Nepenthe

Angels in America at long last - though it's a production of 2003, mind you national TV ( RTP )backbiters - premiers tonight. Not merely AIDS and Americans, but rather the stuff the States are all about: Roy Cohn (Al Pacino): AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who a person sleeps with, but they don't tell you that. Henry (James Cromwell): No? Roy Cohn (Al Pacino): No. Like all labels they tell you one thing, and one thing only: Where does an individual so identified fit into the food chain, the pecking order? Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will come to the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, a homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men, but really this is wrong. A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anit-discrimination bill through the ...

O júri do Festival de Cannes defende o "Mérito Cinematográfico" de Fahrenheit 9/11 Quando entregou a Palma de Ouro de Cannes a Michael Moore, sábado à noite no Palais des Festivals, o presidente do júri, Quentin Tarantino, disse-lhe ao ouvido que o prémio a "Fahrenheit 9/11" "não era motivado por razões políticas". Ontem, numa inédita conferência de imprensa do júri (é a primeira vez que os jurados falam à imprensa depois das suas escolhas), confirmou a mensagem e reafirmou: "Nada do que se passa fora das bobines e dos rolos de filme influenciou a decisão. Quem fez os filmes, por que razão os fez... etc. Só nos interessou o mérito cinematográfico". E qual é o mérito cinematográfico de "Fahrenheit 9/11", documentário sob a forma de panfleto para (Moore assumiu-o) impedir George Bush de continuar na Casa Branca, recorrendo a imagens televisivas, não todas inéditas? "Por exemplo, o humor satírico", respondeu Tarantino...

What have we done, by Susan Sontag For a long time- at least six decades - photographs have laid down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered. The memory museum is now mostly a visual one. Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what we recall of events, and it now seems likely that the defining association of people everywhere with the rotten war that the United States launched preemptively in Iraq last year will be photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners in the most infamous of Saddam Hussein's prisons, Abu Ghraib. The Bush administration and its defenders have chiefly sought to limit a public relations disaster - the dissemination of the photographs - rather than deal with the complex crimes of leadership and of policy revealed by the pictures. There was, first of all, the displacement of the reality onto the photographs themselves. The administration's initial response was to say that the president was shocked and disgusted ...

The covers they didn't want you to see From phallic fingers and bare bums to terrorist targets and rape, Peter Blecha on the record sleeves that went that little bit too far. Taboo Tunes , by Peter Blecha.

Desenrascanço From Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia. (The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed.) Desenrascanço (loosely translatable as "disentanglement") is a Portuguese word used, in common language, to express an ability to solve a problem without having the knowledge or the adequate tools to do so, by use of imaginative resources or by applying knowledge to new situations. Achieved when resulting in a hypothetical good-enough solution. When that good solution doesn't occur we got a failure ( enrascanço - entanglement). It is taught, more or less, informally in some Portuguese institutions, such as universities, navy or army. Portuguese people, strongly believe it to be one of the their most valued virtues and a living part of their culture. Desenrascanço , in fact, is the opposite of planning, but managing for the problem not becoming completely out of control and without solution. However, some critics disagree with the association of the c...

Making a Movie Sexy An Interview to Hanif Kureishi The Mother , the latest movie you've written, tells the story of a 60-something woman who has an affair with a 30-something man, who happens to be sleeping with her daughter. Were you trying to be shocking or, perhaps, romantic? Some of both, probably. A while ago, I was at a restaurant with my mother, and she fancied the waiter's hands. She said to me, I worry that I will never be touched again, except by the undertaker. I kept thinking about that, how, as you get older, age and time become more and more interesting. The idea for The Mother involves sex of a scandalous nature, and I realized that would be a good starting point. But it was the undressing of her dignity that moved me. Most of your work has used sex as a point of departure. In the film Intimacy , which was based on two of your short stories, a couple meet weekly for anonymous sex; in your novel, The Body , a man trades his aging vessel for that o...

