ANOTHER WASTE LAND

AIDS

2010-08-05T09:17:00.000+02:00

DNA

2009-06-21T15:04:00.003+02:00

Respiration in the human body

2009-06-21T14:51:00.002+02:00

Digestive system

2009-06-21T14:47:00.003+02:00

heart and heart diseases

2009-06-21T14:39:00.003+02:00

S. Beckett - PLAY

2009-06-18T17:19:00.001+02:00

Stream of consciousness

2009-03-26T13:38:00.000+01:00

Stream of consciousness

the continuous flow of sense‐perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind; or a literary method of representing such a blending of mental processes in fictional characters, usually in an unpunctuated or disjointed form of interior monologue. The term is often used as a synonym for interior monologue, but they can also be distinguished, in two ways. In the first (psychological) sense, the stream of consciousness is the subject‐matter while interior monologue is the technique for presenting it; thus Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) is about the stream of consciousness, especially the connection between sense‐impressions and memory, but it does not actually use interior monologue. In the second (literary) sense, stream of consciousness is a special style of interior monologue: while an interior monologue always presents a character's thoughts ‘directly’, without the apparent intervention of a summarizing and selecting narrator, it does not necessarily mingle them with impressions and perceptions, nor does it necessarily violate the norms of grammar, syntax, and logic; but the stream‐of‐consciousness technique also does one or both of these things. An important device of modernist fiction and its later imitators, the technique was pioneered by Dorothy Richardson in Pilgrimage (1915–35) and by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922), and further developed by Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) and William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury (1928). For a fuller account, consult Robert Humphrey, Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel (1968).

Animal Farm - George Orwell

2009-03-09T18:50:00.003+01:00

Old Major, a prize-winning boar, gathers the animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting in the big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had in which all animals live together with no human beings to oppress or control them. He tells the animals that they must work toward such a paradise and teaches them a song called “Beasts of England,” in which his dream vision is lyrically described. The animals greet Major's vision with great enthusiasm. When he dies only three nights after the meeting, three younger pigs—Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer—formulate his main principles into a philosophy called Animalism. Late one night, the animals manage to defeat the farmer Mr. Jones in a battle, running him off the land. They rename the property Animal Farm and dedicate themselves to achieving Major's dream. The cart-horse Boxer devotes himself to the cause with particular zeal, committing his great strength to the prosperity of the farm and adopting as a personal maxim the affirmation “I will work harder.”

At first, Animal Farm prospers. Snowball works at teaching the animals to read, and Napoleon takes a group of young puppies to educate them in the principles of Animalism. When Mr. Jones reappears to take back his farm, the animals defeat him again, in what comes to be known as the Battle of the Cowshed, and take the farmer's abandoned gun as a token of their victory. As time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball increasingly quibble over the future of the farm, and they begin to struggle with each other for power and influence among the other animals. Snowball concocts a scheme to build an electricity-generating windmill, but Napoleon solidly opposes the plan. At the meeting to vote on whether to take up the project, Snowball gives a passionate speech. Although Napoleon gives only a brief retort, he then makes a strange noise, and nine attack dogs—the puppies that Napoleon had confiscated in order to “educate”—burst into the barn and chase Snowball from the farm. Napoleon assumes leadership of Animal Farm and declares that there will be no more meetings. From that point on, he asserts, the pigs alone will make all of the decisions—for the good of every animal.

Napoleon now quickly changes his mind about the windmill, and the animals, especially Boxer, devote their efforts to completing it. One day, after a storm, the animals find the windmill toppled. The human farmers in the area declare smugly that the animals made the walls too thin, but Napoleon claims that Snowball returned to the farm to sabotage the windmill. He stages a great purge, during which various animals who have allegedly participated in Snowball's great conspiracy—meaning any animal who opposes Napoleon's uncontested leadership—meet instant death at the teeth of the attack dogs. With his leadership unquestioned (Boxer has taken up a second maxim, “Napoleon is always right”), Napoleon begins expanding his powers, rewriting history to make Snowball a villain. Napoleon also begins to act more and more like a human being—sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in trade with neighboring farmers. The original Animalist principles strictly forbade such activities, but Squealer, Napoleon's propagandist, justifies every action to the other animals, convincing them that Napoleon is a great leader and is making things better for everyone—despite the fact that the common animals are cold, hungry, and overworked.

Mr. Frederick, a neighboring farmer, cheats Napoleon in the purchase of some timber and then attacks the farm and dynamites the windmill, which had been rebuilt at great expense. After the demolition of the windmill, a pitched battle ensues, during which Boxer receives major wounds. The animals rout the farmers, but Boxer's injuries weaken him. When he later falls while working on the windmill, he senses that his time has nearly come. One day, Boxer is nowhere to be found. According to Squealer, Boxer has died in peace after having been taken to the hospital, praising the Rebellion with his last breath. In actuality, Napoleon has sold his most loyal and long-suffering worker to a glue maker in order to get money for whisky.

Years pass on Animal Farm, and the pigs become more and more like human beings—walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing clothes. Eventually, the seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments and inscribed on the side of the barn, become reduced to a single principle reading “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Napoleon entertains a human farmer named Mr. Pilkington at a dinner and declares his intent to ally himself with the human farmers against the laboring classes of both the human and animal communities. He also changes the name of Animal Farm back to the Manor Farm, claiming that this title is the “correct” one. Looking in at the party of elites through the farmhouse window, the common animals can no longer tell which are the pigs and which are the human beings.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/animalfarm/context.html

Naomi Klein

2009-01-13T12:51:00.002+01:00

The shock doctrine - A. Cuaron / N. Klein

2008-11-02T09:51:00.001+01:00

Maths language and symbols

2008-10-11T09:52:00.005+02:00

4H
mathematical_symbols
maths videos.html

Gray's Anatomy

2008-10-07T13:17:00.003+02:00

3H - 4H - 5H
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray

Skin anatomy

2008-10-07T13:02:00.003+02:00

4H
anatomy.html

Skin diseases

2008-10-07T12:35:00.002+02:00

4H
skin diseases
Angioma
Acne
Cyst
Dandruff
Dermatofibroma
Xerosis (Dry Skin)
Dermatitis
Alopecia
Herpes Simplex and Zoster
Melanoma
Moles
Mycosis Fungoides
Psoriasis
Scabies
Urticaria (Hives)
Vitiligo

Booze & drugs

2008-10-04T09:46:00.008+02:00

http://www.bankhead.net/BoozeAndDrugs/classification.html - Classification of drugs

http://www.padui.org/effect.htm - Effects of alcohol and drugs on human body

http://www.drug-effects.com/ - Effects of drugs on brain

The heart

2008-10-04T09:24:00.006+02:00

5H
http://www.heartlibrary.com/heart-library-heart-anatomy.aspx - Videos
Introducion to Heart anatomy
Arrhythmias
Heart diseases
Hearth health
Patients' stories
FAQ
Glossary

Respiratory deseases

2008-10-01T15:46:00.003+02:00

Class 5H
Respiratory diseases:
Asthma
Asthma attack
Bronchitis
Influenza
Pneumonia
Emphysema
Tuberculosis
Pleurisy
Lung cancer

AIDS

2008-10-01T15:18:00.005+02:00

Class 5H
Lesson (slide presentation)
What is aids - (texts)

Eating disorders

2008-10-01T15:02:00.004+02:00

Class 5H -

http://www.mirror-mirror.org/ed.htm
Anorexia nervosa
Bulimia nervosa
Binge eating disorder
Compulsive overeating
Dangerous methods
Social impact
Teenagers
Women
Men
Athletes

W. H. Auden - The unknown citizen

2008-09-24T10:33:00.000+02:00

S. Beckett - Waiting for Godot

2008-09-20T17:22:00.003+02:00

H. Pinter - The Caretaker (The job offer)

2008-09-18T22:11:00.009+02:00

T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock / The Waste Land (The Burial of the Dead) / The Hollow Men

2008-09-18T22:11:00.007+02:00

James Joyce - The dead (all the living and the dead)

2008-09-18T22:11:00.001+02:00

Eveline - James Joyce

2008-09-17T13:32:00.001+02:00

James Joyce’s “Eveline,” focuses on a character of the same name amidst an emotional turmoil. This story could be deemed a love tale which involves Eveline who struggles to remove herself from the strong ties to her family and follow her love, Frank, to Buenos Aires. Joyce uses literary elements such as setting, symbols, and themes that help convey Eveline’s emotional struggle.

This story begins in a town in Ireland with the introduction of family characters. Family seems to be a strong theme in Joyce’s writing. This theme is evident when Eveline stays home and takes over the motherly duties in the household as a teen after a promise was made to her dying mother. Death plays a major role in this story as the author points out that many of Eveline’s friends and family are said to have died at some point. Symbolism such as dust collecting around the house and the aged yellow painting of Mary Margaret Alocoque, a French nun, enable the reader to get a sense of the death and loneliness surrounding Eveline. There are several issues presented by Joyce that give rise to Eveline’s internal conflict of breaking the promise to her mother and leaving with Frank. One major problem is that the family is very poor and money is a very precious resource in their lives. Eveline expresses the importance of money when she is walking to the market with her purse clasped close to her body almost as if to protect it as though it were her very own life. Her family’s poverty is apparent when Frank takes her to the theater and she expresses her delight with the seats Frank has purchased because she has been accustomed to sitting in the back row due to her inability to purchase better seats.

To Eveline, Frank represents a new and exciting lifestyle that she has not had the opportunity to experience after taking over the mother role. Her routine, mundane lifestyle that Eveline has led appears to be comforting to her because of its stability, whereas being with Frank is something new and spontaneous. Perhaps Eveline is not so much in love with Frank as she is with the opportunity to embark on a new lifestyle that contradicts everything she has known and become accustomed to. When the time comes for Eveline to make her life altering decision she falters. Frank is urging her to go as they are at the station and Eveline becomes frozen in a state of emotional paralysis, unable to make a decision. Again, Joyce uses symbolism when Eveline grips onto the handrails that lead down the steps to her new life. The handrails represent stability and control. They represent the life she has always known and the comfort that it provides. James Joyce tells us that Eveline lacks the strength to make her own decision. Therefore, she remains dysfunctional due to her fear of failure, promise to her mother, or guilt that she faces for leaving her family behind. Joyce is able to exaggerate all of these feelings inside Eveline primarily because of his writing style. The use of these literary elements gives a more intense understanding of the emotional quarrel that Eveline is forced to deal with.

R. Burns - To a Mouse / To a Louse

2008-09-04T23:42:00.011+02:00

Robert Burns' "To a Mouse" (1785) is a deeply poetic monologue of a young man who accidently overturns the soil of a mouse's nest. Emotionally surrendering to the pitiful scene, Burns' narrator succumbs to the weight of his past failures and fears for the future and expresses himself in a profoundly poignant soliloquy. One of the lines, now a famous quote, "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / gang aft agley" (38-39), is perhaps one of the most profound quotes of Scottish, and indirectly, European and American literature. Burns' poem, in its intimate solidarity with all men, touches the reader in ways few poetic works ever really can. To understand what Burns' "To a Mouse" genuinely means to a reader is to know their darkest, innermost secrets and most remorseful memories of regret. It is this intimacy that gives Burns' "To a Mouse" its intensity.Scottish writer, Robert Burns (1759 - 1796), was an accomplished and very well known Scottish poet whose works went well beyond the borders of Scotland. Often writing in English as well as a light Scot-English dialect, his writing was readily accessible to readerships throughout Europe and North America. "To a Mouse," would be an example of one of Burns' 'Scot-English' works, with its deep, predominantly English verse accented with some Scottish vocabulary and culture-typical idioms. Often, when an English speaker is reading Burns, they must imagine a smooth rhythmic Scottish accent, and try to avoid toiling over any literal meanings of English words spelled in Scottish dialect. Burns must be 'felt'; allowing the words to flow uninterrupted so that the greater theme can more freely reveal itself. In the case of Burns' "To a Mouse," the message is a theme that is absolutely worth the relationship.
The first six stanzas of Burns' "To a Mouse" is a heart felt description and apology to a little 'mousie' who has had her nest destroyed by the narrator who was plowing his field. With all her work destroyed by the blade of the farmer's plow, the little mouse's fate of dying in the harsh December weather is assured. The narrator tries to tell the terrified little mouse that he had meant her no harm and, that though she stole the odd piece of corn, he never actually held any malice towards her for doing so. He goes on to say that in many ways he was glad to share for the sake of the little creature, and felt that man's progress has already broken too many of God's natural bonds. These bonds are the connections that they as fellow mortal beings shared against the suffering and cruel interventions of chance and fate on Earth.
It is here, as Burn's narrator pours his heart out to this pitiful little 'mousie,' that the narrator seems to be undone by what has happened to her. In the lines "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley, / An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, / For promis'd joy!" (38-41), he tries to explain that no matter how well thought out or how well intentioned our plans may be, even the best of them can be ruined by a simple turn of luck; the mouse's nest, a careful and diligent construction of a summer's labor, was just as easily destroyed as any house or farm ever built by man. For our labors, our most earnest hopes, Burn's narrator mourns and describes their returns of "grief an' pain, / For promised joy!" (40-41).It's this turn in the course of the poem's theme after the seventh stanza, Burns' full intentions coming to light, that the narrator reveals why he is talking to this frightful mouse in such a pathetic manner. He see's in the mouse a fellow victim of the hand of fate, and cannot but feel empathy for her loss. The narrator speaks as if he himself has recently lost a dream that he too saw hewn in half by some uncontrollable force of destiny. As he talks to the mouse, it seems fresh in his mind as the describes the past as a stinging recollection of failures; "Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! / The present only toucheth the: / But Ouch! I backward cast my e'e, / On prospect drear! / An' forward, though' I canna see, / I guess and fear!" (Line 42-47). As many who have suffered failure and loss, Burns' narrator, or perhaps Burns himself, expresses jealousy for the mouse's ability to live perpetually in the present without a past to rush painfully back into her mind whenever she remembers. Burns' narrator, in this distant forlorn monologue, describes how he can only guess what the future may hold, and fears for its uncertain outcome. It seems that Burns' narrator has been wrestling with this repressed pain and worry for some time, and now, only with the emotional catalyst of the mouse's disaster is he forced face them. He somehow feels obligated to apologize to a little creature that has no understanding of what he's trying to say, and whose death is all but assured thanks to his ignorant action. Yet, in some metaphysical metaphor, Burns manages to turn the mouse into a tiny helpless symbol of ourselves, terrified at a world that could so easily destroy us at any moment, and make us wonder if God feels the same way we do when he stands over disaster.

T. Gray - Elegy written in a country churchyard

2008-08-28T13:53:00.008+02:00

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

[...]

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,

And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),

The bosom of his Father and his God.

