a nice bit of absurdism coming up
A piece of dark satire (ironically categorized as “science fiction” in Japan) from Salmonella Men from Planet Porno. Paragraph from the story “Bravo Herr Mozart!”:
Mozart fell ever deeper into poverty from this time on. He studied to be a magician, and tried to make ends meet by taking side jobs, like “theatre manager”. But when his manservant Figaro upped and married in Prague without his permission, Mozart’s financial fortunes reached an even lower ebb. He became dependent on a person called Chloe, went around seducing women and acting like a right Don Juan, wrote musical jokes for the NHS, walked the streets naked shouting “Eine kleine Nachmusik!” and summoned the God of Death by playing his magic flute.
José Martí revisited
Sueño con claustros de mármol
donde en silencio divino
los héroes, de pie, reposan;
¡de noche, a la luz del alma,
hablo con ellos: de noche!
Están en fila: paseo
entre las filas: las manos
de piedra les beso: abren
los ojos de piedra: mueven
los labios de piedra: tiemblan
las barbas de piedra: empuñan
la espada de piedra: lloran:
¡viba la espade en la vaina!
las barbas de pied: mpupuñññanlaanlaMudo, les beso la mano
¡Feliz cumpleaños a tí!
Here he comes across the lake.
He’s comin’ for his birthday cake.
Sing: happy birthday, dragon don,
And watch him blow the candles …
on.
.
.
.
.
.
Que todos tus deseos se vuelvan realidad…
Dogbert vs Dilbert
“She’s not the brightest tree in the forest.”
“We’ve got lower-hanging fish to fry.”
“We’ve got to nix this thing in the bud.”
“During a recent sales meeting, our pointy-haired sales director told us that we were on track to achieving our sales goals and we could almost see ‘…the light at the end of the rainbow.’ I almost shot coffee out my nose.”
“If you can’t get those parts in time, that’ll really put a wrinkle in your feather.”
“’Usually’ only counts in horseshoes.”
“You’re trying to move a mountain with a molehill.”
“Too many cooks in the pot.”
“I wouldn’t trust them with a nine foot pole.”
“I’m going to sweep this mess under the floor.”
“You’re getting too clever for your own boots!”
“Then I figured that something was rotten in Denver.”
“My supervisor stated that another manager had him in her ‘shorthairs’.”
“Open your mouth and shut your ears when I’m talking to you.”
“He couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag if it bit him.”
“They dropped the apple cart, now it’s up to us to get it back on the tracks.”
“That didn’t work out, so I guess we’re just AOL.”
“We’ll be done by the schedule date, maybe later.”
“He turned beet white.”
“We are going to have to put all our oars in the fire for this project.”
“You know…you can’t skin two cats with one bird…”
“Our unemployed are working fewer and fewer hours!”
“That really throws a monkey at the wrench…”
“Let’s get right down to the gnat’s meow.”
Sista`luv, washing her baby:
Bloglink to a friend:
Itching for Eestimaa
http://palun.blogspot.com/2009/06/jaanipaevast.html
There are five things every Estonian needs to celebrate Jaanipäev, the all day and night, midsummer’s eve extravaganza that makes Christmas look tame.
1. Liha (meat) — preferably plastic buckets of chicken or pork šašlõkk — what we in the US might refer to as shish kebab. Chicken breasts, sausages, and basically all other socially acceptable animal by-products are welcome, but no Jaani celebration is really complete without some serious šašlõkk grilling. Šašlõkk comes in various marinades, ranging from vinegar to plum to blueberry to yoghurt, and tastes best after being roasted over an open spit. Because the sun rises at 4 am and begins setting at 10.30 pm on Jaanipäev, a celebrant has several opportunities during the day to consume šašlõkk.
