On the Bush Administration "We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence. I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country." Hillary Clinton
"Agression unopposed becomes a contagious disease." Jimmy Carter "There's nothing to fear but fear itself." F.D.R. "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." J.F.K. "Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose." L.B.J."Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel." Bill Clinton
BARACK OBAMA 2008
Earth Day was created for all of us to feel good about ourselves celebrating our planet, which we screw up over and over on a daily basis. It's like a big Mother's Day.
Susan, from Got2BeGreen, right here on our blogroll, has a quite exciting post on cars and the Fair in San Diego for Environmentalists. Check her post out.
Mine is more modest and I'll just post "Third Stone from the Sun, " as played by late Billie Ray Vaughn, tragically killed in a helicopter accident. The song was written by Jimi Hendrix. Enjoy politically correct Google 's YouTube (all decked out) as is the Google page. Neither guitarist needs further intro. And our del.icio.us links only get better each day.
We boast so much about SoCal weather one day we'd have to pay the price of the law of return. Saturday and Sunday were so uncomfortably hot, applicants to U.S.C. may have had second thoughts about applying to go there. Nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit is a bit more than I am willing to take.
Nothing can go bad that can't go worse. Our central air conditioning was out of order. Why would I have paid for air conditioning if it's not there when I need it? For heaven's sake, it was pure desperation, gnawing of teeth and all else Saint John foresaw in the Book of Revelations.
Now, did anyone expect Barack Obama to trip like he did while still running in a primary? I truly felt sorry for the guy. I saw a photo of him the other day, the man is greying already; I guess Hillary can wear anyone off.
Anyway, it's still tough to sit here; my feet are sore and swollen from yesterday. I hope all goes well with you readers, and hope to be back tomorrow. Hasta la vista, folks!
Last I read, and I must confess that was a while ago, the world meting to review standards regarding our environment and climate change arrived at an impasse.
Maybe the Commander-in-Chief could watch this presentation. It's a tip from the knitting circle, aka SAMOHI-Pals.
It's a blend of animation and real people. Just click here for the full shebang.
Anisio Medeiros was my professor at Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, FAU-UFRJ. He taught at the Escola de Belas Artes, too. A set designer, costume designer, art director and architect from Piauí, a state ridiculed before Acre took its place as motif of scorn, Anisio was a genius ahead of his time. And because I loved all films in which he worked, and heard viva voce his stories on how the set was designed (or improvised) or how the costumes were created from scratch, I dedicate this gathering of souvenirs to him. Bye Bye Brasil has been released here, with subtitles, not bad of a subtitling job, on DVD. Read the NY Times review by Vincent Canby at a click on Bye Bye Brasil above. The film is by Cacá Diegues, who belonged to Cinema Novo and made a cool transition to a Tropicalist æsthetic code in Bye Bye Brasil. Caravana Rolidei is a poor circus on wheels trio, then a quintet. The Rolidei is a phonetic version of Holiday. They seek towns where TV (Globo) hasn't arrived yet, the hypnotic power of a TV set worshiped up in the main square of little towns.
The æsthetic motif of the costumes is great. A hairdo that twinkles with Xmas lights, the clothes of the poor, of the Native-Brazilians, all of it is political in a subtle way, sending us to the days when the Redeemer(coup d'état 64-85) built pharaonic roads, gold was found in the Amazon, but I am moving to the set design. Oh, well. The choices of places in Brazil is perfect: the riverbank town, the palm trees by the ocean, the burned and had Amazon (in 1980!) and Brasília, the destination of poor migrants straight into favelas.
I don't want to spoil the film for you. All I want you to know is this is genius if you are interested in Brazil or Brasil. Cacá Diegues bittersweet good-bye to a Brasil that becomes a Brazil and a Caravana Rolidei that becomes a Caravana Rolidey, with a y, letter inexistent in Portuguese, sum up the Tropicalist message: we devour the foreign products but spit out something different, the message of cultural cannibalism that knows no boundaries. Click here for a great article on this film.
