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29 April
It needs saying: he does not, in the surviving written record, mention them at all.
However, we can infer that he was not indifferent to them (and their social aspirations), because he did talk about or engage with:
1. Lilies in all their finery
2. King Solomon in that connection (famous for his mine)
3. Wheat
4. Other crops*
5. Pigs (and a casting-out of devils involved swine)
6. Vines and 'the fruit of the vine'
7. Fig-trees
8. Sheep and lambs
9. Lamb as meat (in German, Osterlamm for the Passover meal)
10. Bread
11. Wine-vinegar
12. Wine
13. Vines
To be continued
End-notes
* Which would have chimed with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Love and Death (1975)
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Friday 27 April 2012
My fifty-word story (from a few years back)
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27 April
Josef K. had fallen sick again, or so his doctor claimed. Not in person, one must understand, as this opinion was contained in what seemed a hastily penned note, left in the porch.
Josef tutted in a scoffing manner: he sick, and with the lowest blood-pressure in the district!
He looked again at the scrawl, grimaced, and crumpled the offending piece of thin paper in his sweating fingers - grasping for the wall as he collapsed.
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012
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27 April
Josef K. had fallen sick again, or so his doctor claimed. Not in person, one must understand, as this opinion was contained in what seemed a hastily penned note, left in the porch.
Josef tutted in a scoffing manner: he sick, and with the lowest blood-pressure in the district!
He looked again at the scrawl, grimaced, and crumpled the offending piece of thin paper in his sweating fingers - grasping for the wall as he collapsed.
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012
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Economists in the Hen-House
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27 April
John Stuart Mill
Was really quite a pill
Pilate said:
What is Truth?
Better that one man---?
© Belston Night Works 2012
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27 April
Economists in the Hen-House
John Stuart Mill
Was really quite a pill
Pilate said:
What is Truth?
Better that one man---?
© Belston Night Works 2012
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Thursday 26 April 2012
Royal Astonomical Society 'has no back-bone'
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27 April
Such, at least, was - what I deem to be - the clear import of seeing RA55 OFT => RAS SOFT
Or it could be telling me that the owner / driver / registered keeper (maybe all three at once) visits the Saudi town of Rass frequently?
Maybe even a message from or to (if not both) a West Indian person (or persons) about getting angry all the time, as it appears that 'rass' denotes the bum, and, in slang, using the term then means that someone is mad (in the sense of - very - worked up*)
Or, most paranoid of all, maybe it is an allusion to the Royal Archery Society, only there no more is one than such an Armadillo Society, and it is really a front for... you've guessed it, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and all those musical goings-on at Aldeburgh (well, Snape, if one could detect such a village, hamlet, or pair of cottages, though someone must have needed that whacking great maltings!)
End-note
* John is work TUP - meaning that he is a Totally Useless Person.
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27 April
Such, at least, was - what I deem to be - the clear import of seeing RA55 OFT => RAS SOFT
Or it could be telling me that the owner / driver / registered keeper (maybe all three at once) visits the Saudi town of Rass frequently?
Maybe even a message from or to (if not both) a West Indian person (or persons) about getting angry all the time, as it appears that 'rass' denotes the bum, and, in slang, using the term then means that someone is mad (in the sense of - very - worked up*)
Or, most paranoid of all, maybe it is an allusion to the Royal Archery Society, only there no more is one than such an Armadillo Society, and it is really a front for... you've guessed it, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and all those musical goings-on at Aldeburgh (well, Snape, if one could detect such a village, hamlet, or pair of cottages, though someone must have needed that whacking great maltings!)
End-note
* John is work TUP - meaning that he is a Totally Useless Person.
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Wreckers comes home to roost: report on a Q&A at the Arts Picturehouse
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26 April
NB This is a report on the answers given to the more significant questions, and a review of the film (presently in draft) will appear elsewhere. * In consequence, please be aware that there will, almost inevitably, be spoilers *
On Tuesday night, I watched the screening of a first feature by Dictynna Hood, someone to whom I had previously spoken, several years ago, about the documentaries that she was making. (Before she was lionized by Tony Jones and his crew, of whom Trish Sheil was going to introduce Dictynna - who wrote and directed Wreckers (2011) and host the Q&A afterwards, I just had time to ask her whether she had enjoyed making this film, which she largely had.)
As, with a Q&A, I formulate a question mentally and try to hold it during the rest of the film, to ask as soon as the initial questions from the person hosting have died down (so that I do not forget my formulation), I came out with (something like):
You mentioned fairy tales and stories from Fenland – what I found in this film was delight, a sense of possibility, things revealed, things overheard or witnessed, tension, jealousy, menace, fury, and I wonder, Dictynna, how deep you had to dig in yourself – or in ancient sources – to find these impulses?
The latter part of the question, with its humorous implications that she might do or want to do the things that her characters do, made her laugh infectiously. She had already mentioned that she had taken strands from real experiences and the lore of the four Oxfordshire villages, now changed beyond recognition by the overlay of the motorway and its traffic, so she had filmed in and around Isleham - and she mentioned the looks and queries that she had received at another screening in Oxford the day before.
As the questions came (and there was a good turn-out and much interest), Dictynna said more and more, opening up as the film does – opening up vistas – as questioners wondered about the status, as dream, of the start of the film (which, as it stands, someone had wanted her to consider dropping, and for which she had also shot a scene in a chapel, also in or near Isleham, which she said was so beautiful as to be unusable, because it looked as though it belonged in a different film – maybe, someone suggested, still to be made, when she alluded to the footage being on the cutting-room floor*).
Others asked about menace during and at the very end of the film, and it turned out that not only had the ending had been thought of very differently, but that, at one point in the conception, the whole thing could even have been much more of a horrorfest! However, not perhaps as alarming as parts of a wheat-field (whose owner Dictynna was most pleased to see in the audience) - the ones that we did not see, which had been trampled by the crew to get the on-screen shot.
