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< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 405 OF 963 ·
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| Sep-02-08 | | Red October: there are kids about |
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| Sep-02-08 | | hms123: <Dom> A headline today in the good ole US of A: Hurricane Gustav <bares> down on New Orleans. BTW, I am really enjoying your comments in the Iron Man of the Niggling game. |
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Sep-02-08
 | | Domdaniel: <hms> Ta. I'll probably recede into the background when the machine-driven middlegame arrives, and there's no room for my curious brand of rhetoric. Engines don't get it, I find. But at least they don't object to it, like some of their operators/ humanoid slaves. Gotta go, Fritz wants its nails painted black. Why did I buy a Goth computer ... ?? |
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Sep-02-08
| | Domdaniel: <Gustav bares down> Mein Gott, these Teutonics and their penchant for open-air nudity. I've seen them, you know, all pink and blond and lobster-like - if you can imagine a blond lobster - sunning themselves on the Baltic beaches round Sassnitz. Frisch, fromm, fröhlich, frei. And all that. |
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| Sep-02-08 | | hms123: <Dom> exactly! |
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Sep-03-08
| | Domdaniel: <mack> Forget La Mirrenova's coke non-story -- but note how the section of the interview headed 'meeting the Queen' is mostly about date rape. The mind actually boggles. |
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Sep-03-08
| | Domdaniel: "The Queen she came to Liverpool
To roger one and all
The humble folks in Toxteth
And the nobs in the town hall." |
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| Sep-04-08 | | mack: Oh Dom, I can escape neither chess nor chessgames.com. Late last night I made the final, head-down, socks-up, balls-out push to get the dissertation done. I had taken the advice of the Taoist poet Li Po, who before getting down to writing would consume a hundred cups of wine. One hole that I needed to fill in was the identity of 'J.A. Camacho', who had written a very eloquent letter to The Times about the state of broadcasting in the early seventies. And what does google come up with? J A Rios Camacho Leave me alone! |
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Sep-04-08
| | Domdaniel: <mack> What can I say? One way of dealing with small holes that seem to need filling or mending is to take the opposite approach. Enlarge them. Rip out a few more chunks. Think Burroughs meets Henry Moore in Gouda. The result can symbolize the fragmentary and 'holey' state of human knowledge in the internet age. A bit too much like yesterday's avant-garde, I admit. Didn't BS Johnson do the same with a novel in the 1960s? With other pages visible through the holes ... Formally speaking, the Classic Realist Dissertation has some catching up to do. Holes and formalism. It's the Greenaway influence already.... |
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| Sep-04-08 | | mack: <Formally speaking, the Classic Realist Dissertation has some catching up to do.> As has the Classic Nihilist Dissertation (CND).
'As plain as the nose my face:
examine small holes with searchlights'
R. Pollard (as Airport 5), 'Total Exposure', (2001).
I'm not too het up about the holes. I'll piss in them in, make them bigger, hide my bones in them, turn them into mass graves... anything but ever properly fill them in. 'cause where's the fun in that? |
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| Sep-04-08 | | Red October: < Fritz wants its nails painted black> lets paint our nails jet black......
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| Sep-04-08 | | Red October: one more nominee for coolest dude...
Brick Top in Snatch |
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Sep-05-08
| | Domdaniel: <Redifusion> -- <Brick Top in Snatch> Hmmm. I wrote a segment of fiction once (part of a novel, short story, novella, or double-entry bookkeeping epic) which was entitled <A Snatch of Song>. It wasn't anything special. It wasn't even grubby. No smut, no hidden treasures for intellectuals ... what was I thinking? Anyway, Mr Guy Ritchie -- aka Mr Madonna -- then used it as well. End of story ... |
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Sep-05-08
 | | jessicafischerqueen: <Ohh oh- Dominoe-- something something Romeo--> Heh Van Morrison he was Irish like you.
Great score on the <England's Pastures Greenaway> package!! As an Internet free movie addict I sometimes forget that a lot of great stuff is not posted for free, mainly because we internet addicts are savage philistines with the attention spans of fruit flies. Did you like <Drowning by Numbers>? I think that was the last film he made with <Michael Nyman>? I loved it.
You know back in the day I attended a screening of a "air safety public swervice film" that <Greenaway> made when he was a pup. It's German!!
There were about six people in this little cubby hole "art theatre" on St-Laurent street, and they were all French except me and we were all chain smoking importantly. We laughed from start to finish, but that may have been because we were drunk, rather than because of some kind of ironic intention on <Greenaway's> oart. Montreal was a fine place in many ways. Anachronistic. Pretentious. Cheap. Fun. Kind of like us!!!
heh
You got to meet <Green Eggs and Hamaway>, however. I don't think <Robin Days> ever met him. Bloody poms.
