Nov 27, 2014
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 24, 2014
Palais de Justice
We're in litigation with our wayward bank and today we'll finally have our day in court, in Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, way station on Napoleon's Route Napoleon during the "100 days" that ended in Waterloo. Grasse is the world capital of fragrances and the locale of Patrick Süskind's The Perfume, the story of a hypersensitive nose attached to Ben Whishaw who needs the bodily fluids of 12 virgins to complete his mission as the greatest perfume-maker of all time. Grasse is also the seat of The Tribunal de Grande Instance, our court.
Grasse is set on the flanks of the Alpes and built around hair needle turns devoid of any spacial logic, so you're sure to lose your way, especially when you're told by your lawyer that the directions are "bien indiquées," meaning that you're directed off the main road long before you reach the town, arrows pointing this way and that way until they stop pointing and you're on your own in the middle of a Mediterranean jungle of gas stations, low-grow brush ("marais"), utilities, perfume makers, quarries, and the urgent need to pass watersince (you got up too early and drank coffee too much).[1]
Grasse is set on the flanks of the Alpes and built around hair needle turns devoid of any spacial logic, so you're sure to lose your way, especially when you're told by your lawyer that the directions are "bien indiquées," meaning that you're directed off the main road long before you reach the town, arrows pointing this way and that way until they stop pointing and you're on your own in the middle of a Mediterranean jungle of gas stations, low-grow brush ("marais"), utilities, perfume makers, quarries, and the urgent need to pass water
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 14, 2014
Nov 9, 2014
Lord Byron, Bill Clinton, etc --- Venice (4)
It's been a year since we've been in Venice, and now we've hit upon this beautiful picture by Hannes Steinert, depicting,
you know of course ...
... depicting the Lido of Venice. All this while we are excerpting a biography about Lord Byron providing deeper insight into his sex life, including his life in Venice (spoiler alert: self-serving ellipsis ahead)---Byron will feature in the second part of our episodic novella "The Grand Tour"---John and Alex from the Green Eyes finally marry and are off to Europe where they end up at the feet of the Fountain of Geneva whose story they learn from Richard Zugabe, librarian of the Geneva City Archives and owner of an apartment in the Villa Diodati nearby. Right, that's the first chapter of "The Grand Tour" which segues into a tryst at Zugabe's place and evokes the narrative material about Byron who had rented the villa in 1816 & who looked EXACTLY like Bill Clinton & who had apparently left a cache of manuscripts behind the wood paneling of his bedroom---for Richard Zugabe to discover.
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| Spot the anachronism |
... depicting the Lido of Venice. All this while we are excerpting a biography about Lord Byron providing deeper insight into his sex life, including his life in Venice (spoiler alert: self-serving ellipsis ahead)---Byron will feature in the second part of our episodic novella "The Grand Tour"---John and Alex from the Green Eyes finally marry and are off to Europe where they end up at the feet of the Fountain of Geneva whose story they learn from Richard Zugabe, librarian of the Geneva City Archives and owner of an apartment in the Villa Diodati nearby. Right, that's the first chapter of "The Grand Tour" which segues into a tryst at Zugabe's place and evokes the narrative material about Byron who had rented the villa in 1816 & who looked EXACTLY like Bill Clinton & who had apparently left a cache of manuscripts behind the wood paneling of his bedroom---for Richard Zugabe to discover.
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| The young Bill Clinton---sorry, just kidding, "George Gordon, 6th Lord of Byron," William Edward West, (1822) |
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 3, 2014
Nov 2, 2014
Monday matinée (Glenn)
Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Trash it, change it, mail – upgrade it,
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it,Snap it, work it, quick – erase it,
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,
Load it, check it, quick – rewrite it,
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it,
Drag and drop it, zip – unzip it,
Lock it, fill it, call it, find it,
View it, code it, jam – unlock it,
Surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it,
Cross it, crack it, switch – update it,
Name it, rate it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax – rename it,
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it.
Technologic.
German for beginners
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| (Hat tip: Sina DunkleWelle) |
Nov 1, 2014
Don't kill me, don't kill me
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| Artwork on an internet-posted suicide note |
Gallia divisa est in partes tres. Along those lines, there are two types of content moderation. Active moderation monitors each post on a social network; reactive moderation lets things float until somebody complains. Content moderation is important, we learn from an article on Wired, not only because we are prudish, but also because we don't wanna lose our grannies or other objectionists (spelling checker objects)---folks who are not going to share their cat-and-dog pictures or their grandchildren's likenesses amidst adult parts and other shockingness.
More than hundred thousand people are monitoring content worldwide, twice as many as are working for Google. Most of them are based in the Philippines because wages are lower there, and because the locals have a sense for American sensibilities (don't ask).
We (I mean us, Michael Ampersant and his alter egos) have been subject to content moderation two or three times on Facebook, last time with this picture...