Madonna actua em Portugal a 12 de Setembro A empresa de promoção de espectáculos Tournée confirmou, na terça-feira, o concerto da cantora norte-americana Madonna em Portugal, no dia 12 de Setembro. Esta será a primeira vez Madonna actuará em Portugal. De acordo com a edição desta quarta-feira do DN, o concerto lisboeta, que terá lugar no Pavilhão Atlântico, assinalará o final da Re-Invention Tour , que passará apenas por um número restrito de cidades dos EUA, Canadá, Reino Unido, França, Holanda e Portugal. A digressão teve início na passada segunda-feira, em Los Angeles. Acompanhada em palco por 12 bailarinos, cinco músicos e duas cantoras, Madonna tem preparado, segundo o DN, para esta tournée, um alinhamento ao género de best of, com pelo menos uma música de cada um dos álbuns da cantora – com natural destaque para « American Life » -, com a surpresa a residir numa interpretação muito própria da música « Imagine », de John Lennon. O espectáculo obriga ainda Madonna a ci...

El libro que nunca debió escribirse

Euphoria led to the Holocaust Did the Holocaust began as the Nazis swept across Russia rather than as a response to their defeat at Moscow in The Origins of the Final Solution ?

Welcome to Planet Pixar How the pixel-packing upstart became an animation superpower and left Disney in the dust.

The On-line Orgasmic Simulation. You've always wondered how the other sex experiences an orgasm... Do you want to see the difference? Then try this Orgasmic Simulation .

For the record , I didn't go see any movie directed by this guy, I didn't read any book he's supposed to have penned, but I am not American so I don't really need another already-filthy-rich American to tell me Bush is the culprit (for everything). I know about the "standing ovation that, observers estimated, lasted somewhere between 12 and 15 minutes, a Cannes record, and possibly unmatched since Stalin's audiences used to continue clapping for mortal fear of being the first person to stop." - I'm an informed person meselfa, but really, "there is nothing the French love more than an American criticising America." NOW, Inside a well-manned salon, Moore was sporting a baseball cap with the legend 'Made in Canada', a blue hooded tracksuit top, khaki shorts and sandals. Crouched over a circular conference table, he looked like a lumpen tourist at a Vegas blackjack game, uncertain, ill at ease. 'You cool with them being he...

Will wonders never cease... The Golden Trailer Awards : The Academy Awards for the short-attention-spanned? (Already on the 5th annual show, mind you) Trailers in 17 categories ranging from "Best Action" to "Best Romance" to "Trashiest" to "Most Original" will compete for prizes in an irreverent ceremony that recognizes a familiar, yet obscure, corner of Hollywood: movie previews. Trailers for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and the Sean Penn vehicle "21 Grams" will be among those competing for the coveted Best of Show. We live in a golden age of trailers where sophisticated artists and editors conjure exciting, beautiful previews for even the worst movies. Recall, for instance, the majestic trailer for the drab, interminable "Pearl Harbor." It wasn't always that way. "The first credited movie trailer was from 1912, 'The Adventures of Kathlyn,' " says Ms. Brady. The crude trail...

The "Modern" Japanese Woman Japanese culture, although often imagined in terms of harmony and tranquillity, is frequently marked by tension and anxiety. The Taisho era (1912-26) has been conceived as a progressive period in which the jazz age merged with democratic politics to produce what is often termed " Taisho liberalism." Yet Taisho ... was a time of dramatic transformation and transition as the values of the native past and those of the seemingly foreign future frequently confronted each other in stark contrast. These tensions ... came to fruition with the ultranationalist ideology supporting Japan's wars from 1931 to 1945. With the growth of an urban, industrial, and increasingly international society, where values were instantly and endlessly discussed in the mass media, Japanese ruminated on the nature of national, social, and cultural identity. An essential question resided in all spheres: How could one be both Japanese and modern,...

