International House of Penis Songs
Jul. 12th, 2009
06:42 pm - Yes, but can it be said with less?
Five years after my Division II chair tells me to cut the last lines of "Virginia Woolf Kills Herself on my Answering Machine" and I'm still an amateur of this most subtle art of reduction. Now when I think of the poem as it was, I wince.
As I edit for a special rooftop engagement in a week and a half, I keep asking the same question: how can I make these poems worth my audience's attention? As I cut all unnecessary words, and discover that some were missing, it's really striking that in some cases it's taken almost 2 years to recognize & separate the necessary from the chaff.
Look out, y'all. This thing is reaching the degree of tightness it demands. Meaning it's even less likely you'll see the odd poem up here; each is getting just dependent enough on its neighbors.
If you thought Freshwater Dredge was something, hold onto your fucking pants.
03:06 pm - QUERY: RE THE AUTHORITARIAN'S FAVORITE ORWELL QUOTE
"People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."Often this is given as "Good people..."
I have been unable to source this back to a specific piece of GO's prose. Have encountered the opinion that it is not an actual GO quotation.
Can anyone help? Thanks.
10:00 pm - Thursday 12 July 1666
[Continued from yesterday. P.G.] But was up again by five o'clock, and was forced to rise, having much business, and so up and dressed myself (enquiring, was told that Mrs. Tooker was gone hence to live at London) and away with Poundy to the Tower, and thence, having shifted myself, but being mighty drowsy for want of sleep, I by coach to St. James's, to Goring House, there to wait on my Lord Arlington to give him an account of my night's worke, but he was not up, being not long since married: so, after walking up and down the house below, -- being the house I was once at Hartlib's sister's wedding, and is a very fine house and finely furnished, -- and then thinking it too much for me to lose time to wait my Lord's rising, I away to St. James's, and there to Sir W. Coventry, and wrote a letter to my Lord Arlington giving him an account of what I have done, and so with Sir W. Coventry into London, to the office. And all the way I observed him mightily to make mirth of the Duke of Albemarle and his people about him, saying, that he was the happiest man in the world for doing of great things by sorry instruments. And so particularized in Sir W. Clerke, and Riggs, and Halsey, and others. And then again said that the only quality eminent in him was, that he did persevere; and indeed he is a very drudge, and stands by the King's business. And this he said, that one thing he was good at, that he never would receive an excuse if the thing was not done; listening to no reasoning for it, be it good or bad. But then I told him, what he confessed, that he would however give the man, that he employs, orders for removing of any obstruction that he thinks he shall meet with in the world, and instanced in several warrants that he issued for breaking open of houses and other outrages about the business of prizes, which people bore with either for affection or fear, which he believes would not have been borne with from the King, nor Duke, nor any man else in England, and I thinke he is in the right, but it is not from their love of him, but from something else I cannot presently say. Sir W. Coventry did further say concerning Warcupp, his kinsman, that had the simplicity to tell Sir W. Coventry, that the Duke did intend to go to sea and to leave him his agent on shore for all things that related to the sea. But, says Sir W. Coventry, I did believe but the Duke of Yorke would expect to be his agent on shore for all sea matters. And then he begun to say what a great man Warcupp was, and something else, and what was that but a great lyer; and told me a story, how at table he did, they speaking about antipathys, say, that a rose touching his skin any where, would make it rise and pimple; and, by and by, the dessert coming, with roses upon it, the Duchesse bid him try, and they did; but they rubbed and rubbed, but nothing would do in the world, by which his lie was found at then. He spoke contemptibly of Holmes and his mermidons, that come to take down the ships from hence, and have carried them without any necessaries, or any thing almost, that they will certainly be longer getting ready than if they had staid here. In fine, I do observe, he hath no esteem nor kindnesse for the Duke's matters, but, contrarily, do slight him and them; and I pray God the Kingdom do not pay too dear by this jarring; though this blockheaded Duke I did never expect better from. At the office all the morning, at noon home and thought to have slept, my head all day being full of business and yet sleepy and out of order, and so I lay down on my bed in my gowne to sleep, but I could not, therefore about three o'clock up and to dinner and thence to the office, where Mrs. Burroughs, my pretty widow, was and so I did her business and sent her away by agreement, and presently I by coach after and took her up in Fenchurch Streete and away through the City, hiding my face as much as I could, but she being mighty pretty and well enough clad, I was not afeard, but only lest somebody should see me and think me idle. I quite through with her, and so into the fields Uxbridge way, a mile or two beyond Tyburne, and then back and then to Paddington, and then back to Lyssen green, a place the coachman led me to (I never knew in my life) and there we eat and drank and so back to Charing Crosse, and there I set her down. All the way most excellent pretty company. I had her lips as much as I would, and a mighty pretty woman she is and very modest and yet kinde in all fair ways. All this time I passed with mighty pleasure, it being what I have for a long time wished for, and did pay this day 5s. forfeite for her company. She being gone, I to White Hall and there to Lord Arlington's, and met Mr. Williamson, and find there is no more need of my trouble about the Galliott, so with content departed, and went straight home, where at the office did the most at the office in that wearied and sleepy state I could, and so home to supper, and after supper falling to singing with Mercer did however sit up with her, she pleasing me with her singing of "Helpe, helpe," 'till past midnight and I not a whit drowsy, and so to bed.