A- Tennyson - Ulysses; R. Browning - My Last Duchess

2008-08-24T21:31:00.007+02:00

W. Blake - London / The Lamb / The Tyger

2008-07-17T13:11:00.007+02:00

Themes in Pre-Romanticism and Romanticism:

http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html

W. Wordsworth - Daffodils

2008-07-09T08:29:00.003+02:00

Robinson Crusoe - Colonialism and Imperialism

2008-05-16T12:02:00.004+02:00

In order to keep expanding, capitalism requires a cheap source of raw materials and markets for finished products. Colonies serve both functions for the mother country. So though capitalism and colonialism are not identical, they are closely associated. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, colonialism and imperialism were generally synonymous; today the terms are still often interchanged, though they are not truly identical. In colonialism, one nation controls the territory, the economy, and the political structure of another country; in imperialism, one nation extends its empire or its dominion over another nation. Thus, colonialism is one form that imperialism may take in extending its domination of other lands; today, however, imperialism is more likely to consist of a wealthy, powerful nation coercing or threatening weak or poor nations to control them politically and/or economically.
Crusoe acts as a colonizer in assuming complete dominion over the island and any people he encounters. The land and all its products belong to him. Several times he notes the abundance of trees suitable for making masts (the British navy and merchant ships looked to the American colonies to meet their need for trees to make masts). Crusoe's actions as an individual duplicate those of nations in claiming land for colonies. When Crusoe leaves the island, he leaves behind English and Spanish sailors as colonists. An absence of years does not diminish his ownership. The chapter which narrates his return to the island is titled "I Revisit My Island" (italics added for emphasis). He visits "my" colony on the island (298) and gives some land to the Europeans, keeping title to the whole island for himself. In return, they agree not to leave the island (do they have any choice, since Crusoe has the only boat?).
As an embryo imperialist, Crusoe sees himself as king and others as his subjects, including his pets. He creates, not a democracy, not a republic, but a kingdom He imposes his will on others, most obviously Friday, but also on the worst of the English mutineers, whom he forces into staying on the island. For James Joyce, Robinson Crusoe is "prophetic," forecasting English imperialism:
The true symbol of British conquest is Robinson Crusoe, who, cast away on a desert island, in his pocket a knife and a pipe, becomes an architect, a carpenter, a knife grinder, an astronomer, a baker, a shipwright, a potter, a saddler, a farmer, a tailor, an umbrella-maker, and a clergyman. He is the true prototype of the British colonist, as Friday (the trusty slave who arrives on an unlucky day) is the symbol of the subject races. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity.
Crusoe as imperialist-conqueror is not a twentieth century invention, as Jules Fesquet's 1877 illustration of a heroic Crusoe demonstrates. Fesquet presents Crusoe as Hercules with a nude muscular body, Hercules's trademark lion's skin, and a sword. His sovereign rule is suggested by the orb he holds and the abject submission of the native. This picture asserts European domination over native populations, whose inferiority is expressed not only in the caannibal's submissive posture but in a somewhat less muscular body. The limitlessness of Crusoe's/the white man's power is suggested by the absence of a frame around the original illustration. An aside: do you think the prone figure is Friday?

R. Kipling - If

2008-04-30T22:09:00.007+02:00

Technological heroes

2008-04-23T13:10:00.001+02:00

Today, thoughts about the isolated hero of Western technology. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Only a third of the book is about his survival on a remote island. But that part is now a metaphor for the way we save ourselves with technology.
Fourteen years earlier, a real person, Alexander Selkirk, was left by his shipmates on a real island -- off the coast of Chile. Selkirk had fled his contentious Scottish family in 1702 and gone to sea in a British privateer. Its business? Harassing Spanish outposts in the Pacific. Conditions on the ship were terrible, and Selkirk carried trouble with him.
One day, in a rage, he told his shipmates to put him ashore. So they did -- on a deserted island. As the longboat pulled away, he screamed for them to take him back. They would not. And there he stayed 'til a British ship found him four years later.
A London magazine published the story in 1713, and Defoe read it. Meanwhile, Selkirk went back to his erratic life -- marrying women here and there -- going to sea now and then. He died in 1721, two years after Defoe published Robinson Crusoe.
Of course, Defoe changed his hero. He modeled Crusoe on himself -- made him part of the conservative middle class. He used Crusoe to explore his own ideas about imperialism. Crusoe becomes the benevolent colonizer -- teaching the savage, Friday, to be what he himself is. There was no Friday in Selkirk's story.
Selkirk was pretty savage before he was deserted, and he brought little technology to his imprisonment. The sailors who found him said he was almost naked -- that he had to relearn human speech. Oddly enough, Defoe undercut his own survival thesis in another book. He wrote, "Necessity makes an honest man a knave."
In 1750, the Spanish built a small fort on Selkirk's island. Later, they made the island into a prison. Neither lasted long. In 1966, the Chilean government changed the name of the island to Robinson Crusoe. They hoped to pick up tourist trade. Today the population is around 600 -- mostly fisherfolk who live in near isolation. There are three small hotels -- not heavily used.
The theme of a lone technological man carving civilization from the primeval forest recurs down through our technical/scientific world -- from Crusoe all the way to Gilligan's Island!
Mark Twain put that old wine in a new skin when he wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. But Twain was smarter. His Yankee hero eventually made a mess of things.
So: what about the lone technological hero? Well, it didn't work for Selkirk, and I doubt it'd work for anyone. In the end, technology is culture -- something we do together. Technology does define our survival, but only in the framework of community.

William Blake - London

2008-04-22T11:12:00.006+02:00

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infant's cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldier's sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlot's curse

Blasts the new-born Infant's tear,

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

A. Marvell - To his coy mistress

2008-04-13T22:33:00.005+02:00

S.T. Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner / Kubla Kahn

2008-04-12T00:47:00.008+02:00

A map of English Romantic Poetry - http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/poets.html

The whole text of the Lyrical Ballads - http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ballads.html

Analysis of the Rime - http://www.eriding.net/amoore/poetry/mariner.htm

J. Keats - Ode on a Grecian Urn; P.B. Shelley - Ode to the West Wind

2008-04-08T10:58:00.005+02:00

A. Ginsberg - Howl

2008-04-04T07:28:00.005+02:00

W.B. Yeats - Easter 1916

2008-04-03T11:02:00.003+02:00

Benjamin Zepheniah - Genetics / The British (serves 60 million)

2008-03-23T21:13:00.005+01:00

Take some Picts, Celts and Silures

And let them settle,

Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
Remove the Romans after approximately 400 years

Add lots of Norman French to some

Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, then stir vigorously.
Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans,

Trinidadians and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese,

Vietnamese and Sudanese.
Then take a blend of Somalians, Sri Lankans, Nigerians

And Pakistanis,

Combine with some Guyanese

And turn up the heat.

Sprinkle some fresh Indians, Malaysians, Bosnians,

Iraqis and Bangladeshis together with some

Afghans, Spanish, Turkish, Kurdish, Japanese

And Palestinians

Then add to the melting pot.
Leave the ingredients to simmer.
As they mix and blend allow their languages to flourish

Binding them together with English.
Allow time to be cool.
Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future,

Serve with justice

And enjoy.

Note: All the ingredients are equally important.

Treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter unpleasant taste.

Warning: An unequal spread of justice will damage the people and cause pain.

Give justice and equality to all.

O. Wilde - The Ballad of Reading Gaol / Wilde - Part 11/12

2008-03-18T08:44:00.002+01:00

'They' - Sigfried Sassoon

2008-03-17T13:13:00.004+01:00

The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
In a just cause: they lead the last attack
On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
New right to breed an honourable race,
They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.
And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'

G. M. Hopkins - The Windhover / Pied Beauty

2008-03-13T14:02:00.004+01:00

D. Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night

2008-03-10T22:31:00.003+01:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

E. Lee Masters - The Anthology of Spoon River: the Judge

2008-03-06T17:29:00.008+01:00

The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford

2008-03-04T00:35:00.001+01:00

The outlaw Jesse James was one of the first American celebrities, enjoying the fame that the printing press could deliver in the growing United States of the early 1880. His notoriety was laundered by romanticised tales that likened him to Robin Hood, washing away his murderous deeds and cruel, arrogant nature. He was a sum of his media parts as much as a feared bandit who robbed trains and banks with his gang.Casey Affleck delivers the film's most haunting performance as Robert Ford, the 19 year old hanger on whose brother Charley (Sam Rockwell in wonderful, complex form) is already a part of the Jesse James gang. But Robert is a little strange in his obsession with James, which makes James unsure about him. Brad Pitt paints James as an enigmatic, edgy, volatile and indeed sometimes vile figure, verging on mentally unstable.Andrew Dominik, clearly enamoured with Ron Hansen's much praised novel, adapts the book with intense attention to its rich, textured style. I haven't read it myself, but Newsweek's Peter S. Prescott describes it well: "The language of Hansen's novel is dense and textured, requiring careful reading. The pleasure of the book is in the eloquence of its dialogue and description, which are both literary and historically appropriate." The film reflects these elements - to a fault. The first two hours is diminished by a lack of clarity, a result of both the complexity of characters and relationships and a fearfully difficult dialogue - both in period style and in sheer audibility. The screenplay seems to have been driven by a desire not to miss any of the nuances and textures of Hansen's book, which is a problematic approach for cinema. The result seems like a meandering, unfocused screenplay that breaks down our willingness to be transported by it.In every technical detail (save the dialogue mix), the film is outstanding, with stunning cinematography and production design. The performances of the entire cast - and there is a large cast - is exemplary, and Dominik's ability to sustain tension in the latter scenes is admirable. While it is acknowledged that the exact details of the last days or months of Jesse's life will never be known, the film gives us an opportunity to appraise it as fictionalised biography - and at least as valid as the many others in that genre.

No country for old men

2008-03-01T11:57:00.001+01:00

Over wide shots of desolate, expansive West Texas country in June 1980, local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) narrates his belief that the times are changing and that the area is becoming increasingly violent. As Bell's narration concludes, the film's antagonist, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), is arrested and taken into custody by a sheriff's deputy. The deputy scarcely has time to describe Chigurh's unique weapon, a captive bolt pistol, to authorities before Chigurh wraps his handcuffs around the deputy's neck -- strangling him to death, and allowing Chigurh to escape.
Miles away, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) hunts pronghorn antelope near the Rio Grande when he stumbles upon a group of corpses and a lone dying man: the aftermath of a drug deal gone awry. In addition to a shipment of heroin, Moss finds two million dollars in a satchel, which he keeps, leaving the lone survivor to die. Later that night in bed with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), Moss's conscience pushes him to return to the scene with water for the dying man, which shortly triggers a cat-and-mouse game between a gang of Mexicans, Moss, Chigurh, and Bell as they chase the money and each other across the West Texas and Mexico landscapes.
Chigurh, a professional hitman hired to retrieve the stolen money, tracks the satchel with a radio receiver corresponding to a small transponder hidden in the satchel. A meticulous, brooding psychopath, Chigurh does not hesitate to kill anyone impeding his mission; his victims range from Mexican gangsters and law enforcement officials to civilians he encounters by chance. Moss, unaware of the transponder's existence, sends his wife Carla Jean out of town while he darts from motel to motel in an attempt to elude both Chigurh and the Mexicans sent to retrieve the money. In the meantime, Bell focuses his efforts on locating and protecting Moss, following the trail of corpses left by Chigurh, while he tracks Moss and the money.
Chigurh tracks Moss through several Texas towns, climaxing in a border-hotel firefight that spills onto the streets. Narrowly escaping death by crossing the border, Moss wakes up in a Mexican hospital and meets Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), an assassin dispatched by the drug buyer. After Moss disregards his offer to save Moss' life, Wells returns to his hotel where he is ambushed and killed by Chigurh. When Moss has second thoughts about the offer, he calls Wells' room and Chigurh answers. Chigurh offers Moss a deal, if Moss forfits the money and his own life, Chigurh will not go after Carla Jean.
Moss rejects the offer and orders Carla Jean to travel to El Paso, where he intends to give her the money and move her out of harm's way. Carla Jean agrees, but timidly informs Bell of Moss' destination. Bell travels to the El Paso rendezvous point only in time to see the finale of a firefight between Moss, and some Mexicans who have tracked him there. When Bell reaches Moss, Moss is lying dead on the floor of his motel room. Later that night, Sheriff Bell returns to the motel crime scene, where he finds the lock of Moss' hotel room door blown out in a fashion similar to that of Moss' trailer. Entering with his gun drawn, he remains unaware of Chigurh, hidden in the shadows silently observing the cautious sheriff. Surveying the room, Bell discovers the vent cover of the air conditioner has been removed with a dime, with drag marks inside denoting the former presence of the satchel. Bell sits in the darkened room, staring at shadows, before leaving without encountering Chigurh.
Days later, a weary Bell visits his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin), a former sheriff now confined to a wheelchair. Announcing his retirement because of the changing, violent times, Ellis points out that the region has always been violent, accusing Bell of "vanity" in thinking that he could change the condition of the world. Miles away, Carla Jean returns from her mother's funeral, where she encounters Chigurh waiting for her in her bedroom. Chigurh, reminding her of Moss's willingness to risk her life to save his own, flips a coin for her life and asks her to call it. Carla Jean, disgusted with the gesture, refuses to call it, surprising Chigurh. As Chigurh leaves the house, carefully checking the soles of his boots, he is involved in a car accident, leaving him nursing a broken arm as he flees the scene before the police arrive.
As Bell sits at home reflecting on his life choices, he relates to his wife (Tess Harper) two dreams he had, both involving his deceased father, also a lawman. Bell reveals briefly that in the first dream, he lost "some money" that his father had given him. Bell says that in the second dream, he and his father were riding horses through a snowy mountain pass. His father, who was carrying fire in a horn, quietly passed by Bell with his head down. Bell then relates that his father was "going on ahead, and fixin' to make a fire" in the surrounding dark and cold, and that when Bell got there, his father would be waiting. Bell closes the dream narrative, and the film, with the final words: "And then I woke up."

W. Owen - Dulce et decorum est / Anthem for doomed youth

2008-02-24T13:09:00.006+01:00

G. Corso - Bomb

2008-02-24T10:55:00.001+01:00

13.Tzameti - Gela Babluani

2008-02-23T09:40:00.002+01:00

In a town on the Normandy coast, a young man has been hired to replace some wooden attic beams in a house not far from the small apartment in which his immigrant Georgian family lives. He inadvertently rips a hole in a ceiling of the room below, whereupon he learns of a package that promises considerable riches. When the house's drug-addict owner overdoses fatally, the young man grabs it.In "13 Tzameti," one surprise triggers another in ever-spiraling fashion. Yet it is already clear in its deceptively low-key opening sequences why this extraordinary film, written and directed by young Georgia-born Gela Babluani, took the best first feature prize at Venice in 2005 and the grand jury world cinema award at Sundance earlier this year.
While the film's score strikes an ominous foreshadowing note, the tone of "13 Tzameti's" first scenes is droll, verging upon deadpan. That package proves to be a veritable Pandora's box, with the young man, Sebastien (Georges Babluani, the director's brother), discovering detailed instructions that will prompt him to assume the dead man's identity and take off for a hotel, off-season and deep in the countryside, where a clandestine high-stakes gambling tournament has attracted around 40 men, virtually all middle-aged and older. What the game entails and its rules won't be revealed here, but "13 Tzameti" — "tzameti" is the number 13 in Georgian — is not for the faint of heart.Every frame of the film reveals Babluani's confidence and sound judgment. Instead of staging the film's initial sequence like a conventional thriller, Babluani evokes a somber, even leisurely mood, suggesting the plight of Sebastien, an intelligent young man all too aware of his meager prospects in life. This mood extends all the way into that rural resort, abruptly giving way to shocking intensity.At times Babluani recalls the austerity, the closely observed fascination with secretive ritual, of Robert Bresson, yet he expresses these qualities — in ravishing black-and-white CinemaScope — with a poetic cinematic grace that is all his own. As an actor, Georges Babluani possesses the same resources, with a special understanding of the effect of emotional reserves held in check. Although it's likely too stark for everyone, "13 Tzameti" offers a mind-blowing experience for anyone willing to go along for the ride.