KISS OF THE YOGINI "Tantric sex" in its South Asian context David Gordon White Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Note on Transliteration Abbreviations of Titles of Sanskrit Works 1. Tantra in Its South Asian Contexts 2. The Origins of the Yogini: Bird, Animal and Tree Goddesses and Demonesses in South Asia 3. The Blood of the Yogini: Vital and Sexual Fluids in South Asian Thought and Practice 4. The Mouth of the Yogini: Sexual Transactions in Tantric Ritual 5. The Power of the Yogini: Tantric Actors in South Asia 6. The Consort of the Yogini: South Asian Siddha Cults and Traditions 7. The Flight of the Yogini: Fueling the Flight of Tantric Witches 8. The Sublimation of the Yogini: The Subordination of the Feminine in High Hindu Tantra 9. Tantra New Millennium Notes Bibliography Index By reconstructing the medieval South Asian Kaula and Tantric traditions that involved sexual practices, David White hopes to resto...

The Tempest By William Shakespeare Ultra-Condensed by Samuel Stoddard and David J. Parker Prospero Ariel, help me strand my enemies on my magic island. (Prospero and Ariel use their magic to trap his enemies and exact revenge.) Prospero That's enough. Enemies, I forgive you all, and one of you can marry my daughter. I'm going home. THE END

A Thomas Pynchon website

Portugal está de moda. Terra abre su portal con el festival Rock in Rio .

You are Salmon Roe Nigiri Sushi! You are the type of pretty sushi seen most in sushi bars. You are colorful and tasty.

From The New Yorker The Punch Line, by Jim Holt A few years ago, browsing in a dusty used-book store in Maine, I came across a curious volume. It was a fat, tattered paperback bearing the title “Rationale of the Dirty Joke.” Its author, I saw from the sixties-style futuristic cover, was G. Legman. Taking it off the shelf and riffling though its badly oxidized pages, I found that it contained what looked like thousands of erotic and scatological jokes, arranged under such themes as “coital postures,” “the big inch,” and “zoöphily.” These jokes were accompanied by Freudian-style commentary, along with random animadversions on aspects of sixties life, like Zip Codes, hippies, women who swear, and Marshall McLuhan. The most striking aspect of the volume was the author’s esoteric scholarship, exemplified by this sentence from the introduction: Particular attention should be drawn to three rare works presenting Modern Greek, Arabic, and other Levantine erotic tales and foolstories: L...

Overnight posting (it ain't overnight here in California, though) What kind of Nigiri sushi are you? It turns out that: You are Shrimp Nigiri Sushi! You are shy and sweet. You are a great delicacy.

Hollywood Ending , 2002 Ellie (Téa Leoni): Our marriage wasn't going anywhere. Val (Woody Allen): Where do you want it to go? Where do marriages go? After a while they just lay there. That's the thing about marriages. Val : What the hell am I doing in Canada? Lori, they got moose up here. Moose. Are moose carnivorous? Val : For me, the nicest thing about masturbation is afterward, the cuddling time. Val : We had sex. Ellie : Yes, we had sex. But we never talked. Val: Sex is better than talk. Ask anybody in this bar. Talk is what you suffer through so you can get to sex.

Charles C. Ebbets Lunch on a Skyscraper , 1932

Chema Madoz

Apenas te he dejado, vas en mí, cristalina o temblorosa, o inquieta, herida por mí mismo o colmada de amor, como cuando tus ojos se cierran sobre el don de la vida que sin cesar te entrego. Amor mío, nos hemos encontrado sedientos y nos hemos bebido toda el agua y la sangre, nos encontramos con hambre y nos mordimos como el fuego muerde, dejándonos heridas. Pero espérame, guárdame tu dulzura. Yo te daré también una rosa.

A Feira do Livro de Lisboa começa hoje :-). É bom, mas os descontos são ridículos, ou por outra, à medida da algibeira pobre dos portugueses, mesmo porque os livros também não são tão caros como "lá fora". Enfim...

