Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Fog of Journalism
· Angua picks up on some drivel in The Guardian a while back. Yes, The Guardian. Some drivel. But I've noticed that, aside from actual axe-grinding, there's an awful lot of confusion in newspapers and magazines on just about every topic. It's not stupidity or ignorance but more a fiendish desire to simplify everything, and so you end up with a collection of bromides which afford people the opportunity of being pro or anti something without the inconvenience of having to think about it. And then earlier today I discovered that 73 percent of Americans can't find Ireland on a map if it is not clearly labelled so. It's sort of conspicuous, sticking out in the Atlantic and all. Anyway, I would ascribe this to indifference, and this means that newspapers can go on exercising whatever knee-jerk they're comfortable with. Maybe they can't do otherwise, I don't know.
— posted by P | at 10:33 PM | |
Words
· Sometimes people want you to "have a look at" something they've written. Well, sure. There might be a few eyes that need to be crossed, a misplaced coma. That's easily done. But sometimes the thing they give you appears to have been hastily translated from some Central Asian language and needs to be reworked into normal English. Awkward participle constructions, perfectly acceptable in Chuvash, have to be turned into clauses, and so on. That's not too difficult. And now you have a perfectly good text which makes no sense! The problem then becomes fixing other people's mistakes, which is a lot harder than making your own.
· I saw the expression "by dint of" somewhere. I never thought about it before, so I looked it up in the OED. "Dint" (cognate of Old Norse dyntr) means "blow" and is related to the word "dent". "By blow of arms" came to mean "by power of arms", and from there the modern sense. But curiously enough, there are no cognates in the Teutonic languages. That's odd, because it sounds like the sort of rough thing Teutons would bark at each other. I've been trying to think of some additional etymology so that I could write a stiff letter to those snobs at Oxford pointing out their mistake: "Surely you are aware of the Gothic root ... " No luck yet.
· Remember: in Basque jakin means "to know"; but "to know [a person]" is ezagutu. People will probably know what you mean, but they might laugh at you. And you don't want that. Similarly, the French word trouble, as a masculine noun, means "row", "confusion", etc., but la trouble (f.) means, of course, "hoop net". An extremely common mistake.
· If you need some information about Abeditions you can visit their site, but you could also phone them at +32(0)68.28.60.60: "All demand of information can get used to by telephone", they explain.
— posted by P | at 2:49 PM | |
Friday, October 22, 2004
La mer
Oh! si patiente,
Même quand méchante!
Un souffle ami nous chante:
"Vous sans espérance,
Mourez sans souffrance!"
— Verlaine, "La mer est plus belle".
· Here's a type of human relatively new, I believe, to cataloguers of human types: the jazz critic. These are usually white males of fairly well-heeled background, well-educated, sometimes British, partaking of a certain donnish gravity—in this hardly differing from other species of critic—yet completely obsessed by jazz. They rarely write on any other topic, such as movies or fiction, and don't seem to have sparetime enthusiasms or vices. This last thing is remarkable in a writer. Yet the idea of a drunken jazz critic is outlandish, even absurd. I think the explanation might be that the work takes them into bars and clubs, where professional dedication is a bulwark against temptation.
Music Factoid: In 1938, musicians in Artie Shaw's band earned ten dollars a night, according to John Chilton's Billie's blues (London: Quartet Books, 1975, p. 53.). That would be about $134.68 in today's money.
— posted by P | at 6:23 PM | |
Thursday, October 21, 2004
I'm Asking You to Look into Your Heart And Shut Up
· Paul Krugman, alluded to by Maxspeak, mentions something interesting:
Last week, the Republican National Committee sent an angry, threatening letter to Rock the Vote, an organization that has been using the draft issue to mobilize young voters. "This urban myth regarding a draft has been thoroughly debunked," the letter declared, and quoted Mr. Bush: "We don't need the draft. Look, the all-volunteer Army is working."Never mind the issue, look at that idiotic use of the words "urban myth". Why not just "rumour", "falsehood" or something? Presumably they thought it punchier and hipper.
