Hans-Werner Henze died (1926 - 2012)

Hans-Werner Henze, 1926 - 2012

He was 86 years old.

Instead of an obituary, a fragment from the Green Eyes (what else), written 2 month ago, from Chapter 21:

At this moment I have to think very quickly. Fortunately, the appearance of my father has reset my panic button, and I'm as calm as a cloud. And I think German Cemetery, Rome, Italy. I once met a man in unquestionable circumstances, a world-famous composer, from Europe, a composer of contemporary music, world famous, his operas would premier by default at the Met or in Covent Garden, and he had already written more symphonies than Beethoven, let's call him Hans Werner (not Wagner). Hans lived in Rome, where this cemetery is conveniently located (wait), a burial ground for German nationals since ages. The cemetery is world-famous in Germany, since it comprises the remains of Goethe's son, the one-and-only son of the German dichterfürst (the spell checker suggests "Lichtenstein"). Every German school child knows about this. What they don't know, it's also a cruisin' ground. So Hans pays an urgent visit to Goethe's grave (the son), meets new friends, and has a "quick embrace" (his words), with an American, apparently, who flips his wallet and hands the world-famous composer of serial music a 50 dollar bill. Hans accepts the money, and leaves the grounds elated, with one more anecdote to tell in his pockets. I'm not making this up, he told me this himself.


Are you still there? Then you'll possibly like the novel, the GREEN EYES. It's out now, available on Amazon under this link:

"click"

"Call me by your name" --- André Aciman (part 1) (Handsheets for the erotic writer (2))

(Click to enlarge)

(We should post a review, yes, but we're still thinking: we simply can't get over the fact that Oliver dumps Elio in the end)

Cum (Handsheets for the erotic writer (1))

Bob Bienpensant --- Wet Dreams (1)

Freedom Fries --- Chapter 1: Lynx News (part 1)

The place looks best at dusk, she thought. The oak trees across the pond outside had already turned dark, casting their black profile across the lawn, but the western sky was still alight in vivid orange. It was very quiet now around Chapel Hill Farm; she could hear the silence. The place looks best at dusk, she thought again, but when do I look best? She turned to the mirror next to the fridge and studied her reflection.

Anyhow, she was finally done with the dishes, so she picked up the tea things---already prepared---and crossed into the living room for a quiet evening with her husband. As always, he had offered to help, but tonight she had gently turned him down. There were days when the silverware disliked him, chinking and clanging in his hands as if there was a problem, and today had been one of those days, and she would not have been able to handle more clanging in her kitchen. In fact, the silverware had become increasingly argumentative lately. Her nerves? His nerves? Her nerves?

 US House of Representatives member Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio),
announcing the renaming of French fries to Freedom Fries in 2003. 

Doubya was already installed in the sateen slouch chair in front of the TV, the shiny cowboy boots resting on the matching pouf, his left hand resting on his crotch. Hussein's gun was lying next to him on the coffee table; he must have played with it while she was in the kitchen. My God, she hated this gun---the gun that Hussein had carried when being apprehended by the American forces while hiding in a hole in the ground. Didn't the piece belong to the American people? Its proper place was in a museum. How could he just take it home? She had actually raised the question with Fredo, the pliable attorney general. The Museum of the War of Choice, she had suggested helpfully, but to no avail.

The caption as punch line

We borrowed this from our sister-blog, but we have an excuse, since it's also about writing techniques (see header).

Here goes:  Pinocchio is fed up with the complaints from his wife --- "every time we make love, I get splinters" --- so he goes to see Gipetto the Carpenter, his maker, for advice.
"Sandpaper," says the carpenter, "sandpaper, that's what you need," and hands Pinocchio some sandpaper.

A few weeks later, they bump into each other. "How are you getting along with the girls now?" Gipetto asks.

"Who needs girls," Pinocchio replies

Les voiles de St. Tropez

Sacha sends an email asking whether we would know a way to get on a boat and watch Les voiles de St. Tropez closeup. We suggest to rent a powerboat, but before anything clicks he has already found somebody else. We sit at home and cry, cry like John Lee always cries when he has lost Alex again. And then, the next morning, Sacha calls and re-iterates the rental idea --- it was so great yesterday, and he really needs to get closer to the tall ships with his professional camera than the sailing millionaires would let him who gave him a sail yesterday (don't worry, just read the sentence a few more times). So there we are, with Sacha's official picture of the event:

Creole, Hamilton

I haven't left my house in days

Bette Midler

I haven't left my house in days,

I watch the news channels incessantly,

All the news stories are about the election,

All the commercials are for Viagra and Cialis,

Election - erection - election - erection,

Either way we're going to get screwed!"