Mrs. Morrison (Janet Planet) |
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Sep-05-08
| | jessicafischerqueen: "swervice"?
"oart"?
Good grief I've stopped trying even.
<Bill> HELP1!! |
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Sep-05-08
| | jessicafischerqueen: OOH almost forgot.
Do you think <Chrome Hubcap's> very fine <Body Double> starring <Jeremy Ironing Board> was rather directly inspired by <Zed and Two Astronaughts>? I do.
The endings are virtually identical, no?
You've met <Chrome Hubcaps> as well, no? Could you please phone him and <Green Dayaway> up and tell me if I'm right? Do they have telephones?
Maybe they are only on SKYPE now.
Stupid Internet. |
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Sep-06-08
| | jessicafischerqueen: Oh no!
Not more english Prog Rock lyrics!!
"There is lamb's wool under my naked feet...
The wool is soft and warm- gives off some kind of heat... A salamander scurries, into flame to be destroyed..
Imaginary creatures are trapped in birth-- on celluloid...." Heh...
<Peter Gabriel> is as cool as <Peter Greenaway>. I think Peter is the coolest name.
Do you know what Jesus said when Peter came to visit him on the Cross? "Hey Peter! I can see your house from up here!!"
HAHAHAHAAH
*Scranton*
(no letters please) |
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| Sep-06-08 | | Red October: and the Pawn lies down on the b file... |
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Sep-06-08
| | Domdaniel: That's enough, I'm moving to Montcouver to wear black among important people and smoke cigarettes while discussing oarts. Most of these things are illegal here now. Certainly the cigarettes and the oarts. Being pretentious isn't illegal yet, but small children yell obscenities at you and their owners encourage them: <Transfusion City: Quark in the Dark> "Hey Mom! That one's different! Is it a batty boy?"
- Doesn't matter what sort of queer it is, son, kick it again anyhow. See the spiky bit with the glasses? That'd be the head, like. Aim for that. "Wheee! Splat! Kerpow! Thanks, Ma - my first queerbashing! Splonge!" - Happy birthday, my lad. Have some more offal ice cream. It looks more like a pensioner than a queer, but who cares? "Who cares, Ma? Not me! Kerpow! Crunch! Gob!"
- Nice one, son. Have some more lard. If you put on more weight you'd be just like your Dad. "Who's he, Ma?"
- You know those fat lads down the pub with the IRA tattoos? Remember the one who bought you a pint? He's your Da. I think. "Crunch! Kick! DROOL! GOB! You only feckin think he is, Ma?" - Shut it, pigface. A girl has to live, and Barno was in the dosh, like, after robbing the charity store. They never nabbed him for it neither, so he must be smarter than he looks, like. "So firkin what, Ma? Gob!"
- You're the spit of yer Da, all right. And you're yer Mammy's own little queerbashin' pet, too ... but you know sod all about women. We goes for men that are rich, fat, a bit clever - but stay-out-of-the-nick clever, not yer effin books - and well hun-- eh, well hungry. He likes his lard butty pizzas, does yer Da. "Super, Ma. Can I be a cross between me Da and David Beckham when I grows up?" - Sure, son, if your Dad shags David Beckham. Ain't gonna happen, is it? Kick the batty pensioner weirdo again, willya, before his whine gets on me nerves. "Nerves, Ma? You want yer tablets? Gouge! Splat!"
- Yeah, I do. Here's 29 Euro. Go down to Mackey on the corner and get us ten of the yella fellas. Good boy. [the end]
*This public service playlet was brought to you by a disillusioned old fart. He's been disciplined for droning on about his injuries (and sneaking a Velvet Underground allusion into a realist narrative). Bloody arty formalists. We won't be seeing *him* again.* The Mismanagement. |
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Sep-06-08
| | Domdaniel: <Jess> Greenaway claims to have been a painter and humble film editor in the 70s with something called <The Central Information Office>. I've seen the paintings. Influenced by RB Kitaj, I suspect. But the CIO is too perfect. I bet he invented it. I love Drowning by Numbers. Its release was also the first time I met PG. The story of this encounter should still be up top in my profile, unless I erased it in a fit of drunken anti-formalism. And I've never had one of those. Though a redesign and overhaul is planned, so read it soon - before the end of the Noughties, anyway. More Greenawayerie to follow by crested wagtail. |
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Sep-07-08
| | jessicafischerqueen: Heh that's bloody hilarious <Dom> It would play well on screen as a comedy skit on a good TV show like MONTY PyTHON for example. Do they have shows like that anymore?
