Friday, September 11, 2009

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Is anti-Catholicism the antisemitism of the intellectual?

Would you say that atheism is the antisemitism of the intellectual?

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

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LibraryThing recommendations

1. A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Wassilij Grossman
2. The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
3. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
4. Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
5. Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte



6. Oblomov by Ivan A. Goncharov
7. The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes
8. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
9. To the Finland Station (New York Review Books Classics) by Edmund Wilson
10. The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell

see more recommendations for this work
Member recommendations

1. christiguc recommends The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
2. chrisharpe recommends Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
3. chrisharpe recommends Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
4. chrisharpe recommends One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
5. chrisharpe recommends War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

It's the sentimental man who gets killed first.

Hemingway

Saturday, September 05, 2009

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Do Americans Know what Socialism is?

A Christain has complained that Obama is a socialist:

I see, so "man has a strong tendency to want to prosper at the expense of others," and this is his "God given right." So that's what God wants.
-
"When property is taken from its owner without his consent, and transferred to another solely for the benefit the recipient, then property rights have been violated and an act of plunder has been committed." In this case I suppose you are referring to the money that taxes take from citizens. --Strange, I thought we had elections and that the people choose the representatives that establish these taxes.
-
When you refer to "recipients" above are you referring to old ladies in nursing homes who turn their social security checks over to the Fortune 500 corporations that are taking care of them? Are you referring to school lunch programs that are responsible for keeping millions of children from hunger? Or are you referring to the reverse taxes (also known as tax breaks) given to major corporations like Exxon?
-

As to: "The total inertness of mankind. Man needs the state to order his social life and is incapable of organizing his own life without the overreaching hand of government elitists."
This is not even near the case in Sweden or Norway, and there are no "overreaching hands of government elitists." Instead there are well housed, well educated, citizens with adequate health insurance.
But, speaking of "overreaching hands" what do you call the bureaucrat-administrators of private health plans in the US who decide which prescriptions to fill and which operations to perform on the 80% of the population who actually have any insurance? Last year United Health Care rejected (denied) 30% of medical claims submitted to them.


And then, "The infallibility of the state and its legislators. Under socialism, the state is by definition always right and can never be wrong. This means that when something goes wrong, a scapegoat must be created."
-
The kind of socialism referred to here is the kind that Hitler created under National Socialism. No one in the US is talking about any kind of socialism, no less Nazism.

Or, "A popular fallacy of our times is that it is not considered sufficient that the law should be just -- it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education and morality throughout the nation."
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Let's take welfare to start. It's a pretty good idea not to allow people to starve or sleep in the streets. Is that welfare? Before, you brought God into the argument--does God prefer that people sleep in the streets?
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Education: Do you actually believe that education of the entire population regardless of ability to pay, destroys the state? I'm shaking my head in disbelief. --We need more free education in order to further strengthen our country. Without it we're headed for the dump. China & India are already nipping at our heels. They're not afraid of education.


"...and morality throughout the nation."
-
This country has always legislated morality and there are people who wish to legislate more morality. They don't live in the left.
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Who has kept marijuana away from freedom loving citizens--no less hospitals and hospices? Leftists?
Who is agitating for anti-abortion laws. What about selling liquor on Sundays? The left? Why are doctors afraid to prescribe heavy does of narcotics to cancer patients in pain? A socialist government already in Washington?
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I am running out of steam--but I can say this at last: If Jesus were here he would be a true socialist and would be caring for every child and ever oldster in the nation. He would be working toward a single-payer universal health plan. He would demand that every person have the food he needs to live a healthy strong life. He would fight for a progressive tax system (render under Caesar)that would ensure that the poor would be able to live full lives.
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With Jesus as our guide greed and rapaciousness would wither and disappear--and would not be considered virtues.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Monday, August 17, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
wisdom from Arnold Rothsteinand my father:

During the late fifties and sixties, one of the best tout sheets at Belmont Park in NY was Dr. Marlin's Picks. Dr. Marlin was a pretty good handicapper and earned the appellation "Dr." when he picked the winners of seventeen straight races in 1963. To my knowledge his longest streak after that time was six straight winners, a feat that is not unheard of, though rare, among racing cognoscenti. However, like all gamblers who live long enough, he died broke, as eventually, as Arnold Rothstein (and my father) said, "the odds will always get you."

Sunday, August 16, 2009

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MAGNOLIA --Paul Thomas Anderson*, writer, director.


