More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 January
Well, Ewan McGregor amply demonstrates that he was lacking in something back then, and Robert Carlyle's performance was given largely by his ludicrous moustache. Yet, apart from the fact that the film dragged and went around in circles, it was fine.
The science talk about the biochemistry and physiology of addiction was a bit too much for one who had not long taken pain-killers, but the after-film discussion with the speaker was fun, and everyone had the chance to have their say.
Their next one in the series is MS and Hilary and Jackie, which seems a bit tenuous, when that is not only not remotely what the film is about, but does not even feature except as the background to the drama between the sisters, but still...
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Monday 9 January 2012
Antony Worrall Thompson masterminded attacks on my bird-feeder by marauding squirrels
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 January
The arrangement was that they’d split the proceeds 50:50, but you can never trust a squirrel to honour a deal when it’s influenced by nuts as trophies.
Seriously, I have no (operational – i.e. stocked and suitably hanging) bird-feeder, and I cannot claim that I have ever seen even one squirrel in my garden (apart, probably, from a plastic one, which my ex-wife thought pleasantly decorative: its fate is unknown to me, but not a source of sorrow).
Back to the story, what a back-handed compliment for the brand of shop (which I sha’n’t name – they don’t need the publicity) from which the items were taken: the endorsement that a top chef (at least, I take it that he is one) thinks their (if it was) cheese and wine worth running that risk for*!
Could this just be the beginning of the concept of celebrity approval by theft? Will tagged packets of condoms next be taken by your favourite man (or woman), and the name D---- or M---- just happens to get mentioned in the report?:
I always steal T----- condoms – why wait to pay when I can get it on and use them?
Of course, the whole idea might then backfire, if the public dared to copy its prize stars, and those rather ineffectual bleepers at the entrance to shops would be getting worn out. How would the line of defence go? Maybe, I only did it because she’s worth it.
* Or should this apology, reported on the Channel 4 News web-site, actually be read as showing that AWT admitted an error of judgement in his choice of products?:
The celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson apologises for repeatedly shoplifting cheese and wine from a branch of T[----], and says he will "seek treatment".
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 January
The arrangement was that they’d split the proceeds 50:50, but you can never trust a squirrel to honour a deal when it’s influenced by nuts as trophies.
Seriously, I have no (operational – i.e. stocked and suitably hanging) bird-feeder, and I cannot claim that I have ever seen even one squirrel in my garden (apart, probably, from a plastic one, which my ex-wife thought pleasantly decorative: its fate is unknown to me, but not a source of sorrow).
Back to the story, what a back-handed compliment for the brand of shop (which I sha’n’t name – they don’t need the publicity) from which the items were taken: the endorsement that a top chef (at least, I take it that he is one) thinks their (if it was) cheese and wine worth running that risk for*!
Could this just be the beginning of the concept of celebrity approval by theft? Will tagged packets of condoms next be taken by your favourite man (or woman), and the name D---- or M---- just happens to get mentioned in the report?:
I always steal T----- condoms – why wait to pay when I can get it on and use them?
Of course, the whole idea might then backfire, if the public dared to copy its prize stars, and those rather ineffectual bleepers at the entrance to shops would be getting worn out. How would the line of defence go? Maybe, I only did it because she’s worth it.
* Or should this apology, reported on the Channel 4 News web-site, actually be read as showing that AWT admitted an error of judgement in his choice of products?:
The celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson apologises for repeatedly shoplifting cheese and wine from a branch of T[----], and says he will "seek treatment".
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50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre
50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
50 years since Poulenc stubbed his toe in Montmartre
9 January
Do not misunderstand me - I have loved, even if I can never remember how to pronounce his surname, Poulenc's chamber works for a long time.
But to-day, a matter of weeks since it was played before on Radio 3, I have just heard again his Sextet for Piano and Wind, so some dubious anniversary must be afoot:
However, why not hear his glorious music more often just as a matter of course, as with that of Prokofiev (a proposition with which Susan Milan, who had just played his sonata for flute and piano at a recital, fully agreed and with the notion that he is underplayed in the repertoire)?
We really don't need these lame excuses such as its being 100 years since Groves pronounced somebody's music 'an abomination' to revisit them.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Treatment for Worrall Thompson
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 January
I have just heard reported, on Radio 3 news, the item that has been besieging me on various sign-in pages. It was then being reported as an allegation that Antony Worrall Thompson had been caught shoplifting, perhaps cheese and wine.
According to the news bulletin, he has now received a caution, and has described his behaviour as 'irresponsible'*, saying 'I need treatment' for it.
I wonder what treatment he has in mind... For sure, forgoing that illicit cheese-and-wine party, but perhaps having to eat Quorn® twice per week.
In any case, Worrall Thompson's reported way of referring to himself and what he had done might make one wonder if he was meaning to suggest that this had happened before, if there is a behaviour that needs treatment**.
Doubtless, more will unfold on yet another celebrity story - a rather different penalty, in terms of both criminal sanction and disapproval, from when Winona Ryder was caught, it has to be said.
* There was another adjective, but somehow it didn't stick.
** Well, according to the Channel 4 News web-site:
The celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson apologises for repeatedly shoplifting cheese and wine from a branch of T[----], and says he will "seek treatment".
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 January
I have just heard reported, on Radio 3 news, the item that has been besieging me on various sign-in pages. It was then being reported as an allegation that Antony Worrall Thompson had been caught shoplifting, perhaps cheese and wine.
According to the news bulletin, he has now received a caution, and has described his behaviour as 'irresponsible'*, saying 'I need treatment' for it.
I wonder what treatment he has in mind... For sure, forgoing that illicit cheese-and-wine party, but perhaps having to eat Quorn® twice per week.
In any case, Worrall Thompson's reported way of referring to himself and what he had done might make one wonder if he was meaning to suggest that this had happened before, if there is a behaviour that needs treatment**.
Doubtless, more will unfold on yet another celebrity story - a rather different penalty, in terms of both criminal sanction and disapproval, from when Winona Ryder was caught, it has to be said.
* There was another adjective, but somehow it didn't stick.
** Well, according to the Channel 4 News web-site:
The celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson apologises for repeatedly shoplifting cheese and wine from a branch of T[----], and says he will "seek treatment".
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Sunday 8 January 2012
Anxious thoughts made apparent
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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8 January
There is some quotation from Paradise Lost that would do better than that tag-line, but it doesn't come to me*.
It would not be right to say that I like Erin Hogan's descriptions in her book Spiral Jetta, but only because I do not think that one should relish another's pain.
For what she does is to capture the type of content of anxious thoughts, fears that cannot be reasoned with and so will not be subdued by argument or otherwise abate:
I pulled off into what seemed the largest gap between two scrub bushes and parked the car. There were a lot of little bushes underfoot, and I wondered whether the undercarriage of the car, which had been running all day, might be hot enough to start a fire. I wasn't sure if this could actually happen, but the thought alone made me get back in the car and move it to the barest ground I could find.
Likewise (a continuation of the previous passage, but just giving a pause):
Still worrying, I checked the landscape and realized that, should I see a faint plume of smoke from wherever I happened to be, I would not have time to halt the nascent inferno, and my burned-out Jetta would forever be marked as the car--and I as the dumbass driver--that destroyed Mormon Mesa. My poor car would share the fate of the rusted-out amphibious vehicle and old Dodge truck near Spiral Jetty.
Further (a continuation of the previous passage, but just giving a pause):
The thought was too much to bear, so I moved the car again, took a liter bottle of water and poured it over the ground, then put the car back over the wet spot. What more could I do?
Beautifully written, and - so rare nowadays - perfectly punctuated, what Erin Hogan has written just does justice to the intrusive thoughts, with their very strong force, that can beset an experience and undermine one's (potential) joy in it.
Another quotation (from a page or so on):
Now I faced a new dilemma. Clearly there was someone else out there. But would they be friend or foe? I pictured a bunch of sixteen-year-old guys sitting on their tailgate, listening to ZZ Top, shooting their rifles at empty beer cans scattered atop the mesa. I magined what I would look like sauntering up to them out of nowhere. "Hey guys, how's it going?"
[...] I imagined my broken, violated body baking there on the top of the mesa. Snippets of Deliverance alternated with The Accused in my head. I debated going back to the car. Was that cowardly or prudent? Where, once again, was the line between legitimate concern and paranoia?
Maybe the above, if not an interest in US land art, will encourage finding this book. I should leave the final word to Erin:
Maybe it's the salt that keeps Spiral Jetty honest. The work is now almost entirely white. Salt has latched onto every available surface, blanketing it, making it a croûte en sel. It comes across as pink in all the recent pictures I had seen, and perhaps in a certain light it is. [...] But the color one feels overwhelmingly is white: bone white, bleached white, blinding white.
* On reflection, I think that it is 'darkness visible' (from Book 3 or 4).
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8 January
There is some quotation from Paradise Lost that would do better than that tag-line, but it doesn't come to me*.
It would not be right to say that I like Erin Hogan's descriptions in her book Spiral Jetta, but only because I do not think that one should relish another's pain.
For what she does is to capture the type of content of anxious thoughts, fears that cannot be reasoned with and so will not be subdued by argument or otherwise abate:
I pulled off into what seemed the largest gap between two scrub bushes and parked the car. There were a lot of little bushes underfoot, and I wondered whether the undercarriage of the car, which had been running all day, might be hot enough to start a fire. I wasn't sure if this could actually happen, but the thought alone made me get back in the car and move it to the barest ground I could find.
Likewise (a continuation of the previous passage, but just giving a pause):
Still worrying, I checked the landscape and realized that, should I see a faint plume of smoke from wherever I happened to be, I would not have time to halt the nascent inferno, and my burned-out Jetta would forever be marked as the car--and I as the dumbass driver--that destroyed Mormon Mesa. My poor car would share the fate of the rusted-out amphibious vehicle and old Dodge truck near Spiral Jetty.
Further (a continuation of the previous passage, but just giving a pause):
The thought was too much to bear, so I moved the car again, took a liter bottle of water and poured it over the ground, then put the car back over the wet spot. What more could I do?
Beautifully written, and - so rare nowadays - perfectly punctuated, what Erin Hogan has written just does justice to the intrusive thoughts, with their very strong force, that can beset an experience and undermine one's (potential) joy in it.
Another quotation (from a page or so on):
Now I faced a new dilemma. Clearly there was someone else out there. But would they be friend or foe? I pictured a bunch of sixteen-year-old guys sitting on their tailgate, listening to ZZ Top, shooting their rifles at empty beer cans scattered atop the mesa. I magined what I would look like sauntering up to them out of nowhere. "Hey guys, how's it going?"
[...] I imagined my broken, violated body baking there on the top of the mesa. Snippets of Deliverance alternated with The Accused in my head. I debated going back to the car. Was that cowardly or prudent? Where, once again, was the line between legitimate concern and paranoia?
Maybe the above, if not an interest in US land art, will encourage finding this book. I should leave the final word to Erin:
Maybe it's the salt that keeps Spiral Jetty honest. The work is now almost entirely white. Salt has latched onto every available surface, blanketing it, making it a croûte en sel. It comes across as pink in all the recent pictures I had seen, and perhaps in a certain light it is. [...] But the color one feels overwhelmingly is white: bone white, bleached white, blinding white.
* On reflection, I think that it is 'darkness visible' (from Book 3 or 4).
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Saturday 7 January 2012
Tirza: an epilogue
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 January
At the time of the Festival, I established that the book from which this book was made, with the participation of its author, into a film was available only in the original Dutch and in a German translation (which, at a pinch, I could have read, but at great cost).
I now see that there is a French translation, which would not put me at any greater advantage, but none in English that I can find, and I wonder what the fate of the film is - if it is not going to get distributed here or in the States, the possibility of an English translation probably depends on it.
Well, I still think that it is a tremendous film, and maybe I shall look for evidence of reviews...*
I have found this, with which I would take issue (and will, given a chance):
http://jasperaalbers.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/the-best-and-the-worst-of-dutch-cinema-%E2%80%93-the-tirza-review/
But, maybe, I'd prefer you to look at (or what preceded it):
http://unofficialcambridgefilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/10/attempting-to-address-tirza.html
* Contains spoilers *
In the meantime, my knowledge of German allowed me, belatedly and when it had to be returned to the library, to look at the Dutch original, and it may not surprise to know that the ending in the novel appears to differ:
If I didn't miss something, and it isn't a dream, Jörgen does not try to leave, but ends up going back to, Kaisa's dwelling, but makes it to the airport, and, despite her cries of Want company, sir?, boards a flight and labours his way home.
