people are dumb

On my walk to the Accident & Emergency today i walked past two couples with babies. The first in a stroller, pushing along, cigarette in one hand on the handle of the stroller wind blowing smoke directly in its face. Ok, well done parenting, you clearly care about the health and welfare of your child, at least let your wife push the stroller while you drag on, sure smoking is hard to quit but talk abut selfish parenting choices my god.

It got better, next couple baby in one arm, cigarette in the other and baby coughing its lungs out while mom drags away oblivious to the clear cause of her child's distress. again husband 2 inches to your right, hand it off and smoke if you must but for fuck sake her kid was less than 2yrs, maybe instead of a no smoking within X number of feet from a door there should be no smoking within X feet of an infant. fuck sake.

I was told there will be pet owner tests potentially due to dog attacks where kids were killed...inside their own private residences by their own pets. One wonders where the fuck their parents were in this incident, and again, after witnessing the above it seem that the gov't should put more effort and money into lessen the impact of parents as potentially dangerous animals around children.

Marlowe's Seduction

So, reading Hero and Leander which has had some classic lines, I shall share a few, culminating in potentially one of more egregious arguments for "please have sex with me" i've heard in this kind of literature. though amusing.

Context:

Hero: the most beautiful woman in the world. So much so her blue hem is stained with the blood of wretched lovers slain either by competitors, or their own hands, and occasionally just the knowledge that she is so beautiful and they can't have her...they just die. Though, she does have a "gentle heart" one is told.....

Leander: the most beautiful man in the world, so much so his friends wonder that he too is not enamored of himself since men and women both see his beauty and think he's a sexy beast.

They randomly meet at a celebration of lovers and the worship of Venus where all the lovers come together to be blessed, Hero shows up and it becomes a tragic blood bath of male suitors. Woo romance. then Leander sees her and doesn't immediately die upon sight so woos her.

One statement before his "romantic" monologue is this : "It lies not in our power to love or hate, for will in us is overruled by fate"

Now to the dramatic lovers monologue:

"One is no numbers, maids are nothing then, without the sweet society of men."

well I'm glad I've learned where to find my worth from.

But this, amuses me more.

"This idoll which you terme Virginitie,
Is neither essence subiect to the eie,
No, nor to any one exterior sence,
Nor hath it any place of residence,
Nor is't of earth or mold selestiall,
Or capable of any forme at all.
Of that which hath no being, doe not boast,
Things that are not at all, are neuer lost."

"Please have sex with me, though we use your virginity as a bargaining chip in marriage and its essentially part of your value as a person in our society stop worrying about it. Virginity is a lie its a figment of your imagination, it isn't on earth nor is it celestial in fact it doesn't exist at all, and you can't lose things that aren't real. So...Hero, whatcha doin' tonight?"

Go Marlowe.

Though he continues to argue that men are fools for valuing virginity so highly, these are the lines immediately following the above "Things that are not at all, are never lost:

"Men foolishly doe call it vertuous;
What vertue is it, that is borne vvith vs?
Much lesse can honour bee ascrib'd thereto,
Honour is purchac'd by the deedes vvee do."

I'll allow that one. (btw, dont mind the "double u" and since v/u are interchangeable, the double vv is a w fyi, sorry for those who loathe early printing/medieval/early modern spelling. what can you do? i suppose i could edit it for you but...i'm educating you.... ;))

Minor Tirade against a Lit Theorist

Ronald Barthes wrote an essay entitled the "death of the author" and I'm mildly peeved by his short sighted focus and i realize that it is a dangerous part of lit theory, one takes ones argument by the balls and argues for it with the blind pretensions of a philosopher on a linguistic ego trip but the closed mindedness of said author irritates.

He argues that the Author has no control over his writing, he is merely "pulling from his dictionary" at random and his actions are in fact the murdering of self via writing because you can't exist in the text any longer it is a moment in time and, apparently, the moment stops belonging to the author once he is finished.

He claims that to remove the Author is to take meaning and interpretation out of the text and doing so is "an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostasis--reason, science, law." does that feel like a leap to anyone else? to refuse to allow there to be meaning is to refuse God? please, i know we authors tend to have egos but I don't think anyone attributes a piece of literature to divinity short of religious doctrines like the Bible, Talmud, Koran etc... and refusing to give meaning to the bible doesn't exactly refuse the notion of God it can simply mean you don't feel something as complex as God can be in a book, etc, it doesn't require atheism... but regardless it hardly refutes God to deny a novel complex meaning.

This next quote i can agree with sort of, "The reader is the space on which all quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination"

I'll give him that the reader plays a vital role and that without the reader the Author's acts are moot. however he goes further to say "we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author"

So, I get the "metaphor" the author relinquishes control and the reader takes it up etc, but to assume that the author no longer exists within a text is foolish, he is more than a dictionary. Sure, if I handed webster to you i'll deny the required role of the author but one can't take away the solid and glaring problem with this particular argument. The author wrote something specific. its not like he handed you a jumble of words in a jar and said "play with those sonny, see what you think" he gave you a specific text with specific word order and purpose and though the reader is free to interpret as he sees fit he is still limited by the text before him. If you give him a text of Romeo and Juliet yes he has a lot to go on but he's probably not going to be able to see the history of the Congo or the Declaration of Independence therein, he is limited. It is not something wholly created by the reader, it is something given to the reader that exists in two truths, two consciousness', the combination of two minds in one moment, the writer's words in the reader's mind. you cannot have one without the other. To remove the author from the text is to have air, it is a foolish enterprise and I am annoyed by the short-sighted argument herein.