In comments, there was interest in and appreciation of how the countryside had been presented, and I asked a further question about location, because there are many instances of people walking, often enough in twos, both in the village and elsewhere: Hood explained that, in shooting in Isleham (which, although not on a through-route, is apparently busy), she had focused on Dawn with David’s long-lost brother Nick (Shaun Evans) on the pavement and shut out the cars to create a deliberate effect.
The perennial question about when in the making the composer (Andrew Lovett) had been involved came up, and, unusually for films, the answer was that, as one of three with whom Hood had worked before and had been approached when it was at script stage, he self-selected by his desire to engage with the work.
Dictynna also commented that the use of music had been deliberately sparing on his part, and he had made use both of silence, and processing the actors' voices to make sounds that one could not quite distinguish, which people present seemed to agree imparted a dream-like element that they also found pervasively in Wreckers, a blurring between what was dream and what seen.
Towards the end of the session, Dictynna revealed more, including a source of the main story in a Viking text, and also a story about the devil (though Nick, she stressed, has other qualities than mere devilish ones). (As she agreed with me when I said a few words afterwards, there are all sorts of resonances, including Shakespearean ones).
Finally, we were told that two more projects are being worked on, one - of all things - a romantic comedy, so watch this space…
End-notes
* It's always made me think, subconsciously, that hairdressers must be much more house proud, because there the floor is swept clean of cuttings several times per day...
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26 April
NB This is a report on the answers given to the more significant questions, and a review of the film (presently in draft) will appear elsewhere. * In consequence, please be aware that there will, almost inevitably, be spoilers *
On Tuesday night, I watched the screening of a first feature by Dictynna Hood, someone to whom I had previously spoken, several years ago, about the documentaries that she was making. (Before she was lionized by Tony Jones and his crew, of whom Trish Sheil was going to introduce Dictynna - who wrote and directed Wreckers (2011) and host the Q&A afterwards, I just had time to ask her whether she had enjoyed making this film, which she largely had.)
As, with a Q&A, I formulate a question mentally and try to hold it during the rest of the film, to ask as soon as the initial questions from the person hosting have died down (so that I do not forget my formulation), I came out with (something like):
You mentioned fairy tales and stories from Fenland – what I found in this film was delight, a sense of possibility, things revealed, things overheard or witnessed, tension, jealousy, menace, fury, and I wonder, Dictynna, how deep you had to dig in yourself – or in ancient sources – to find these impulses?
The latter part of the question, with its humorous implications that she might do or want to do the things that her characters do, made her laugh infectiously. She had already mentioned that she had taken strands from real experiences and the lore of the four Oxfordshire villages, now changed beyond recognition by the overlay of the motorway and its traffic, so she had filmed in and around Isleham - and she mentioned the looks and queries that she had received at another screening in Oxford the day before.
As the questions came (and there was a good turn-out and much interest), Dictynna said more and more, opening up as the film does – opening up vistas – as questioners wondered about the status, as dream, of the start of the film (which, as it stands, someone had wanted her to consider dropping, and for which she had also shot a scene in a chapel, also in or near Isleham, which she said was so beautiful as to be unusable, because it looked as though it belonged in a different film – maybe, someone suggested, still to be made, when she alluded to the footage being on the cutting-room floor*).
Others asked about menace during and at the very end of the film, and it turned out that not only had the ending had been thought of very differently, but that, at one point in the conception, the whole thing could even have been much more of a horrorfest! However, not perhaps as alarming as parts of a wheat-field (whose owner Dictynna was most pleased to see in the audience) - the ones that we did not see, which had been trampled by the crew to get the on-screen shot.
In comments, there was interest in and appreciation of how the countryside had been presented, and I asked a further question about location, because there are many instances of people walking, often enough in twos, both in the village and elsewhere: Hood explained that, in shooting in Isleham (which, although not on a through-route, is apparently busy), she had focused on Dawn with David’s long-lost brother Nick (Shaun Evans) on the pavement and shut out the cars to create a deliberate effect.
The perennial question about when in the making the composer (Andrew Lovett) had been involved came up, and, unusually for films, the answer was that, as one of three with whom Hood had worked before and had been approached when it was at script stage, he self-selected by his desire to engage with the work.
Dictynna also commented that the use of music had been deliberately sparing on his part, and he had made use both of silence, and processing the actors' voices to make sounds that one could not quite distinguish, which people present seemed to agree imparted a dream-like element that they also found pervasively in Wreckers, a blurring between what was dream and what seen.
Towards the end of the session, Dictynna revealed more, including a source of the main story in a Viking text, and also a story about the devil (though Nick, she stressed, has other qualities than mere devilish ones). (As she agreed with me when I said a few words afterwards, there are all sorts of resonances, including Shakespearean ones).
Finally, we were told that two more projects are being worked on, one - of all things - a romantic comedy, so watch this space…
* It's always made me think, subconsciously, that hairdressers must be much more house proud, because there the floor is swept clean of cuttings several times per day...
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Tuesday 24 April 2012
If I ran a monthly publications about the Windsors...
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24 April
Yes, if I did so, it would not be the regal equivalent of OK! (although it is that already).
No, but, as Royal Editor-in-Chief, I would definitely have the number-slave BE51 MAG, which I caught to-night, parked on a rainy Cambridge street (in fact, I'm guessing that all Cambridge streets were rainy, except a thickly lined avenue (where the rain comes later), but you know what I mean...).
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24 April
Yes, if I did so, it would not be the regal equivalent of OK! (although it is that already).