As I say, I was reading the text as someone who speaks German, so I could work out much of what was being said, but I may have missed something in the preceding pages that could indicate that it is Jörgen's fantasy that he makes this journey...
Since then (at the end of February, in fact), Penny, a friend who speaks Dutch, took a look at the closing pages, and found nothing to suggest that there is the intervention of a dream between getting back from Big Mama and leaving Namibia.
End-notes
* Well, I see that it has no reviews at all on the so-called Rotten Tomatoes web-site, and the first one that I found was from one of the Festival's own Take One crew - I obviously didn't submit something myself, or, as others didn't, it didn't appear.
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 January
At the time of the Festival, I established that the book from which this book was made, with the participation of its author, into a film was available only in the original Dutch and in a German translation (which, at a pinch, I could have read, but at great cost).
I now see that there is a French translation, which would not put me at any greater advantage, but none in English that I can find, and I wonder what the fate of the film is - if it is not going to get distributed here or in the States, the possibility of an English translation probably depends on it.
Well, I still think that it is a tremendous film, and maybe I shall look for evidence of reviews...*
I have found this, with which I would take issue (and will, given a chance):
http://jasperaalbers.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/the-best-and-the-worst-of-dutch-cinema-%E2%80%93-the-tirza-review/
But, maybe, I'd prefer you to look at (or what preceded it):
http://unofficialcambridgefilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/10/attempting-to-address-tirza.html
* Contains spoilers *
In the meantime, my knowledge of German allowed me, belatedly and when it had to be returned to the library, to look at the Dutch original, and it may not surprise to know that the ending in the novel appears to differ:
If I didn't miss something, and it isn't a dream, Jörgen does not try to leave, but ends up going back to, Kaisa's dwelling, but makes it to the airport, and, despite her cries of Want company, sir?, boards a flight and labours his way home.
As I say, I was reading the text as someone who speaks German, so I could work out much of what was being said, but I may have missed something in the preceding pages that could indicate that it is Jörgen's fantasy that he makes this journey...
Since then (at the end of February, in fact), Penny, a friend who speaks Dutch, took a look at the closing pages, and found nothing to suggest that there is the intervention of a dream between getting back from Big Mama and leaving Namibia.
End-notes
* Well, I see that it has no reviews at all on the so-called Rotten Tomatoes web-site, and the first one that I found was from one of the Festival's own Take One crew - I obviously didn't submit something myself, or, as others didn't, it didn't appear.
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Might I ask what our Sunday trading legislation is for? (1)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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8 January 2012
Does anyone have any idea now what the UK law on Sunday trading protects - and how?
We have a regime, recently changed to allow shops to reopen on the chime of midnight as Sunday ends, where the larger shops (as defined by square footage, principally*) can only open for six hours continuously, starting no earlier than 10.00 a.m. and ending no later than 6.00 p.m.
(I am not aware of any obligation to open for the full six hours, so, if I am right, it would be possibly to be open just from 12.00 till 3.00.**)
Does that protect the workers, if they presumably can be in later than on other days for a start no earlier than 10.00, and give them the possibility of some lie-in? Is that at the heart of the legislation's thrust, though it doesn't protect workers in smaller, local shops (we know that names and brands), who still might have to start at 8.00, if not 6.00 (let alone the 24-hour petrol-stations)?
Or is it to protect the poor consumer / shopper from shopping him- or herself silly every day of the week...?
In any event, the premable of the enabling Act of Parliament (there are bound to be Regulations made under it), the Sunday Trading Act 1994, says (with great economy) relatively little:
An Act to reform the law of England and Wales relating to Sunday trading; to make provision as to the rights of shop workers under the law of England and Wales in relation to Sunday working; and for connected purposes.
Oh, I forgot, there is the protection for workers of being able to opt out (and not be penalized) of working on a Sunday - notices to be served, etc., and changing one's mind***. Which, of course, for someone who wants to devote him- or herself to the family and / or religious observance, is fine and good, but where do those other limitations on opening hours come from and fit in, not least 17 years on from 1994?
End-notes
* Thus: “large shop” means a shop which has a relevant floor area exceeding 280 square metres.
** Actually, that doesn't appear to have been envisaged, and is, at any rate, not possible (and might mean that someone failing to open for the full six hours could be taken to task, bizarre though that seems, for all that I know):
A person who is, or proposes to become, the occupier of a large shop may give notice to the local authority for the area in which the shop is situated—
(a) stating that he proposes to open the shop on Sunday for the serving of retail customers, and
(b) specifying a continuous period of six hours, beginning no earlier than 10 a.m. and ending no later than 6 p.m., as the permitted Sunday opening hours in relation to the shop.
*** Section 4 of the Act is, to say the least of it, terse: 'Schedule 4 to this Act shall have effect'.
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 January 2012
Does anyone have any idea now what the UK law on Sunday trading protects - and how?
We have a regime, recently changed to allow shops to reopen on the chime of midnight as Sunday ends, where the larger shops (as defined by square footage, principally*) can only open for six hours continuously, starting no earlier than 10.00 a.m. and ending no later than 6.00 p.m.
(I am not aware of any obligation to open for the full six hours, so, if I am right, it would be possibly to be open just from 12.00 till 3.00.**)
Does that protect the workers, if they presumably can be in later than on other days for a start no earlier than 10.00, and give them the possibility of some lie-in? Is that at the heart of the legislation's thrust, though it doesn't protect workers in smaller, local shops (we know that names and brands), who still might have to start at 8.00, if not 6.00 (let alone the 24-hour petrol-stations)?
Or is it to protect the poor consumer / shopper from shopping him- or herself silly every day of the week...?
In any event, the premable of the enabling Act of Parliament (there are bound to be Regulations made under it), the Sunday Trading Act 1994, says (with great economy) relatively little:
An Act to reform the law of England and Wales relating to Sunday trading; to make provision as to the rights of shop workers under the law of England and Wales in relation to Sunday working; and for connected purposes.
Oh, I forgot, there is the protection for workers of being able to opt out (and not be penalized) of working on a Sunday - notices to be served, etc., and changing one's mind***. Which, of course, for someone who wants to devote him- or herself to the family and / or religious observance, is fine and good, but where do those other limitations on opening hours come from and fit in, not least 17 years on from 1994?
End-notes
* Thus: “large shop” means a shop which has a relevant floor area exceeding 280 square metres.
** Actually, that doesn't appear to have been envisaged, and is, at any rate, not possible (and might mean that someone failing to open for the full six hours could be taken to task, bizarre though that seems, for all that I know):
A person who is, or proposes to become, the occupier of a large shop may give notice to the local authority for the area in which the shop is situated—
(a) stating that he proposes to open the shop on Sunday for the serving of retail customers, and
(b) specifying a continuous period of six hours, beginning no earlier than 10 a.m. and ending no later than 6 p.m., as the permitted Sunday opening hours in relation to the shop.
*** Section 4 of the Act is, to say the least of it, terse: 'Schedule 4 to this Act shall have effect'.
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There is another Earth – and, wow, up there with Solaris! (terminal posting)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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8 January
* Contains spoilers *
I must have been quite dim when I saw Another Earth. (We say 'He is bright', 'She's so dim', as if the intensity of a light is all that matters, when, of course - as any photographer or cinematographer will tell you - it has other qualities.) It's just that I was musing to myself why, when Rhoda was wandering around, largely at night, the other Earth that was being talked about on the night that she, by trying to look at it out of the window whilst driving, killed the wife and child of John Burroughs seems so improbably huge - if it appeared that big, it would either have to be enormous (and so not a mirror Earth) or very close, many times nearer than the moon (with which, maybe for technical reasons, it seemed to appear).
The less-dim may have realized the symbolic nature of its size, reflecting - almost in an expressionistic way - the depth of Rhoda's guilt. As I have said, the probable cannot be pressed too far with this film, or it would not have taken scientists four years (the term of Rhoda's prison sentence) to try communicating with the other planet. And, as John Burroughs asks, when he is arguing against not escaping from Plato's cave and knowing the truth, would its inhabitants be calling it Earth 2, as those on his were.
His initially unselfish response to learning that Rhoda has won the prize of a trip to Earth 2 is not what we expect, and, when he comes to appreciate that he doesn't want her to go, we have not expected her to tell him the truth about why she came there. (We know that she is a bright girl, who had a place to go to MIT before her foolish act (and which of us has not done foolish things in a car and got away with it?), and her quick-wittedness came out in thinking of the explanation that she had called to offer a free trial of a cleaning service, faced by the awfulness of telling John the truth - and then in claiming to come from Maid in Haven, which, of course, sounds almost like something else, the thing that maybe John comes to believe her to be.)
The final unselfish act - again, a complete surprise to me - was giving John her flight-ticket, and again I was being slow. (I've talked about Rhoda's quick-wittedness - what makes us turn extremes of a spectrum into pejorative terms?) I knew that she had given him a family photograph, and that she had told him that the latest theory was that Earth 2 became visible when its synchronicity with this planet broke, but I did not know then that the flight-ticket was also being given, or why John, with the views expressed before (which may have been an intellectual cover, of course, for his real feelings), would have wanted it.
I came to understand, as I meditated on the apparent hugeness of Earth 2, that, if the theory were right, then it might be that, on that otherwise hitherto identical planet, the accident hadn't happened, and John could see his family again (whatever the other John Burroughs might think).
Whether others 'got all of that' as the film played out, I don't know, but it has in no way spoilt it for me to have been reflecting on what I could not follow...
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8 January
* Contains spoilers *
I must have been quite dim when I saw Another Earth. (We say 'He is bright', 'She's so dim', as if the intensity of a light is all that matters, when, of course - as any photographer or cinematographer will tell you - it has other qualities.) It's just that I was musing to myself why, when Rhoda was wandering around, largely at night, the other Earth that was being talked about on the night that she, by trying to look at it out of the window whilst driving, killed the wife and child of John Burroughs seems so improbably huge - if it appeared that big, it would either have to be enormous (and so not a mirror Earth) or very close, many times nearer than the moon (with which, maybe for technical reasons, it seemed to appear).
The less-dim may have realized the symbolic nature of its size, reflecting - almost in an expressionistic way - the depth of Rhoda's guilt. As I have said, the probable cannot be pressed too far with this film, or it would not have taken scientists four years (the term of Rhoda's prison sentence) to try communicating with the other planet. And, as John Burroughs asks, when he is arguing against not escaping from Plato's cave and knowing the truth, would its inhabitants be calling it Earth 2, as those on his were.
His initially unselfish response to learning that Rhoda has won the prize of a trip to Earth 2 is not what we expect, and, when he comes to appreciate that he doesn't want her to go, we have not expected her to tell him the truth about why she came there. (We know that she is a bright girl, who had a place to go to MIT before her foolish act (and which of us has not done foolish things in a car and got away with it?), and her quick-wittedness came out in thinking of the explanation that she had called to offer a free trial of a cleaning service, faced by the awfulness of telling John the truth - and then in claiming to come from Maid in Haven, which, of course, sounds almost like something else, the thing that maybe John comes to believe her to be.)
The final unselfish act - again, a complete surprise to me - was giving John her flight-ticket, and again I was being slow. (I've talked about Rhoda's quick-wittedness - what makes us turn extremes of a spectrum into pejorative terms?) I knew that she had given him a family photograph, and that she had told him that the latest theory was that Earth 2 became visible when its synchronicity with this planet broke, but I did not know then that the flight-ticket was also being given, or why John, with the views expressed before (which may have been an intellectual cover, of course, for his real feelings), would have wanted it.
I came to understand, as I meditated on the apparent hugeness of Earth 2, that, if the theory were right, then it might be that, on that otherwise hitherto identical planet, the accident hadn't happened, and John could see his family again (whatever the other John Burroughs might think).
Whether others 'got all of that' as the film played out, I don't know, but it has in no way spoilt it for me to have been reflecting on what I could not follow...