The Guardian on Pedro Almodóvar's " La mala educación " "Pedro Almodóvar has done it again. His new movie is a dizzying and rapturous noir melodrama, a little like Hitchcock's Vertigo with layers of confusion and contradiction. Perhaps it's not as powerful as his most recent film, Talk to Her, nor as extravagantly emotional as All About My Mother, but it is absorbing and playful and sensuous as only this director can be"

PARABÉNS :-D Há UM ANO que este blogue existe!!!

Slip inside the eye of your mind Don't you know you might find A better place to play You said that you'd never been But all the things that you've seen Will slowly fade away So I start a revolution from my bed 'Cos you said the brains I had went to my head Step outside, summertime's in bloom Stand up beside the fireplace Take that look from off your face You ain't ever gonna burn my heart out And so Sally can wait, she knows it's too late as we're walking on by Her soul slides away, but don't look back in anger I heard you say Take me to the place where you go Where nobody knows if it's night or day But please don't put your life in the hands Of a Rock n Roll band Who'll throw it all away I'm gonna start a revolution from my bed 'Cos you said the brains I had went to my head Step outside 'cos summertime's in bloom Stand up beside the fireplace Take that look from off your face 'Cos you ...

My Goodness (or the drawbacks of religion? pliz...) Childless couple told to try sex A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren't having sex. The University Clinic of Lubek said they had never heard of a case like it after examining the couple who went to see them last month for fertility tests. Doctors subjected them to a series of examinations and found they were both apparently fertile, and should have had no trouble conceiving. A clinic spokesman said: "When we asked them how often they had had sex, they looked blank, and said: "What do you mean?". "We are not talking retarded people here, but a couple who were brought up in a religious environment who were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate." The 30-year-old wife and her 36-year-old husband are now being given sex therapy less...

Hollywood Ending hoje na 2: às 22h00 :-)

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! The world forgetting , by the world forgot Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd. "Eloisa to Abelard" , Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

LA ADAPTACIÓN DE ALATRISTE, A PUNTO DE COMENZAR La adaptación cinematográfica de las aventuras del Capitán Alatriste va viento en popa, según ha explicado el autor de las novelas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte. El escritor asegura que el rodaje comenzará en septiembre y es muy posible que finalmente sea Viggo Mortensen quien encarne al protagonista de la saga, ya que "está encantado con la película". Según explicó Pérez-Reverte durante su visita a la Fundación Antonio Gala, el intérprete de Aragorn en la trilogía de El Señor de los Anillos ha sido "contactado y posiblemente haga el filme, pero hasta que no firme un contrato no puede decirse que estará con seguridad". La versión cinematográfica del capitán Alatriste, dirigida por Agustín Díaz Yanes, será, en palabras de Pérez-Reverte, una "película carísima, que se rodará en España y se proyectará en EEUU y en todas partes en español y por eso hay que quitarse el sombrero, porque es una chulería que está muy bien...

Photigami : Origami and Photoshop :-D [thanx to Marc]

Nuestros Jefes Quando em 2001 o Eurostat anunciou que dentro de 50 anos a população de Espanha estaria reduzida a metade, a primeira pergunta que ocorria a um português atento era: "Caramba, e quem vai dirigir as nossas empresas nessa altura?" Não era xenofobia -era objectividade. Porque o nosso universo empresarial era há dois anos (e continua hoje a ser) um palco privilegiado para os espanhóis se testarem para lugares de maior responsabilidade no país vizinho. Para os portugueses que pensam gerir-se a si mesmos, o medo é cíclico: "Na próxima semana vem cá o espanhol..." Para os que reportam directamente a um director-geral castelhano, o pânico é permanente: "Fala baixo, que o espanhol ainda te ouve..." Os yuppies são, por isso, os primeiros agentes avançados do intercâmbio cultural entre os dois países ibéricos. E compreender a verdadeira essência das relações entre Portugal e Espanha jamais poderia fazer-se sem viajar até ao seio das empresas milt...

Kurt Vonnegut's Web Page Cold Turkey Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace. But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas. ------------------------- When you get to my age, if you get t...

