Found this in the dictionary.com entry for "posit":
“If a book is hard going, it ought to be good. If it posits a complex moral situation, it ought to be even better” (Anthony Burgess)
I have a wishlist on textamerica.com: consume.textamerica.com
If you want to contribute images of stuff that you think I'd like (or even stuff that you really want but you think I would hate and then give to you) just send the pictures to: consume.stuff@textamerica.com
Isn't this fun? We can all revel in the joy of the true meaning of the holidays: gluttonous capitalism and unrestrained self-interest/greed. Yay.
For more thrills please visit my extremely pretentious moblog: guerrilla.textamerica.com
Peace.
I don't use signatures... but I need an outlet for these quotes:
"If a triangle coulud speak, it would say, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular."
-Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677)
"If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
-George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)
"It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put
together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are
irrational and of a magical nature."
-Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)
Ah... that feels so much better.
I must admit that I got them from A Word A Day. But now that I think about it I haven't been getting my AWAD... must be because I have a rule on my home computer that siphons them off into a local folder... yep, that's it... I have 83 undread AWAD emails... that's intimidating. Here's the today's quote:
"He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak."
-Michel De Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
Hmmm. I should take that under advisement. Force of will should never determine the outcome of an intelligent debate.
Is it still possible to make a living as an "essayist"?
Night.
I am still thinking about this movie.
I saw it twice in the theaters and it continues to haunt me. A discussion about the merits of the film emerged in CTIN 532 with Perry Hoberman when I compared the visceral pleasures to the performances Survival Research Laboratories. I believe that there is much more to the film than the kinetic hyper-violence/gore and the ultra-hip stylistic posturing that composes its superficial aesthetic. But regardless of the critical analyses that we throw at pop culture, we ultimately have a binary emotional attitude: we either love it or hate it.
I personally love it.
Listening to the soundtrack, a song called "The Lonely Shepherd" came on, I remembered it clearly from the movie, it's the last song played during the final montage and it encapsulates the coolness of kitsch when infused with production value, it deftly references the archetypal structures of the genre flick without succumbing to them, and it uses the forelorn pan piping of Zamfir. Zamfir! Seriously. I laugh at the same time as I am totally engaged by it.
I found this entry when searching for "zamfir kill bill":
Kill Bill and the Wave of Globalization
Even if you hate the film. This is an interesting reading of it. The animated flashback alone, by the justly venerated Japanese studio, Production I.G., is a brilliant collaboration that could easily have overwhelmed any other film, but here, it is wholly appropriate to the genre-savvy nature of Kill Bill Vol. 1 and simply destroys any interpretation of the movie as singularly "American".
Lastly, if QT films have staying power in the cultural consciousness, then it is not in the clever dialogue (that some critics and fans have lamented is lacking in Kill Bill Vol. 1... and admittedly it is, but the movie is not about that style of dialogue! It's too bad that expectations can cause such resistance.) but in the indelible fusing of the soundtrack and the images that is only paralleled in my opinion by the work of Stanley Kubrick. Just as Blue Danube Waltz and Singing in the Rain were transformed by 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, QT's films absorb the soundtrack so effectively that I can no longer hear Misirlou or Stuck in the Middle with You without thinking of their associated scenes in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.
That is all.
Busy, busy, busy.
I made a gift wishlist moblog on textamerica the other day for my own amusement and engagement with our hyper-capitalist civilization.
I speak this language far more fluently than English... so perhaps I will be more verbose in this medium than the blog.
Kurt
I trace a line in space and bifurcate the emptiness. A vector without a reference, so I take a picture of the woman picking her nose in the car next to me. She thinks she's alone.
Maybe we share a moment like this every morning, on the 10, heading East, hypnotized by brakelights and mindless DJ chatter. We could be companions. I could learn to recognize her, her car, her swerve, her neurotic lane-changing, her tapping finger and her quick acceleration to the next stop. Sometimes I see her in my rearview mirror, I slow down, let her catch me, let her slip ahead of me only to watch her take an exit long before mine. Perhaps we'll do this again sometime? Tonight? No... have to work late.
Still.
I find myself channeled into a path, shared with strangers that have agreed to the same rules of transit as I have, so that we may all flow along, shifting stream to river to tributary until I reach my destination.
I wonder if I know any of these people?