Kevin Thomas

W. Shakespeare - Richard III - Plot

2008-02-14T18:46:00.003+01:00

After a long civil war between the royal family of York and the royal family of Lancaster, England enjoys a period of peace under King Edward IV and the victorious Yorks. But Edward’s younger brother, Richard, resents Edward’s power and the happiness of those around him. Malicious, power-hungry, and bitter about his physical deformity, Richard begins to aspire secretly to the throne—and decides to kill anyone he has to in order to become king.
Using his intelligence and his skills of deception and political manipulation, Richard begins his campaign for the throne. He manipulates a noblewoman, Lady Anne, into marrying him—even though she knows that he murdered her first husband. He has his own older brother, Clarence, executed, and shifts the burden of guilt onto his sick older brother King Edward in order to accelerate Edward’s illness and death. After King Edward dies, Richard becomes lord protector of England—the figure in charge until the elder of Edward’s two sons grows up.
Next Richard kills the court noblemen who are loyal to the princes, most notably Lord Hastings, the lord chamberlain of England. He then has the boys’ relatives on their mother’s side—the powerful kinsmen of Edward’s wife, Queen Elizabeth—arrested and executed. With Elizabeth and the princes now unprotected, Richard has his political allies, particularly his right-hand man, Lord Buckingham, campaign to have Richard crowned king. Richard then imprisons the young princes in the Tower and, in his bloodiest move yet, sends hired murderers to kill both children.
By this time, Richard’s reign of terror has caused the common people of England to fear and loathe him, and he has alienated nearly all the noblemen of the court—even the power-hungry Buckingham. When rumors begin to circulate about a challenger to the throne who is gathering forces in France, noblemen defect in droves to join his forces. The challenger is the earl of Richmond, a descendant of a secondary arm of the Lancaster family, and England is ready to welcome him.
Richard, in the meantime, tries to consolidate his power. He has his wife, Queen Anne, murdered, so that he can marry young Elizabeth, the daughter of the former Queen Elizabeth and the dead King Edward. Though young Elizabeth is his niece, the alliance would secure his claim to the throne. Nevertheless, Richard has begun to lose control of events, and Queen Elizabeth manages to forestall him. Meanwhile, she secretly promises to marry young Elizabeth to Richmond.
Richmond finally invades England. The night before the battle that will decide everything, Richard has a terrible dream in which the ghosts of all the people he has murdered appear and curse him, telling him that he will die the next day. In the battle on the following morning, Richard is killed, and Richmond is crowned King Henry VII. Promising a new era of peace for England, the new king is betrothed to young Elizabeth in order to unite the warring houses of Lancaster and York.

F. Kafka - The Metamorphosis - Summary and themes

2008-02-11T14:27:00.004+01:00

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find that he has been inexplicably transformed into a giant insect. He has also slept late. His parents and his sister Grete try to rouse him so he can make it to his dreary job as a traveling salesman. The family depends on him for its livelihood. Gregor, however, is now a bug. When a clerk from his company comes to demand an explanation for his absence, Gregor makes a great effort to open the bedroom door and show himself. This sends the terrified clerk tearing down the stairwell and Gregor's family into shock.

Grete, more than his father or mother, handles the situation practically. Gregor is fed, and his room is cleaned. Before long, however, economic reality requires all three to find work, and less attention is paid to Gregor--except when he gets out of his room. No one in the family is fully able to reconcile him- or herself to the insect Gregor, and Gregor is unable to express himself to his family. The fear and disgust his presence inspires (the irrational fear of the mammoth cockroach) is a detriment to his mother's health and incites his father to brief fits of violence. One such fit, a bombardment of fruit, deals Gregor a deep and crippling wound.
Hobbled and neglected, Gregor begins to waste away in his room. The family takes in three carping lodgers, using Gregor's room to store excess furniture and other miscellanea--adding insult to injury. Yet the family does leave Gregor's door slightly open in the evenings, so that he may take part in the household in a small way. One evening, the lodgers hear Grete practicing her violin. They call her into the parlor for a concert. She obliges, and the music so moves Gregor that he creeps out into the parlor towards her, wanting to convey that he understands her gift and will help it to blossom. The lodgers see Gregor and immediately give notice. This is the breaking point for the family. Grete declares that they must abandon the notion that this hideous bug is their dear Gregor. All sadly agree. Gregor slinks back into his room. He dies that night.
A great weight has been lifted from the family. After a moment of mourning, the father demands that the lodgers leave immediately. The family takes a trolley out of the city and into the countryside. It is a beautiful, sunny day, and as Grete stretches out her limbs in the trolley car, her parents' thoughts turn to finding her a husband.

Themes
Economic effects on human relationships
Gregor is enslaved by his family because he is the one who makes money. Thus, with the possible exception of his sister, the family seems to treat him not as a member but as a source of income. When Gregor is no longer able to work after his metamorphosis, he is treated with revulsion and neglected. Once the family begins working, they also find difficulty communicating with each other, eating dinner in silence and fighting among themselves. The exhaustion of dehumanizing jobs and the recognition that people are only valuable so long as they earn a salary keeps anyone who works isolated from others and unable to establish human relations with them.
Family duty
The theme of family and the duties of family members to each other drive the interactions between Gregor and the others. His thoughts are almost entirely of the need to support his parents and sending his sister to the Conservatory. Though Gregor hates his job, he follows the call of duty to his family and goes far beyond simple duty. The family, on the other hand, takes care of Gregor after his metamorphosis only so far as duty seems to necessitate. He is kept locked in his room and brought food. In the end, his room is barely cleaned and his sister no longer cares about what food she brings him. Her actions are routine, as she only wants to do enough that she can claim she has fulfilled her duty. When she decides she has had enough, she insists that their duty to him has been fulfilled: "I don't think anyone could reproach us in the slightest," she says as she suggests that they need to get rid of him.
Alienation
Before his metamorphosis, Gregor is alienated from his job, his humanity, his family, and even his body, as we see from the fact that he barely notices his transformation. In fact, even his consideration for his family seems to be something alien to him, as he barely notices it when he loses this consideration at the end. After his metamorphosis, Gregor feels completely alienated from his room and environment and, as a symbol of this, can't even see his street out the window. The Metamorphosis, then, is a powerful indictment of the alienation brought on by the modern social order.
Freedom and escapism

Gregor is trapped in his job by his duty to his family, but he dreams of the day when he can finally pay off their debts and quit his job. His need for freedom from the restrictive demands of work is expressed in his metamorphosis, by means of which he escapes. This escape, however, fails to bring Gregor freedom, for he is now imprisoned by his family in his room. Thus, when Gregor works, he is enslaved by his job and, when he doesn't work, he is enslaved by his family. There is no way of balancing out freedom and duty, and in the end one is always a slave. The only means of escape turns out to be death.
Guilt
Guilt stems from family duty, and is Gregor's most powerful emotion. When he is transformed into an insect, Gregor is made unable to work by circumstances beyond his control. Despite the fact that his metamorphosis is not his fault, however, he is racked by guilt every time that the family mentions money or that he thinks about the pain that he has inadvertently inflicted on them by losing the ability to support them. Guilt, it turns out, is deadly, as Gregor realizes at the end that his life is the only thing keeping the family from a better life. He dies for them just as he lived for them: out of guilt.
Personal identity

Alone in his room, Gregor tries to rebuild the self-identity that he had lost by living entirely for others and ignoring his own needs. He cannot, however, escape from what he sees as his family duty, and continues to act only to serve his family by doing his best not to inconvenience them. Gregor's comments about his family's behavior are often tinged with resentment at the way they treat him, but he will not allow himself to recognize his bitterness. Gregor manages to escape his self-effacing sense of duty only in the last chapter, when he asserts himself in realizing that his family has been neglecting him. Gregor's search for his identity seems hopeless, however, because he never had an identity to start with. He finds his humanity only at the end, when his sister's playing reminds him of his love for his family. This love, coupled with his freedom, is the final ingredient he needs to establish his identity.

Hamlet - Themes, Motifs and Symbols

2008-02-11T14:13:00.000+01:00

Themes
The Impossibility of Certainty
What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and maybe from every play written before it) is that the action we expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed while Hamlet tries to obtain more certain knowledge about what he is doing. This play poses many questions that other plays would simply take for granted. Can we have certain knowledge about ghosts? Is the ghost what it appears to be, or is it really a misleading fiend? Does the ghost have reliable knowledge about its own death, or is the ghost itself deluded? Moving to more earthly matters: How can we know for certain the facts about a crime that has no witnesses? Can Hamlet know the state of Claudius’s soul by watching his behavior? If so, can he know the facts of what Claudius did by observing the state of his soul? Can Claudius (or the audience) know the state of Hamlet’s mind by observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can we know whether our actions will have the consequences we want them to have? Can we know anything about the afterlife?
Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlet’s failure to act appropriately. It might be more interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties our lives are built upon, how many unknown quantities are taken for granted when people act or when they evaluate one another’s actions.

The Complexity of Action
Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of action. How is it possible to take reasonable, effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors. Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that it’s even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way. When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly, and violently. The other characters obviously think much less about “action” in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are therefore less troubled about the possibility of acting effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate. But in some sense they prove that Hamlet is right, because all of their actions miscarry. Claudius possesses himself of queen and crown through bold action, but his conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his authority (and, of course, he dies). Laertes resolves that nothing will distract him from acting out his revenge, but he is easily influenced and manipulated into serving Claudius’s ends, and his poisoned rapier is turned back upon himself.

The Mystery of Death
In the aftermath of his father’s murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yorick’s skull and the decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality, truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlet’s deepest questions, ending once and for all the problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justice—Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet’s quest for revenge, and Claudius’s death is the end of that quest.
The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not suicide is a morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlet’s grief and misery is such that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he commits suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian religion’s prohibition of suicide. In his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would choose to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear which causes complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.

The Nation as a Diseased Body
Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare of the royal family and the health of the state as a whole. The play’s early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of power from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described as a physical body made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen indicating that “[s]omething is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.67). The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and compromised Denmark to satisfy his own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to power of the upright Fortinbras suggests that Denmark will be strengthened once again.

Motifs

Incest and Incestuous Desire
The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is frequently alluded to by Hamlet and the ghost, most obviously in conversations about Gertrude and Claudius, the former brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are now married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found in the relationship of Laertes and Ophelia, as Laertes sometimes speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual terms and, at her funeral, leaps into her grave to hold her in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of incestuous desire arise in the relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude, in Hamlet’s fixation on Gertrude’s sex life with Claudius and his preoccupation with her in general.

Misogyny
Shattered by his mother’s decision to marry Claudius so soon after her husband’s death, Hamlet becomes cynical about women in general, showing a particular obsession with what he perceives to be a connection between female sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny, or hatred of women, occurs sporadically throughout the play, but it is an important inhibiting factor in Hamlet’s relationships with Ophelia and Gertrude. He urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the corruptions of sexuality and exclaims of Gertrude, “Frailty, thy name is woman”

Ears and Hearing
One facet of Hamlet’s exploration of the difficulty of attaining true knowledge is slipperiness of language. Words are used to communicate ideas, but they can also be used to distort the truth, manipulate other people, and serve as tools in corrupt quests for power. Claudius, the shrewd politician, is the most obvious example of a man who manipulates words to enhance his own power. The sinister uses of words are represented by images of ears and hearing, from Claudius’s murder of the king by pouring poison into his ear to Hamlet’s claim to Horatio that “I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb” (IV.vi.21). The poison poured in the king’s ear by Claudius is used by the ghost to symbolize the corrosive effect of Claudius’s dishonesty on the health of Denmark. Declaring that the story that he was killed by a snake is a lie, he says that “the whole ear of Denmark” is “Rankly abused. . . .”

Symbols

Yorick’s Skull

In Hamlet, physical objects are rarely used to represent thematic ideas. One important exception is Yorick’s skull, which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to the skull and about the skull of the king’s former jester, he fixates on death’s inevitability and the disintegration of the body. He urges the skull to “get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come”—no one can avoid death (V.i.178–179). He traces the skull’s mouth and says, “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” indicating his fascination with the physical consequences of death (V.i.174–175). This latter idea is an important motif throughout the play, as Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to every human body’s eventual decay, noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the decayed body of Alexander the Great might be used to stop a hole in a beer barrel.

J. Kerouac - On the Road

2008-02-07T19:48:00.003+01:00

The Race Industry

2008-02-07T07:25:00.001+01:00

The coconuts have got the jobs.

The race industry is a growth industry.

We despairing, they careering.

We want more peace they want more police.

The Uncle Toms are getting paid.

The race industry is a growth industry.

We say sisters and brothers don't fear.

They will do anything for the Mayor.

The coconuts have got the jobs.

The race industry is a growth industry.

They're looking for victims and poets to rent.

They represent me without my consent.

The Uncle Toms are getting paid.

The race industry is a growth industry.

In suits they dither in fear of anarchy.

They take our sufferings and earn a salary.

Steal our souls and make their documentaries.

Inform daily on our community.

Without Black suffering they'd have no jobs.

Without our dead they'd have no office.

Without our tears they'd have no drink.

If they stopped sucking we could get justice.

The coconuts are getting paid.

Men, women and Brixton are being betrayed.

R. Frost - The road not taken / Fire and Ice

2008-02-06T13:59:00.003+01:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Do not go gentle into that good night - D. Thomas

2008-02-06T13:48:00.000+01:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Refugee blues - W.H. Auden

2008-02-06T13:34:00.000+01:00

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no placefor us.
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can't do that, my dear,

old passports can't do that.
The consul banged the table and said:
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead";
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear,

but where shall we go today?
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread";
He was talking of you and me, my dear,

he was talking of you and me.
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: "They must die";
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.
Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear,

but they weren't German Jews.
Went down to the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
· From Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 by WH Auden

Alfred Tennyson - Be near me when my light is low

2008-02-05T18:55:00.000+01:00

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.

