Of fence

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” 

Dante Alighieri, Inferno

Bouche à Bouche (de métro)

Head to head

Face to face

Toe to toe

Mano-a-mano

But not:

Shoulder to shoulder

Tête-à-tête

Hand in hand

Eye to eye

PeliCan

iMmodesty Free

Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,

Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.

I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,

Because I think that is sort of sweet;

No, I object to one kind of apology alone,

Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.

You go to their house for a meal,

And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;

They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,

And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;

If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,

And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;

They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,

But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.

I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,

I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spent in contradicting them,

Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,

And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,

And what particularly bores me with them,

Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,

So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,

Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves. 

Ogden Nash

I haven't slept for ten days, that would be too long.

'The starting point of a philosophical thought has to be the contingency of one's own language as the "substance" of one's own thinking: there is no direct path to universal truth through abstracting from the contingencies of one's "natural" tongue and constructing a new artificial or technical language whose terms would carry precise meanings.  This, however, does not mean that a thinker should naïvely rely on the resources of his own language: the starting point for his reflection should rather be the idiosyncrasies of his language, which are in a way redoubled contingencies, contingencies within a contingent (historically relative) order itself.  Paradoxically, the path from the contingency (of one's natural language) to the necessity (of speculative thought) leads through the redoubled contingency: one cannot escape thinking in one's language, this language is one's unsurpassable substance; however, thinking means thinking against the language in which one thinks -- language inevitably ossifies our thoughts, it is the medium of the fixed distinctions of Understanding par excellence.  But, while one has to think against the language in which one thinks, one has to do so within language, there is no other option.  This is why Hegel precludes the possibility (…) of purifying our natural language of its "irrational" contingencies and constructing a new artificial language that would faithfully reflect conceptual determinations.  Where, then, in language itself, can we find some support for thinking against it?  Hegel's answer is: where language is not a formal system, where language is at its most inconsistent, contingent, idiosyncratic.  The paradox is that one can only combat the "irrationality" of language on behalf of the immanent notional necessity if this necessity itself relies on what is most "irrational" in language, on its redoubled irrationality or contingency. (…)

What Hegel has in mind here is often uncannily close to Lacan's notion of lalangue: word-play, double meanings, and so on-- his great example in German are words with opposite or multiple meanings (like zu Grunde gehen, "disintegrate/fall apart" and, literally, "to go to, to reach, one's ground," etc., not to mention the notorious Aufhebung with its three meanings: to cancel/annihilate, to preserve, to elevate to a higher level).

(…)

There is no conceptual clarity without taking lalangue as a starting point -- (…)

Does not Freud intend something strictly homologous with his notion of symptoms, jokes, and slips of tongue?  An inner necessity can only articulate itself through the contingency of a symptom, and vice versa: this necessity (say, the constant urge of a repressed desire) comes to be only through this articulation.'

Zizek, Less Than Nothing, Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, pp. 470 - 71

Magritte, Le Principle du Plaisir, 1937

BLacken Why?

I was thinking about reading/watching films last night.  For all the txts I've read, they helped me v little in terms of understanding images.  

The concepts and abstractions in an image, the ideas contained in them, yes, mos def, what's symbolized in some of them can be made clearer when one understands/absorbs them first through the written word (maybe).  

These past few days, after watching a couple of films in B&W, I've wondered why I've such trouble with it, and decided it isn't to do with its Idea. 

It is just harder for me to apprehend, understand and see, really, what B&W images depict in fim. It's a physical constraint.  Objects lose their immediately recognizable quality to me, in B&W, and I have to make a lot of effort to see what is there, even.  I find B&W works v v well for photos and film when the object depicted is a human being; faces, bodies, both. No problem there, at all. 

But when it is a scene in a room or outdoors, with a lot of "things" (tables, walls, trees, chairs, bottes...shelves; dresses, decor; even celestial bodies-- is it the moon? the sun?) not only do the things themselves become more difficult for me to identify, but what really requires my attn (and thus removes it from the narrative, from the art, from the dialogue- it 'kidnaps' my attn) is depth and perspective.  I lose most of my ability to see it at a glance.  