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Page layout and baking
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
7 January
No, not a view of the night sky, with supernovae, galaxies and complete with meteors, but an arrangement of twelve prawn bites, creatures that sacrificed their lives to be put in the oven for my delight (as it turned out, this purchase of discounted party food was inspired) - I was interested enough in the challenges presented in setting them out, if one didn't adopt the mundane approach of rows of each one, to record the result.
And then we have this, to-night's effort with the same task (no, the previous ones did get cooked and eaten, not just put back in the fridge to be humiliated again by more facile designs made using them):
From which one takes what? Well, someone might like to compare them, and perhaps even psychoanalyse me on the basis of the significance of the similarities (or differences) in carrying out the same exercise more than once.
For me, I take the grandiose line, and return to the night sky, with an analogy to mandalas, those Buddhist sand-paintings that first so intrigued me when I read about then...
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7 January
No, not a view of the night sky, with supernovae, galaxies and complete with meteors, but an arrangement of twelve prawn bites, creatures that sacrificed their lives to be put in the oven for my delight (as it turned out, this purchase of discounted party food was inspired) - I was interested enough in the challenges presented in setting them out, if one didn't adopt the mundane approach of rows of each one, to record the result.
And then we have this, to-night's effort with the same task (no, the previous ones did get cooked and eaten, not just put back in the fridge to be humiliated again by more facile designs made using them):
From which one takes what? Well, someone might like to compare them, and perhaps even psychoanalyse me on the basis of the significance of the similarities (or differences) in carrying out the same exercise more than once.
For me, I take the grandiose line, and return to the night sky, with an analogy to mandalas, those Buddhist sand-paintings that first so intrigued me when I read about then...
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Friday 6 January 2012
Crypt in Canterbury
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6 January
I quote from the Hoban 2005 web-site. Can anyone else spot the relational error?:
After viewing the painting, a service began in the main part of the cathedral, so the group was led downstairs to the crypt, where no photography is allowed.
A clue. It resembles the one in these lines from a song by Chris de Burgh:
Rolling through the countryside,
Tears were in my eyes.
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6 January
I quote from the Hoban 2005 web-site. Can anyone else spot the relational error?:
After viewing the painting, a service began in the main part of the cathedral, so the group was led downstairs to the crypt, where no photography is allowed.
A clue. It resembles the one in these lines from a song by Chris de Burgh:
Rolling through the countryside,
Tears were in my eyes.
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Vented ill-feeling and the Vento case
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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6 January
Whilst looking for related case-law to that of Vento v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2002] EWCA Civ 1871*, I came across another that, though not relevant to what I wanted to know, is nonetheless intriguing, probably in a salacious way, for the allegations made in it.
I wasn't there, so I only know what the judge said (and judges tend to be a little staid, even if they do not sit in the High Court or higher courts), but here is an indication of what looking at the case, Mitton and others v. Benefield and another [2011] EWHC 2098 (QB), reveals (amongst other things - see for yourself):
* I consider it clear that he [Mr Wilding-Mitton] has become or allowed himself to become obsessed with his neighbours and prepared to identify as sinister the most ordinary of suburban activities.
* Mr Wilding-Mitton maintained in his evidence that he has consulted experts on both sides of the Atlantic to enable him to tell me that from the outset of their relationship Mr and Mrs Benefield, who should be classified as psychopaths, had a planned campaign to destroy Mr Wilding-Mitton and his family. He said that he thought the matter, which he described as the hounding of an innocent person, to be of national importance. He said that they, by which I understood him to mean his family, were trying to defend themselves in an impossible situation.
* He said that Mr Benefield was a platinum smirker who had a moronic stare. A consequence was, according to Mr Wilding-Mitton, that his daughter, who in the witness box appeared an amiable teenager, had been subject to psychological rape or molestation. Nothing she said in her evidence came remotely close to that kind of categorisation. He maintained that Mr Benefield was a psychopathic narcissist and that Mrs Benefield had a psychotic disorder.
Read on, if you dare, at www.bailii.org ...
* A general Internet search, based on the name 'Vento' and trying to find a synopsis of what it established concerning awards for injury to feelings in discrimination cases, proved null, so I consulted a specialist legal database, www.bailii.org, not to be mistaken for what superficially pretends to be it at www.bailii.org.uk.
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6 January
Whilst looking for related case-law to that of Vento v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2002] EWCA Civ 1871*, I came across another that, though not relevant to what I wanted to know, is nonetheless intriguing, probably in a salacious way, for the allegations made in it.
I wasn't there, so I only know what the judge said (and judges tend to be a little staid, even if they do not sit in the High Court or higher courts), but here is an indication of what looking at the case, Mitton and others v. Benefield and another [2011] EWHC 2098 (QB), reveals (amongst other things - see for yourself):
* I consider it clear that he [Mr Wilding-Mitton] has become or allowed himself to become obsessed with his neighbours and prepared to identify as sinister the most ordinary of suburban activities.
* Mr Wilding-Mitton maintained in his evidence that he has consulted experts on both sides of the Atlantic to enable him to tell me that from the outset of their relationship Mr and Mrs Benefield, who should be classified as psychopaths, had a planned campaign to destroy Mr Wilding-Mitton and his family. He said that he thought the matter, which he described as the hounding of an innocent person, to be of national importance. He said that they, by which I understood him to mean his family, were trying to defend themselves in an impossible situation.
* He said that Mr Benefield was a platinum smirker who had a moronic stare. A consequence was, according to Mr Wilding-Mitton, that his daughter, who in the witness box appeared an amiable teenager, had been subject to psychological rape or molestation. Nothing she said in her evidence came remotely close to that kind of categorisation. He maintained that Mr Benefield was a psychopathic narcissist and that Mrs Benefield had a psychotic disorder.
Read on, if you dare, at www.bailii.org ...
* A general Internet search, based on the name 'Vento' and trying to find a synopsis of what it established concerning awards for injury to feelings in discrimination cases, proved null, so I consulted a specialist legal database, www.bailii.org, not to be mistaken for what superficially pretends to be it at www.bailii.org.uk.
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Thursday 5 January 2012
The real Diva
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6 January
In the film Diva (1980), it may be possible to argue that there is more than one diva, and that Paris itself is the other.
Leaving that aside, we have Cynthia Hawkins, a black American soprano (played by Wilhemenia [sometimes with a Wiggins] Fernandez), who seems to be living in Paris, but - although full marks for effort - whose French must have been a strain on the ears of the first audience: if that isn't just put on, why this choice of character, not necessarily actress, for the role?
Well, she does have a childlike trust and belief, and that quality is both important to the film and comes across very clearly, and it is probably quite relevant that she is the glamorous star from another country, albeit doing her best with her French. (It's said that Jessye Norman was in mind when the part was created (not to play it), although I do not know in what way.)
Her feeling about herself, about not wanting to be recorded or held to ransom because of a recording, is the thing that comes to the fore: with Jules, she is amazingly open and also forgiving, since he not only takes her dress, but the recording that helps create the film's kerfuffle, and he is not always the most direct about what he is doing.
So that, that quality, is what I guess makes Cynthia singing from La Wally, which she does splendidly, the diva in Diva: her naive belief, and following her instincts.
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6 January
In the film Diva (1980), it may be possible to argue that there is more than one diva, and that Paris itself is the other.
Leaving that aside, we have Cynthia Hawkins, a black American soprano (played by Wilhemenia [sometimes with a Wiggins] Fernandez), who seems to be living in Paris, but - although full marks for effort - whose French must have been a strain on the ears of the first audience: if that isn't just put on, why this choice of character, not necessarily actress, for the role?
Well, she does have a childlike trust and belief, and that quality is both important to the film and comes across very clearly, and it is probably quite relevant that she is the glamorous star from another country, albeit doing her best with her French. (It's said that Jessye Norman was in mind when the part was created (not to play it), although I do not know in what way.)
Her feeling about herself, about not wanting to be recorded or held to ransom because of a recording, is the thing that comes to the fore: with Jules, she is amazingly open and also forgiving, since he not only takes her dress, but the recording that helps create the film's kerfuffle, and he is not always the most direct about what he is doing.
So that, that quality, is what I guess makes Cynthia singing from La Wally, which she does splendidly, the diva in Diva: her naive belief, and following her instincts.
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Early Woody and Mere Anarchy (3)
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6 January
I am beginning to realize that the theme of Fool's Gold seems to link almost everything in this collection:
* A man offered levitation and special powers by crooks
* An actor who doesn't know his own status, duped into taking a poor part in a film
* The 2.6-pound white truffle that everyone wants is a fake
* The director who so believes his yes-men that he tries to film the LA phone-book
* The unwise purchaser of a property and hirer of the men to work on it
* The songwriter in analysis who is supposed to be the next Irving Berlin and pays his therapist with songs
* What to the witless might sound like a brilliant idea for working up the interrelated lives of Gustav and Alma Mahler into a musical drama
Those are just the ones whose themes I can recall, and only the one about the father whose son goes to 'film camp' and has the proprietor of the camp and him raging back and forth in correspondence breaks the pattern - even there, though, the $16m distribution rights seem fine until someone else is interested in a share...
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6 January
I am beginning to realize that the theme of Fool's Gold seems to link almost everything in this collection:
* A man offered levitation and special powers by crooks
* An actor who doesn't know his own status, duped into taking a poor part in a film
* The 2.6-pound white truffle that everyone wants is a fake
* The director who so believes his yes-men that he tries to film the LA phone-book
* The unwise purchaser of a property and hirer of the men to work on it
* The songwriter in analysis who is supposed to be the next Irving Berlin and pays his therapist with songs
* What to the witless might sound like a brilliant idea for working up the interrelated lives of Gustav and Alma Mahler into a musical drama
Those are just the ones whose themes I can recall, and only the one about the father whose son goes to 'film camp' and has the proprietor of the camp and him raging back and forth in correspondence breaks the pattern - even there, though, the $16m distribution rights seem fine until someone else is interested in a share...
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Early Woody and Mere Anarchy (2)
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5 January
I had wrongly thought that something appearing in The New Yorker might be a mark of quality.
However, the credits tell me which have previously been published there, and they are not the best: one is just demonstrating how to set out a screenplay (which Allen, of course, can do), but with few laughs; another, a ludicrous idea for a show, which, if the narrator had employed the little sense that he had, he would never have bought an expensive lunch to hear about; a third, a tiring story, loosely tied in with Dante's Inferno, about a very ill-advised choice of building and builder.
Doesn't exactly inspire one to read on (although, for completeness and despite what often seems to me to be lazy writing, I will), and the quality of the presentation of the text leaves a lot to be desires - I know that people no longer know what orphans and widows are, so cannot care about them, but for the last line of a page to end like this shocks me:
; fi-
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5 January
I had wrongly thought that something appearing in The New Yorker might be a mark of quality.
However, the credits tell me which have previously been published there, and they are not the best: one is just demonstrating how to set out a screenplay (which Allen, of course, can do), but with few laughs; another, a ludicrous idea for a show, which, if the narrator had employed the little sense that he had, he would never have bought an expensive lunch to hear about; a third, a tiring story, loosely tied in with Dante's Inferno, about a very ill-advised choice of building and builder.
Doesn't exactly inspire one to read on (although, for completeness and despite what often seems to me to be lazy writing, I will), and the quality of the presentation of the text leaves a lot to be desires - I know that people no longer know what orphans and widows are, so cannot care about them, but for the last line of a page to end like this shocks me:
; fi-
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Thursday 29 December 2011
180 years since Charles Dickens sneezed publicly in Cardiff - to great acclaim
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30 December
No, it's the 200th anniversary of birth or death*, as usual, and, since we never know which, we don't know what we are celebrating (and, to me, it seems inapt to celebrate the years since someone's death).
That said, if claims are to be made for Dickens, let them establish something that he would have thought worthwhile. And yet, on The Verb a few weeks back, Kevin Jackson told us that Dickens had innovated with the names of his characters, and with the supposed advantage over the big Russian novel (where, of course, we are willingly familiar with the tripartite system of naming, and cannot confess not even to trying!) that one could easily keep track of someone in, say, Bleak House because of the choice of name:
Well, as much as a name that I recognize in Dostoyevsky may recur and I recognize it by its shape, so names in that Dickens novel will be more easily identifiable and probably memorable, but it is a far cry from asserting that, on that account, I know what function that person performs in the novel. No, as with the less major characters in any novel, one sometimes has to look back to see who they are, and there the Russian novel anticipates the need with a Dramatis personæ.