07:36 pm - Day 2 of ALA, and reading things aloud.
This morning was Dim Sum with Jill Thompson for breakfast (Here is Jill. People always want to know where she got that bag, and she made it herself. I told her she should take orders for them for a ridiculous amount of money.) Then with Elyse Marshall, ace HarperChildren's publicist, to a local studio where I was interviewed for Barnes and Noble, then recorded some paragraphs from Kipling's The Jungle Book, Ray Bradbury's story "Homecoming" and James Thurber's The 13 Clocks. I loved doing them -- B&N will pick one sequence and have it animated and put up online.
Was fascinated by how different the voice of the narrator was in each case -- the voice of the book, and that reminded me that I had not yet answered this, and had meant to:
Neil ~ Thank you for many hours of entertainment, whether I'm reading your works, or you are! My daughter is finding that chapter books are a good thing, and wants me to read them to her. I'm glad to do so, but I'm looking for some suggestions from a masterful book reader (you) to a very coarse book reader (me). How do you keep the character voices straight in your head? I suppose it helps that you know the words particularly well since you wrote them, but any tips or suggestions? Any other pointers for engaging the listener? I know my daughter doesn't mind (she still wants me to read, after all!), but I'd like to be better for her and for me. Thanks and keep up the superb work, both here on the blog and in the offline printed universe! BRIAN
Let's see. Character voices are more or less easy: I sort of cast them in my head as I go. What's the person like? Who do they remind me of?
I'm appalling at doing accents, but not bad at doing people. And mostly you're not even doing impressions, just general brush strokes. How does a person sound? Well, you hold them in your head and generally sound like that.
When dealing with a larger than life story I'll sometimes go for a larger than life cast in my head: In (for example) The 13 Clocks, in my head, when I read it aloud, I tend to cast Marty Feldman as the Golux, and Peter Sellers (doing his Laurence Olivier in Richard the Third impression) as the evil Duke.
It's hard though, in a big book with a lot of characters, some of whom may nip off-stage for seven or eight chapters at a time. Do your best, and have a picture in your head. Borrow from your life. Steal voices shamelessly.
Most important, just do the voices (including the voice of the Book, which may not be your voice exactly, but should be close enough to it that it won't be a strain), and do not be shy. Even at your worst, you're doing better than you would if you didn't do the voices, and kids are a mostly uncritical audience, especially if you do it with confidence.
Read it as if you're telling a story. Read it as if you're interested and you care. And, the biggest and most important one, vary the tune.
I heard a young writer reading some of his own work in public a few weeks ago, and every sentence had exactly the same tune, the sime rising and falling cadences. They all ended on the same note. The beat that ran through the whole passage did not change from first to last. It was hypnotically dull.
Listen to people read who are good at it. BBC Radio 7 and BBC Radio 4 (here's the Radio 4 Readings website)are a great source of an ever-changing series of books and stories, fiction and non-fiction, all read aloud and read aloud well. Listen to the tune, where voices go up or down. Listen to what makes a reader speed up or slow down -- listen to what keeps you interested and where you lose interest. And do it as they do -- change the tune, change the pace, keep interested and it will keep interesting.
But mostly my advice is this: just do it. Enthusiasm and willingness to do it counts for most of it, and you learn by doing it and get better from doing it.
