, making it look like it was written by a very confused person.
*****
The end of the football club: how eventually supporters as emotional stakeholders will realize they are not supporting the team but cheering for a publicly traded company. It's just as ridiculous as wishing that Bayer will have bigger profits than Merck when you're not even a shareholder but only someone who is hooked on aspirin.
inspired by: one of the best bits of sports journalism I've seen in a long time. The need for sponsorship is having ridiculous outcomes. The football stadiums are named after insurance companies rather than named after great players (and then in smaller print, "sponsored by company X", as decency would have it) but some might argue that it's all business after all. Which leads to my pet hate of that thing Tate Modern calls the Unilever series. I swear the first time I saw it, it meant they were selling ice creams and detergents in the Turbine Hall. And I suppose I was right.
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January 05, 2009
Counterpoint
It took Ezra Pound 1 year to write the image poem "In a station of the metro" which started out by having 30 lines and got reduced to this:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Now, I wanted to create a poetry poster for an empty frame that was lying around and considered Larkin's poem The trees ( I wanted a verbalization of the other "picture" on the wall: the garden's London planes framed by the living room sash window) but it was too long and the rhyming put me off so I Pounderized it. Much better.
We will have to wait until Spring for it to make sense.
*****
I could spend hours looking at the Assyrian reliefs in the British Museum. Especially at the design of male legs. It's just one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
*****
I think I saw a guerrilla book re-shelving action today. At Foyles, on the Bibles of every size, version and color display someone sneaked in one single volume of a beautifully red bound copy of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales. There's too much sex and violence in the Bible for that comparison to be even remotely clever. Or else, it looks like something Dawkins would do. Meh for narrow minded atheists.
*****
You know your brain has been messed up by the British press when distractedly looking at headlines and reading "Gaza" you wonder what's Paul Gascoigne up to again.
*****
Found Luis Molina-Pantin on Babelia this weekend.
Informal study on hybrid architecture Vol.I. Narco-Architecture and its contributions to the community (Calì-Bogota, Colombia)2004-2005 is a series of images that shifts us towards another of the artist’s interests: cultural phenomena linked to architecture. The photos were taken between 2004 and 2005, in particular in the Parque Jaime Dunque near Bogotà, and in Calì, two places among those sadly known as the headquarters of important Colombian drug cartels.
This hybrid architecture, as Pantin defines it, shows a mix of local stylistic elements and occidental and oriental models, generating an architectural potpourri that once would have been defined as whimsy: it shows the obscene aesthetic taste of the Colombian drug lords of the 1990s. In those years, local schools of architecture were adulterated, victims of a civic variation due to the mad and heedless accumulation of wealth, combined with the arrogance and ignorance of the narcos. There is no human presence in these images; the vanished inhabitants and the detached gaze of the artist who does not judge, comment or document, demonstrate the taxonomic vision of a folly. The artist creates a de facto museum of narco-architecture pervaded by an unadorned poetic of places that brings to mind De Chirico’s Italian piazzas.---source
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January 02, 2009
Letting out excess bile or when Claudia rambles about stuff that has been annoying her for no particular reason
There's nothing like starting the year by completely breaking my only new year's resolution. A life of contradiction and of opinionated gibberish is so much more fun.
*****
It's too late - and the 2008 Turner prize is as relevant by now as the work of most people who have won it in past years - but once in a while the interview the winner gave to radio 4 pops in my mind. I can't find it but it was even more entertaining than this stunthere. It involved something about how he uses the Simpsons to give meaning to the experience of contemporary life. Had he used Futurama and I might actually have cared. Not.
Also, about his favorite films: "I’m a big fan of the director James Cameron and I think Titanic (1997) is an incredible film – a big film about big ideas".
An excerpt of an essay by Orwell comes to mind:
"Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’. (...)
But here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers. This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the PRIVATENESS of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official—the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’."
*****
Funny how the same people who get all worked up and rave about how greed caused the recession are the same ones who seem to only find time to speak about finance. So much for a shift in values.
Nonetheless, I've come across a number of sites and post-bubble gurus prattling about frugality and living with less. My favorite is one that has a title in the lines of "Simplicity: how to become rich slowly" (paraphrasing here, there's no way I'm going to link to that; heck, there's no way I'm even going to google for it).