(We wrote the Pamela Woods part in the Freedom Fries for her; sadly, she doesn't know)

I'm a bad boy (re-blogged)

(Hat tip: a site on Tumblr with "Bad Boy" in the name that we failed to retrieve afterwards)

Idempotency (1)

It had to happen, it had to happen. One fine day, John will ask Alex: "What's idempotency?" And since this will be in one of the few chapters in any Green Eyes part where we are doing the explicit thing that readers so crave, Alex won't enter into a longish explanation, he won't say anything, since he's down on John's cock. But since John insists --- because we are writing this post now so we will have John insist -- Alex will briefly interrupt his busy schedule and might say: 'Why don't you look it up on Wikipedia.' But since Alex is so busy, he'll drop the first three words and not just might interrupt his schedule, he will interrupt his schedule. And just say: "Look it up on Wikipedia." But that's cruel, isn't it? Sending people to Wikipedia? While having sex, nota bene? With them?

Photoshop's stained glass filter applied once 

M& Redefinition: S&M: Telling people to look it up on Wikipedia while having sex.

Freedom Fries --- introduction

Freedom Fries, yes, how about the Freedom Fries. The term came into being in the spring of 2003, when President Jaques Chirac of France refused to join George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq (the second Gulf War), and Representative Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), the chairman of the Committee on House Administration, directed the three canteens of the US House of Representatives to rename French fries to "freedom fries."

 US House of Representatives member Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio),
announcing the renaming of French fries to Freedom Fries in 2003. 

When Michael decided to write a script about the aftermath of the Bush years, he used the Freedom Fries reminiscence as a trigger for a change of heart of (or in) the former president---with predictably unpredictable consequences for him and a few other people.

Libra (Jezza Smilez)

(click here for more from Jezza:)

You write like Shakespeare (reposted)

The IHT had a column by Alex Beam about the new website I Write Like, which uses a Bayesian classifier algorithm to compare anyone's prose to that of  famous writers. Thought up by the Russian programmer Dmitry Chestnykh, the site has already generated serious mischief. Somebody submitted transcriptions of Mel Gibson's phone rants, and I Write Like concluded that he "writes" like Margaret Atwood. Atwood own prose was classified as "Stephen King." A former president of Harvard writes like the sci-fi writer Cory Doctorov, and novelist Claire Messud writes like David Foster Wallace (not true, by the way).

You see it coming. We have to find out about ourself. so we first submit Huck Finn's father's rant against the government, which we posted because of its prophetic anticipation of the Tea Party, and, yes, I Write Like returned the answer: "You write like Mark Twain." Cool.

OK, so now a text of our own. Let's take the Donna Pérignon post from March 2010, one of the countless contributions on this blog so heartlessly ignored by pundits and mainstream media. Donna pays us a visit and rekindles our interest in the Giant Wave. Have you read it now? Donna is actually our neighbor Michelle de la Sala, and she really looks like Michelle Pfeiffer.

We now submit this post (its text) to I write like, and the answer is:

I write like
William Shakespeare

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

What can we say? Buy our new book, GREEN EYES, and find out yourself:

What happened to my schlange?

What's your answer? --- a quiz (Jacki)

So you are writing a novel, or a play, about Winston Churchill, say, and somebody just said to him: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee." What's your answer? You possibly know the answer to this one, but that's what this quiz is about. (Answers under the read more link at the bottom)