(no, wait)
...which was taken down after a few minutes with a stern warning from the Philippines; we got blocked from posting anything for three days. Right, so we've been moderated twice exactly; the first time we've got blocked for one day only. Do the math (catchword "series"), it's frightening if you are one of these people always itching to push the envelope.
Over-sexed as we are we think about only one thing, but porn appears to be the least of the social network's concerns---it's fairly harmless, especially for the souls of content moderators. Gore is worse, not to mention ISIS clips with beheadings of nosy journalists, or suicide notes, or clips of pet torture. And there's apparently lots of that stuff going on. The average content moderator is given only a few seconds on her Stachanovist clock for each picture. That may be a lot for the active moderators who have to check all those pictures of cats and dogs and birthday cakes, but very little when we talk reactive moderation.
&-t back of the envelope: Assume that half of the moderators do reactive stuff, and that each works 40 hours a week, and each has 10 seconds per flagged post, dum dum dum, we get 144 million flagged pictures per day, except for the weekends when the moderators are off.
What else? Lets keep it short and Socratic. O reader, we ask, would you moderate this picture that we've been dying to post for quite some time:
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| (This is the picture that Facebook took down after a few minutes) |
Oct 31, 2014
Oct 23, 2014
Gallery (17) (Ron Kibble)
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| "Cropped," Ron Kibble |
(There's no Kibble link---we got his permission to post this picture, since then he has disappeared from the web. More art on the gallery page)
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 21, 2014
Purity pledge (2)
Recall this picture from the first purity pledge post:
So, we were wondering about a purity pledge for boys. So we asked Bob Bienpensant. That's how it looks like, the purity pledge for boys, he writes, and sends this picture:
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| They look the part, don't they? |
So, we were wondering about a purity pledge for boys. So we asked Bob Bienpensant. That's how it looks like, the purity pledge for boys, he writes, and sends this picture:
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Oct 16, 2014
Oct 13, 2014
Gallery (15) Steve Walker
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| "David and me," Steve Walker (1961-2012) |
(Okay, here they are again (the few lines, John speaking)): "There’s a passage in David Leavitt’s “The lost language of Cranes” that comes back to me once a year or so, one of the characters relating a story of him and a very young boyfriend visiting Florence, and as they enter the hall of Michelangelo’s David, the eyes of the crowd are drawn away from the statue and to the magnetic beauty of this very young boyfriend. It doesn't read as if Leavitt made this up, this somehow really happened to him. Anyhow, the boyfriend must have looked like Romeo---by analogy, I mean.")
(More art on the gallery page)
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot --- Chapter III (not a review)
We're not good at reviews unless we can complain about Hollywood producers not understanding what "ion propulsion" means, or not knowing about the ambient temperature on Titan, the Saturn moon, or/and so on.
So this is not a review but a post about the third chapter of Dave Shafer's debut novel "Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot." We're jealous of the success of his book, of course, but that doesn't keep us from really loving the third chapter. The book is about a global conspiracy (data, computers, etc) but we have no clear idea of the conspiracy yet in Chapter III where we meet the main protagonist of the story, Mark Devreaux. Mark graduated from Harvard, like his ex-friend Leo, another important protagonist---amazing how many people graduate from Harvard in American novels (although Shafer graduated from Harvard himself, so he holds some poetic license).
Mark is/was a copy writer at some internet upstart---amazing how low Harvard graduates can fall in American novels---but then he has a creative night with OxyContin (the drug), Pouilly-Fuissé (the chardonnay, usually overpriced in our opinion---St. Veran, also a white Beaujolais, has a much better quality-price quotient) and with an IBM selectric (that was/is a typewriter, a technology not quite up to the tricks of ion-propulsion). So Mark pulls an all-nighter and writes a piece about "Motivation in an Unjust World." The piece is discovered by James Shaw, the quasillionaire and godfather of the conspiracy we don't know of yet, so Mark is duly booked for Margo!, a talk show hosted by Margo, the Oprah Winfrey look-alike.
So this is not a review but a post about the third chapter of Dave Shafer's debut novel "Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot." We're jealous of the success of his book, of course, but that doesn't keep us from really loving the third chapter. The book is about a global conspiracy (data, computers, etc) but we have no clear idea of the conspiracy yet in Chapter III where we meet the main protagonist of the story, Mark Devreaux. Mark graduated from Harvard, like his ex-friend Leo, another important protagonist---amazing how many people graduate from Harvard in American novels (although Shafer graduated from Harvard himself, so he holds some poetic license).
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| Dave Shafer |
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 1, 2014
Sep 30, 2014
Yesterday ---- Part II: Sex on the Eames chair (really)
Finally, folks, the second part of our true-true short story about the visit of our friends from Australia. A third (and last part) will follow. (For the first part go here)
Josh and Jason slept well. They brought good winter weather, a light mistral with dry clear air and steely blue sky. We’ll go visit Saint Tropez. It would be me, today, who would have to make the move, but it’s easier to talk about the corniche or the Forêt Domanial de l’Esterel, the natural park of marais and pine trees that surrounds Le Trayas and protects us from over-development, we’ve recently met a fox up there. I point to a villa on the cliff which supposedly belonged to Greta Garbo (everything is a rumor here, and they are always false). We’ve reached St. Maxime when I finally muster the chutzpah to say: “Chang tells me you’ve sucked his dick last night.”