I've been reading in front of audiences now for almost 20 years. I've got significantly better in that time, mostly because I've done it so much. You learn as you go. You get better as you go. Practice makes if not perfect then at least pretty decent.
And that's all.
Except to wish Roz Kaveney happy birthday.
01:51 am
Redback and Home-Grove
A smell of condoms stains the nose,
thirst creases the tongue,
I shake; and
I leave long before daylight, no problem.
At the pressure of his hips I
was a mandible. I locked
around that sharp-boned boy.
He tried to stretch one narrow leg--
my jaw-body stopped it when it touched me.
Now he is the gristle and lengths
of tendon that appetites leave behind.
Disarticulate in the sheet-folds.
Everytime I walk through the house
the darkness and the heat
grow thick, tough like foliage,
the house a grove of doors.
Desire moves elsewhere fast,
no more than he was man to me
when I'd become an entrance, an opening.
Hes, theys, warm shapes that struggle a while before they don't.
They're hard to remember
once I have fumbled
past the doorknob and the cold
outside sets on my shoulders.
It's very light.
10:18 am - Deeper into Neukolln
When I first moved to the northern tip of Neukolln in 2006 there was a funky little record store (it also sold comics, jagged grungy silkscreens, books of pervy photos of wounded Japanese girls by Romaine Slocombe, and copies of FRUiTS magazine) on my street called Le Petit Mignon, run by a frenchman called Guillaume Siffert. 
In March 2007 Le Petit Mignon closed its Neukolln shop, moved up to the Torstrasse in Mitte, and merged with Staalplaat, a Dutch record shop and label which started as a cassette distribution operation in 1982. At the time, it looked like Le Petit Mignon was getting "upwardly mobile", moving from a marginal area to hipster central in Mitte. But in early 2009 rumours started to reach our ears that Le Prodigal Mignon was seeking to return to Neukolln, bringing Staalplaat with it. Guillaume spent a couple of months scouting locations, and finally settled on Flughafenstrasse, a busy commercial, working class street that slopes down from Tempelhof Airport to the Neukolln town hall. 
The new Neukolln Staalplaat -- called Staalplaat Working Space -- opened in late April. I made my first visit last night, to see a Midori Hirano show in their concert space at the back. I actually missed Midori's set because of a fireworks display at Tempelhof, catching instead the sensuously placid guitar sounds of Rac-ka, a duo from Osaka.
It felt good being in there, even if there was something a bit cautious about the way Guillaume had to unlock the door to let us in. On the Staalplaat blog page Rinus details not just the new venue's problems with noise-obsessed neighbours, but their view that "the neighbourhood is turning into a red-light district, with illegal prostitution, women-, drugs-, and arms trafficking, bribery, violence and noise disturbances."
I personally felt a big hippy-alternative vibe of calm. Staalplaat's concert room has sofas. It's very quiet in there (and not just because of the neighbour with the decibel meter) and the only lighting is a couple of candles and some ghostly ambient seep from the backyard. When experimental music is playing, you're instantly in a Wire magazine article, and when the show is over and the audience mills out into the shop area you feel something of the vibe of the old Rough Trade shop in Covent Garden, the one under Slam City Skates.
The move back into Neukolln -- deeper into Neukolln, in the developing area around Boddinstrasse -- seems to have given Staalplaat a rush of relevance, a new mission and energy. Whereas, up in Mitte, Staalplaat pretty much blended in, sensibility-wise, with neighbours like Bongout Gallery and Neurotitan, down here in "deep Neukolln" it seems to be back on the cutting edge, joining semi-squat cultural guerilla operations like Loophole (from which I did a livecast back in February at the invitation of the ubiquitous Rinus Van Alebeek). The gamble seems to have paid off; foot traffic into Staalplaat during the day is apparently rather higher down here "in the middle of nowhere" (actually close to happening spots like Weserstrasse) than it was up on tacky Torstrasse, the Oxford Street of Berlin hip.
Neukolln may not have Mitte's buy-yourself-hip clothes boutiques (oh shit, did Best Shop close down already? Maybe Mitte doesn't have them either!) but it does offer less conventional clothing possibilities. I'd recommend a trip to the gigantic Bauhaus store on Hasenheide, directly across the road from Viet-café Hamy, our cut-price version of Mitte's Monsieur Vuong. At Bauhaus you can marvel at gorgeously utilitarian gas cannisters, chipboard slabs, orange-painted trolleys and red nested toolboxes.