I saw this 3 hour film tonight at home. One of the best. Enters my top fifty if I ever make a list. It's complex and original. And never fails to be interesting. Several intertwined stories dealing with forgiveness, happiness, attempting to erase the indelible past, confession, coincidence, deus ex machina, the weakness of the strong, the strength of the weak, choices made in the past, choices to be made in the future, and choices of the present. Creating false personas, and promising to be true.

And, two men dying asking for forgiveness from those they hurt, and from those who don't now that they have been hurt.

Is this enough to keep your interest?

*Note: Two actors have 3 part names like the writer, Paul Thomas Anderson: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Phillip Baker Hall, if that doesn't confuse you then the movie won't either.

Comment from a friend:

Magnolia. You asked me to tell you what I understood from the rain of frogs. All of the characters in Magnolia, like all of us, are enslaved by our thoughts. We make ourselves, then we get stuck in our own viewpoint. We behave in accordance with what we think. Each of us must liberate ourselves from the incarceration of our ideas. That is the most difficult task we will ever face. It takes great courage to insist on an honest appraisal of what we are and demand of ourselves that we become what we know we must be. The rain of frogs alerts us to the urgency of this task. There is no more time. We must face up to ourselves now, or we shall never escape. The frogs are a warning that everything depends on our acting to liberate ourselves now, or it will be to late, and will languish in the prison of our childish notions until we die. Michael

Thursday, August 13, 2009

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Here's something from the Paris Review, Summer 2009. #107:

Gay Talese on infidelity.

"Here's what people don't get. Sex is not that important. It isn't the most important thing in any relationship. Marriage is never about sex, and yet in American fiction so many stories and novels present a sexual dalliance ans an unpardonable sin. (In real life) I never thought that should be true. Marriage is the main event. These other relationships bring me into worlds I would otherwise not know. These relationships have helped our marriage. ..I think of all these people who get divorced over minor matters...I don't see how people can live in conventional marriages. "

Gay Talese has a fifty year marriage with a very accomplished,independent and fiscally successful wife.
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E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley to be published in September

"And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own."

This novel is unlike anything Doctorow has written before, it uses to the Collyer brothers to draw us through the twentieth century in America as seen by a blind man and his eccentric pack rat brother whose bodies were found in a Fifth Avenue mansion after their deaths.

"Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding.

The brothers are often cited as an example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as disposophobia or 'Collyer brothers syndrome', a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.

Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over 100 tons of rubbish that they had amassed over several decades." Wikipedia

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

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Nina Simone

Never an empty note or word.

Of how many singers can that be said?

Amália Rodrigues
Om Kalthoum (Arab Singer of the 40s, 50's 60's)
Celia Cruz
Bessie Smith
Billie Holiday
Dinah Washington
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Know this:

What age does to them,
It will do to you.

Complaint is a Trap, never
Leading to Satisfaction. It only
Roils the Heart.

Saturday, August 08, 2009

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William Vollmann

But meaning can be found in the most desolate zones, for survivors if not for victims, and in Rising Up and Rising Down Vollmann relates the following story from the San Francisco morgue as what he calls a "Solomonic parable":

Three different mothers were led into the viewing room one by one to identify a dead girl, and each mother claimed the girl as hers, with a desperate relief, as I would suppose.... Those three mothers must all have given up hoping that their daughters would ever speak to them or smile at them again. They wanted to stop dreading and start grieving. They didn't want to go into viewing rooms any more. And maybe the glass window was dirty, and maybe their eyes were old or full of tears. It was a natural mistake. But one mother was lucky. The dead girl was really her daughter.

Thursday, August 06, 2009

 



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Toots enjoying Hugh Taylor Birch Park, Ft. Lauderdale, July 2009
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Tuesday, August 04, 2009

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"A Man Escaped" Director: Robert Bresson--1956

The most tantalizing, enthralling movie I have ever seen. The true story of a French prisoner of the Nazis, who meticulously plans an escape. The detailed planning takes 1 hour and 30 minutes of the 1 hour and 40 minutes of the entire film. Breathless, riveting, alarming, complete non-stop tension.