“Yes,” they say.
“It’s unfair,” I say. They laugh.
We arrive in St. Tropez and walk along the quay where Brigitte Bardot lived in Dieu créa la femme (the next house accomodated La cage aux folles, Birdcage was the remake). We take turns taking pictures of us and the sea. I ask Jason to zoom in on the northern horizon with his Canon EOS 70D and point to the tip of Miramar, a stone throw away from our house in Le Trayas. “It’s unfair,” I say, “they can see us, but we can’t see them.” We laugh.
Josh and Jason slept well. They brought good winter weather, a light mistral with dry clear air and steely blue sky. We’ll go visit Saint Tropez. It would be me, today, who would have to make the move, but it’s easier to talk about the corniche or the Forêt Domanial de l’Esterel, the natural park of marais and pine trees that surrounds Le Trayas and protects us from over-development, we’ve recently met a fox up there. I point to a villa on the cliff which supposedly belonged to Greta Garbo (everything is a rumor here, and they are always false). We’ve reached St. Maxime when I finally muster the chutzpah to say: “Chang tells me you’ve sucked his dick last night.”
“Yes,” they say.
“It’s unfair,” I say. They laugh.
We arrive in St. Tropez and walk along the quay where Brigitte Bardot lived in Dieu créa la femme (the next house accomodated La cage aux folles, Birdcage was the remake). We take turns taking pictures of us and the sea. I ask Jason to zoom in on the northern horizon with his Canon EOS 70D and point to the tip of Miramar, a stone throw away from our house in Le Trayas. “It’s unfair,” I say, “they can see us, but we can’t see them.” We laugh.
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| Jason takes this picture, Josh (or I) hold him in place |
Sep 29, 2014
Five is logic
(Let's post this before we post anything else:) If you're a writer, you're getting five daily emails from The Writer's Digest, all titled "X rules for leveraging your epic lack of talent." Along those lines, we read on the pages of Longform Reprints about Mike Caren, the president of Warner:
"His second discovery was that he could encourage the writing of hits by urging songwriters to follow his nine rules of hit songwriting. While Caren’s rules are not comprehensive or exclusive, it is easy to measure their value by a glance at the dozens of gold and platinum records hanging in his office. He is happy to run down his rules for me. “First, it starts with an expression of ‘Hey,’ ‘Oops,’ ‘Excuse me,’” he begins. “Second is a personal statement: ‘I’m a hustler, baby,’ ‘I wanna love you,’ ‘I need you tonight.’ Third is telling you what to do: ‘Put your hands up,’ ‘Give me all your love,’ ‘Jump.’ Fourth is asking a question: ‘Will you love me tomorrow,’ ‘Where have you been all my life,’ ‘Will the real Slim Shady please stand up.’”
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| Mike Caren |
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 24, 2014
Spot the difference
We had this interview on The Way She Writes about "linguistically challenged" writers like us, where we were saying typical &t-things like...
...and people responded with nervous emails along the lines of...what's your secret, what's your secret...?
Here it is (the secret):
Spot the difference.
PS: Cathy Ulrich from Hollywood Hates Me writes: "What difference? I can see no difference."
I am (and have always been) fairly absent-minded. Absentmindedness is a strength, I think, not a weakness, in general it’s a good thing to be somewhere else with your mind....and there was this author picture...
...and people responded with nervous emails along the lines of...what's your secret, what's your secret...?
Here it is (the secret):
Spot the difference.
PS: Cathy Ulrich from Hollywood Hates Me writes: "What difference? I can see no difference."
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 19, 2014
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 14, 2014
"After Auschwitz---no more poetry!"
"Alles hängt mit allem zusammen," (everything is connected with everything) would Norbert Elias say, the German sociologist and first recipent of the Theodor W. Adorno Price. It wouldn't be an Adorno saying however, because the man himself, the heavy thinker of "Critical Theory" and its Frankfurter Schule, would never say (or think) things as simple as this.
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| Theodor W. Adorno |
But there you have it. We wake up, tumble upon a link to The New Yorker and read an article on Theodor W. Adorno and his Frankfurter Schule and learn that "he died of a heart attack in the shadow of the Matterhorn."
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| The Matterhorn |
That's us here in Switzerland, folks, the Matterhorn is right around the corner. And yes, alles hängt mit allem zusammen, Adorno suffered his attack, was brought to the nearest hospital and died there, an unassuming Spital located in Visp, Valais, Switzerland, unassuming except that yours truly spent a whole week in the same hospital, his first time ever as a hospital patient, waiting for his foot to unswell so that Dr. Ursprung could repair his broken fibula.
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 10, 2014
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