None of what you see in this film and in so many other ones would have been possible without Anisio Medeiros. I was a poor draftsperson with a pencil. He made me the model for our B&W classes. Scorning the Oiticica which follows anyone in the Oiticica family, he would announce to all,
"We can't start the class without Tina Harris."
I remembered him due to my cybertroubles with passwords and nicknames. He would tap the floor with one foot, impatiently, while I finally arrived, late as usual, holding a cigarette, ready for my modeling time. The best souvenirs I have of Anisio Medeiros are of his sharing with us how he designed scenes improvising, as in Macunaíma, where foam was modeled to look like meats in a gigantic black bean casserole. Others are catty gossip which dies with him and us, his fave students. Finally, I did learn a lot of tricks in color techniques, from the precise names of colors to how to obtain them. Watercolor is about transparency, pastels are about several layers over each one of them. It is impossible to replicate our color sessions. I cannot fathom students sitting under a freeway in a dangerous area of downtown in order to capture how luminous a poor area can look. Or on the streets of downtown Rio anywhere nowadays.
I take my hat off to Anisio Medeiros, thank my schoolmate who refreshed some memories of him this morning and encourage you to watch this and all other films he participated in. A fine art director, genius in improvising, with peculiarities that make him a star in an era of constellation of architects teaching at FAU-UFRJ, Anisio Medeiros, wherever he is, for my friend remembered him today, too, will be tapping his shoe for a long wait, I hope, waiting for Tina Harris, some day, some time. Just a taste of Bye Bye Brazil for you.
It's a bummer when lawyers are the only ones reading you. In addition, it's weird I use Firefox and all my readers are comig through Internet Explorer. I guess I should surrender and buy a Vista (with no view) or just insist, as my nature tells me to. Google lost nothing after losing an infinitesimal share of biz on Facebook, a kewl relationship site to Microsoft. Google just went ahead to announce Maka Maka, which reminds me of Tiki Tiki a drink at Trader Vic's a five star restaurant of the 50s. Really old for our standards here in Los Angeles. Maka Maka makes a lot of sense. After all, Macca, the Beatle, is the only in the newspapers, tabloids, cutting deals here and there. Who wants to read about HoneyPuss in long boots Patty Boyd ? Or Eric Clapton's pathetic confessions of plagiarism? My source on the latter is B12 Solipsism, beware, spreading confusion on the Net since www 1.0. I wish I had been a blogger in the 1990s instead of an educator. Then a blogger instead of a translator. Here we are.
Maka Maka is a way of virtual life. It's a sweet surrender to Mountain View. More than MySpace, Orkut or FaceBook, more than the Google Bar, Maka Maka will take care of every single aspect of your life. All we need now is love between Google and Apple. Every time I read left click I cringe.
Hillary, my presidential candidate, also cringes at the idea of a left click. Left nada. This time she won't be the mousey brown-haired GOPer who watched Nixon's fall. She won't be the blondie feminist who adamantly declared 'I'm not the stand by your man type' while Mme. HW Bush gave away her favorite cookie recipes.
Hillary will be tough as nails, setting aside those who are in her way, kinda of like Mountain View will with Maka Maka. One of Hill's Bills is deeply involved in his former POTUS job, his library. Another is a bill, immigration, in which she used the best of clintonism's -- It depends on what the definition of if is. Her bills, money amassed during the campaign, are the target of all candidates, except her key bill. Bill Aberdeen, the one imposed by the Brits on slave ships is history. If Barack Obama couldn't stand tall against BP why would he now?
Bill Richardson, ahhh! That's my man. Rotund, Native-American, Spanish fluent, he looks just like me. A former cabinet member for Bill POTUS, he can add he has experience building our image and is faithful to his political background.