No, but, as Royal Editor-in-Chief, I would definitely have the number-slave BE51 MAG, which I caught to-night, parked on a rainy Cambridge street (in fact, I'm guessing that all Cambridge streets were rainy, except a thickly lined avenue (where the rain comes later), but you know what I mean...).
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Monday 23 April 2012
An inquest into the mysterious death of MI6 spy Gareth Williams opens today (according to Yahoo!)
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23 April
I suspect that fans of the jazz pianist of the same name, who may have been alarmed by the caption, can safely assume that this was a different bearer of the illustrious title.
So Claire Martin will be relieved about the gig in Colchester on Saturday...
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23 April
I suspect that fans of the jazz pianist of the same name, who may have been alarmed by the caption, can safely assume that this was a different bearer of the illustrious title.
So Claire Martin will be relieved about the gig in Colchester on Saturday...
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What Bruno Bettelheim has to tell us about all sorts of stories
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23 April
Some people (no names mentioned!) are quite dogmatic about what BB postulated about fairy tales:
It's a bit like being a strict Freudian* and - as Arthur Koestler expressed it in Bricks to Babel (1980) - filtering out everything that is inconsistent with your adopted (to be pretentious) Weltanschauung, so BB (probably quitely kicking and screaming, from what little I know of him) becomes the new God.
Thus adherents say that He Has Spoken, and henceforth Fairy Stories shall be hallowed, imbued with dark meanings, and with the purpose of helping us manage our difficult inner feelings by projecting them onto a story (no quibbles, no refund).
I think of this from hearing Debussy's familiar (though thankfully off the air for a while) L'Après-Midi d'une Faune (1894), and a decent explanation - for once - of its roots in Mallarmé's poem of 1865. It requires little invention to imagine sexual sublimation (of writer, reader or listener, though, for me, the lattermost remains a stretch, as does finding the text behind other works of Claude's): the faun can safely do - or dream of doing - what we can conveniently enjoy in him, and deny as being our desire.
Which brings us to yesterday's screening, accompanied by Neil Brand and Mark Kermode (why else was everyone there?) in The Dodge Brothers, of The Ghost that Never Returns (1929), the penultimate event in the 15th British Silent Film Festival, which was hosted by the Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, this year.
More to come...
End-notes
* Woody Allen's passing quip is my favourite, which goes something like During my time in therapy, my analyst retired - as he was a strict Freudian, it was only six sessions later that I realized.
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23 April
Some people (no names mentioned!) are quite dogmatic about what BB postulated about fairy tales:
It's a bit like being a strict Freudian* and - as Arthur Koestler expressed it in Bricks to Babel (1980) - filtering out everything that is inconsistent with your adopted (to be pretentious) Weltanschauung, so BB (probably quitely kicking and screaming, from what little I know of him) becomes the new God.
Thus adherents say that He Has Spoken, and henceforth Fairy Stories shall be hallowed, imbued with dark meanings, and with the purpose of helping us manage our difficult inner feelings by projecting them onto a story (no quibbles, no refund).
I think of this from hearing Debussy's familiar (though thankfully off the air for a while) L'Après-Midi d'une Faune (1894), and a decent explanation - for once - of its roots in Mallarmé's poem of 1865. It requires little invention to imagine sexual sublimation (of writer, reader or listener, though, for me, the lattermost remains a stretch, as does finding the text behind other works of Claude's): the faun can safely do - or dream of doing - what we can conveniently enjoy in him, and deny as being our desire.
Which brings us to yesterday's screening, accompanied by Neil Brand and Mark Kermode (why else was everyone there?) in The Dodge Brothers, of The Ghost that Never Returns (1929), the penultimate event in the 15th British Silent Film Festival, which was hosted by the Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, this year.
More to come...
End-notes
* Woody Allen's passing quip is my favourite, which goes something like During my time in therapy, my analyst retired - as he was a strict Freudian, it was only six sessions later that I realized.
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Sunday 22 April 2012
Why don't I credit sightings of UFOs?
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22 April
Not, primarily, because of the negative influence of the quality of Erich von Daniken's publications, theories and methods (which Nigel, a friend, liked looking into), but simply because I have never seen anything that I could not identify. (Likewise, with ghosts.)
Though it sounds quite dangerous (from my own teenage reading), I'd like to see ball lightning, but nothing else have I seen, flying or hovering, that wasn't an aircraft:
Having had a trial flying lesson, I know that the wing-tip on the right (five letters) has a green light (also five letters), and thus that the left wing-tip has a red one, and I have never been stuck for seeing one ofr other of these lights on something overhead - aliens in UFOs almost certainly don't feel the need to follow our terrestrial aeronautical code, and, if they do, they wouldn't be 'unidentified'.
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22 April
Not, primarily, because of the negative influence of the quality of Erich von Daniken's publications, theories and methods (which Nigel, a friend, liked looking into), but simply because I have never seen anything that I could not identify. (Likewise, with ghosts.)
Though it sounds quite dangerous (from my own teenage reading), I'd like to see ball lightning, but nothing else have I seen, flying or hovering, that wasn't an aircraft:
Having had a trial flying lesson, I know that the wing-tip on the right (five letters) has a green light (also five letters), and thus that the left wing-tip has a red one, and I have never been stuck for seeing one ofr other of these lights on something overhead - aliens in UFOs almost certainly don't feel the need to follow our terrestrial aeronautical code, and, if they do, they wouldn't be 'unidentified'.
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Stars hoping to do well in the 26.2m race include Nell McAndrew (according to AOL®)
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22 April
Not engaging my anyway tired brain, I puzzled over whether a 26.2m race was the metric equivalent of the 100 yds*, until I spotted the word Snickers®, I mean Marathon, in the main headline***.
In any case, do I mistake, or has Nell changed a bit since last seen?