*****
I remembered recently a story by a brazilian writer who was staying in some remote village where there was no TV. He found reading the newspapers strangely relaxing since he stopped being manipulated by the lineup of the TV news, the anchor's histrionics, the skewed and useless people in the street point of views. Then there was some sort of storm and they didn't get the papers for a few weeks. Suddenly there were no news and he realized how the events he used to worry about didn't really have any practical effect on his life.
Considering how bad the media in general has become (I have to exclude at least El Pais from this generalization), the alternative to being news-less is the RSS reader. Every piece of news (discounting headline sensationalist phrasing, that is) has the same importance, the same typeface, the same colors, the same font size. You're your own editor.
*****
Random aesthetic pet hate: I find blue jasper Wedgwood-style porcelain repulsive.
*****
(from the epicurious blog)
So, instead of following and critically analyzing recommendations by people who devoted their lives to studying a subject and to reviewing the most items related to their field of expertise they are able to, we should rely on the opinions of random people on the internet and follow the majority ruling? Hmmmm. Someone is confusing entertainment with learning.
*****
Paul McCartney should just give up. He's on a crusade to prove he's cooler than a dead man.
In the post Beatles era, Lennon gave us "Imagine" and McCartney "Mull Of Kintyre". Oh God, and "Ebony & Ivory". Paul McCartney is a Knight of the British Empire and John Lennon returned his own MBE. In 1976, Time magazine was saying Paul was a sort of conservative Republican. John was providing funding for anti-war protests while under CIA surveillance. Enough said.
*****
Phew.
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November 06, 2008
Bittersweet
I'm just furious that Obama won. I just realized how the moral power shifted in this household. How can I now make fun of the resident American here? He already started telling brits: "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure any black man can become king here...oh wait, no they can't!". Now we need to start working on electing a lesbian gypsy woman for that planned role of President of the European Union if we want to get back our sense of moral superiority. Sigh.
Just kidding. Couldn't be happier. As a little girl, those very scarce female role models in politics were the only reassuring fact that I wasn't completely screwed; so, I'm hoping non-white boys (and girls) all over are dreaming of becoming presidents of something someday...
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December 27, 2007
I don't want to discuss politics. This lady belongs to my private set of female figures for whom I'm grateful for comforting me at that defining moment in your childhood when you realize your possibilities are substantially narrower because you were born into the wrong gender.
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October 12, 2007
lessing doesn't care less
Reporters opened the door and told her she had won the Nobel Prize for literature, to which she responded: "Oh Christ! ... I couldn't care less."
"I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot, OK?" Lessing said, making her way through the crowd. "It's a royal flush."
"I'm sure you'd like some uplifting remarks," she added with a smile.
"I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise," Lessing said. "I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."
She acknowledged the $1.5 million cash award was a lot of money, but still seemed less than thrilled.
"I'm already thinking about all the people who are going to send me begging letters. I can see them lining up now," she said. The phone in her house, audible from the street, rang continuously.
*****
I like her. I don't know if I like her books but now I'm definitely going to read them. Also, I'm hoping her acceptance speech will be a riot.
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A gerund goes into a bar, and the bartender says, “What are you, drinking?”
*******
The governor of the Federal District of Brazil, José Roberto Arruda, has ordered regional public employees to abolish the use of gerunds, a measure that he defines as a "nice" message against inefficiency.
Upon defending the decision, Arruda said that he has lost patience with some members of his own government who are always "doing", "getting", "studying", "sending" or "preparing" but never finish their work or establish ways to finish it.
Local government calls the use of gerunds "a plague", which only serves to make excuses for unsolved problems.
via vivirlatino
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August 19, 2007
Just wondering...
Why has Putin gone fishing (pictured below, Rambo style) with Prince Albert II of Monaco? This most unlikely pair's holidays sounds like the setup for a dry joke.
***
What to do with Poland in the EU, considering thy have a religious extremist, xenophobic, homophobic government?
The brothers appointed him last year as one of three deputy prime ministers, and as minister for education, a job he has exploited to transform Polish youth. Giertych started by laying down an “essential” reading list for schools that includes the popular Christian novel Quo Vadis? by Henryk Sienkiewicz, John Paul II’s autobiography, Memory & Identity, and a history of Catholic priests in Dachau. He wants to ban Joseph Conrad (a Pole, but too close to Nietzsche for comfort), Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian, obviously), and the works of the Polish Jewish writer and homosexual Witold Gombrowicz. on the Sunday times
Not that there's a pulp fueled bonfire in Warsaw yet, but this reminds me of Heine: "Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too."
