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2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I don't know how many of my readers have seen this, but it looks like a scream. urlLink www.molvania.com - some Eastern Europeans think it's an outrage and extremely insulting, but I think it's hilarous. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | President George W. Bush, breaking with decades of U.S. policy has outraged Palestinians, when he said Israel could keep part of the West Bank in a future peace deal that now appears more distant than ever. Bush coupled what Israel hailed as a historic statement on Wednesday with an endorsement of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral Gaza pullout plan and a negation of any right of return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel. - full story urlLink here . More from urlLink Palestine Daily . Is he NUTS??? Palestianian PM made a comment that was shown on Singapore media, but doesn't seem to have made it to most international news - 'This is ridiculous. It is like the President of Mauritius dictating and giving away land in Texas!'. Even China doesn't attempt to tell foreign countries what to do. Υβρις εστιν... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink When Islam Breaks Down - by Theodore Dalrymple. EXCELLENT! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Spent the morning and lunch in a meeting with the architects of our Tower of Babel (my nickname for it) project in Peking, slated to be the world's tallest building, a golden spike some one kilometre tall. Then spent the afternoon at Dominic's place - Teeheong has come back from 6 years in Melbourne, where he's been playing Bassoon and doing postgrad, and is very annoyed with the immigration laws about foreign talent - he's easily the best bassonist in Australia and he can't get a position because he doesn't have PR (and conversely he can't get PR unless he has a regular job). I've not seen him in 6 years, so it was lovely catching up again. Next, the National University of Singapore's decided to can the Piper's Guild - seems we're not making enough money. The same university that's annouced extra funding for the arts and built a spanking new Arts Centre that cost millions... cuts back on fledgling groups. Brilliant. Never mind, we did fine for over a decade before we went under the University's wing, and we'll be fine without them - just without the thousands of dollars each term to spend on instruments and a room to call our own. Dom and I had dinner at Adam Road - briyani... yum. Rented Gattaca to watch - I'm surprised I hadn't watched it before. It's excellent - the soundtrack by Michael Nyman is to die for... and Ethan Hawke is adorably handsome in there ;) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | So we had a power outage last night. I actually enjoyed it - no computer distracting me, no TV for dad to turn up at high volume and thus driving me nuts... only the lack of airconditioning or fans and not being able to charge my mobile phone was a tad annoying. When keeping a blog, how far does one self-censor? It's far easier keeping a diary, wherein all of one's most personal and honest thoughts may be recorded, because there at least one may have some measure of control over the readership. A blog however, is vastly different - one never quite knows who might be reading. Some things simply aren't said in public, and to the faces of certain people. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Had a power outage just now, lasting about an hour. Quite unusual, I can't remember when the last time it happened was. I sent a text message to Bryan, asking 'hey, is the power out at your side too?' and got the reply 'yes, fucking hell. Dad says Osama probably bombed the power station'. How amusing. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | You are a GRAMMAR GOD ! If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. Congratulations and thank you! urlLink How grammatically sound are you? brought to you by urlLink Quizilla |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Washington Times special report on the American Evangelical Protestants who are streaming into Iraq, seeking to convert the Muslims and Iraq's Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians. It appears these Protestants focus on converting native Christians rather than the Muslims. Shame on them, for stealing sheep from the ancient churches! I was rather amused by what an Iraqi bishop had to say about them and their penchant for passing out bulk-rate Bibles to the Iraqi Christians: 'Do we really need this huge amount of Bibles? Do they think we don't know Jesus Christ? Let them go to the Muslim areas and distribute their Bibles. If they do it in Muslim neighborhoods, the Muslims will kill them.' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | As I sit at the computer, I'm listening to J.S. Bach's Easter Oratorio - glorious stuff! Two links from Yahoo News: urlLink Eats, shoots and leaves sounds interesting - the author's a punctuation pedant, and mostly likely also a grammar pedant - just like me. Someone has to keep the standards of language up! urlLink Deep Fried Chocolate Sandwich : LONDON (Reuters) - Chocoholics seeking to indulge their passion this Easter will appreciate a British hotel chain's diet-busting chocolate sandwich, which boasts the added attraction of being dipped in batter and deep-fried. ... - from the land that gave us the deep-fried Mars Bar. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | '...bananas and plantains are in trouble. Imperiled by pests that they cannot fend off, they need a genetic fix. Otherwise, many varieties may one day become extinct...The problem is that bananas have not had sex for 10,000 years. Edible bananas are mutants with three sets of chromosomes instead of the two found in wild bananas, causing the edibles to be seedless and therefore sterile.' From urlLink sfgate.com via urlLink SauteWednesday |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Here's a neat article on the dynamics at work in second-language conversation. (Link via urlLink mirabilis .) Many monoglots assume that speaking a foreign language is merely replacing one set of words or grammar rules with another. It actually involves all sorts of strange and wonderful processes that get you to interpret reality and look at the world in completely new ways. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Random thought: If the Last Supper was the first Mass/Divine Liturgy/Communion Service, then that would make Judas Iscariot the first person to leave Mass early. Food for thought, I say. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Mexican woman performs own Caesarean to save baby : now THAT is what I call courageous fighting for the gift of life! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Serge's Blog : urlLink Endangered Languages Project : Theres urlLink a facinating article (registration required) from the Philadelphia Enquirer about language conservationists who record endangered languages, and Serge, like me, is a language geek. It's quite fascinating, as the article says: About 500 years ago, humans spoke 13,000 languages. Today, only about 6,500 languages remain. In a few centuries, there could be as few as 500. That alarms linguists, who are scurrying to record languages and describe their grammar before they are lost for good. 'If we let them go extinct, valuable knowledge will be lost,' Harrison said. 'Many preliterate cultures have immense knowledge, which they hand down by way of their language.' Tofa, another Siberian language that Harrison has studied, provides an example. He said Tofa-speaking reindeer herders have devised a highly efficient way of sharing information about their herds. They have an individual word for every conceivable combination of attributes to describe a reindeer. Using just a single word, a Tofa speaker could describe, say, a 2-year-old, brown, castrated male reindeer. Languages also impart something else, less tangible. They reflect different perspectives on life and the physical world. The English words snake and fish indicate no perceived connection between these living things. But in Tofa, the word for snake is translated as ground-fish. An interesting choice - it helps an English speaker see the similarity between how a fish moves in water and the slithering of a snake over land. urlLink The Abolition of Grandparents: by Gary North Because there was so little housing space under Communism, it was common for grandparents to live in the same small apartment. So, when the children came home from school, grandma was there to tell them stories and thereby transfer part of the pre-revolution culture to them. -snip snip- My father-in-law was alert to this factor because he was an Armenian. He was the seventh in a line of sons in his family who served the community as their minister. There was never any other occupation that his father had wanted for him. Until the Turkish genocide of a million Armenians in 1915–16, his family had stayed in the same town: Van. He told me that it was possible to trace his family back to the 13th century in the church graveyard. In the church Bible that had been left behind in the exodus in 1915, his father had told him that there was a notation in the margin: 'Today, the Mongols came through.' That is what I would call cultural continuity. WOW. Talk about continuity. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Since it's Bright Week (as we Byzantines call it) or Easter Octave (as the Latins call it), here's a lovely fresco from the Church of the Saviour 'in the Country' in Constantinople (also known as the Χώρα or Khora/Chora Church), depicting Christ yanking Adam and Eve out of Hades! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Some comments from the urlLink Scotsman about the decline of Latin, here's what they say about the Catholic Church: The international institution that formerly sustained Latin - the Catholic Church - has largely sold out that great intellectual heritage. In 1962, at the first session of the Second Vatican Catastrophe, the American bishops complained that they could not understand the debates being conducted in Latin. So they installed, at their own expense, simultaneous translation facilities. Instead, they should each have been handed a copy of North and Hillard and been told to come back when they had attained the level of literacy appropriate to any bishop of the Holy Roman Church. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Rogueclassicism : On urlLink Passion : Last night, however, the wife and I went and it was a pretty good movie. Not great -- if Zefirelli and Mel got together and made the movie, it would be great. Now since no one in the popular press seems to comment on the Latin -- other than to mention how it probably wasn't historically the language which would have been spoken by the various folks who speak it -- I will. It's not as bad as some folks have suggested. Some of the pronunciation is ecclesiastical, which is kind of strange in context ('Chaisar'?). I did detect (imagine?) that the common soldier types were using a more 'English' word order than Pontius Pilate, who was rather more 'Wheelockian'. Either way, though, it was generally understandable, once you caught on to the accents -- Jesus' Latin was somewhat difficult to understand, but that might have been deliberate, given that it wasn't his 'first' tongue. My only real quibble with the 'Latin' side of things was the way Caiaphas addressed Pilate. Most often, it was as 'gubernator', which I don't believe would have been appropriate. Similiter, he once addresses him as 'Consul', which also seems out of place. Only once does he address him as procurator. [update: a reader -- thanks RH! -- has reminded me that Pilate's official title was Praefectus; in the Passion, he is never addressed as such as far as I recall] In passing, though, I note that Pilate seems to be portrayed as understanding various non-Latin languages. I'm not sure how accurate that would be ... Some interesting bits of Latin that caught my ear were the soldier saying 'Faciam musicam' (I shall make the music) prior to Jesus' scourging and the centurion's 'Interfecimus deum' when the earthquake hits. urlLink Bushiad and Idyossey - This was mentioned on the Classics list ... it's a parody (obviously) of Homer's works with George Bush as the central character in both. Clearly not written by a Republican ... Some folks will like it, others will hate it, but you've got to at least acknowledge the effort. urlLink Classicolor : Okay ... a couple of folks have sent this to me and the first time I shuddered and thought ... no. But it keeps popping up in various fora, so we might as well get it over with. At the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Cophenhagen, there is an exhibition called 'Classicolor', which presents copies of assorted Classical pieces painted as they would have been originally. Someone has put urlLink a page of photos up. Shudder redux. Not sure about the accuracy of the colours, but they're probably not too far ... they all seem to have Anime/Manga style eyes (especially the Caligula) ... urlLink More Thoughts on Scotland and Classics : And an impassioned plea for the classics comes from Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Italian archaeologist and author of a trilogy of novels on Alexander the Great as well as The Last Legion, all of which have inspired and informed films currently in production. 'Let’s imagine that in 500 years’ time, or a thousand, English has become a dead language, replaced, perhaps, by Chinese. And let’s imagine that it is learned only in schools and universities, much as ancient Greek and Latin are now. At that point someone might claim that the study of English had become completely useless because it is a dead language and should be abolished in favour of other subjects, more functional and suitable to the times. 'In theory, this wouldn’t mean much; in practice it would be a disaster. No-one would be able to read Chaucer,Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Dickens, Joyce, etc, any longer. 'This is why it would be a serious mistake to close the last institutions which cultivate the study of these so-called ‘dead’ languages.' We neglect Latin and Greek at our peril, warns Manfredi, who goes so far as to point to Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 - about a future society that bans books. Greek and Latin, he argues, like music, poetry and art, are 'vaccines against homogenisation, globalisation … the subjugation of minds.' The full original article urlLink here . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | An ancient Greek joke, from Philogelos : ''I had your wife for nothing,’ someone sneered at a wag. ‘More fool you. I’m her husband, I have to have the ugly bitch. You don’t.'' In case you didn't know, it's the single jokebook survives from ancient times: the Philogelos, or “Laughter-Lover,” a collection in Greek that was probably put together in the fourth or fifth century A.D. More about it urlLink here . The whole Philogelos may be found urlLink here . or visit urlLink Michael Hendry's Ioci Antiqui pages for jokes from a variety of ancient sources. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Incipit rant Eduardis malcontenti. I've been surfing Friendster and I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who, under the 'favourite books' section, proudly announce 'Books? Yuck!' or 'Who needs them? I don't read!'. Who'd have thought anyone would consider illiteracy a badge of distinction? Ah yes, but then I live in Singapore, an island with less culture than a pot of yoghurt, and where the vast majority of citizens are dumb illiterate cattle without the capacity to think and reason, without common sense, without manners or any graces at all. Here endeth today's rant. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Lew Rockwell : urlLink Three Cheers for Intellectual Honesty: How Freedom Is liberating China – and How the College Left Ignores It - this one's good. urlLink Eet Mor Chocolate I've always believed and taught that. In my school of Theology, good chocolate, as well as perfect roast lamb, are among the most important proofs for the existence of God. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Remember a week ago I urlLink blogged about NATO forces in Kosovo attacking an Orthodox Priest and his son, leaving both in a coma? urlLink Here's an account from the Priest's wife and pictures. SHAME on Nato. Shame on those who demonise Serbs in this conflict and support the Albanian terrorists who destroy our churches and work for the destruction of Christendom. The Western media has demonised Serbia in the last decade or more, while virtually ignoring the fact that Bosnia-Hercegovina's first president Alija Izetbegovic spoke of creating a pure Islamic state in the region prior to independence, brought in fundamentalist Moslem guerillas who carried out anti-Christian pogroms against both Orthodox and Catholics in several areas, and of course he provided his buddy Osama Bin Laden with a Bosnian passport. Sadly, where the Serbs were considered the villains in Bosnia-Hercegovina, they are now viewed similarly in Kosovo by many Western governments. Meanwhile in Egypt, urlLink Coptic Pope Denounces Forced Conversion Of Coptic Girls In case you didn't know, the Christians of Egypt trace their lineage back to St Mark the Evangelist, and have been relentlessly persecuted by the Mahometans since Egypt was so cruelly wrested from the Christian Roman Empire, of which it was a part, in the 7th Century by the invading Arabs, who enforced their religion and decimated the Church. Fierce persecution has been the lot of the Egyptian Church, and it's a wonder they're still going after over a thousand years of oppression, murder, forced conversions and rapine. For more information, visit urlLink www.copts.com Again we pray for the suffering peoples of Kosovo, Egypt and Palestine, that the Lord our God would hear their cry and deliver them from their great distress: hear us, O Almighty Lord, and have mercy! Again we pray that the Lord would turn aside all evil intentions and malice directed against His faithful people, preserving and sustaining them in the midst of enmity and cruel violence: hear us, O gracious Lord, and have mercy! Again we pray that the Lord will stop the hand of those raised up against His Holy Church, softening the hearts of our enemies: hear us, O most merciful Lord, and have mercy! Again we pray that the Lord would confirm His persecuted people in Christian witness, granting them the grace to bear their sufferings in His Holy Name and to His glory: hear us, O most holy Lord, and have mercy! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | now that Pascha and Holy Week are out of the way, I can go back to regular blogging again! Expect the usual updates and articles once more! Oh, and now that Pascha's over, I can eat anything I want for the next 50 days! Mua ha ha ha ha! Amusingly enough, my chanting in various languages over Holy Week and Pascha scored lots of points with the 'ethnic' Orthodox. *GRIN* Now, a small selection of articles: urlLink The Real Battle over The Passion - the REAL reason why those Jews hate the film. urlLink In Praise of Cowardice - why the French are right and the Americans should learn from them. urlLink Vengeance - Something liberal 'modern' Americans won't ever understand - the culture of honour and revenge, and why America's making a mess of Iraq and the Middle East. urlLink Church and State: The New Anti-Catholicism - an interesting article on how the separation of Church and State usually ends up with the State trying to swallow up the Church. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life! (Troparion) Greetings to all on the radiant feast of the Resurrection. If you're wondering what the icon shows - it's what we traditionally call 'the Harrowing of Hell'. Christ, doing down into Hades, has broken the chains and gates of Hades (notice below Christ's feet), and pulls Adam and Eve out of the grave (other urlLink icons show him grabbing both Adam and Eve). In t urlLink his icon , showing the same thing, one notices the angels above Christ's head holding the banner of victory - the Cross. On either side, kings and prophets of the Old Testament look on in amazement. I won't say anything of my own on the topic of the Resurrection, but will quote from the Paschal Homily of St John Chrysostom (the Golden-Mouthed), Archbishop of Constantinople. This sermon dates from about the year 400 A.D. and according to Tradition, the clergy of the Orthodox Church do not preach their own sermon on Easter, but rather read St John Chrysostom's excellent sermon. Here it is: The Paschal homily of St John Chrysostom If any be a devout lover of God, let him partake with gladness from this fair and radiant feast. If any be a faithful servant, let him enter rejoicing into the joy of his Lord. If any have wearied himself with fasting, let him now enjoy his reward. If any have laboured from the first hour, let him receive today his rightful due. If any have come after the third, let him celebrate the feast with thankfulness. If any have come after the sixth, let him not be in doubt, for he will suffer no loss. If any have delayed until the ninth, let him not hesitate but draw near. If any have arrived only at the eleventh, let him not be afraid because he comes so late. For the Master is generous and accepts the last even as the first. He gives rest to him who comes at the eleventh hour in the same was as him who has laboured from the first. He accepts the deed, and commends the intention. Enter then, all of you, into the joy of our Lord. First and last, receive alike your reward. Rich and poor, dance together. You who fasted and you who have not fasted, rejoice together. The table is fully laden: let all enjoy it. The calf is fatted: let none go away hungry. Let none lament his poverty; for the universal Kingdom is revealed. Let none bewail his transgressions; for the light of forgiveness has risen from the tomb. Let none fear death; for death of the Saviour has set us free. He has destroyed death by undergoing death. He has despoiled hell by descending into hell. He vexed it even as it tasted of His flesh. Isaiah foretold this when he cried: Hell was filled with bitterness when it met Thee face to face below; filled with bitterness, for it was brought to nothing; filled with bitterness, for it was mocked; filled with bitterness, for it was overthrown; filled with bitterness, for it was put in chains. Hell received a body, and encountered God. It received earth, and confronted heaven. O death, where is your sting? O hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen! And you, o death, are annihilated! Christ is risen! And the evil ones are cast down! Christ is risen! And the angels rejoice! Christ is risen ! And life is liberated! Christ is risen! And the tomb is emptied of its dead; for Christ having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be Glory and Power, now and forever, and from all ages to all ages. Amen! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | So what's Great and Holy Saturday about? The Western Church knows all about Good Friday and who doesn't know what Easter is about? But yet, to most of the West, Great Saturday is a bit of a limbo period. Not quite Easter yet, but not quite out of Good Friday. This is the day on which our salvation was effected. This is the day when the 'gates of brass' of Hell were broken. This is the day Christ lay in the tomb - the day God himself rested, that's why it's Great and Holy Saturday. As the hymns for Great Saturday tell us: He who shut in the depths is beheld dead, wrapped in fine linen and spices. The immortal One is laid in a tomb as a mortal man. The women have come to anoint Him with myrrh, weeping bitterly and crying: 'This is the most blessed sabbath on which Christ has fallen asleep to rise on the third day. Life itself is Great Saturday, to put it one way - we've gone through Great Friday, and we're waiting for the General Resurrection - for eternity, because Sunday and Pascha (Easter) is the eternal Eight Day. I could use a good rest myself. I've been on my feet all week chanting for the local Chalcedonian Byzantine Orthodox (I know that's a curious way of describing them) parish - some 5 hours on Palm Sunday, then 2 hours on Great Monday and Great Tuesday, 4 hours on Great Wed and Great Thursday, then 5 on Great Friday. It's been an exhausting week - not only does this parish lack a chanter, they don't have the music for Holy Week. While I have much of it, there are certain essential pieces I don't have, so I've ended up emailing chanters and clergy of various traditions and they've faxed and emailed me Galician, Russian and Greek music, which I've had to set English words to - great fun. I usually sing the stuff in English and also in the original language, whee. I'm nowhere near being a trained chanter, but I have the benefit of having been soaked to the bone in Orthodox services, so I know how the services work, as well as music from various traditions (from being a dilettante and hanging around real chanters from various traditions). The result is that while I'm not drilled in any one tradition, I know enough music to bluff my way as a singer (tho not necessarily chanter) through any services that aren't in a single language or tradition. The stuff that's in regular tones I can handle easily, but then there's the 'special melody' stuff... and the ones I've had to learn from scratch for this week are (for those of you who are liturgical enthusiasts): Behold the Bridegroom Cometh/Se Zhenyk Gryadet Polyunoshchi/ - for the first few services of Holy Week. First in English, according to the simple Russian Obikhod melody, then in Slavonic, according to the slightly more meandering (and thus more interesting) Galician melody. Of Thy Mystical Supper/Vecheri Tvoyeya - the hymn for Great Thursday. The English version I find best sung to the simple Russian Obikhod Tone 6 melody. Just for effect, at Communion time I threw in the Slavonic version, using the melody from the 1904 Lviv Irmologion. Noble Joseph/Blagoobrazny Iosif - for the Good Friday services, repeated ad infinitum during the veneration of the Epitaphios (grave cloth of Christ). The melody I used was the most complicated of the melody variants - the Russian one. The music was faxed to me the morning of the service, and I ended up fitting the English words to it, singing those as well as the Slavonic. Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent/Da Molchit Fsyakaya Plot - replacing the Cherubic Hymn on Great Saturday for the Vesperal Liturgy of St Basil. The easiest thing to do for English is to use the words and melody (Picardy) found in any traditional western hymnal. During communion I decided to use the Slavonic version, to Galician chant from the 1904 Lviv Irmologion. In The Flesh Thou Didst Fall Asleep/Plotiyu Usnuv - for the Paschal Liturgy. I'm singing this tonight in English to the 1904 Lviv Irmologion melody - the other singers can hold an ison (drone) for this, I'm singing this solo because it's too difficult for anyone not musically trained to pick it up quickly. After this morning's Vespers and Liturgy, I met Howard for lunch and we watched Passion together. 'twas his 18th birthday, and he chose to spend the afternoon with me, how sweet. Comments on Passion? Beautifully made, visually stunning. Gibson has some truly breathtakingly inspired moments. On the other hand, certain inconsistencies with the Gospel accounts, as well as intentional historical inaccuracies marred the film for me. I won't bother posting the review now, but perhaps later in the week when I've caught my breath. Nevertheless, well done, Gibson. Amusingly enough, I find a priest I've known for many years is actually Gibson's chaplain - yes, in Gibson's little chapel in California, so I've asked him to send Gibson my little nitpicks. I wish I were in Dublin with Fr Serge for Pascha this year- Andrij's there. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Epitaphios in gold-thread embroidery, early 14th C., Thessaloniki, Museum of Byzantine Civilization Today hell cries out groaning: I should not have accepted the Man born of Mary. He came and destroyed my power. He shattered the gates of brass. As God, He raised the souls that I had held captive. Glory to Thy cross and resurrection, O Lord. Today, hell cries out groaning: My dominion has been shattered. I received a dead man as one of the dead, but against Him I could not prevail. From eternity I had ruled the dead, but behold, He raised all. Because of Him do I perish. Glory to Thy cross and resurrection, O Lord. Today hell cries out groaning: My power has been trampled upon. The Shepherd is crucified and Adam is raised. I have been deprived of those whom I ruled. Those whom I swallowed in my strength I have given up. He Who was crucified has emptied the tombs. The power of death has been vanquished. Glory to Thy cross and resurrection, O Lord. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I find myself stuck in Singapore this Holy Week, so I'm helping out the Oecumenical Patriarchate's parish here, Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church - they have no chanters or anyone familiar enough with the complicated Holy Week services- I thus function as chief chanter. The services are long and complex, and I'm singing in English, Romanian, Greek and Slavonic - trying to fit music to words in various languages is not easy. I shall be very glad when Pascha (Easter comes). |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | The Crucifixion of Christ Today He Who hung the earth upon the waters is hung on the tree. The King of the angels is decked with a crown of thorns. He Who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery. He Who freed Adam in the Jordan is slapped on the face. The Bridegroom of the Church is affixed to the cross with nails. The Son of the Virgin is piecrced by a spear. We worship Thy passion, of Christ, We worship Thy passion, O Christ. Show us also Thy glorious resurrection. Antiphon XV, after the Third Gospel Reading, Holy Friday Matins Troparion in tone 2 - The Noble Joseph, When he had taken down Your most pure Body from the tree, Wrapped it in fine linen, And anointed it with spices, And placed it in a new tomb. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Great Week The Hymn chanted in Bridegroom Matins as the Priest carries this icon through the Church (Tone 8) Behold the Bridegroom comes in the midst of the night; and blessed is the servant, whom He shall find vigilant; and unworthy is he, whom he shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, that you will not be overcome by sleep, lest you be given up to death, and be shut out from the Kingdom. Wherefore, rouse yourself, crying out: 'Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou, our God, through the prayers of the Mother of God, save us!' Here we see Christ as the Roman guard adorned Him in purple, with the crown of thorns and a reed for a staff. His hands are bound loosely, signifying that He bore the humiliation willingly. All of Great Lent and Great Week look forward to Pascha (Easter). At Pascha, we celebrate the Bridegroom coming at midnight, that is Christ's coming again in victory. Let us prepare ourselves lest we be caught like the foolish virgins who were not able to join the Wedding Feast. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | 'When Thy glorious disciples were enlightened at the washing of their feet before the supper, then the impious Judas was darkened by the disease of avarice, and to the lawless judges he betrayed Thee, the Righteous Judge. Behold, O lover of money, this man because of avarice hanged himself. Flee from the insatiable desire which dared such things against the Master! O Lord who deals righteously with all, glory to Thee!' Troparion of Holy Thursday . Of Thy mystical supper, 0 Son of God, accept me today a communicant, for I will not speak of Thy mystery to thine enemies, neither like Judas will I give Thee a kiss, but like the thief will I confess Thee: Remember me, O Lord, in Thy kingdom. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Bravo Nato. Have a look at this urlLink news report . Can any still doubt that Nato is helping the forces of Mahomet against Christendom? From the OCA website: Petitions for insertion in the Litany of Fervent Supplication Crisis in Kosovo March 25, 2004 Again we pray for the suffering peoples of Kosovo, that the Lord our God would hear their cry and deliver them from their great distress: hear us, O Almighty Lord, and have mercy! Again we pray that the Lord would turn aside all evil intentions and malice directed against His faithful people, preserving and sustaining them in the midst of enmity and cruel violence: hear us, O gracious Lord, and have mercy! Again we pray that the Lord will stop the hand of those raised up against His Holy Church, softening the hearts of our enemies: hear us, O most merciful Lord, and have mercy! Again we pray that the Lord would confirm His persecuted people in Christian witness, granting them the grace to bear their sufferings in His Holy Name and to His glory: hear us, O most holy Lord, and have mercy! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Senza Fine sung by Monica Mancini. Hi chaps. I'm taking a wee break from blogging. Spent the weekend with my parents in Malacca, as we were picking up some documents from a friend of dad's there and decided to make it a short overnight trip. I'm going to watch a few films and unwind. This afternoon I watched Ghost Ship, an absolutely awful horror film from 2002 (or 2001, I forget). What was nice was the italian 60s love song used in the film. I'll quote it below and be done blogging for the day! > Senza fine Tu trascini la nostra vita Senza un attimo di respiro Per sognare Per potere ricordare Cio che abbiamo gia vissuto Senza fine Tu sei un attimo senza fine Non hai ieri Non hai domani Tutto e ormai nelle tue mani Mani grandi Mani senza fine Non m'importa della luna Non m'importa delle stelle Tu per me sei luna e stelle Tu per me sei sole e cielo Tu per me sei tutto quanto Tutto quanto io voglio avere Here follows my attempt at translation: Without end, You drag our life Without a moment of breath In order to dream To be able to remember That we have lived Without end You are a moment without end, You have not yesterday You have not tomorrow All and by now in your hands Hands, great Hands, without end The moon is of no importance The stars are of no importance, You for me are the moon and stars You for me are sun and sky You for me are, Oh, how much All how much I do not want to have (I have no idea how this translates) But ah well! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Tell Me Why by Paul van Dyk. urlLink I took the urlLink What Mythological Creature Are you? test! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Together We Will Conquer by Paul Van Dyk. Mmmmm. Trance. More lovely bitching about the crap film from the chaps at urlLink Livejournal Classics DEATHS: Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. The deaths made me cry. Not with pity or sadness, you understand, but with shock and horror at the stupidity. Giving a list seems to be the best way around my incoherent agony... Menelaus - He dies. On the SECOND DAY! He's not meant to die. He wins. He gets the girl. He goes home to Sparta. The end. But not, apparently. Ajax - Also killed on the second day. Apparently, suicide is not an option the film-makers wanted to include, because obviously giving depth to their characters was the last thing they wanted. Paris - Not actually a death, and therin lies the problem. He's meant to be dead, why isn't he dead?! The ending? Paris, leaves the city with Helen and Briseis May I be the first to say, WTF?! There's not even a little basis in canon for this. Not even a little. Helen leaves the smoking remains of Troy with Menelaus. Paris is dead [yay!]. And, of course, we must include the immediate distortion of relationships. Agamemnon is established from the first as having something of a feud with Achilles: 'Of all the princes...I hate him the most' Yep. It's that subtle. Achilles, obviously, hates him back. Ta Da: instant rivalry! Therin lies the reasoning behind Achilles taking the entire Trojan beach, all by himself, just to show off. Agamemnon then goes on to cement his appearance as an evil bastard by laughing evilly and proclaiming, at great length, about his brilliance. The ancient greek equivalent of 'I am so great! I am so great! Nyah!' What is equally odd, in light of this, is the dismissal of the Iphigenia episode. I mean, if you want people to think a character is evil, have him kill his own daughter. Cinematically, it's a good bit to include, although obviously easy to misinterpret. But no, this must be missed out, because then if something from the actual story happened (heaven forbid!), then the director might actually have had to go with the canon and let Agamemnon live to get his come-uppance at a later date. Sheesh. That said, Agamemnon was so ridiculously evil. I was waiting for the scary music and for him to sprout fangs. And Orlando Bloom. Tsk, tsk. Does he have more than one facial expression? Or even more than one character basis? I swear, I was having LOTR flash-backs the whole way through. I kid you not. Didn't the audience come out saying 'What was the big deal about a 17 day war ? How did this make Achilles famous ? He won a 17 day war ?' And then, just the whole 'cousin' thing...they tried to ditch the homoeroticism, but instead, everything that could have remotely been related to homosexuality stood out like a sore thumb--because we were all LOOKING for it. Especially with the men flaunting abs and rear ends everywhere you looked! When students go to literature class and find out it's different in Homer, they gain the greatest lesson that can be taught, that of questioning one's sources and looking past what one is told. The fact that the truth ALWAYS has to be searched for and is never spoken outright by anyone. If a few million americans had learned this, we probably wouldn't be at war now. That's the problem with this. people expected to be handed the truth. you're not going to be. if you want it you have to go looking. My favorite anachronistic line from the movie: Hector: When will the soldiers from the countryside be here? Random Soldier: Noon. Yes, noon, and they had watches in Troy? If you can STILL read more, try this urlLink list of errors spotted by a Classics student and teacher . Here are my favourites: 1) The war lasts about 16 days in the film, when it is supposed to last 10 years. But a decade more or less, does it really matter?... 2) In the film Agammemnon has unified all Greece... Maybe they confused him with Philip V of Macedonia (Alexander's daddy), who lived 9 centuries later and who was the first to do such a thing. 5) By the way, Sparta is not supposed to be on the sea shore, it is placed in the hinterland, just like in the map they showed 3 seconds before showing the port of Sparta! 19) So, the Trojans used to wear togas?? I was surprised not to see any lictor! 24) It was already amazing to see the 2nd century Romans using stirrups, but it seems now that even the Trojans used it in the 13th century BC... 26) The Achaean army counts 50'000 soldiers... Maybe this is a little too much; I wonder if there was some men left in Greece to protect the land during their absence... 28) I didn't know that the Greeks used money as soon as the Bronze Period... 29) If it was the case (!), they were putting the coin in the mouth of the dead, not on his eyes (but I suppose it is more cinematographic). |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Alright, since a number of readers of this blog seem to have been directed here on account of my urlLink review of Troy , and I've gotten a few questions on which version of the Iliad they should attempt, here's a little attempt by me to tell you! Needless to say, ideally, the Iliad (and Homer) should be read in the original Greek, and read ALOUD. It's poetry, after all. Click urlLink here to hear Stanley Lombardo, read the first book of the Iliad in the original Greek. That may be slightly boring to those of you who don't understand Homeric Greek (I confess mine isn't terribly good either), and you may recall that Homeric epics were meant to be sung by bards, who told the story to crowds, varying details in each performance. What did that sound like? We can't be sure, but there've been efforts to reconstruct the effect, based on folk epics and storytelling traditions that still survive. There's page about urlLink Homeric Singing , which contains urlLink Demodokos' Song from the Odyssey, sung to a melody based on the pitch accent of the text and accompanied by a reconstruction of the Homeric Phorminx (a sort of 4-stringed harp). The original Greek has a sort of Tummm-ta-ta rhythm that's quite hypnotic, and standard for epic poetry. I have two criteria for judging translations. Firstly it has to be poetry, with a recognisable rhythm (the Iliad is VERY rhythmic), hence any 'free verse' nonsense is out. Secondly, and perhaps more nebulously, it has to feel like Homer. I'll quote the opening of each so you get an idea of what they're like. Here's a very basic English translation as reference (numbers in square brackets indicate line numbers in the original Greek): The wrath sing, goddess, of Peleus' son, Achilles, that destructive wrath which brought countless woes upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes, and made them themselves spoil for dogs and every bird; thus the plan of Zeus came to fulfillment, [5] from the time when first they parted in strife Atreus' son, king of men, and brilliant Achilles. If you want a very old-fashioned English verse translation of Homer's Iliad, check out urlLink Alexander Pope's version of 1725 : urlLink Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing! That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain; Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore, Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore. Since great Achilles and Atrides strove, Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove! Very pretty, and very poetic, but it's not Homer - it's Pope. Still, Pope's translation is very pretty to read, even though he adds in all sorts of 1725-ish details. Next, there are the modern versions available: urlLink Lattimore, 1951 : Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaeans, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. urlLink Fagles, 1990 : Rage--Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. urlLink Lombardo, 1997 : Rage: Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage, Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls Of heroes into Hades' dark, And left their bodies to rot as feasts for dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done. Begin with the clash between Agamemnon--v The Greek warlord--and godlike Achilles. Each of the translators has made a series of choices in translating Homer into English. All of the translators are attempting to be accurate, clear, and readable, but they express these qualities in different ways. Lattimore's translation has been often praised for its accuracy and poetic qualities. It manages to be literal without being stiff and matches Homer's phrasing closely. It also uses a number of devices to maintain the 'strangeness' of Homer: Achilleus is Achilleus (reflecting the original Greek), not Achilles; Hades is mentioned in line 4 without further explanation; and in line 7 Lattimore renders the Greek faithfully with the patronymic 'Atreus' son,' rather than substituting the name Agamemnon as the other two translators do. Lattimore, like the other translators, decided not to render Homer's dactylic hexameter in his translation into a strict English meter, such as dactylic hexameter or iambic pentameter, but instead chose a naturally stressed free verse. In Lattimore's case, he aimed at a regular six-beat stressed line, letting the natural stresses of the English words carry the rhythm along. For example, the first line can be read and stressed as follows in English (an accent ['] mark indicates which syllables are stressed): Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus The meter is beautiful to the ear, especially when longer passages are read aloud in English. Finally, Lattimore's translation matches Homer's Greek line for line. For example, Lattimore's Iliad Book I is 611 lines long, the same length as Homer's. In contrast, Fagles' Iliad Book I is 745 lines long, Lombardo's 643. Fagles and Lombardo were each trying for something different from Lattimore. Fagles tries to bridge the gap between Greek culture and our own by being more accessible: the word 'Rage' is repeated twice in line 1 to emphasize that 'rage' (μήνιν in Greek) is the first word and a major theme of the poem; in line 3 'the house of Hades' has become 'the House of Death'; 'carrion,' not in the Greek, has been added in line 4, as has 'Muse' in line 7, to help the reader understand who the Goddess is the poet addresses in line 1; and 'Agamemnon' has been substituted in line 8 for the more obscure 'Ατρείδη - Atreus' son.' Lombardo's main goal is to emphasize one characteristic of Homeric Greek above all else: its speed. Homeric Greek is supple and moves quickly, and to try to capture this aspect Lombardo writes a shorter English line and drops words and phrases from Homer. 