(1) Thomas Reed vs. Henry Clay: Clay: "I would rather be right than be president." What's Clay's reply?
(2) Lady Astor vs. Winston Churchill: Astor: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee." What's Churchill's reply?
(3) NYM Ed Koch vs Andrew Kirtzman, after the reporter insisted on pressing a point about an inconsistent statement Koch had made. What was Koch's answer?
(4) Groucho Marx vs. a contestant on You Bet Your Life, after the contestant revealed that he was a father of 10. Groucho: "Why so many children." Guest: "Well, Groucho, I love my wife." What was Groucho's next line?
(5) Abraham Lincoln vs. Stephen Douglas, after Douglas called him two-faced during a debate. How did Lincoln react?
(6) Pierre Trudeau vs. Richard Nixon, upon hearing that Nixon had called him an asshole. What did Trudeau say?
(7) Oscar Wilde vs. Lewis Morris; Morris had just been passed over for the Poet Laureateship, and said to Wilde: "There's a conspiracy against me, a conspiracy of silence buut what can one do? What should I do?" What was Wilde's reply?
(8) Miriam Hopkins vs. an anonymous singer, who had just informed her: "You know, dear, I insured my voice for fifty thousand dollars." What did Hopkins say?
(9) James McNeill Whistler vs. Oscar Wilde, after Whistler had made a particularly witty observation.Wilde: "I wish I had said that." What was Whistler's reply?
(10) Senator Fritz Hollings vs. Henry McMastor, when challenged by his Republican opponent during a televised debate to take a drug test. What did Hollings say?
(11) Reverend Edward Everett Hale vs. the U.S. Senate, when asked if he prayed for the Senators. What was Hale's answer?
(12) Edna Ferber vs. Noel Coward, Coward was remarking upon the fact that Ferber was wearing a tailored suit. Coward: "You look almost like a man." What was Ferber's riposte?
(13) Winston Churchill vs. a Member of Parliament, who said: "Mr. Churchill, must you fall asleep while I'm speaking?" What did Churchill say?
(14) Calvin Coolidge vs. some random lady at a White House dinner. Woman: Mr Coolidge, I've made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you." How did Coolidge reply?

Advanced bureaucratology (Dirk)

Good Morning!

"I'm ticklish."

Why have they stopped wearing white collars? (reposted)

Like everybody else, we're getting these letters from Nigeria. Here's the latest (from .pl, actually, that's Poland, I think, the full email address is: mrzacom@gazeta.pl --- in case you feel the need to reply):

Dear MICHAEL

Please pardon me for not having the liberty of knowing your mindset before writing you this letter without any formal introduction.My name is Mr. Zaco Mohammed I am the present branch Manager in one of the Barclay's Bank here in London I write to solicit for your partnership in claiming of $15.million usd from an account at our Head Office .

The aforementioned fund $15.million usd is my share percentage from a Gold Mining project that i helped financed, influentially.

Furthermore, as a Manager in the bank, I am not allowed to be part of such a deal, because it's against my company's professional practice policy. So I am compelled to ask that you stand on my behalf and receive this fund into

any account that is solely controlled by you. I will compensate you with 35% of the total amount involved as gratification for being my partner in the transfer.

Please contact me immediately you received this mail

Yours Truly,

Mr.Zaco Mohammed

Do we have to point out what's wrong with this letter---besides the ploy? Everything is off, style ("MICHAEL"), spelling (the first person pronoun is not capitalized), interpunction (spaces between the last letter and a dot, for example), grammar ("that i helped financed"), idiomatic usage  ("for not having the liberty of knowing your mindset") etc. And it's always thus.

Who is writing these letters? In my days, we were told with great fanfare of highly intelligent---that was always the qualifier: "highly intelligent"---individuals that were cheating unsuspecting victims out of their money by means of wit, deception, guile, and other nonviolent forms of behavior, all this while the perpetrators were wearing white collars.

Bürchen in Switzerland (reposted)

Milka milk chocolate, with the milk from happy cows---that was the slogan of a chocolate commercial during my youth in Germany. And there we are, in Bürchen, Switzerland, and it's true.

Near Bürchen, Bietschhorn in the background (peak in the clouds)

Bürchen is located on the southern side of the Valais valley, near the side valleys of Zermatt and Saas Fee, at 1600m altitude. The ski lift begins right in front of our settlement, the Chalet zone.

Did you sleep well?

"Why, oh why, have beauty spots gone out of fashion?"

Good Morning!

A brief post on style (Frank L. Visco)

Always avoid alliteration.

Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)

Employ the vernacular.

Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

Contractions aren't necessary.

Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

One should never generalize.

Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

Profanity sucks.

Be more or less specific.

Understatement is always best.

Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

One-word sentences? Eliminate.

Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

The passive voice is to be avoided.

Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

Who needs rhetorical questions?