End-notes
* Fortunately, it would be over before it began, so no scope for celebruty** blisters or sprained ankles.
** Sic: one view is that they all Brutes and Beasts, seeking to charm us - with their emperors' and empresses' new clothes - into believing that they are Beauties.
*** Or do I mean headlie****?
**** Or even headlice?
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22 April
Not engaging my anyway tired brain, I puzzled over whether a 26.2m race was the metric equivalent of the 100 yds*, until I spotted the word Snickers®, I mean Marathon, in the main headline***.
In any case, do I mistake, or has Nell changed a bit since last seen?
End-notes
* Fortunately, it would be over before it began, so no scope for celebruty** blisters or sprained ankles.
** Sic: one view is that they all Brutes and Beasts, seeking to charm us - with their emperors' and empresses' new clothes - into believing that they are Beauties.
*** Or do I mean headlie****?
**** Or even headlice?
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Blind singer wows on The Voice (according to AOL®)
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22 April
But why should a blind singer not wow on that programme, since the show's claim to exist is that the judges vote without reference to sight of the singers (pun unintended)? (Not that one could necessarily see blindness, except when it is emblazoned in a caption, any more than hepatitis B or leukaemia.)
You could say that the name of the ensemble The Blind Boys of Alabama was chosen to be catchy (I don't know who chose it), or to draw attention to blindness in the deliberate way that I now criticize.
However, the question is: Who draws attention?
Down's Syndrome girl in a floral print frock and black boots wows on The Voice...
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22 April
But why should a blind singer not wow on that programme, since the show's claim to exist is that the judges vote without reference to sight of the singers (pun unintended)? (Not that one could necessarily see blindness, except when it is emblazoned in a caption, any more than hepatitis B or leukaemia.)
You could say that the name of the ensemble The Blind Boys of Alabama was chosen to be catchy (I don't know who chose it), or to draw attention to blindness in the deliberate way that I now criticize.
However, the question is: Who draws attention?
Down's Syndrome girl in a floral print frock and black boots wows on The Voice...
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Saturday 21 April 2012
Running down Eraserhead
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12 March
Another special screening tonight - in a series (whose existence didn't quite pass me by, but nearly) about the depiction of monstrosity on screen - of David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) this time.
We had a bit of an introduction (which threatened to be a bit more of an introduction than I was happy with, but thankfully - as I infer - someone must have waved frantically from the back to cut short what was, as was admitted to us, a speech with the potential to go on all night), and then the film.
Philip Kiszely, who teaches at the University of Leeds (and also runs a publication about punk and post-punk) was our culprit, but he was to be forgiven for the even-handed way in which he conducted the discussion afterwards. His closing words of advice to those who had not seen Eraserhead before was to consider stopping eating the popcorn now, and that he would have wanted to take the seat nearest the door!
It was Screen 3, so the most intimate of the Arts Picturehouse's dark rooms at around 120 seats, but there was still a good attendance, at which Philip was - perhaps for effect - a little surprised, that people who had (he did a straw poll) not seen it before were still turning out to see Eraserhead after 35 years: did they know what they were letting themselves in for?
As a host, Philp was enthusiastic, giving us pointers in references to film noir and in how Lynch had put the film together piecemeal as funds permitted. He also said that Lynch had said very little about what his intentions in making <i>Eraserhead</i> had been, what meaning or message it had had for him, but that he had tantalizingly revealed that he had been reading The Bible at the time, and that one verse - which, of course, he did not specify - had been at the root of it all.
As I have said, he was also indulgent to the pure Freudian interpretation that, with contributions from some, was going later, where everything was a phallus, and Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) in fear of castration. So be it, but strange, as I remarked to Philip at the end, that Freud has so much less credit outside the worlds of film and literary theory, and certainly not in practice...
Friday 20 April 2012
66 DD brassiere
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21 April
According to Wikipedia®, the word 'brassiere' was not either simply taken from French or used in English until 1893 (and, to judge from the content of the same source, it does not ever seem to have had the grave accent that a related French word, brassière, has).
However, I estimate that it is probably in danger of extinction in that form (i.e. rather than 'bra'), morceau than 'refrigerator' is with 'fridge'*. Similarly, although I cannot quite picture what a 66 DD would be like, I would also imagine that the future of the woman who required such a support might be threatened by health risks associated with being that size.
All of which is a mere excuse for the following, since 66 DD is actually one of a set of UK number-plates** of which I have taken judicial notice (the car that displays it appears to belong to someone two villages distant).
Likewise (taking out the offending spaces, as the owners often do), PEN1S*** and - balancing things up - VA51NAS.
I infer that the following should exist, but I have yet to see them:
* PI55 OFF
* MI55 SEX
* PA55 OUT
* PA55ION
* 4 5KIN
Likewise, PI55 UPS, MI55 SOD, etc., etc. Happy watching, but do keep an eye on the road, too!
End-notes
* I come to that conclusion on the basis, primarily, of which term tends to appear on packaging.
** Which predictive text curiously renders as 'number-slaves', so one can, again, speculate on what the compilers of Nokia®'s knowledge of words thought that the phones' users would be writing about...
*** I believe that PEN 15 must also exist, and (despite remembering otherwise) I may, in fact, have seen that one: I saw this number-slave** twice.
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21 April
According to Wikipedia®, the word 'brassiere' was not either simply taken from French or used in English until 1893 (and, to judge from the content of the same source, it does not ever seem to have had the grave accent that a related French word, brassière, has).
However, I estimate that it is probably in danger of extinction in that form (i.e. rather than 'bra'), morceau than 'refrigerator' is with 'fridge'*. Similarly, although I cannot quite picture what a 66 DD would be like, I would also imagine that the future of the woman who required such a support might be threatened by health risks associated with being that size.
