Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Friends of the random Summer

Múm's fotrs found here

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Spoil 1.87

but nothing gets you really
it's a shame
I wanted you to feel the same

Boil 2.10

La Jetée

Monday, February 26, 2007

Ingredients for a Party

1L Barium-Sulfate
100ml injection of radiocontrast agent
1 Siemens Somatron Sensation
1 white gown, open at the back
1 chipper radiologist

Translator's gaffe

He then proceeded to get information about Sparta. Here he found that the Lacedaemonians after a period of depression had been successful in their struggle with Tegea...
Herodotus, The Histories

Depressed Lacedaemonians?
What's next, obesity in fair Sparta, rowdy Athenians, clumsy
Trojans, altruistic Romans, or gentle Giant Enkidu roaming
the forests at peace...

Ruination day

and the sky was red, I went back to work...and back to bed...

April 14th

From behind 2.20

...the enlivening impact of the culture clash between WASPy bureaucrats and Surrealists, naive Americans and sophisticated Europeans. As Peggy Guggenheim, who has a brief cameo role in the book as the lover of Max Ernst, once complained: "Oh! This new insult - bourgeoise. Why doesn't he call me a whore like all the other men in my life?"

M.J. Reisz, "Surreal Refuge", TLS Dec 1 2006, p.27

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Sunday, February 25, 2007

Viva la complacencìa

[Schumer] points to three long-term trends that ate away at New Deal–style liberalism: the success of Democratic governance, which lifted millions into prosperity and "made them forget the role government had played in facilitating that success"; the homogenization of the country, which weakened Democratic appeals to groups of voters based on ethnic or regional identity; and the decreasing appeal, as capitalism succeeded for more and more people who vote, of a politics based on criticism of the status quo and egalitarian economic and social policies. These changes helped grease conservatism's path to power.

M. Tomasky, "The Democrats", NYRB 54.4 2007

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Monday, February 19, 2007

biosphere 0.93

"Dummheit und Korruption sind ein zwangsläufiges, also ganz normales Ergebnis einer Gesellschaftsform deren nervus rerum die Akkumulation von Kapital ist. [...] Der Bürger als Souverän kann sich nur legitimieren, indem er sich belügt. Die Korruption des bürgerlichen Subjekts ist zu seinem Wesen [...] geworden. Deshalb bringt die realexistierende Gesellschaft nicht mehr wie in der Klassik Dichter und Denker hervor, sondern Deppen und Superstars. Ich werd ja schier selbst an ihr zum Deppen. Sie schwemmt eben jene Typen auf die Schaumkrone, die der Entwicklung der Gesellschaftform entsprechen: [...] - nun sind es heute eben die Korrupten und Schwachköpfe und deren Pendant, die Korruptionsbekämpfer. "

Kai Müller, Leserbrief, Konkret 12/2006, S. 6

File 1.76

But what really attracted the Russian reader was that in Chekhov's hero he recognized the type of the Russian intellectual, the Russian idealist, a queer and pathetic creature that is little known abroad and cannot exist in the Russia of the Soviets. Chekhov's intellectual was a man who combined the deepest human decency of which man is capable with an almost ridiculous inability to put his ideals and principles into action; a man devoted to moral beauty, the welfare of his people, the welfare of the universe, but unable in his private life to do anything useful; frittering away his provincial existence in a haze of utopian dreams; knowing exactly what is good [...] but at the same time sinking lower and lower in the mud of a humdrum existence, unhappy in love, hopelessly inefficient in everything -a good man who cannot make good.
V. Nabokov, The Atlantic Monthly, Sep 2005, p.91.

Your Psychiatrist will see you now...


Thursday, February 15, 2007

From behind 2.19

There's also the fact that we live in a cultural milieu dominated by postmodernism. Broadly speaking, it attempts to deconstruct power and its narratives. It tries to rescue the marginalised. A noble intent, but because it doesn't believe in truth, anything goes. The tyranny of orthodoxy has been replaced by the tyranny of relativism. You are supposed to believe in nothing; hence nihilists and atheists are suddenly rather chic. Postmodernism has taken tolerance to the extremes, where extremists thrive. It's a dangerous form of appeasement.
Tobias Jones, "Meet the new totalitarians", Guardian Weekly Jan 12-18 2007, p.13

Let's review: postmodern = deconstruction = margins = relativist = nihilist = tyranny = appeasement. A donkey doing its sums doesn't make a spring, or however a nihilist might put it...

Oh and atheists "are suddenly chic" ? Man, where have you been?!

Of course the "new" world order is to be blamed on Derrida, Foucault, et al. They totally slipped up with their ethics and opened the door on those extremist outrages (surely a Guardian word of choice?)

From behind 2.18

The last supreme court chief justice William Rehnquist took a powerful sedative during his first decade on the high court and grew so dependent on it that he became delusional ... when he stopped taking the drug in 1981, according to newly released FBI files.
A. Cooperman, The Guardian Jan 12-18 2007, p.6

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

remède la melancollie ?



Thursday, February 08, 2007

Tout va bien

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Spoil 1.86

J.-L. Godard: At the customs, they said, "Why are you here, for business or pleasure?" I said, "Business." The officer said, "What kind of business?" I said, "Unsuccessful movies." He was very nice, because he said, "Oh, I'm so sorry."

Boil 2.09

When Evelyn Waugh wrote in a review of The American Way of Death that Mitford did not have "a plainly stated attitude to death," Mitford asked her sister Deborah to tell Waugh, "Of course I'm against it."