lotusland - nervous politics from a laid-back city

as funny as that "petit bonheur" song was in french class

an old batman comic that uses the word boner the way old people do, with hilarious results.

hey - something had to break the blogging vow of silence.   more posts to come?

paul celan's death fugue - a decent translation?

death fugue by paul celan is currently my favourite poem.  the thing is, i dont speak german, so i cant really judge the translations for myself.

ive seen translators leave various words/phrases in german.  one translation kept your golden hair marguerite / your ashen hair sulamith in german. meister has been left in the original german or translated as gang-lord/master.  some leave der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland in german.  does "aus deutschland" always mean "from germany" ... ?

so yeah, calling all german-speakers.

the first meme ever... ok, maybe not.

**UPDATE** alex has informed me this meme is stupid and im stupid if i think he is going to post stupid stuff on his blog.  i am now flipping him the bird.

Number of Books I Own

i dont know.  theyre everywhere, especially the domiciles of others. 

Last Book I Bought

madness and civilization: a history of insanity in an age of reason by michel foucault.  i now own it.  hot.

Last book I read

wonderful, wonderful times by elfriede jelinek.  i read it when i was in a "youth is wasted on scenesters" funk.  very cathartic and surreal.

5 Books That Mean A Lot To Me

5.   all those books with the pink covers and the cursive writing and "shopping" in the title:  i effing hate those books to death.  i had this prof who thought he was cool and edgy, but was actually a stodgy modernist who talked about cinema verite to be cool,  but didnt know anything about it.  moreover, he totally slagged j.g. ballard.  he used to read these girly novels to be ironic.  ugh.  hatred for this crap consumes me.

4.  the acid house by irvine welsh.  it was my first exposure to short stories what don't suck, and also to a written english dialect. (i never read robbie burns until grade 11.  heh.)    the stories were so powerful cos they had more excitement and desperation than my teenaged catholic school arse had ever experienced. 

3.  the history of the peloponnesian war by thucydides.  it's one of the books which drove me to take a lot of political theory courses, and yet one that most people would assume i dont care for, since im not a realist  ir scholar who has to name drop it every two seconds like kal holsti never ran that one into the ground.  besides, who doesnt love the melian dialogue?

2.  death in venice by thomas mann, tied with machiavelli's the prince.  i felt i understood italy more after having read them

1. if on a winter's night a traveller by italo calvino, because it is, quite simply, the best book ever written.  sorry.  the best political theory book is the genealogy of morals.  ok, it's only the best written.  the best book for the theory itself is one-dimensional man by marcuse.

i cheated at the end.  oops.  i tag alex and aija.