All of which is a mere excuse for the following, since 66 DD is actually one of a set of UK number-plates** of which I have taken judicial notice (the car that displays it appears to belong to someone two villages distant).
Likewise (taking out the offending spaces, as the owners often do), PEN1S*** and - balancing things up - VA51NAS.
I infer that the following should exist, but I have yet to see them:
* PI55 OFF
* MI55 SEX
* PA55 OUT
* PA55ION
* 4 5KIN
Likewise, PI55 UPS, MI55 SOD, etc., etc. Happy watching, but do keep an eye on the road, too!
End-notes
* I come to that conclusion on the basis, primarily, of which term tends to appear on packaging.
** Which predictive text curiously renders as 'number-slaves', so one can, again, speculate on what the compilers of Nokia®'s knowledge of words thought that the phones' users would be writing about...
*** I believe that PEN 15 must also exist, and (despite remembering otherwise) I may, in fact, have seen that one: I saw this number-slave** twice.
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Are you an attendee?
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20 April
Well, HM Queen Elizabeth II is an attendee, because (as is well known) she has those - called attendants, such as ladies-in-waiting - who attend on her.
However, if there is a royal screening or performance, Her Royal Majesty is no more than anyone else there an attendee just for attending it.
Likewise, with a conference: those who attend conferences are (conference) delegates, not attendees.
Picking up, now, where, a week ago, I left off - this sentence has been sponsored by the Royal Society for the Promotion of Commas! - I must turn to that implicit, and vexed (or, rather, misunderstood), question of pairs, as implied above:
I used the words 'attendee' and 'attendant' in the first sentence, and they are a pair, but not a Matching Pair in the way that, say, the legal terms mortgagor and mortgagee or warrantor and warrantee are*.
PROVIDED THAT one knows what one is talking about, one can infer what the pairs will be, which is why I have to go back and say what a mortgage is.
The word comes to us, from French, and literally means a dead glove, maybe even gauntlet: interesting though it would be, for me, to delve into what that origin is, it is just helpful to think in terms of the highly successful board-game Monopoly®, where mortgages are all part of the play.
So, if strapped for cash** (for example, because of landing on Mayfair when it has two hotels on it - and the owner of the hotels noticed before the next player shook the dice), or just because one wants to build said hotels and borrow the money, one can always mortgage the property / properties - to the value stipulated by the values on the game-card for it / them - to the bank to raise it. The property (or properties) is (are) the security for the loan.
Those who have played the game often enough will then know that the game-card(s), each one of which (in the game) is the title-deeds for the property (or properties), has (or have) to be turned the other way up. This act signifies two things:
(1) The player cannot, until the mortgage is redeemed (i.e. discharged), charge other players who land on it rent, etc. (so they get away scot free, as the phrase has it), because the table of what is ordinarily payable is on the other side of the card, which is now face down;
(2) More importantly, that the property (properties) is (are) no longer the player's to do with freely, within the rules (unless, of course, several more of the players in the game are bankers, in which case they make up their own rules!), as he or she wishes - the bank has its security for the money that was lent*** in it (or them), and, unless the player (perhaps as another banker) slily turns it back the other way up, hoping that no one will notice (as if people cheat at cards or in other games, even life), the mortgage needs to be redeemed first.
So what?, you ask, infuriated, bored, tired, or longing for a drink / death / redemption...
Well, the act of mortgaging is carried out by by the player who mortgages the property to the bank, so he (or she) is the mortgagor - and the bank, to whom it was mortgaged, is the mortgagee.
Exactly as with employer and employee, except that, with a mortgage, it may be less immediately obvious who is doing what, complicated by 'applying for a mortgage', the bank (or building society) 'making a mortgage offer', when was it really happening is somebody wanting a mortgage on certain terms, and the lender**** considering it all, and offering a mortgage, on those - or less good - terms.
The act of mortgaging remains what the owner of the property does. Which is obvious with a remortgage, because one knows, although one has a mortgage, who the owner is - it far less intuitively clear when the act of purchase of the property is simultaneous with mortgaging it to secure the loan (needed) to buy it.
Nonetheless, John Stuart Mill takes out the mortgage, mortgaging Black Acre to Z Building Society, and so is the mortgagor, never (in this case*****) the mortgagee.
Finally, though, other words do not pair up with -or and -ee (or, as with employer above, -er), but people (who should know better) try to make them: a bit like making an elephant co-habit with a porcupine in the hope that they will like each other and get married...
So we have, where we started, this crazy fiction that people who are at a conference or meeting are attendees - sometimes people may be 'in attendance', rather than 'present', but they are not attendees. Who, after all, is the attender, if they are? Well, they are themselves, I suppose...
Moving on to lender. Please, please do not be tempted by those who want to say that there is such a thing as a lendee - any more than there is any room for needing this stupid invention of tutee:
Table of Correspondences (non-exhaustive)
1. Borrower / Lender
2. Tutor / Student (or Pupil)
3. Donor of a power of attorney / Donee of the power
4. Buyer / Seller
5. Purchaser / Vendor
In a closing word, I shall say why I gave the last two pairs. There are a good few reasons:
(a) There is no Vendee;
(b) (No more than Buyee);
(c) The pairs don't mix - any more than the elephant and its 'spiky friend' above - and it is not My buyer is having problems with his vendor..., except in the sort of estate agency where your are definitely being charged too much commission;
(d) By inference, there are other real pairs that have not been mentioned, and where the one that lures may not exist - or mean what it seems!
A starter for ten:If someone who gives an assurance is a guarantor, who is the person who receives it? (Go here, if you want a clue...******)
End-notes
* One could go on, with legator and legatee, donor and donee...
** I have no notion where that came to us from, any more than - as mentioned in a conversation with friend Chris the other day - I have no truck with....