'Peleus' son' drops out of line 1, 'Achaeans' is shortened to 'Greeks' in line 2, Homer's 'strong souls' become simply 'souls' in line 3, and again 'Atreus' son' has become 'Agamemnon' in line 8. Both Fagles and Lombardo also wrote their translations as poetry to be read aloud. Fagles says in his introduction that he used a flexible line of five, six, and occasionally seven beats, while Lombardo's metrics are quite free, designed to reflect the stress and rhythm of ordinary speech in the service of speed. All three of these translations have their strengths and weaknesses. The reason that I recommend the Lattimore translation is that the majority of Classics scholars have found that it offers the accuracy, clarity, and readability that works effectively in trying to read Homer. Lattimore's translation can be more demanding than the other translations, but so far faculty and students have found that it offers an excellent means for studying the Iliad and the culture it portrays. There will undoubtedly be a time when Lattimore's translation is replaced by another one for me, since no translation, no matter how great, keeps its vitality forever, but this will only happen when it is obvious to the me that the new translation will allow new generations of readers to enter into Homer's world in a way that Lattimore's no longer can. On the other hand, if you don't really want a feel of Homer, but want a gripping read, try Lombardo's version. Compare the two translations when Agamemnon replies to the priest of Apollo, who is asking for his daughter Chryses back: Lombardo, 1997: 'Don't let me ever catch you, old man, by these ships again, Skulking around now or sneaking back later. The god's staff and ribbons won't save you next time. The girl is mine, and she'll be an old woman in Argos Before I let her go, working the loom in my house And coming to my bed, far from her homeland. Now clear out of here before you make me angry!' Lattimore, 1951: 'Never let me find you again, old sir, near our hollow ships, neither lingering now nor coming again hereafter, for fear your staff and the god's ribbons help you no longer. The girl I will not give back; sooner will old age come upon her in my own house, in Argos, far from her own land, going up and down by the loom and being in my bed as my companion. Sso go now, do not make me angry; so you will be safer.' I think that really sums it up. One's like something out of a novel and the other's epic. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | ... that reading the Bible without reference to Tradition could get you in trouble? A man was looking for some guidance from God so he asked God to make his Bible open at the page He wanted him to read. So the man opened his bible randomly and the first verse that his eyes met was 2 Corinthians 13:12, 'Greet one another with a holy kiss.' A little discouraged he tried again and this time he found himself at 1 Corinthians 14:39 'Do not forbid the use of tongues.' The classic example is the guy who opened to 'Judas went out and hanged himself' , tried again and found 'Go thou and do likewise...' [from urlLink Shrine of the Holy Whapping ] |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Love Flows Like A River by Tuck & Patti. Folksy Jazz, great for parties and relaxing. Ah, I'm in sartorial lust again. This time, it's the house of urlLink Berluti , a Parisian luxury shoe brand, dating from 1895 when an Italian shoemaker, Alessandro Berluti, moved to Paris and opened a shop. Berluti makes stunning shoes with a deep burnished shine, like expensive hardwoods. Have a look at their website, their Club , Dandy and Tatoues models are to die for. I showed them to a friend and he said 'they have to be wood.. it's not humanly possible for leather to shine like that'. Prices start at £650 for ready-made shoes and £2000 for bespoke shoes. Incidentally, Berluti made the most expensive pair of shoes to date, a pearl-studded pair for 'Emperor' Bokassa of the Central African Empire (now Republic), for his self-coronation in 1977, and those loafers cost a whopping $85,000 USD. Oh, in other news... Justin brought the girlfriend along. But that's alright, cos she was nice and I've decided she's ok. We had a good catching up session. Justin's still yummily buff as always. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: 流水Liu Shui, a piece for Chinese ch'in zither, apparently dating back to the middle Ming dynasty (hence 1400s or so). urlLink This one's an interesting site, a home of the late Ch'ing (Qing for you pinyin Nazis) Dynasty, from Anhui province, moved in toto to America and restored beautifully. It's now at the urlLink Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusets, and is the only complete, historic Chinese house located outside China. The website is beautifully constructed and shows great attention to detail. The artefacts, the construction, daily use as well as the dismantling and later restoration and re-erection in America is explained extensivly and lavishly illustrated. Of course, everyone should have a deep knowledge and abiding interest in Chinese architecture, culture and history, so the site should be a source of great joy to all, but should one be such an unthinkable boor as to lack all of these things, the site will still remain an excellent example of how a museum website should work. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Gloria from Guillaume Machaut's La Messe de Nostre Dame , sung by the Ensemble Organum. One of the earliest pieces of Renaissance Polyphony, dating from the 1300s. Fascinating, as it still feels very Mediaeval, but at the same time, it looks forward to Palestrina in some moments. This performance by Ensemble Organum introduces some rather Byzantine-sounding ornaments and is *quite* interesting. I got 17 out of 20 right in this test. Most people are surprisingly bad at spotting fake smiles. One possible explanation for this is that it may be easier for people to get along if they don't always know what others are really feeling. I'm GOOD. Meanwhile, after a long and tiring day of meetings, I'm having dinner with Justin Soo, whom I've not seen in something like a year. I do hope he's not bringing his girlfriend with him. Yes, I'm slightly jealous of her, but there's more than that. Yes, she's a nice girl, but she's so simperingly feminine that it drives me up the wall. She coos and poses... she's the sort of girl who takes two bites of a meal and declares herself full, and will only eat one more mouthful if her boyfriend feeds it to her. Ugh. Girls like that make me want to throttle myself.. Justin and I have been friends for over a decade now (some of my circle have been friends with him even longer), and he's a close old friend.. but none of us have been able to see him this past year without him bringing his little girlfriend along. I'm currently looking through a pictoral catalogue of Ming and Ch'ing furniture mum brough home (a book, not a collection of furniture!)... and drooling at the chinese antiques. Would that I could afford them. Ha. Would that I could afford a lot of things... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Gabrieli's Deus Qui Beatum Marcum from A Venetian Coronation , played by the Gabrieli Consort and Singers, directed by Paul McCreesh. OTT Venetian festival music from the late 1500s, with plenty of instruments and singers. Bombast is the word. First off, two articles by Mike Rogers on music: urlLink Rock and Roll Repudiation , and urlLink Now That's Good Music! on why Rock music is bad for babies. Please, please, read them. urlLink Was There a Trojan War? - Probably, but not much like Brad Pitt's. urlLink The Dangers of a Purely Contemporary Language - We’re Losing Shakespeare! - by Joe Sobran. ' George Orwell saw not only the poverty but the danger of a language that had become purely contemporary. A language without roots, without the authority of generations implicit in its usages, is the perfect instrument for tyranny. ' urlLink Things That Make You Go...Aaarrghh! - Finally, life's most annoying things explained. (Well, some of them, anyway.) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Sonata Duodecima by Dario Castello, played by the Palladian Ensemble. my prescription: Prednisolone: 5mg morning, 2.5mg evening Famotidine: 40mg morning, 40mg evening Telfast: 180mg morning afternoon and evening hydroxizine: 25mg morning and afternoon, 50mg evening. Whee. Great fun. I'm on ultra-high doses of anti-histamines to control the hives, the docs are trying to wean me off the steroids which I've been on for nearly half a year now. Steroids are bad in the long-term - I've gained weight, had constant skin breakouts, been subject to mood swings... I'm a Spotty Grumpy Whale, basically. Just took my evening dose with a gulp of Amaretto - it was the only drink I had to hand. Someobody tell me why taking medication with alcohol is a bad idea? It's never been explained to me properly. Cooked dinner this evening for the family. I figured pasta would be quick and easy.Started off with a basic Aglio e Olio recipe - olive oil, lots of garlic and chilli... but I decided to jazz it up with a good amount of chopped mushrooms. Then I had the idea of adding the juice of half a lemon. The result? An Aglio e Olio that had a bit more texture than usual and a slight tanginess that complemented the oiliness nicely. Used the leftover lemon juice with olive oil for a salad dressing, but again, with a difference - a few dashes of sesame oil into the olive oil. The ensuing lemony-olivy-sesameish flavour is very very good. Oh if you want a cheap laugh, go urlLink here . I've been having discussions with friends on the nature of friendship recently. How often do friends need to be in touch and see each other? I've friends with whom I'm in regular contact online and via text messaging, and hence I don't see that often - some of these I see perhaps once a year or even less, although we talk online perhaps several times a month. I've friends with whom I've not had contact with for years, but when the deep bond of friendship is there, once we meet again or talk online again... the gap of years falls away and it's as if we'd never parted. There are friends I see often because we live in the same city and constantly have stuff to update each other on and bitch about, or perhaps we move in roughly the same circles and these circles cross every so often. Dependency is not healthy for any friendship, I've come to realise that. When one party constantly leans on the other, it's not good. Friendship is something that can only exist between equals. While I'm not advocating choosing friends based on a possibility of benefit, it should be obvious to anyone that a mentor-student relationship is not a true friendship. Really close friends aren't co-dependent, aren't sticky and their intimacy isn't forced. The distance between the two has to be comfortable for both. I'm reminded of a Chinese saying: 君子之交淡如水 小人之交甜如蜜 It translates roughly as 'The relations between gentlemen is bland like water, the relations between little people is sweet like honey'. Alas, the literal translation carries none of the force of the original. The idea is that Gentlemen friends keep a respectful distance between each other and aren't over familiar, presuming to want to know every detail of each other's lives, whereas 'little people' or 'people of small minds' are sticky and extremely close all the time, cloyingly sweet like honey. There's also the idea that the water in the first bit is clear, pure and flowing... silent but deep. I know, it's not in the translation, but it's all implied. That's one of the glories of the Chinese language - its terseness, rather like Latin. There's the striking mental image that comes to mind - two Chinese scholars in robes of the archaic period (like Confucius) standing on opposite sides of a gently flowing stream, bowing respectfully to each other. Then the second part of the saying brings to mind two crude peasants, scruffy and rough, arms on each other's shoulders, both of them enjoying sticks of candied haws (which are very sticky) and getting it all over themselves (hence sticking to each other) while loudly joking. In other news, I've continued reading the Iliad. There is such an abundance of glorious lines in there... lines that I have to remember and use when appropriate. I'll collect them as I find them and post them here in Greek and English. Quotes such as Hector's curse to Paris 'we should have given you a coat of stone long ago' - i.e. a stoning. Don't be surprised I can't remember the Greek, for Homeric Greek is as different from Classical Greek as Beowulf is from Chaucer. Imagine a novel written in a mix of Ebonics, Scots, Rap-talk and Engish... that's what the Iliad is like, as the Homeric language is a mishmash of various dialects. Andrij sent me this lovely quote from Metro (a free London daily newspaper distributed in the Underground stations): 'I almost wet myself listening to Brad Pitt making a fool of himself at a press conference in Cannes while pitifully attempting to explain Homer's intentions when writing The Iliad. Shut up and be pretty, girly-man!' I'll end this post and go to bed with one more quote, this time from urlLink Pensate Omnia : What would happen to society if it were actually possible -- from an economic and political point of view -- to radically redistribute wealth and opportunity in such a way that all people were equally well educated, cultured and groomed? Now, I think this goal is sorta nice (maybe), but completely impossible in reality. But, all that aside, how would society function if such a liberal/progressive vision actually happened? Who would work in McDonalds, or drive semi trucks, or clean hotel rooms, or sit behind a little desk answering phones all day? Seriously. Society would fail if everyone were well educated, cultured and groomed. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Haydn's Cello Concerto in C Major, played by Christophe Coin and the Academy of Ancient Music, directed by Christopher Hogwood. Stunningly beautiful and gorgeously lyrical. Review available urlLink here . I find Coin's version better than Yo-Yo Ma's, as Coin specialises in period cello, and Ma doesn't. Ah, I so love Haydn's music. There's a mixture of geniality and sanity about his work that I find irresistable. I actually prefer him to Mozart by far. Mozart is exuberant and giggly, like a little child in bright colours running about the place. Haydn, in contrast, is quietly elegant and always serene, rather more like a perfectly mannered adolescent girl of the 18th Century in an understated silk brocade dress, with a gentle smile on her lips. Someone once said that while Mozart seems to walk on air, and Beethoven digs down into the depths, Haydn always kept his feet on the ground, and I think that is perhaps one of the reasons I love his music so. He was a genius, but never a tormented or showy genius. He has been accurately described as 'the most comforting and humane of composers' and he wrote music, he said, so that the 'weary and the worn, or the man burdened with affairs, may enjoy a few moments of solace and refreshment'. It is hard to think of a more modest, or beguiling, description of the consolation of great art (and music in particular). Come to think of it, Haydn may well have been my introduction to classical music. Mum tells me while I was yet in the womb, she would play her classical records (one of the favourites was Haydn's Cello Concerti ) and talk to me, saying something like 'you must listen to music like this when you grow up, ok? None of that horrible noisy modern stuff!'. Apparently it's worked for the most part, even though I quite like Trance, for I find myself constantly coming back to Jazz and Classical for solace. Piece Of Useless Information : the melody of the German anthem Deutschland Uber Alles is taken from the slow movement of a Haydn string quartet. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Francis I of France and the Pope once met in one of those show-off friendly encounters that Renaissance monarchs used to enjoy. One night, the king and the Pope exchanged lutenists: Francesco da Milano played for Francis, and Albert de Rippe played for the Pope. After Francesco was done, Francis thanked him and gave him his weight in gold. After Albert was done playing, the Pope thanked him and gave him ... his blessing. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Arvo Pärt's Kanon Pokajanen , Slightly out of synch, I know, but hey, it's good stuff! Two cartoons about Troy this morning: urlLink Troy, the Gabriel Cut and urlLink this one . It could have been a 'gay' film, but nooooooo, they had to be 'cousins'... Just for kicks, some friends and I have been compiling a list of works from Western literature that are messed up by the 'artistic licenses' taken in Troy. Here it goes... Homer: The Odyssey Aeschylus: The Oresteia Euripides: Andromache Electra Hecuba Helen (in Egypt) Iphigenia at Aulis/Iphigenia Among the Taurians Orestes The Trojan Women Sophocles: Ajax Electra Philoctetes Vergil: The Aeneid The Eclogues (mention Paris as a shepherd...so I guess this is kind of nitpicky) Ovid: The Metamorphoses The Heroides Dante: The Inferno Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida Goethe's: Iphigenie auf Tauris Faust Now, I'm sure we're missing some, so feel free to add what you can think of. Personally, I liked the movie for its entertainment value (and nothing else), but you have to wonder just how many artistic licenses you are entitled to when something forms the basis of Western literature. You very own Odyssey. by urlLink laurel_blossom Name: Who accompanied you? Telemachus What was your mode of transportation? On a raft made of bendy straws What happened with Circe? She drove you insane by playing elevator music all the time. Did Calypso take you prisoner? Yes, but you escaped by making a small boat out of all her ugly wooden jewelry. What did the Phaeacians think of you? They thought you were funky awesome cool, man. How did you deal with the suitors? You threw pillows at them, thus they were frightened away by the extreme cuddly softness. What did your family say when you returned? “Your dinner got so cold that it turned into ice cream and ruined the table cloth; just so you know, that’s coming out of YOUR allowance.” Created with the ORIGINAL urlLink MemeGen ! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: Monteverdi's Oblivion Soave from L'Incoronazione di Poppea , sung by Dawn Upshaw. urlLink If you've been paying attention, you'll notice a new little box below my User Profile on the right. That's my urlLink Phlog ! You'll be wondering what a Phlog is, naturally. The answer is simple, and I'll let the chaps at urlLink Whisk explain: Phlogger is an extension to your blog. When you blog, you usually have to be at home online, but what Phlogger does is it allows you to blog thru your phone, by SMS or MMS, and whatever you type will go into your blog almost immediately, anytime, anywhere. Perfect for while you're out and you're hit with a sudden urge to blog something to all your readers, before you forget it once you're home. Too cool to be true? Nope, it's here and it's free! [ urlLink more ] It can be used either as a standalone or embedded into a blog (as I've chosen to do)... it's apparently quite popular with school-age adolescents (I found the link from a former student's blog) in Singapore (the company's Singapore-based), and I like to think I'm 17 (for the tenth year running), so that's ok. Right, so now I have a urlLink phlog - I'm officially kewl * . It's a cute idea, but let's wait and see how long before phlogging becomes a dead horse. * - incidentally, how does one pronounce 'kewl'? Is the 'kew' pronounced identical with 'Kew' (as as in the Gardens) and 'Queue'? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Lew Rockwell : urlLink A Sense of Wonder : by Charley Reese . 'Both Christianity and Zen urge us to return to a childlike state so that we can experience the wonder and the beauty of the world. Our memories of childhood are so vivid because then we lived in the present moment, encumbered neither by memories nor worries about the future.' It's a blessing to be able to do that, being able to live 'in the moment' and enjoy life to the fullest. I know I've still got a bit of that child-like wonder, I wonder how long I'll be able to keep it. urlLink Best Teller : by Robert McCrum . This one's quite good, a bit of speculation about the identity of Homer. Why's Homer so important? Well, Western civilisation worships the Romans. The Romans worshipped the Greeks. The Greeks worshipped Homer. That rather makes him like God then... Two men who tell it like it is, from urlLink Serge : urlLink 'The Israelis Are Acting Like Nazis!' says Holocaust survivor Yosef Lapid. An Israeli Jew who isn't afraid to face the truth and call it evil. urlLink 'Poor blacks can't speak English, shouldn't blame the police for imprisonment and have themselves to blame for being poor!' says Bill Cosby. 'Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' He added: 'They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!' There's more - speaking about blacks in prison: 'These are not political criminals,' he said. 'These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?' Thank Athena some black person has the guts to say this, for in their current state of victimhood-mentality, the black community won't let anyone of any other colour get away with it. Perhaps they'll listen up this time. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Angel of Protection. urlLink What kind of Angel are you? brought to you by urlLink Quizilla The Lost Soul urlLink What sign of the Black Zodiac are you? brought to you by urlLink Quizilla |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | O Westron Wynde when wylt thow blow The small rayne downe can rayne Cryst yf my love were in my armys And I yn my bed agayne. (Anon., before 1500) O Western Wind, when wilt thou blow The small rain down can rain Christ, if my love were in my arms And I in my bed again I miss you. Not a day gone by these nearly two years when I haven't thought about you. You know who you are. I know you think of and miss me too, yet also do I know I wish not for your return. We're not good for each other, even though our intentions were good and we wished only the best for each other. My life is complicated enough as it is. You know full well you complicate things even further. Oddly though, while you were in my life, the instability and volatility of our relationship was a dependable constant. Our intimacy was luminous while it lasted, but we should both move on now. It's true, all good things come to an end, but wish I to the gods that it had ended otherwise. I hope we both end up in the same place in Eternity, for I'd rather be able to love you perfectly in the next life than to have you in this life, where all love is imperfect. If Love's a Sweet Passion, why does it torment? If a Bitter, oh tell me, whence comes my content? Since I suffer with pleasure, why should I complain, Or grieve at my Fate, when I know 'tis in vain? Yet so pleasing the Pain is, so soft is the Dart, That at once it both wounds me and tickles my Heart. (from Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen ) O how often I thought those words to myself when we fought and argued. I suppose it's all part of growing up, this childish love-affair. After we parted, for the longest time I could not bear to listen to Noël Coward's Someday I'll Find You without tearing, for I thought of you each time I heard these lyrics: Someday I'll find you, Moonlight behind you, True to the dream I am dreaming. As I draw near you'll smile a little smile; For a while We shall stand Hand in hand. I'll leave you never, Love you forever, All our past sorrow redeeming: Try to make it true, Say you love me too, Someday I'll find you again. Still, I shall remember what we had with a smile through the years, tho it be bitter-sweet at best. Perhaps Coward's Let's Say Good-bye is relevant here: Let our affair be a gay thing, And when these hours have flown. Then, without forgetting Happines that has passed, There'll be no regretting Fun that didn't quite last. Let's look on love as plaything, All these sweet moments we've known Mustn't be degraded When the thrill of them has faded, Let's say 'Good-bye' And leave it alone. Be well, and take good care of yourself. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Dappled Things : Nearly everyone rejoiced at the festivities of the wedding of urlLink Don Felipe de Borbón, Prince of Asturias to the first commoner to be set on the road to becoming one day Queen of Spain. Some people are never happy, though, and the inevitable party-poopers had to make some noise. One group complained that it cost too much. A group of miserable republicans protested outside the Cathedral and called for the abolition of the (extremely popular) monarchy. Just as miserable, urlLink the Iranian theocracy issued a diplomatic protest because the Spanish royals had invited the deposed Empress of Iran and the late Shah's son to the wedding. Good for the Spaniards. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Dappled Things : I admit to detesting those red t-shirts with Che Guevara's face on them. The people who wear them are, more likely than not, as ignorant of Che Guevara as they are of any other historical figure, so I suppose we should cut them some slack. Still, it's a despicable fad. urlLink The Telegraph has a piece on the fashionability of Che (whom it calls 'the murdering savage') at the Cannes festival. What was he about? Here's a bit of information: He was not a Cuban, but a high-born Argentinian who as a young man was appalled by the plight of the poor of South America. As so often happens, however, he combined a hatred of an existing system with the super-ego of privilege and with a self-ordained exemption from all law and morality. The outcome, classically, was a merciless revolutionary, who revelled in homicidal violence, both as a means and an end. Within a month of the Fidelistas' triumph, with Guevara's secret Communist cell driving the process, more than 500 ex-members of the deposed regime were murdered. When a young revolutionary urged caution, the Argentinian abused him roundly. 'What a shit-eater you are,' he roared. 'We must make the revolution in a struggle to the death against imperialism from the first moment.' Not content with the bloodshed in Cuba, he travelled to Africa to preach Marxist violence to the pre-literates of the Congo. But many brands of violence, even cannibalism, were vying in that charming marketplace and, unable to compete, he returned to Cuba. His next mission was to mainland South America to create - in his own words - a continental inferno, another Vietnam, which would ultimately destroy the US. So, all in all, an admirable fellow... The poster of Guevara on an undergraduate wall is an echo of this fatuity, a historically-ignorant and adolescent rejection of the poor devil who is paying for the flat. Above all, Guevara's enduring status in film and populist imagery is proof of mankind's pathetic inability to recognise evil when its guise is beauty and its lie is love. Don't even get me started on the idiots around the world (especially in Britain) who happily wear teeshirts with the hammer and sickle or CCCP on them. They have no idea of the evil that drives Communism. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink The Curt Jester : Fuzhou (AsiaNew/Ucan) - A Marian shrine in Fujian province has attracted a large number of Protestants as well as Catholics this May. Sister Zheng Wenying of Fuzhou estimates that at least 1,000 Protestants from Fujian and neighboring provinces had visited Rosary Hill Village by the middle of the month that Catholics traditionally devote to Mary. Most came in groups ranging from dozens to a hundred, led by Protestant pastors. Sister Zheng told that nuns of the diocese explained Catholic teachings about the Blessed Mother to some visiting Protestant groups. Some members of these groups agreed that revering both Jesus and his mother would make their Christian faith more complete, she said, adding that 'some even knelt and prayed in the church.' WOW. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Doxos has been reading about a series on ' urlLink Verbal Independence ', and it's quite interesting. For cultural distinctiveness the LS eschews the use of Webster's so-called 'American' English orthography which actually is nothing more than a bastardisation of the proper and correct English language by New England busybodies. Whenever possible, we prefer to use the more traditional, antebellum Southern English orthography; widely known to many as the Oxford standard which once saw widespread usage in Dixie prior to the War for Southern Independence and Reconstruction and even some limited use afterwards... the Oxford standard is the most widely accepted and orthodox orthography in the English-speaking world. It is actually the most accurate guide to the spelling of the English language available today, and we proudly re-embrace it as a part of our Southron language. It's fascinating, as they advocate a standard that's almost identical with English. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | (from urlLink St Stephen's Musings ) Q: Why do Episcopalians/Anglicans never win at chess? urlLink A: They can't tell the difference between a bishop and a queen. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | 'When you meet the unbelievers, strike off their heads; then when you have made wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives.' Surat Mohammed: 47: 4 [from urlLink Gerard Serafin ] Anyone else to suggest it's a religion of peace? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I'm in sartorial lust again. I was just reminded of a beautiful pair of shoes I saw and tried on with Justin Soo 2 years back in London: urlLink urlLink Red House , they call it. No patterns, no stitching, no broguing - just one single piece of leather for the upper. They looked gorgeous on me and felt like heaven. Now imagine them in this sort of Burnished Tan colour: urlLink But alas, they're over £200 a pair - £220 for the simpler model and £297 for the best ones. The rest of the urlLink site 's stunning too - I love their shoes! Keep on drooling, Ed. ( That's a hint for you readers to pool some money together to buy me a pair! ) Tried finding a new toothbrush today. All the shops had were Soft and Medium. Doesn't anyone use Hard toothbrushes anymore? There will be no jokes about putting hard things in my mouth. ( Anthony, this means you! ) Had a brunch appointment with Remí today, and thanks to his usual punctuality, it turned into a lunch appointment. I was glad to see him again - he's doing alright in National Service, almost nearing the end of his BMT (Basic Military Training). He's deeply tanned, has no hair, but has kept his sense of humour. He loves the humanities deeply, and cannot imagine life without music, books and beautiful things. He also wants me to run a sort of intense crash-course in high-culture for him when he has his week of leave after finishing BMT, before he gets posted to a unit. We'll see about that. He's such a sweet little goof. The quite-good and conveniently-located Bellagio's Gelato in Holland Village in Singapore has closed. I only realised this when Cheryl and I went down for a spot of Gelato after lunch today and found, to our horror, the place empty and a 'For Rent' sign up. A pity, they weren't bad and not too expensive either. Ye shall be missed. The blazing tropical heat seemed a lot hotter after that. It seems that the Turks are now claiming Homer was Turkish, and that he was actually named Omar. Ha. Speaking of Omars... Omar Sharif, the venerable actor, now aged 71, is learning ancient Greek: Fluent in several languages, the elder Sharif said he has taken up the study of ancient Greek. 'One of two things will happen: I will have died learning something useless but beautiful, or I shall die having read Homer in the original. It may seem stupid but you have to have a beautiful mission in life.' Good for him! Reading my friend urlLink Alfian's blog , I have new respect for the Malay tongue, which I had hitherto considered a primitive and savage language: Malay is a subtle and complex language, and its many modes of pronoun address are enough to give me a headache. Take, for example the word 'we'. In Malay, two versions of 'we' exist: one, 'kami', excludes the person addressed to, and 'kita', includes this person. If I take such examples of exclusion and inclusion further, then it is possible to conclude that Malay society is extremely stratified, going back to its early feudal roots, where separation was enforced between the court and the rakyat, the formal and colloquial. I'm surprised that the distinction exists in Malay - it certainly doesn't exist in any language that I know, and I recall asking my teachers of ancient tongues at King's College whether there were different sorts of the pronoun 'we/us' that included or excluded the person to whom it was addressed. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | You're An Intellectual! You can always be found reading or on the computer. People always come to you when they need information. You don't really care about love at this point, your only goal is to improve your mind. After all, knowledge is power! urlLink What Type Of Anime Character Are You? brought to you by urlLink Quizilla Blues are some of the most loving, nurturing and supportive personalities. They live from their heart and emotions. Their purpose for being on the planet is to give love, to teach love and to learn that they are loved. Their priorities are love, relationships, and spirituality. urlLink What Is Your True Aura Colour? brought to you by urlLink Quizilla You are an quiz-taker |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | My buddy Glen has started a urlLink blog today - Happy Birthday to Glen's Blog! Welcome to blogland - may we see more of you in time to come! Two entries at the time of writing, and his urlLink first post is entitled 'In The Beginning Was The Word', which is of course, the title of my blog. His urlLink second is about urlLink Troy . Not a bad start! ( Yes, I know, I've managed to turn an announcement for his blog into yet another piece of shameless self-advertisement, but hey, it's my blog and I can do what I want, NYAH! ) Oh, ladies, Glen's 22, tall, tanned, an absolute sweetie and CUTE! ( Hey Glen, you owe me bigtime for that... ) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Come on kids, urlLink sing along! If you were wondering how to join the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), you can find out all you need to know urlLink here .[links via urlLink North Korea Zone ] Gosh, is that a scream or what? Even China doesn't do crude propaganda like that anymore. While we're at it: Kim Jong-Il announces 'Smoking is Bad for Your Health' urlLink According to the BBC , North Korean dictator/fruitcake announced that smokers were one of the ' three main fools of the 21st century,' and has kicked off a campaign to reduce smoking in the impoverished communist nation, which stands at about 40%. I wonder if leaders of reclusive Stalinist prison-nations came in fourth on that list. Apparently, he is concerned that too many people were dying from cancer before they had the chance to die from starvation. Funny thing a brutal dictatorship will do to a person's time preference. It turns out that this comes because he recently quit smoking after a bout of illness a few months back. Maybe a few months of starvation in a prison cell would work wonders on his concern for the famine his people have been suffering under. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Side-splittingly funny account of a Polish expat who returned to Warsaw and got (very incompetently) mugged, then flagged down a vanload of completely bonkers cops who ran around the city, stopping trams and pointing at nuns, businessmen and other improbables and saying, 'are these the kids who mugged you?' [link via urlLink Boing Boing ] |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | link from urlLink Serge : Arriving in Fátima the pilgrims made their way to the Chapel of the Apparitions, where from the altar a Hindu priest led prayer sessions... The Hindu priest is then seen clothing the Rector of the Fátima Shrine and the bishop with a Hindu priestly shawl. “On the shoulders of the highest representatives of the Church in Fátima, the Hindu priest places a shawl with the inscriptions of the Bhaghavad Gita, one of the sacred books of Hinduism,” the reporter tells his viewers... The newscast finishes with scenes of the Hindu priest lighting a candle at the shrine while his followers dance outside the Chapel of the Apparitions chanting praises to their gods. Abomination. No other word is suitable. Now, there's a place for respecting other religions, but violating Christian sanctuaries is really too much. The Christian altar is to be used for no purpose other than worship of the God of the Christians, and the Bishop allowing himself to be clothed with a Hindu priestly shawl is appalling. As for the Hindus dancing ourside the Shrine while 'chanting praises to their gods', I keep thinking 'Baal has conquered the God of Israel'. While in no wise do I advocate the beyond-insane fundamentalism of the Mahometans, I cannot imagine any Mullah allowing the same in a mosque anywhere in the world, and for that I respect them greatly. Mutual respect and co-operation (where mutually benficial) between religions is good, we must not fall into indifferentism, for 'The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice unto demons, and not to God.' 1 Corinthians 10:20 I'm sorry. The holy martyrs did not die rather than offer incense to pagan gods so that their successors could allow this in our churches. I'd like to burn those who allowed this abomination, but the waiting list of apostate clergy and laity is miles long. Instead, I'll content myself with writing a bit of imitation liturgical poetry. Those of you who are Orthodox or know the Byzantine rite may find this familiar in tone: O Apostate Priests, how ye have sold yourselves! Judas received thirty pieces of silver to betray the Son of Man - what was your recompense for bringing the abomination into the Holy of Holies? Judas bent his neck to betray Christ with a kiss, and the false-bishop of Fátima bends his neck to receive the demon-inspired writings. Idols of wood and gold have eyes which see not, ears which hear not and mouths which speak not, yet in laying them upon the altar of God, your wickedness cries out to Heaven for vengeance. The episcopal ring, the sign of fidelity, thou wearest, O false-Bishop, but instead thou hast raped God's bride, the Church. Elias laughed as the priests of Baal danced in vain, but ye smile and welcome the priests of darkness in to dance upon the holy ground of God. O faithless ones, O heartless traitors, ye have shewn yourselves servants of darkness! But by the prayers of the Saints and Martyrs faithful to thee,O Christ, confirm the rest of us in the faith. What ought to be done to that bishop? He ought to be defrocked - as should all the rest of the bishops of the world who've hushed up sexual scandals and misconduct in the church. In case you weren't aware, there actually IS a ritual for that: the 'Degradation of a Bishop' (Degradatio ab ordine pontificali) , which can be found in the Roman Pontifical ( Pontificale Romanum ) of Pope Benedict XIV. When he promulgated this ritual in 1862, Pope Benedict obviously felt that it was necessary. He envisioned the possibility that a bishop could disgrace himself so thoroughly, and abuse his office so blatantly, that the Holy See would have no choice but to remove him. Such a bishop would not be allowed to resign quietly 'for reasons of health;' he would not be transferred to a titular see in the Sahara; he would not be 'promoted' to a meaningless desk job at the Vatican. He would be stripped of his office and--the word is so beautifully expressive--' degraded .' Since CWR first published this ritual, a dozen bishops have been forced to resign, in America and other countries, after accusations of gross sexual misconduct. We have every reason to believe that more such resignations will soon be forthcoming. Isn't it a shame that their resignations were accomplished through impersonal communication--by mail and by fax--rather than with a formal liturgical ceremony? THE RITE OF DEGRADATION If the degradandus (the person to be degraded) be an archbishop, the degrading prelate removes his pallium (the bishop's stole), saying: We deprive thee of the rights and privileges of the episcopal dignity, symbolized in this pallium, since thou hast abused them. Then, even if the degradandus be a mere bishop, the degrading prelate removes his mitre, saying: We strip thy head of this mitre, emblem of the episcopal dignity, since thou hast befouled it by thy ill government. Then one of the ministers brings the Book of the Gospel to the degradandus , which the degrading prelate takes from his hands, saying; Give us back the Gospel! Since thou hast spurned the grace of God and made thyself unworthy of the office of preaching, we rightly deprive you of this office. Then the degrading prelate removes the ring from the finger of the degradandus , saying: Rightly do we pull off thy ring, the sign of fidelity, since thou hast made bold to rape God's own bride, the Church. At this time one of the ministers brings the degradandus a crosier, which the degrading prelate takes from his hands, saying; Thy shepherd's staff we take from thee, that thou shalt be powerless henceforward to exercise that office of correction, which thou hast brought to disarray. Then the ministers take off the gloves of the degradandus , and the degrading prelate lightly scrapes thumbs and hands with a knife blade or a shard of glass, saying: We hereby deprive thee, to the extent of our powers, of the grace of spiritual blessing and of sacramental anointing, that thou shouldst forfeit the office of sanctifying and of blessing, and their effects. With the same knife blade or shard the degrading prelate lightly scrapes the head of the degradandus , saying: We utterly erase and eradicate the consecration, blessing and anointing bestowed upon thee, and we put thee out of the episcopal order, whence thou returnest unclothed. The ministers remove the shoes from the degradandus . Thus ends the ceremony. No doubt the last is to signify that the man can no longer follow in the footsteps of the Apostles. It is a humiliating ceremony and most necessary in these times when so many bishops have indeed abused their rights and privileges, disgraced their administration, made themselves unworthy of their preaching office, shamelessly raped God's very Own Bride, and mismanaged their pastoral office. If ever there was a time for the renewal of the Office of Degradation, it is now. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Hybrid Fruit Photoshopping urlLink iPod/Torture Mashups In NYC These Iraqi torture/iPod ad mashups are appearing around NYC. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Women Plagued By 200 Orgasms A Day Gosh. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Rogue Classicism : We've read about this group before, but they're getting a pile of press coverage all of a sudden, especially in the southeast Asian press, for some reason: On a sweet Athenian spring evening with the sacred rock of the Acropolis bathed in the white light of a full moon, a chorus of voices join in prayer, chanting: “Hail Zeus!” The voices are not those of actors in an ancient tragedy or an Olympic ceremony, but a group of modern-day Athenians solemnly worshipping the Olympian Gods. Long before the Olympic Games became a rich commercial bonanza, they were among the most important religious festivals of the ancient Greeks, held in honour of the heavenly 12 of Mount Olympus. Now, as the Games return to their birthplace in August, a small group of Greeks are pressing for official acknowledgment of their pre-Christian roots. They have applied for formal religious recognition and sought court injunctions against the commercial exploitation of their religious symbols by organisers of Athens 2004. The trouble is, no-one is taking them seriously. In some cases they even face prosecution for participating in an illegal cult. While classical Greece is revered as the seat of Western civilisation, its gods, heroes and monsters are more commonly associated these days with the muscle-bound characters in American-made cartoons. Gathered on the balcony of a 21st-century Athens penthouse, adults stand with their eyes screwed shut, hands aloft and coloured ribbons in their hair as the moon is eclipsed. A plastic God Apollon looks down nobly from his black teak altar. On his right, Athena is wearing a warlike helmet, while an image of a bare-breasted Aphrodite recalls her status as the Goddess of love. Turquoise ribbon: The worshippers finish their full moon ceremony by linking arms to form a circle. Vasileos, a chemical engineer who preferred not to give his surname, is convinced that he and his fellow worshippers are the real Greeks and that Orthodox Christians are impostors. “Who were these early Christians? They were the great unwashed, they had no athletics, no culture and they only had one book – the bible.” Georgios, a distinguished lawyer with a turquoise ribbon in his hair to signify the circle of life, cannot see where the credibility problem lies. “The ancient Greeks invented logic, science, medicine and philosophy and built the Parthenon. Are you telling me they didn’t know what they were doing when it came to religion?” he asked. Panayiotis Marinis, a doctor and spiritual leader of the group, was born into a family of polytheists in the tiny village of Kithra on the island of Kefalonia. He said the tradition was still strong in many smaller communities. “My family were believers, a lot of people in our village were,” he said. He pointed to the huge crowds who have followed the Olympic torch since it was lit in a ceremony borrowed straight from the traditions of their religion. Marinis estimated there were as many as 100,000 followers of the 12 gods spread around Greece but they were no closer to getting state recognition. They have been waiting for two years for an answer to a petition for an official place of worship to the Greek ministry of education and religious affairs. ... Many in the group are unimpressed by Orthodox Christianity which they regard as an unwanted visitor to Greek shores. “Christianity was the first form of globalisation,” said Doretta, a writer. “To us a god is not a boss, he is a friend, and you can fall out with friends — look at Odysseus and Poseidon,” she added in reference to a famous spat between the Greek warrior and the God of the sea. [more from the urlLink Daily Times ] Someone tell them Christ knocked their marble deities off the pedestals nearly two thousand years ago. As I mentioned in another urlLink post , |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Despite what you have been told at various times by assorted dusty tomes, the voices in your head, Homer, the penguins, and the reincarnation of Julius Caesar, it is probably not a good idea to start muttering dark imprecations (in dead languages) against certain people you are not fond of. It is almost assuredly a bad idea to attempt to turn these muttered imprecations into curse tablets. I can guarantee you that it is a very bad idea indeed to try to use your assorted dusty tomes as a set of instruction manuals to do so. Placing ancient curses always runs the risk of irritating the more, er, snarky cthonic deities. But they can usually be placated with a decent libation. And maybe a tapdance. Especially Egyptian ones. Don't even think of trying a spell in Egyptian because the last time you tried, you stumbled over the hieroglyphs, and we all know mispronouncing things in spells is a recipe for disaster. You know full well the Opening of the Mouth is the one and only Egyptian spell you can handle. Besides...where would you find a sheet of lead in Singapore at this time of night? ------- Addendum: I tend to doubt it's a good sign that you're even capable of formulating dark imprecations in other languages, let alone in languages that have been dead for thousands of years. It's even less of a good sign that you can do so without pausing in your reading for more than the moment or two it takes to locate a fresh source of caffeine. You might want to have this looked into before the nice young men in the clean white coats come for a visit. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | These are my favourites: [mostly from urlLink Stephane - thanks!] Here's a bit more bitching: At Hector's funeral - where the hell are the ceremonial mourners? Why hasn't Andromache cut her hair like a good widow? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Latin For Tourists In Rome From iol.co.za: urlLink Rome takes tourists back in time with Latin . Rome - When in Rome, do as the Romans do... or at least did. Tourists have long been drawn to the Colosseum and ruins of magnificent Roman temples in the heart of the Italian capital, but starting this week they can immerse themselves in ancient history and even pick up beginners' Latin. The regional government along with two historical societies is offering free Latin classes to tourists in a bid to lure even more of the sword-and-sandals loving crowd to Rome. (...)[ urlLink full article ] Canterbury Re-opens Mediaeval Tunnel From the BBC: urlLink Cathedral's medieval tunnel opens . A 15th Century tunnel at Canterbury Cathedral which allows pilgrims to visit the site of the murder of Thomas Becket has been reopened to the public. The tunnel, which was built around 1420, had been closed for over 40 years and used for storage. It was built to enable 15th Century pilgrims to visit the site without disturbing the cathedral's monks. [ urlLink continue ]. The official urlLink Canterbury Cathedral website has more detail: urlLink Cathedral’s tunnel restored after 600 years . A tunnel in the heart of Canterbury Cathedral, built in the early 15th Century, has been re-opened to the public for the first time in over 40 years. Linking the South West Transept to the Martyrdom, and running under the Pulpitum steps that give access to the Cathedral Quire, the tunnel was built in about 1420 to allow pilgrims to visit the site of the murder of St Thomas Becket without disturbing monks performing their daily duties. (...) Four knights of King Henry II murdered St Thomas Becket in the North West Transept of the Cathedral by on the 29th December 1170. Many miracles were reported following his death and Canterbury became the one the chief European centres of pilgrimage for centuries until the Reformation. Now you'd like to know more about Thomas Becket, wouldn't you? From Eyewitness to History: urlLink The Murder of Thomas Becket, 1170 . A sword's crushing blow extinguished the life of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, on a cold December evening as he struggled on the steps of his altar. The brutal event sent a tremor through Medieval Europe. [ urlLink continue ] urlLink New Window Opened On The Silk Road From the Taipei Times: urlLink New window opened on the Silk Road . The felt slipper in the glass case looks somewhat worn and dusty, but still serviceable. Hence the shock of its caption — which reveals that its owner once pounded the Silk Road, the great ancient trade route, more than 1,000 years ago. The Tibetan shoe, dating from the 8th or 9th century, is among a wealth of astonishingly well-preserved treasures from the Silk Road which have just gone on show at the British Library in central London. Running from modern-day Iran to the west through central Asia and into China, with branches into Tibet and South Asia, the Silk Road — a series of trading routes rather than a single highway — saw commodities such as fabrics, spices and precious stones carried along its length. More importantly for historians, with their passage came a transfer of ideas, technologies and beliefs. Much of the route, especially that lying in what is now far-western China, is arid desert, meaning that a huge amount of usually perishable materials such as papers and fabrics have survived the centuries, often buried in sands. The British Library's exhibition is largely drawn from items discovered by famous Hungarian-born explorer Marc Aurel Stein, who trekked along the Silk Road a number of times between 1900 and 1930. [ urlLink continue ] The exhibition mixes such treasures with many objects and documents giving a taste of ordinary people's lives along the great trade route, One letter, found in Sogdiana, in modern-day Uzbekistan, was written by an angry woman to a husband who had abandoned her, forcing the woman to work as a servant for a Chinese household. 'I would rather be a dog's or a pig's wife than yours!' reads the curt missive, a domestic dispute which happened in the early 4th century, only to be rediscovered by Stein more than 1,500 years later. After reading this, I scurried over to the British Library website to see if the Silk Road exhibition has an online component. It does! Go take a look at the urlLink Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith pages . The site offers five illustrated themes: urlLink The development of the book and the invention of printing urlLink Languages and Scripts of the Eastern Silk Road urlLink Buddhas and bodhisattvas urlLink Play on the Silk Road urlLink The Silk Road Sky Those who have Shockwave installed can also urlLink view the Diamond Sutra in detail. urlLink MORE... urlLink Moutarde Violette From the New York Times: urlLink Mustard Isn't So Yellow Anymore . When Elie-Arnaud Denoix and his father, Louis, dusted off the family's recipe for moutarde violette — mustard mixed with grape must — in 1986, the only other person here in the Limousin region making this ancient preparation was 'one very old woman who just made a little bit,' Elie-Arnaud Denoix said. 'We knew that when she died, that would be it for moutarde violette — unless we started making it again,' he said. Given that the word mustard comes from mustum, Latin for grape must, the loss of what was once a standard type of mustard seemed, to Mr. Denoix, both ironic and somewhat poignant. Besides, he'd miss it... [ urlLink continue ] urlLink Extending The Living Room To The Street From the Global Ideas Bank: urlLink Extending the living room to the street. Inner city residents in Stavanger, Norway (population 108,000) have transformed a whole street into a permanent ‘social space’ by furnishing it with benches, tables, a pergola, potted plants, a notice-board, wiring for those who want to sit in the street with their computers and surf the internet and a flagpole (a flag is hoisted on the pole to celebrate residents' birthdays). It all started one day when Trond Sigvaldsen took his father's garden bench out in the street to give it a polish, taking with him his newspaper and a coffee flask. People started to gather around his bench for a chat. So, they thought, why not make the whole of Vikesdalsgata street into an open air living room? Having first knocked on doors to get the agreement of all the residents, they spent tedious months negotiating with local authorities and then more months furnishing their new dwelling space. The launch took place in the spring of 1999 and nowadays the street has become something of an attraction for surrounding neighbourhoods. The improvements are much appreciated by the elderly waiting for their buses and by school pupils in their lunch hours. urlLink Bonkers Book Collecting From The Telegraph: urlLink The bizarre world of bonkers book collecting. According to the organisers of this year's Antiquarian Book Fair at Olympia, west London, interest among collectors in what have become known as 'bizarre books' - the quirkily titled, the inane of subject and the unfortunate of author - is rising fast. Oh I've a copy of Bizzare Books , which lists some of the gems in there: Criminal Life: Reminiscences of Forty-Two Years As A Police Officer. By Superintendent Bent. The Haunted House by Hugo First Skiving Off by Marcus Absent. Drummer Dick's Discharge. Play With Your Own Marbles. The Big Problem With Small Organs. Fine-Weather Dick. Scouts in Bondage. Correctly English in Hundred Days. ( 'This book is prepared for the Chinese young man who wishes to served for the foreign firm. It divided nearly 190 pages. It contains full of ordinary speak and write language.' ) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | This one's great fun, and having spent most of the last 5 years in London, I know exactly what they're talking about. [link from urlLink Iconoblog ] While you're at it, here's another link from urlLink Iconoblog : urlLink Learn to speak Danish ! - with audio examples. The instructions there say that one should be able to pick up the phrases (said at breakneck speed) after about 10-20 listenings. I suspect I'll take a lot more than that for most of the phrases, even though I managed to learn how to say 'great party, huh?'. In case you were wondering, it's ' fed fest, hva? '. Give it a try, then say together with me: ' Are you SURE it's related to English??? ' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink O Happy Addiction : John Laughland on very expensive shoes. No shoes last for ever, and every five years or so a pair can no longer be repaired. Then, it takes a while before I can muster the funds to replace them. But when I finally take the plunge and buy a new pair, I always justify the outlay with the simple — and, as far as I know, unanswerable — question: why make a virtue of a necessity like shoes, when you can make a luxury of them instead? I know the feeling, being a dandy myself... urlLink Nectar of the Olympians : Brad Edmonds on hot sauce. urlLink War Insanity: A Japanese view, from Mike Rogers. urlLink Ten Lessons of Colonial War : Relearning them in a hard school. Article by Eric Margolis. urlLink Noble Rot : Jonathan Yardley on urlLink A Bordeaux Wine Revolution by William Echikson. Ah, an article on my favourite drink in the world - sweet wines! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Alfian's one of Singapore's young (he's my age, so I HAVE to think of him as young) writers, and even though I don't agree with his political and cultural views... the fact that we've been friends (on and off) since we were both 15 keeps us in a sort of respectful co-existence even though I don't like most of his work and consider him to be pretentious and overly angsty. But this time, Alfian's written a hilarious bit about the urlLink Nonok - and married it to the founding myths of Singapore, the malay prince Sang Nila Utama. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Two Links from urlLink Serge : urlLink Forgotten Christians: Not all displaced Palestinians are Muslims! At the time of the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, it is estimated that the Christians of Palestine numbered some 350,000. Almost 20 percent of the total population at the time, they constituted a vibrant and ancient community; their forbears had listened to St. Peter in Jerusalem as he preached at the first Pentecost. Yet Zionist doctrine held that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Of the 750,000 Palestinians that were forced from their homes in 1948, some 50,000 were Christians—7 percent of the total number of refugees and 35 percent of the total number of Christians living in Palestine at the time. In the process of “Judaizing” Palestine, numerous convents, hospices, seminaries, and churches were either destroyed or cleared of their Christian owners and custodians. In one of the most spectacular attacks on a Christian target, on May 17, 1948, the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate was shelled with about 100 mortar rounds—launched by Zionist forces from the already occupied monastery of the Benedictine Fathers on Mount Zion. The bombardment also damaged St. Jacob’s Convent, the Archangel’s Convent, and their appended churches, their two elementary and seminary schools, as well as their libraries, killing eight people and wounding 120. --- Following the incremental atrophy of leftist ideals, the Islamists are seen as the only ones who are willing and able to fight the occupation. The Lebanese Hezbollah, widely seen as a nonsectarian organization that is able to cooperate with people of all faiths, is particularly admired both among the refugees in Lebanon as well as those who remain in Palestine. “We have received far more support and comfort from the Hezbollah in Lebanon than from our fellow Christians in the West,” remarked one Christian Palestinian refugee in Damascus. “I want to know, why don’t the Christians in the West do anything to help us? Are the teachings of Jesus nothing but empty slogans to them?” This is a justified and important question, but the answer is not straightforward. The Catholic Church has, in fact, long argued for an end to the Israeli occupation and for improvement of the Palestinians’ situation. The leaders of the Eastern Orthodox churches have taken similar, often more strongly worded positions. --- Christians find themselves under the hammer of the Israeli occupation to no less an extent than Muslims, yet America—supposedly a Christian country—stands idly by because its most politically influential Christians have decided that Palestinian Christians are acceptable collateral damage in their apocalyptic quest. “To be a Christian from the land of Christ is an honor,” says Abbas, a Palestinian Christian whose family lived in Jerusalem for many generations until the purge of 1948. “To be expelled from that land is an injury, and these Zionist Christians in America add insult.” Abbas is one of the handful of Palestinian Christians that could be described as Evangelical, belonging to a group that appears to be distantly related to the Plymouth Brethren. Cherishing the role of devil’s advocate, I had to ask him, “Is the State of Israel not in fact the fulfillment of God’s promise and a necessary step in the second coming of Christ?” Abbas looked at me briefly and laughed. “You’re kidding, right? You know what they do to our people and our land. If I thought that was part of God’s plan, I’d be an atheist in a second.” urlLink Please Me, O Lord : S.M. Hutchens on the roots of romantic worship. If you're an Evangelical Christian, please read this - I'd like your thoughts on it. If you're any other sort of Christian, this may help give form to those nagging doubts you've had about Evangelical worship which you may not have been hitherto able to articulate. Those of us who live in Singapore will know of the spectacle of a self-proclaimed evangelical 'pastor' hopping around the stage during what she calls 'services' and acting more like a temple prostitute than a cleric of Christ. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | It is said that in the old days, Chinese civil servants would avoid certain places at different points in their lives: When you are young, avoid Szechwan - the food is spicy and makes you crazy. When you are young, avoid Shanghai and Keangsoo (Jiangsu) - the girls are pretty, and you will never leave. When you are old, avoid Canton - the food is good and the weather warm, you will never want to return north. Just goes to show that the south has it far better than the barbaric north, and they knew it even back then! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Very interesting and thought-provoking. Those of you who enjoy thinking about life, reality, morality and suchlike will have a ball with these. {link from urlLink Old Oligarch ) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink urlLink what decade does your personality live in? quiz brought to you by urlLink lady interference, ltd Ouch. But then perhaps I'm like God... I'm above and beyond time! Mua ha ha ha! You are a Sylph! The sylphs are the air spirits. Their element has the highest vibratory rate of the four (beside earth, fire, water). They live hundreds of years, often reaching one thousand and never seeming to get old. They are said to live on the tops of mountains. The leader of the sylphs is a being called Paralda who is said to dwell on the highest mountain of Earth. Sylphs often assume human form but only for short periods of time. The vary in size and can be as large as a human. They are volatile and changeable. The winds are their particular vehicle. The work through the gases and ethers of the Earth and are kindly toward humans. Slyphs are usually seen with wings, looking like cherubs or fairies. Because of their connection to air, which is associated with the mental aspect, one of their functions is to help humans receive inspiration. The sylphs are drawn to those who use their minds, particularly those in creative arts. urlLink Which Type Of Faery Folk Are You? 'I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.' Ettiene De Grellet urlLink What Motivates You? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Apolytikion (Fourth Tone) O Christ our God, You ascended in Glory and gladdened Your disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit. Your blessing assured them that You are the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world. Kontakion (Plagal of the Second Tone) O Christ our God, upon fulfilling Your dispensation for our sake, You ascended in Glory, uniting the earthly with the heavenly. You were never separate but remained inseparable, and cried out to those who love You, 'I am with you and no one is against you.' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Had dinner with cutie friend Eric last night, whom I haven't really talked to in over a year - since I went back to England last March, to be precise. It was nice catching up. He's decided he wants to watch Troy now, for comic value. Ha! Brought dad to the dentist this morning. If there's anything good about the Troy film, it's that I'm now motivated to read the Iliad . Not that I've not studied bits and pieces here and there and suchlike, but I've never actually read it from cover to cover... Well, I've read it in an English translation, but that doesn't really count cos translations are for wimps. I've got here a parallel English-Greek edition (Loeb, of course) and I'm ploughing my way through the Greek, with the English on the side for help if I get stuck (this is Homeric Greek, some 500 years before the period I specialise in). So I started on Monday... It's now Tuesday afternoon and I'm in the middle of Book V already. One line struck me: ἀλλ' οὔ πως ἅμα πάντα θεοὶ δόσαν ἀνθρώποισιν But in no wise do the Gods grant to men all things at one time. How very true. I shall have to remember that one for future use. They say I have a messy workspace. It is now nearly Ascension (that's Thursday, to be exact), and the assorted music from Holy Week and Easter is still lying on my desk. Perhaps it'll get cleared by Christmas. After all, the music for last Christmas is STILL HERE. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Boing Boing : 'Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water,' is a documentary on Klingon-speakers debuting in Cannes. In conjunction with the release, the Klingon Language Institute is holding a workshop/confernece at Cannes for interested parties. KLI members featured in the film include Dr d'Armond Speers, a linguist who spoke only in Klingon to his son until age three and a half, and Rich Yampbell, composer of Klingon national anthem taHaj wo. And people call Greek and Latin useless languages? HELLO??? Here is where I display my geek feathers - I actually know a few words and phrases of klingonaase (that's what it's called)... even though I identify as a Romulan in conventions and when gaming... I'm a Trekkie of sorts after all. Here's a useful klingonaase insult - tokhe straav', which means 'willing slave', the worst insult in the language. If you ever see a klingon, don't say that to him unless you want an axe cleaving your skull. Wait, I don't believe I actually said 'if' in that previous sentence, as if it could ever happen... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Boing Boing : I don't know what to make of this. It's a very well-researched, non-hysterical collection of 50 seeming contradictions in the Berg decapitation video. The author states that a number of these will likely be explained away, but taken as a whole, this very convincingly implies that Berg was not killed by the terrorists that the CIA fingered, and may, in fact, have been killed by westerners. 15) Orange jumpsuit Berg shown in video wearing orange jumpsuit known to be of U.S. issue. The orange jump suit 'appears' to be identical to the jumpsuits used at Guantanamo. (Compare with pictures at Guantanamo.) The orange jumpsuit was standard US military issue to men in custody. It is unlikely Berg would continue wearing a U.S. custodial uniform if he had been released by the military as they claim. The fact he was still wearing the suit is both anomalous and suggestive. One wonders: Was there an immediate transfer of Berg from the US military to unknown persons, preventing Berg from discarding his US prison garb? 16) No blood at decapitation When Berg is decapitated, there was almost no blood. If Berg were still alive at this point, with the cut starting at front of throat, blood would have been spraying everywhere. Berg's severed head, the floor, Berg's clothes, and even the hand of the 'Arab' who decapitated Berg had no visible blood on it. When the executioner holds up Berg's head immediately following what is represented as an actual decapitation of a living person, there is no significant blood flow from the neck or blood splatters showing anywhere on the executioner. 17) Berg did not move Berg seems limp just before the beheading. It is not clear if he was moving after the time skip in the tape. While on the ground, Berg's body didn't seem move except in response to the captors movements. Although held down, Berg would have tried to instinctively wiggle and writhe away from captor's grip and use of a knife. (That is unless he was long dead after the cut in the tape.) A surgeon would very likely testify that the beheading did not cause the death. 18) Berg may have been dead just before beheading The lack of spurting blood and lack of movement suggests Berg was already dead at the time of the alleged decapitation. During the beheading, Berg's eyes are not seen. Camera angle made it impossible to see if Berg's eyes were open or glassy. Berg very probably was killed before the staged beheading. Did the captors have no stomach for the beheading of a living person? 19) Straight cut on the neck The cut on Berg's neck seems to be too straight to have been done crudely and with such speed by a man wielding a large knife. Anybody who has carved a turkey knows there is something wrong with the supposed beheading. The suspended head looks more like Berg had been neatly beheaded by a guillotine. 35) White hands of 'terrorists' Some of the 'Arab terrorists' have pasty-white hands and (other exposed) skin. One would be hard pressed to find Arab men with pasty-white hands. 36) Wrong accent Al-Zarqawi is/was Jordinian. Arab linguists have said the man posing as Al-Zarqawi did not speak with a Jordanian dialect. Others have suggested the man reading the written statement may not have been a native speaker of Arabic.... 42) Gold ring on killer's hand The man in the videotape who is purported to be Zarqawi seems to be wearing a gold ring. Note: This is a questionable point. To quote Healing Iraq (healingiraq.blogspot.com) as quoted at this angryfinger.org post ( urlLink Nick Berg Conspiracy Theories Abound ): 'Islam does not specifically forbid that men wear gold, in fact the Quran and the Hadith have encouraged men to 'adorn' and 'embellish' themselves (dying hair, perfume, etc.) .... the practice of wearing gold ornaments is discouraged by Muslim clerics, 'Gold is the ornament of women'. Socially it is not acceptable in the Arab world for men to wear gold, although this has changed lately and many young men do (engagement and wedding rings are mostly gold).' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink This one's really funny. It's all text (not a cartoon this time), but all my readers are literate... and lovers of literature... RIGHT? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Yes, un-Islamic. A car-bomb, on the other hand... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Slate slideshow of the attempts to capture the timeless beauty of Helen of Troy. [link via urlLink Dappled Things ] |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Watched this film last night with a bunch of friends. At the end of it, I heard some girls going 'wah, you mean it's based on a book?'. Lady Athena give me strength... WARNING: Rant ahead. This one's LONG. I don't usually post ultra-long reviews of films like this, but being a Classicist, I've taken this desecration of Homer personally. What do you get if you start with the first great narrative of Western civilization, then remove all the psychological complexity and profound characterization? Troy If you're someone to whom 'Homer' means only the stupidest character on The Simpsons , this may not be off-putting. If you think the Bronze Age began when Brad Pitt's tanning bed was delivered, you may not care. And if you know Trojans only as impediments to procreation, Wolfgang Petersen's grandiose, hollow war film may seem like gold. The rest of us may wish he'd plunged head-first into Homer's wine-dark sea and stayed under. This Iliad purist doesn't know where to start. Let's try starting with the time-frame. Writer David Benioff compressed 10 years of battle into 17 days (I counted) and ignored significant characters. From the very beginning, where the historical preamble of text explaining the 'background' gets shown, I started shifting in my seat. 'Greeks and Trojans' they said. Now, even though in English we tend to think of the war as having been between Greeks and Trojans, here wasn't such thing as 'Greece' in the times the Trojan Wars took place. 'Greece' was a bunch of city-states, led by more or less independent kings: Sparta (Menelaus), Mycenae (Agamemnon), Ithaca (Odysseus), Phthia (Achilles) etc... Those people, by the way, called themselves Achaeans most of the time, and that's what Homer calls them. 'Greeks' doesn't appear in the Iliad at all. Agamemnon neither conquered nor unifed Greece. Greece was still a collection of loosely allied kingdoms at the time of the Trojan War. The Greek kings fought to get Helen back because they had all wanted to marry her and pledged each other that they would defend the one who won her hand against any tried to take her away, not because they owed Agamemnon fealty. First the men. The cast's Achilles heel is its Achilles, who ought to be a heel: arrogant, lazy, stubborn, cruel, deceitful and foolish. Homer created Western literature's first anti-hero in this demigod, upon whom the Greeks' hopes rest despite his long reluctance to fight Trojans. Pitt turns him into a simple, sullen rebel against Greek leader Agamemnon, a generically stolid warrior who wonders in the best tradition of the 20th century crap: 'what's all the killing for?' He comes to life only in sword-to-sword combat with Trojan prince Hector (an excellent Eric Bana). The rest of the time, even in bed with the captive Briseis, this Achilles is as wooden as the Trojan horse. Achilles also declines to join his friend Patroclus in bed. Patroclus is his 'beloved cousin' rather than, as Shakespeare so piquantly put it, 'his masculine whore.' And, just to dispel that expectation from the start, our very first view of Achilles finds him in bed with TWO babes. When Achilles bedded Briseis, my friend urlLink Anthony very evilly commented, 'I hope he's using a Trojan!' Stupid filmmakers have changed the key to Patroclus' death - in the Iliad , Achilles tells Patroclus to lead the Myrmidons, and is thus responsible for his lover's death. A pity Hollywood didn't have the guts to show Achilles' bisexuality. Would Pitt's female fans still have come to watch a near-naked Brad Pitt getting it on with some guy? Sure, why not? It's not like he's ever going to get it on with most of them anyway. I'll be posting about the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus soon - I'll reread the Iliad and come up with some ideas. Is it my imagination or is Pitt's designer leather skirt about four inches shorter than everyone else's? Pitt also poses his way through the film. He preens, he prances and he pouts. And when he summons his men in to battle it is with an accent that knows no location on earth. It has a tinge of the British in it so maybe that is where he was aiming. But he doesn't hit that target. His cry outside the walls of Troy - 'Heck-tah! HECK-TAH!' sounded like a 'can Hector come out and play, Mr Priam?' . No wonder Hector didn't look too worried. Achilles, who has a strange combination of nearly Matrix-like powers, utter ruthlessness and male lovers in the original poem, has been turned into 'Fabio on the beach' in the guise of Pitt (who with a good script and more effort could have turned this into the most complex and original warrior figure Hollywood has ever produced). I must say though, he did look really good with his shirt off, especially the scene where he was conveniently covered in vaseline. They've removed the importance of Shield Brothers and gotten rid of, surprise surprise, the importance Patroclus has in Achilles' rampage. No idea what I'm talking about? Patroclus and Achilles were lovers, or at the very least, the dearest of 'bosom friends' and shield brothers. At the root of the film's troubles is the Petersen's biggest miscalculation: leaving out the gods. Though the Gods are referred to obliquely, the film keeps them firmly out of sight and mind - the implication being that they aren't there at all. It's Homer as secular humanist. But the Gods are what make the Iliad so grand. To tell the story of Troy without the back story of the Judgment of Paris, for example -- in which the handsome prince is forced to pick between the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera and Athena by giving the most beautiful a golden apple -- is to suck the tale of its vigor. And when Paris challenges Helen's ex-husband, King Menelaus, to single combat and starts to lose, what a difference it makes for Paris to cower in terror and scurry away, as the film depicts, rather than have Aphrodite swoop down and spirit him away, as in Homer's version. Lost in the translation is the vivacious, compelling tug of war between Gods and mortals. Sure, the Gods are immortal, but they miss out on the joy -- the excitement -- of being alive and knowing you have a finite time on this Earth. Homer's gods meddle, bicker, squabble and, in many ways, are less noble (and more fun) than the humans they try to push around. Even Homer's martial epic would best be subtitled, The Gods Must Be Crazy. In the Iliad , the Gods are a meddlesome bunch -- Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite and the rest are always zipping down from Olympus to butt into human affairs. Homer would've had no story without them. There would have been no Trojan War because Helen would never have been abducted. Achilles, the story's hero -- and the son of a Goddess -- would have never been born. Benioff and Petersen made a fatal mistake by excising the gods, who are mentioned vaguely but never interfere with the action. One points of the Iliad is that fate and the immortals rule us, despite our attempts to assert free will; we must be righteous partly because the Gods may end our lives at any time. Hector is Achilles' equal in the Iliad , until the goddess Athena disguises herself as Hector's brother and betrays his trust. It's vain Aphrodite, goddess of love, who gives the Spartan queen Helen to the Trojan prince Paris, as Helen's his reward for judging Aphrodite winner of a beauty contest.) This infuriates Helen's husband, Menelaus, who convinces his fellow kings of Greece to seek revenge. Without a sense of destiny and divine command behind them, Paris becomes a common seducer and Helen a cheap tart. (The smaller-than-life performances by Orlando Bloom and German actress Diane Kruger reinforce that impression.) Oh, and what on earth is the temple of Apollo doing on the beach, outside the city walls? That's supposed to be the temple of Troy's patron god. What is this, San Apollo fuori-le-mure? In just the first half hour of the film, most of the back-story of the Trojan War has been jettisoned. Gone is the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, where the shunning of Eris, the Goddess of Discord, sets the wheels of the Trojan War into motion. Gone are the twin prophets Cassandra and Helenus, who are the voices of reason of Troy. Gone is Hecuba (or Hecabe), the mother of Hector and Paris, who tries to stop her younger child from traveling to Sparta to act on his romantic impulses. Gone is Paris having been exiled from Troy at an early, due to a prophecy he would lead to the downfall of Troy. Gone is the fact that Paris not only stole Menelaus’ wife but much of his wealth as well. Gone is Menelaus calling upon all of Helen's old suitors, who made an oath long before that they would all back Helen's husband to defend her honour. Gone is Agamemnon having to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis(the twin sister of Apollo) in order to secure safe passage on the oceans to travel to Troy. Actually, much more of the story has been shuffled off, including a lengthy battle against the Teuthranians, whom the Greeks originally thought took Helen, since Menelaus was away at a funeral when Helen was squired away, but who needs all that rich texture when you only have 165 minutes to tell your story, and you wasted the first fifteen setting your hero up as the Grecian Fabio meets Han Solo? Achilles never really gets a scratch on him even though he is in the thick of a battle full of spears and swords, never mind that he is not revealed to be the son of a Goddess or wearing armor forged by the Gods. He is only a mere mortal here. For anyone who read the poems or is familiar with the stories, there is too much missing. THE MOST POIGNANT PART OF THE STORY WAS CHANGED! I'm talking about Book 6 where Hector says goodbye to his family... why oh why did they change that?! Go read the Iliad, and you'll see what I mean. What's left? Not mythology, to be sure, but a rather bland sociology lecture on the realpolitik of power and the human waste of war. Now, such a contemporary sermon is well and good, but ancient Greece ain't the place to preach it. Also, there's carnage, accomplished over and over with the best computer-generated images money can buy. We're treated to at least four funeral pyres and countless scenes of slaughter, which achieve tension and emotional resonance only when a few great foes go one-on-one. So they've removed the Gods and all hint of the supernatural, but it also includes a reference to Achilles’s heel, which, in the absence of the gods, is merely a payoff with no setup. Traditionally, Achilles's prowess is the result of his mother dipping him in the river Styx’s Invulnero-Water, since the water makes invincible whatever bodypart it touches; but since she held him by foot, his heel didn't get the treatment. Also, Paris is given a vision from Athena where she practically holds up a sign pointing to Achille's heel saying 'AIM FOR THIS SPOT'. Let's not forget Apollo, who's pretty pissed at the Achaeans for having violated his sanctuary and priests, guided the arrow of Paris to Achilles' heel. Without that having been established, the crucial arrow to Achilles' heel makes us think, 'Right. The heel. I remember that. What exactly was it about?' The scene's inclusion is therefore a stupid loose thread left dangling after the story was trimmed and re-hemmed, and his thrashing around when he is hit in his hamstring with an arrow after he has suffered far stronger blows to the rest of his body becomes almost comical. And what the hell is Achilles doing taking part in the taking of Troy? He's dead LONG before that happens in Homer. urlLink Anthony pointed out quite correctly that the Iliad is about Gods and heroes. This film has humanised the heroes and eliminated the Gods. Epic is about heroes, not humans. It's perhaps unfair to expect contemporary Hollywood moviemakers to do justice to Homer or the legends of the Trojan War that have inspired artists and writers through the centuries. It is definitely unfair to expect Hollywood moviemakers to be comfortable with any notion of honour, even though the behavior of classical heroes like Achilles and Hector is inexplicable without it. However, Troy goes to the other extreme: Belief in the Gods is shown to be absurd, and whenever a character invokes them, he is making a ludicrous mistake. As a result, the film lacks any sense of fate, destiny or even why this war's heroes should be memorable. Troy takes all the wind out of Homer's sails. This is an epic made by a modernist who doesn't believe in epics. Doesn't believe in the honour of battle, or the status of a tragic hero, or the ideal of romantic love, or the dictates of an omnipotent god. It's OK to create a political explanation for the Greek expedition, making punishment for Helen's abduction a convenient cover story for Agamemnon's imperial ambitions. But without honor as a primary concern, Achilles' fury at Agamemnon for taking away his lawful prize, the priestess Briseis, doesn't really make any sense. There's a movingly human scene in the Iliad, one of the most beautiful and noblest scenes from the poemin which Glaucus and Diomedes stop fighting to exchange their armours as a gesture to the ties of hospitality that binds the two. Homer considered Diomedes so important that an entire book of the Iliad is dedicated to him. Unfortunately that scene is absent because they've completely eliminated Diomedes and regal warrior Aeneas does only marginally better -here he's a Trojan teen in a toga who speaks one line.) Agamemnon (Brian Cox) sniggers that the foolish Helen has 'proved to be very useful'— and he must have fought the urge to stroke his beard like Ming the Merciless. His pettiness cheapens the character's shrewd intelligence. Cox goes so over-the-top as a thoroughly evil Agamemnon that you wonder if he isn't deliberately sabotaging the movie. His performance raises an interesting question: Which is harder to watch, a talented actor giving a performance way below his game, or a really dreadful actor demonstrating for all time his utter lack of talent? If 'Troy' doesn't put an end to the movie career of Orlando Bloom, there is no justice in movieland. Could somebody remind Bloom that we are in the Homeric Age - not Middle Earth - when using the Bow he morphed into Legolas. All I needed was an Cave Troll to come up and smite the Greeks. After he kills Achilles with an arrow, I was half expecting a voice from below to shout, 'that still only counts as one!' . Please, Bloom... change professions. You should not be allowed to act, legally. I am amused by the thought that teenage girls might actually buy a copy of the Iliad, perhaps hoping to find an insert with pictures of him. There was that bit when Paris and King Priam are looking at the Horse (it's hideous) left behind by the Greeks, and Bloom comments 'burn it, father'. I couldn't help thinking 'oh, he HAS to be gay... he has taste'. Sean Bean makes a canny and trustworthy Odysseus of Sparta, although even Cecil B. DeMille himself might have resisted the scene in which the character sees a soldier carving a wooden toy horse and -- say! -- the light bulb goes on over his head. And Australian actor Eric Bana thoroughly atones for last summer's 'The Hulk' with his performance as Hector, Paris's older brother and the most capable and most tragic figure in the entire saga. The first major battle sequence, with Achilles and his hand-picked Myrmidons storming the Trojan beach, might be exciting if it weren't a flagrant carbon copy of the D-Day opener in 'Saving Private Ryan.' The final scenes, with Achilles searching the dying Troy for Briseis, suggest 'Titanic.' The large-scale battle scenes are impressive, but they suffer by comparison to those in Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson has made it pretty difficult for directors of epic movies for the forseeable future). Then there's that scene where the Trojans set ablaze giant orbs of thatch and bowl them straight at the massed enemy. Scary it isn't, but you sure do want to sing along: Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire! Now the women. Diane Kruger's Helen. Ha. She's pretty in a sort of Californian High-School way, but no way would she be a woman for whom a thousand ships were launched. In the Iliad, it says when Helen is in Troy, two old guards catch sight of her and say 'it is no shame that men should fight and die for such a beauty as this'. I can't imagine that happening with Kruger, who seems to have wandered in from the next-door audition for Eastern European Bond girls. I read somewhere Catherine Zeta-Jones was a possibility for Helen, and I can imagine a LOT more ships being launched for her. However, Bloom had already been cast as Paris and she would've looked too old for his consort. Pity. The movie's real erotic object is Pitt's Achilles, really. Just look at the number of times he slowly undresses and washes his body. They've eliminated Cassandra the priestess. Cassandra was given