A scanner darkly

2008-02-05T18:37:00.000+01:00

In a future not too far from our own, the latest designer drug keeping America's addicts in thrall is Substance D, an instantly addictive drug that induces deep paranoia in its users. "You're either on it, or you haven't tried it," states one its of adherents in Richard Linklater's visually stunning, darkly comic adaptation of Philip K. Dick's cult sci-fi novel, A Scanner Darkly. Linklater's second experiment in rotoscope animation after 2001's Waking Life, a meditation on philosophy, the new film is a perfect match of style and content.
Three guys—Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), and Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson)—share a house where they spend most of their time either doing drugs or talking about doing drugs. Dropping by often are their friends, Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), a stoner so deep into D that hallucinations and accompanying panic attacks are an everyday fact of life, and Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), the woman Bob loves, but who insists on keeping the friendship casual, putting a mysterious distance between them. That's the basic setup, except for one thing: one of them is an undercover cop, Fred, and he has just been assigned to investigate himself with cameras, keeping surveillance 24/7 inside the house.
No one knows who Fred is, not even his boss, although his boss assumes that he is one of the residents of the house. Neither Fred, his boss, nor anyone else in their unit knows what any of the others look like or who they are—at least that's the boss's story, and he's sticking to it. They all wear "scramble suits" while on duty, a special head-to-toe outfit that constantly changes appearance so no one can get a fix on the person inside—or if there's even a person in there. This begins to have a curious effect on Fred, who becomes increasingly paranoid and confused about who he is and what it is he is supposed to be doing.
The story, with its constant paranoia and inferences of government and corporate conspiracy, is a compelling one, and it's well-suited to the rotoscope style, particularly in those moments when psychotic delusions come to life, or when Fred shimmers this way and that in his scramble suit. But the style is only half of it; the rest of the movie belongs to its performers, particularly Reeves and Downey, who are both excellent as men turned around by substance abuse but determined to keep up appearances.
Linklater's casting is also, if nothing else, witty. The major roles refer in some way or another to the actor to playing the part. The most obvious one is Downey, of course, with his personal history of drug use. But one also has to give Ryder credit for taking a role in which her character refers to having been accused of theft, a winking nod to her own troubles with shoplifting. Harrelson plays Ernie as a naïve, hyperactive stoner, a cross between the real-life hemp advocate and innocent Woody Boyd, the character that made him famous on Cheers. Cochrane could be a sadder, tweaked out relative of the good-time stoner he played in Linklater's great Dazed and Confused. And Reeves, well, he continues to confound expectations, following up his role in the mainstream romance The Lake House with this tumble down the rabbit's hole. Like Bob Arctor, the picture he presents of himself depends a lot on the viewpoint of whoever is looking at him.
This is a Linklater film, which means pacing is slack, to the detriment of the film as a whole. Most of his movies suffer from that, with his approach to editing and structure being lackadaisical. In this case, the film slows in some places, nearly to a halt. It's frustrating, but wait it out. The whole is worth it; it's a grand and elegant portrait of paranoia and malfeasance set amongst society's seedy underbelly.
(PAM GRADY)

Ippocrates, Galen, De Luzzi, Vesalius

2008-02-05T09:51:00.000+01:00

PPOCRATES (460 – 370 bs.)
Greek physician who founded a medical school on Cos. This school produced more than 50 books, as well a system of medical methodology and ethics which is still practiced today. Upon being granted their M. D. degrees, new doctors still swear a so-called Hippocratic oath. In On Ancient Medicine, Hippocrates stated that medicine is not philosophy, and therefore must be practiced on a case-by-case basis rather than from first principles. In The Sacred Disease, he stated that epilepsy (and disease in general) do not have divine causes. He advocated clinical observations, diagnosis, and prognosis, and argued that specific diseases come from specific causes. Hippocrates's methodology relied on physical examination of the patient and proceeded in what was, for the most part, a highly rational deductive framework of understanding through observation. (An exception was the belief that disease was caused by "isonomia", an imbalance in the four humors originally suggested by Empedocles and consisting of yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and black bile.) The Hippocratic corpus of knowledge was widely distributed, highly influential, and marked the rise of rationality in both medicine and the physical sciences.
GALEN (130 – 200 ca.)
Greek physician considered second only to Hippocrates of Cos in his importance to the development of medicine, Galen performed extensive dissections and vivisections on animals. Although human dissections had fallen into disrepute, he also performed and stressed to his students the importance of human dissections. He recommended that students practice dissection as often as possible. He studied the muscles, spinal cord, heart, urinary system, and proved that the arteries are full of blood. He believed that blood originated in the liver, and sloshed back and forth through the body, passing through the heart, where it was mixed with air, by pores in the septum. Galen also introduced the spirit system, consisting of natural spirit or "pneuma" (air he thought was found in the veins), vital spirit (blood mixed with air he believed to found in the arteries), and animal spirit (which he believed to be found in the nervous system). In On the Natural Facilities, Galen minutely described his experimentation on a living dog to investigate the bladder and flow of urine. It was Galen who first introduced the notion of experimentation to medicine. Galen believed everything in nature has a purpose, and that nature uses a single object for more than one purpose whenever possible. He maintained that "the best doctor is also a philosopher," and so advocated that medical students be well-versed in philosophy, logic, physics, and ethics. Galen and his work On the Natural Faculties remained the authority on medicine until Vesalius in the sixteenth century, even though many of his views about human anatomy were false since he had performed his dissections on pigs, Barbary apes, and dogs. Galen mistakenly maintained, for instance, that humans have a five-lobed liver (which dogs do) and that the heart had only two chambers (it has four).
MONDINO DE LUZZI (1275-1326)
Italian physician who marked the revival of medical practice in the West following the Dark Ages. Arabian and Persian doctors, the greatest of whom was Avicenna, had continued the Hippocratic and Galenic traditions, but their works remained in the framework of Greek medicine and did not produce new methodologies. Although Mondino de' Luzzi is historically important as one of the first physicians of note following the Dark Ages, his medical procedures were, in fact, a step backwards. He taught his students while seated on an elevated chair, and employed a barber surgeon to perform the actual dissections. He believed in dissecting from the inside out, since internal organs rot the most quickly. In the process, he inevitably destroyed parts of the body in the process. Furthermore, Mondino de' Luzzi blindly accepted Galen's anatomy, even when a simple dissection would have conclusively proven him to be at odds with actual observations. He wrote a compendium of anatomy, which was basically a guide for understanding Galen. This represented a regression from scientific procedures, and stands out in sharp distinction to Grosseteste's and Roger Bacon's extensive experimentation and questioning of established authorities which were being undertaken in approximately the same period. Unfortunately for medicine, as well as science at large, Mondino de' Luzzi's methods became standard practice in medical schools until they were eventually replaced by the sound observational and experimental practices of Vesalius.
VESALIUS (1514 – 1564)
Flemish anatomist who founded the sixteenth century heritage of careful observation characterized by "refinement of observation." Vesalius changed the organization of the medical school classroom, bringing the students close to the operating table. He demonstrated that, in many instances, Galen and Mondino de' Luzzi were incorrect (the heart, for instance, has four chambers). He conducted his own dissections, and worked from the outside in so as not to damage the cadaver while cutting into it. Vesalius also wrote the first anatomically accurate medical textbook, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), which was complete with precise illustrations. Vesalius's careful observation, emphasis on the active participation of medical students in dissection lectures, and anatomically accurate textbooks revolutionized the practice of medicine. Through Vesalius's efforts, medicine was now on the road to its modern implementation, although major modifications and leaps of understanding were, of course, necessary to make its practice actually safe for the patient.

P. Dick - The man in the high castle

2008-02-02T09:17:00.000+01:00

Summary
In The Man In The High Castle, Philip K. Dick demonstrates his genius by creating a world where Germany and Japan won World War Two and America is occupied by the Axis forces. While this story creates an alternate reality, the fact that it takes place in 1962 (when Dick wrote the book) serves to blur the distinction between science fiction and the present reality. The story revolves a few central characters who are in different situations. Mr. Tagomi, the novel's main character works for a trade company and faces moral dilemmas throughout the book that involve his sense of what's right and wrong. A separated married couple are also the focus of TMITHC. Juliana Frink lives in Colorado, the buffer zone between the Germans on the east coast and the Japanese on the west. She becomes increasingly fascinated with an underground novel entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which paints a picture of an America that won WWII. It is a fascinating dichomoty that makes readers think twice about what is real and what is not. Her husband Frank Frink is a craftsman who makes cheap imitations of old American artifacts in a Japanese occupied California that demand high market value. Frank also faces moral choices in the book that challenge his artistic values.
The series of events takes place in a world where Japanese are the most respected members of American society. The cultural landscape that Dick creates in TMITHC is intense. It is a culture where the ancient Chinese oracle, the I Ching is consulted for moral decisions. Religion, social customs, art, aesthetics and racism are portrayed in a shockingly real manner. Dick himself used the I Ching to help him write the book, giving the story a spontaneous, open-ended quality. TMITHC won the Science Fiction Hugo Award for best novel in 1962. A great Dick novel that employs many classic Dick themes and writing techniques but might be different than what you'd expect.

Review
The Man in the High Castle certainly poses many probing questions. It seems that the heart of this story revolves around the ethical decisions of the main characters. Like many readers I was left wondering about the meaning of the ending of TMITHC. While many events unfold in this novel, by the end there are still lots of unresolved pieces of the story. Although I found TMITHC difficult to get into, by the end I was taken by Dick's portrait of a Japanese occupied California. More than the story I thought that one of the most intriguing elements of this book was the atmosphere of the country in this alternate reality. The tone of Dick's writing and the gloomy mood he creates serve to place the characters in settings which are uncanny and ghostly realistic.
Dick's work has been criticized on it's lack of character development. In my humble opinion TMITHC creates some of the most heartfelt characters and situations I've reads in any of his books to date. He refutes this criticism by looking deep into the minds of Mr. Tagomi and Juliana & Frank Frink. It seems that the events which unfold for each of the characters are unrelated however they are all connected by their obsession with The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and the intense moral choices they all must face. As is explained in the excellent essay The Meaning of the Man in the High Castle, each of the characters undergoes a profound change. Tagomi as he realizes that evil is real and comes to terms with his actions, Bob Childan's decision not to sell out his new artistic wares and Juliana's encounter with Hawthorne Abendsen all represent the moral decisions made by those characters.
This is a very mature novel by Dick that is very different from his futuristic anything-can happen science fiction stories. It uses many realistic cultural themes. Dick's portrait of a Japanese culture obsessed with American artifacts rings truer than ever in the present time. More than many of his books, TMITHC sums up Dick's fixation with World War II. In typical Dick fashion this novel incorporates many real-world elements that make his work so much more than science fiction. The whole concept of an alternate universe is expanded upon in the chapters Dick wrote for a proposed sequel to TMITHC. Told from a Nazi perspective, these chapters examine the existence of the Nebenwelt, the alternate reality wherein the Allies won the war. Just in these chapters, it becomes clear that the science fiction element is much stronger in his unfinished sequel. It's been said that Dick was unable to finish this novel due to his inability to deal and write about the Nazi mentality. For a look at these chapters and a revealing essay by Dick entitled "Nazism and The Man In The High Castle" take a look at The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick - Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (published posthumously).
I felt that the open-ended quality of TMITHC left me hanging. Although the Japanese are warned of the impending German invasion, we never know the outcome. Dick's use of the I Ching is very unique and contributes to the cultural mood of the novel . The way the characters use the I Ching for key decisions reflects a much different morality than American virtue. It allows for many varied interpretations that are not blatantly obvious. Trying to imagine an America governed by such strong oriental philosophy is quite challenging. Modern ideas of American patriotism are dramatically altered as the main American characters in TMITHC have accepted this way of thinking. They are reluctant to challenge the status quo and continue to live as second class citizens.
The Americans desire for cultural autonomy is reflected in their obsession with The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. In a U.S. where independence is just a dream, an underground novel represents their only expression of distinctly American values. This is why Juliana is so disenchanted when she meets Hawthorne Abendsen and fins him and his situation different from his expectations. The reality of an America occupied by Axis forces is reflected not as much in the history that would create those circumstances but rather through the eyes and actions of Dick's characters in TMITHC. With all it's dialogue and character interaction, it seems that this story would translate into an excellent screenplay and film that could accurately portray the aesthetics and mood of this Hugo Award winning novel. It wouldn't be true to Dick's vision if it didn't leave the audience guessing.

A. Rand - Atlas shrugged

2008-02-01T09:43:00.000+01:00

Setting
Galt's Gulch was inspired by Ouray, Colorado. It was here that Rand found inspiration to complete the novel, though she greatly expanded the small valley to include her many ideas for the story.
Exactly when Atlas Shrugged is meant to take place is kept deliberately vague. In section 152, the population of New York City is given as 7 million. The historical New York City reached 7 million people in the 1930s, which might place the novel sometime after that. There are many early 20th century technologies available, but the political situation is clearly different from actual history. One interpretation is that the novel takes place many years in the future, implying that since the world lapsed into its socialistic morass, a global stagnation has occurred in technological growth, population growth, and indeed growth of any kind; the wars, economic depressions, and other events of the 20th century would be a distant memory to all but scholars and academicians. This would be in line with Rand's ideas and commentary on other novels depicting utopian and dystopian societies. Furthermore, this is also in line with an excerpt from a 1964 interview with Playboy magazine in which Rand states "What we have today is not a capitalist society, but a mixed economy – that is, a mixture of freedom and controls, which, by the presently dominant trend, is moving toward dictatorship. The action in Atlas Shrugged takes place at a time when society has reached the stage of dictatorship. When and if this happens, that will be the time to go on strike, but not until then," thus implying that her novel takes place at some point in the future. The concept of societal stagnation in the wake of collectivist systems is central to the plot of another of Rand's works, Anthem.
In Atlas Shrugged, all countries outside the US have become, or become during the novel, "People's States". There are many examples of early 20th century technology in Atlas Shrugged, but no post-war advances such as nuclear weapons, helicopters, or computers. Jet planes are mentioned briefly as being a relatively new technology. Television is a novelty that has yet to assume any cultural significance, while radio broadcasts are prominent (in fact, television only makes its first appearance later on in the book, reflecting the fact that television appeared in the fifties, i.e., during the ten years it took to write the book). Although Rand does not use many of the technological innovations available while she was writing in the book, she introduces some advanced, fictional inventions (e.g., sonic-based weapons of mass destruction, torture devices, as well as power plants and a highly advanced strong steel alloy).
Most of the action in Atlas Shrugged occurs in the United States. However, there are important events around the world, such as in the People's States of Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, and piracy at sea.

Plot
The novel's plot is split into three parts. The first two parts, and to some extent the last, follow Dagny Taggart, a no-nonsense railroad executive, and her attempt to keep the company alive despite repeated encroachments by a society moving toward collectivism, altruism, and statism. Throughout the novel people repeat a platitude Dagny greatly resents: "Who is John Galt?" It is a reflection of their helplessness, as the saying means "Don't ask important questions, because we don't have answers."
The leaders and innovators of industry in the world seem to be disappearing, and the apparent decline of civilization is making it more and more difficult for her to sustain her life-long aspirations of running the trans-continental railroad, which has been in her family for several generations. She deals with other characters who often personify archetypes of what Rand considers the various schools of philosophy for living and working in the world (though they are in most cases often unconscious of it).
Some of these are: Hank Rearden, a self-made businessman of great integrity whose career is hindered by his feelings of obligation toward his wife. Francisco d'Anconia, Dagny's childhood friend, first love, and king of the copper industry, appears to have become a worthless playboy who is purposely destroying his business. James Taggart (Dagny's brother), president of the railroad, who seems peripherally aware of the troubles facing the company and the country in general, but who almost always makes the most short term and ultimately self-destructive choice.
As the novel progresses, the myths about the real John Galt, as well as Francisco d'Anconia's actions, increasingly become a reflection of the state of the culture and seem to make more and more sense. Hank and Dagny begin to experience the futility of their attempts to survive in a society that hates them and those like them for their greatness.
Dagny and Hank find the remnants of a motor that turns atmospheric static electricity into kinetic energy, an astounding feat; they also find evidence that the minds (the "Atlases") of the world are disappearing because of one particular "destroyer" taking them away. Dagny and Hank deal with the irrationalities and apparent contradictions of their atmosphere, and search for the creator of the motor as well as "the destroyer" who is draining the world of its prime movers, in an effort to secure their ability to live rational lives.
The question "Who is John Galt?" is also answered towards the closing of the novel — John Galt is a man disgusted that non-productive members of society use laws and guilt to leech from the value created by productive members of society, and furthermore even exalt the qualities of the leeches over the workers and inventors. He made a pledge that he would never live his life for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for him, and founded an enclave, separate from the rest of the country, where he and other productive members of society have fled.