Copying Jan Lindenberg -- my personal style guru, who uses them to soften his recycled MDF chairs -- I bought a €4.60 recycled Bauhaus packing blanket yesterday and modeled it for Hisae's camera right there in the store, to the amusement of Saturday shoppers. I run the pictures here so that Twit Opera and the Anons can mock me as if I weren't already mocking myself, and because ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
milky_eyes was complaining yesterday about the absence of photos of me. Packing blankets -- like deep Neukolln -- are where it's at, man. You read it here first.
02:10 am - Time for another strange times post, I reckon.
Yep.
Incidentally, I wonder how many of my posts start with 'Yep'. Thank you for not counting.
I also wonder about 'internet presence'. I've got a fair idea that I should hammer together at least a presentable couple of minutes' worth of me doing comedy. Plans on this are afoot.
Bah. Tired. Motivation for introspective post detailing pros and cons of these days fading.
It's an eternal thing, keeping tabs of how much energy one thinks one has, and how much one actually has.
On the cons side: I have no certainty of income from September onwards. And that's about it. There are other things that I could mew about because I'm tired, I've fed myself poorly recently and am apprehensive about my next project - but that would be self-pitying crap, and we do not cater to that sort of behaviour. So - on to the pros.
The novel is fairly flying. Powers are growing rather rapidly, and I've found out that there is a secret to increasing one's productivity about 380%. No internet. I've been writing in café Nero the last couple of weeks - gets me out of the house and away from internet/Warcraft, which is good (but close to cakes and coke, which is BAD. Every silver lining has a cloud). I almost have the confidence to plow on without feedback, but not quite. I look forward to slamming down half a novel for the big guns (i.e. mum and dad) to read, and am hoping that that might happen before July is over and done with. As it stands I have three quarter-readers, who are working selflessly on all corners of the North Atlantic. The goal of finishing in August still stands.
Actually, my life is fairly simple these days.
a) survive on no money plzkthx.
b) finish - in order - standup gig tomorrow, trip to Edinburgh via York (research, see. I'm well good, me) on Monday, then from Tuesday onwards work on the Baxterbear stage show with Nick + writing somewhere + traipsing about with Morag in her home town. And about Morag. I haven't written too much about her here, because I've been too busy in her company. But life - is good. I shan't bore you with the details - but I've smiled more in the last two months and change than I've done for a long time.
c) finish novel. This would ideally happen in Edinburgh.
d) finish BA Thesis, 5-9 years overdue. Basically, it's time. Also, it will by all accounts help greatly with procuring any type of other work.
The plan, in short, is to go into my 35th year on the planet with 1x finished novel, 2x acting credits, somewhere between 60 and 100 comedy gigs and a degree to show for the year. Oh yeah - and weighing in under 100kg, which last happened in 1999.
Actually, that's fairly insane. Do I always do this? I guess I do. So, there's that. And now - sleep. I have any number of things to do tomorrow.