2. Õlu (beer) — I know there are a lot of people who look down on beer drinkers as lower-class alcohol-consuming heathen and would prefer to toast the longest day of the year with vodka or maybe even a nice chianti. On Jaanipäev, though, you’ve really got to drink beer, and I say this as someone whose magic cure for the wintertime blues is limoncello. But what brand of beer? If you are in northern Estonia, they’ll try and push a Saku on you, while the southern Estonians will force you to drink A. Le Coq. I even know some crazy muthas who go for Alexander or even the boozer’s choice, Saaremaa X (10 percent alcohol), which is also manufactured by A. Le Coq. Ultimately, beer brand is not the most important question. If your lawn is littered with empties the next morning, half of which you don’t recall imbibing, then you’ve done your service to the Estonian state.
3. Makk (radio) — No Jaanipäev celebration is complete without a boombox blaring the Estonian jams and their modern dance facelifts. For a small country, Estonians have produced a large corpus of music, ranging from country-influenced thumpers to covers of AM Gold hits, like “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies, which you’ve never really grooved to, until you’ve grooved to it in eesti keel. My personal favorite yesterday was an old accordian-driven tune by Kihnu Virve called Imeline jaaniöö — “wonderful Jaani night.” What’s great about stations like Raadio Elmar, is that they won’t just play, say, Roosiaia Kuningana by Anne Veski, but they’ll also play a new, sped-up 21st century dancefloor version of the 1980 hit to match the rest of the drink-till-you-drop party programming that just keeps going and going and going. Why I bet, they’re half way through a disco-upgrade of Uno Loop’s classic, Mis värvi on armastus? right now.
4. Tuli (fire) — A Jaanituli is the most essential ingredient of a Jaanipäev celebration. An old pagan tradition, the bonfire is actually a great way to dispose of old crap. Estonians gladly seize this opportunity to torch old boats, remont leftovers, archives of SL Õhtuleht newspapers, and whatever else will burn. The spark is put to the wood precisely at sunset. From your nook in the Estonian countryside, you can look up to the sky and see the smoke drifting from neighboring jaanituled. If you are feeling festive enough, or have had enough Saaremaa X, you might feel moved to suddenly leap over the towering flames of the Jaanituli for good luck. Those Estonians who accidentally fall in feel no pain, as there is no pain on Jaanipäev.
5. Sõbrad (friends) — Estonians are infamous for being rude jerks most of the year, but on Jaanipäev, no matter who you are, you are welcome in the village. People call out to old friends from car windows, guests show up out of the blue with Gin Long Drinks, and roving gangs of strange children invite themselves over to eat your food and play with your kids’ toys. Here’s your neighbor Ants helping himself to a beer, there’s your black sheep cousin Marju, savoring your tasty šašlõkk, and nevermind the old schoolmaster Teodor, who is playing one-handed badminton by himself in the corner (as he has a beer in the other hand at all times). Jaanipäev is the only day out of the year when you can count all 1.34 million inhabitants of Eestimaa as your friends.
The hunter who works as a writer…
Movie fans who lapped up the disjointed narratives of Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel are indebted to writer Guillermo Arriaga, who skilfully interweaves seemingly disparate plot threads with apparent ease. Not content with writing the rather excellent new flick The Burning Plain, which features an amazing turn by Charlize Theron, Arriaga has also made his directorial debut with the tale of self-harm and painful love that shifts across time and space. We caught up with him to discuss his fabulous new offering…
What were the experiences and inspirations that led to the story of The Burning Plain?
“There are many, many stories, it’s not like one story. Things that have happened in my life that I have slowly put together. I remember once going to a house that was burning and I was terrified to imagine that someone was inside. Having these flames going out of the windows, it was heartbreaking because the fireman was saying there were people inside. That really shocked me, and I was ten.”
Is it correct to say that the work of Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog influenced your stark depiction of nature and landscapes in the movie?
“They were not direct influences, but thank you for putting me in the same tradition as that because they are great filmmakers. I remember watching Days Of Heaven when I was young… [but] I didn’t want anything to intrude on the story. I didn’t want people to say ‘look how great camera movement he did’, because then it becomes distracting. People being involved in the human beings – that was basically my purpose. I think that Terrence Malick is someone who has this beauty, but you’re still involved with characters.”
