Happy St. Paddy

I'm not 100% sure what it's precisely about, but I do like the Irish and I do like beer. Wish I could have had one during my lunchbreak, too bad we got the calvinism thingy here.

Update/resumption

If anyone ever still checks this, an update from my life, which is now a Winter of Working. It's not bad, but not terribly good either. But as the course of life goes so Spring will arrive again. Being me I'm only half-capable of believing that, but it will happen.

Popol Vuh on youtube

I had seen this animated movie on the Popol Vuh by Patricia Amlin many years ago in class as a freshman. Had been looking for it for a few years now, and suddenly discovered it on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMo0-kEFis

It's brilliantly done, no documentary but the story itself in a gripping way. There's also a different film, The Five Suns, about central Mexico but haven't found that one yet.

Pogues

So, today i rediscovered The Pogues!! You can check out some of their songs here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkdOqdpSc0A&feature=channel_page

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSi4CDANuUY&feature=channel_page

It has a kind of poetic side to it I sometimes like a lot. If the lead singer Shane MacGowan sometimes sounds drunk, he is. Great drinker, he once was so drunk on stage that he puked over the first row. It seems because he is kind of a shy person so that it takes him some help to get on the stage or tv.

books and frescoes

I'm awash in them.......

Finally, I'm starting to get to like books again. Ever since I worked in the library in high school and after at university my relation with books had changed. Whereas earlier I would see them as something to to satisfy curiosity, they became work. Whether it would be lending them out or browsing for information for the next paper to write, they became something to be avoided. Think about it, for my current thesis I expect to have well over 500 items in my bibliography. What room does this leave for reading for fun?

But I solved this now. First thing is that most of my professional reading stuff is now in PDFs. Either I get them that way or I scan them. Only occasionally when I have to read something very carefully I print it out. Reason is that I really got to dislike my stacks of paper, try finding something you urgently need out of maybe 1500 things for only a little bit of information. Today that only takes 10 seconds and the room is much nicer as well.

But the really good thing is that it has allowed for a renewed appreciation of normal books. It's so much better when, if tired of hours behind the computer, you can retire from the screen to someplace else and just relax and read a little.

Not that it's easy to get too bored with my present subject, though, today, among other things, I did some analysis of mainland Greece frescoes, one of them being the boar hunt fresco of Tiryns. It shows women in chariots leaving the palace, the men with dogs and spears in pursuit in the marsh, the boar running for its life but eventually captured in a net and a dagger put through her/his head. If this leads you to think these people where total arseholes for doing such a thing to a friendly boar, it might cheer you up to hear that the lot who burned down Tiryns just took it off and tossed it over the wall. Must have been those animal activists again.......No, this fresco stuff is not something you can easily get bored of studying!!

Oh, it's almost time for Sunday evening beers........best to all of ye reading this :)

obsession

Almost forgot this space........

Anyway, so I was watching this movie 'Ce que mes yeux ont vu' about Lucie, an art history student researching an unidentified women in paintings by Watteau. Very good movie, I recommend it. It's an obsessive quest, but one that ultimately leads somewhere. With a very sad thing along the way, well, actually unconnected to it, for what could she have done? But sad nonetheless. It got me thinking about obsessions.

First one of institutions. They bother me, they really do, with their out-of-touch structuring logic. It can happen in a minor way at my institution, which can drive me up the wall with stuff. But it can also happen in a very big way when a bunch of not-so-sane people hijack a country and turn it into a crazy place. I am talking about Iran here of course. Sure you seen the image of Neda, the 27yo philosophy student, shot to death at random, too sad, i hope it can go well with people there, her life had meaning at the very least.

I've put the blog in green for it, looks strange huh.

It's a powerful reminder of why Marx called the state the 'excrement of society', even if many of his interpreters didn't heed that, well, once you're in the treadmill, hard to get out.

But I was worrying at that time I might not have a big obsession myself. Sure, I have plans, dreams, persons I'm passionate about, but obsessed? I don't know. Perhaps it's also possible to have that without directly noticing it, of it lurking below the surface. Maybe I'm just too unstructured ;)

fooling the cats

Yes, I've been a bit busy and not so much time for another update. Things are going well. Writing is coming along, weather is excellent so lots of biking as training for my summer plan. Barca managed to win the CL cup quite easily over ManU so that was good.

I found another use for Youtube to deal with quarreling/whining cats. Sometimes they just can't seem to leave you alone with their ways or leave each other at peace. Funny if you play some clips on youtube of cats meowing they think it's the real thing!! So they go absolutely crazy and try to find where is this Invader Cat in the house. It's hilarious to see, but I have to keep myself from doing it too often, lest they suspect something. :)