The tragedy of the unfinished bathroom

We also do art, right? So, that's the excuse:

That's not the art, that's just the unfinished bathroom

We're sitting in a friend's chalet and the repair people are supposed to show up and finish the work in the bathroom. Don't let's get into the gritty-nitty details, we've waited all day and I finally send the following email to our friend:

...two boys showed up to install a new radiator...nobody else...so much for earlier assertions made earlier today..we've waited the whole day for them, could not go out...this is now the end of the second week we are without toilet on the floor...

(this is the entire email message, okay, the elliptical dots are very handy, no need any longer to finish sentences).

Here's our friend's reply:

Roy Lichtenstein Alka Seltzer (1966)

Shall I compare thee to a summer day?

Since we are a literature blog now, we have to do serious stuff, like posting some serious pictures, like. Like this one...

Tyson Beckford

...which brings to mind Shakespeare's 18th sonnet...


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 


...(you don't want to look at the HTML code underneath)...

...but you might want to look at this clip, eternalizing David Gilmour, the singer of Pink Floyd, when he set the sonnet to his music, because that's what aging rock stars, like us, do, when, they, have, their, reflective, moments...





...and judge yourself.

Hold on, here are a few pointers to Sonnet 18:

Guiness Book of Averages

Yes, we know. Something went wrong with the link. So we have to write our own Book on Averages now. Won't be easy. But we know already...

Average time of reading a Shakespeare sonnet: 3 minutes.

And, along those lines (you know us)...

Average length of the human penis: The average penis size is slightly larger than the median size (i.e., most penises are below average in size).

Seamus, who looks like a penis, but was not strapped to the roof
of the station wagon

Now we still don't know the average size, but imagine that we were having a phone conversation with a tele-marketeer who is selling penis-enhancers, say. You ask a direct question. Like: "You think my penis is too small?" Would you expect a direct answer? No, you are so much used to the decline of our civilization, you are completely accepting of the answer:"The average penis size is slightly larger than the median size (i.e., most penises are below average in size)" and you buy the penis-enhancer from Beate Uhse instead. That link didn't break, right? By the way, it's indicative of the Tea Party that its members don't think asides about tele-marketeers are funny.

Update, update:

Your dong as a life-style issue

Stay tuned.

Holmes and Holmes again (Dirk)

Let's promise a joke, first.

Second, let's watch the clip:



What is it about Sherlock Holmes? His wit must play a major role, so there's still hope for mankind. And now the joke:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes” replies Watson. “And what do you deduce from that?” Watson ponders for a minute. “Well, Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe. But what does it tell you, Holmes?” Holmes is silent for a moment. “Watson, you idiot!” he says. “Someone has stolen our tent!”

Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis (2) (Monty Python)

And here's the clip:



For a full transcript, see our earlier post here.

Green eyes, Prologue

Readers, the first chapter of this story describes a casual encounter of three men in the dunes behind the gay section of the beach of my town. It does so in fairly graphic language, language that might be shocking to some of you. I have therefore decided to put the first chapter into an appendix, and provide instead a flat, inoffensive summary of the events described there, events that triggered the heartbreaking, murderous, but ultimately fortuitous story of the Green Eyes.

My name is John Lee, and I live in Georgia Beach, GA. I teach French at Southern Georgia College, a small school 30 miles to the south-east.

I have issues. During my adolescence, I was diagnosed with bipolarity, a psychological condition of difficult mood-swings. As I grew up, I became arrogant, shy, and homosexual, character traits that interact with my bipolarity. At my age --- I am 29 years old --- I find myself in a downward spiral of disengagement, depression, and neglect. Whereas I was outgoing and sexually active during my youth, I am now mostly confined to my small apartment on the Roosevelt Canal, where I --- auto-erotic efforts aside --- play chess on the internet (losing), publish a blog (that nobody reads), and prepare classes (that students don't like). A side-effect of my bipolarity of relevance here has to do with my language. I am hypersensitive to certain power-point expressions ("going forward"), but use myself various forms of new-speak (e.g., the "un"-prefix), idiosyncratic turns of phrase (using "said" as a demonstrative, "wise" as a post-fix modifier), and am given to awkward metaphors and abundant bracketing (()). My mother is French, my father rarely spoke when I was young, and English is not my first language.