*** I quote the Order of Service:
Priest Some unfortunates would say 'loaned'
Congregation Verily, they are to be pitied
All Amen
**** If you hold 'lender', we will return to it later (D.V.).
***** Whereas, if John Stuart Mill's neighbour Virginia Woolf owns Blue Acre and needs some readies, she could mortgage it to him, and he would be a mortgagee.
****** Someone who says that he is someone else's Power of Attorney is actually telling you that he (or she) is a piece of paper!
(He or she is the donee of the power, but could also - as with the merged notion of solicitor / barrister in the States - be viewed as the donor's attorney.)
As if all that weren't enough...
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20 April
Well, HM Queen Elizabeth II is an attendee, because (as is well known) she has those - called attendants, such as ladies-in-waiting - who attend on her.
However, if there is a royal screening or performance, Her Royal Majesty is no more than anyone else there an attendee just for attending it.
Likewise, with a conference: those who attend conferences are (conference) delegates, not attendees.
Picking up, now, where, a week ago, I left off - this sentence has been sponsored by the Royal Society for the Promotion of Commas! - I must turn to that implicit, and vexed (or, rather, misunderstood), question of pairs, as implied above:
I used the words 'attendee' and 'attendant' in the first sentence, and they are a pair, but not a Matching Pair in the way that, say, the legal terms mortgagor and mortgagee or warrantor and warrantee are*.
PROVIDED THAT one knows what one is talking about, one can infer what the pairs will be, which is why I have to go back and say what a mortgage is.
The word comes to us, from French, and literally means a dead glove, maybe even gauntlet: interesting though it would be, for me, to delve into what that origin is, it is just helpful to think in terms of the highly successful board-game Monopoly®, where mortgages are all part of the play.
So, if strapped for cash** (for example, because of landing on Mayfair when it has two hotels on it - and the owner of the hotels noticed before the next player shook the dice), or just because one wants to build said hotels and borrow the money, one can always mortgage the property / properties - to the value stipulated by the values on the game-card for it / them - to the bank to raise it. The property (or properties) is (are) the security for the loan.
Those who have played the game often enough will then know that the game-card(s), each one of which (in the game) is the title-deeds for the property (or properties), has (or have) to be turned the other way up. This act signifies two things:
(1) The player cannot, until the mortgage is redeemed (i.e. discharged), charge other players who land on it rent, etc. (so they get away scot free, as the phrase has it), because the table of what is ordinarily payable is on the other side of the card, which is now face down;
(2) More importantly, that the property (properties) is (are) no longer the player's to do with freely, within the rules (unless, of course, several more of the players in the game are bankers, in which case they make up their own rules!), as he or she wishes - the bank has its security for the money that was lent*** in it (or them), and, unless the player (perhaps as another banker) slily turns it back the other way up, hoping that no one will notice (as if people cheat at cards or in other games, even life), the mortgage needs to be redeemed first.
So what?, you ask, infuriated, bored, tired, or longing for a drink / death / redemption...
Well, the act of mortgaging is carried out by by the player who mortgages the property to the bank, so he (or she) is the mortgagor - and the bank, to whom it was mortgaged, is the mortgagee.
Exactly as with employer and employee, except that, with a mortgage, it may be less immediately obvious who is doing what, complicated by 'applying for a mortgage', the bank (or building society) 'making a mortgage offer', when was it really happening is somebody wanting a mortgage on certain terms, and the lender**** considering it all, and offering a mortgage, on those - or less good - terms.
The act of mortgaging remains what the owner of the property does. Which is obvious with a remortgage, because one knows, although one has a mortgage, who the owner is - it far less intuitively clear when the act of purchase of the property is simultaneous with mortgaging it to secure the loan (needed) to buy it.
Nonetheless, John Stuart Mill takes out the mortgage, mortgaging Black Acre to Z Building Society, and so is the mortgagor, never (in this case*****) the mortgagee.
Finally, though, other words do not pair up with -or and -ee (or, as with employer above, -er), but people (who should know better) try to make them: a bit like making an elephant co-habit with a porcupine in the hope that they will like each other and get married...
So we have, where we started, this crazy fiction that people who are at a conference or meeting are attendees - sometimes people may be 'in attendance', rather than 'present', but they are not attendees. Who, after all, is the attender, if they are? Well, they are themselves, I suppose...
Moving on to lender. Please, please do not be tempted by those who want to say that there is such a thing as a lendee - any more than there is any room for needing this stupid invention of tutee:
Table of Correspondences (non-exhaustive)
1. Borrower / Lender
2. Tutor / Student (or Pupil)
3. Donor of a power of attorney / Donee of the power
4. Buyer / Seller
5. Purchaser / Vendor
In a closing word, I shall say why I gave the last two pairs. There are a good few reasons:
(a) There is no Vendee;
(b) (No more than Buyee);
(c) The pairs don't mix - any more than the elephant and its 'spiky friend' above - and it is not My buyer is having problems with his vendor..., except in the sort of estate agency where your are definitely being charged too much commission;
(d) By inference, there are other real pairs that have not been mentioned, and where the one that lures may not exist - or mean what it seems!
A starter for ten:If someone who gives an assurance is a guarantor, who is the person who receives it? (Go here, if you want a clue...******)
End-notes
* One could go on, with legator and legatee, donor and donee...
** I have no notion where that came to us from, any more than - as mentioned in a conversation with friend Chris the other day - I have no truck with....
*** I quote the Order of Service:
Priest Some unfortunates would say 'loaned'
Congregation Verily, they are to be pitied
All Amen
**** If you hold 'lender', we will return to it later (D.V.).
***** Whereas, if John Stuart Mill's neighbour Virginia Woolf owns Blue Acre and needs some readies, she could mortgage it to him, and he would be a mortgagee.