There are scenes I can barely "read" because of this. "Are they indoors? Outdoors? Is that a table or paint on wall? Chair or sculpture?  Is it the sky or the sea? Grass or sand? Are they standing on something? Are there stairs?  Is it daytime? Night?"  These details suck me out of the film proper and back into myself, my thoughts about the material world of objects, and the consciousness of my own thoughts about the scene/object(s) over which I'm puzzling.  

The mysterious pact between viewer and actor/director - a tacit understanding that that is fiction but it nevertheless manages to make the viewer "forget it" for the duration of the work (when it's good) - is interrupted, switched off.  

There are moments where B&W is better than colour.  

For instance, the one scene in the beginning of Stardust Memories by Woody Allen where ppl finally leave his flat, and he walks from the door toward the bookcase/bookshelf... on the big wall to the left, there's a blown-up photo of an Asian man with a gun pointed at his temple.  Here, I was truly impressed by the use and effect of B&W.  It highlighted the thing that needed to be highlighted, but also I suspect that photo is already in B&W anyway; if it is, this is a fun thought to me: the beauty of a B&W photo is made invisible by B&W.

What I dislike when watching a film is spending time thinking about what objects are and what colour they might be, and miss what the characters are saying/doing, and trying to figure out where they are, or if they're standing in the background or the foreground, etc etc. And I like B&W so much! the colours themselves, their juxtaposition!  I like it in animals, clothes, photographs, paintings, drawings, and I'd love few things better than a B&W Kaleidoscope.  

Up till colour in film was possible, there was no alternative.  Now there is, and I'd very much like to know what the justifications are for using it instead of colour, in commercial films.  I consider all films released in cinema commercial.  Films made to be shown only in museums are not commercial at inception, and usually do not tell a story in the sense of fictional narrative, so if theyre B&W it doesn't remove from the purpose of the film in the first place.  

Provocatively, the thought I'm left with is that contemporary commercial directors who use B&W in a film where the form doesn't require it for one reason or another, end up making anti-modern (AKA post-modern) films, rejecting stylistic and formal considerations, instead of adding to them.

SeaSaw

 

Paul Nash, Winter Sea, 1925-1937

In York, England.  Saw this one yesterday at the York City Gallery, a surprising, small-ish museum with a few extremely good pieces.  In person, the one above is so beautiful it belongs in a room by itself.  

These two others were on the lower floor, housing an even more surprising combination of early Dutch religious paintings, taxidermy, and natures mortes.  The peacock ought to come with a caption saying "don't look at my feet", and if I were the curator, I'd call this juxtaposition HourGlasSkull "Time & Wind".

But what topped it all for me was seeing a painting by Jack Butler Yeats, brother of W.B., and not only was the painting quite good (I especially loved the colours) but the title is so unusual! That We May Never Meet Again depicts two friends who for whatever reason will never meet again!  I didn't know W. had a painter brother!  I won't post it, I didn't take a photo of it; just stood there and wondered about the title, and tried to ascertain how many different shades of blue were used, and if this was optimistic or not, and good thing there is a fan in this room cause it is so hot, and why haven't I heard of Jack Butler Yeats before... and I walked away thinking that no matter what the narrative may be, the painting is pretty good.

Can I Borrow A Melody?

If

IF you can keep your head when all about you 

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!


Kipling

Prosopomp & Circumvent

e.g. "The markets received encouraging news in regards to the European debt crisis, the Fed extended "operation twist" and commodity prices continued to trend ..."

RainboWarrior

Bipolar bear

Dickinson

XI

MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

√

 ,

 ,

 .

Line Age

Waking with the Fishes

The term "Exocoetidae" is not only the present scientific name for a genus of flying fish in this family, but also the general name in Latin for a flying fish. The suffix -idae, common for indicating a family, follows the root of the Latin word exocoetus, a transliteration of the Ancient Greek name ἐξώκοιτος. This means literally "sleeping outside", from ἔξω} "outside" and κοῖτος "bed", "resting place", so named as flying fish were believed to leave the water to sleep on the shore.

Flying fish have in turn given their name to:

• The Exocet guided missile.
• Three ships of the United States Navy named USS Flying Fish.
• The constellation Volans ("flying", originally "Piscis Volans" = "flying fish").

