Any room left on the sofa?

Did you hitch a ride on an Arctic Tern this year?...

Do give my best regards to my distant brother ,he's the <Algebraist> there.

He keeps carving and etching Cartesian symbols on his igloo's walls...

*Region Check*

<Jess> is in Canada and <Dom>'s in the Anti-Bear land...

Me?I am the leader of one of these clans in Mongolia. I'm now called the <Three-Faced> here nicknamed <Three>...

Ever since <Jess> resigned,the TAL has become defunct. It's been boring without a an enemy inside your head...*shakes head*

Why don't you guys come down east to check out the ranch here...

Ever heard of a clan of outlaws? Yep that's us...Picture a couple of guns on the waist and a protractor on the ear...<Three>..

Hey <Jess> if you're in Canada,the Gobi is west yea?...Well Canada's east for me..

"I ride like a cowboy toward the sun,
And life ain't fun when you're on the run,
Got my gold and I got my gun,
But life as an outlaw just begun,
Got my shotgun by my side,
Got my horse and I got my pride,
I ride til there ain't no place to hide,
It's sad cause the bad guys always die"

Yegads! Sometimes Calamity James (remember him?) used to obliviously wander past blocks of gold and three thousand pound notes. Why did we pity him?

'Only a few days ago, Louis Aragon pointed out to me the sign of a Pourville hotel showing in red letters the words: MAISON ROUGE consisted of certain letters arranged in such a way that when seen from a certain angle in the street, the word MAISON disappeared and ROUGE read POLICE.'

Yores,

"What is surrealism"?

Ok I read this book (in translation obviously) more than a few times.

Ok I was forced to the first time.

But this statement always struck me as very offensive-

"The perfect articulation of surrealism is to empty a machine gun into a crowd at a shopping mall"

1. I don't think he meant this to be sarcastic or even ironic.

2. Why doesn't he have the guts to do this? People actually *did* do this, in both phases of the Algerian revolution.

3. Why didn't his pal <Salvador Dali> say anything this ridiculous?

4. <Chien Andalou> is very, very beautiful, and very, very frightening. If it doesn't frighten you it means you have no brain.

5. <Bob Dylan> loved that film. He alludes to it in arguably one of his very finest compositions, <Visions of Johanna>-

"Jewels and binoculars,
Hang from the head of the mule"

(sometimes he sings "muse" instead- the shifty beggar)

6. I have mixed feelings about <Andre Breton>. You can't just say stuff for "shock value" if you are not serious about it.

You see, the people who actually did empty guns into bourgeois crowds in Algiers- who blew up people at the air port- repeatedly- well, they were serious. They were not playing. It was NOT "surrealist absurdism".

It was bloody real.

I therefore regard anything <Breton> had to say about this to be facile, at best, and disgusting, at worse.

Much, much better (on this particular topic) was the brilliant <Pontocorvo> film documenting the circumstances and actions of these people and the consequences- the real consequences- of their real actions. No "posing" for them.

Also, why is <Jean LePen> not rotting in Hell? Why did he until very recently poll upwards of 5% of the French electorate?

Why has France never admitted that torture- under the on site guidance of <LePen>- an officially sanctioned and deliberate government policy?

Dali certainly was fairly ridiculous too. of course. It was ostensively for his veneration of Hitler and his showboating eroticism that Dali was kicked out of the surrealist group, for example, although these two things are rather more symptomatic of his refusal to properly forge a pact between conscious and unconscious. Floppy clocks are arguably as vulgar, surrealistically, as Hitler wankfests. Point being, Dali was no pal. Avida Dollars, usw. And he ought not to be seen as the archetypal surrealist, either -- not because he was popular, but because the frames of reference of surrealism were mutated because he was popular.

Hmm... no such thing, shurely?

I know what you're saying, for sure. That balancing act between pushing boundaries and pushing boundaries for the sake of it isn't simple. Let's not even talk about inadvertently pushing boundaries through thinking that you're pushing boundaries for the sake of it. But it's the greatest dilemma for me when I think about contemporary comedy - what do I have to say about Jerry Sadowitz coming out on stage at the Montreal festival and saying 'greetings, moose@#$%ers!'? I dunno. But jeez, we *must* discuss it!

<Chien Andalou>

Did you know that <Dali> made a guest appearance on <The Love Boat> TV show?

I prefer <Duchamp> to <Dali> or <Breton>-- But for me numero wunno is the films of <Bunuel>- particularly <I forget the title> in black and white about the Nun.

A seamless multi-allegorical visual poem.

<Vervidia>? <Velveeta Brand Cheese>?

I'd GOOGLE it but I regard that activity to be "jejune".

<Do you know anything about the "nuts and bolts" about the collaboration between <Dali> and <Luis Bunuel> on <Chien Andalou>?>

Not much beyond what's related in the various biographies. What should I know??

<Did you know that <Dali> made a guest appearance on <The Love Boat> TV show?>

http://www.polkadotparadise.com/use...

It had English subtitles- and the filmmakers asked him questions about chess, why chess, etc.

My favorite part is in the opening sequence- <Duchamp> is considering a move OTB, quietly smoking.

The interviewer asks a few questions, prompting this response by "the man":

"Chess is a school of silence."

That's how you can tell I'm not a serious chessplayer- I never shut up.

<mack> Got it!!

Ok no GOOGLE but thanks to you I've remembered-

It's <Viridiana>, no?

The last supper sequence is "monumental" in my opinion. And watching the viciousness of the beggars is like being electrocuted.

I think <Brecht> must have loved this film. It's more "Brechtian," arguably, than his own plays.

Overall, I think <Bunuel> "does Brecht" much, much, better than did <Godard>.

Only art school fanatics can sit through one of <Godard's> "full on Brechtian films".

Although I admit a fascination with the opening traffic accident sequence in <Weekend>.

He may as well have stopped the film after this sequence.

by <Boomie>, with factual information:

Jul-09-09

delete Boomie: <jessicafischerqueen:

Contrary to popular opinion, the <swastika> symbol was not lifted intact by the Nazis.

They changed the Indian swastika symbol- which is Buddhist, by the way- by reversing the direction of the little thingies on the end of the spokes.>

Well, not exactly true. Swastikas have been found that date back to 5000 BC. It is a design that occurs naturally in square basket weaving.

A little closer to India, swastikas have been found in the remains of the Indus Valley civilization which was ground into dust by the invasion of the Vedic culture. So the symbol was used on the subcontinent before 1500 BC when the invasion took place.

Now forbidden in most of the chess world, as well as in the Duchamp Hotel. I'd fume quietly but the signs say 'defense de fumer' -- is that like a French Defense with a smokescreen?

In Breton's defence, can I just say that he didn't mention emptying it of bullets? He might have been emptying it of fish, for example.

He wrote something in French.

Have you got a bona fide copy handy?

I'd be most interested to know about the translation.

It seems to me that Surrealism would be the one thing that would refuse to explain itself.

That volume was one of the most turgid, humorless things I ever read.

Although I did read it more than once, and frequently passed off much of it as "my own thinking".

You have a point about translation blips. It's hard to imagine Andre talking about 'shopping malls', for instance.

Faire vide le gatling-gun dans l'arcade de shopping?

Now <mack> will provide a punchline about Walter Benjamin and Arcades.

Et in arcadia ego.

PS. Maybe one could compare Breton's line to the sentiments of WW1 poets ... like Sassoon, in 'Blighters':

<I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls, Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home, sweet Home’,
And there’d be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.>