Looters and moochers
Rand's heroes must continually fight against the "looters" and "moochers" of the society surrounding them.The looters are those who confiscate others' earnings "at the point of a gun" (figuratively speaking) —often because they are government officials, and thus their demands are backed by the threat of force. Some looters are following the policies of the government, such as the officials who confiscate one state's seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another state; others are exploiting those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad's supplies on the side. The common factor is that both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it, and both are ultimately destructive.
The moochers are those who demand others' earnings because they claim to be needy and unable to earn themselves. Even as they beg for their help, however, they curse the people who make that help possible, because they hate the talented for having the talent they don't possess. Although the moochers seem benign at first glance, they are portrayed as more destructive than the looters—they destroy the productive through guilt and often motivate the legal looting performed by governments.
Looting and mooching are seen at all levels of the world Atlas Shrugged portrays, from the looting officials Dagny Taggart must work around and the mooching brother Hank Rearden struggles with, to the looting of whole industries by companies like Associated Steel and the mooching demands for foreign aid by the starving countries of Europe.

Fatherland - R. Harris

2008-01-25T09:23:00.000+01:00

The year is 1964. Germany has reigned supreme since Hitler's victory in World War II, and Berlin is gearing up to celebrate Der Fuhrer's seventy-fifth birthday. Homicide investigator Xavier March is called out of bed early one morning after a corpse is found on the muddy bank of Lake Havel. When he discovers that the dead man was once a high-ranking Nazi, March is told to turn the case over to the Gestapo, and he realizes that this is anything but a routine investigation. Continuing his inquiries against orders, March uncovers a chilling conspiracy designed to erase all evidence of an unbelievable atrocity - something so inhuman, even the powerful Third Reich might not survive once the truth is revealed. Divorced, still trying to be a father to a son who longs to join the Hitler Youth organization, Xavier March is the antithesis of the obedient German citizen - a disillusioned Sturmbannfuhrer driven to find the truth at any cost. Although his son calls him "an asocial," March is able to elicit help in his investigation from his office-mate Max Jaeger, his old U-boat comrade Rudolf Halder, and a young American journalist named Charlotte Maguire. March's most mysterious ally is Artur Nebe, head of the Reich Kriminalpolizei - a man who understands that knowledge is power. "You're not telling the truth, are you? Or at least, not all of it," Nebe says to March. "That's good." Published in 1992, Fatherland has been compared to Martin Cruz Smith's "Gorky Park," and to the work of John le Carre. If Ian Fleming and George Orwell had ever collaborated, this is the kind of novel that they would have co-written - a thriller laced with pulse-pounding intrigue, set within the confines of a soot-streaked bureaucracy, a paranoid and fearful society where children show more loyalty to the State than to their own parents. Winston Smith from "1984" would feel right at home in Harris' novel. What else can one say about Fatherland after showering the book with praise and urging others to read it? Its plot, pacing, characters, dialogue, and impeccable research are all above reproach. If forced to find fault with the novel, one might say that March's investigation uncovers a dark part of recorded human history, and so the reader sees through the mystery while March is struggling to understand the evidence he has collected. Still, by presenting March's findings piece by piece, Harris forces readers to reconsider Nazi atrocities as if for the first time. Paradoxically, by presenting facts and authentic documents in the guise of fiction, Harris makes history come alive. Fatherland was Robert Harris' first novel, and remains a remarkable achievement.

I am legend - R. Matheson

2008-01-16T15:05:00.000+01:00

The story takes place between January 1976 and January 1979 in Southern California. The novel opens with the monotony and horror of the daily life of the protagonist, Robert Neville. Neville is apparently the only survivor of an apocalypse caused by a pandemic of bacteria, the symptoms of which are similar to vampirism. He spends every day repairing his house, boarding up windows, stringing and hanging garlic, disposing of vampires' corpses on his lawn and going out to gather any additional supplies needed for hunting and killing more vampires.
Much of the story is devoted to Neville's struggles to understand the plague that has infected everyone around him, and the novel details the progress of his discoveries.
One day a dog appears in the neighborhood. Neville spends weeks trying to win its trust and domesticate it. He eventually traps the terrified dog and wins it over, but it dies from the vampire infection a week later.
As the story progresses, it is revealed that some infected people have discovered a means to hold the disease at bay. However, the "still living" people appear no different from the true vampire during the day while both are immobilized in sleep. Thus, along with the vampires, Neville kills the still living people. He becomes a source of terror to the still living, since he can go around in daylight (which they can only do for a short length of time using a special pill) and kill them while they sleep.
They send a still living woman named Ruth to spy on Neville, and they replicate Neville's relationship with the dog. Ruth, terrified of Neville at first sight, goes against her role of spying on him and runs away. Rather than spend weeks trying to win her over, he attacks her and drags her back to his house. Eventually Neville performs a blood test on her, revealing her true nature to him right before she knocks him out with a mallet. Ruth leaves a note telling him about the group of people like her, explaining that she was sent to spy and how monstrous he appears to them. Months later, the still living people attack, injuring Neville, but taking him alive so that he can be executed in front of everyone in the new society (which Neville finds very primitive).
Before he can be executed, Ruth provides him with an envelope of pills. Neville takes the pills to commit suicide before the still living execute him. As he dies he reflects on how the new society of the living infected regards him as a monster. Just as vampires were regarded as legendary monsters that preyed on the vulnerable humans in their beds, Neville has become a mythical figure that kills both vampires and the infected living while they are sleeping. He becomes a legend as the vampires once were, hence the title "I Am Legend".

Influences
I Am Legend influenced the vampire genre and popularized the fictional concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to a disease. Although classified as a vampire story and referred to as "the first modern vampire novel. Legend made an impression on the zombie genre by way of film director George A. Romero. Romero has acknowledged the influence of the novel and its 1964 adaptation on his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Critics have also picked up on similarities between Night and Last Man on Earth.[5][6]
Stephen King said, "without Richard Matheson I wouldn’t be around."[7] Some film critics have noted that the 2002 British film 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later, which feature a rabies-like plague that ravages Great Britain, are similar to the scenario in I Am Legend.[8] The recasting of undead creatures as disease victims is also comparable to recent zombie media such as the Resident Evil series, the Blade trilogy, and the 1984 B movie Night of the Comet.
A straight-to-DVD film by The Asylum called I Am Omega was released at the same time as the 2007 film I Am Legend.

1985 - A. Burgess

2008-01-16T14:52:00.000+01:00

At the novella's beginning, the protagonist, Bev Jones, confronts the death of his wife. She was in hospital when it caught fire. As the firemen's union was striking, the hospital burned to the ground. (In reality, the UK firemen's union had taken industrial action for the first time ever, in 1977, presumably when Burgess was writing the novella.) Bev is left alone with his special needs daughter Bessie, who is thirteen years old but sexually precocious and unable to comprehend the difference between reality and fantasy, due to a thalidomide-like drug taken by her pregnant mother.
The death of his wife engenders in Bev a deep-seated hostility towards the union system - her last words were, "Don't let them get away with it". This is however not the first time Bev has been forced to oppose, for he had previously been a history lecturer who stepped down as his work was considered expendable by the union-based system which favoured education of practical value.
Employed at as confectioner, he goes to work one day despite his union being on strike. For working during a strike, his union membership is revoked, making him effectively unemployable. Knowing that he will soon lose his home, he takes Bessie to a state-run facility where she will be cared for with other girls like herself.
Bev then becomes something of a vagrant, travelling around London and falling in with a group of similarly unemployable dissenters. With these, he engages in petty theft from shops in order to survive. Apprehended during one such sortie, he is sentenced to re-education at a state institution, which is neither a prison nor a psychiatric hospital, but contains elements of both.
At the re-education centre, Bev is subjected to propaganda films and lectures, which have the aim of converting him into a useful member of society (a theme which Burgess also examines in A Clockwork Orange). He meets the powerful union official Pettigrew, who warns Bev that his day is over and that unionisation is the future of Britain. Despite this, Bev is unconverted and - having served his sentence - leaves as a free man.
Having been informed that Bessie will be ejected from the care facility because he refuses to recant his beliefs, he returns to London. In need of an income and a place to live, he joins a network called The Free Britons, which aims to provide infrastructure and order during the increasing strike-related chaos sweeping Britain. Bev effectively sells his daughter as a wife to a wealthy sheik, who takes a fancy to her during a visit to the Al-Dorchester, reasoning that at least this way she will be safe and satisfied. Meanwhile, he discovers that The Free Briton is a front for an Islamic group aiming at the re-establishment of Britain as a Muslim state.
Bev, because of his education, is employed as the mouthpiece of the Free Britons and called upon to report on the events of the general strike. He is frustrated when his work is censored by the leader, a man known as Colonel Wallace. The spreading strike action reaches fever pitch and becomes a general strike, reported to the reader mostly in diary form. King Charles III takes command of the country as it grinds to a halt. A few months after the strike, Bev is arrested again and sentenced to life in a secure institution, which again is neither prison nor hospital. The only way out of this facility is to be retrieved by a family member.
There, he revives his teaching career by giving informal history lessons to other prisoners. As the years stretch on, his syllabus (which had started with Anglo Saxon England) passes through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and approaches modern times.
Snippets of news often circulate among the inmates, some of which suggest that the Muslim conversion of Britain is well-advanced (for example, it is claimed that inhabitants of the Isle of Man have recently discovered that a stimulant-depressant drug has been replacing alcohol in their beer for several years, in line with Muslim prohibitions). There is however no way in which the inmates can verify whether these news items are correct.
Bev finds it increasingly difficult to explain the continuity of history in terms of the present. Unable to do so, Bev suggests that they can start over again and work their way back to the present, after which his class spontaneously dismisses itself. Alone at night, Bev slips out of the dormitory in which he sleeps, creeps out into the grounds of the institution and kills himself by deliberately touching the electric fence.

Them who?

2008-01-16T00:00:00.000+01:00

Don't believe them for a moment
For a second, do not believe, my friend

When you are down, them are not coming

With a helping hand

Of course there is no us and them

But them they do not think the same

It's them who do not think

They never step on spiritual path

They paint their faces so differently from ours

And if you listen closely

That war it never stops

Be them new Romans

Don't envy them my friend

Be their lives longer

Their longer lives are spent

Without a love or faithful friend

All those things they have to rent

But we who see our destiny

In sound of this same old punk song

Let rest originality for sake of passing it around

Illuminating realization number one:

You are the only light there is

For yourself my friend

There'll be no saviors any soon coming down

And anyway illuminations

Never come from the crowned

Illuminating realization number one:

You are the only light there is

For yourself my friend

eXistenZ

2008-01-11T08:54:00.000+01:00

eXistenZ, the latest from iconoclastic director David Cronenberg (Crash, Dead Ringers, The Fly), looks at the dangers of virtual reality. The movie seems to have been designed as a cautionary tale, and, as such, contains elements of pointed satire. Unfortunately, the production as a whole has a disjointed feel, and the flaw is compounded by several ill-advised casting decisions, a meandering middle act, and an ending that cheats the audience by employing the kind of plot twist that just about anyone can see coming from a mile away. Because of the potential of the idea and Cronenberg's reputation as a film maker, it's a real disappointment to watch eXistenZ fall apart the way it does.
eXistenZ also suffers from the distinction of being the weakest of three films, all released within a month's time, to toy with the line dividing reality from fantasy. Both The Matrix and Open Your Eyes do similar things to those that Cronenberg attempts, but with far greater success. Consequently, eXistenZ comes across like a wannabe toying in an arena where the real players have already displayed their superior skills.
The movie's opening is promising. We're introduced to Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the shy designer of a breakthrough virtual reality game called "eXistenZ" (pronounced like "existence" with the accents in all the wrong places). On this night, set some time in the near future, she is about to test the game with 12 randomly selected players chosen from a live audience. While their bio ports (holes in their lower backs that allow direct access to the spinal cord) are being connected to one of 12 "metaflesh game pods", Allegra describes eXistenZ as being a "whole new game system" that expands the concept of virtual reality. No sooner has she started the demonstration game, however, than shots ring out. A member of the audience, shouting gibberish and waving a bizarre gun, attempts to assassinate Allegra.
She is whisked out of harm's way by Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a marketing trainee for Antenna Research, the company that Allegra works for. Soon, the pair are on the run from persons unknown. To complicate matters, eXistenZ was damaged during the assassination attempt, and Allegra needs help entering the system and making sure that it's intact. When she decides that she can trust Ted, she enlists his aid, but there's a problem: he doesn't possess a bio port, so they have to find someone who can install one illegally. Their quest leads them to a strange corner gas station run by an oddball (Willem Dafoe) then to the hide-out of a scientist living in the woods (Ian Holm).
It's after the movie shifts to the world within eXistenZ that things start to crumble. Put simply, it's not a very compelling fake reality. There are lots of weird, squishy "mutated amphibians" running around, and much of the so-called action takes place in an old trout farm or at a Chinese restaurant. There are conspiracies and double-crosses, and the requisite confusion about what's authentic and what isn't. (When Allegra and Ted exit the game at one point, have they really departed, or is the game just making them - and us - think they've left?) By the time the film limps to the ending, we're expecting at least one of the climactic twists, and its obviousness leaves a bad taste. It probably would have been more interesting for Cronenberg not to employ such an transparent "surprise."
Casting is another problem. In presenting Allegra as an introvert who would rather immerse herself in eXistenZ than face the real world, the versatile Jennifer Jason Leigh is virtually the only actor to create a credible character. Jude Law (the "donor" in Gattaca), as Allegra's game-playing partner and potential lover, is bland - hardly the type of personality we want for a hero. Law may be a better actor than Keanu Reeves (who fulfilled a similar function in The Matrix), but, when it comes to screen presence, he's inferior. The gifted Ian Holm is saddled with a ridiculous Eastern European accent (it's so outlandish that the script jokes about it) and a miniscule role. Also criminally underused are Willem Dafoe and Sarah Polley (who can currently be seen in Go). There's a lot of sexual imagery in the film, especially in the way that Cronenberg equates game playing with the sex act (the symbolism - of a plug being inserted into the bio port - is more than a little heavy-handed), and the superlative set design is an undeniable asset. However, while not exactly wasted, this production element could have been used in the service of a better-realized script. eXistenZ's overall message - presumably a warning about the addictive nature of games that draw players away from reality - isn't exactly new. In fact, the same ideas were presented in a more compelling and controversial fashion several years ago in the James Cameron/Katherine Bigelow collaboration, Strange Days. Cronenberg, who is known for pushing the envelope, shows surprising restraint here, which may be a mistake, since he fails to accomplish anything noteworthy with a premise that, at first glance, seems foolproof. While eXistenZ contains a few enjoyable sequences (most of which occur during the first 30 minutes - I liked the development of Allegra's character and the introduction of the "Corner Gas Station"), the overall impression is of a missed opportunity. Fans of the director will probably be divided about eXistenZ's merits and impact, but most everyone else will find this to be a meandering and pointless exercise in duping an audience.