Like Google, Inc. couldn't care less if it is indeed IE the browser for Google Bar, at 600+ dollares/share one can afford t be less popular among its peers, and Maka Maka is coming. Hillary can laugh at the face of John Edwards, who lost his home state, playing a poor self-made man when in fact a millionaire insurance lawyer. Hillary Clinton is my person today and at the polls, for a better America, centered, supported by all the bills that matter and Bill Richardson, for vice-president, the governor of New Mexico.
The beauty of it is -- Hillary doesn't really have a home state to lose. Really. Maka Maka for her, too.
My Mac pleads Help! Tina Oiticica Harris, from center one-click MacBookPro.
The verdict is out, loud and clear. We're having foreclosures and will have more, marching their way into the affluent westside. Source: breakfast reading of the Los Angeles Times. Breakfast: fake bacon, fake egg, grapefruit, tomatoes and butter lettuce. Some coffee. I am exhausted. Already. Yesterday was an intensive day; productive yet exhausting. We met about my mother; about our son's special ed. needs, a meeting we had awaited to go our way for almost three years. The caveat in this wait is the inability of special ed. to cater to kids whose IQ is very high but are performing below their potential. We did some HW and the meeting went fine, in a mostly amiable ambiance. The last meeting was a stop worth stopping for. My gyn knows an endocrinologist whose methods combined to Weight Watchers group talk can reduce my weight, condition new eating habits and educate me towards a new perspective on food. This was a long meeting, filled in the end with a gift package. I can feel the pain of displacement here in California, the fires are still a possible threat. Natural disasters elsewhere are worse. Talking of natural disasters, the talking heads were here, at the edge of the abyss, but prudently didn't step ahead. A photo of grey noon, when snow-like specs filled the air. Click to enlarge, please.
In the mid-eighties the hippest ever nightclub opened in Rio. Its name was "Crepúsculo de Cubatão," or Cubatão Sunset. Cubatão, in São Paulo state, held the infamous claim to the Guiness Book of Records as one of the most polluted cities in the world. Ah, what sunsets it had -- and Los Angeles did too.
I thought about "Crepúsculo de Cubatão" last night, as the sun set behind the trees and the sky was tinged reddish, orange, the sun the size of a supersizeme round party platter. I have some cell. phone pictures to share here.
The enterpreneur who named the club struck a genius chord. The club was all black, the drinks were kamikazes, really strong ones, the clientele consisted of Anglophones and beautiful Cariocas clad in black with a touch of metal. We called ourselves the "dark" movement or generation. The music was Joy Division, Killing Joke, Billy Idol,The Smiths, U2 and the likes. I guess when the concept reached the USA it was renamed "Goth." Rio most often received the music from the UK before the USA did. Here, when I went to the craziest frat party in my life, on Halloween, at all-male dorm Touton Hall, I was scorned and told they played American only. That was 1985, the year of misconstrued "Born in the USA."
Howdy, partner. I'll try not to sound so fer shur Californian. This was happenstance as I don't open blogs these days, I have been kind of unwell and busy about my private life, I'm sorry about that. I had just gone to my Google News page, realized the flares are blazing and our travails are treated as if they were show business. Check this old saw in the Daily Kos. I told you I am running behind. Unpatriotic Californians.
As very patriotic Ronald Reagan, you know, the guy who brought down the Berlin Wall, all by himself, and Richard Nixon, whose presidential libraries are in unpatriotic Orange County, I hope this hopeless saw has at least an apology to us Americans in California. All of us born or not in beautiful America.
Later. I got to read for a while. On-line with big pictures.
The irony lost is read between the lines of the mordacity of Randy Newman's lyrics, in which he is criticizing our plethora of villages, Greater Los Angeles. Wikipedia says he feels ambivalent about Los Angeles. I guess we all love the sunny days when we can cruise by to the sound of the Beach Boys. We cultivate our bermudas and slightly pampered manners, uncouth ignorant wannabes nouveau riche Los Angelinos that we are. Or plain obese immigrants ignorant of each other.