We're in early July when the story begins. I am waking up on a Sunday morning, feel the need for fresh air, and decide on stroll along the beach. As I saunter past the gay section of said beach, I encounter a man of great physical attractiveness. He has roughly my age, but his most remarkable feature are his green, mesmerizing eyes. We take note of each other. The man, let's call him Green Eyes, is clearly indicating his readiness for an immediate exchange of bodily fluids. I follow him into the dunes. We undress for, and engage in, a sexual act. A third man appears on the scene, undresses, and joins. All three of us reach a climax in due course. Green Eyes re-dresses and disappears. In a surprising turn of events --- surprising at least for anybody who is familiar with casual, anonymous homosexual behavior --- the third man invites me to a party at the house of a friend later in the evening. So far, Chapter One.

Readers, I urge you, I implore you, leave the appendix alone, turn the page, and continue with Chapter 2.

Halt. Hold it. I forgot. The sanitization of Chapter 1 doesn't mean you can fool around. The rest of this book isn't a cakewalk either, it's solely for mature audiences, to put it mildly. Have fun.

Opus 1 (German for beginners)

Praise for Michael Winter's Opus 1:

"Die konzertierten Harmonien dieses erstaunlichen Erstwerkes erinnern nicht so sehr an Wagner oder Debussy, obwohl sie in ihrer Transzendenz und konzentrierten Zurückhaltung gleichwohl das Interesse eines an Weltmusik geschulten Publikums verdienen..." (BaRbette Bienpensant in Fortgeschrittene Musik)

Right. We told you so.

PS: If I would show this to my mother, she would say "albern" ("silly")
PSS: Here's the Google translation:

"Concerted harmonies of this amazing Erstwerkes remember not so much of Wagner and Debussy, although their transcendence and concentrated restraint nonetheless deserve the attention of a qualified audience of world music ..."

PSSS: Not our day.

Car poetry

"You need one of these," a friend writes and sends this picture:

 "Perhaps you don't know," we write back, "but we've got a new car, well not so new, but it has a cool running board and sexy tires." He can't believe it, he needs to see a picture. Here it is:

And here's the cultural excuse for all this:

A car is a car
If it can ride you nearby or far

A car is a car
When it gets you in time to the bar.

Sylvia Chidi

(Editor's note: the poem continues for another 30 lines or so, which we edited out for obvious reasons)

Cow poetry

Please take a picture of the cows...asked Jo on the phone. So here we are, with cows right on the little patch below the parking lot of the chalet zone in Bürchen, Switzerland, where we are staying at the moment...

...but we are not yet done, since this blog is about to undergo transmogrification into a platform for Michael's writing and other cultural pursuits. How are we going to justify pedestrian cows to high-minded readers? With poetry, of course, Cow Poetry. Let's keep it short, though, you never know how this will end.

I've never seen a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
but I can tell you anyhow,
I'd rather see then be one!

Gelett Burgess

Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis (Monty Python)

"Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis? Isn't it frightfully good to have a dong? It's swell to have a stiffy; it's divine to own a dick...from the tiniest little tanger, to the world's biggest prick! So three cheers for your willy or john thomas...hurray for your one-eyed trouser-snake...your piece of pork, your wife's best friend, your percy or you cock...you can wrap it up in ribbons, you can slip it in your sock...but don't take it out in public or they will stick you in the dock, and you won't come back. Uuh thank you very much." (Hat tip: Urban Dictionary)

Good Morning!

"What are your plans?"

From Corbin Fisher's website ACM

What would Freud say?

The Kingdom, debt, and Paul Ryan

We received several political emails from Perry (him from the Kingdom). In the first email, he writes:

Perry

On the VP Ryan front: He has our vote.

In the second, he writes:

The US problem is debt. We are floating in debt and O'b [Obama] is simply not willing to address the problem.

And in the third, he writes...

...let's interrupt briefly here, and go to a source that has shown it ability to bring a syllogism home, to quote a source correctly, and to win the Nobel price in economics, and this source writes in its latest post:

Let’s look at what Ryan's budget actually proposes (as opposed to vaguely promises) in its first decade.

VP hopeful Ryan

First, there are a set of tax cuts for higher income brackets and corporations. The Tax Policy Center estimates the cost of these tax cuts, relative to current policy, at $4.3 trillion

From dawn to dust

 From dawn to dust,

 It's such a lust,

A letter to my lawyer

Here's an unedited email I sent to my lawyer earlier today:

...thanks...I'll react tomorrow...It would be EXTREMELY HELPFUL IF YOU COULD, IN FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS, CONFIRM THE RECEIPT OF AN EMAIL MESSAGE WHEN ASKED TO DO SO...

