Săbărelu

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Sit my friends and listen
Put your glasses down
Sit my friends and listen
To the voices of the drowned
—The Pogues, "The Wake of the Medusa"



Săbărelu

I call it a soft, green garland, The Arges, big as it is, Hasn’t the charm of the Săbărel. The tiny Săbărel, hey … Love thrives on its abundance. Oh, Didina, Didina, oh. The Săbărel, with its sweetness, Flows all winter and doesn’t freeze. Oh, Didina, Didina, oh. Green leaf, marjoram, hey; I cam up from the valley onto the hill, And I look out on the Sabar, hey. I saw the Sabar girls bleaching. Bleaching cloth, hey, oh, Didina, Didina, oh. You can see their feet, hey. Their feet as white as swans, hey. Oh, Didina, Didina, oh. The Săbărel, with its sweetness, Flows all winter and doesn’t freeze. Oh, Didina, Didina, hey.

But around Epiphany It flows as cold as a floe of ice, You draw it up onto the green bank And drink sweet water, oh, so sweet. Oh, Didina, Didina, oh. But around Epiphany It flows as cold as a floe of ice. You draw it up onto the green bank And drink sweet water, oh, so sweet. Nana, nana, ah, my darling. May God bring the rain pouring down So that the Neajlov will rise, May God bring the rain pouring down. So that Neajlov will rise And sweep the bridge out of the valley. And sweep the bridge out of the valley. Nana, nana, ah, my darling. Leaving only poles, Leaving only sundered poles, And drown all the Neajlov men.

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Kronos

Various interpretations of the paintings have been offered: the conflict between youth and old age, time as the devourer of all things, and also, more specifically, in Goya’s version, an allegory of the situation in Spain.

What do you think?


Very eloquinty put. Picasso, sir? Why, it is believed that he may have painted some 58 recreations of Las Meninas.

What I was wondering is what the gentleman from Wales makes of it? Cronos, sir.


I like the way the gentleman thinks. Still, look at the expression on the titan’s face. Many of the figures of the Black Paintings share the same expressive facial characteristics: staring eyes, revealing the whites at the top and the pupils below (indication of terror or extreme intensity---like the eye-rolling of a wild horse [link]), as well as open or eating mouths.

Rose-Marie and Reiner Hagen have it that "open mouths were---and are still---considered taboo, both in society and, for a long time, in art...probably because the lips and mouth mark the start of the digestive tract---a part of the human body that remains anonymous...a part that we share with animals. To look down the throat is to remember that our intellectual existence, which we consider our real one, is dependent upon organs and instinctual drives that we cannot control and at whose mercy we lie."

I have heard it said that the painting may have originally portrayed the titan with a partially erect penis. But, if ever present, that alleged missing "part," was lost due to the deterioration of the mural over time or during the transfer to canvas; in the picture today the area around the titan’s groin is indistinct. They say it may have been overpainted deliberately before the picture was put on public display.

Hm … And what have we here? Would that be a Rubens or a Goya?



What do you think, sir? Much ado about nothing, if you ask me. I mean, it’s only sex, isn’t it? But, it might of course depend on what the definition of is is.


Indeed... Human nature, sir.

Look at the engravings.

Look at the portraits.

Goya was by no mean a caricaturist. A caricaturist is someone who laughs at other people’s expense, but Goya gibes as much at himself as he does at others. Nobody is spared: the coquettes and their suitors (the duchess of Alba and Goya), the monks and their flocks, the aristocrats and their servants. His paintings may be hard and brutal but there is there, at the same time, an immense and overflowing sorrow for mankind, a sorrow that embraces victims and torturers alike, in its compassion, and which extends beyond just simply the human condition. Let's just call it the condition---for this is The Wulfshead and it wouldn't do to sound too human-centric in our understanding.



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So what team does this mean I'm on?