Strings Attached

Sui generis

It's so hard to come across something like this.  To me, it has the perfect measure of:

Serious thought

Funny Image

Cutitude

Appropriate for all ages

Appropriate in any language!

List of Unknowns

"...
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
..."

Midsummer Night's Dream

Act 5

Scene 1

PlethOratoRhetoRich

Or "A lot of rhetorical devices for enhanced oratorical skills"

Tautology and pleonasm

Tautology and pleonasm are not the same thing. Pleonasm is defined as "the use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense."^[1] A round circle. A big giant. Tautology is a repetition of the same idea in different words: A huge great big man. Say it over again once more. (Say it over. Say it again. Say it once more.) The crucial difference is that "Repeat it again" is a pleonasm, because again is inherent to "repeat". Repeat and again do not simply mean the same thing, which means that this is not a tautological repetition of the same thing in a different word – just as tuna and fish are not the same thing.^[2]

The expressions like added bonus, first introduction, free gift, round circle etc. are pleonastic rather than tautological. Why? Because these expressions do not convey the same meaning in different language. Instead, one idea is simply contained in the other. For example- They arrived one after the other in succession is tautology because 'one after the other' and 'in succession' convey the same sense in different languages, while in 'added bonus' added and bonus do not mean the same thing, only one idea is implicit or contained in the other. Consequently, expressions like 'added bonus', 'reason why', 'repeat again' etc. should be pleonastic rather than tautological. Besides, the expressions like 'annual exams every year' should be tautological.

Repetitions of meaning in mixed-language phrases (my fav bit!)

Repetitions of meaning sometimes occur when multiple languages are used together, such as: "rice pilaf" (pilaf is Turkish for "rice"),"chai tea" (tea tea), shrimp scampi (scampi is Italian for shrimp),"the La Brea Tar Pits" (the The tar Tar Pits), "the hoi polloi" (the the many), "Sierra Nevada mountain range" (Snowy Mountain Range mountain range), "Sahara Desert" (Deserts Desert), "Gobi Desert" (Desert Desert), "Mount Fuji-yama" (Mount Fujimountain), "shiba inu dog" (little bush dog dog), "shiitake mushroom" (shii mushroom mushroom), Jirisan Mountain" (Jiri mountain mountain), "Mississippi River" (Great-river river), "Rio Grande river" (big river river), "cheese quesadilla" (cheese cheesy-thing), "Lake Tahoe" (Lake Lake), "Faroe Islands" (Sheep Island Islands), and "Angkor Wat temple" (Angkor Temple temple). A triple redundancy example is "Breedon on the Hill" in Leicestershire (Hill-hill on the hill").

Lençois Maranhenses

"O sertão vai virar mar, o mar vai virar sertão..."

"Que Deus deu, que Deo dato."

Lookalikes

James Ellroy

John Malkovich

SequesTree

Victor Brauner, The Glowworm, 1933

Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 1622-25

Lift it.

PedestriAnnoyed

Attention porcyclists, steamrollers, and wheelchariots of fire: I made this one just for you Y

Look, I understand.  You're respectively: actively healthy, you have babies who need to see the outside world every day even when you're tired and stressed out, and you need to transport your body even though your legs don't work--- I salute you!

But you're also in charge of a vehicle that's rigid hard, and can hurt human bodies if you bump into one!

Seriously, just because there is no engine in your machine, it doesn't mean you need not be as careful as you'd be were you driving a car or motorcycle!

Yesterday, coming out of a store, about to cross the street, I saw a car coming, so naturally I stopped, since I was not at the pedestrian crossing.  It kindly stopped for me, as Death did for Emily Dickinson, at which point I waved my unemcumbered right hand to paralinguistically thank the humanist on wheels when, suddenly, as if Thor himself had come down from on high.         KAPOW!

"I'm hit, I'm hit!  Human down, human down!"  Ok. I'm being a hyperbolic fiend.  But yes I was hit. It could have been ugly.  The panhandler in front of the shop yelled out "Attention!", so I froze in place. I was almost run over by a Man on WheelSteroids in the Mecca of the Bicycle.  Not Amsterdamage.  In Amsterdam cyclists ride at a normal speed.  Oui, France! Land of the Tour de Force de France. His body hit me.  