It's all in the ride.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/punquinheads/blue/mellow.gif){kind=small}
splashing in the paddling poolJul. 11th, 2009
10:00 pm - Wednesday 11 July 1666
Up, and by water to Sir G. Downing's, there to discourse with him about the reliefe of the prisoners in Holland; which I did, and we do resolve of the manner of sending them some. So I away by coach to St. James's, and there hear that the Duchesse is lately brought to bed of a boy. By and by called to wait on the Duke, the King being present; and there agreed, among other things, of the places to build the ten new great ships ordered to be built, and as to the relief of prisoners in Holland. And then about several stories of the basenesse of the King of Spayne's being served with officers: they in Flanders having as good common men as any Prince in the world, but the veriest cowards for the officers, nay for the generall officers, as the Generall and Lieutenant- generall, in the whole world. But, above all things, the King did speake most in contempt of the ceremoniousnesse of the King of Spayne, that he do nothing but under some ridiculous form or other, and will not piss but another must hold the chamber-pot. Thence to Westminster Hall and there staid a while, and then to the Swan and kissed Sarah, and so home to dinner, and after dinner out again to Sir Robert Viner, and there did agree with him to accommodate some business of tallys so as I shall get in near 2000l. into my own hands, which is in the King's, upon tallys; which will be a pleasure to me, and satisfaction to have a good sum in my own hands, whatever evil disturbances should be in the State; though it troubles me to lose so great a profit as the King's interest of ten per cent. for that money. Thence to Westminster, doing several things by the way, and there failed of meeting Mrs. Lane, and so by coach took up my wife at her sister's, and so away to Islington, she and I alone, and so through Hackney, and home late, our discourse being about laying up of some money safe in prevention to the troubles I am afeard we may have in the state, and so sleepy (for want of sleep the last night, going to bed late and rising betimes in the morning) home, but when I come to the office, I there met with a command from my Lord Arlington, to go down to a galliott at Greenwich, by the King's particular command, that is going to carry the Savoy Envoye over, and we fear there may be many Frenchmen there on board; and so I have a power and command to search for and seize all that have not passes from one of the Secretarys of State, and to bring them and their papers and everything else in custody some whither. So I to the Tower, and got a couple of musquetiers with me, and Griffen and my boy Tom and so down; and, being come, found none on board but two or three servants, looking to horses and doggs, there on board, and, seeing no more, I staid not long there, but away and on shore at Greenwich, the night being late and the tide against us; so, having sent before, to Mrs. Clerke's and there I had a good bed, and well received, the whole people rising to see me, and among the rest young Mrs. Daniel, whom I kissed again and again alone, and so by and by to bed and slept pretty well, [Continued tomorrow. P.G.]
11:20 am - Being Japanese in Blankenfeld
On Wednesday Yoshito, Naoko, Hisae and I took the train to Blankenfeld, a satellite suburb about 25 kilometers from central Berlin. Japanese friends had invited us to Workshop Japan, an afternoon presentation of the part-time work they'd been doing over the last three months, teaching German children about Japanese crafts, lifestyle, language and philosophy.
Coming from dense, Turkish Neukolln to Blankenfeld was like entering another world. After riding two trains and a bus we found ourselves skirting a poppy-dotted wheatfield in a thunderstorm. Boat-shaped suburban houses were surrounded by gnome-haunted gardens, many boasting ornamental fountains, statues of goats, and clumps of bamboo. Even in the heavy rain, we paused to marvel at flowers and plants we never see in the inner city.
At the school -- a clean, modern brick box -- ten-year-olds scurried about in Japanese headbands, guided by the friends who had invited us. Look, there's Ido-San, the performance artist! But today she's Ido-San, the judo instructor! Look, there's Saiko, the art student who works in the kitchen at Smart Deli! But today she's the kimono lady!
Like Superman, these friends of ours have secret powers. We thought they were artists, but after a quick change of clothes in a phone booth they become... ambassadors for Japan! Speculating idly as the slick Workshop Japan DVD played to the teeming assembly hall, I wondered if I too could earn money from the German government teaching "the Scottish Way" to kids? Is there even a Scottish Way worth learning? How do we arrange our gardens? How do we fight? How do we dress? Is it sufficiently different from the German way to warrant a three month course? Is it charismatic enough? Could this be what my Book of Scotlands leads to?
I suppose I was perceived as a parent at the Workshop Japan afternoon -- a parent nobody had ever seen before, not attached to any particular child. Like all the other "parents" I raised my Japanese digital camera and snapped dutifully during the kimono fashion show, as young German girls paraded past in unlikely kimonos featuring what looked like the double-headed eagle of the Hapsburg Empire.
In fact, if I was the "father" of anyone, it was the Japanese instructors themselves. It was with some kind of paternal pride that I told Saiko-San that the arrangement of hair at the back of her neck had achieved the pinnacle of iki beauty.
What I noticed, out at Blankenfeld, was that we all became different people there. In central Berlin the culture allows us to be somewhat ageless and cultureless. Out at Blankenfeld, we suddenly had ages and cultures. I was "old", the girls (in their mid to late 20s) were "responsible adults", and the kids were "kids". Your perceived age slotted you into this syntagmatic hierarchy, did away with equality, made you act a certain way. We also had more noticeable ethnicities. All the kids were white, and German. All the instructors were Japanese, and did stereotypically Japanese things, like paper-folding and flower-arranging. I passed, I guess, for a German.