Nic and I have been on a project of identification of the revitalization of downtown and south central. Our first homes were on and off USC campus, an area quite similar to the ghetto shown in "White Men Can't Jump." The 1992 Rodney King riots created empty lots on Vermont past USC. Ours are long boulevards and avenues. During the latest riots the media announced repeatedly there were no police on the street. There was a party for Chief Gates. Rodney King -- Can't we get along? -- lent his name to the riots of spring 1992.
While we debate on the mini-MZD Seth A. showed and I added in the links of today recently, I would like to open this blog to a quote I found revealing.
The ills of century XXI are psychiatric or syndromes. People go mad or weirded out like flies today, the way romantic writers invariably died of TB.
Pensaba que era linda pero se ve muy fea. (Unknown) It's that Narcissus finds ugly what isn't his reflection (Caetano Veloso - Sampa)
On Friday evening there was a storm with lightening and heavy rain. I couldn't care less; it was similar to a Rio de Janeiro storm. For a native Los Angelino it's scary, especially after having spent the summer in dry southwestern France, in the countryside. When there is a storm everybody unplugs there. Lightening can get in and damage a TV set, for example; or the phone. Los Angeles gathers 164 languages, zillions of cars, infinite solitude, many little communities, from the fancy-schmancy Bel-Air to the very poor ones in central Los Angeles. There, hot-pillows motels reign for a fast shot or smoke or whatever; little churchfronts promising salvation suck more suckers; pawn shops take goods no questions asked. Lots of basura on the sidewalks, human lives trashed or litter. Skid Row at night looks like a sea of cardboard papers sprawled on the sidewalks with toes pointing at rats while the cardboard heaves and inhales and exhales. This is my city, too. To think white flight screwed the neighborhood where U.S.C. is located. White flight in the Bronx moved us to Rio de Janeiro. Back here at USC, in the Oingo Boingo, Tom Petty, Depeche Mode era, I find out I am not white enough or have the education to teach. After my master's in linguistics at 'SC, listening to the darn marching band my son loves so much, there I go for a graduate course in education, plus emphasis on bilingual Spanish credential. In Brazil we say Argentinians smile when there is lightening. They are "known" as being conceited, what do I know? Brazilians feel funny being the only Portuguese speakers in South America. Argentinians smile because they think God is taking their photos when there is lightning. They ask for the mapa mundi of Buenos Aires in a bookstore. Maradona scored a goal with the hand (of God.) In Los Angeles we can't afford to despise the Argentinos. Or Spanish, a reality prevalent in our county. Or Jewish holidays, or Lotus Day, bla-bla-bla-bla.
While cruising my former 'hood, near 'SC, the thoughts of Rodney King came haunt me. The discomfort of street vendors and poverty, the buzz on Jena 6, was our city at risk of a riot again?
Yom Kippur dinner at a nice restaurant. The bourgeois dad saying he expects people he invites to be there. He nearly drools arrogance onto his beard. I am in bermudas, as usual, in my Adidas; we got cash for a bite. The waiter is from Sandinista country, a mestizo. He can converse small talk in twenty languages, maybe. We sit in the back facing ANA-MIA Asian chicks. If they are sideways they fit in a vynil LP jacket.
Little by little we loosen up. We down the excellent Los Angeles tap water. Gabriel is with the marching band, back in Santiemonica.
Los Angeles is tough ugly shine-you-crazy-diamond land, somewhat like São Paulo city, the Paulicéia Desvairada, recklessly hallucinated São Paulo immortalized in the collection of Mário de Andrade's 1922 modern poems. São Paulo is the first or second urban sprawl in the Americas, depending on the source. How about our Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles de Porciúncula, the capital of "Blade Runner's" dystopia? Some left it, I love it. Enjoy yet another new très kewl opening sequence to the film, based on a Phillip K. Dick paranoid fantasy. Another.