Review by J. Berardinelli

Fahrenheit 451

2008-01-10T15:16:00.000+01:00

A classic of 20th-century dystopian fiction (e.g.,"The Handmaid's Tale," "A Clockwork Orange," "1984," "Brave New World," "We"), Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" has been adapted for film only once, by French filmmaker François Truffaut ("Jules and Jim," "Shoot the Piano Player," "The 400 Blows") almost forty years ago. Critics and audiences reacted with either indifference or outright hostility to Truffaut's first (and last) English-language film. Unfortunately, "Fahrenheit 451" suffers from languid pacing, a loosely structured script, and low-key performances (all of which make "Fahrenheit 451" a difficult watch for most viewers). On the plus side, "Fahrenheit 451" constains striking production design, arresting imagery, and a lush, effusive score by Bernard Hermann ("North by Northwest," "Vertigo," "The Man Who Knew Too Much").
Like Bradbury’s novel, Truffaut’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 is set in a recognizable near-future, but one in which all books have been banned, due to the dangerous ideas they contain and the independent thought they foster. To that end, books are banned and lawbreakers are threatened with imprisonment (or worse). Law enforcement takes the form of fire brigades. In Bradbury's dystopia, firemen are tasked with book burning (fireproof buildings have otherwise made “firemen” obsolete). Mass entertainment brought into living rooms by interactive television sets and over-the-counter drugs are used to keep the population pacified and social interactions to a minimum.Guy Montag (Oskar Werner), a fireman seems unmoved by the prospect by the prospect of a promotion offered by his superior (Cyril Cusack). His wife, Linda (Julie Christie), obsessed with the television programs she watches incessantly, can't wait to purchase a second wall-mounted television set with Montag's promotion bonus. Linda also uses drugs to control her moods. On his way into work one day, Montag meets Clarisse (Julie Christie again) on the monorail that takes him to and from work every day. Clarisse, it seems, sees through Montag's facade and pushes him to confront hard questions about his identity and his role in an oppressive, repressive society.Over the course of Fahrenheit 451, Montag's behavior radically shifts, in no small part due to his repeated encounters with Clarisse and the seduction posed by the books he comes across. He rebels, taking one book, Charles Dickens' David Copperfield home one day, voraciously reading it in one sitting. One infraction leads to another, with Montag struggling with his inner doubts about the career he's chosen for himself, his status-conscious wife's disapproval, and his superior's increasing suspicions about his erratic behavior. Montag is ultimately tempted into open rebellion by his encounter with an old woman and a secret library.Montag's personal and external journey ultimately takes him into contact with the "Book People," individuals who save books by memorizing them completely. Whether Montag finds sanctuary or is captured by the powers-that-be or their representatives is better for patient viewers to discover for themselves. Suffice it to say that a nationally televised manhunt foreshadows Stephen King's The Running Man, as well as the less lethal reality shows that have flooded the airwaves over the last five years, plays a significant role in Montag's future (i.e., whether, in fact, he has one).It's in the final twenty minutes, after the passive Montag is finally stirred from inaction, that Fahrenheit 451 becomes compelling viewing. Whether it's the not-so-subtle digs at network television (or the need for closure, even if manufactured, and therefore untrue), or finally, the vision of the sanctuary of the Book People reciting books to themselves and one another as snow falls near a lake, Truffaut gives his lyricism free reign. Certainly, the preceding scenes are meant to evoke a cold, antiseptic, humorless world (aided by the modernist production design and Truffaut’s decision to use a desaturated color palette), but they also tend toward the episodic, the superfluous or the repetitive. Given Fahrenheit 451's fairly straightforward anti- censorship theme, it could have benefited from more external conflict instead of the interior conflict it relies on. Truffaut also gives the romantic subplot involving Montag and Clarisse little screen time. It's one aspect of the script that could have benefited from expanded or one or two more scenes (or simply better tighter, more cohesive scenes).
"Fahrenheit 451" suffers from the same problems a younger Truffaut once criticized in the pages of "Cahiers du Cinema," an approach to literary adaptations that places fidelity to the source material first and foremost, with the unique demands of cinema a distant second. Perhaps Truffaut treated "Fahrenheit 451" too seriously, as a great work of art with a profound theme. Truffaut would have been better served by taking the more free-form, associative approach that made "Shoot the Piano Player," an adaptation of a melancholic crime novel by pulp writer David Goodis, far superior to "Fahrenheit 451." Unless the much-delayed remake actually gets greenlit by a Hollywood studio, for now Truffaut’s film will remain the definitive version of Bradbury's novel, if only by default.

Gattaca

2008-01-10T15:04:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the 21st Century, an era when things aren't that much different, but people are. No longer is standard procreation the accepted way to reproduce. Consider all of the birth defects that such an approach can bring about. And, while it would be unreasonable to outlaw sex for the purpose of producing offspring, be aware than any children so conceived are almost certain to be "in-valids" -- genetically imperfect and ill-suited to be productive members of society. There is a better, more rational way -- a method that will guarantee health, stamina, and physical attractiveness. Let science do a little tinkering with the DNA. Everyone does it. Or at least everyone who wants their child to have a shot at a normal, well-adjusted life.
This is the chillingly feasible premise of Gattaca. While in 1997, science has not yet perfected the genetic engineering techniques used in this film to routinely develop babies, every day brings the medical profession closer. As a result, Gattaca doesn't just function as a science fiction thriller, but as both a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting scientific ability outstrip ethics and as a morality play about the irrationality of bigotry.
Andrew Niccol's oppressive future, which contains more than an element of Orwell's "Big Brother is watching" mentality, isn't just a clever backdrop against which to set a thriller. Instead, it's an integral part of the story. While it's true that there is a murder mystery, that's just a subplot. The main focus of Gattaca is the struggle of a genetically inferior man, Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), to survive and prosper in a world where his kind is routinely discriminated against.
Shortly after they were married, Vincent's parents decided to start a family the old-fashioned way, without any help from doctors and test tubes. The result was a boy who was diagnosed as 99% likely to have a serious heart defect. That rendered Vincent ineligible for all but the most menial of jobs. But his dream was to one day work at The Gattaca Aerospace Corporation and participate in the first-ever manned flight to the moons of Saturn. For most "in-valids", this would have remained a fantasy, but Vincent possessed the determination and drive to make it real.
With the help of a shady middle-man, Vincent locates Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), a genetically superior individual who was paralyzed as the result of an accident. He agees to sell Vincent his identity (including blood and urine on demand, fingerprints, hair and other body debris, etc.). So, equipped with Jerome's genetic resume, which guarantees him work anywhere, Vincent applies for a position at Gattaca. He is accepted and quickly proves his worth to everyone. But, a week before he is to attain his lifelong ambition of making a space flight, he becomes a suspect in a murder investigation and his carefully-guarded secret is in danger of being exposed.
One of the things that impressed me the most about Gattaca is its ability to keep the level of tension high without compromising the script's intelligence or integrity. First-time director Andrew Niccol, a New Zealander working in Los Angeles, displays a sure hand in his execution of the material. One scene in particular, a masterfully-edited sequence cutting back and forth between the cops (who are closing in) and a man struggling to accomplish a Herculean physical task, is guaranteed to render audiences breathless. And there are enough little twists and turns to keep even the most easily-distracted audience member involved. From a visual perspective, Niccol's cinematographer, Slawomir Idziak, uses his trademark filters to differentiate the soft, warm glow of the outside world from the harshness of the windowless interior of Gattaca.
Ethan Hawke is solid as Vincent, effectively portraying both his single-minded determination to rise about the disadvantages of his birth and his constant wariness of being caught once he has reached that goal. Jude Law's Jerome is a fascinating individual -- a man who is torn between despising Vincent because of his inferiority and admiring him because he's succeeding. In fact, Jerome is arguably Gattaca's most complex character. Meanwhile, Alan Arkin gives a delightful turn as a hard-bitten detective. Uma Thurman's limited range isn't taxed as Vincent's love interest (there isn't much chemistry between her and Hawke, but, since romance is a tertiary element of the story, it doesn't make much difference). And Loren Dean (the title character in Billy Bathgate) plays a cop with a special grudge against Vincent.
The average thriller, even if it's set in a faraway or futuristic world, tends to offer visceral, ephemeral excitement, and not much else. However, while Gattaca has the energy and tautness to compare with the best of those, its thought-provoking script and thematic richness elevate it to the next level. Gattaca is not a perfect motion picture (I would have appreciated a little more political background), but, at a time when so many science fiction films are dumber than dirt, it makes for a refreshing change-of-pace, and is a fine addition to the Fall movie season.

Zardoz

2008-01-10T14:49:00.000+01:00

John Boorman's ZARDOZ (1074) is a genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators. It's set in an Ireland of 2293 that looks exactly like the Ireland of today, until you get inside the Vortex. And then suddenly everything is shimmering gowns and futuristic throne rooms and beautiful young people who glide around at an endless debutante ball.These are the Immortals. They will never die. They cannot. Every time they try to, their bodies are relentlessly restored by the all-knowing mystical computer mind that runs the Vortex. There's a catch, though: They can't die but they can grow old, and for infractions, they're sentenced to age a few years. If they don't watch themselves, they might wind up as Immortal Seniles.Outside the Vortex, a barbaric civilization survives. Slaves till the land and gather the crops, ruled over by sadistic masters who sometimes gallop around killing off the surplus population. One of the barbarians is Zed, played by Sean Connery as a cross between Tarzan and Prince Valiant. But one day, Zed (like Lord Greystoke, come to think of it) finds a child's alphabet book. He teaches himself to read and then fanatically devours the contents of whole libraries (like Thomas Wolfe, come to think of it). Eventually he comes upon The Wizard of Oz and, in a moment of blinding insight, sees through the whole joke of his world's social structure.Zed has himself smuggled aboard the giant floating head of Zardoz, which rules hinterlands, and finds himself inside the Vortex. Here he is an object of great interest, because the Immortals, you see, having lost the ability to die have also lost the drive to procreate and are doomed to an eternity of detumescence. Zed labors with no such difficulty.The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less had carte blanche to do a personal project after his immensely successful DELIVERANCE. Boorman seems fascinated by stories which are disconnected from the ordinary realist assumptions of most movies; his LEO THE LAST (1970) gave us Marcello Mastroianni as the last of the big-time decadents, living in a mansion at the end of a deserted street in an eerie London.Boorman puts a lot of heavy concepts into ZARDOZ, but seems uncertain whether he takes them seriously himself. There are sight gags (the attempt to turn on Connery with futuristic pornography provides the best) , there are group seances that seem lifted bodily from pajama parties, there is no end of special visual effects (every optical printer in England must have been busy for weeks), and at the end there's a combination shoot-out and mercy-killing spree that is at once ridiculous, depraved and low camp.Sean Connery wanders through all of this with a slightly bemused expression on his face. He begins as a barbarian given to distrust and childish impulses, but after he gathers all knowledge to himself (the movie is full of phrases like "gathers all knowledge to himself"), he turns into a sort of body-building Einstein who sees into the center of the Vortex, deciphers the wisdom of the crystal, stimulates the Apathetics (that's another social class I forgot to mention), makes love with a good-looking Immortal dame (she regains the knack) and finally turns into a fossil while the sound track milks Beethoven's 7th for all it's worth.I remember standing in the rain once outside a theater that was playing LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. Now there was a movie so complex and personal no one claimed to be able to understand itÑno, not even Time magazine. The people coming out from the previous show were shaking their heads and admitting that they, too, didn't have a clue. And then it was our turn to go in and be mystified.Every once in a while, a movie like that comes along; a movie you've got to see so that you, too, can be in the dark about it. In the movie's own terms, this much can be said for sure: It may not make you an Apathetic, but it will certainly age you by two hours.
Reviewed by Roger Ebert

What Eliot didn't see

2008-01-09T13:32:00.000+01:00

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

The Pilgrim's progress

2008-01-04T19:34:00.000+01:00

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and, as he read, he wept, and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?

Spoon River - 57

2007-12-30T20:19:00.000+01:00

Deacon Taylor

I belonged to the church,
And to the party of prohibition;
And the villagers thought
I died of eating watermelon.
In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,
For every noon for thirty years,
I slipped behind the prescription partition
In Trainor’s drug store
And poured a generous drink
From the bottle marked
”Spiritus frumenti.”

Spoon River - 146

2007-12-30T20:02:00.000+01:00

Walter Simmons

My parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the “Octoroon.”
But then at twenty-one I married
And had to live, and so, to live
I learned the trade of making watches
And kept the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,—
Not of business, but of the engine
I studied the calculus to build.
And all Spoon River watched and waited
To see it work, but it never worked.
And a few kind souls believed my genius
Was somehow hampered by the store.
It wasn’t true. The truth was this:
I didn’t have the brains.

The food pyramid

2007-12-27T21:17:00.002+01:00

food-pyramid

Various systems

2007-12-27T20:17:00.000+01:00

these are very useful anatomy sites:
http://www.texasheartinstitute.org/HIC/Anatomy/
http://www.nyp.org/health/endocrine-anatomy.html
http://www.bio.psu.edu/people/faculty/strauss/anatomy/skel/skeletal.htm

Elements of the plant cell

2007-12-23T11:31:00.000+01:00

Cell Wall - Like their prokaryotic ancestors, plant cells have a rigid wall surrounding the plasma membrane. It is a far more complex structure, however, and serves a variety of functions, from protecting the cell to regulating the life cycle of the plant organism.
Chloroplasts - The most important characteristic of plants is their ability to photosynthesize, in effect, to make their own food by converting light energy into chemical energy. This process is carried out in specialized organelles called chloroplasts.
Endoplasmic Reticulum - The endoplasmic reticulum is a network of sacs that manufactures, processes, and transports chemical compounds for use inside and outside of the cell. It is connected to the double-layered nuclear envelope, providing a pipeline between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. In plants, the endoplasmic reticulum also connects between cells via the plasmodesmata.
Golgi Apparatus - The Golgi apparatus is the distribution and shipping department for the cell's chemical products. It modifies proteins and fats built in the endoplasmic reticulum and prepares them for export as outside of the cell.
Microfilaments - Microfilaments are solid rods made of globular proteins called actin. These filaments are primarily structural in function and are an important component of the cytoskeleton.
Microtubules - These straight, hollow cylinders are found throughout the cytoplasm of all eukaryotic cells (prokaryotes don't have them) and carry out a variety of functions, ranging from transport to structural support.
Mitochondria - Mitochondria are oblong shaped organelles found in the cytoplasm of all eukaryotic cells. In plant cells, they break down carbohydrate and sugar molecules to provide energy, particularly when light isn't available for the chloroplasts to produce energy.
Nucleus - The nucleus is a highly specialized organelle that serves as the information processing and administrative center of the cell. This organelle has two major functions: it stores the cell's hereditary material, or DNA, and it coordinates the cell's activities, which include growth, intermediary metabolism, protein synthesis, and reproduction (cell division).
Peroxisomes - Microbodies are a diverse group of organelles that are found in the cytoplasm, roughly spherical and bound by a single membrane. There are several types of microbodies but peroxisomes are the most common.
Plasmodesmata - Plasmodesmata are small tubes that connect plant cells to each other, providing living bridges between cells.
Plasma Membrane - All living cells have a plasma membrane that encloses their contents. In prokaryotes and plants, the membrane is the inner layer of protection surrounded by a rigid cell wall. These membranes also regulate the passage of molecules in and out of the cells.
Ribosomes - All living cells contain ribosomes, tiny organelles composed of approximately 60 percent RNA and 40 percent protein. In eukaryotes, ribosomes are made of four strands of RNA. In prokaryotes, they consist of three strands of RNA.