Today's Graph
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· I was looking through someone's vast collection of LPs and noted that some standards are more popular than others, so naturally I made a few calculations on the back of an envelope. The graph at right shows my results.
The collection I examined contained works by various artists, both vocalists and instrumental ensembles, from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s. The majority were US labels and, it seems, original releases. I estimate that some two thirds were by musicians who had been around since the old days.
As for my choice of songs, I concluded that the logical procedure would be to select any song that happened to pop into my head for absolutely no reason.
The interesting thing about my graph is that it shows what musicians have chosen to play, not what the dopey public thinks about anything.
Easy Listening Factoid: "A Swingin' Safari", the theme music for The Match Game, was composed by Bert Kaempfert, who also wrote "Strangers in the Night".
Book-of-the-Month Club?
· What kind of person needs a whole month to read a book? Who invented this twelve-step programme for semiliterates? Probably the sort of people who publish books. They're like embittered chefs who've come to despise cooking. "Let's just take Pollo alla limone off the menu, it's too much trouble and nobody orders it—they're too stupid. Let them eat spicy chicken wings."
Is anyone in the publishing industry of this country aware of the expression "a good wine needs no bush"? Here's some typical stuff from the back of a recent book of twaddle by some Canadian has-been (judge of the obscurity): "...canonized by critics and studied by students worldwide .... widely available as a bestseller ... ". If nothing else, wouldn't somebody trying to purvey fine writing pause over that "studied by students"?
What seems to have happened is that literature has been taught, over the last 50 years, as if a work of art resembled a walnut. The reader has to crack it open, pick out the bits of meaning, and put them in his head. The rest is discarded. This has had the undesirable effect of promoting meaningful books with important messages.
I think it works the other way around: books rely on the reader's already having something inside him (probably something he got from reading books).
— posted by P | at 2:44 PM | |
Friday, October 15, 2004
Music , etc.
· Some interesting information about Fartein Valen (1887-1952). At the same site you can find "Aviation in British Music".
· The Indefatigable Mr Steyn is at it again, saying bad things about John Kerry:
But he won’t win. Because enough Americans understand that going back to where we were means a return to polite fictions and dangerous illusions. You can’t put that world back together.I guess that's a reference to the Dick Cheney remark of a while ago about going back to the "pre-9/11 mindset". If you think about it, the idea makes no sense. It seems to be designed to argue "stick with Bush; he's on the ball with this terrorism thing; he's brought his A-game; the other guy is a weakling".
I can't honestly see any reason to worry that US citizens are going to forget about the 9/11 attacks. Everybody knew that terrorists could mount some outrage somewhere in the US. There was the earlier World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing. The 9/11 attacks eclipsed these and shocked everyone around the world. But who was spouting "polite fictions" back then? And what is the nature of these "polite fictions"? Is that some kind of coded message or something?
Here are VP Cheney's remarks:
It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we are not really at war.Lots of lefties have criticized this as fear-mongering, as if Mr Cheney meant to say: vote for Kerry and we'll be attacked. That's not what he meant, though, but what he meant is completely stupid. If we get attacked again, his words imply, we'll go soft on terrorism and consider it a mere crime rather than an act of war. I think that's a justifiable interpretation of what he said. And it makes no sense: another 9/11 will make us forget about the first one. How stupid is that?
So poor Mr Steyn is reduced to the Jonah Goldberg variations. He ought to write more about musical theatre and that. Something he knows about.
— posted by P | at 3:54 PM | |
- Go to other departments on unknown business
- Go to bathroom
- Have 40-minute conversations right behind my desk
- Leave desk; return; re-depart
- Make a point of quizzing everyone you meet about some work-related arcana
- Discuss, at great length, problems which are only problems for those who have nothing to do but think about the work that other people ought to be doing.
- Meeting, meetings, meetings!
Ve Heff Vays of ...
· Maybe I fell asleep in the early 21st century and now here it is the mid 1400s or so. According to Obsidian Wings, torture might be okay... What I don't see, though, in the comments of various postings on this, is the point that if torture is wicked, then surely getting someone else to do it is even worse. Yet the zanies seem to have reasoned in just the opposite way: we can do this terrible thing and avoid the responsability. I say if you want to torture people, do it yourself.