According to this, the Twilight character I'm most like is Bella. Apparently, I'm an emotional and passionate person who isn't afraid to take risks.
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The Doctor is in

Be afraid, be very afraid.

The poster below was contributed by one contender in the poster contest organized on Ah, Shoot, via Michelle Malkin, encouraging readers to see what kind of posters they can come up with in order to highlight the perils of "President Obama’s takeover" of the healthcare industry.

WARNING: This one is not for the faint of heart:


The participant feels that through such efforts perhaps–just perhaps–enough people will begin to understand the concerns that are being raised.

Just imagine the horror of it all:


Good folks, lock up your sons and daughters...


I wonder if this is how "Obama is planning to kill grandpa"...



Obama, Obama, he's very bad indeed.


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Like Hell I'm Going To Let Some Black President Help Me Pay For Dialysis

I take pride in who I am. Always have, always will. I've worked hard my whole life and have never taken anyone's charity, and I'm not about to start now, no matter what. I'm telling you, there's no way I'm going to sit back and let some black president of the United States try to devise a structure to help me pay for the dialysis treatment I so desperately need to survive.

Not over my dead body.

Just who does this Afro-American occupant of the highest office in the land think he is, anyway? Look, I've got nothing against black people, but some of them act like the whole world owes them something. For example, important government subsidies on my dialysis.

You know, I don't recall asking for some black commander in chief to embrace protections that would prohibit insurance companies from dropping my coverage on a whim and operating as if my continued existence on earth were nothing more than a strategic liability. Plus, if I go along with this progressive health-benefits scheme, he'll probably hold it over my head every time I receive vital care with the aid of the government to which I already pay taxes.

Sorry. I've got too much self-respect for that.

Obama needs to know that there's still one American willing to watch his body drown in its own deadly internal toxins rather than have long-overdue reform crammed down his throat.

Fact is, nobody wants some too-big-for-his-britches black president butting in to suggest that everyone, including me, needs to be treated with dignity. Yet this Obama thinks he can just waltz in and and tinker with a health care system that destroys people like myself every single day.

Can you imagine what'd it be like if he weren't just half black?

Seriously, when Obama's done drumming up support for legislation that might allow me to see my daughter graduate from college and prevent me from dying before my 50th birthday, what's next on the agenda? Will he try to keep my life's savings from evaporating in a stock market that operates free of serious governmental oversight? Is there any aspect of capitalism run amok that this guy won't tamper with? Really, Obama, thanks but no thanks. The last person I need help from is some black leader of the federal government in a position to perhaps improve my quality of life.

The worst part is that I'll have to put up with this guy being a black president for at least three more years. I guess all I can do is try to hold out for the 2012 election. Maybe then we'll get a white president back in office. Maybe he'll have the common decency to let me suffer in peace.

Cross posted at MadMikesAmerica.
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Temporal Power

The Dadis show is unscripted, eerily brilliant and frightening in its madness, with derision, words flung around the room, in cataclysmic effect, hailing youth, deriding demagoguery, putting on a show trial of televised populism to great effect.
The sad reality is he actually speaks a lot of truths in what he says, but his cloak sends shivers, and madmen, whatever their shade, usually have a poor record when they assume too much power.
---Nico Colombant, The Dadis Show

The scene is in French and it takes place somewhere in Africa, yet there is something fundamentally Shakespearian in its universality.

I am talking about this youtube video in which Guinea's current head of state, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara publicly admonishes Anatoly Patchenko, Rusal’s representative in Guinea.



Everything Dadis says is true:

Patchenko is an international swindler.

And something is rotten in the state of Guinea: corruption is endemic.

But Dadis looks and sounds like a madman.