Memorable names (and whether they are memorable just because quirky remains a separate, and unexamined issue - who can forget Tom Jones?) in a longer work do not, I believe, necessarily guide me as to who that person is in relation to everyone else, not least when (again in Bleak House) Dickens deliberately rattles on about the presumed oil-wells of the Reverend Chadband's countenance, or the perpetual need for a cushion to be readjusted, in such a way as to sabotage the progress of his own novel and distract our concentration.
Although, in Wemmick, for example, Dickens chose a very fitting name for its bearer, it is because I see him linked to his castle that I remember him for who he is, not because of the name per se.
At any rate, in a fanciful desire to laud Dickens for this above all else, the contributor to the programme dismissed, as their novels not containing comparably witty or descriptive names, both Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) and Henry Fielding (1707-1754). This, without giving a single example, whereas the eponymous heroes alone of the former's Ferdinand Count Fathom and Roderick Random make demands on our attention. As for Fielding, Mrs Tow-wouse in Joseph Andrews is foremost in my memory, but the novel's pages are peppered with Tom Suckbribe, Jenny Bouncer, Sir Thomas Booby, Mrs Slipslop, Peter Pounce, etc.
If Dickens excels, without the endeavours of other writers at least a century before Dickens even being considered, such as Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), but only Shakespeare (who was only credited with Aguecheek and Belch, because he allegedly took all of his names from his sources), then so be it, but why give Dickens a crown that he doesn't exclusively deserve, and which does not even typify the best things about him?
(In fact, anyone who has heard of William's contemporary Ben Jonson, or who ever took a look at The Alchemist, would find it hard to understand what the fuss about names in Dickens is...)
Since posting the above, and in looking vainly for somewhere on Radio 3's web-site to leave a comment, I've now found the following work, a slim volume published in 1917 by Elizabeth Hope Gordon:
The Naming of Characters in the Works of Charles Dickens
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30 December
No, it's the 200th anniversary of birth or death*, as usual, and, since we never know which, we don't know what we are celebrating (and, to me, it seems inapt to celebrate the years since someone's death).
That said, if claims are to be made for Dickens, let them establish something that he would have thought worthwhile. And yet, on The Verb a few weeks back, Kevin Jackson told us that Dickens had innovated with the names of his characters, and with the supposed advantage over the big Russian novel (where, of course, we are willingly familiar with the tripartite system of naming, and cannot confess not even to trying!) that one could easily keep track of someone in, say, Bleak House because of the choice of name:
Well, as much as a name that I recognize in Dostoyevsky may recur and I recognize it by its shape, so names in that Dickens novel will be more easily identifiable and probably memorable, but it is a far cry from asserting that, on that account, I know what function that person performs in the novel. No, as with the less major characters in any novel, one sometimes has to look back to see who they are, and there the Russian novel anticipates the need with a Dramatis personæ.
Memorable names (and whether they are memorable just because quirky remains a separate, and unexamined issue - who can forget Tom Jones?) in a longer work do not, I believe, necessarily guide me as to who that person is in relation to everyone else, not least when (again in Bleak House) Dickens deliberately rattles on about the presumed oil-wells of the Reverend Chadband's countenance, or the perpetual need for a cushion to be readjusted, in such a way as to sabotage the progress of his own novel and distract our concentration.
Although, in
At any rate, in a fanciful desire to laud Dickens for this above all else, the contributor to the programme dismissed, as their
If Dickens excels, without the endeavours of other writers at least a century before Dickens even being considered, such as Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), but only Shakespeare (who was only credited with Aguecheek and Belch, because he allegedly took all of his names from his sources), then so be it, but why give Dickens a crown that he doesn't exclusively deserve, and which does not even typify the best things about him?
(In fact, anyone who has heard of William's contemporary Ben Jonson, or who ever took a look at The Alchemist, would find it hard to understand what the fuss about names in Dickens is...)
Since posting the above, and in looking vainly for somewhere on Radio 3's web-site to leave a comment, I've now found the following work, a slim volume published in 1917 by Elizabeth Hope Gordon:
The Naming of Characters in the Works of Charles Dickens
Wednesday 28 December 2011
Food cats
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28 December
Yes, you'll be thinking as I do, all cats are 'food cats':
Food cats would naturally choose - yes, what would food cats choose?
Well, apparently it is revolutionary thinking to 'believe that cats know what they like when it comes to food', so maybe the makers of this food don't have a cat, and someone who does had to tell them.
Then they seem to want to know what I think of their food. OK, we know that some people stocking up with tins of dog-food are buying a cheap meal for themselves, but what is this all about?:
Why not try one of our other W***** varieties?
or
Have you tried W****** DRY?
The text below seeks to exonerate these questions, by stating that their meals contain 'succulent pieces of meat and fish to vary your cat's diet', but I'm sure that they think that I must have just a little taste before I serve it...
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28 December
Yes, you'll be thinking as I do, all cats are 'food cats':
Food cats would naturally choose - yes, what would food cats choose?
Well, apparently it is revolutionary thinking to 'believe that cats know what they like when it comes to food', so maybe the makers of this food don't have a cat, and someone who does had to tell them.
Then they seem to want to know what I think of their food. OK, we know that some people stocking up with tins of dog-food are buying a cheap meal for themselves, but what is this all about?:
Why not try one of our other W***** varieties?
or
Have you tried W****** DRY?
The text below seeks to exonerate these questions, by stating that their meals contain 'succulent pieces of meat and fish to vary your cat's diet', but I'm sure that they think that I must have just a little taste before I serve it...
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Saturday 24 December 2011
The good man Philip and the railway service Pullman
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Christmas Day
Whatever one thinks of Philip P., if one has read any of his work*, the one whose title I'm parodying was not the snappiest, and more resembled the label of a Ronseal® tin in terms of subtlety.
For those not in the know generally, it appears that Mr Pullman has some issue with religion (maybe even Christianity as a formalized faith), and calling a book The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ is only a little less of a battle-cry than much of what Richard Dawkins naggingly wants to assert every waking minute of his life.
(Culturally or racially intolerant people want to bleat on about mosques, minarets and muezzins, but Dawkins is a foghorn in his own right, together with a blindingly white tower in one's view and a powerful light that he keeps shining in one's eyes.)
I can just imagine Alison Weir subtitling an account of Anne Boleyn's courtship and marriage The chaste, monogamous, home-loving king and his slatternly, unfaithful bitch of a wife - maybe she should try, if in need of boosting her sales: what about writing history for the masses in headlines worthy of defunct News of the World? (A sort of Horrible Histories of popular events, but for a different age-group.)
Anyway, back at PP: he's been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Moon, but the catch is that he has to go to collect it! (Presumably some bright spark's wheeze for keeping him out of the way for a while.)
Though that trick wouldn't work with RD, maybe, since he wrote The God Delusion, someone should write (something like) Dawkins: The Delusion of Anyone Giving a Frig - or God himself could prove that RD doesn't exist by dropping a huge tome on him called The Dawkins Delusion, a self-fulfilling title...
* Someone whom I know was so afraid, when reading the Dark Materials trilogy, that - and I quote - 'I would die before I got to the end' that he bunked off his lecturing job to make sure that the latter was completed before the former happened (although, for why it should have done, you'd have to ask him...).
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Christmas Day
Whatever one thinks of Philip P., if one has read any of his work*, the one whose title I'm parodying was not the snappiest, and more resembled the label of a Ronseal® tin in terms of subtlety.
For those not in the know generally, it appears that Mr Pullman has some issue with religion (maybe even Christianity as a formalized faith), and calling a book The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ is only a little less of a battle-cry than much of what Richard Dawkins naggingly wants to assert every waking minute of his life.
(Culturally or racially intolerant people want to bleat on about mosques, minarets and muezzins, but Dawkins is a foghorn in his own right, together with a blindingly white tower in one's view and a powerful light that he keeps shining in one's eyes.)
I can just imagine Alison Weir subtitling an account of Anne Boleyn's courtship and marriage The chaste, monogamous, home-loving king and his slatternly, unfaithful bitch of a wife - maybe she should try, if in need of boosting her sales: what about writing history for the masses in headlines worthy of defunct News of the World? (A sort of Horrible Histories of popular events, but for a different age-group.)
Anyway, back at PP: he's been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Moon, but the catch is that he has to go to collect it! (Presumably some bright spark's wheeze for keeping him out of the way for a while.)
Though that trick wouldn't work with RD, maybe, since he wrote The God Delusion, someone should write (something like) Dawkins: The Delusion of Anyone Giving a Frig - or God himself could prove that RD doesn't exist by dropping a huge tome on him called The Dawkins Delusion, a self-fulfilling title...
* Someone whom I know was so afraid, when reading the Dark Materials trilogy, that - and I quote - 'I would die before I got to the end' that he bunked off his lecturing job to make sure that the latter was completed before the former happened (although, for why it should have done, you'd have to ask him...).
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Has Will Smith been flyposting again?!
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Christmas Day
From a street in Cambridge:
IAMN
OTAR
OBOT
the lamp-post declared.
Never said that you were! I retorted.
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Christmas Day
From a street in Cambridge:
IAMN
OTAR
OBOT
the lamp-post declared.
Never said that you were! I retorted.
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The woman who wrote about pandas
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Christmas Eve
Yes, I'm sure that Ms Truss' book did well enough, but, with 'Pandamania' upon us*, what if she'd waited...! (Perhaps those led astray by the cover may still be interested.)
But why would anyone punctuate (think of punctuating?!) a sentence about pandas eating shoots - which we now know are so costly (a bit like buying a chinchilla, and then finding that the only thing that it will eat costs as much as (maybe a cheap) caviar!) - by putting a comma slap bang in the middle of They eat shoots and leaves, or whatever exactly it was**?
Really, one would have to subscribe to the 'theory of punctuation' that says:
(1) Never use the semi-colon - no one else does, and no one understands where it belongs, which may be cause and effect, or vice versa (if not a symbiotic feedback-loop);
(2) The colon is good (as above) once in a while, just to bring you up short, saying 'Something important (probably) follows!';
(3) NB Ignore the semi-colons in this list, but, for advanced students, that's the only way to employ them. If still tempted, stick in a dash instead (much safer!);
(4) Blather on until you've had enough with that sentence. Then, at least, a full-stop, if not, which is worth considering, a new paragraph;
(5) Finally, just to show who's boss, stick a comma in from time to time to impress - if they are in the wrong place (wherever that is), no one will know, and they are as likely to think that you've done something clever that they don't understand as stuck it where it doesn't fit;
(6) If needing to talk about more than one comma, comma's or commas are both fine***.
Not very convincing, but maybe that's Modern English. (About as tenuous as turning, by mistake, the description You wiggle! into the imperative You, wiggle!?)
* Or, if you prefer, Pandamonium...
** Ah, yes! It was some alleged dictionary or encyclopaedia, saying The panda eats, shoots and leaves.
It could just as easily have said The panda, eats shoots and, leaves, only no 'humorous' story about it dining in a restaurant would ensue, just apoplexy.
*** No one understands the apostrophe (or plurals) any longer, so you can do what you like:
Potato's (meaning 'Potatoes');
Paninis (pluralizing an already plural word);
Premia or stadia (when adding an 's' to 'premium' / 'stadium' is much more natural, as these words are not Latin, but naturalized English) -
Whatever you like, dear student! (Sorry, that should be Whatever, you like, dear student!, or even Whatever you, like dear student!.)
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Christmas Eve
Yes, I'm sure that Ms Truss' book did well enough, but, with 'Pandamania' upon us*, what if she'd waited...! (Perhaps those led astray by the cover may still be interested.)
But why would anyone punctuate (think of punctuating?!) a sentence about pandas eating shoots - which we now know are so costly (a bit like buying a chinchilla, and then finding that the only thing that it will eat costs as much as (maybe a cheap) caviar!) - by putting a comma slap bang in the middle of They eat shoots and leaves, or whatever exactly it was**?