It is also reminiscent of some of the finer work of VIZ magazine, but tonier. Just as broad, but definitely tonier.
do you know any tony Broads?
Or any Broads named Tony?
Are you allowed to phone <PG-13> up? Would he remember you as a critic who interviewed and wrote about him? If so, let's invite him to join our website here.
All Poms play chess, no?
<Kingscrusher> has invited everyone on the Internet to his biannual "chess social" at a pub in Londinium. heh-
Pictures of last year's bash include a lotta geezers quaffing pints as they scowl at a chessboard. I can't read Profiles anymore as there is some kind of Korean virus in my computer. sigh.
It's depressing-- and it seems to be affecting Profiles mainly. But more and more English letters are appearing on my screen as Korean characters. My Computer is multi-lingual, and I think it's getting confused. I suppose it didn't help that I spilled coffee on the dam thing. If this one goes down that will make 3 (count em- 3) computers and one cell phone that I will have wrecked by spilling coffee on them. Why don't they make these things waterproof?
Are <wagtails> flightless? If not, they will not function as EMUS!!
Mrs. Beatrix Potter
The old bag. |
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Sep-07-08
| | Domdaniel: <Jess> From bottom to top ... Hang on, I'd better rephrase that. Apparently it's a standard way of starting a letter between the members of a sadomasochistic relationship, from the slave to the dominatrix. And that wouldn't be *right*, now, would it? Hmm. Among Tory gentlemen of a certain age, is Mrs Thatcher's bosom admired as a single entity ("Magnificent frottage - er, *frontage*, I mean" -- Lord Pschytte of Much-Burying-of-Lefties-in-the-Marsh) or was the right breast privileged ("The right tit for the job, I always say" -- Lord Belgrano of Mention-de-Waugh). Basta. Anatomical Thatcherisms got us into trouble before. Plus, the demented old dear is currently providing useful info for my semi-unwritten novel, Larry Alzheimer in the White Location. Wagtails can be *made* flightless. A little touch of <avian bricolage> and bobtail's yer uncle: "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain ..." Greenaway claimed to "come from a family of ornithologists". His early films are obsessed with bird lore, so it may, in a sense, be true. One typical way that he has of starting a sentence - which I either picked up from him or had anyway - is "There is a sense in which ..." Put two of us in a room and the result borders on the absurd, from the 'wrong' side: "There is a sense in which it is a good afternoon."
"Indeed. There is a sense in which you are welcome to Dublin."
"But there is a sense in which I am not, since I am, in a sense, English".
"There is a sense in which I beg to differ. And there is a sense in which you don't actually exist - being, for example, a textual device on some future computer medium used to entertain a woman in the distant future."
"Exactly. But that woman is also real, whatever that may mean. Even as we speak, she is a precocious child in Canada ... an *Infanta* figure, in a sense." [*and so on*]
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| Sep-07-08 | | Red October: <f this one goes down that will make 3 (count em- 3) computers and one cell phone that I will have wrecked by spilling coffee on them> one more reason to like Vodka my dear... more tea ?
Regards,
Mrs Arsenic
The ole Village by the See |
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Sep-07-08
| | Domdaniel: <Jess ... more of the same, in a sense>: In a sense, the makey-uppy PG dialog is more 'realistic' than the previous ('battybashing') one. As a compulsive eavesdropper, user of public transport, and maker of surreptitious notes, I know that the character types depicted are, sadly, all too real. I've heard worse between parent and sprog. But in 'life' both parent and sprog would use certain words with incredible frequency - words I cannot use here (c-word, f-word, recently the n-word too -- though they're touchingly reticent about that and look around first to see if any actual n-persons might be nearby). A cleaned-up version (using the Irish village of Effin instead) might go: "Yeh effin little bollix, get yer effin hands off me effin leg right effin now, or I'll get yer effin Da to effin sit on yer effin head while he's watchin' the effin' telly." Also, it's all much too *constructed*. Underclass speech is very repetitive. The same thing is said 20 times, and ignored 20 times by the notional addressee. Questions are answered with other questions. And so on. A bit like <The World vs GM A.Person>, innit? But I *have* seen the overweight offspring of obese parents being encouraged to engage in illegal behavior (okay, mostly stuff like vandalism and littering - not GBH or murder or robbing the Bank of England - though I've heard stories about small kids used as drug mules and burglars and pickpockets/'dippers'). This is a song about an apiarist in Effin:
<"He kept bees in the village of Effin
And Effin bee-keeper was he
Then one day this Effin bee-keeper
Was stung by a big Effin bee.">
- The defendant, excuse my language, M'lord, then called me a 'big Effin bee' ... - Did he, now? I sentence him to be hanged by the neck until ... what happens then, Sergeant? - Death, M'lud.