****** Someone who says that he is someone else's Power of Attorney is actually telling you that he (or she) is a piece of paper!
(He or she is the donee of the power, but could also - as with the merged notion of solicitor / barrister in the States - be viewed as the donor's attorney.)
As if all that weren't enough...
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Friday 13 April 2012
The Last Staple
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13 April
No, not, o true Tolstoyans, The Last Station, but Staple!
The simple question being: why cannot the stapler, a bit like the oil warning light, tell you when you are using the last of a row of what, gummed together, always looks like a lot of staples when you load it?
If it did, not only would you not go to staple a document - usually that document (and six copies of it) with which you need to rush out of the office - and fail and have to find one that is loaded, in all your frustration and anguish, but nor would your colleagues.
For everyone assumes, which is neither rational nor necessarily fair, that someone else, at a less pressing time, should have filled the stapler up, because he or she knew that he or she had just emptied it, instead of lazily using another.
Whereas, as I should like to suggest (and Dirty Harry would agree), none of us - and this is not meant to have gravitas, unless you choose to read a profound insight into it - knows when it is The Last Staple. (So I say nothing about Wise and Foolish virgins, and trimming wicks and filling with oil.)
End-notes
* Of which Bach treated in Cantata No. 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140.
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13 April
No, not, o true Tolstoyans, The Last Station, but Staple!
The simple question being: why cannot the stapler, a bit like the oil warning light, tell you when you are using the last of a row of what, gummed together, always looks like a lot of staples when you load it?
If it did, not only would you not go to staple a document - usually that document (and six copies of it) with which you need to rush out of the office - and fail and have to find one that is loaded, in all your frustration and anguish, but nor would your colleagues.
For everyone assumes, which is neither rational nor necessarily fair, that someone else, at a less pressing time, should have filled the stapler up, because he or she knew that he or she had just emptied it, instead of lazily using another.
Whereas, as I should like to suggest (and Dirty Harry would agree), none of us - and this is not meant to have gravitas, unless you choose to read a profound insight into it - knows when it is The Last Staple. (So I say nothing about Wise and Foolish virgins, and trimming wicks and filling with oil.)
End-notes
* Of which Bach treated in Cantata No. 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140.
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Thursday 12 April 2012
A deserved winner at Cannes (2)
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13 April
Thanks to the offices of Rotten Tomatoes, it is heartening to have found a worthwhile review of this film from Peter Bradshaw.
But he really doesn't look that young, any more than some of the jazzers or classical musicians, who show you how they looked ten years or more ago...
On the poster for the film, this comment* - from the London Film Festival - seemed pertinent:
Hugely impressive... confirms Ceylan's status as a master of cinema...Chekhovian in its piercing insights
End-notes
* In my scrawl, it looks like that of Geoff Archer** - of only the former name was I certain, and it should have been Geoff Andrew!
** Sure some Freudian thing going on!
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13 April
Thanks to the offices of Rotten Tomatoes, it is heartening to have found a worthwhile review of this film from Peter Bradshaw.
But he really doesn't look that young, any more than some of the jazzers or classical musicians, who show you how they looked ten years or more ago...
On the poster for the film, this comment* - from the London Film Festival - seemed pertinent:
Hugely impressive... confirms Ceylan's status as a master of cinema...Chekhovian in its piercing insights
End-notes
* In my scrawl, it looks like that of Geoff Archer** - of only the former name was I certain, and it should have been Geoff Andrew!
** Sure some Freudian thing going on!
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The Cabin in the Woods - with whom?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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12 April
Are young(er) people just supposed to be (more) naive, or why else is it that they people horror films?*
I say this as a response to reading what Darryl Griffiths has written about (or not written about) in an on-line review for New Empress Magazine, because it seems to be taken for granted either that Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Al Pacino and Meryl Streep do not get frightened, or that the cinema-going public does not want to witness it happening when they go away for a relaxing break together in a cosy holiday apartment at Tombstone Mansions.
Which is, in a way, why it is a pity that Guillermo del Toro's Don't be Afraid of the Dark (2010), a vehicle for Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce, is such a dud: I determined so in my review at Cambridge Film Festival, and imdb.com confirms it, with a rating of 5.6.
Never mind: I have insider knowledge, in the form of seeing what appeared to be rushes, that Meg and Tom are going full out for gore this year!
End-notes
* And, although that is not my typical choice of viewing, how did we, since - and probably well before - Scream (1996) or The Blair Witch Porject (1999), get where we are from the worlds of Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Anthony Perkins?
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12 April
Are young(er) people just supposed to be (more) naive, or why else is it that they people horror films?*
I say this as a response to reading what Darryl Griffiths has written about (or not written about) in an on-line review for New Empress Magazine, because it seems to be taken for granted either that Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Al Pacino and Meryl Streep do not get frightened, or that the cinema-going public does not want to witness it happening when they go away for a relaxing break together in a cosy holiday apartment at Tombstone Mansions.
Which is, in a way, why it is a pity that Guillermo del Toro's Don't be Afraid of the Dark (2010), a vehicle for Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce, is such a dud: I determined so in my review at Cambridge Film Festival, and imdb.com confirms it, with a rating of 5.6.
Never mind: I have insider knowledge, in the form of seeing what appeared to be rushes, that Meg and Tom are going full out for gore this year!
End-notes
* And, although that is not my typical choice of viewing, how did we, since - and probably well before - Scream (1996) or The Blair Witch Porject (1999), get where we are from the worlds of Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Anthony Perkins?
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Wednesday 11 April 2012
Statistics and the brain (2)
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12 April
And now I have followed on with this:
I'm also, now, wondering about this approach that is promoted to us, even in a context of putting a comment on a web-page as I am now doing, of avatars and profiles - it's almost as if, a bit like Voldemort putting a bit of himself here, a bit there, we are invited to inhabit these computer-generated objects and thereby be there for others to see and know, almost as if that will be there for ever and ever.