Really, one would have to subscribe to the 'theory of punctuation' that says:
(1) Never use the semi-colon - no one else does, and no one understands where it belongs, which may be cause and effect, or vice versa (if not a symbiotic feedback-loop);
(2) The colon is good (as above) once in a while, just to bring you up short, saying 'Something important (probably) follows!';
(3) NB Ignore the semi-colons in this list, but, for advanced students, that's the only way to employ them. If still tempted, stick in a dash instead (much safer!);
(4) Blather on until you've had enough with that sentence. Then, at least, a full-stop, if not, which is worth considering, a new paragraph;
(5) Finally, just to show who's boss, stick a comma in from time to time to impress - if they are in the wrong place (wherever that is), no one will know, and they are as likely to think that you've done something clever that they don't understand as stuck it where it doesn't fit;
(6) If needing to talk about more than one comma, comma's or commas are both fine***.
Not very convincing, but maybe that's Modern English. (About as tenuous as turning, by mistake, the description You wiggle! into the imperative You, wiggle!?)
* Or, if you prefer, Pandamonium...
** Ah, yes! It was some alleged dictionary or encyclopaedia, saying The panda eats, shoots and leaves.
It could just as easily have said The panda, eats shoots and, leaves, only no 'humorous' story about it dining in a restaurant would ensue, just apoplexy.
*** No one understands the apostrophe (or plurals) any longer, so you can do what you like:
Potato's (meaning 'Potatoes');
Paninis (pluralizing an already plural word);
Premia or stadia (when adding an 's' to 'premium' / 'stadium' is much more natural, as these words are not Latin, but naturalized English) -
Whatever you like, dear student! (Sorry, that should be Whatever, you like, dear student!, or even Whatever you, like dear student!.)
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Friday 23 December 2011
Mind charity shops and NAMH
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
23 December 2011 (updated 2 February 2013, 11 January 2015)
Seeing Paul Farmer's Tweet, I gave him the opportunity to comment. He did not do so (until 11 months later, when asked again...).
You will know the national charity Mind (it sometimes claims to be the leading UK mental-health charity, but Rethink and the Mental Health Foundation may not agree).
Some places where people live have a local Mind charity shop: the common misconception (which, for all that I know, some obscure notice on the premises may allegedly clarify, if you knew that it is there) is that giving items to or otherwise supporting the shop supports people locally who have mental-health issues (rather than Mind itself, the national body).
Some people also assume that 'Mind' means something, and write it 'MIND', as if it were an acronym, but it is actually just a trading-name that stuck to and was kept by what is really the National Association for Mental Health (or NAMH).
So, to summarize, Mind is really NAMH, and Mind charity shops don't support the Mind named after your area, e.g. West Norfolk Mind (if there is one and you lived there).
Now, other charities, say Red Cross, may be set up the same way - I don't know - but, in Mind's case, it's just several assumptions that it would be easy enough to prevent people making, if it mattered enough to stop them.
Now one wild, further, improbable step: imagine East Cambridge Mind (there isn't one, but let's call it ECM) providing services in the voluntary sector, receiving grants and funding, etc. They might offer somewhere where, using Mind's favoured terms, those with a personal experience of 'mental distress' can come for a coffee at certain times of the week.
Or there might be free counselling, or the artificial buddying known as befriending, where a volunteer commits to meet with a member of ECM every so often to allow social things like going for a walk or having a drink (maybe one then the other) that might seem harder to do on one's own. Services, anyway, that need staff and volunteers.
Mind doesn't employ the staff or manage the volunteers, because Mind (as NAMH) is a separate company. ECM is another. Mind lets ECM use the Mind name by agreeing to let it subscribe to be a Local Mind Association (or LMA).
OK, so Mind where you live will be a company (usually limited by guarantee) registered at Companies House. NAMH is another one, so they are separate, except for NAMH letting ECM have Mind in its name.
ECM subscribes (pays a subscription, amongst other things) to do that, but it remains separate. Two companies, never the twain shall meet, although national Mind does require these LMAs (such as ECM) to meet quality standards. The assessment, though, is largely on the basis of self-certification.
So to establish that, say, ECM supervises its staff regularly (maybe monthly) for that quality standard, what Mind actually does is to get ECM to fill in a series of forms that state how, where and when supervision takes place and is recorded. For example, ECM sets out how the manager meets the employee or volunteer every x weeks, spends at least y hours with him or her without interruption, and makes sure that z specified issues are discussed every time.
No other check is made - it may not happen at all, or, at least as often or as well as certified. As far as Mind is concerned, ECM is meeting the quality standard, just because it says that it is meeting the quality standard. That's fine, of course.
Or might you be saying this?:
Isn't ECM employing or having as volunteers people who work with vulnerable people, some of whom may be vulnerable people themselves, seeking 'to give something back'?
That's true.
OK, so aren't there at least three people's interests to protect?
(a) The person receiving a service through ECM;
(b) The person giving a service on behalf of ECM;
(c) The other staff / volunteers of ECM?
Yes, that's right.
And, in fact, isn't there a fourth (maybe a fifth) set of interests?
(d) The carers / relatives / friends of the person receiving a service (or those who otherwise come into contact with the staff and volunteers of ECM)?
You're still right, and some of those are the ones who are not disabused as to what they are supporting with Mind charity shops, too.
So, if something goes wrong, if a volunteer or an employee (or all of them) is not being supervised, and Mind is just being told that they are, it will want to know and will take action?
No, Mind just believes what it's told - it actually has no mechanism for an employee to go to it and complain of not being supervised, because it will just direct him or her back to ECM. ECM is a company, Mind is a company (NAMH), and, despite ECM subscribing to Mind, Mind says that it has no control over ECM.
It remains an internal matter to resolve with ECM, even if the staff member or volunteer is vulnerable because of mental distress, and is less well placed to challenge ECM's company approach or adherence to quality standards or its procedures. Mind will not help or get involved - the aggrieved person, who is not being supervised properly and / or regularly, must raise a grievance.
But that's OK, isn't it? It fits with the slogan (it's for For better mental health, isn't it?), and is just the model of governance you expect from the Mind name.
Good, knew you'd be happy - merry Christmas!
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23 December 2011 (updated 2 February 2013, 11 January 2015)
A good day for some early spring cleaning and take stuff to your local Mind shop.
— Paul Farmer (@paulfarmermind) February 2, 2013
But does one's 'local Mind shop',@paulfarmermind, raise funds that are spent *locally*, on services where one lives ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 2, 2013
Seeing Paul Farmer's Tweet, I gave him the opportunity to comment. He did not do so (until 11 months later, when asked again...).
@THEAGENTAPSLEY @MindCharity around £400,000 per year goes to local Minds in grants from the profits generated by our shops.
— Paul Farmer (@paulfarmermind) January 11, 2015You will know the national charity Mind (it sometimes claims to be the leading UK mental-health charity, but Rethink and the Mental Health Foundation may not agree).
Some places where people live have a local Mind charity shop: the common misconception (which, for all that I know, some obscure notice on the premises may allegedly clarify, if you knew that it is there) is that giving items to or otherwise supporting the shop supports people locally who have mental-health issues (rather than Mind itself, the national body).
Some people also assume that 'Mind' means something, and write it 'MIND', as if it were an acronym, but it is actually just a trading-name that stuck to and was kept by what is really the National Association for Mental Health (or NAMH).
So, to summarize, Mind is really NAMH, and Mind charity shops don't support the Mind named after your area, e.g. West Norfolk Mind (if there is one and you lived there).
Now, other charities, say Red Cross, may be set up the same way - I don't know - but, in Mind's case, it's just several assumptions that it would be easy enough to prevent people making, if it mattered enough to stop them.
Now one wild, further, improbable step: imagine East Cambridge Mind (there isn't one, but let's call it ECM) providing services in the voluntary sector, receiving grants and funding, etc. They might offer somewhere where, using Mind's favoured terms, those with a personal experience of 'mental distress' can come for a coffee at certain times of the week.
Or there might be free counselling, or the artificial buddying known as befriending, where a volunteer commits to meet with a member of ECM every so often to allow social things like going for a walk or having a drink (maybe one then the other) that might seem harder to do on one's own. Services, anyway, that need staff and volunteers.
Mind doesn't employ the staff or manage the volunteers, because Mind (as NAMH) is a separate company. ECM is another. Mind lets ECM use the Mind name by agreeing to let it subscribe to be a Local Mind Association (or LMA).
OK, so Mind where you live will be a company (usually limited by guarantee) registered at Companies House. NAMH is another one, so they are separate, except for NAMH letting ECM have Mind in its name.
ECM subscribes (pays a subscription, amongst other things) to do that, but it remains separate. Two companies, never the twain shall meet, although national Mind does require these LMAs (such as ECM) to meet quality standards. The assessment, though, is largely on the basis of self-certification.
So to establish that, say, ECM supervises its staff regularly (maybe monthly) for that quality standard, what Mind actually does is to get ECM to fill in a series of forms that state how, where and when supervision takes place and is recorded. For example, ECM sets out how the manager meets the employee or volunteer every x weeks, spends at least y hours with him or her without interruption, and makes sure that z specified issues are discussed every time.
No other check is made - it may not happen at all, or, at least as often or as well as certified. As far as Mind is concerned, ECM is meeting the quality standard, just because it says that it is meeting the quality standard. That's fine, of course.
Or might you be saying this?:
Isn't ECM employing or having as volunteers people who work with vulnerable people, some of whom may be vulnerable people themselves, seeking 'to give something back'?
That's true.
OK, so aren't there at least three people's interests to protect?
(a) The person receiving a service through ECM;
(b) The person giving a service on behalf of ECM;
(c) The other staff / volunteers of ECM?
Yes, that's right.
And, in fact, isn't there a fourth (maybe a fifth) set of interests?
(d) The carers / relatives / friends of the person receiving a service (or those who otherwise come into contact with the staff and volunteers of ECM)?
You're still right, and some of those are the ones who are not disabused as to what they are supporting with Mind charity shops, too.
So, if something goes wrong, if a volunteer or an employee (or all of them) is not being supervised, and Mind is just being told that they are, it will want to know and will take action?
No, Mind just believes what it's told - it actually has no mechanism for an employee to go to it and complain of not being supervised, because it will just direct him or her back to ECM. ECM is a company, Mind is a company (NAMH), and, despite ECM subscribing to Mind, Mind says that it has no control over ECM.
It remains an internal matter to resolve with ECM, even if the staff member or volunteer is vulnerable because of mental distress, and is less well placed to challenge ECM's company approach or adherence to quality standards or its procedures. Mind will not help or get involved - the aggrieved person, who is not being supervised properly and / or regularly, must raise a grievance.
But that's OK, isn't it? It fits with the slogan (it's for For better mental health, isn't it?), and is just the model of governance you expect from the Mind name.
Good, knew you'd be happy - merry Christmas!
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The habit of collecting (3)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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23 December
Well, an evening of interesting prospects:
Gerry Hawkins offers me to Discover the secrets of sex with our pills
However, Gerry's gender is unclear, so it may be germane to find out, if the invitation is to discover the secrets with her / him (rather than just swallow the tablets made of talcum powder and rat poison)...
Also, as such pitches are usually offering penis enlargement, what's secret about that, I have to ask? In fact, the well-endowed males report a problem accommodating their flexible friend neatly when it becomes firmer and thus more noticeable, so no secret there.
But, of course, the secret has to be what one can do, which one couldn't before, with the supposedly available super-member, and then the usual thing is make a more open claim about length or girth. Well, maybe increasing one dimension of the relevant organ might be a better pay-off than the other, as the receiving part is not infinitely deep, and I have been told (although it could, of course, have been reassurance) that it could be quite uncomfortable to have that much penetration...
Back at my e-mail, Molly Justice (my cat is called Molly, so perhaps she's starting Internet protests at my care of her!) wants to promote something more novel: Yelling with toothache, here is the way out!
Sure, one might be being invited to make a one-way trip to a Swiss clinic, but there are worse things than NHS dentists (non-NHS dentists, for one, as the bill can give more pain than any tooth)!
In any case, with the Christmas post, how am I supposed to get any remedy, even if it were genuine and were genuinely to be sent to me? But I suppose there's Special Delivery or some equivalent form of courier, and some might be so avoidant of dentistry and keen for a solution that they would subscribe.
