Friday, April 28, 2006

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!!!



Who is this man?

(bum bum bummm)

A Conversation in Each Bottle!

Check out these ads for Grand Marnier--

Who gets paid to come up with this?!??

I sure do love this man--

--Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Bear with me here, on behalf of this GENIUS:

Tom Faulkner writes about Garcia Marquez's short story "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings":

"The problem García Márquez presents us is not just What if angels were real? but What if they were real, and nothing like we expect them to be? He creates a tension between the old man's magical and human qualities, leaving us unable to fit the character into a comfortable mental category. The old man is far too human and decrepit to match our cultural image of angels: perfect, powerful, majestic, immortal. Nor does he appear to be a heavenly messenger, sent by God as a sign of momentous changes; his presence seems to be purely an accident of the weather, without purpose or meaning. Nonetheless, he certainly has his magical qualities, and is even credited with miracles (though, like everything else about him, they are disturbing, and fail to satisfy expectations). However miraculous his nature, origins, or abilities may be, he is stranded here, and relatively powerlessan exile from his former life, at the mercy of strangers. The villagers must somehow account for him, and because no one understands his language, he is unable (and apparently unwilling) to explain himself. Several possible interpretations arise, but most of them are clearly absurd, telling us more about the villagers' superstitions and beliefs than about the old man's true nature. They are rendered with playful humor, ensuring that the reader will appreciate the irrational and illusory basis of such folk wisdom. Yet our superior, conventional methods of logic and reason don't seem any more useful in reaching a secure explanation. The old man remains a stubborn, intriguing mystery, both magical and ordinary, impossible to decipher but undeniably there."

and,

"By combining factual and imaginative descriptions, and seeming to treat them with equal credibility, the author suggests that both ways of knowing are valid, perhaps even necessary to achieving a balanced understanding."

and,

"Works of magic realism are both praised and criticized for their childlike wonder, their depiction of a world of almost-infinite possibilities, where the supernatural and the everyday take on the same vivid intensity. But they are not fairy tales or two-dimensional fantasies; they offer no clear lessons, simple events, or sharp distinctions between reality and magic. Wondering includes both delight and confusion, the struggle to comprehend experiences that challenge our understanding, and don't fit our accustomed map of reality. Far more things are possible in the world of magic realism, including miracles, contradictions, and logical impossibilities but this also means that more meanings are possible, and that all meanings will be elusive and uncertain."

I know that's a lot of text, but c'mon!! Have you read One Hundred Years of Solitude?

If anyone thought that Kant was boring . . .

. . . prepare to change your mind. Turn the volume up really loud. Courtesy of Jenn.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

I was reading, and I learned something new.

The bhajan is a traditional Hindu devotional song.

Most were written between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries as a result of the Bhakti revivalist movement.

This movement's center was the idea that to attain spiritual salvation a person had only to attain a pure and selfless love of God.

For some interesting discussion, see Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, and Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

For more on the Bhakti movement:
from Answers.com
from Wikipedia

To listen: Here (with RealPlayer) (I like the one labeled "Aiso ko udaar")

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Psh.

Happy Birthday to Billy Shakespeare . . . goshdarned misogynist . . . .