Dadis had his moment, but when all is said and done, and for all the posturing of the protagonists, the righteous anger of one, and the feint contrite humility of the other, there is little doubt who is the mouse and who is the cat in that particular game, or where the real temporal power actually resides. Hint: don’t look at the "monarchs" (the current head of state or his corrupt predecessors), or at the nation state. Don’t look at the people either: Guinea holds a third of the world's bauxite reserves but despite having bauxite resources worth about $500 billion even at current depressed market prices, Guinea has one of the world's lowest gross domestic products per capita, ranking it 210th in the world. The country also has large deposits of iron ore, gold and diamonds. But its infrastructure is poor, tending to focus on the area around mines and projects, and most of the population lives in poverty.

This is what I have always liked about Africa, everything is so clear and so simple, no pretense at democracy. Everything is condensed, drawn in broad outlines. All that remains is one situation acting as a parable of universal human fate. Dadis’s outburst is a protest against the world injustice. He is wild and drunk with indignation, almost childish in his transports. But in the end, his outburst cannot solve or alter anything. One thing is clear: he is in way over his head. His supporters expect him to be a game changer, but he is trapped. He is trapped into finding himself in a compulsory situation, a situation of local and international politics he doesn’t want but which is now thrust upon him.

There is there a perfect study of politics opposed to morality, and of the divergence between theory and practice.

Already events have been driving him into a blind alley.

Look at the audience and the high dignitaries in the crowd in this other video. They sit in silence; they avoid looking in each other’s eyes; they try to penetrate into the minds of others. Above all, they want to know what he, The Prince, is thinking.

Like him, they are actors in a drama they do not always wholly understand, in which they have become involved.
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Silver Bells

Joseph Cornell, c. 1948, Untitled (Medici Princess)

Construction, 17 5/8 x 11 1/8 x 4 3/8 in

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!


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Sorry. I guess all this html represents the drawing? The format? Anyway, this illustration belongs with the comment below. I can't get a hang of this Google thing...... Enjoy your evening.....
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Goya was neglected for quite a few decades after he died. And when he painted these "black paintings" toward the end of his life he seemed to be painting only for himself. No longer fashionable, he decorated his walls, within his own house, with these monsters. And they now hang in their own room in the basement of the Prado, in Madrid. Along with more than a hundred of his other paintings, tapestries, drawings, and so-called cartoons. One could spend a day with this collection alone.

What a bleak view of humanity! But explosive and thoroughly compelling, aesthetically unrivaled by any artist since or before. Completely original, like the paintings of all the great Spaniards. Including the Greek.

Yes, go down to the basement of the Prado, enter the room where the Black Paintings are on display. They'll cheer you up, actually. When you go back out onto the street you should be fortified. For you have spent the past half hour or hour or two with reality. Nothing you will see can compare with the truth of these dismal paintings. Imagine living in a house surrounded by these pictures? Old, forgotten, wanted by the police, Goya painted them for himself. When he came in out of the rain, tired, in the late afternoon he had to look at them. When he started the day he looked at them. Did he study them then as works of art, wondering how he could have done them better? What went through the mind of this unique genius?

The academic association with Rubens strikes me as doubtful. Goya made a career of documenting humanity’s brutalities. He may have launched from Rubens’ approach but did something entirely for himself. Or God. Look at the engravings. As for the portraits, look at them too. He made his imbecile kings appear like imbeciles, same as Velazquez. How would Picasso have done it?

And speaking of imbecile kings..... here’s a small cartoon by Quintanilla. Which is kind of funny.
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Human Nature

I wouldn't know, sir.

In Korzybski's framework time binding is the third level in a progression of bindings. Energy binding is what all life forms do in the process of converting ambient energy for use in their life processes. Space binding is performed by animals and to a much lesser degree by some plants in their various activities. Finally, through language and culture, sapient beings such as humans perform time binding by the transmission of knowledge and abstractions through time which are accreted in cultures.

Which reminds me, sir: 2010 is upon us, and it dawned on me that no Calendar yet has been chosen by the management for the New Year.

My feelings in this has always been that such matters should be left to the patrons.