- Ah. Perhaps a tad permanent for an Effin case like this. Suspend him by some other part of the anatomy. A wing, perhaps? |
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Sep-07-08
| | Domdaniel: <Jess> More, more ... I was gonna do some writing today. It seems I did: A writer and reporter who specialises in this feral criminal area - I interviewed him last year - said it's getting much worse, much faster. And that's not just the standard gripe of the old, like Socrates complaining about that young punk Plato. This is an actual one-off one-way historical shift. The grandparents of today's underclass teens -- in London, Rome, Chicago, Dublin, Montreal -- might have been 'ordinary decent criminals', back in the day. As such, they had a rudimentary education which at least introduced them to concepts like good and evil. They had some basic religious instruction in some faith or other - brainwashing or propaganda, maybe, but some of it stuck. And working-class communities had a moral code -- even vicious thugs would not assault an old woman, batty or otherwise. Yes, this notion of the 'ordinary decent criminal' has been romanticized and sentimentalized ("I seen him nail an informer's head to the floor, but he went upstairs first and turned up the volume on his Mum's TV, so she wouldn't hear the screams. A gent, he was".> Not helped by the Kevin Spacey movie (director: Thaddeus O'Sullivan) of that name. Ironically, both Boorman's <The General> and O'Sullivan's <Ordinary Decent Criminal> were based on the same real-life Dublin gangster, Martin Cahill. As was a third movie, <Vicious Circle>. But back to 'real' life. Older generation: criminal but with an accepted code of ethics. Next generation: criminal too, but different. By the 1980s, hard drugs are ubiquitous (at this level of society) and religion has lost most of its influence. These people have *heard* of good and evil, but they generally succeed in not thinking about it. If put in jail, they don't read books: they fight, work out in the gym, use illegal cellphones to keep their drug biz ticking over, and hire the best lawyers to challenge their convictions. There are however still some things they regard as 'evil' - the moral code is provided by TV and tabloids - which is why, in prison, they have to be segregated from paedophiles in case they torture them to death. Now we reach *their* children. The "ASBO Generation" -- named after a legal device introduced in Britain and Ireland, the Anti-Social Behaviour Order. A well-meant but toothless attempt to identify young offenders and steer them back to the path of goodness. But these kids are feral. They get stoned and shoot their 'buddies'. They live entirely in the moment. They have instant gratification instead of morality. They've never heard of good'n'evil, outside of comicbooks and DVDs -- where, naturally, they identify with the evildoers. As a sign of change, I think of Shakespeare's Richard III. A baddie himself, Dick hired even nastier types to do his murders (like Nixon). Like the pair of thugs he sends into the Tower to kill Clarence. Consider this world: set in the 1400s, described by Shakespeare 150 years later. Two thugs - the most depraved and godless sinners in the most wicked city on Earth (after Paris, Rome, and where else?) - are about to kill a Royal. That's a hang-draw-&-quarter offence if things go wrong, and a straight-to-hell gig in any case. God don't like the <just followin' orders> line. So what do they do? They debate it. They talk about sin and punishment for several minutes. They're the baddest guys in town, but they can't do a simple hit without dithering about eternal brimstone and the lake of fire. Conclusion: an old-style biblical education screws you up, especially if you're considering a career as a professional killer. But look at some contemporary versions. Dexter: the psychopathic serial killer as hero. Hannibal Lecter: beyond good and evil, with the math to prove it. Or take any of the hitmen in recent movies: you think John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank worries about his soul? The black comedy there derives from the fact that he *does* have qualms. But what are they based on? Romantic love. So the answer is <"Bring back God - and give Him an even bigger stick this time"> ... ? Nope. It's too late for that. The basic shared cultural assumptions are gone. The reporter I interviewed had lived among these guys for months. He said he was able, on some vaguely human level, to relate to the older generation, despite their murderous careers. But the young ones terrified him. Just a void, he said, where we expect the humanity to be. The solution isn't really a solution. Gated communities, techno-surveillance, security guards and armed response -- until the tide rises and sweeps the scum from the streets. Along with everything else ... |
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< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 405 OF 963 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
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Kibitzing