Minor Tirade Complete...

Wanderlust

Two things I wanted to share that are fitting in that I was moved by them today and they are of a similar vein.

Machiavelli first though it came second. As an illustration of his gentleness and kindness the biographer de Grazia gives this:

"The last letter to his son Guido suggests personal gentleness, and this not even to men but to a little mule gone crazy. It should not be tied up the way people tie up the crazy, writes Niccoló the father. "I want you to let it loose...take off the bridle and halter and let it go where it wants to in order to feed itself and get rid of its craziness. The country is wide, the animal is small, it cannot do any harm."

Though I am not crazy, the idea of healing through freedom is something I like quite a lot. It is satisfying to think that all one really needs to be "sane" is to be free of "bridle and halter" and to be able to go where one wants, for "the country is wide."

The other is less gentle, hehe, but of the spirit of wanderlust.

Wonderlust King- Gogol Bordello (the english is not perfect, but they are not english, but the idea is...well I like it...)

Back in the day yo as we learned
A man was not considered to be
Considered to be fully grown
Has he not gona beyond the hills
Has he not crossed the 7 seas
Yeah, 7 seas at least!

Now all them jokers kept around
Just like the scarecrows in hometown
Yeah, scarecrows in hometown
From screen to screen they're travelin'
But I'm a wonderlust king

I stay on the run
Let me out
Let me be gone
In the world's beat up road sign
I saw new history of time...
New history of time!!!

Through Siberian woods
Breaking up their neck

Chinese moving in building discoteques

Homemade sex toys and whatnot
Yeah, and why not?
Well at least it's something different
From what they got in every other airport

Ja ne evrei, no koje-chto pohozge
sovrat ne dast ni Yura ni Seryozga!
Simple because I'm not a total gadjo
Da ja shut, ja tziratch, nu tak stozge?

I traveled the world
Looking for understanding
Of the times that we live in
Hunting and gathering first hand information
Challenging definitions of sin

I traveled the world
Looking for lovers
Of the ultimate beauty
But never settled in
I'm Wonderlust King!

And presidents
And billionaires
And generals
They'll never know
What I have owned!
What I have owned...
I'm a wonderlust king!

The generals, the presidents, the billionaires have no idea what a man who has travelled the world has owned. I like that too. And the quest for understanding and ultimate beauty isn't that what it's all about? Or at least what I am doing currently, sort of, and if I do take such silly steps as to see more of the world soon...it would be what I would be doing wouldn't it?

I am a little crazy mule, set free. I am a wanderlust queen.

Amusing take on love, in Medieval French Poetry

So, I'm reading some of chaucer's sources for my paper, One being Le Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne by Guillaume de Machaut.

There is a scene where a knight and a lady are talking the lady is sad and the knight asks why she says her lover is dead and describes her love and how they got on and the knight says oh no my pain is worse my lover left me for someone else, etc. but what is comical is the descriptions of the ideal relationship

Lady: "All my comfort was in him: he was all my delight, all my solace, my pleasure my treasure. he was to me a wall, a fortress, a resort. And he loved me and above all he served and feared me."

Knight: "I was struck by one among all the others, who just as the sun outshines the moon in brightness, so she surpassed the rest in worth, in honor, grace and beauty. And she so pleased me by being so humble and simple..."

Teehee, so, according to Machaut women want to be served and feared and men want simple and beautiful. How romantic.

Palin on Fox

Just heard of Palin's association with Fox News, can't say I'm surprised since dignity and actual, intelligent news haven't been a part of Fox in a very long time. But, I am offended by her sentiments about Fox:

--“I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News,’’ Palin said in a statement posted yesterday on the network’s website. “It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.’’--

Sure it is, sister, more proof that there is no filter for truth in the crap that comes out of her mouth. She appears to be a person willing to push for fame and say anything regardless of moral value. She also isn't even politically fucking experienced she quit in the middle of her damned first term as governor. She's clearly milking this for power and fame. "Government? No, i don't need to actually be active in that and have a position, all i have to do is spew bull shit onto the shit-show that is Fox news and write a trashy book about my "experience" and i'll not only be rich but i'll take over the world" and i'd be less fucking annoyed if she didn't have followers if people looked at her like the sleaze bag she is. But, no, she has a hoard of misinformed, dissatisfied people ready and willing to support whatever garbage comes out of her mouth. If she actually runs for president next go round...i can't even imagine what would happen if that cow had actual power of commands instead of just very loud voice, though perhaps it would work out that she'd quit halfway through that too.

I'm too tired to rant coherently at the moment but this just is one more strike against American news agencies, and the dedication to offering truth to people. Which, in actuality, probably has never actually been about delivering the "truth" of the world to people, i suppose no reporting of facts or history really is but, for fuck sake people used to actually try occasionally to have morality and good intentions. So much for that...

e e cummings

I know this is an extremely unusual poem, (though its author was against capitalization and punctuation so I suppose its fair that its unusual) but it's also one of my favorites. Not sure what made me look it up today but I love it so I did and figured I would share.

Anyone Lives in a Little How Town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.

Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed (but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
with by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

e e cummings

Easily one of my favorite poems, not sure why. I like the little romance between anyone and noone and the tragic hope in a bed of seeming randomness and small moments. I hope you enjoy it too.