...CONCERNING SOME OF YOUR COMMUNICATIONS, I HAVE THE FEELING TO BE CONFRONTED WITH REALLY OLD-SCHOOL FRENCH BUREAUCRACY...OLD-SCHOOL ALSO IN THE SENSE THAT THE UNDERLYING ADMINISTRATION DOES NOT WORK...DATA HAVE BEEN COMMUNICATED TO YOUR OFFICE, AND ARE SUBSEQUENTLY LOST, HASTY PHONE CALLS ARE THEN MADE THAT WOULDN'T BE NECESSARY IF YOUR ADMINISTRATION WOULD BE UP TO DATE, PHONE CALLS THAT COST TIME AND MONEY, POSSIBLY OUR MONEY....AND THERE ARE OTHER PROBLEMS .... NOT GOOD...OLD-SCHOOL FRENCH BUREAUCRACY...MAIN REASON WHY FRANCE IS DOING SO POORLY THESE DAYS IN COMPARISON TO PLACES WHERE LAWYERS (and others) ACTUALLY *DO* RESPOND TO EMAILS PROMPTLY AND *ARE* ABLE TO CONFIRM THE RECEIPT OF EMAILS WHEN ASKED TO DO SO...IT'S A MATTER OF PRODUCTIVITY...

I have been a professional bureaucratologist for an important part of my career (Link:

Google.Scholar.Masuch

) and from my perspective, I can tell you, you should REALLY, REALLY, reorganize in a thorough and strict way the communication flow in your office, starting from scratch, even if it means that heads rollllll---

Kind Regards, Michael Masuch

PS (Sept 7, 2012): I'm studying the way people get fired these days, and there are cases where people got fired for using to much upper case in their emails. Seriously.

Olympics (Urban Dictionary, July 25, 2012)

Word of the day

Olympics: Loose assemblage of activities undertaken quadrennially by over-ripped folk with an odd view of life and difficulty prioritising. Small trinkets on coloured ribbons and needlessly ostentatious flower arrangements are commonly given to several of the better entrants as stirring tunes play. Flags and advertising signage tend to be prominently displayed and portly men in suits shuffle about needlessly.

We couldn't agree more.

Tell me why America is the greatest country in the world

This is how Aaron Sorkin's HBO series Sixty Minutes opens, folks:

Prometheus --- film review (spoiler alerrrt)

This multiplex in Pathong's biggest mall is real nice, the shiniest black marble greets the lone visitor, and it's being polished a-more as we a-wait the beginning of the movie. We did MIB 3, and may elaborate on it later. Now we are doing Prometheus, the latest film by Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator...). The movie program of this multiplex is somewhat meager, three or four movies are running now, and the humongous auditorium n° 5 is empty. We brought warm clothes to weather the air conditioning. An utterly empty auditorium, it's always impressive, especially to retired university professors, as it brings their worst nightmares to life.

OK, Prometheus. We vaguely recall having read a review in the NYT, not a bad review, right? SciFi, somebody's having visited Planet Earth 35,000 years ago, left some traces, and modern science has discovered where they came from. We're on our way. A motley crew. They've been hired on the fly by Charlize Theron, whose nose is so straight she must have had a facial. Also aboard is David, the humanoid (robot). He's so much smarter than than the rest that one wonders why anybody bothered to send authentic humans at all---except that the uppity assistant who pointed this out at the script conference got fired on the spot, perhaps because David looks too much like Lawrence of Arabia, or, more precisely, like Peter O'Toole, and he also speaks like a British actor from fifty years ago.

Sushi Express

So Chang discovers this outlet, right in the heart of JongCeylon, Patong's largest mall. And it's a buffet, which means you can eat as much as you like. For 300 bath (10 US$). Or perhaps, more precisely: eat as much as you can, because that's the idea of buffets, isn't it. And if we can mangle our philosophical thoughts at this point, if maximizing quantity and utility converge buffet-wise, we are dealing with a case resistant to Hegel's conversion law ("Quantität schlägt in Qualität um"), which, by implication, also weakens Karl Marx's case (if only Alexis Tsipras, the new, young, handsome, charismatic, Greek leader would know, it might save the Euro).



You have 1 hour 15 minutes for eating more than you like; a wall clock watches with red digital display over the proceedings, an ambulance is waiting outside.