Reconciling everyone's aesthetic at The Wulfshead, which can go from the gentleman's own unique and exquisite tastes, to other patrons' many inclinations, such as, say, Mr. Trovato's very own exquisite sense of aesthetic... well, quite frankly, I am sure the gentleman can see why such an attempt at reconciliation is beyond the capacity of any staff---including me, sir. Nor do I feel that it should be attempted; to each his or her own, sir, that's what I always say. However, a patron with whom I was having a very similar conversation yesterday, brought to my attention that Girls and Corpses have quite an unusual 2010 calendar that might just do the trick this year.

What do you think, sir?

There is, to a certain degree, a bit of a Goyesque sensibility to the calendar that I am sure has not escaped the gentleman's notice.

Eros and Thanatos, sir.

Ariel and Caliban...

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The Real Scrap

Hmm...What do you think?
More free quizzes on pollsb.com
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How To Mousse A Moose

Sarah Palin's family on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", AP Photo/Harpo Productions, Inc., George Burns

Don't turn up your trousers before you get to the brook.

---Advice for today at The Old Farmer's Almanac

I like to think I support feminists, despite the challenges of consistency I sometimes assert. However, I remain vague on aspects of hair styling and artistic cookery. To mousse something has to do with frothing up the hair I believe, and a mousse is a sort of frothed food. A moose mousse would involve intricate grinding and sieving of the animal before the actual dessert could be served. And I don't know whether chocolate goes well with moose. Chocolate gravy on roast beef might not be bad.

But back to topic: a moussed moose might make a cute, fluffy animal toy for a child, complete with soft antler rack---if the things on a male moose are called antlers and not some special term. You see, I don't really know what I'm talking about here, which is why I want to turn the job over to a woman who, before Sarah's book, might have been considered a real rogue of a female. Can there be any comparison between Maureen Dowd and Sarah Palin? Go to this morning's link...and let the moussing begin~~~

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/opinion/18dowd.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
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Making Wednesday just a wee bit brighter

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Making Monday just a wee bit brighter

Cross posted at MadMikesAmerica...

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MAKING SUNDAY JUST A WEE BIT BRIGHTER

I was sitting on my porch this morning drinking my first and only cup of coffee, pondering life and its attendant tragedies, when I was momentarily distracted by Taser, my German shepherd puppy. As I watched it occurred to me that there are things that can make a day seem brighter like.......

Watching your puppy chase a butterfly.

Watching the big dogs chase your puppy that is chasing a butterfly.

Watching your puppy distracted by a flying crow.

Watching the big dogs distracted by your puppy distracted by a flying crow.

It's the little things that count......

Cross posted at MadMikesAmerica....

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Nancy....I hope little Taser can make her day just a wee bit brighter....
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Comme un boomerang

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Where Angels fear to tread

No two creations are the same: garnishes and ingredients come and go over the years, and there may be ten different names for the same cocktail.



This one is known as a Genesis 6:

2 oz Bacardi Limon rum
1 oz Grand Marnier orange liqueur
1 oz Jose Cuervo Especial gold tequila
1 dash cranberry juice
4 oz sweet and sour mix

Mixing Directions:

Over ice in collins glass pour 2 parts lemon rum with one part tequila, dash Grand Marnier, fill with sour mix, then add just a bit of cranberry for blush, cover with shaker, and give it enough shake to froth. Strain into a cocktail glass.

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That's refreshing!

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CNN Grand Inquisitor questioned Representative Errant Joseph Cao (R-La):

	I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
	NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! ...Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the GOP, and nice red uniforms - Oh damn!

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We regret

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Right thinking people

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Reading makes a country great. . .

Cast aside all logic and embrace insanity!




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Be afraid... be very afraid

Meet the new GOP... Same as the old GOP?



The NRCC is governed by its chairman, U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (left), and an executive committee composed of Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives.





The day-to-day operations of the NRCC are overseen by Executive Director Guy Harrison, who manages a staff of professionals with expertise in campaign strategy development, planning and management, research, communications, fundraising, administration, and legal compliance.




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