Despite the emphasis on culture, there was less cultural mixing going on out at Blankenfeld than happens in central Berlin. Last week Ido-San did one of her multimedia performances in Neukolln -- an act that mixed Japanese and Western idioms. But out at Blankenfeld she was being 100% Japanese.
It was a relief to get back to dense, dirty Neukolln, where people are as various as flowers are in Blankenfeld. It seems to me that central Berlin is the exception and Blankenfeld the norm, in the sense that rather few places allow you to escape your age, your class, your race and your culture -- should you wish to! -- in the way that urban Berlin does. Here nobody ever says "Act your age!" or "Scots don't do that!" or "Be a man!"
But if it's a sort of freedom to escape your age, your gender, and your culture, it's also a sort of freedom to embody them gorgeously, generously, even stereotypically. Perhaps, out in blank Blankenfeld, my Japanese friends were suddenly free to express a repressed part of "themselves" -- the part, paradoxically, that we're not at liberty to change.
06:30 am - How to play with your food
When I was in Melbourne, five years ago, Poppy was a guest of honour with me, and somewhere back then it was decided that we would be going to Alinea, a Chicago restaurant of remarkable coolness. The years went by and I was never in Chicago for long, and Katrina happened, and once Poppy went back to New Orleans she did not want to leave, but we knew one day it would happen.
And tonight it did. Poppy flew up from Chicago and took me to dinner. It was expensive, and, I only discovered at the end of the meal, Poppy was paying. (This is a big public thank you.)
The service and friendliness and sense of enjoyment from the Alinea staff was remarkable. I've had, on rare occasions, food that was as good, and, rarely, I've had food that was better, but I do not ever recall any meal that was as much fun to eat. 23 Courses (hmm, very illuminati) of things that melted or popped or squrunched in your mouth in astounding ways.
I think my favourite not-actually-putting-something-in-my-mou
If anyone reading this is at ALA, I'm doing two signings at the HarperCollins booth 2011, one at 1.00pm on Saturday, the other on 9.00am on Monday (which should have some amusement value). Also a panel on Monday at 1:30pm on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The rest of the time is filled with interviews, receptions, speeches and such.
I'm actually here to receive the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. Which will be presented on Sunday night, and for which I have written (and already recorded) a speech. (Which will be played if I forget how to talk on Sunday night. It's possible.)
And I want to thank Harper Collins for indulging me, and keeping up the free version of The Graveyard Book on the mousecircus website all that time. You can still listen to (or watch) me read The Graveyard Book, chapter by chapter, across America, at http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.asp
(And to answer a sharp-eyed questioner, yes, there are a couple of changes in the latest printing of The Graveyard Book; I fixed an error in astronomy I'd made, and a misspelled foreign word, and fixed some paragraphs in the acknowledgments that were truncated in the original US edition.)
(And that reminds me: yes, I will be at San Diego Comic Con briefly on Friday July 24th, to do a panel with Henry Selick about Coraline, and a one hour signing afterwards. I'll be at the Eisner Awards for a bit that night, then will zoom across town to the Benefit concert that Amanda Palmer and Vermillion Lies are doing for the CBLDF.)
*Chris says people have been asking for "The Mezze of Destruction", the code-phrase that tells him they were sent from this blog, at the Green Goddess, and getting special extras -- restaurant Easter Eggs, as it were, and I have been getting happy messages from people who have eaten there who tried it. And, almost needless to say, lived.
Right. Bed.