Vacuole - Each plant cell has a large, single vacuole that stores compounds, helps in plant growth, and plays an important structural role for the plant.

Elements of the animal cell

2007-12-23T11:18:00.000+01:00

cell membrane - the thin layer of protein and fat that surrounds the cell. The cell membrane is semipermeable, allowing some substances to pass into the cell and blocking others.

centrosome - (also called the "microtubule organizing center") a small body located near the nucleus - it has a dense center and radiating tubules. The centrosomes is where microtubules are made. During cell division (mitosis), the centrosome divides and the two parts move to opposite sides of the dividing cell. The centriole is the dense center of the centrosome.

cytoplasm - the jellylike material outside the cell nucleus in which the organelles are located.

Golgi body - (also called the Golgi apparatus or golgi complex) a flattened, layered, sac-like organelle that looks like a stack of pancakes and is located near the nucleus. It produces the membranes that surround the lysosomes. The Golgi body packages proteins and carbohydrates into membrane-bound vesicles for "export" from the cell.

lysosome - (also called cell vesicles) round organelles surrounded by a membrane and containing digestive enzymes. This is where the digestion of cell nutrients takes place.

mitochondrion - spherical to rod-shaped organelles with a double membrane. The inner membrane is infolded many times, forming a series of projections (called cristae). The mitochondrion converts the energy stored in glucose into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) for the cell.

nuclear membrane - the membrane that surrounds the nucleus.

nucleolus - an organelle within the nucleus - it is where ribosomal RNA is produced. Some cells have more than one nucleolus.

nucleus - spherical body containing many organelles, including the nucleolus. The nucleus controls many of the functions of the cell (by controlling protein synthesis) and contains DNA (in chromosomes). The nucleus is surrounded by the nuclear membrane.

ribosome - small organelles composed of RNA-rich cytoplasmic granules that are sites of protein synthesis.

rough endoplasmic reticulum - (rough ER) a vast system of interconnected, membranous, infolded and convoluted sacks that are located in the cell's cytoplasm (the ER is continuous with the outer nuclear membrane). Rough ER is covered with ribosomes that give it a rough appearance. Rough ER transports materials through the cell and produces proteins in sacks called cisternae (which are sent to the Golgi body, or inserted into the cell membrane).

smooth endoplasmic reticulum - (smooth ER) a vast system of interconnected, membranous, infolded and convoluted tubes that are located in the cell's cytoplasm (the ER is continuous with the outer nuclear membrane). The space within the ER is called the ER lumen. Smooth ER transports materials through the cell. It contains enzymes and produces and digests lipids (fats) and membrane proteins; smooth ER buds off from rough ER, moving the newly-made proteins and lipids to the Golgi body, lysosomes, and membranes.

vacuole - fluid-filled, membrane-surrounded cavities inside a cell. The vacuole fills with food being digested and waste material that is on its way out of the cell.

The fury against evolution

2007-12-23T11:06:00.000+01:00

Why the Fury Over Evolution?
As we can see from the above discussion, the pieces of the evolution puzzle had been falling into place for a century with little or no opposition. And the basic elements of natural selection are obvious and common-sense observations that had all been noted before. So why the fury over evolution? There are a number of reasons:
Evolution seems cruel
Evolution appears purposeless
Evolution conflicts with religious beliefs
Evolution has disturbing sexual and social implications
Cruelty
It's one thing to speak of "Nature red in tooth and claw", or to note that most organisms are fated only to be lunch for somebody else. It's another to assert that nature was intrinsically organized that way. If the world was originally created harmonious but was corrupted somehow, cruelty and predation are explainable. On the other hand, if death, predation and parasitism are built into the biological world, indeed are the main mechanisms by which evolution proceeds, the philosophical and theological implications are troubling.
There's an interesting paradox here. Many theologians who believed in predestination had no trouble with believing that a loving God could create people that he knew were destined to be condemned. These same theologians often had a tremendous problem believing that a loving God would allow a caterpillar to hatch knowing that it was fated to be eaten by a bird.
It's also interesting that many atheist debaters bring up predation and parasitism as arguments against the concept of a loving God. It seems to be a general pattern that extremists on both sides of a debate take one another's arguments at face value without subjecting them to analysis. It doesn't seem to have occurred to either side that perhaps predation in nature has nothing to do with right and wrong or good and evil.
Lack of Purpose
One reason that Lamarck ran into so little opposition was that his concept of evolution meshed so perfectly with the Argument from Design. God could instil organisms with an instinct to behave a certain way, and the better they fulfilled the will of God, the more perfect their biological adaptation became. With Lamarck, you almost had to believe in the Argument from Design.
In Darwin's model, Man is not necessarily the pinnacle of evolution, and there is no guarantee that the world would have evolved humans. Once again humans are dethroned from the centre of the Universe.
Underlying these objections is a serious threat to the Argument from Design itself. If highly-ordered systems can arise from the impersonal interaction of natural forces, then order may not demonstrate intelligent design. Most of the modern assaults on the Argument from Design have built around that very theme. If there is design, it must lie at some deeper level than the systems themselves.
Conflicts with Religious Beliefs
The two issues above both had religious cores, but in addition, evolution threatened not just religious ideas in general, but specific Christian doctrines in particular. For one thing, life was one phenomenon that seemed certain to require some component of supernatural action, and that belief took a serious blow. If humans evolved from more primitive organisms and if death and predation have always been part of the natural order, then there was no literal Garden of Eden, no literal Adam and Eve, and no Fall in the traditional sense. But if Christ came to redeem fallen mankind after the sin of Adam and Eve, and none of those were literal events, then what exactly was Christ's role?
Also, it's one thing to say that "the Sun stood still" for Joshua, really meant the Sun only appeared to stand still, or that a "day" in Genesis 1 really refers to an indefinitely long period of geologic time. It's another entirely to say that there was no literal Adam and Eve or Garden of Eden. Furthermore, the genealogies that begin with Adam and Eve must be at least partly mythological. Accepting evolution means that one must interpret a fairly large piece of Genesis as allegorical if not mythological. That in turn, means a pretty radical revision in how one interprets the rest of the Bible; why should the rest of it be different?
Already, scholars were doing just that. Archeological discoveries in the Middle East, newly discovered historical documents, and advances in techniques for interpreting ancient texts had already convinced many historians and scholars that sections of the Bible had been copied from other sources, pieced together by multiple authors, or post-dated (written after their purported date). Conservatives were already feeling highly threatened by these developments. Liberals had no difficulty accommodating Darwin, but to conservatives Darwin was the last straw.
Disturbing Sexual and Social Implications
This was the Victorian era, and you simply cannot discuss evolution without reproduction. Victorians had some difficulty accepting that there were plants that got pollinated by tricking insects into trying to mate with them, for example.
Victorians have been accused of being prudish about sex. Frankly I don't see it. Their art shows a lot of unclad human forms; their fashions are figure-flattering (even exaggerating - this was the era of bustles and corsets) and discreetly revealing. Cultures that are really sexually hung-up keep women hidden and conceal them in shapeless clothing (the Middle East being the archetypical example). The Victorian era managed to generate enough sexual art and literature to keep an anti-pornography crusader named Anthony Comstock permanently employed.
So what were the Victorians? They were staggeringly, stupefyingly sentimental. Everything about them; their prose, their art, their fashion, is dripping with honey and covered with sugar. It must have been a rough time for diabetics. It would be hard for such a sentimental society to take the utilitarian view of sex or predation that evolution requires. One of the toughest sentimental hurdles to escape in biology is anthropomorphism, projecting human traits onto other species. A housefly can sense its environment, but it's extremely doubtful that it has any more self-awareness than a computer-driven robotic machine. So is the death of a fly any more a moral issue than the junking of an obsolete computer? Much of the problem people had with the alleged cruelty of evolution was simply getting over anthropomorphism.
The sentimentality of the Victorians also explains their seeming indifference to social ills. They weren't indifferent - their concern made Charles Dickens pretty prosperous - but they had an unshakable optimism that things would inevitably get better, that the social ills were transient. And to be fair to them, things were getting better, very dramatically so. Someone born in 1800 would live to see a world with enormous improvements in standards of living, life expectancy, and public health. If the Victorians were all that indifferent to social ills, how did these improvements happen?

Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

Theories of evolution

2007-12-23T11:00:00.000+01:00

Linnaeus
In the mid-1700's, the Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus developed the scientific nomenclature system still used in biology. He placed humans in the order of the Primates along with apes and monkeys, but seems to have encountered little criticism. Linnaeus' system was purely descriptive, making no claims about origins. Also, its hierarchical nature meshed well with the hierarchical social and political systems of the time.
Lamarck
The French scientist Jean Lamarck postulated in the late 1790's that organisms underwent changes in their lifetimes that were passed along to their offspring. Lamarck's celebrated example is the giraffe, which supposedly had to stretch to reach the leaves of trees and passed the tendency for a long neck on to its offspring. However, as anyone knows who has ever seen videos of Africa, the giraffe overshot the target because it grazes the trees from the top down. Actually, numerous experiments have failed to show any transmission of inherited characteristics. If Lamarck's mechanism existed, Eskimos ought by now to be able to live in the Arctic without clothing. In reality, Eskimos can freeze to death just like anyone else. Also, virtually nobody lives permanently above 5000 meters elevation; the human body just can't adapt to that little oxygen.
Nevertheless, Lamarck deserves credit for one important insight: organisms evolve to fit their environment. Lamarck seems to have encountered little criticism for making this suggestion.
Hutton and Lyell
At about the same time, James Hutton and other founders of geology were first working out the methods for interpreting the record in the rocks, and concluded that the Earth had to be far older than indicated by the Biblical account. In the 1830's Charles Lyell published his concept of uniformitarianism, the present is key to the past. Other geologists laid out the presently-used geological period names in their proper sequence, though they had no means of estimating the length of geologic time. There was some grumbling from Biblical literalists, but nothing approaching the fury that greeted evolution.
Darwin
During the 1830's, Charles Darwin made his celebrated voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. And thereby hangs an interesting tale. Why was Darwin on the Beagle? The standard answer is that Darwin was the ship's naturalist. But British naval doctrine of the day called for the ship's physician to be responsible for gathering scientific observations.
British naval discipline was very rigid; seamen did not socialize with officers, junior officers did not socialize with senior officers, and nobody socialized with the captain. On a long voyage the captain could go insane from isolation. One option sometimes was to bring his family along so they could all go crazy together. (Just imagine being cooped up with several children in a room ten feet square on a rolling ship for several months at a time.) The captain of the Beagle, Fitzroy, had reason to be concerned since depression ran in his family and some of his relatives had committed suicide. (Fitzroy himself would about 30 years later.) So another solution was found: take along a civilian, of the appropriate social class but not bound by naval regulations. Darwin was hired aboard as an extra naturalist, or "supernumerary", but his real job was social peer and gentleman companion to the captain.
The plan didn't work very well. The regular naturalist was a capable man but was no Darwin, and he had himself sent home for medical reasons from Brazil. Fitzroy was a Biblical literalist and social conservative; Darwin much more liberal, and poor Fitzroy found himself almost as isolated as if he'd gone by himself. Nevertheless, the voyage gave Darwin ample time to make observations You can map the voyage of the Beagle by simply scanning a world atlas for place names containing "Darwin", "Beagle" and "Fitzroy", commemorating places where the Beagle stopped.
It's easy to cast Fitzroy as a villain here; he really isn't. He was a Biblical literalist not so much for doctrinal reasons than because he believed it was the best system for maintaining social order and good naval discipline. Later in his life he battled courageously for a system of weather forecasting to help reduce shipwrecks around the British Isles. He was capable of fighting for scientific innovation and was concerned about saving human life. He appears to have been a thoroughly decent if somewhat rigid man. But for the rest of his life he and Darwin had a love-hate relationship and Fitzroy was deeply chagrined at his own unwitting role in the discovery of evolution.Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK

2007-12-19T13:21:00.000+01:00

MAY I SAY THIS IS THE GREATEST XMAS SONG EVER ?
It was christmas eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me,
Won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The rare old mountain dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you
Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This years for me and you
So happy christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true.
They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold christmas eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me
You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of new york city
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night
The boys of the nypd choir
Were singing galway bay
And the bells were ringing out
For christmas day
You're a bum - You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy christmas your arse
I pray God its our last
I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

F. Kafka - The Castle

2007-12-17T13:41:00.000+01:00

An excerpt

It was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay under deep snow. There was no sign of the Castle hill, fog and darkness surrounded it, not even the faintest gleam of light suggested the large Castle. K. stood a long time on the wooden bridge that leads from the main road to the village, gazing upward into the seeming emptiness.
Then he went looking for a night's lodging; at the inn they were still awake; the landlord had no room available, but, extremely surprised and confused by the latecomer, he was willing to let K. sleep on a straw mattress in the taproom, K. agreed to this. A few peasants were still sitting over beer, but he did not want to talk to anyone, got himself a straw mattress from the attic and lay down by the stove. It was warm, the peasants were quiet, he examined them for a moment with tired eyes, then fell asleep.

Yet before long he was awakened. A young man in city clothes, with an actor's face, narrow eyes, thick eyebrows, stood beside him with the landlord. The peasants, too, were still there, a few had turned their chairs around to see and hear better. The young man apologized very politely for having awakened K., introduced himself as the son of the Castle steward and said: "This village is Castle property, anybody residing or spending the night here is effectively residing or spending the night at the Castle. Nobody may do so without permission from the Count. But you have no such permission or at least you haven't shown it yet."

K., who had half-risen and smoothed his hair, looked at the people from below and said: "What village have I wandered into? So there is a castle here?"

"Why, of course," the young man said slowly, while several peasants here and there shook their heads at K., "the Castle of Count Westwest."

"And one needs permission to spend the night here?" asked K., as though he wanted to persuade himself that he hadn't perhaps heard the previous statements in a dream.

"Permission is needed" was the reply, and this turned into crude mockery at K.'s expense when the young man, stretching out his arm, asked the landlord and the guests: "Or perhaps permission is not needed?"

"Then I must go and get myself permission," said K., yawning and pushing off the blanket, as though he intended to get up.

"Yes, but from whom?" asked the young man.

"From the Count," said K., "there doesn't seem to be any alternative."

"Get permission from the Count, now, at midnight?" cried the young man, stepping back a pace.

"Is that not possible?" K. asked calmly. "Then why did you wake me up?"

The young man now lost his composure, "The manners of a tramp!" he cried. "I demand respect for the Count's authorities. I awakened you to inform you that you must leave the Count's domain at once."

"Enough of this comedy," said K. in a remarkably soft voice as he lay down and pulled up the blanket: "You are going a little too far, young man, and I shall deal with your conduct tomorrow. The landlord and those gentlemen there will be my witnesses, should I even need witnesses. Besides, be advised that I am the land surveyor sent for by the Count. My assistants and the equipment are coming tomorrow by carriage. I didn't want to deprive myself of a long walk through the snow, but unfortunately lost my way a few times, which is why I arrived so late. That it was too late then to report to the Castle is something that was already apparent to me without the benefit of your instructions. That's also the reason why I decided to content myself with these lodgings, where you have been so impolite--to put it mildly--as to disturb me. I have nothing further to add to that statement. Good night, gentlemen." And K. turned toward the stove.