Won't you take a look at this illustration, from SAMOHI, which was originally called "Comunism" -- Too much information, perhaps -- and tell me what strikes you as odd or familiar.
Unfortunately, it's too hot and I would like to go back to rest another few hours. Velvet Howler has a seductive proposal. Let's vote for Ron Paul. In poli sci this is called the deepening of contradictions. What can BP do more than keep flooding Google with its propaganda? It can and has kicked out lots of people from Whiting, IN. And polluted Lake Michigan.
Never heard of "This won't hurt?" or "I'll stop if it does?" That's BP.
There. I'll be back for a third installment. This bloggin' is gettin' deep and in this sweltering summer of oppression(MLK) I know nobody is wearing boots.
Maybe Archimedes was ug-lee. How does his theory of communicating vessels work?
This is bigger than politics or evironment of a one rusty Oldsmobile town. I'll tell you about the human tragedy in Whiting, where BP pushes property taxes to increase ten fold. Refresh this one link because Google is updating it. I'm sore, sorry and gotta rest. Later, fer shure.
Play around with the Google Search I bring you. Kitty Carslyle keeps an eye on them. ¡ No pasarán, BP !
I have just gotten back from the street. Let me get myself together, and in the meantime, visit my great files or my flickr.
The plan for the next few posts is:
• History of Midwestern working class in Whiting,IN.
• History of exploitation of ma by man. Experimental products, harmful substances.
• Passivity, bow to the boss mentality
• Central Europeans
• More on humans and BP
• How water flows
I'm planning with DADO and B12. I do hope my intellectual links join me. Heck, this is the only place where you can follow the story and loudly fight back destruction of man by man:
"This shall not pass. You shall not betray us."
My hypothesis is Lake Michigan will affect the whole Great Lakes basin. Hay dos novedades, señor.
Dado and I met in 1985. I was younger then than she is now. I was "old." Dado has been telling me about British Petroleum and property taxes going stratospherically high, this company buying out everyone's land -- Whiting, IN, is a one rusted mill town, in GOP country, the state of Indiana.
I have been reading about BP in B12 Solipsism, Seth Anderson's inspirational blog, both artistically and politically, a force for me to start using Movable Type, third post using it. Yey. Only today all the dots connected in my head. Before meeting my Dad, my mom practiced her English at Rio's Cultura Inglesa. She dated briefly a guy who worked for Shell. Kenneth Brennan. He went to war, she met the American, Daddy, and the rest you read here, in my haphazard tale -- my Anarchic_Universe. That was back in 1946, the UK dude, and 1948, when she married Daddy in Rio de Janeiro and came to America. There was nothing wrong with exploring oil then. Or campaigning for war. The Brazilians were happy to fight a campaign "O petróleo é nosso!" -- It's our oil! Or to fight in WW II. In 1959, Billy Wilder shot the best comedy of all times: "Some Like It Hot." The dream guy is Shell Junior, played by Tony Curtis. I saw a short film by Disney endorsing oil and Da Bomb at the American Embassy in Rio. Early sixties?
I arrived here when Valleyspeak was the hippest dialect in town. 1985 was a year that went by quicky. Rock was transitioning from new wave to hair metal; in 1987 G & R made the scene. I thought they sounded like a mélange of all possible hard rock/metal groups.
Then like all things L.A. they got my attention. Axl Rose, I am sorry, dude, you're nuts. Then there was the BIG to-do about the slurs in "One in a Million." Aw, the guy is a hick redneck bigot and the song mirrors his outlook on people. Bad news: he's not alone.
Racial tension was palpable. Eddie Murphy spoke the truth in his 80s movies. BH Cop, Trading Places. Tina Turner, my private dancer, was able to reach both rockers and soul/the blues lovers. She was da bomb. Actually, "What's Love Got To Do With it?" has a xaxado flavor. [shah-SHA-doh]. Check it out, with Luiz Gonzaga's "Baião". There were Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" and Michael Jackson's Thriller.
