Film production in Morocco had been doing well in the last few years, but was damaged by the events of September 11. Things seem to be looking up, though. The Kingdom is trying to promote the Marrakech Film Festival, where Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and David Lynch will be guests of honor. Hopefully that will attract more filming contracts.
My friend Carrie will be reading from her novel-in-progress at the Barnes and Noble at the Grove (3rd and Fairfax) this Saturday. Come support a local writer!
My e-mails this morning included a note from a company looking for Arabic linguists. The message started like this:
“Together we’ll vanish villainous terrorism and radiate a blooming impregnable devout world peace. Do you speak Arabic…? Do you have a command of its local dialects…? Do you want to know how you may play a global roll and forge the path to a higher economical future for your self…? If you’ve answered, ” YES ” to the above, and you would like to find the means to achieve this desired goal; you should read the following [an ad for a company hiring linguists.] Shall you find your self or anyone you know with a solid determination and a steadfast belief to be an active member in our relentless effort to eradicate terrorism and bring it to extension? And shall you desire to place your mark on our history in the making, Swiftly contact us and we will be grateful to welcome you aboard.”
I especially liked the alliteration (“vanish villainous”), although if terrorism could vanish on its own, we wouldn’t need to fight it, now would we? … And I really had no idea that world peace could be “radiated” like a laser beam and, furthermore, that this world peace laser could be anthropomorphized to be “devout”. I wonder what its religious beliefs are, this world peace? And what of my “roll” in all this? But the kicker was the conclusion of the hiring ad: they actually want to bring terrorism to “extension,” instead of “extinction.” Is it any wonder we are losing this fight to “eradicate terrorism”? Lord help us.
The Grouch.
I’ve injured my back over four weeks ago and it doesn’t seem to be getting better. You name it, I’ve tried it: Creams, pills, exercise, no exercise, drinking lots of water, sleeping on the floor…nothing seems to work. Or rather, my back gets better for a few days and then it starts hurting again. At the moment, I’m in pain again. So I bought a heating pad, and that alleviates it a little, but I can’t very well have that on for 10 hours straight. The chiropractor cracked a few bones and adjusted some muscles, but mostly she sent me off with this advice: don’t sit. What? How can I not sit? What am I supposed to do all day? So of course, I sit. I have to work, after all. And so of course it hurts, and I get crankier. Maybe I should get a lectern and write standing up, a la Nabokov.
Turkmenistan. All I knew about the place was that it was an ex-Soviet Republic and that it agreed to let George W. access its borders for his war on the “forces of evil.” This week, though, I’m seeing the country and its leader in a whole new light.
Saparmourat Niyazov, an ex-communist who was elected president after the fall of the USSR, was declared “President for Life” in 1999 by the “People’s Council.” Niyazov was so happy with his new gig that he went on a restructuring spree. To wit:
He would henceforth be know as Turkmenbashi (meaning, Head of All Turkmen) or Turkmenbashi the Great. He decided that TV screens in his country would carry a golden silhouette of the leader at all times. He names cities, stadiums, and streets after himself. Next, he decreed that the months of the year would be renamed. January would be named after him: Turkmenbashi. Other months would be named after his political oeuvre, Turkmen poets, or national leaders. In a tell-tale sign, though, he decided that April would be named “Mother” in deference to his own mother, who died when he was young. T.S. Eliot said April is the cruelest month, and seeing how Niyazov turned out, maybe he was right. Finally, he decided to rename the stages of life. Adolescence lasts until the age of 25, and old age doesn’t kick in until age 85. Since I find that I am now in my “youth” period, I think I like his definitions better. Can you imagine conversations in Turkmenistan these days?
“Excuse me. Can you tell me the way to Turkmenbashi?”
“Why, just take Turkmenbashi down to Turkmenbashi!”
Or:
“Your little Turkmenbashi grows taller every day.”
“Yes, he will turn 5 next Turkmenbashi.”
Or:
“Do you Turkmenbashi?”
“Course I do, every day!”
I wonder what changes I would implement if I were a potentate…
Oh, look, it’s time for a Bush rant already. Let’s see…
Today he’s busy trying to look like he’s doing something about the economy, when he himself represents some of what is wrong with the economy. Things aren’t looking too good for many Americans, though they aren’t too bad if you’re in the top 1% of taxpayers. Meanwhile, most Americans don’t trust him to go to war against Iraq, and want him to get the approval of Congress and the support of U.S. allies before taking action.
All in the Eye of the Beholder.
“The man who wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” was an equally brilliant photographer. But in modern times Lewis Carroll’s achievements have been overshadowed by the widely held conviction that his primary inspiration, literary and artistic, was an unsavory obsession with little girls.
Even as scholarly revisionists have begun questioning this presumed linchpin of the Carroll psychobiography, a new exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is challenging viewers to take a fresh look at his photographs. “Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll” argues that if we set aside modernist aesthetics and tabloid Freudianism and view these pictures in their Victorian context, they reveal themselves to be serious artistic works less concerned with the beauty of children than with theatrics, allegory and artifice.
In other words, Carroll’s pictures reflect not pedophilia but a kind of premodern postmodernism.”
Carroll’s Artistry and Our Obsessions
Unfortunately, the show won’t be coming to Los Angeles. And to think I was in San Francisco just this last weekend and missed this.
The Guardian‘s George Monbiot had this to say about the impending war on Iraq:
“But the US government’s declaration of impending war has, in truth, nothing to do with weapons inspections. On Saturday John Bolton, the US official charged, hilariously, with “arms control”, told the Today programme that “our policy … insists on regime change in Baghdad and that policy will not be altered, whether inspectors go in or not”. The US government’s justification for whupping Saddam has now changed twice. At first, Iraq was named as a potential target because it was “assisting al-Qaida”. This turned out to be untrue. Then the US government claimed that Iraq had to be attacked because it could be developing weapons of mass destruction, and was refusing to allow the weapons inspectors to find out if this were so. Now, as the promised evidence has failed to materialise, the weapons issue has been dropped. The new reason for war is Saddam Hussein’s very existence. This, at least, has the advantage of being verifiable. It should surely be obvious by now that the decision to wage war on Iraq came first, and the justification later.”
The Logic of Empire
Monbiot might have a point. In this article, titled The Saddam in Rumsfeld’s Closet, the Secretary of Defense is quoted as saying, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Sounds Orwellian, doesn’t it?
Hilary Mantel reviews The Bondwoman’s Narrative in the London Review of Books. Having blogged about the Henry Louis Gates-edited book in the past (here and here), I was dismayed when I read this part:
“She knows Dickens well enough to lift a chunk of Bleak House and change foggy London into foggy Washington. But her borrowing is intelligent, because she sees into Dickens’s metaphor. ”
Isn’t it odd that she finds nothing wrong in the “borrowing”, yet in an earlier passage she has this to say about the author of Roots?
“More to the point in this instance is the embarrassing memory of Alex Haley’s Roots. In 1976 the book was marketed as ground-breaking black history. It proved to be not just fiction, but plagiarised fiction.”
I suppose it depends on who is being reviewed, whether it’s Alex Haley or Henry Louis Gates.