Did you make any decisions or changes in the editing room with regards to the fractured structure of the story?
“It’s in the screenplay. Everything is in the screenplay. All of them have been written the way you have seen them, including 21 Grams. It’s not editing room decisions, it’s writing, narrative decisions. The structure of the film is exactly as it was written.”
What is the writing process like for you, especially in terms of slotting the story together in a non-linear way?
“First of all, I do not map any kind of thing. I do not write the story separately and then put them together. I write exactly in the order you see them, because these structures will never work if you don’t write it in that way. You have to sense where you have to make the cut, where you have to have the dramatic question. It’s draining for me because I have a lot of problems to concentrate when I’m writing because I am wondering all the time, and in order to get myself right it’s difficult. For example, I write from 10pm to 5 in the morning and I will not stand up from my computer until I have written at least half a page.”
Did you work closely with Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger on their portrayals of their characters?
“I didn’t have too much time to prep the film, I didn’t have too much time to rehearse. So I sometimes work making questions to the actors. For example, a question to Charlize, sometimes they were dumb questions – ‘where was the man you met after you were with Santiago?’… and to Kim – ‘what was the smell of the hospital when they diagnosed your illness?” Or to Charlize – ‘how was the smell of your baby?”
And that helped them put them in the right frame of mind during filming?
“Yes, those kind of questions. Even before we say ‘action’, I say ‘remember this kind of smell’. I like actors who are thinking actors, who are portraying actors who are feeling, really feeling. I was very clear with the first-time actors who are in the film – don’t act, just think. Cinema, it’s so incredible that it can get your thoughts.”
Was there ever any pressure from the financial backers to simplify the movie plan to make it an easier sell for the mass audience?
“Never, never. My producers and financiers were like ‘will this work for the story – yes or no?”. They always think in terms of the story. Of course they would like to have someone who is more attractive to the audience and they proposed some actors, but I said ‘you know, it’s going to be a miscast. I’d rather have an unknown well cast than a well-known badly cast’. They understood perfectly and never pushed me. I only have good words for my producers and financiers.”
Did you write the tortured soul of Sylvia with Charlize Theron in mind?
“There were moments when I thought that she would be great. Sometimes I was thinking of her in the character. But no, it wasn’t [written for her] because then it can be very painful when you don’t get the actor you want. It’s like having your wife pregnant – you don’t know how the baby’s going to look like until you say ‘ah – that’s Charlize’s face!'”
Advice from an Institutional Investor
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.
In these days of doom and gloom (in the UK anyway; it does’nt seem so bad in Asia) some lighthearted new terms to keep us going.
CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.
CFO– Corporate Fraud Officer.
BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.
BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewellery, and the husband gets no s*x.
VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.
P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.
BROKER — What my broker has made me.
STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.
STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.
STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.
FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone has been disconnected.
MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.
CASH FLOW — The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.
YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.
WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.
PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use.
La tierra giró…
La tierra giró para acercarnos,
giró sobre sí misma y en nosotros,
hasta juntarnos por fin en este sueño,
como fue escrito en el Simposio.
Pasaron noches, nieves y solsticios;
pasó el tiempo en minutos y milenios.
Una carreta que iba para Nínive
llegó a Nebraska.
Un gallo cantó lejos del mundo,
en la previda a menos mil de nuestros padres.
La tierra giró musicalmente
llevándonos a bordo;
no cesó de girar un solo instante,
como si tanto amor, tanto milagro
sólo fuera un adagio hace mucho ya escrito
entre las partituras del Simposio.
The Earth Turned…
...to Bring Us Closer by Eugenio Montejo The earth turned to bring us closer, it spun on itself and within us, and finally joined us together in this dream as written in the Symposium. Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices; time passed in minutes and millennia. An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh arrived in Nebraska. A rooster was singing some distance from the world, in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers. The earth was spinning with its music carrying us on board; it didn't stop turning a single moment as if so much love, so much that's miraculous was only an adagio written long ago in the Symposium's score.
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