The Nth British Invasion got here way after it made it big in Brazil. Proto-emo The Smiths, Joy Division. The politically correct U2, from Ireland, Historically way incorrect, but oh-well.
It is fascinating to observe the class clash in Bruce Springsteen's video. He's a buff :wub: worker who has to deliver this fancy schmancy car for a real fox.
Looking back on that era, it was a confusing and depressing one. On the other side of the Anglophone Empire, Maggie was destroying unions. Here we had the Great Bulls*tter and his Nancy preaching "Say No To Drugs." Scotch straight up, hun? An economic crisis, as usual with the GOP. Even Bush Papa called Reaganomics "voodoo economics."
The 80s left no love behind except for music and fashion in all of its diversity, from vynil punk to ghetto punk to big hair metal.
The 90s brought us NIRVANA, smashing out Michael Jackson and G&R. The social/racial unrest steaming in the 80s exploded in riots in Los Angeles. Rodney "Can we get along?" King. Los Angeles is a city whose structure is long straight avenues and boulevards. The TV stations kept on saying there were no police on the streets. Practically from Hollywood to somewhere south of USC lots and lots became empty deposits of burned buildings. My husband and I visited some areas; the silence could be heard after the riots. Here we had snow. Ashes from the city.
The beginning of the 90s brough along a promise of change. The first baby boomers to run and win and kick bootie.
How could I forget Ronald Reagan, and not the German people, was resposible for the fall of the Berlin Wall, coincidentally on November 9, Krystallnacht.
Do you want to know the rest of the story of the glory? Come back soon. I gotta go. Get my legs up with nothing in between ;( Unfortunately, I'm not well, yet. Darn. Oops, I can't darn, sorry.
This is my pumpkin baby, who's speaking fluent French now. Razr cell. photo. Later, dudes and dudettes?
The beauty of living away from Rio is not having to deal with Brazil's current divisionist climate. Google reported racism to be on an all time high in Brazil. What a shame.
To get blue hydrangeas here in SoCal one must plant some copper powder in the soil. In Rio de Janeiro State they are naturally blue. Blooms in fall and winter -haha - what winter?
This is a small cactus in bloom. You have see others, including the one adorning the Mexican flag. Nopales and tunas, the flower buds. If the cactus is transposed to a wider pot, it'll grow more. Succulents, the plants with thick leaves that suck water, also grown as much as the pot or soil you provide them. A cactus captures humidity in the air with its thorns.
My poor shamrock, whose name is something Brasilis. It's not looking healthy but will improve. How do you know the difference between a shamrock and a regular clover? The shamrock has straight tips. The clovers' are rounded.
The first fruit of the season: plums and figs. Just like home. People say California is the state for fruits, nuts, and flakes. Please sign the petition to end anti-gay discrimination. I would like you to enjoy with me a beautiful George Harrison song: Here Comes the Sun.
Technorati Photo Blogging We do what we can do. Recycle. Stop taking baths and reducing our shower time; shower with a friend. Please don't flush each time you go. California is in a state of quasi-emergency regarding our water supply.
Here at home we will collect rain water. But it never rains in L.A. We use natural means to fight bugs that attack our veggie garden, trees, and ornamental garden. We planted in the embankment of the freeway. This is our "pay forwards" to our community; this is our small way to contribute to a better earth and oceans.
It's not about Al Gore. It's about us, in the USA. Huge SUVs, cheap food for the poorer, filled with dyes and additives. Hybrid corn, anyone? The crows have shown up today. It's only one cornstalk.
All my life prior to life in Santa Monica, I lived in apartments. It is great to be able to play with the space and choose what to do with it. We made an investment for us and the environment. Finally the state of California is deciding to go solar. We did. Check these out; click to enlarge. Skylights reduce the need for light bulbs.
The solar panels have brought our electricity bill down to 40 dollars a week. We have a tankless water heater, too. Solar, natch.