Hand on Old & New Testament, the Qu'ran, and any sacred and propane text you want to put under my palm, this monsieur was going faster than the spawn of SpeedyGonzales and the Roadrunner.  And do you know why? Because he is Healthier, and thus Better, than thou -- and than I, ai, ai! But it hurt!  What, what, what makes him think he can go at 40Km/h on a bicycle and take the tiny wee narrow corridor between cars and, well, pedestrians like me, when, I am certain, had he been behind the wheel of a car, he'd never ever do it?

Then, the other month... okay, it was last year, but so what? Last year, I was in Monoprix, buying shampoo, (2 for price of 1, delicious scent, really -- chestnut!) and I'm standing in the kilometric queue when PHLOP!  My right ankle is viciously nicked by a wheelchariot of fire.  It was NOT, i repeat, NOT the disabled person's fault, because her vehicle was being manned by a woman, whom I can only presume to be an absolute relative of the seated lady.  She didn't think it was worth getting too worked up about the fact that now there's an unfashionable dot of blood on my ankle, making me look like I am metamorphosing into a ladybug, which suddenly, just now, makes me think would be uberly cool.  She raised her eyebrows & shoulders, like synchronized water ballerinas, into a Gallic shrug and said, in a soft, almost inaudible, irritatingly nonchalant tone, "désolée."

Yah? *I* am désolée. Me. 

And I am even more days olé when it is a StrollerSteamroller straight out of Rosemary's Baby coming my way, as if channelling a demonic supermarket trolley.  Do ppl become blind when theyre pushing a stroller?  Suddenly, all these women discover a somehow heretofore unknown right to drive a large object on wheels into total strangers in broad daylight!  No swerving, no stopping.  It is Stroller vs Bodies.  I feel like the zombies  videogame heroes must kill. We can guess who wins. This happens all the time in Paris, a city where only infants are adored more than yippie dogs in sweaters being carried around in LouisVuitton bags  the size of a large melon at €1060 a pop per poodle.  This tshirt exists:   Need I elaborate further? (Yah okay it may be cute, cute as long as it isn't steamrolling over you.)

Already these ppl get all manner of provisos for their circumstances, as they should get.  I like to see ppl porcycling instead of driving, and I want to see both wheelchariots and steamrollers get a reserved space on public transportation and other public places.  It is necessary, right, proper, civilized and good! You should get each and every single one of these rights to come and go acknowledged and respected.  

But that does not mean you get to break basic, essential, though sometimes tacit, understandings of savoir vivre and just, well, common decency.  You just don't push your stroller into ppl, ok? You don't.  You have no idea what kind of crazy bastard deranged git lowgrade forehead you may be pushing it into, and next thing you know your baby may be caught in a problematic situation with you.  Ppl with strollers, understand something: you need to think about the infants' safety, not just your own; not just your right to get onto the bus first, to be first in the queue, to be the Monarch on Coronation Day walking down filthy Parisian pavements as if they were the red carpet. A stroller is hardly the Pope-mobile; it can hurt ppl though. But the little human in the stroller can also be harmed.  Think, for chupacabra's sake.

And cyclists.  It is stupidiotic, okay? it is, to think that you can be that healthy and charming and urbane on a cycle going at 40Km/h and not pause to consider you may fall off it and break your stupid head filled with breezy Parisian fumes. Inline skaters, too.  All this applies to you as well.  I don't have eyes at the back of my head so don't creep up on me from behind because I may have to move and now you're flat on the floor like a dragonfly on the windshield of a convertible Jaguar in the Autobahn.  Imbeciles!

Okay, when it comes to wheelchairiots I won't say much. I'll say something to those who push them.  Come on, be civilized!  Your relative gets to ride the bus because people are civilized and demand wheelchairs have a special ramp put on buses, or that the bus be equipped with those up-and-downy thingies that South Central Los Angeles Latino and Black gangsters have under the cars!  We all pay for that, so please, be courteous. Don't assault me.

The person whose chair you're pushing is disabled, but you aren't, so you're game. Why look for trouble?  Why think a wheelchair is less amenable to hurt a human body than a car, a bicycle, or a stroller?  You can damage someone's tendon forever.  Then what?