Americans have started to notice prices at the pump with an unfamiliar '2' on the sign. Meanwhile, crude oil prices are hitting 13-year records close to $40 per barrel. As the International Energy Agency reports, there is "no relief in sight". All this should come as no surprise to readers of David Goodstein's Out of Gas - the only question is, have we left it too late to survive the inevitable shocks that are coming? In this slim and subtly illustrated volume Dr. Goodstein, physics professor and vice provost at Caltech, explains in clear and simple terms why the fossil fuel age is coming to an end. A "massive, focused commitment" is needed to develop alternatives, and every year of delay in that commitment adds immeasurably to future human suffering. In years, or at best a decade, we will reach the global "Hubbert's peak" for conventional oil, when production starts to decline even with rising demand. Such a peak was reached for U...

God: An itinerary " Theography ": a map of the idea of God. He's quite clear that this is not a natural or very ancient belief. Almost all human societies have something we call religion, and there's a lot of evidence that humans are naturally superstitious, seeing agency and purpose in inanimate objects.

"Perpetrators of Genocide: An Explanatory Model of Extraordinary Human Evil" , by James Waller: The twentieth century, the "Age of Genocide", moved from the near-complete annihilation of the Hereros by the Germans in South-West Africa in 1904; to the brutal assault of the Armenian population by the Turks between 1915 and 1923; to the implementation of a Soviet man-made famine in the Ukraine in 1932-1933 that left several million peasants starving to death; to the Soviet deportation of entire nations; to the extermination of two-thirds of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust of 1939-1945; to the massacre of approximately half a million people in Indonesia during 1965-1966; to mass killings and genocide in Bangladesh (1971), Burundi (1972), Cambodia (1975-1979), East Timor (1975-1979) and Rwanda (1994); and, finally, to the perpetual human crisis that continues to rage in the former Yugoslavia. Insightful study featuring an Explanatory Model of Extraordinary Human ...

BEAST ly photos :-)

A Colorful California Roadtrip (Carmel Valley, Afton, Redwood National Park) (Pasadena, Baker, San Francisco) [obrigada ao Tito]

Following the "Brad Pitt in faldita" mood that swarms the country Which Homeric hero are you? I'm Hector...

Wish I was living in Lisbon to attend all these events. A truly nice repertoire in a nice place Already seen it but I'd not mind seeing it again at all... CATS (estreia dia 6 de Outubro) Norah Jones 08 de Junho – 22H00 (abertura de portas às 21H00) Still remember his trio with Paco de Lucía and Al di Meola... John McLaughlin "Remember Shakti" 09 de Julho – 21H30 (abertura de portas às 20H00) El maestro Paco de Lucia 10 de Setembro – 21H30 (abertura de portas às 20H00) Nice poster... Joaquín Cortês 12 e 13 de Maio – 21H30 (abertura de portas às 20H30)

El Mar Cantábrico

, sítio histórico, excelente sítio na Web :-)

Martin Allen es un especialista en la Segunda Guerra Mundial que sorprendió a propios y extraños hace bien poco con su estudio Eduardo VIII , el rey traidor, donde desvelaba las simpatías pro-nazis del duque de Windsor antes y después de la abdicación a que se vio forzado en 1936 para poder casarse con la divorciada norteamericana Wallis Simpson. El estudio que presentamos aborda otra cuestión enigmática de aquel conflicto bélico. ¿Por qué voló Rudolf Hess a Escocia solo y desarmado, saltando en paracaídas y siendo capturado por los británicos, para no regresar jamás a la libertad y morir en 1987 en la cárcel de Spandau, a los 94 años de edad, suicidado según la versión oficial? El autor ha realizado una exhaustiva investigación sobre archivos secretos británicos y alemanes... y en menor medida españoles, pues pese a que puntos esenciales de la trama que describe tuvieron lugar en Madrid, los documentos necesarios no se desclasificarán hasta 2017. Afectan a las andanzas en nu...