Rating:
Run Time: 102 min
MPAA Rating:
Released: 1956
Directors: Robert Bresson

Genre/Type: Drama
Prison Film
Docudrama
Escape Film

Producers: Alain Poiré
Jean Thuillier

Plot Synopsis by Tom Wiener
In a genre crowded with quality films, director Robert Bresson's POW drama has become legendary, in part because it strips down the experience of a man desperate to escape to the essentials. That's in keeping with the approach Bresson took with all of his films. The filmmaker, who spent a year in a German prison camp during World War II, based this story on the experiences of Andre Devigny, a French Resistance fighter sent in 1943 to the infamous prison in Lyons, where 7,000 of the 10,000 prisoners housed there died either by natural means or by execution. Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) is certain that execution awaits him, and he almost immediately begins planning his escape, using homemade tools and an ingenuity for detecting the few weaknesses in the prison's structure and routine. For a time, he goes it alone, then takes on a partner, but only reluctantly. Fontaine does get some help from a couple of prisoners allowed to stroll in the exercise yard, but for the most part he is a figure in isolation. For Bresson, the process of escape is all, and in simplifying his narrative he ratchets up the tension, creating a film story of survival that many feel is without peer.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

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Yes, I’m at my desk, alone,
I can’t look in my mirror , instead I look
In books and at my computer,

I was warned. But I am not surprised,
Even though I knew, I didn’t act and my
Strength disappeared, slowly, I didn’t notice,
What dreams I had.

I thought there was always time.

July 2009

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

 


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Can you see the man in his flying machine? Taken from my balcony.
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Sunday, July 26, 2009

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Musings, notes,

I don't know whether to write truth or fiction, but then I never know what my life is. mek

"It was, It will never be again. Remember." Paul Auster

Why is it that there are so many great trailers, but so few good movies? mek

"It is not what is criminal that is hardest to acknowledge; but rather what is ridiculous or shameful." Jean Jacques Rousseau

Understand, do not deny, that from the beginning we live in a state of perpetual decay. mek

"Art cannot exist without surprize or without change." Jean Renoir

Cutting work back is fine. But don't stop working until someone measures you for the six sided box. mek

Two skeletons on a tin roof during a windstorm. (of a piece of modern music by an unknown critic.)

Friday, July 24, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

If you don't intend to get married is it still premarital sex?

Thursday, July 23, 2009

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Synecdoche, New York, Screenplay – Charlie Kaufman.

"There are almost thirteen billion people in the world and not one is an extra. They are all leads in their own stories. And they must be given their due.

I woke up and found my life. She helped me find my after I lost it.

The end is built into the beginning.

-

Everything is more complicated than you think. We see only 10% of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every decision we make. And you destroy your life every time you choose and maybe you won’t even know it for twenty years. And you may never trace that decision to its source. You only get the one chance to play it out.

And they say that there is no fate—but there is: it’s what we create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons we are here for only a fraction of a second. Most of our time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while we’re alive we wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right.

But it never comes or it seems to but doesn’t really so we spend our time in vague regret or vague hope that something good will come along. Something that will make us feel connected, make us feel whole, make us feel loved.

-

What was before us, our exciting mysterious future is now behind you. Understood, disappointing. We realize we are not special; we have struggled into existence and now are stepping silently outward. This is everyone’s experience, every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone is everyone.

-
As the people who adore you stop adoring you—as they die,as they move on, as you shed them, as you shed your beauty, your youth, as the world forgets you, as you recognize your transience, you begin to lose your characteristics one by one, as you learn that there is no one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving, not coming from any place, not arriving any place, just driving, counting off time, now you are here, it’s 7:43, now you are here, it’s 7:44, now you are---gone.

-
Where is everyone?
– Mostly dead—some have left—

(paraphrase) I’m tired,…and lonely...everyone’s dreams.. in all those lives, all those thoughts, we’ll never know, that’s the truth of it.

I love you
I love you too.
I know how to do this play now…I have an idea.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

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Word of the Day for Thursday, August 28, 2008

chthonic \THONE-ik\, adjective:

Dwelling in or under the earth; also, pertaining to the underworld

"Driven by dæmonic, chthonic Powers."
-- T.S. Eliot

"The chthonic divinity was essentially a god of the regions under the earth; at first of the dark home of the seed, later on of the still darker home of the dead."
-- C. F. Keary

"The chthonic imagery of Norine's apartment, which..was black as a coalhole and heated by the furnace of the hostess' unslaked desires."
-- M. McCarthy

"Two great and contrasted forms of ritual: the Olympian and the Chthonic, the one a ritual of cheerful character, the other a ritual of gloom, and fostering superstition."

Chthonic comes from khthón, the Greek word for earth.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for chthonic