her powers of prophecy by Apollo, who wanted to gain her favor, but after getting her powers she rejected him. Instead of taking back the powers, he cursed her to never have anyone believe her prophecies. When Hecabe was pregnant with Paris, she had a dream that she gave birth to a flame that destroyed Troy. Cassandra said that the child would destroy the kingdom and he should die. However, the dream was interpretted by someone else the same way, and Paris was taken to a mountain top and left to die of exposure. He was found instead, and raised as a shepherd. Later, when he came back to Troy, Cassandra recognized him and again warned them that he would bring the death of the kingdom. She attacked Helen upon arrival, again warning everyone, and again being unbelieved. At the end of the trojan war, she warned the King that there was an army inside the wooden horse, but no one believed her then either. the one with the gift of foresight. She knows what is going to happen, and that is why she tells the Trojans 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts'. It's one of the key lines of the Iliad . POOF. Disappeared without a trace. During the sacking of Troy, she was captured by Ajax in the temple of Athena and raped, but since Ajax has been killed by Hector in the film... Where is Hecuba, the Queen of Troy? They seem to have misplaced Priam’s 48 other sons and all 50 of his daughters. I understand that it would be extremely difficult to have them all, but they left out such key Trojan royals as Deiphobus, Polyxena and Cassandra. As I said, I understand leaving these characters for the sake of it being a complex story, but they’re not even mentioned . Helen. Helen was not sent to Sparta to marry Menelaus, she was the daughter of Leda and Tyndareus (previous king and queen of Sparta), her real father was Zeus which explained her beauty. She chose to marry Menelaus out of all the suitors in Greece and the alliance was made upon the suggestion of Odysseus that the suitors agree to join together and stand behind her choosen husband if his right to Helen is challenged . Briseis? Briseis was not a cousin to the royal family nor was she a priestess of Apollo. Briseis was the wife of King Mynes of Lyrnessus, which was an ally of Troy's. According to mythology. Achilles sacked Lyrnessus, killing Briseis' husband and her three brothers. Achilles then took her as his prize, making her his concubine. He fell in love with her, and during the tenth year of the Trojan war, Agamemnon, decimated Thebes, taking Chryseis, the daughter of a priest of Apollo. Apollo got pissed when Agamemnon refused to give her back, and 'came down from Olympus darker than night, though he is known as the 'bright one'; and shooting his golden arrows at the Achaean camp, he caused a plague that decimated the army.' Agamemnon was told by Calchas (the same prophet that told him to sacrifice his daughter) that the plague was created by Apollo's wrath over the pain of his priest. Agamemnon agreed to give back Chyrseis as long as another prize was provided to replace her. Achilles, hearing this ridiculed Agamemnon, calling him a schemer, and to punish him for this, Agamemenon took Briseis from Achilles. That is why Achilles refused to fight anymore until Patroclus was killed by Hector. They've elevated Briseis' existence from chattel (and minor sub-point) to Trojan royalty and a love story. (For goddsakes! A love story!) I am so sick of stories of women who are enslaved and then fall in love with their captors/rapists/enslavers! Hello, where are all those nutty left-wing liberals and feminists when you need them? They have Briseis kill Agamemnon. Unbelievable. Oresteia, anyone? Hello? Clytemnestra - are you listening? 'cos if you are, you're going to be really happy... you don't have to kill your husband anymore! Your son doesn't have to come back to kill you anymore! Of all the wrecking of the myth, this is the WORST. This is SACRILEGE. The very idea that Hollywood could so alter one of the greatest tales ever told to say that anyone but Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon is, to use an apt Greek word, hubris . It's disgusting. The point that Agamemnon goes home to be killed by his wife Clytemnestra is the basis of the Oresteia - the cornerstone of Western Drama. Benioff might as well make a giant 40 foot robot come in and kill him because, well, if he can change important events in the poem such as the DEATH OF THE KING OF THE MYCENAEANS, then adding a 40 foot robot bent on destruction shouldn't be a problem at all. For such a high budget production, you would think they could have afforded to have Chryseis, Cassandra, and Briseis... WITHOUT bunging them together into one unlikely character! Briseis killed Agamemnon? No problem! She can stand-in for Clytaemnestra, after all, Briseis' character was standing in for virtually every female in the Iliad. The film's entire female cast is basically just an elaborate background tool set up so that the men have a distraction when the battles have died down. This treatment of the women and the elimination of the homosexual love between Achilles and Patroclus makes the film the worst sort of Hollywood heterosexist whitewash imaginable. I must remember this if I ever become a Classics teacher and give a test on the Iliad or Greek Mythology. I shall make sure to ask questions whose answers are very different in the book and flick - that way we'll see who did the reading! 'How does Agamemnon die?' (trick question)! That'll teach'em to read the text! No, he is not killed by Briseis! What the movie doesn't explain is why Helen would leave with Paris after an acquaintanceship of a few nights. Is it because her loins throb with passion for a hero? No, because she tells him: 'I don't want a hero. I want a man I can grow old with.' Not in Greek myth, you don't. If you believe Helen of Troy could actually tell Paris anything remotely like that, you will probably also agree that the second night he slipped into her boudoir, she told him, 'Last night was a mistake.' Hector tells Paris how he remembered when Paris was 10 years old. Hello... Wasn't Paris abandoned at Mt Ida, raised by a shepherd and later returned to Troy as prince? Ajax was not killed by Hector, instead Ajax wounded Hector without sustaining an injury. Later he and Odysseus made speeches who of them should get Achilles' armor, and Odysseus won, so Ajax started killing his own people too after going berserk, and later he comitted suicide. What is this nonsense about 'the sword of Troy'? Aeneas didn't carry out the sword of Troy, he carried his father, led his son, and carried the statue of Troy (a goddess figure) according to the Aeneid . Patroclus was an accomplished warrior in his own right, not the untried boy presented in the movie. Patroclus, who looks a little like Achilles, wears his helmet and armor to fool the enemy, and until the helmet is removed everyone thinks that Achilles has been slain. So dramatic is that development that the movie shows perhaps 100,000 men in hand-to-hand combat, and then completely forgets them in order to focus on the Patroclus battle scene, with everybody standing around like during a fight on the playground. Menelaus? He's supposed to survive the Trojan War and get back to Sparta promptly, where ten years years later he tells Telemachus all about his father (Odysseus). He is not supposed to die on the second day of the war. By treating Achilles and the other characters as if they were human, instead of the larger-than-life creations of Greek myth, director Wolfgang Petersen miscalculates. What happens in Greek myth cannot happen between psychologically plausible characters. That's the whole point of myth. Great films like Michael Cacoyannis' urlLink Elektra , about the murder of Agamemnon after the Trojan War, know that and use a stark dramatic approach that is deliberately stylized. Of course, Elektra wouldn't work for a multiplex audience, but then maybe it shouldn't. Then we've got the Trojan Horse itself. It’s a monstrous thing, hammered together out of ship planks, and painted a menacing black. Why anyone would bother hauling it home beats me. In Homer, the soothsayer of Trojans tried to warn King Priam that the horse was a danger but Poseidon sent his sea serpant to silence him, unlike the film where the soothsayer/priest was encouraging Priam to bring the horse into the city. Also would it have killed them to be a bit faithful to the script and show the horse so large that the Trojans had to demolish part of their city walls in order to bring the thing in? Paris and Helen run off together at the end. I repeat - Paris and Helen run off together at the end. Excuse me? He's supposed to get mortally wounded and go crawling back to his first true love, the nymph Oenone on Mt Ida, whom he abandoned when Aphrodite promised him Helen. She has the power to heal him, but refuses to because he abandoned her. He dies right there and she is grief-stricken, etc. Paris hence dies long enough before the Greeks breach the city that Helen is married off to Deiphobus, another of Paris’s brothers. I was looking forward to Paris dying. But turns out that the writers changed it...grrr. They kill Brad and Eric, but they can't kill Orlando. Were the writers afraid that a few million teen Orli fans were gonna hurt them or something? Helen is supposed to go with Menelaus, but since they've already killed him, she might as well go with the cute one, right? Andromache is supposed to be dragged off into slavery. Astayanax (Hector's teenaged son) is supposed to be hurled from the walls of Troy by Neoptolemus, Achilles' son. Aeneas' son Ascanius doesn't seem to exist in this movie, and how could he if his father is like, 15? Homer has Menelaus come into the palace at Troy, intending to kill her. As he finds her, Helen bares her bosom, and the beautiful sight affects Menelaus so much that he forgives her everything and brings her home. Of course, in the film, Menelaus died at the hands of Hector, so that couldn't happen... The really bizarre thing about the script was that despite the listed inaccuracies, there were several things that only those well-read in the Classics would understand. For example, Thetis’s wandering around in the water for no real reason seems extraneous unless one understands that she was the daughter of a sea god. She also seems pointless unless one knows that it was her prophecy to Achilles that gave him the choice between a long life of obscurity and a short life of glory. Furthermore, at the end of the film, when several Trojans are fleeing to Mt Ida, Paris stops a teenage boy who is helping an old man to flee. Paris asks the boy what his name is, and he says 'Aeneas.' Paris then hands him the 'Sword of Troy', which as previously mentioned, if it is in the hands of a Trojan, Troy would never fall. Unless someone knows about the Aeneid , etc, they wouldn’t get this reference, nor would they realize that the boy was basically carrying Anchises on his back. Never mind the actor playing Aeneas is actually 16, and therefore too young to be married to the eldest daughter of Priam and have a son. After all, do you really need Ascanius to rule Alba Longa for 30 years? Nah. Imagine a movie based on the Bible without Christ, angels, or miracles. Or Lord of the Rings without magic or wizards. Imagine the Titanic taking its maiden voyage down to the French Riviera in late July, where the only ice to be seen for miles and miles were the ones the bartenders were putting into the drinks. Imagine Frodo and Sam reaching the Cracks of Doom in a week by taking a little known short cut that does not appear on any map of Middle-earth. That’s about the level of change made in adapting the Iliad to the screen, and that is simply unacceptable. I can't figure out why they made so many of the changes they did. They're not little details by any means, and saying that it's not supposed to be the Iliad doesn't excuse the fact that the story goes against every source of myth related to the war, not just the Iliad . 'Don't look now, dudes, but there're, like, a thousand ships outside. But never fear. The pecs of Troy -- um, princes of Troy -- are ready.' They also show plenty of male flesh. Granted, it was nice to see lots of splendid muscles from Pitt and Bana, but did Petersen really have to desecrate the Iliad in order to do that? Couldn't he have made a film about bodybuilders or competitive swimmers instead? Adaptation of the Iliad ? Perhaps rape would be more appropriate. Some things that really got to me: the pronunciation of names. Yes, I understand that in Latin, Priam is pronounced Pree-ahm, —that one I could accept, but they did some odd things with the other names: Briseis is now Bri-say-iss and Menelaus is now Meneh-louse . MUSIC Unmemorable. Horner, who's done fabulous work elsewhere, gives an eminently forgettable score here. It's one of those 'we can tell the Greeks are about to appear because the music's changed and the drums have started' sort of soundtracks. Plus, epic films have epic soundtracks and themes. Doctor Zhivago had 'Laura's Theme', for example. If I'm not humming the theme or theme song as I leave the cinema, it's not an epic soundtrack. Way too much 'aaAAAaaaaaAAAhhhh' music going on. Easily his worst soundtrack in 20 years. SET & COSTUMES Despite all the technology and GCI battle scenes, the biggest problem with Troy is a simple filmmaking 101 blunder: If a period picture wants to seduce an audience into suspending disbelief, a director must create not just a physical world, but an emotional one as well. In recent flicks such as The Last Samurai, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, there's the sensation that we've happened upon a fully realised universe that was buzzing and thriving long before the camera crew stopped by. But for all his eye-popping set pieces, Troy still feels phony. Everyone seems to have just shown up that morning- nothing about the landscape looks lived-in. The costumes are all shiny and brand-new, the actors even shinier and prettier. The armour everyone's wearing looks like they took it out of the plastic wrap right before they jumped off the ships - either that or polishing armour is part of the ritual of preparing for war (it's not). Is it just me or does Achilles' armour look like it's from a mail-order fetish catalogue? According to the Iliad , his armour was forged by the great god Hephaestus. And with today's amazing special effects that are obviously available in Hollwood and used elsewhere in the film... it's not much to ask for the armor to LOOK somewhat impressive if not god-forged. The armour of the period is quite extensively described by Homer, bronze breastplates with silver and tin and enamel ornamentation, bronze greaves etc. The stuff they're wearing in the film looks like leather and moulded plastic. Of course they couldn't have their actors jumping around in heavy bronze breastplates because they're bloody heavy (those ancients were made of sterner stuff than our modern men) but they could have made an effort to make it look less cheap! After all, this film did have a budget of $200 million! Which brings me to the costumes. I suspect they must have run out of money at this point (the film ended up wildly over-budget and over-schedule), because if you look closely, the nobles of Troy are all wearing tie-tyed cotton fabrics in white and blue. One can even spot where the knots and rubber bands were tied. Somebody please tell the costumer that bright blue and white tie-dye belongs in 70s California in hippie-settlements, not the world of Homer. The Greek kings all look like old bikers. In fact, the Greeks look pretty much like every OTHER people trying really hard to look like Greeks. They're kind of a cross between Minoans, Medieval Europeans, and Vikings. It's a sad day indeed when the Greeks aren't Greek. One of the gang I watched the film with commented that the Greeks looked more like Dwarves from LOTR. HISTORICAL DETAIL There were more Greeks in one scene of 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' than there are in the entirety of 'Troy.' In keeping with the Eisenhower era-style casting, the rank-and-file Greek army -- you know, the nameless barbarians who get brutally slaughtered -- has a few guys who look as if they might be of Italian or Middle Eastern descent. I read somewhere the extras were Bulgarians (rather pissed off at being paid $12 USD a day). What's the point of having some actors spout Greek in the big crowd scenes? I definitely heard a 'Malista' somewhere. The swords in the film are made of steel - and definitely not bronze. WHY IN ZEUS’ NAME IS THERE IRON IN THE BRONZE AGE? There's a reason this age is called the BRONZE AGE - they didn't have iron or steel tools yet. Further nitpick - why do all these sword dramas feel the need to have the sound effecty 'kkkssssszzzing' when a sword is drawn from the scabbard? I've worked with all sorts of swords and NOT ONE ever makes that sort of sound. I have to laugh at the celebration around the wooden horse. Of course, the Trojan women are doing a Mayim step (that’s an ancient Hebrew dance step. Enough said) And of course, there was a random guy doing backflips. Ah, movie cliché #987. What on earth were llamas doing running around the streets of Troy? I know they filmed in Mexico or something, but what are South American animals doing in a market place in Asia Minor in in 1200 B.C.? When praying, the characters of Troy are depicted as kneeling before the statues. They couldn't have had a historical or classical consultant on this film, as everyone knows the Ancient Greeks and Homeric heroes STOOD when they prayed - in the ancient 'Orans' position of forearms raised, palms facing upwards when praying to the Olympians or palms down when praying to the Gods of the Underworld. They most certainly did not kneel. While we're on the topic of religion in the film, in the scene when Hector and Paris return to Troy, as they're entering the great hall, one sees clergy milling about, presumably the priests of Apollo, who is patron of Troy. One knows they're meant to be clergy not because they're wearing funny clothes (pretty much everyone is in this film, aside from Pitt who seems to show more skin than clothes) but because they're wearing hats and holding golden staffs which are directly stolen from Greek Orthodox CHRISTIAN Bishops' vestments and regalia. The staffs they hold (called Pateritsa ) are terminated by two serpents looking toward an orb surmounted by a cross - an example may be seen urlLink here . The priests of Apollo are also wearing on their heads these tallish cylindrical hats covered with a black veil - they're called Kamilavka ( Kalmilavkion in the singular) and are worn by Bishops, dignitaries and monks - a picture of a bishop wearing it and holding the serpent staff may be found urlLink here . What the hell, did they think Greek Orthodox = Greek Pagan? THE SCRIPT Oh, the script. Did director Wolfgang Petersen imagine that if his actors acted as though they were reciting Shakespeare, it would make the dialogue, which alternates among the pompous, the banal and the just plain dumb, sound like Shakespeare? When Paris, who's so gorgeous he could have played Helen, nuzzles the Spartan queen in her boudoir, she coos, 'last night was a mistake,' just like any soap opera star. 'You must be Hector,' says Achilles, on their first meeting. Ouch. 'Burn Troy Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn Troy to the ground!' screams Agamemnon during the sack of Troy. HA. Benioff's script tries so hard to be high-flown and solemn that it ends up funny. The speech is hokey enough that hearing it once almost induces groans. Hearing it over and over and over again, as we do here, ensures groans. Enough with the immortality business, already! A lethal drinking game could be crafted from the number of times the script solemnly refers to 'immortality', just as it could for the number of times that Pitt strikes a body-builder's pose as horns in the soundtrack adore him. We also get countless speeches about how 'the world will never forget this war/our glory/your bravery/the mighty sword of blah-blah-blah.' If you took a drink each time someone said one, you'd be snockered halfway through. 'Immortality, take it, it's yours,' Even our great warrior signs on. He sings a chorus of the pathetic blues (seems his Achilles heel is really just a bad case of angst), and then gives the sad song a positive spin: 'The gods envy us. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed.' How can I take Achilles seriously after hearing him utter the line 'It's too early in the day for killing princes” ? That and the Rules of Epics , which require all critical death scenes to occur in Act 3. Bana's Hector has his moments, too. A couple of times, by the expression on his face, I thought he was going to go green, you know, Hulk out . Hector Smash! Don’t make Hector angry Achilles. You won't like him when he’s angry.” Orlando Bloom elicited a big laugh from me when he swept Helen into his arms and vowed 'We'll live off the land. I'll kill deer and rabbits,' or something to that effect. Though, I don’t think it was supposed to be funny. David Benioff’s adaptation is laced with the dialogue of a angsty teenager who never studied the classical works. One of Agamemnon’s men says “if we turn back now, we’ll lose all credibility”. How about some poetry to the language? REWRITE: “If we turn a blind face, the four winds will spread our cowardice to every corner of Greece.” That’s a centuries-old epic I can buy, not crap like “I want to see my son grow old and have girls chasing him.” The film needs “my eyes want to look upon my son, bathing in all the flavour that life has to offer,” not “May the Gods be with you.” That last line is not made up and one which even George Lucas would admit sucked. Menelaus: 'Where is she?' Guard: 'Sir, your wife left ... with the Trojans.' One would assume that a $200 million summer blockbuster could have found space on the payroll for some random lackey to comb the script and extricate any errant one-liners that could be potentially misconstrued as silly condom jokes by annoyed, impatient audiences. It calls to mind a quote from the estimable film critic Homer Simpson: 'Your movie is more boring than church.' I believe neither Homers would approve. In an urlLink interview , Benioff recently said, 'This is the mother of all epics, the cornerstone of Western literature. If I screw it up, classicists around the world will issue a fatwa and assassinate me with bronze daggers.' He'd better be borrowing Brad's protective armour then. If I were in the mafia, I would seriously start a vendetta against those who allowed this film to see the light. Please just pretend like you read the Iliad before you make a screenplay. This goes beyond interpretation (read: O Brother Where Art Thou? Now that's an excellent interpretation of the Odyssey!), this whole movie entered in to Classics heresy. The whole 'inspired by' is nonsense. We wouldn't have people giving that argument if the story was of a character whose name was Jesus Christ, who was from Nazareth, parents were Mary and Joseph and instead of being crucified, instead he was whisked away by a gang of robbers, and he ends up becoming an alcoholic, womanizer and a gang leader and comes back and destroys the Roman Civilization. A director could easily put a disclaimer at the end saying 'Inspired by the Life of Jesus Christ', but we all know what would happen then. But yet, respected Classicist urlLink Mary Beard says: Among those of us [professional classicists] who look on, a few will be curmudgeonly carping at inaccuracies or misrepresentations of the original. The majority will welcome the publicity for their subject. Many (myself included, I should confess) will already be penning articles on the 'Pittian Moment In the Reception of The Iliad' or devising new courses on 'Classics in Film' or 'The Trojan War in Popular Culture'. The chances are that Troy will have a longer life in a university department near you than in your local multiplex.' and ironically, she's right. If they had done a good job, I perhaps could have had a sequel to look foward to. Now I fear it. The only good sign I saw in the whole bloody film was that they killed enough main characters (in the wrong way), that perchance they can't attempt to ruin my beloved Odyssey, Aeneid and Oresteia, right? Plus, no Gods and monsters means the Odyssey and Oresteia can't be made by them right? Oh Zeus. I hope so. If you really want to experience Troy as it should be, go out and get a translation (I recommend Lattimore or Lombardo's versions), and read it for yourself. Better yet, learn Homeric Greek and read the original. If you want to actually see it...might as well wait for the rentals to come out (if I ever buy this on DVD it'll be as a comedy). If you want to see really hot men go naked (forgot how many times I almost jumped at the screen seeing Brad Pitt and Bana), then by ALL means, do go and watch it. As for the $200 million spent... all down the drain. If you want to see a comedic adaptation of Iliad without being too offended, then gooo ahead and watch. I thought the movie was hilarious. It shouldn't have been, but it was. Every time they screwed up, I just burst out laughing. Especially at Bloom's Paris . Because honestly... In the Odyssey, Homer calls Odysseus 'ὃς πρὶν μὲν μάλα πολλὰ πάθ' ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμὸν ἀνδρω̂ν τε πτολέμους ἀλεγεινά τε κύματα* πείρων, δὴ τότε γ' ἀτρέμας εὑ̂δε, λελασμένος ὅσσ' ἐπεπόνθει. one who in time past had suffered many griefs at heart in passing through wars of men and the grievous waves; but now he slept in peace, forgetful of all that he had suffered. ' (Odyssey, 13.90) Now, taking a cue from Odysseus, I'm going to have a nap. Hopefully when I get up, I won't be so angry. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Just a few links from urlLink Lew Rockwell to clear my 'to-blog' list before I give my review of TROY. urlLink The Abuse of the Politically Incorrect : Steven Yates on the academy and beyond. The most recent justification for the domination of academia by leftists is that 'liberals are smarter.' This was actually said by Robert Brandon, chair of the philosophy department at Duke University, urlLink in a statement replete with logical fallacies . Example: 'most stupid people are conservative,' he said, clearly intending us to infer that 'most conservatives are stupid.' That is like arguing from all dogs are mammals to all mammals are dogs (the formal fallacy is called illicit conversion ). Such is academia in 2004: comparable not so much to a sinking ship as to a train in free fall, having gone off an unseen cliff. urlLink Stop Sympathizing With the Savage : Joseph Sobran on The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding , by Robert Hughes. Sometimes civilized men commit savage crimes; but savages commit them as a matter of course. This is no reason to belittle the difference between civilization and savagery. It’s a reason to keep trying to improve civilization. Sympathy for the alien can be noble, if it presupposes sympathy for one’s own. But as Robert Frost said, a liberal is one who won’t take his own side in a fight. “Nothing human is alien to me,” as the Roman said; but too many liberals seem alienated from the civilization to which they owe their being. urlLink The Executioners Enjoyed Their Work : Theodore Dalrymple on Original Sin and the veneer of civilization. One thing that unites the men who beheaded the American Nick Berg in Iraq, the soldiers who abused Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the Palestinians who have held on to Israeli body parts in Gaza City and the murderers of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan is that they all enjoyed what they did, and enjoyed it immensely. There is almost no greater pleasure known to man than to commit great acts of cruelty in the belief that the cause of right and justice is being served. Anyone who has observed rioters will know that they are having a wonderful time: could there be a greater joy than vandalism with a social purpose? ...Both self-examination and my experience of others tells me that evil lurks within all of us, waiting for its opportunity to spring. Civilisation may be a veneer, but it is the veneer that separates us from barbarism. Never forget Original Sin and its consequences. urlLink Meet the 'Jackass' Generation : by R. Cort Kirkwood In Abu Ghraib prison, we reaped what we sowed. For years, we've preached egalitarian nonsense to our daughters. We sexualize them before puberty. We gorge them on rap and hip-hop. They get pierced like tribal Africans. We tell them to behave like boys, yet to resent and despise the male sex. Then Lynndie England shows up, and we profess utter shock. Or maybe we don't. The men? They are 'Jackass' Americans: hyperviolent and hypersexual. And stupid. We teach them that women, to quote a sociologist, are little men and that men are big women. We teach them that anything goes, even homosexual abuse. Nothing is right or wrong. Products of late-20th-century schools, they can't think for themselves. Then again, neither can most Americans. That's how we got to Iraq. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Ukraine's fabulous urlLink Ruslana has just won the Eurovision song contest, held this year in Constantinople (Istanbul, some seem to keep calling it). What's interesting about her music is that she tries to blend folk rhythms and styles with pop - and the result isn't tacky or cheesy as one would think... it works quite nicely. How does one describe her style? 'Drive-Ethno-Dance' is what some might call it. What's her music sound like? Some samples are available urlLink here . I particularly like urlLink Знаю я and urlLink Аркан . A bit more information about her in English urlLink here , and here's her urlLink Official Website (the English is dodgy in parts, so it helps if you can read either Ukrainian or Russian). Thanks, Andrij, for letting me know she won! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | This is a good thing ... someone in the press has recognized the graphically violent images which Homer presented: What may surprise is that the oldest author in Western literature, Homer, was way ahead of Hollywood. Of all the great writers, Homer was perhaps the most cinematic. He writes like a movie camera: Written details play in our minds as if we were seeing them on a screen. In Homer's Iliad, when the Trojan warrior Hector has killed one of his Achaean (Greek) enemies, he 'planted a heel against Patroclus' chest, wrenched his bronze spear from the wound, kicked him over flat on his back.' That's cinematic. Critic Roger Ebert talks about a movie cliché he calls the 'fruit cart,' when a falling kung-fu fighter or a careening car knocks over a table or fruit cart and spills produce all over the screen. In Homer's Odyssey, the hero comes home to find his estate infested with villains. He kills them all, starting with the head bad-guy. 'Odysseus aimed and shot Antinous square in the throat with the arrow's point stabbing clean through to the nape of the neck and out the other side. Antinous pitched to the side, his cup dropped from his grasp as the shaft sank home, and the man's life blood came spurting from his nostrils in thick red jets. His foot jerked forward and kicked the table and food showered across the floor, bread and meat soaked in a swirl of bloody filth.' Fruit cart. It is especially in the area of graphic violence that Homer anticipates Hollywood. There was a time in movies when the bad guy got shot, grabbed his chest and keeled over. In 1967, Bonnie and Clyde turned death by gunshot into a slow-motion ballet of bodies jerked like marionettes punctuated by squibs popping like bubble wrap. Since then, Hollywood has upped the ante, and the ballet of graphic gore has gotten more sophisticated, more precise and more messy. No one can be shot nowadays without a shower of blood spattering the wall behind him like spray paint. In just 20 lines of the Iliad, Homer kills off half a dozen heroes in bloody style. Here's a sampling: 'Thrasymedes stabbed Antilochus right in the shoulder and cracked through the bony socket, shearing away the tendons. Then he wrenched the whole arm out and down thundered Antilochus and darkness blanked his eyes. . . . 'Peneleos hacked Lycon's neck below the ear and the sword sank clean through, leaving Lycon's head hanging on his body by only a flap of skin. The head swung wide and Lycon slumped to the ground. . . . 'Idomoneus skewered Erymas straight through the mouth, the spearpoint raking through, up under the brain to split his glistening skull, teeth shattered out, both eyes brimmed to the lids with a gush of red and both nostrils spurting, mouth gaping, blowing convulsive sprays of blood. He was a corpse as he hit the ground.' Tarantino is playing catch up. [from the urlLink Arizona Republic ] |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Think about it. There was this thing outside the city, soon as it got inside, people came pouring out of it.. isn’t that what these things are supposed to prevent? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | It's a bit early for a commemoration of the Fall of Constantinople (Tuesday 29 May 1453) even by the Gregorian Calendar, but I found something on urlLink Pensate Omnia that was thought provoking: During the early occupation of Constantinople, dishonourable Turkish soldiers killed, raped and sold thousands of Orthodox Christians to the slave markets of the east. Other soldiers searched through the houses of the wealthy finding extraordinary opulence and immense quantities of gold buried in their gardens. This hidden gold could have sustained the whole of Europe for many years. The wealthy people of the city, paying homage to Sultan Mohammed II, instructed their children to present offerings of gold bars on trays. Mohammed II became very angry at this display of wealth asking, 'if you had so much gold, why did you not offer it to your Emperor when he asked for support to defend the Empire?' It was the rich who told the Emperor to 'sell the Holy Chalices and other liturgical instruments, and use the gold of the Church to defend the Empire'. Are these words repeated today in our churches? [from an urlLink article on repentance ] I think we all know the answer to that question. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | While washing your hands at the sink in the bathroom you start chanting Byzantine music (in Plagal of the Second tone), and -- all the sudden -- an ison starts coming from one of the stalls. 'Well, you've got to admit,' the young Serbian man said as he came towards the sink, 'it's good stuff.' - from urlLink Pensate Omnia |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | While the main upmarket shopping area in Peking is 王府井Wangfujing (which I like to call by the rather quaint sounding translation 'Well of the Princely Mansion'), where the masses shop is slightly to the west of 天安門 Tiananmen - 西單 Xidan. I walked the length of Xidan one Saturday afternoon and evening - the numbers of people shopping is truly amazing. These people, not ten years ago, were bothering tourists to buy stuff for them from the Friendship Store (where better stuff not available to locals was sold), now have a whole series of gigantic shopping malls with a variety and quality of goods to match anything one can find in New York or London. It's a very obvious sign of how far the Chinese economy has come and how much the buying power of the Chinese consumer has improved - no wonder companies all around the world want to break into the Chinese market. Peking alone has 14 million registered inhabitants (not including the 4 million from other bits of China working in Peking), about 2 million people coming and going daily. The numbers are staggering, really. One of the chaps Dad and I had dinner with, the head of a Government department, had just signed a contract with some Portuguese firm. He was quite bemused to reflect that he had more employees in his department under his command than the total population of Portugal. - There's a fast-food noodle chain that's quite popular in Peking (and all over China), named urlLink 美國加州牛肉面大王 。Literally translated, 'America California Beef Noodle King'. I kid you not. Personally, I've never heard of any such thing as 'Californian Beef Noodle'. None of their ingredients are particularly Californian or even American, and their menu is very typically that of a North-Chinese noodle place, with springrolls, meat buns and suchlike. It's as if a KFC clone opened up in San Francisco, named 'Manchu Fried Chicken' but with a menu identical to that of KFC. When it first opened in 1998, Dad and I thought it was going to die a quick death, but it's doing a booming business, expanding and opening new outlets all the time. They're actually the Number 3 fast-food chain in China, after Mac's and KFC. I can't understand it myself. It must be the idea that somehow it's foreign (they claim foreign ownership) - the Chinese seem to adore anything foreign. [ urlLink English Website here ] - In 通州 Tongzhou, the suburb of Peking, where Dad and I were staying, we had lunch one day in a tiny hole-in-the-wall eatery off the main street. Szechwan cooking, it promised, and from the accent of the chap trying to get us to go on, it seemed the real McCoy. We had 宮保雞丁Chicken stir-fried with dried chillies (poetically called Throne-Protector Chicken, named in honour of the official for whom it was created), 回鍋肉 Refried Pork (literally Back-to-the-Wok Meat), 魚香茄子 Stir-Fried Aubergines/Eggplant (literally Fish-Fragrance Eggplant, don't ask) with lots of rice and tea. Bill came up to ¥21. That's about $4.50 Sing (about £1.50 or $2.50 USD). Needless to say, the food was excellent. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | A few weeks ago, I was waiting for my friend Graeme at a theatre, waiting to see a play. So alright, I had the handsfree attached to my mobile phone and awaiting for his call. He calls, and I press ANSWER on the phone. I put the phone to my ear and keep going ' uh hello? '... because I can't hear anything. After about a minute, I give up and figure there's a problem on his side, so I then wait for him to call back. As I'm waiting I suddenly realise ' hang on, of course there's no sound coming out of the phone speaker... ' because the handsfree is attached... and the sound then should be coming out of the earphones... which I had sagely left hanging around my neck. I called Graeme back and told him what happened. ' Oh my God, Ed, you're so joking ' was his response. Classic moment really. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Since I haven't a direct line to urlLink Fr Reginald Foster , the Pope's Latinist, may I be so bold as to suggest: Blogo, -are. for the verb Blogus, -i, m. for the noun What think ye? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | For my readers who aren't aware, Singaporean males have to do 2 - 2.5 years of compulsory military service at some point between the ages of 16 and 21. Well. My friend Lennard went into the Army a short time ago, and here goes his urlLink blog entry : i have a 2-litre water bottle in camp and everyday i would chugg and chugg and chugg like a desperate man. then one day, the guy sleeping next to me asked, 'oi. why you always drink so much water ah?' to which i replied 'just trying to get my daily fill' and proceeded to elaborate what i meant. so for those as daft as me, let me educate you. The daily requirement for water is 6 to 8 glasses, not litres. Isn't he so cute? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink The site claims: Basically, Gematria is searching for different patterns through the text, such as the amount of words beginning with a vowel. If the amount of these matches is divisible by a certain number, such as 7 (which is said to be God's number), there is an incontestable argument that the Spirit of God is ever present in the text. Another important aspect in gematria are the numerical values of letters: A=1, B=2 ... I=9, J=10, K=20 and so on. The Gematriculator uses Finnish alphabet, in which Y is a vowel. Experts consider the mathematical patterns in the text of the Holy Bible as God's watermark of authenticity. Thus, the Gematriculator provides only results that are absolutely correct. My blog's only 23% Evil? Are they kidding? [Link from urlLink The Mighty Barrister ] |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | YOUNG Chinese boys may soon cut a typically English pose on the Bund - Shanghai's promenade from the colonial period - in the first time since the 1950s that students will stroll along the waterfront in blazer and school tie. English public schools are being drawn to China by the growing appetite for what is thought to be British style. Indulgent parents in a China whose economy is booming will lavish their 'young emperors' with the best of English education and at a fraction of the cost of sending them to England... If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then Asians are paying the British the ultimate compliment. The irony is that in Britain these days, British style is a blend of 'Estuary accents' and bhangra music. A distinctly multicultural Britain may find puzzling an Englishness whose last repository is along the Bund in Shanghai. That's a fascinating article from the Straits Times- perhaps they might need an ethnically-Chinese teacher of Greek and Latin who speaks perfect English and is an Anglophile? One may hope... It's an idea that appeals to me - for a long time I've wanted an excuse to spend extended periods in Shanghai, the city where my Mother was born and spent her childhood, living in the French concession, before the Communists came and our family fled. Just think of it... me, in what was once called 'the Wickedest City in the World'... teaching the Classics and eating fabulous Shanghainese food by day, and enjoying the opium-smoke suffused 'Flower Quarter' by night. Ok, I know, opium is a horrible drug and it's impossible to find.. and that the Flower Quarter doesn't exist anymore... and that I'm neither interested in Flower Girls or drugs... it's just such a pretty picture that it appeals to me intellectually and aesthetically. Of course, while I'm dreaming of an ideal Shanghai, I'd also be attending services at the urlLink Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Most Holy Mother of God , built 1931 in the French Concession, just up the road from where my mum used to live as a child: or the urlLink Church of the Tsar-Martyr St Nicholas (the Russian Military parish). Alas, today, the Cathedral, where urlLink St John the Wonderworker ( urlLink here's a church dedicated to him) once served, is now a securities exchange firm and also houses a disco on the second floor under the dome-the 'St Peter's Club', while Old Nicholas the Magnificent is now a resturant and casino. More details about the two churches urlLink here . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Random thought - does anyone else think Mahometan women, when wearing the black shapeless veil that covers them from head to toe, look awfully like a giant bottle of Guinness Stout? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink This website features the complete organ works of J. S. Bach, in virtual performances created by James Pressler. They're really good - in mp3 format, and great listening. Several other important composers are also represented there. The urlLink Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch, BWV 769 is particularly good. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | The FBI issued a terrorist warning after receiving a tip on an evil millionaire -- who turned out to be a character in a video game. It was the lead item on the government's daily threat matrix one day last April. Don Emilio Fulci described by an FBI tipster as a reclusive but evil millionaire, had formed a terrorist group that was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington, D.C. That day even FBI director Robert Mueller was briefed on the Fulci matter. But as the day went on without incident, a White House staffer had a brainstorm: He Googled Fulci. His findings: Fulci is the crime boss in the popular video game Headhunter. 'Stand down,' came the order from embarrassed national security types. One wonders if the April day in question was 1st April. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Hello bento box! And other smiley-face food from Japan. Other cute maki links urlLink here and urlLink here . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Nintendo's new double-screen handheld is curiously similar to its vintage (and misbegotten) Donkey Kong 'Game and Watch.' The urlLink link has a urlLink Donkey King Game & Watch emulator for Windows , should you be old enough to remember the game and wish to play it again! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Today's Worth1000 photoshopping contest is phobias, illustrated. They've got some pretty nice ones there! |
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