03:13 am - Tótallí drönk
Uppúr fyliirísröfli við Þórdísi og Hjalta: klámmyndir eftir íslenskum skáldsögum:
Birtan á böllunum,
Sumartott og svo kemur sárasóttin,
Sjortarinn bakvið brekkuna,
Hversdagsböllurinn,
Graðventa,
Riddarar hringvöðvans,
Hængjaslátur í bakrennum,
Kólon íslandus,
Vefarinn mikli frá Rassmír,
Barn ónáttúrinnar,
Bréf til hóru,
Sjálfsætt fólk,
Brekkukotsanall,
Gandavegur 7,
69 af stöðinni,
Vaknað í brussu,
Perraalheimur,
Ballakirkja, Sáðakur og Vetrarserðingin,
Þetta er allt að koma,
Mella,
101 Sleikjavík,
Maður og kona og piltur og stúlka,
Stútungapungar,
Stúlka með fingur,
Perri á Húsafelli,
Fljótt sagði fuglinn,
Nokkrir góðir dagar á Guðnýjar
fleiri ábendingar óskast
Jul. 10th, 2009
10:00 pm - Tuesday 10 July 1666
Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning, sitting, and there presented Sir W. Coventry with my little book made up of Lovett's varnished paper, which he and the whole board liked very well. At noon home to dinner and then to the office; the yarde being very full of women (I believe above three hundred) coming to get money for their husbands and friends that are prisoners in Holland; and they lay clamouring and swearing and cursing us, that my wife and I were afeard to send a venison-pasty that we have for supper to-night to the cook's to be baked, for fear of their offering violence to it: but it went, and no hurt done. Then I took an opportunity, when they were all gone into the foreyarde, and slipt into the office and there busy all the afternoon, but by and by the women got into the garden, and come all to my closett window, and there tormented me, and I confess their cries were so sad for money, and laying down the condition of their families and their husbands, and what they have done and suffered for the King, and how ill they are used by us, and how well the Dutch are used here by the allowance of their masters, and what their husbands are offered to serve the Dutch abroad, that I do most heartily pity them, and was ready to cry to hear them, but cannot helpe them. However, when the rest were gone, I did call one to me that I heard complaine only and pity her husband and did give her some money, and she blessed me and went away. Anon my business at the office being done I to the Tower to speak with Sir John Robinson about business, principally the bad condition of the pressed men for want of clothes, so it is represented from the fleete, and so to provide them shirts and stockings and drawers. Having done with him about that, I home and there find my wife and the two Mrs. Bateliers walking in the garden. I with them till almost 9 at night, and then they and we and Mrs. Mercer, the mother, and her daughter Anne, and our Mercer, to supper to a good venison-pasty and other good things, and had a good supper, and very merry, Mistresses Bateliers being both very good-humoured. We sang and talked, and then led them home, and there they made us drink; and, among other things, did show us, in cages, some birds brought from about Bourdeaux, that are all fat, and, examining one of them, they are so, almost all fat. Their name is [Ortolans], which are brought over to the King for him to eat, and indeed are excellent things. We parted from them and so home to bed, it being very late, and to bed.
02:24 pm - against the actions of the valley club
From the website colorofchange.org:
"Whites only" pool in 2009?
Condemn discrimination at the Valley Club and ask the DOJ to enforce civil rights laws.
Sixty-five children from a largely Black summer camp in Philadelphia were turned away from a swimming club in the suburbs because of their race. The camp had a contract to use the Valley Club's pool for the summer. Once the club realized the kids were Black, it canceled their membership.
A "Whites only" pool in 2009 should not be tolerated. Please join us in publicly condemning the Valley Club's discrimination, and calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether the club violated federal civil rights laws.
Sign here to add your voice.
Please re-post this to your blogs and social networking pages.
Thank you!
11:36 am - Kittens!
Sorry for my relative silence over the last couple days. Between job interviews, errands, and dealing with our small pack of kittens, I haven’t really had much time to sit down and write. I have been brainstorming some future entries though, so don’t worry, this is only temporary.
To make up for my absence, I will show you some cute photos of said kittens:
Left to Right: Simon, Jayne, River, Mal
Originally published at Teh Blog. You can comment here or there.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/alphyna/pp/amused.png)
amused09:42 am - friday time suck
time for a lyrics quiz.
name the artist & the song.
no goggling. see how many you can get.
should not be that hard ;-)
i'll post the answers tonight.
have fun.
1.
I like your pin shot
I keep it with your letter
Done up in blueprint blue
It sure looks good on you
2.
When all your talking supermen
Just take away the time
And get in the way
3.
Haven’t had a dream in a long time
See, the life I’ve had
Can make a good man bad
4.
One day my kite will escape forever
And I will jump to catch the trailing string
Wishes and wants will fall from my pocket
As I wave, full of peace
5.
I keep thinking someday I will make this all up to you
And maybe someday I will
6.
Every body knows what's going wrong with the world
But I don't even know what's going on in myself
7.
Was in a little situation
Came with a solution
Was a revelation to hear
Triumphant calling
Triumphant trumpets
8.
So I leave you with a smile
Kiss you on the cheek
And you will call it treason
9.
Brooklyn like a sea in the asphalt stalks
Push out dead air from a parking garage
10.