I shall look out for others in the same business, having just read a Woody Allen piece about a bureau that puts prayers on eBay for the highest bidder, and which seems apt (more about that it in the Woody strand of postings about Mere Anarchy)...
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23 December
Well, an evening of interesting prospects:
Gerry Hawkins offers me to Discover the secrets of sex with our pills
However, Gerry's gender is unclear, so it may be germane to find out, if the invitation is to discover the secrets with her / him (rather than just swallow the tablets made of talcum powder and rat poison)...
Also, as such pitches are usually offering penis enlargement, what's secret about that, I have to ask? In fact, the well-endowed males report a problem accommodating their flexible friend neatly when it becomes firmer and thus more noticeable, so no secret there.
But, of course, the secret has to be what one can do, which one couldn't before, with the supposedly available super-member, and then the usual thing is make a more open claim about length or girth. Well, maybe increasing one dimension of the relevant organ might be a better pay-off than the other, as the receiving part is not infinitely deep, and I have been told (although it could, of course, have been reassurance) that it could be quite uncomfortable to have that much penetration...
Back at my e-mail, Molly Justice (my cat is called Molly, so perhaps she's starting Internet protests at my care of her!) wants to promote something more novel: Yelling with toothache, here is the way out!
Sure, one might be being invited to make a one-way trip to a Swiss clinic, but there are worse things than NHS dentists (non-NHS dentists, for one, as the bill can give more pain than any tooth)!
In any case, with the Christmas post, how am I supposed to get any remedy, even if it were genuine and were genuinely to be sent to me? But I suppose there's Special Delivery or some equivalent form of courier, and some might be so avoidant of dentistry and keen for a solution that they would subscribe.
I shall look out for others in the same business, having just read a Woody Allen piece about a bureau that puts prayers on eBay for the highest bidder, and which seems apt (more about that it in the Woody strand of postings about Mere Anarchy)...
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Thursday 22 December 2011
Tyrannosaur and Another Earth
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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23 December
* Contains spoilers *
Both hailed at Sundance, but how Paddy Considine's direction won a best award is beyond me, whereas Brit Marling / Mike Cahill's film did deserve all that it got (and probably more):
Did Tyrannosaur tell a story? Yes.
Was it pretty much a linear narrative? Yes.
Was the story shocking or innovative? Well, a man kicking his canine best friend to death because angry at someone else did jolt, but it just set the tone, only slightly offset as a stereotype by Joseph's (Peter Mullan's) being someone who can give a fuck (sometimes).
What was innovative about the direction? Yes, what was innovative about the direction?
In interview at Cambridge Film Festival, Considine was clear that: his script was the script; he is on the Autistic spectrum; and there was no role play / improvisation in sight.
For my money, he wrote a decent enough script, given what he wanted to tell a story about, but all of these actors* - Peter Mullan, for God's sake! - were quite capable of delivering it with minimal direction.
And the title and the poster image that incorporated and reflected it? Sheer red herring, as far as I can see.
Just part of this comfortable myth that Joseph had enough humanity to go with his brutality and bullying that he would be self-aware when telling Hannah (Olivia Colman) that calling her that name (i.e. 'the Tyrannosaur') was how he mocked his late wife's clomping around because of her obesity or disability (I forget which).
So I know which film praised at Sundance I'll be rewatching - on a screen, if I get the chance!
* Incidentally, a factor links the three main figures:
Peter Mullan
Olivia Colman
Eddie Marsan
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23 December
* Contains spoilers *
Both hailed at Sundance, but how Paddy Considine's direction won a best award is beyond me, whereas Brit Marling / Mike Cahill's film did deserve all that it got (and probably more):
Did Tyrannosaur tell a story? Yes.
Was it pretty much a linear narrative? Yes.
Was the story shocking or innovative? Well, a man kicking his canine best friend to death because angry at someone else did jolt, but it just set the tone, only slightly offset as a stereotype by Joseph's (Peter Mullan's) being someone who can give a fuck (sometimes).
What was innovative about the direction? Yes, what was innovative about the direction?
In interview at Cambridge Film Festival, Considine was clear that: his script was the script; he is on the Autistic spectrum; and there was no role play / improvisation in sight.
For my money, he wrote a decent enough script, given what he wanted to tell a story about, but all of these actors* - Peter Mullan, for God's sake! - were quite capable of delivering it with minimal direction.
And the title and the poster image that incorporated and reflected it? Sheer red herring, as far as I can see.
Just part of this comfortable myth that Joseph had enough humanity to go with his brutality and bullying that he would be self-aware when telling Hannah (Olivia Colman) that calling her that name (i.e. 'the Tyrannosaur') was how he mocked his late wife's clomping around because of her obesity or disability (I forget which).
So I know which film praised at Sundance I'll be rewatching - on a screen, if I get the chance!
* Incidentally, a factor links the three main figures:
Peter Mullan
Olivia Colman
Eddie Marsan
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Another blog - Writer's Rest (2)
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23 December
At Writer's Rest, Lindsay has now made a posting to comment on my posting*:
That is the question and right now it is unanswerable. I want to read this book. I think author is right about the language used to describe this theoretical ascension into consciousness. Personally, I believe that IF it happens (I have no idea whether it will or not), it will fall far short of an apocalyptic event.
* IF technology were what it is cracked up to be, I would not have had to notice in the list of blogs that I am following that there had been a reply, I was supposed to get an e-mail - maybe the e-mail got too interested in watching the trailer for J. Edgar, though I can't fathom why (Hoover as a black woman in the court scene in Bananas, Woody Allen's early collaboration with Marshall Brickman, fires my imagination far more than Leonardo does)...
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23 December
At Writer's Rest, Lindsay has now made a posting to comment on my posting*:
That is the question and right now it is unanswerable. I want to read this book. I think author is right about the language used to describe this theoretical ascension into consciousness. Personally, I believe that IF it happens (I have no idea whether it will or not), it will fall far short of an apocalyptic event.
* IF technology were what it is cracked up to be, I would not have had to notice in the list of blogs that I am following that there had been a reply, I was supposed to get an e-mail - maybe the e-mail got too interested in watching the trailer for J. Edgar, though I can't fathom why (Hoover as a black woman in the court scene in Bananas, Woody Allen's early collaboration with Marshall Brickman, fires my imagination far more than Leonardo does)...
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The habit of collecting (2)
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23 December
Some will know the drummer Jack de Johnette (of, amongst other things, long-standing service in Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio).
Well, in three spam messages to delete one surely from a would-be relation, Jacquetta Donnette, telling me how great I'll feel with an 'exact fake watch'.
So it's either the penis or - maybe not unrelatedly... - the wrist that gets targeted: Of Cock or The Clock, maybe one could say.
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23 December
Some will know the drummer Jack de Johnette (of, amongst other things, long-standing service in Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio).
Well, in three spam messages to delete one surely from a would-be relation, Jacquetta Donnette, telling me how great I'll feel with an 'exact fake watch'.
So it's either the penis or - maybe not unrelatedly... - the wrist that gets targeted: Of Cock or The Clock, maybe one could say.
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From the archive: In a Better World reviewed in a poem
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23 December
Christian's Journey
21 August 2011
Copyright © Belston Night Works 2011
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23 December
Christian's Journey
A boy who played with pipe-bombs
Nearly kills his friend -
Christian's the bomber,
Saved by his friend's dad:
Elijah's not in pieces
(Though he thought him dead)
And, on the towering silo,
He need not seek his end.
Returning from his coldness
At his mother's death
(He'd made himself heroic -
His father's sternest judge),
The future is reopened,
The truth can be revealed,
And Christian learns of feelings
That his hate concealed.
21 August 2011
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There is another Earth – and, wow, up there with Solaris! (part posting)
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23 December
Something doesn’t have to be plausible to be genuine, human, warm and engaging, and elements of Another Earth are not plausible*, but that didn’t matter.
If I had earlier followed up, as I intended, the newspaper’s and Sundance’s recommendation to see this film, I could have given it the ‘watch it again and see if it matters / works’ test. However, this was the last screening most locally to me, so no another Another Earth for me just yet…
One thing to have known from a second screening might have been whether there were clues in the first 20 to 30 minutes that I missed that it was going to develop and build so dramatically. That said, there was nothing about it to say ‘Cut your losses, this isn’t going anywhere’, it’s just that it gave the impression of being unexceptional, which, start to finish, it certainly isn’t. (It would have take a cussed ‘This isn’t what it was cracked up to be!’ to walk out.)
Another would have been to know when Brit Marling’s luminous quality as Rhoda Williams first came through, because, again, I had the expectation from the write-up that the actress / co-director / co-producer was striking and her performance revelatory, which she and it are. For what she reveals, she sometimes also conceals, but there was a subtly amused tone to her response to what John Burroughs (played by William Mapother - a curious alternative to cartography!) was saying to her.
... To be continued - in another posting
* They are minor things, but criminal rehabilitation, both in prison and on parole, would have involved seeking to apologize to the victims of the crime or, as the case might be, being directed to stay away, because saying sorry wouldn’t be welcome.
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23 December
Something doesn’t have to be plausible to be genuine, human, warm and engaging, and elements of Another Earth are not plausible*, but that didn’t matter.
If I had earlier followed up, as I intended, the newspaper’s and Sundance’s recommendation to see this film, I could have given it the ‘watch it again and see if it matters / works’ test. However, this was the last screening most locally to me, so no another Another Earth for me just yet…
One thing to have known from a second screening might have been whether there were clues in the first 20 to 30 minutes that I missed that it was going to develop and build so dramatically. That said, there was nothing about it to say ‘Cut your losses, this isn’t going anywhere’, it’s just that it gave the impression of being unexceptional, which, start to finish, it certainly isn’t. (It would have take a cussed ‘This isn’t what it was cracked up to be!’ to walk out.)
Another would have been to know when Brit Marling’s luminous quality as Rhoda Williams first came through, because, again, I had the expectation from the write-up that the actress / co-director / co-producer was striking and her performance revelatory, which she and it are. For what she reveals, she sometimes also conceals, but there was a subtly amused tone to her response to what John Burroughs (played by William Mapother - a curious alternative to cartography!) was saying to her.
... To be continued - in another posting
* They are minor things, but criminal rehabilitation, both in prison and on parole, would have involved seeking to apologize to the victims of the crime or, as the case might be, being directed to stay away, because saying sorry wouldn’t be welcome.
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Forty-five years in film (2)
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22 December
I still haven't looked to see whether unnaturally or not, but the version that I thought was going to press turned out to have to be truncated, and that is really all that I know as yet, with one of the three illustrations being out, too.
Still, I shall commend the New Empress Magazine's 2011 Year Book, as there is much else in it - available from NEM web-site's ordering-system or, although the navigation's tricky, via www.newempressmagazine.com, and possibly via the ISSN (but it's not on this issue)...
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22 December
I still haven't looked to see whether unnaturally or not, but the version that I thought was going to press turned out to have to be truncated, and that is really all that I know as yet, with one of the three illustrations being out, too.
Still, I shall commend the New Empress Magazine's 2011 Year Book, as there is much else in it - available from NEM web-site's ordering-system or, although the navigation's tricky, via www.newempressmagazine.com, and possibly via the ISSN (but it's not on this issue)...
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In and out of insults
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22 December
Fashion was when an abruptly raised solo middle finger (probably of either hand - forgive me for not being bothered with the etiquette!), together with the curt utterance ‘Swivel!’, was deeply insulting*. Probably, then, it became less insulting, until it became too tame to do at all, because I cannot think when I last saw it done.
(If not on t.v., although it usually lags behind in the provocation stakes, it probably originated on celluloid, that great promoter of catch-phrases such as the dire ‘I’ll be back…!’ – with its sickeningly inappropriate overtones of Captain Oates.)
In their time, insults and insulting gestures have the currency (pun intended!) of being known to be both the latest and also stylish: by saying it and doing the (action and) utterance properly, you are showing that you are an informed person, and so worthwhile. (By mimicking something else, whether it is passé or just not credited as being the thing to do, you are showing the converse, your worthlessness: and we all know how the dictionary almost invairably defines various coarse words as meaning (amongst those referring to the sexual organs in which they have their home) 'a worthless [or offensive] person'.