I shall side-step critiquing these related so-called social networks (because I'd just want to ask what the sociability really consists in - and I'd no more want to play golf in my living-room, rather than out on the links with club and ball), but just observe that, if I died to-night (and had logged out of my e-mail and Amazon accounts, and my blog), there probably are protocols for my legal representatives to access those things - and to do so before any period of inactivity caused them to be deleted.
However developed the avatar, though, or the profile, they would not be me, would not live on - although things written by or to me might be preserved - in some cyber-existence without the living physical me. Walt Disney reportedly had his brain frozen in such a hope, and, whatever you might think of that as a grasp of what identity is, now as against then, it seems that we are as far from capturing the essence of what would bring Walt back to life, if he died to-day.
For the die-hards of AI, though, what we cannot do is merely not presently technologically possible.
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12 April
And now I have followed on with this:
I'm also, now, wondering about this approach that is promoted to us, even in a context of putting a comment on a web-page as I am now doing, of avatars and profiles - it's almost as if, a bit like Voldemort putting a bit of himself here, a bit there, we are invited to inhabit these computer-generated objects and thereby be there for others to see and know, almost as if that will be there for ever and ever.
I shall side-step critiquing these related so-called social networks (because I'd just want to ask what the sociability really consists in - and I'd no more want to play golf in my living-room, rather than out on the links with club and ball), but just observe that, if I died to-night (and had logged out of my e-mail and Amazon accounts, and my blog), there probably are protocols for my legal representatives to access those things - and to do so before any period of inactivity caused them to be deleted.
However developed the avatar, though, or the profile, they would not be me, would not live on - although things written by or to me might be preserved - in some cyber-existence without the living physical me. Walt Disney reportedly had his brain frozen in such a hope, and, whatever you might think of that as a grasp of what identity is, now as against then, it seems that we are as far from capturing the essence of what would bring Walt back to life, if he died to-day.
For the die-hards of AI, though, what we cannot do is merely not presently technologically possible.
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Who gets diagnosed - and where are the psychiatrists when this is happening? (2)
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12 April
It's Mozart's Rondo in A Minor, K. 511. In a minor key and it sounds sad, so Mozart must have been depressed at the time.
No evidence of which I am aware except the internal temperament of the piece for this proposition: he must have been depressed, because - amongst what we have - it is unusual amongst his works to be in this key / a minor key.
Could someone not, as a patron, have commissioned Mozart to write such a piece? A Duke Orsino, from Twelfth Night, would have desired to hear such a thing, and, when David played to Saul to soothe him, whose mood was he fitting?
For we do not impute to Bach, in those other-wordly passages in the Crucifixus of the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) the state of mind / soul at the time of composition that the music portrays, before the sudden triumph of Et resurrexit, do we?
To be continued
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12 April
It's Mozart's Rondo in A Minor, K. 511. In a minor key and it sounds sad, so Mozart must have been depressed at the time.
No evidence of which I am aware except the internal temperament of the piece for this proposition: he must have been depressed, because - amongst what we have - it is unusual amongst his works to be in this key / a minor key.
Could someone not, as a patron, have commissioned Mozart to write such a piece? A Duke Orsino, from Twelfth Night, would have desired to hear such a thing, and, when David played to Saul to soothe him, whose mood was he fitting?
For we do not impute to Bach, in those other-wordly passages in the Crucifixus of the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) the state of mind / soul at the time of composition that the music portrays, before the sudden triumph of Et resurrexit, do we?
To be continued
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Tuesday 10 April 2012
Statistics and the brain (1)
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11 April
On Lindsay's blog, another discussion about AI and virtual immortality.
In a side-strand, generated by comment, I have added:
If they do actually mean anything, and are not more inventions (which, however imaginative they may be, just mislead everybody), these statistics about, for example, how much of the brain we use are in the realm of science - but how good is the science, as, if it were crucial to making the right finding to have more of the scientist's brain working than 10%, then the measurements might be ones that defy or defeat the measurer.
An often-quoted one, and one used by those who like wearing hats to justify the preference, is the claim that - and I think that it is usually this sort of figure - 20% of heat lost by the body is through the head. To which I retort:
1. When someone inverted the figure, and made it 80% heat loss, I really had to question whether he ever engaged the brain before speaking;
2. If this is the loss from the head, and one wants to minimize it, a hat is clearly not the answer, where a balaclava is;
3. Maybe that's where the 10% usage of the brain comes from - it's overheating because of people trying to block its cooling system.
See more, if you will, at Writer's Rest...
And now, also, at Statistics and the brain (2)
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11 April
On Lindsay's blog, another discussion about AI and virtual immortality.
In a side-strand, generated by comment, I have added:
If they do actually mean anything, and are not more inventions (which, however imaginative they may be, just mislead everybody), these statistics about, for example, how much of the brain we use are in the realm of science - but how good is the science, as, if it were crucial to making the right finding to have more of the scientist's brain working than 10%, then the measurements might be ones that defy or defeat the measurer.
An often-quoted one, and one used by those who like wearing hats to justify the preference, is the claim that - and I think that it is usually this sort of figure - 20% of heat lost by the body is through the head. To which I retort:
1. When someone inverted the figure, and made it 80% heat loss, I really had to question whether he ever engaged the brain before speaking;
2. If this is the loss from the head, and one wants to minimize it, a hat is clearly not the answer, where a balaclava is;
3. Maybe that's where the 10% usage of the brain comes from - it's overheating because of people trying to block its cooling system.
See more, if you will, at Writer's Rest...
And now, also, at Statistics and the brain (2)
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