Kids are crying 'cos the sheets are so cold
Woke this morning found my hands were frozen
I've tried to fix the fire, but you know the damn thing's too old
08:07 am - Contra-bombast
When the Serpentine Gallery Pavillion opens on Sunday, it'll be Britain's first exposure to SANAA, the architectural team of Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, responsible for New York's wildly successful New Museum.
Every July the Serpentine Gallery -- currently under the direction of the enlightened Hans Ulrich Obrist -- lets an architect erect a temporary pavilion in its Kensington Gardens enclosure. SANAA's, the ninth in the series, is certainly the least bombastic. As the Times' architecture critic Tom Dyckhoff explains in a video on the paper's site, the Japanese team has built a light plane of polished aluminium sloping modestly towards the ground across pillars and bendy plexiglass walls. The inside space, dotted with Nishizawa's white bunny chairs, merges inside and outside. From a distance, the mirrored structure seems to blend with the trees, like a calm sheet of reflective water.
Equally reproachful of bombast is the music of Otomo Yoshihide, the subject of a new documentary called KIKOE. Filmmaker Iwai Chikara (who also runs a club with Yoshihide) filmed the musician over ten years, building up 500 hours of footage of concerts, interviews and sessions, which he's edited down to 99 minutes. Chikara calls it "a document of a system observed from a fixed point" -- the fixed point being Yoshihide himself, and the "system" being collaborators like Sachiko M and Kahimi Karie. The film shows at Shibuya Eurospace later this month before heading out to European film festivals.
Yoshihide is part of the No Input onkyo movement which shares a certain organic minimalism with SANAA's architecture. "I just wanna listen, no playing," as Sachiko M puts it, and I can imagine SANAA saying the same about Kensington Gardens -- their building really seems to want to listen to the park rather than dominate it.
My final example of a Japanese dislike of bombast comes in the form of the documentary Jesus Camp, which we watched last night on the recommendation of Japanese friends. The Christian evangelicals depicted in Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing's 2006 film probably won't surprise anyone -- they're a well-explored, even over-familiar subject, and for the moment they've lost their mainstream political capital -- but what I found interesting here were the cut-aways to a Japanese studio discussion in which a short-skirted woman exclaims to an expert how sorry she is for American kids whose ideologically-motivated home-schooling doesn't allow them to study art or music -- let alone Darwinian evolution -- and whose parents are so out of love with the world that they can't wait to die.
"It's truly scary that 25% of Americans think this way!" these Japanese commentators agree. A religion, or a culture, with a little more love for its surroundings -- and a little less bombast -- suits them better.
06:09 am - Do drivers have a better chance of surviving car wrecks if they're drunk?
Do drivers have a better chance of surviving car wrecks if they're drunk?Jul. 9th, 2009
10:00 pm - Monday 9 July 1666
Up betimes, and with Sir W. Pen in his coach to Westminster to Sir G. Downing's, but missed of him, and so we parted, I by water home, where busy all the morning, at noon dined at home, and after dinner to my office, where busy till come to by Lovett and his wife, who have brought me some sheets of paper varnished on one side, which lies very white and smooth and, I think, will do our business most exactly, and will come up to the use that I intended them for, and I am apt to believe will be an invention that will take in the world. I have made up a little book of it to give Sir W. Coventry to-morrow, and am very well pleased with it. Home with them, and there find my aunt Wight with my wife come to take her leave of her, being going for the summer into the country; and there was also Mrs. Mary Batelier and her sister, newly come out of France, a black, very black woman, but mighty good-natured people both, as ever I saw. Here I made the black one sing a French song, which she did mighty innocently; and then Mrs. Lovett play on the lute, which she do very well; and then Mercer and I sang; and so, with great pleasure, I left them, having shewed them my chamber, and 1000l. in gold, which they wondered at, and given them sweetmeats, and shewn my aunt Wight my father's picture, which she admires. So I left them and to the office, where Mr. Moore come to me and talking of my Lord's family business tells me that Mr. Sheply is ignorantly, we all believe, mistaken in his accounts above 700l. more than he can discharge himself of, which is a mighty misfortune, poor man, and may undo him, and yet every body believes that he do it most honestly. I am troubled for him very much. He gone, I hard at the office till night, then home to supper and to bed.
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