Red Roses and Petrol

With a title reminiscent of a Pogues album, this Irish 'indie' film looks to be a mighty fine cinema that I, for sure, want to see.

Malcolm McDowell, no longer the young tough of Clockwork Orange, plays the not so Altvater to the 'Johnny' played by Max Beesley, who is very like his younger self.
The music is of the rowdy Flogging Molly variety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2OAR6MDoWE

Behind the scenes with Malcolm McDowell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsSxCQzfMAk

a live flogging:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Ammrgxsi0

Dubliners & Pogues as they once were:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au30c9ZMIPg

from Discourse 3.1.24-50 of Epictetus as in Arrian's lecture notes, circa 100 A.D.

"Young man, whom do you wish to beautify?
Learn first who you are and trick yourself out in this way.
You are a human; that is, a mortal animal life-form;
one that knows how to deal with mental impressions [phenomena] by means of
logical reasoning. but what is [the meaning of that]'by logical reasoning'?
It is [the process of] considering the nature of phenomena [mental impressions] and judging them in the manner of an absolute monarch.
So then, what excellency do you possess? Your life? Not so special.
Your mortality? Not so special. Knowing how to deal with mental
impressions? Not so special. It is your logical reasoning that is
your excellent quality. Refine and embellish that but leave your
hair to Him who made it as He wanted. Come on now; what other
appellations do you have? Are you man or woman? A man. eh. So groom
yourself as a man, not as a woman. This feminine prize is born to be
delicate in her nature and if she has much body hair, is a monster,
and is exhibited with the freaks in Rome. But it is the same [sort
of monstrosity] for a man not to have it, and if it is in his nature not
to have it, he is a monster; but if he should shave his body hair off himself or
should pluck it out, what would we make of him? Where should we
exhibit him? What kind of circus poster should we design for his
show? "I shall show you a man who wishes to be a woman rather than a
man."? What a dire spectacle! There is no one at all who will not
be amazed at the notice. By the Great Spirit, I suppose that even
the fellows who pluck out their own body hairs do what they do
without realizing what it means. Hey man, why are you indicting your
own nature? Because it made you a man? Why then? Is it necessary
that it make everybody women? And what would be the advantage then
of prettifying yourself? For whom would you be tricking yourself out
if all humans were women? This little creation [i.e., your body]
doesn't please you? Then make yourself into a woman outright.
Why ever do that? [To get at] the root of your hairyness.
Make yourself a woman in all respects, so that we may not [longer] be deluded;
not [this affair of] on the one hand, half a man, but on the other, half a woman. Whom do you wish to please? Dainty little women?
Then please them as a masculine man.
"Yes, but they delight in smooth-skinned, beardless lads."
Don't blow me away!
So if they were delighting in lewd *catamites, would you become a lewd catamite?
Is this the work for which you were born?
That licentious women should be delighted with you?
-- tr. by nekkid, Eve of Memorial Day, 2008


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effeminacy
-explicates kinaidos*
(Latin kinaedus)

Seeking Buddha Scriptures in the West

Painting in walkway of Summer Palace, Beijing, Peoples' Republic of China.

Left to Right: Sun Wukong (Monkey King), Xuanzang (Monk), Zhu Wuneng, and Sha Wujing

About the Myth:

http://www.greatsage.net/monkey/journey.html

ChickaLatte challenges Starbucks

Looks real good for newcomer ChickaLatte in the coffee war!

http://chickalatte.com/

What ChickaLatte baristas (chickalettes?) wear:

http://fantasiawear.com/chickalatte.htm

Charter School Madrassa Controversy in Minnesota

Looks like we'll be seeing more media coverage from Minnesota, especially on Fox News, with this cultural stasis clash.


http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/19/muslim-school-officials-attack-news-crew-in-twin-cities/

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=%7BC617801C-966A-47F0-8133-81005D98254F%7D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_%28political_history%29

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWE9rZoCZhI

Diogenes the Philosopher

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope

Hyperthymesis

I've been noticing, via the internet, that many Ancient Greek scholars are puzzled into aporia by this announcement from the University of California at Irvine concerning hyperthymestic syndrome which attributes the etymology of the term to thymeis, claiming thymesis meant memory in Ancient Greek.

http://today.uci.edu/news/release_detail.asp?key=1450

Searching in lexica and the internet, I haven't found such. My hypothesis is that the root of the word is thymus ( Betacode Greek = qu/mos ), which was the seat of the emotions to the Ancients. This is the "heart" of poetry and the scriptures. Memory has been shown to have a strong correlation with emotion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_memory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia

Faith

Fundamentalist Faith as viewed by Yusuf Al-Khattab (formerly Joseph Cohen) and Richard Dawkins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i74ZnwEuEMg

G'schichten aus Alt-Wien

"G'schichten aus Alt-Wien" performed by Die Wienersangerknaben, 1983 in Tokyo.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RH7vVjd70f0


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-nYsEjKkwc8


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CXUhpGE_nQc

Finale
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z_YWEyIOiU

Adolf Hitler at 14 with Realschule classmates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein

Late night/early morning thoughts on the 'politically correct' agenda

Words often evoke our emotions, but on the other hand much of our thinking is dependent on words.
Totalitarians all seem to know this.
That must be why they try to control our language, and hence the thoughts that are possible.
Perhaps this is merely a silly dream of a syllogism.
It's high time I was listening to the Bruckner E-minor Mass.

http://www.quilisma.com/pages/Polyphony/bruckner/brucknerreviews.htm

The recording I prefer is the 1992 Sony CD with Deutsche Blaserphilharmonie and Kammerchor Stuttgart. All search engine references are somehow turned into the Polyphony recording reviewed above, which is what 'they' want to sell.

Hieronymus Bosch: Light at the End of the Empyre

Are intellectuals destroying "America as the New Rome"?

"...for this group of radical declinists 'bad news is actually good news', and all reports of 'economic depression, unemployment, world wars and conflicts, and environmental disasters [are received] with barely concealed glee, since these events all foreshadow the final destruction of modern civilization' (Arthur Herman). Crucially for the ever-increasing influence of this dread-filled perspective of history,

'most people today are barely aware of [the influence of this] almost sadistically redemptive component of the pessimist tradition. Instead, the sowing of despair and self-doubt has become so pervasive that we accept it as a normal intellectual stance.'

Ultimately, it is the radical intelligentsia and the crisis of the cultural sphere that hold the key to the great historical questions about the fate of Rome, America and the West."

http://quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=3898

It seems that the management of our news media is strongly biased toward destructive pessimism. Unfortunately for Western Civilization, it has been selling well and heavily influencing our US politics.
"Oremus.... Permissum campana orbis." U.S.Sen. Patrick J. Leahy

nekkid

TSIFTETELLI - making the belly dance

The Greatest Danger

"...what we can do seems without limit. Never has the human seemed so potentially in charge of its world; never has the appearance of control seemed so total.... While humans have always been dangerous, especially to one another, this danger is magnified by how all-encompassing is the impact decisions can have on so many. Even measures put in place for protection work as though behind our backs to put us more at risk than ever. Perhaps the greatest danger of all is the belief that we are enough in charge to maintain control over things, as though there can always be a technological fix to whatever problems arise." Charles J. Sabatino: "A Heideggerian Reflection on the Prospects of Technology", http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Sabatino.pdf

Does Biofuels Program resemble Mao's 'Great Leap Forward'?
http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

Belly Dance in the 21st Century

It's quite hard to find an lovely plump belly dancers now like those that were most popular half a century ago. Slim and schlank is the new standard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2riUwpvhGVo Cory Zamora floor belly dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbAXtImlF4g Veil Dance: Nahari with Adrian Sarhan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEpOL6ukGCE double veil b. d.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLbPoxoNIj4 Istanbul cabaret floor dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr9q3lDfRXQ The Belly Dance Underworld

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axUixg0RFaI Turkish Diva Male Belly Dancer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belly_dance

Tschüss!

What message are you able to find in Martin Heidegger's "field-path"?

http://www.omalpha.com/jardin/heidegger1-eng-imp.html

http://www.focusing.org/apm_papers/dreyfus.html

nekkid

Rana aurora

Is she ready to AEstivate?

AEstivation

Revival of a funny old post I had made in
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/latin/


from *The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table*
by Oliver Wendell Holmes (circa 1858)

"[Your talking Latin---said I---reminds me of an odd trick
of one of my old tutors. He read so much of that language
that his English half turned into it....]

"In candent ire the solar splendor flames;

The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames;

His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes

And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.


"How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,

Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,

Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine,

And bibe the flow from logicaudate kine!


"To me, alas! no verdurous visions come,

Save you exiguous pool's conferva-scum,--

No concave vast repeats the tender hue

That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!


"Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades!

Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!

Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,--

Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump!"

posted by nudius