Djangology
· Django Reinhardt was once asked what his favourite piece of music was. He mentioned Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, Bach's Toccata and fugue, but "... maybe Debussy comes closer to my musical ideal, for in him I find the sensibility and intelligence that I look for in any kind of music." From Jazz guitars: an anthology, edited by James Sallis. New York: Quill, 1984, p. 128.
Seven Habits of Highly-Paid People Who Do not Appear to Be Doing Anything
Speaking of Beef Extract Plants
· (They mean a factory, not, disappointing to relate, a meaty botanical wonder.) Some memoirs of corned beef, from the comments at Chase me, Ladies. Oh—the other stuff is kind of interesting too. About Che Guevara's baldness.
Waiting for This to Happen
· An important story (via Orcinus, who also links to another source and still another) about civil rights and so on. The FBI wanted to know who checked out a book on Bin Laden from some library in the Whatcom County Library System in Washington. The library refused to tell them. The author of the story notes in conclusion:
The FBI still has the bin Laden book.One thing to note: libraries probably can't afford to keep transaction records longer than necessary. It's an awful lot of useless data. Once a book is safely returned, nobody needs to know where it has been. You might want to know how often a book has circulated but anything else is useless. Just a matter of economy. I believe the circulation modules of some new library systems work that way.
Librarians point out, it's overdue.
This also suggests that either there aren't any real leads on possible US-based terrorists or there aren't any US-based terrorists.
— posted by P | at 2:53 PM | |
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Dumb Mental Health Gag
· The other night I heard a man on TV use the combination "OCD" to mean "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" (on some crime show where they use a lot of Q-tips) Well ... okay. How could an Obsessive Compulsion be Disorderly? And anyway, in most professions—butcher, baker, banker, grocer—you do need to be somewhat compulsive. Supposing you're a brain surgeon. Wouldn't some measure of obsessive compulsion be a good thing?
— posted by P | at 3:34 PM | |
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
· Some interesting reminiscences of Aleksei Batashev, president of the Moscow Jazz Club during Benny Goodman's Soviet tour in 1962.
A bit more, in Russian, at Dzhazz Rossii.
· I've been looking for information about the underground movie theatre discovered underneath Paris a while ago. In ArtsJournal (scroll down a bit):
Urban Guerilla Artists Claim Ownership Of Underground Paris Cinema A clandestine group of "urban explorers" calling themselves La Mexicaine de la Perforation and which claims its mission is to "reclaim and transform disused city spaces for the creation of zones of expression for free and independent art" has claimed ownership of a cinema located in a cave under Paris. The place was discovered by puzzled police last week. "They (the police) freaked out completely. They called in the bomb squad, the sniffer dogs, army security, the anti-terrorist squad, the serious crimes unit. They said it was skinheads or subversives. They got it on to national TV news. They hadn't a clue."This was reported in the Guardian but all their links seem to have lost their integrity. Here's a link from "Filmrot.com". What does the name mean? I assume it's a pun on Machine de perforation, a machine for drilling through rock.
Cool it, Daddy-O
· I haven't seen it yet, but The Rebel Set (1959), directed by Gene Fowler Jr., looks promising.
Edward Platt (the Chief in Get Smart) organizes some beatniks to steal a lot of money. Then he doublecrosses them! In the 1950's and 60's Platt was in scores of films and appeared in almost every TV show of the period. He played juvenile offender officer "Ray Fremick" in Rebel without a Cause and many other roles.
— posted by P | at 3:43 PM | |
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Presidential Poetry
· I think people don't appreciate the poetry of President Bush quite enough. That's probably because as long as he's in office everyone looks only to his performance qua president and disregards any other, irrelevant, thing.
Here then is a particularly fine piece from his recent work:
Tribal Sovereignty
Tribal sovereignty means that
it's sovereign
You're a
You're a
(you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign)
Entity
(Washington DC, 2004)
— posted by P | at 2:09 PM | |
Big Bad Jazz
· Actually, the title of Albert McCarthy's jumbo book about jazz is Big Band Jazz (London: Peerage Books, 1983), and I misread it as above. I think I'm right in saying my version is better, if less specific.