But we know that all, of course: we're modern, we're in the post-Manwatching period. What we don’t know is that the same gesture, performed more slowly, and with the utterance softer and more questioning would have been a pick-up line in Tokyo’s infamous district of the love-hotels. After all, would the person using the more combative combination either expect or want to be taken up on the offered service?
Fine, the insult depends on proposing a penetration that is assumed to be unwelcome, but it only works if there isn’t a retort that takes it at face value and says ‘Yes, please! – Your place or mine?’, intending to induce the revulsion in the other person that he or she sought to provoke. Other responses, of a more cloacal nature, could equally have been devised, but I doubt that they were.
Which shows? The mere copying of a gesture or insult is just that, whereas it takes genuine wit to parry it, as stand-ups do with put-downs, and make the person who uttered it (feel) defenceless and stupid. Doing it on the hoof takes sharper wits, of course, and most people who expect to be heckled have their armoury of both passive and offensive attack – which can, in turn, be copied…
Homo sapiens? I don’t think so! More like Homo mimicus, and even the primates, mammals and birds do that to pass on tricks that have been discovered even in the domain of accessing, processing or eating food. (Quite apart from bees and the honey-dances, and ants’ - or termites’ - ways of passing on important information about threat or prey.)
But do any of these creatures copy something that, looked at, makes no rational sense? – why would the person raising the finger actually want it where he or she suggests the other person accepting it, and, if he or she actually stopped to consider the indecent proposal, wouldn’t he or she be the loser in the transaction?!
Negative view it may be, but human-beings are not always very selective, and the part of the body that this sort of copying behaviour resembles most is not the brain, but the appendix, for its redundancy (and also the scope for grievously poisoning the body with its hoard of toxins). Not the evolutionary future at all, not even a tributary, but a silted-up backwater, stagnating and no longer flowing!
* And these things can be misheard, of course, to the great delight of those who realize that someone else has got it wrong: imagine someone going through the whole routine perfectly, but under the impression that the word is 'Snivel'...
(Actually, a friend revealed, by writing down the phrase 'can't be asked', that there is evidence of genetic miscopying (sc. transcriptional error) in meanings changing and phrasal words becoming confused - when it is the thing to say 'feisty', no one troubles to think what the word actually means, because, hey, we're talking about The Spice Girls, and we know what they're like, so we know what feisty signifies?
Johnson got it all wrong with his dictionary, then, and Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty was right - should have said that the awesome five were 'very helicopter' and seen if that caught on, if you can excuse me being a bit traffic-cone about it!)
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22 December
Fashion was when an abruptly raised solo middle finger (probably of either hand - forgive me for not being bothered with the etiquette!), together with the curt utterance ‘Swivel!’, was deeply insulting*. Probably, then, it became less insulting, until it became too tame to do at all, because I cannot think when I last saw it done.
(If not on t.v., although it usually lags behind in the provocation stakes, it probably originated on celluloid, that great promoter of catch-phrases such as the dire ‘I’ll be back…!’ – with its sickeningly inappropriate overtones of Captain Oates.)
In their time, insults and insulting gestures have the currency (pun intended!) of being known to be both the latest and also stylish: by saying it and doing the (action and) utterance properly, you are showing that you are an informed person, and so worthwhile. (By mimicking something else, whether it is passé or just not credited as being the thing to do, you are showing the converse, your worthlessness: and we all know how the dictionary almost invairably defines various coarse words as meaning (amongst those referring to the sexual organs in which they have their home) 'a worthless [or offensive] person'.
But we know that all, of course: we're modern, we're in the post-Manwatching period. What we don’t know is that the same gesture, performed more slowly, and with the utterance softer and more questioning would have been a pick-up line in Tokyo’s infamous district of the love-hotels. After all, would the person using the more combative combination either expect or want to be taken up on the offered service?
Fine, the insult depends on proposing a penetration that is assumed to be unwelcome, but it only works if there isn’t a retort that takes it at face value and says ‘Yes, please! – Your place or mine?’, intending to induce the revulsion in the other person that he or she sought to provoke. Other responses, of a more cloacal nature, could equally have been devised, but I doubt that they were.
Which shows? The mere copying of a gesture or insult is just that, whereas it takes genuine wit to parry it, as stand-ups do with put-downs, and make the person who uttered it (feel) defenceless and stupid. Doing it on the hoof takes sharper wits, of course, and most people who expect to be heckled have their armoury of both passive and offensive attack – which can, in turn, be copied…
Homo sapiens? I don’t think so! More like Homo mimicus, and even the primates, mammals and birds do that to pass on tricks that have been discovered even in the domain of accessing, processing or eating food. (Quite apart from bees and the honey-dances, and ants’ - or termites’ - ways of passing on important information about threat or prey.)
But do any of these creatures copy something that, looked at, makes no rational sense? – why would the person raising the finger actually want it where he or she suggests the other person accepting it, and, if he or she actually stopped to consider the indecent proposal, wouldn’t he or she be the loser in the transaction?!
Negative view it may be, but human-beings are not always very selective, and the part of the body that this sort of copying behaviour resembles most is not the brain, but the appendix, for its redundancy (and also the scope for grievously poisoning the body with its hoard of toxins). Not the evolutionary future at all, not even a tributary, but a silted-up backwater, stagnating and no longer flowing!
* And these things can be misheard, of course, to the great delight of those who realize that someone else has got it wrong: imagine someone going through the whole routine perfectly, but under the impression that the word is 'Snivel'...
(Actually, a friend revealed, by writing down the phrase 'can't be asked', that there is evidence of genetic miscopying (sc. transcriptional error) in meanings changing and phrasal words becoming confused - when it is the thing to say 'feisty', no one troubles to think what the word actually means, because, hey, we're talking about The Spice Girls, and we know what they're like, so we know what feisty signifies?
Johnson got it all wrong with his dictionary, then, and Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty was right - should have said that the awesome five were 'very helicopter' and seen if that caught on, if you can excuse me being a bit traffic-cone about it!)
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A survey / summary
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Whether it really means that they were of interest (or someone just told someone else to look), I have no idea, but the list of postings with the most page-views (since the blog's inception) is:
No. Posting
90 Dimensions: Through the looking-glass of time? (2)
75 Unlimited dimensions
57 Nicola Malet at The Tavern Gallery (Meldreth)
41 The man who believed in flicker-drive
9 The Physics of Poetry
6 A tribute to times past
6 An appreciation of L'enfance du Christ
6 New dimensions on Dimensions
5 Blogging at the Tate (from 4 September)
5 Dimensions to-night
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22 December
Whether it really means that they were of interest (or someone just told someone else to look), I have no idea, but the list of postings with the most page-views (since the blog's inception) is:
No. Posting
90 Dimensions: Through the looking-glass of time? (2)
75 Unlimited dimensions
57 Nicola Malet at The Tavern Gallery (Meldreth)
41 The man who believed in flicker-drive
9 The Physics of Poetry
6 A tribute to times past
6 An appreciation of L'enfance du Christ
6 New dimensions on Dimensions
5 Blogging at the Tate (from 4 September)
5 Dimensions to-night
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Wednesday 21 December 2011
The Truth about Russell Hoban (according to Hermann Orff)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Those who know Russ Hoban's work well (although he is also author of A Practical Guide to Wood-working, and a number of spin-off titles such as A Practical Guide to Working with Live Maggots on Film-sets) will not be surprised by the revelation, cannily made to-day by one-time shrinkhead and writer for the breakfast-cereal market Hermann Orff, that the person who has died recently was not really Russ at all.
Let me (with the benefit of what, courtesy of Hermes Soundways®, I have understood about the whole Hoban Morphing Project - Humph for short - in the last few crazy days, when sleep seemed a luxury, not a necessity) try to explain:
* Orff first got it from a cabbage that wasn't really a cabbage, but a tip-off that domestic intelligence was getting wise to the whole Hoban vibe, that things were not as they seemed.
* He, being a crazy son of a bitch at the best of times and, like the prophets of old, not one to do what he was damn'd well told, tried to turn the mission down (as if we Agents have any choice, any right of veto, say, about being despatched to Connemara with god-little notice to obtain Yerk's tie-pin (by fair means or foul)!
* So he buggers off to Antibes, and starts hanging out with set there, saying that, despite his thick Rhine accent, he is a Plaid Cymru councillor turned t.v. evangelist who has been working wonders in Mold and even as far as Chester...
* Anyway, the short of it is that he gets zapped in quite the sort of way that he's making out the hand of God is whipping his flock into divine order, because Youdi visits him personally (but in a dream - some of your mystic apparition stuff) and tells him that if he doesn't fry his backside pronto and get back to Blighty, no accrued pension rights (deferred or no) for him.
* Orff falls in line, and goes on the snoop like a good member of the agenthood. Truth is, MI5 has by now got the whole scam, so pretending to date Stella Rimington by overpraising her latest ouevre brings him enough Gewissheit to blow the gaff and, on the pretext that he is a demented collector of plastic figures from the packets of those puffy little boulders of sheer sucrose that Orff himself had been wont to scoff at breakfast as a boy, secures the whole Hoban files.
* On Youdi's orders, this time communicated through that rather bored and, if not world-weary, then rather mundane bearer of tidings Gaber, he legs it with the dossiers, leaving behind a dented metal globe and some electrodes (some trip Kraken had been on made him think that it would be a red herring), and pores over the whole caboodle down at The Cheshire Cheese.
* I see him there, think to myself I wonder what the schlemihl's up to this time with his conspicuous Bogart gear (hat and all), and, sidling up, start plying him with double pink gins, for which he has an insatiable fondness. Well, he's got the fondness, but he hasn't got the stomach to go with it (and is toping on a near-empty stomach), so, on his sixth, he's suddenly belly side up on the floor, and I'm legging it with the Hoban papers.
* I go to a location that Lola told me about, some weird sort of castle place off the south coast that she liked (it was nice, with the ribbons and banners and all that), and master the whole scheme in a matter of hours, plied by a dram or two from the Sound of Islay, before getting the nub over to Youdi on the old handheld (had to stand on one leg, though, facing the wind to get a signal when it came to transmit).
* Message back from Youdi, via a vision of a bus about to plunge off the edge of a nearby cliff and the assorted screams of the no longer would-be passengers, to make a posting here.
* So, the real Huss Hoban (christened Russell Idaho Obama) first saw the light of day the day that Christ died at his parental home in Foxrock nearly 55 years ago. Unaccountably, though the ostensible child of a god-fearing Protestant Irish couple called Becquet, he was black, and it does not require a genius to work out that he was destined for the care of the Sisters of Mercy.
* All in all, he quickly had a new home in Brixton, and grew up, not knowing otherwise, as if South London were his natal home, and the immigrant Borges family, who adopted him to overcome childlessness, were his parents.
* When it came to know better, he didn't care to, being too much engrossed in learning the business of being an illustrator to care much about how he was conceived or who gave him birth. However, he did execute a deed to change his name, because he had resolved to overcome the stigma that it was obvious that would detract from his work, if, as he fancied, he branched out into writing.
* In a place as huge and populous as the States, finding someone with the same name who would settle in the UK and front as him for as long as was convenient was not difficult.
* Both men quite enjoyed their respective roles, one with full licence to embellish any aspect of his life that would enhance the quirky, out-of-the-groove market that his accomplice was seeking to appeal to, who was, in turn, freed from the demands on him to do other than write, without the need to present a front.
* The rest is history. Van Morrison, more obviously, did the same thing when he appointed Brian Kennedy as his public mouthpiece. Those, however, who really believe that Naomi Campbell authored a novel about a swan have wasted precious minutes that could have been spent reading The Daily Mail instead - sorry to have intruded on those endless stories of doom and disaster!
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Those who know Russ Hoban's work well (although he is also author of A Practical Guide to Wood-working, and a number of spin-off titles such as A Practical Guide to Working with Live Maggots on Film-sets) will not be surprised by the revelation, cannily made to-day by one-time shrinkhead and writer for the breakfast-cereal market Hermann Orff, that the person who has died recently was not really Russ at all.
