Nepenthe

Newly arrived movie (here, and not a minute too soon - it's from 2002):

And now for something completely different, or is it? :-) Adventures in Basqueland

Tokyo on One Cliché a Day courtesy of Slate Magazine

Livro do meu amor, do teu amor, Livro do nosso amor, do nosso peito, Abre-lhe as folhas devagar, com jeito, Como se fossem pétalas de flor. Florbela Espanca A Editora 101 Noites celebra o Dia dos Namorados com o lançamento do livro As Mais Belas Cartas de Amor . Um livro que promete inflamar os corações dos leitores através das cartas apaixonadas de grandes vultos da literatura portuguesa e estrangeira como Fernando Pessoa, Mariana Alcoforado, Charles Baudelaire, Almeida Garrett, Katherine Mansfield, Edgar Allan Poe, John Keats, Victor Hugo, entre outros. Os amores dos escritores, os seus encontros e desencontros, as suas paixões e as suas mágoas inspiraram arrebatadas páginas que nos permitem aceder à sua intimidade. E quando os escritores se abandonam ao prazer da escrita e se deixam levar pela emoção, a vida e a literatura confundem-se. Porque o amor também é literatura. Carta de Almeida Garrett à Viscondessa da Luz " Tu já não és só a minha amante...

Imagine if poor countries of the world caught up with the rich: Chinese in SUVs. Bollywood more famous than Hollywood. McDonald’s a minor ethnic cuisine... A Development Nightmare

The Postmodernism Generator : Communications from Elsewhere. Just keep refreshing the page so you can get all kinds of post-modern/post-mortem essays on the ineffable :-) To think we didn't have this in college... tss tss :-D

Remeber.org has a wide array of material regarding the Holocaust and the liberation. There I came across the sketches of several camps Check how the russian prisoners are isolated from the rest. No wonder the Germans ran across countries to surrender to the Yanks after all they did to the Soviet prisoners (first gas chambers in Auschwitz where tested on Russian prisoners)

Francis Wheen 's top 10 modern delusions : 1. "God is on our side"; 2. The market is rational; 3. There is no such thing as reality; 4. We mustn't be "judgmental"; 5. Laissez-faire capitalism is the prerequisite for trade and prosperity; 6. Astrology and similar delusions are "harmless fun"; 7. Thin air is solid; 8. Sentimental hysteria is a sign of emotional maturity; 9. America's economic success is entirely due to private enterprise; 10. "It could be you..."

Some cathartic pics from the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace in Beijing:

I will not post any pics on this because it's too painful. Here are a couple of sites about the Rape of Nanking . And another one. Beware that some of the pics in here are extremely gruesome. A text excerpt: "Yet the Rape of Nanking remains an obscure incident. Although the death toll exceeds the immediate number of deaths from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (140,000 and 70,000 respectively, by the end of 1945) and even the total civilian casualties for several European countries during the entire war (Great Britain lost 61,000 civilians, France 108,000, Belgium 101,000, and the Netherlands 242,000), the horrors of the Nanking massacre remain virtually unknown to people outside Asia. [...] THE MILITARY POLICY forbidding rape only encouraged soldiers to kill their victims after wards. Kozo Takokoro was blunt about this. "After raping, we would also kill them," he recalled. "Those women would start to flee once we let them go. Then we...

The End of Happy Endings? By Pico Iyer Happy endings are presumed to belong to the realm of fantasy. In real life, after all, even a thumping electoral victory is generally more a first act than a last; what ensues, much too often, is disappointment, broken promises and even murmurs of a recall. When the believer, in any faith, tells us that the reward for bloody sacrifice is eternal joy, the nonbeliever is often tempted to think that the believer is merely trying to justify the ways of God to man. On earth at least, the end of life is death. America, though, is the spiritual home of new beginnings, which may be why it has always had a soft spot, a special gift, for happy endings. We speak brightly of ''closure,'' as if the most difficult things in life could be wrapped up as neatly as a gift package; we speak of people ''passing on,'' as if the end of life were just a passing phase. America, in fact, could almost be defined as the place that c...

An Auschwitz in Korea

Since we're at language , here's the new lexicon for all things (formerly know as) «homosexual», from San Francisco , no less :-).

A Loss for Words Americans may mean what they say, but they can't always summon the language to say what they mean. By John Powers I don't know how many times I've heard it, or read it, even in this newspaper: "The proof is in the pudding." "No, it isn't," I want to scream. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Cervantes wrote that four centuries ago. And don't get me started about having your cake and eating it, too. You have to have your cake in order to eat it. The trick is to eat it and still have it. At least it used to be, back when we knew our proverbs and weren't misusing the word "proverbial." Not that America is going to fall apart because we butcher a few bromides. But I'm concerned about a country that's not quite sure what it's saying and doesn't seem to care. We say "transpire" when we mean "happen." We say "momentarily" when we mean "s...

En una noche escura con ansias en amores inflamada ¡o dichosa ventura! salí sin ser notada estando ya mi casa sosegada. ascuras y segura por la secreta escala, disfraçada, ¡o dichosa ventura! a escuras y en celada estando ya mi casa sosegada. En la noche dichosa en secreto que naide me veýa, ni yo mirava cosa sin otra luz y guía sino la que en el coraçón ardía. Aquésta me guiava más cierto que la luz de mediodía adonde me esperava quien yo bien me savía en parte donde naide parecía. ¡O noche, que guiaste! ¡O noche amable más que la alborada! ¡oh noche que juntaste amado con amada, amada en el amado transformada! En mi pecho florido, que entero para él solo se guardaba allí quedó dormido y yo le regalaba y el ventalle de cedros ayre daba. El ayre de la almena quando yo sus cavellos esparcía con su mano serena en mi cuello hería y todos mis sentidos suspendía. Quedéme y olbidéme el rostro recliné sobre el amado; cessó todo, y dexéme dex...

Festival Porto Cartoon, 1º, 2º e 3º prémios , respectivamente :-)

Porque Porque os outros se mascaram mas tu não Porque os outros usam a virtude Para comprar o que não tem perdão Porque os outros têm medo mas tu não Porque os outros são os túmulos caiados Onde germina calada a podridão. Porque os outros se calam mas tu não. Porque os outros se compram e se vendem E os seus gestos dão sempre dividendo. Porque os outros são hábeis mas tu não. Porque os outros vão à sombra dos abrigos E tu vais de mãos dadas com os perigos. Porque os outros calculam mas tu não. Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

Still on the Guardian: End of the US empire

Where does New York writer Paul Auster get his ideas from? Don't ask him, he hasn't a clue. What's clear, however, is that his new book, 'Oracle Night' is a work of art