If you'll now turn to page 16 of Ole Brask's Jazz people (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1976) you will find James Jones wanted to write a book about Django Reinhardt and spent a good few years in Paris doing research. His concluding impression after all this was that nobody really knew Reinhardt, or could explain the man, and therefore he had to abandon the project; but he does relate an interesting anecdote: Duke Ellington had Reinhardt over for a US tour. There was to be a concert at Carnegie Hall but Django didn't show. He was found wandering around Sixth Avenue inspecting secondhand stores.
— posted by P | at 12:07 PM | |
Let's Monitor the Internet
· As usual, terrorists might be using the internet bla bla bla:
"While many netizens are leery of any restrictions on the freedom that flourishes on the internet and have a libertarian approach regarding any threats to this freedom, it is incumbent on us to accept some responsible oversight."Etc. Terrorists use the internet, therefore, etc. Notice the language: "libertarian approach regarding any threats to this freedom", which being interpreted means: not wanting to be spied on. More?
Furthermore the Senate should ratify the Council of Europe's Convention on Cyber Crime which contains methods that would prevent terrorists from hijacking the internet.Yes, they might seize it at gunpoint and drive off. This was at American Craphead, sorry, "Thinker".
— posted by P | at 10:38 AM | |
From the Desk of Jane Galt
· Attention!
The verdict: gosh, I'm too tired to guess. But expectations were so low for Bush, that I almost think not drooling on himself was a win.Hurray! Gosh! I guess we can score this as a win for the Bushmeister! Gawrsh. (This from someone who was instructing us on the iniquity of Canadian softwood lumber, i.e.., pine and spruce that almost every building has, and explaining that it was just bad.)
— posted by P | at 7:28 AM | |
Friday, October 08, 2004
The Trick Is to Not Mind That It Hurts
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· A few days ago I somehow blew a rib out of place by excessive coughing and sneezing. I don't think it's very serious. Nothing seems to be broken. It's a bit like a twisted ankle, except it's in my ribcage and causes extraordinary discomfort every time I move.
I can still do all the normal things, but I can't cough, sneeze, sit up, sit down, lie down, get up, reach down, or laugh without wincing in pain. I can manage a restrained laugh, but I hate to think of the calamity if I were to sneeze.
However, things have improved over the last few days. So much so that I 've decided to institute a series of important and totally convincing bar graphs showing my good progress and recovery.
Since I was sidelined by this thing, I decided to make the best use of my time: watch the elevator in my building to see if the old elevator paradox holds true. As everyone knows, elevators don't act as one would expect. They keep ascending and descending in a somewhat stochastic process, whereas you'd think that everyone leaves and enters the building at the ground floor, rather that flying in and out of the windows above. My conclusion: There's something funny going on in my building, because people are always using the elevator just when I want to.
— posted by P | at 1:50 PM | |
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Fantasia para un Gentilhombre
· I used to know a repulsive kid at high school who, if he thought somebody looked Oriental, would ask if he knew any martial arts. No matter what the answer was, he would go on talking about kung fu, jiu-jitsu, etc. For some people the Far East means nothing but martial arts. For others it's just food, or exotic young women. The same thing with people who tell you they like music: sometimes they really mean that they spend all their time stoned and listening to records.
Kill Bill vol. 2 reminds me of that. No story to speak of—oh, sorry, the vengeance thing, an archetypical thingamabob. I think the trick is to make it interesting. Otherwise all you've got is a kid's story with lots of gore and snarling people. It's a billion dollar comic book. The same old gags: somebody kills somebody and then says, "I'm sorry, how rude of me", etc. Then Uma Thurman, who, I gather, can't read aloud very well. Then a lot of speeches which aren't as good as the ones in Pulp Fiction.
It was a good idea having the Kung Fu guy's evil twin in it.