Prime Minister Kasimierz Marcinkiewicz, also of Law and Justice Party, has stated that if a homosexual “tries to 'infect' others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom." -- Human Rights News.
A senior Polish official has ordered psychologists to investigate whether the popular BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes a homosexual lifestyle.
The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.
"I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy." on the BBC.
Censorship in Poland is a deadly serious subject. The censorship situation with David Cerny's Shark represents a radical change in the nature of what is censored in Poland. Artist Dorota Nieznalska has been punished by Polish courts, ordered to perform community service after a work of art was found offensive to the Christian religion, she is still in court appealing the decision. In Bytom, Poland, gallery manager Sebastian Cichocki is currently being investigated for allowing a work of art by the Prague-based Guma Guar to be displayed. There is a serious ambiguity with Polish laws governing free speech, but it is clear that laws concerning religion and free expression have yet to be tested in court. on Prague TV.
A group of Polish members of parliament have submitted a bill seeking to proclaim Jesus Christ king of their overwhelmingly Catholic country. on the BBC.
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August 02, 2007
Meh
The New York Times Arts section. One step away from being removed from my RSS reader.
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August 01, 2007
The Daily Mail sucks
(the best caption they could come up with on the day of Bergman's death)
and so does most of the British press...and to think I saw an ad today in the tube that said something like "yadda yadda England brought culture and sophistication to the world...". Yeah, right. Before tabloid era, maybe.
*****
Still have some posts to write about Hay on Wye, the floods in Wales, Alan Bennett's diary, odd coincidences, Prague, Carlsbad, the Strahov Monastery, Central Asia, stereotyping (as usual), Harry Potter and all the stuff I've been up to lately.
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October 24, 2006
At the aftermath of the recent spanish changes, there's an ongoing debate about gay marriage here with the government dismissing it as not important at this time and as being a dividing issue.
I can't resist to summarize this three-fold comment by Miguel Vale de Almeida on the recent polls in which some newspapers/TV stations have asked random people if they agreed with same sex marriage - to which a vast majority of Portuguese people said no.
- the right to same sex marriage is a political one and not just a law issue or a moral issue: its denial goes to show how citizens are not treated equally before the law thus going against the Portuguese Constitution;
- on surveys about "values" they never ask if the respondent agrees with the situation of there being so few rich people and so many poor ones: it's a given fact, it's not questionable;
- why not come up with a survey to see if Portuguese people agree with letting women vote (they should be given alternatives such as "Yes, but their vote only should count as half" or "Yes, with the bulletin pre-filled by their husbands"); no one asks this because the right of women to vote is not a "values" related issue, it's the product of an unquestionable right to being treated equally.
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“I will never understand those who proclaim love as the foundation of life, while denying so radically protection, understanding and affection to our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, our colleagues. What kind of love is this that excludes those who experience their sexuality in a different way?”
— José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s Prime Minister, May 11, 2005
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“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.”
— Voltaire
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“Same-sex relationships have long been part of our African history and heritage. There is ample research illustrating that African people have loved and had sexual relationships with people of the same sex for hundreds of years. For example, in Namibia, Kenya, Nigeria and SA, bond friendships, ancestral wives, female husbands and male wives have existed for centuries as forms of same-sex relationships.
All these relationships were accepted and respected in Africa, long before Africa was colonised. In addition, these forms of partnerships and marriages were protected by common law. Same-sex practices have always been a part of our sexual desires, intimacy and practice. In SA, the practice has been traced among the Zulu, Lovedu, Sotho, Tswana and Venda tribes. It is important to understand the traditional and cultural institutions that form families, marriages, and clans before we pronounce on these matters.
There is no record of traditional African societies legislating against homosexuality. Such laws are a western import, manifested through colonial penal codes and the criminalisation of sodomy across the continent. So, one could argue with authority that it is homophobia, not homosexuality, that is un-African.”
— Fikile Vilakazi, editorial: “Protect South Africa from Sexual Apartheid”
in Business Day, September 7, 2006
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