The veggie garden uses a water drip system so only the necessary water is used, thru a thin hose spread around the plot with holes in it.
It's nice to think your herbs and veggies are organic and in
your back yard. Below you see native southern Californian plants. Cacti and succulents. Most were new to me. The gardens put to use my degree in architecture. They are great drought resistant plants. The frost we had this year, climate change, killed many of them. You could click to enlarge the photo, if you wish. I would like to show you another couple of shots and then I am out of here. Below is our "romantic garden" where once there was dirt and a few trees. It is important for each one of us to do what is possible. To vote, to contribute to society, to get educated and educate.
Maybe I have time for another post today? I am very swollen and tired.
Although I hardly ever leave my house, many publications take me all over the world. Although I am a USA citizen above all, there are times I wish we were a republic. Except for not having water, California has everything.
On the morning of May 29, I saw what the Los Angeles Times called the "gutter punks." These are akin to the Hollywood Boulevard kids I used to see, trashing needles, sleeping on the streets, tatttoed and pierced; either strung out or lost in a daze. Who wants to deal with them? The ones in the Times are parking on Haight-Ahsbury.
The other piece of news that grabbed my attention was the price of gasoline and on the same page some talk about incentives for solar panels. Why have't they thought about this before? Every day is a sunny day in So.Cal. Without mosquitoes, too.
Later on I will get back to these three societal subjects. Gutter punks, Environment, solar panels, and the one below, immigration S.N.A.F.U.s . When my husband and I were coming back here from Rio de Janeiro, we got stuck in a "Level 2 (security) Room," in which only one kid worked while the other four did nothing. My husband was harassed and humiliated; maybe it was racial profiling. Some people think they are all that when they have a grain of sand of power in their hands. This agent, Joseph Foster, threatened me, an American citizen by birth, unless NYC is no longer part of the USA.
My husband is more phylosophycal about picking his battles. As if I hadn't been misconstrued in the morning in some other URL, I was so badly attacked at another I took screenshots of the whole hoolabaloo. My private webmaster ;P thinks I should just forget about sick people on the Net. No can do.
This is a summarized version of today's post at Universo Anárquico. I know I should have gone to the beach. How could I go to the beach after seeing this in the LATimes? I never knew we had an Arlington West in Santa Monica.
Utopia and Dystopia go hand in hand. A Utopia is a fantasy world in which everything is perfect. A dystopia is a society where things go wrong. Utopia-dream/dystopia-nightmare. Generally dystopias are placed in the future.
The most famous ones, for my generation, are:
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. A dystopia in which people are engineered genetically, there is no sex, but lots of soma, a feelgood drug. Things go wrong when one Alpha whose mother was a runaway, and had sex, goes ...
• Nineteen-eighty-four, by George Orwell. I saw the movie and many years later read the book. In this dystopia everybody is in a permanent state of paranoia. There is a war nobody knows much about. Big Brother is watching through the telly at all times. Winston falls in love, uh-oh. Doesn't this one sound familiar?
• Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which goes quite well with Truffaut's film. Ray Bradbury explained how the first seed was planted when he was walking in the San Fernando Valley, in Los Angeles. The seed was a short story, The Pedestrian. I read it at age thirteen. It is here:
On Tuesday, May 22, Al Gore will be in Los Angeles to sign his new book, The Assault on Reason. The event will take place at the Wilshire Theater. Meanwhile, L'Imbecile will be sobbing Global Warming destroyed his favorite book and he hadn't finished coloring it, yet. What a chestnut; from The Great Communicator( sic) to now.
Event: Al Gore Where: Wilshire Theater, 8440 Wilshire Blvd Beverly Hills, CA Date: May 22nd Time: 7:30
To purchase tickets please visit http://www.writersblocpresents.com or call 310-335-0917.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Thank you, The AlGore.com Team
A pause for an announcement from l'Imbecile himself. Not! Global Warming, click.
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