— posted by P | at 5:15 PM | |
I Suffer from Voice Immodulation. As Do Hundreds of Others
· Bob Harris in This Modern World, comments on a serious matter, the numbness in the media over news of civilian deaths in Iraq. He has a lot to say about this, none of it very cheerful:
The military isn't pressed and can't be bothered for a detailed explanation about the incident, other than to blame the victims themselves. "Great care should be taken by all to avoid and keep a safe distance from any active military operation as unpredictable events can occur," the U.S. spokesman says."Unpredictable events," they say. Like an earthquake or a lightning strike. Like an unprovoked attack from an Apache helicopter, firing on unarmed civilians, on tape, recorded for all the world to see.
Nobody's responsible. These are "unpredictable events."
In passing he notes something that I've always thought terrifically bizarre: Wolf Blitzer's aprosodia. You can't tell if he's asking a question or if the end of the story is near. "BLA BLA BLA! AND I'M WOLF BLITZER!
This is the same condition from which Will Farrel suffers when he's playing "Jacob Silj". But Blitzer gives the impression that he doesn't know what he's talking about and, moreover, doesn't know that he doesn't know, or thinks that only an idler would waste time trying to understand something. At first I thought it odd that such a person would get to be a well-known journalist. But maybe that's the very reason why he's done well: the goal now might be just to get on the air, shout a lot, then on to the next thing. Quick! Before the other channels start shouting about it.
I imagine at the end of the day he just drops into a fitful doze, wondering what all the shouting was about.
— posted by P | at 2:43 PM | |
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
The Great Debate
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· I did manage to watch 30 seconds of the Cheney-Edwards match, but then I decided to watch a few episodes of Spongebob Squarepants instead. Afterwards it struck me how similar Edwards is to Spongebob and, in turn, how much Cheney resembles Squidward, but as if they were both on medication. Edwards, I would say, some mild thing like valium, or perhaps a muscle relaxant; Cheney I'm not sure about. Clomipramine, benzodiazepine, chlorpromazine, one of those.
— posted by P | at 7:51 PM | |
Truth, Truth ...
· Apparently there is a group to counter the Swift Boat Cranks: Truth & Trust. I hadn't heard of them until I looked in at Letter from Gotham. It seems to clear the air a bit. (Frankly I think the site itself would be better if the design were more straightforward. When it comes up there's a sort of fade-in effect as all the movies and cinemaoids kick in. That's just me, of course. I get alarmed when something I'm reading starts squirming around and threatening to download all manner of special features and trailers. But there is lots of stuff there.)
— posted by P | at 7:23 PM | |
Islamic Beers
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· People have probably been wondering what the chief Islamic beer is; they may have missed this one.It was founded at Murree by the British in 1861, but the company can't sell its product to most of the population.Therefore they have been seeking an export market, particularly the UK. Write to your local dealer. Or better yet, next time you're in a restaurant, make sure the following exchange occurs:
"Anything to drink with that?"
"Oh, let me have a Murree, please."
"What? Murray?"
"No, Murree Beer; it's from Rawalpindi. You know."
"I'm afraid we don't have that."
"No? Oh. That's kind of odd, don't you think?"
— posted by P | at 3:49 PM | |
65 Pfennigs
· My uncle once told me that there was a shop in their neighbourhood in Berlin where bread cost 65 Pfennigs, and so the family referred to it as "65 Pfennigs". Nobody else would know that, though. His point was that a small, obscure, thing can mean something specific to somebody. I think this could be an intelligence-gathering question. It's not enough to know the language because there are hefty bags of other things you need to know to understand a thing, and in this sense some intel types seem to underestimate the value of that. I've done some interpretation work, and I often felt like saying, "He says ... , but what he means is ...", etc. People just frown impatiently at that, as if to say, "Oh, shut up." So I don't know.
— posted by P | at 2:56 PM | |
- Babik Reinhardt
- Coco Reinhardt
- Django Reinhardt
- Jospeh Reinhardt
- Lulu Reinhardt
- Mandino Reinhardt
- Mike Reinhardt
- Noé Reinhardt
- Nono Reinhardt
- Samon Reinhardt
- Sascha Reinhardt
- Schnuckenack Reinhardt
- Sony Reinhardt
- Vino Reinhardt
- Zipflo Reinhardt
A Partial List of Musical Reinhardts
— posted by P | at 2:17 PM | |