Let me (with the benefit of what, courtesy of Hermes Soundways®, I have understood about the whole Hoban Morphing Project - Humph for short - in the last few crazy days, when sleep seemed a luxury, not a necessity) try to explain:
* Orff first got it from a cabbage that wasn't really a cabbage, but a tip-off that domestic intelligence was getting wise to the whole Hoban vibe, that things were not as they seemed.
* He, being a crazy son of a bitch at the best of times and, like the prophets of old, not one to do what he was damn'd well told, tried to turn the mission down (as if we Agents have any choice, any right of veto, say, about being despatched to Connemara with god-little notice to obtain Yerk's tie-pin (by fair means or foul)!
* So he buggers off to Antibes, and starts hanging out with set there, saying that, despite his thick Rhine accent, he is a Plaid Cymru councillor turned t.v. evangelist who has been working wonders in Mold and even as far as Chester...
* Anyway, the short of it is that he gets zapped in quite the sort of way that he's making out the hand of God is whipping his flock into divine order, because Youdi visits him personally (but in a dream - some of your mystic apparition stuff) and tells him that if he doesn't fry his backside pronto and get back to Blighty, no accrued pension rights (deferred or no) for him.
* Orff falls in line, and goes on the snoop like a good member of the agenthood. Truth is, MI5 has by now got the whole scam, so pretending to date Stella Rimington by overpraising her latest ouevre brings him enough Gewissheit to blow the gaff and, on the pretext that he is a demented collector of plastic figures from the packets of those puffy little boulders of sheer sucrose that Orff himself had been wont to scoff at breakfast as a boy, secures the whole Hoban files.
* On Youdi's orders, this time communicated through that rather bored and, if not world-weary, then rather mundane bearer of tidings Gaber, he legs it with the dossiers, leaving behind a dented metal globe and some electrodes (some trip Kraken had been on made him think that it would be a red herring), and pores over the whole caboodle down at The Cheshire Cheese.
* I see him there, think to myself I wonder what the schlemihl's up to this time with his conspicuous Bogart gear (hat and all), and, sidling up, start plying him with double pink gins, for which he has an insatiable fondness. Well, he's got the fondness, but he hasn't got the stomach to go with it (and is toping on a near-empty stomach), so, on his sixth, he's suddenly belly side up on the floor, and I'm legging it with the Hoban papers.
* I go to a location that Lola told me about, some weird sort of castle place off the south coast that she liked (it was nice, with the ribbons and banners and all that), and master the whole scheme in a matter of hours, plied by a dram or two from the Sound of Islay, before getting the nub over to Youdi on the old handheld (had to stand on one leg, though, facing the wind to get a signal when it came to transmit).
* Message back from Youdi, via a vision of a bus about to plunge off the edge of a nearby cliff and the assorted screams of the no longer would-be passengers, to make a posting here.
* So, the real Huss Hoban (christened Russell Idaho Obama) first saw the light of day the day that Christ died at his parental home in Foxrock nearly 55 years ago. Unaccountably, though the ostensible child of a god-fearing Protestant Irish couple called Becquet, he was black, and it does not require a genius to work out that he was destined for the care of the Sisters of Mercy.
* All in all, he quickly had a new home in Brixton, and grew up, not knowing otherwise, as if South London were his natal home, and the immigrant Borges family, who adopted him to overcome childlessness, were his parents.
* When it came to know better, he didn't care to, being too much engrossed in learning the business of being an illustrator to care much about how he was conceived or who gave him birth. However, he did execute a deed to change his name, because he had resolved to overcome the stigma that it was obvious that would detract from his work, if, as he fancied, he branched out into writing.
* In a place as huge and populous as the States, finding someone with the same name who would settle in the UK and front as him for as long as was convenient was not difficult.
* Both men quite enjoyed their respective roles, one with full licence to embellish any aspect of his life that would enhance the quirky, out-of-the-groove market that his accomplice was seeking to appeal to, who was, in turn, freed from the demands on him to do other than write, without the need to present a front.
* The rest is history. Van Morrison, more obviously, did the same thing when he appointed Brian Kennedy as his public mouthpiece. Those, however, who really believe that Naomi Campbell authored a novel about a swan have wasted precious minutes that could have been spent reading The Daily Mail instead - sorry to have intruded on those endless stories of doom and disaster!
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The habit of collecting (1)
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22 December
Other than being a writer by profession (i.e. I profess to be a writer, but who am I to judge!), I am a collector.
Apart from whisky, which makes me laugh in a more earthy way that's in touch with the beat of the universe (or some other such flannel as is to be found on many a whisky tube, e.g. the assertion that the Old Pulteney distillery at Wick was, when it was founded, accessible only by sea (well, why found it there?)), I tend to collect things that make me laugh (or that have some other human worth).
This is one, from the title of an e-mail purporting to come from Georgina Dejesus:
our pills has merci for your penis
It's not really the pidgin English that's funny, although 'merci' is quaint, it's this silly attempt to get me to open it - either because of the lurking virus, or because I might be drawn into ordering something that will never arrive or, if it did, would do me, at best, no good, and, at worst, more harm than good.
I've been collecting such e-mails in a folder called 'Crubb' in the account where they tend to reach me, and have more than five hundred, just saved when they take my fancy over the years, and intended to drip-feed into the lives of characters in a novel that I'll probably never write, so maybe I'll share them here with whomever's looking...
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 December
Other than being a writer by profession (i.e. I profess to be a writer, but who am I to judge!), I am a collector.
Apart from whisky, which makes me laugh in a more earthy way that's in touch with the beat of the universe (or some other such flannel as is to be found on many a whisky tube, e.g. the assertion that the Old Pulteney distillery at Wick was, when it was founded, accessible only by sea (well, why found it there?)), I tend to collect things that make me laugh (or that have some other human worth).
This is one, from the title of an e-mail purporting to come from Georgina Dejesus:
our pills has merci for your penis
It's not really the pidgin English that's funny, although 'merci' is quaint, it's this silly attempt to get me to open it - either because of the lurking virus, or because I might be drawn into ordering something that will never arrive or, if it did, would do me, at best, no good, and, at worst, more harm than good.
I've been collecting such e-mails in a folder called 'Crubb' in the account where they tend to reach me, and have more than five hundred, just saved when they take my fancy over the years, and intended to drip-feed into the lives of characters in a novel that I'll probably never write, so maybe I'll share them here with whomever's looking...
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Another blog - Writer's Rest (1)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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21 December
Commenting on the topic 'Apocalyptic AI' on Lindsay's blog (which I follow, and probably make a nuisance of myself on!), I have posted the following:
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21 December
Commenting on the topic 'Apocalyptic AI' on Lindsay's blog (which I follow, and probably make a nuisance of myself on!), I have posted the following:
It is the claim of AI (its ultimate claim) that consciousness can be gained (or created), and that, as Derek Parfitt repeatedly asserted about various things that are not achievable in Reasons and Persons, technology just has not advanced enough to make it happen.
Some might call that a poetic hope or even a belief that is not necessarily any more grounded than some religious beliefs are supposed to be, but never mind – there is simply a divide over whether we incline to the idea that consciousness just is, and can at best be mimicked, and those who believe that building increasingly advanced systems that employ intelligent strategies, then thinking and consciousness, very much part and parcel of the same thing, come as a result.
I may be simplifying, and there may be waverers, but most people either think ‘Great – I can live on in R2D2!’, or that machines will always just be machines, and not cats or humans…
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Samuel Johnson: a corrective
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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21 December
Beckettt was bothered enough about Johnson early on to attempt a play about him, which I dread admitting not to have read yet, and we all know his assertion that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.
Shame, then, that we believe all the media-hype about him (a certain Mr Boswell, amongst others), and that his own grandiose claims were credited: talk about Baron Munchausen, but, if the chief medical officer saw details of his daily alcoholic consumption, we'd have none of this not exceeding 3 to 4 units per day regularly! (Not to mention Falstaff, and his commending of sack.)
For the truth is that he had quite a small life - leaving apart the life of the mind, with its fictitious Mrs Thrales - and hardly stepped out of the post office that he ran in Leeds (forget all that nonsense about Ludlow and the like, for our Sam - a kinship of Sams (nat Lemuel, I saye!) with Beckettt - was a Yorkshireman born and bred). A true Walter Mitty before we had the name for him, he so believed that he lived in London and was a great man, pronouncing upon all sorts of subjects, that even people who knew that this was counterfactual were swept up by his enthusiasm.
For Johnson, like our own dear Boris, was nothing if not enthusiastic, and even once made the considerable trip to Rochester because he'd heard that there was a model-railway exhibition on: chump that he was, he had somehow caught sight of a flyer from tens of years on and not spotted that the date was way in advance of his allotted life-span! Still, he was a keen philatelist, too, and brought out a private stamp to mark the excursion, using some rather scrappy shots that he'd taken on his mobile and then smartened up in one of these fancy image-processing suites (when, of course, for the cost of the software (bundling wasn't the norm back then, and he'd had to buy it as a separate), he'd have been better off taking a decent image on a film SLR and having it put onto CD-ROM in digitized form when he had the roll developed...
Oh, and that business about the trip to the Hebrides - need I have said that Boswell's sister was one of the founders of Thomas Cook (named after a boy that she'd gone steady with because he was in the Globetrotters, and who tragically choked on a piece of basketball when some klutz mistook it for a pumpkin and made it a Thanksgiving not to be forgotten), and needed a bit of pull for the Scottish market that she thought crazy stories like Johnson dancing a jig on Rathesay might generate?
Most can probably guess the rest, but it's a bit like a meeting of the directors of a company - if they all say that it took place by approving minutes of it, who's to say otherwise (certainly not the bemused articled clerk who's had to concoct this spurious verbiage, against his better judgement)?
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21 December
Beckettt was bothered enough about Johnson early on to attempt a play about him, which I dread admitting not to have read yet, and we all know his assertion that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.
Shame, then, that we believe all the media-hype about him (a certain Mr Boswell, amongst others), and that his own grandiose claims were credited: talk about Baron Munchausen, but, if the chief medical officer saw details of his daily alcoholic consumption, we'd have none of this not exceeding 3 to 4 units per day regularly! (Not to mention Falstaff, and his commending of sack.)
For the truth is that he had quite a small life - leaving apart the life of the mind, with its fictitious Mrs Thrales - and hardly stepped out of the post office that he ran in Leeds (forget all that nonsense about Ludlow and the like, for our Sam - a kinship of Sams (nat Lemuel, I saye!) with Beckettt - was a Yorkshireman born and bred). A true Walter Mitty before we had the name for him, he so believed that he lived in London and was a great man, pronouncing upon all sorts of subjects, that even people who knew that this was counterfactual were swept up by his enthusiasm.
For Johnson, like our own dear Boris, was nothing if not enthusiastic, and even once made the considerable trip to Rochester because he'd heard that there was a model-railway exhibition on: chump that he was, he had somehow caught sight of a flyer from tens of years on and not spotted that the date was way in advance of his allotted life-span! Still, he was a keen philatelist, too, and brought out a private stamp to mark the excursion, using some rather scrappy shots that he'd taken on his mobile and then smartened up in one of these fancy image-processing suites (when, of course, for the cost of the software (bundling wasn't the norm back then, and he'd had to buy it as a separate), he'd have been better off taking a decent image on a film SLR and having it put onto CD-ROM in digitized form when he had the roll developed...
Oh, and that business about the trip to the Hebrides - need I have said that Boswell's sister was one of the founders of Thomas Cook (named after a boy that she'd gone steady with because he was in the Globetrotters, and who tragically choked on a piece of basketball when some klutz mistook it for a pumpkin and made it a Thanksgiving not to be forgotten), and needed a bit of pull for the Scottish market that she thought crazy stories like Johnson dancing a jig on Rathesay might generate?
Most can probably guess the rest, but it's a bit like a meeting of the directors of a company - if they all say that it took place by approving minutes of it, who's to say otherwise (certainly not the bemused articled clerk who's had to concoct this spurious verbiage, against his better judgement)?
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Tuesday 20 December 2011
Pierrot longs for the moon
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21 December
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21 December
Pierrot longs for the moon
(For Harry - who also likes moons)
So clearly
A man
I saw to-night
In the moon:
A man's face
Shadowy
Never seen before
In semi-relief
So real
And huge
No space for dog
Or bush,
Just he
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2011
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