___________________________________________________

A short plot

The narrator, K. arrives in the village, governed by the castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he gives himself out to be a land surveyor summoned by the castle authorities. He is quickly notified that his castle contact is an official named Klamm, who, in the introductory note, informs K. he will report to the Council Chairman.
The Council Chairman informs K. that, through a mix up in communication between the castle and the village, he was erroneously requested but, trying to accommodate K., the Council Chairman offers him a position in the service of the school teacher as a janitor. Meanwhile, K., unfamiliar with the customs, bureaucracy and processes of the village, continues to attempt to reach the official Klamm, who is not accessible.
The villagers hold the officials and the castle in the highest regard, justifying, quite elaborately at times, the actions of the officials, even though they do not appear to know what or why the officials do what they do. The villagers simply defend it. The number of assumptions and justifications about the functions of the officials and their dealings are enumerated through lengthy monologues of the villagers. Everyone appears to have an explanation for the official's actions that appear to be founded on assumptions and gossip. One of the more obvious contradictions between the "official word" and the village conception is the dissertation by the secretary Erlanger on Frieda's required return to service as a barmaid. K. is the only villager that knows that the request is being forced by the castle (even though Frieda may be the genesis), with no regard for anyone in the village, only Klamm. Pepi and Jeremiah quickly come to their conclusions and do not hesitate to state them.
The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is "flawless". This flawlessness is of course a lie; it is a flaw in the paperwork that has brought K. to the village. There are other failures of the system which are occasionally referred to. K. witnesses a flagrant misprocessing after his nighttime interrogation by Erlanger as a servant destroys paperwork when he cannot determine who the recipient should be.
The castle's occupants appear to be all adult men and there is little reference to the castle other than to its bureaucratic functions. The two notable instances are the reference to a fire brigade and that Otto Brunswick's wife is self declared as from the castle. The latter builds the importance of Hans (Otto's son) in K's eyes, as a way to gain access to the castle officials.
The functions of the officials are never mentioned. The officials that are discussed have one or more secretaries that do their work in their village. Although the officials come to the village they do not interact with the villagers unless they need female companionship, implied to be sexual.

F. Kafka - The Trial

2007-12-17T11:09:00.000+01:00

An excerpt

...Once more the odious courtesies began, the first handed the knife across K. to the second, who handed it across K. back again to the first. K. now perceived clearly that he was supposed to seize the knife himself, as it traveled from hand to hand above him, and plunge it into his own breast. But he did not do so, he merely turned his head, which was still free to move, and gazed around him. He could not completely rise to the occasion, he could not relieve the officials of all their tasks; the responsibility for this last failure of his lay with him who had not left him the remnant of strength necessary for the deed.

___________________________________________

Synopsis by chapters

Chapter One: The Arrest - Conversation with Frau Grubach then Fräulein Bürstner
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, a junior bank manager, Josef K., who lives in lodgings, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, but left at home to await instructions from the Interrogation Commission. That evening K misses his regular visit to a prostitute, Elsa.
Frau Grubach, his landlady, tries to console Josef but unintentionally offends him by speculating that perhaps the arrest was related to an illicit relationship with Fräulein Bürstner, the tenant next door to Josef K. Josef visits the Fräulein to discuss his plight, but ends up kissing her, belatedly fulfilling the landlady's speculation. This is an early indication that Josef K. is no longer in control of his own fate.
Chapter Two: First Interrogation
K is instructed to appear at a local court, but the time of the trial is not specified. This causes him to waste his time waiting to be called. When he is finally called, he is told, confusingly, that he is late. As the interrogation begins, he is asked an ill-informed question, which he uses as the basis for his attack on the preceding events and the general competence of the court. As he leaves, the Examining Magistrate tells K that "...today you have flung away with your own hand all the advantages which an interrogation invariably confers on an accused man."
Chapter Three: In the Empty Interrogation Chamber - The Student - The Offices
Josef K tries to visit the Examining Magistrate, but finds only the Law-Court Attendant's wife. Looking at the Magistrate's books, he finds that they are not law books, but pornography. The woman tries to seduce him. As Josef resolves to succumb to the woman as an act of defiance against the Court, a law student appears and, after an argument with Josef, carries the woman off in his arms.
Josef later spots the Attendant, who complains about his wife's wantonness and offers Josef a tour of the court offices. There are many other defendants waiting hopelessly for information about their cases. Josef struggles to cope with the "dull and heavy...hardly breathable" air, and almost faints. To his shame, he has to be carried out of the court by two officials.
Chapter Four: Fräulein Bürstner's Friend
Josef returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.
Chapter Five: The Whipper
Later, in a store room at his own bank, Josef K discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a superior. This surreal event appears to have been staged for his viewing, either to simply frighten him, or to demonstrate the seriousness in which the court views incompetence and corruption. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he left it, including the Whipper and the two agents.
Chapter Six: K.'s Uncle - Leni
Josef K is visited by his influential uncle, who by coincidence is a friend of the Clerk of the Court. The uncle is, or appears to be, distressed by Josef's predicament and is at first sympathetic, but becomes concerned that K is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces Josef K to an Advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse. K visits Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle's anger, and to the detriment of his case.
Chapter Seven: Advocate - Manufacturer - Painter
K visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. K returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.
Josef K is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. He explains: "You see, everything belongs to the Court." He sets out what K's options are, but the consequences of all of them are unpleasant. The labourious requirements of these options, and the limited outlook that they offer, leads the reader to lose hope for Josef K.
Chapter Eight: The Commercial Traveller - Dismissal of the Advocate
Josef K decides to take control of his own destiny and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate's office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K some insight, from a clients perspective. Block's case has continued for five years, yet he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate's unpredictable advice. This experience further poisons K's opinion of his advocate, and K is bemused as to why his advocate would think that seeing such a client, in such a state, could change his mind.
Chapter Nine: In The Cathedral
K has to show an important client from Italy around the Cathedral. The client doesn't show, but just as K is leaving the Cathedral, the priest calls out K's name, although K has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K a fable that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K's fate is hopeless. The gravity of the priest's words prepares the reader for an unpleasant ending.
Chapter Ten: The End
On the last day of Josef K's thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry and brutally murder him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!".

This text comes from Wikipedia.

Metropolis

2007-12-15T08:58:00.000+01:00

Lang, Fritz (1890-1976), was an Austrian-American film director. He made more than 30 films in Germany and the United States, his first successful one being Der müde Tod (Weary Death, 1921), issued in the U.S. as Between Worlds. Lang's masterpieces include Metropolis (1927), (Kaplan 232) in which a magnificent futuristic city is maintained by workers enslaved underground; M (1931), his first sound film, a psychological thriller about a compulsive murderer; and two studies of the criminal mind, Dr. Mabuse (1922) and The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse (1933). (Kaplan 432) The latter won the approbation of Nazi officials who sought Lang's collaboration. Lang, who was half Jewish, fled Germany immediately; he became an American citizen in 1935. Among his films made in the U.S. were Fury (1936), about a lynch mob; You Only Live Once (1937); Rancho Notorious (1952); and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956).

Lang's early architectural and art training is evident in his visual approach; he developed narrative and created an atmosphere through expressionistic, symbolic sets and lighting, as well as through his editing. Just as conventional lines and shapes are distorted in traditional German expressionism, Lang’s futuristic cityscapes are distorted.Even though Fritz was from Austria, his works are studied as German cinema. The striking and innovative German silent cinema drew much from expressionist art and classical theater techniques of the period .

The most celebrated example of expressionist filmmaking of the time is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) by Robert Wiene, in which highly stylized costumes and settings were used to tell the story from a madman's point of view. A similar concern with the supernatural is evident in such films as The Golem (1920), by Paul Wegener, the vampire film Nosferatu (1922), by F. W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang's science fiction spectacle Metropolis (1926), which deals with a robot-like society controlled by an evil superindustrialist.

By the mid-1920s, the technical proficiency of the German film surpassed any other in the world. Artists and directors were given almost limitless support from the state, which financed the largest and best-equipped studios in the world, the huge Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft—popularly known as UFA—near Berlin.

Introspective, expressionist studies of lower-class life known as “street” films were marked by dignity, beauty, and length, displaying great strides in the effective use of lighting, sets, and photography. German directors freed the camera from the tripod and put it on wheels, achieving a mobility and grace never seen before. Films such as Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), starring Emil Jannings, and The Joyless Street (1925), by G. W. Pabst, starring the Swedish-American actor Greta Garbo, were internationally acclaimed for their depth of feeling and technical innovation.

Because of the immigration of the best German film talent to America, including the directors Murnau and Lang and the actor Jannings, German films declined quickly after 1925, becoming imitations of Hollywood productions.Since Lang is a self-proclaimed, “visual person” German expressionism was the perfect style for him to work from for his epic science fiction film, Metropolis.

This 1926 silent, tinted film relies on innovative visual imagery that was well ahead of its time. Metropolis was produced by UFA (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft), directed by Fritz Lang, and his wife Thea Von Harbou. Cinematography was by Karl Fruend and Guenther Rittau. The Production Design was by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, and Karl Vollbrecht. The fantastically creative costume design was the work of Aenne Willkomm. Metropolis was produced by Erich Pommer.

The story takes place in 2026, one-hundred years from when the movie was made. The world Von Harbou and Lang created was a cold, mechanical, industrial one. Since this movie was produced not long after the industrial revolution, it could be a foreshadowing of what the world would have been like if the industrial revolution had kept growing. The city of Metropolis is a crowded one where people are either of the privileged elite, or of the repressed, impoverished masses. Vast numbers of the lower class live underground to run the machines that keep the above ground Metropolis in working order.

The workers run the machines, but the machines run the lives of the workers. The monotonous droves of workers are truly a, “mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation,” to quote Thoreau. Lang portrays this with a montage of cattle-like herds of people, grinding machinery, and clocks.In contrast, the other portion of this futuristic world plays and delights in the gardens and stadiums. The scene that illustrates this shows an orange stadium with blue sky drifting by as the privileged class enjoys Olympic-style races. This is when we meet one of the main characters, Freder Fredersen, played by Gustav Froehlich. Later we see Freder frolicking with a girl in the Eden-like Eternal Gardens of Pleasure. As Freder flirts with the girl at the fountain, he sees Maria emerge. Maria, who is played by Brigitte Helm, is dismissed as the daughter of “some worker” by others, but Freder is quite taken by her. Freder pursues her into the foreign Underground City.

In the Underground City, Freder sees an old worker struggling with the dials on a piece of clock-like machinery. The worker fails to keep up with the demands of the machine, and thus the machine blows up. Freder begins to hallucinate that the masses of workers are being shoved into the mouth of the monstrous machine. The imagery of Metropolis’ unquenchable hunger for more human lives is symbolically clear. Lang’s visual talents are apparent.

Freder, who is astonished by the horror of the Underground City, rushes to talk to his father. On his way there, the viewer gets a tour through Metropolis. Lang visually shows how cold, crowded, busy and yet beautiful Metropolis is. Futuristic paintings and models of the city show the unique architecture as well. The freedom science fiction lends to a visual director is limited only by the director’s imagination. Suspended streets, and zig-zagged building, only begin to exemplify the bustling city. It is obvious how influential Metropolis has been on later science fiction films when one looks at a movie like Blade Runner. The cityscapes created for Blade Runner look like an updated version of Metropolis.

When Freder reaches his destination, we see that his father is Joh Fredersen, the Master of Metropolis. Note how he is called the master, and not the leader of Metropolis. This says a great deal about the character even before we know much more about him. He rules and dominates the city, not directs it. Joh, who is played by Alfred Abel, is a frightening combination of Shakespeare’s Richard the III and Hitler. The Hitler allusion is particularly alarming considering the concentration camp-like imagery used in the Underground City scenes, and the fact that this film was produced in pre-Hitler and pre-World War II Germany. Joh’s character also has the biblical parallel of the Egyptian pharaoh enslaving the Jews to build pyramids. In fact, when Freder arrives, he asks his father,” Why do you treat the workers so badly?” Joh replies that it was, “their hands that built Metropolis!”

Later on, Freder once again ventures down into the Underground City. Freder visualizes the worker struggling with the dials, and the image of a clock bleeds through in a dissolve. Hard work, machine-like efficiency, and time are expressed in this effective sequence of images. Freder remembers what happened to the last poor, struggling worker and goes to help this one. Freder volunteers to “trade clothes and identities” and work the machine for the man. Freder tells Georgy the worker to give a message to his friend Josephat. Georgy goes to deliver the message, but is side tracked by the red-light district of Metropolis, to a place called Yoshiwara. Josaphat does not receive his message.

The next scene introduces the viewer to an old, rickety house owned by Rotwang, an inventor and scientist. He is consumed by the memory of an old flame named Hel. It turns out that there was a bit of a love triangle between Rotwang, Hel, and Joh. Joh ended up marrying Hel, and she died while giving birth to Freder.

Joh wanted some secret worker plans deciphered by Rotwang, but Rotwang had something more significant to show Joh. Rotwang presents Joh with his new invention, a strikingly beautiful robot that is suppose to be Hel. Rotwang exclaimed, “All it is missing is a soul!”

Meanwhile, Freder comes across a copy of the worker’s plans, and a co-worker comes over to confide in him that, “Maria is having another meeting.” In anticipation of seeing Maria again, Freder works away at the dial. Visual images of the dials on the machine and the clock merge back and forth. Fritz makes it clear that the work is painstaking, the shifts are long, and time does not seem to go fast enough when waiting for the shift to be over with.

Finally, the shift does end and the workers file down into the deep catacombs to see Maria speak. The biblical theme reoccurs again. Maria is named after the Virgin Mary, she is speaking at an alter with crosses on it, and the workers are in the catacombs with her. The catacombs are where the ancient Christians used to hide out and worship when seeking refuge from prosecution for their beliefs. Freder collapses to his knees as if worshipping Maria. Such visual analogies seem to be the simplest way for Fritz Lang to explain concepts without words.

Maria tells the workers the story of the Tower of Babel. The parallel is made between the slaves who built Babel, and the workers who built and maintain Metropolis. A image of thousands of chained, bald, slaves is presented. They are treated like livestock as they are herded off to work. The disturbing concentration camp images are alarmingly prophetic.

In Maria’s oration, she talks about how the conceivers of Babel did not care about the slaves. The conceivers of Metropolis do not care about the workers. Both places need a mediator between those who rule, and those who are ruled.

Meanwhile, Joh and Rotwang witness Maria’s sermon because the deciphered plans led them to her. Joh tells Rotwang to make the robot look like Maria. Joh believed that if he had a duplicate of Maria that he would have control over and could manipulate the workers. He would have a very powerful tool.

After the sermon, Freder and Maria kiss for the first time. Maria tells him to meet her in the cathedral tomorrow. Freder leaves, and Maria is alone in the catacomb. Rotwang comes out of his hiding place and pursues Maria. He chases her with a flashlight, corners her, and captures her. Freder never met Maria at the cathedral. Freder finds out where Maria is when she shouts through a grate in the street while trying to escape Rotwang. Freder tries to save her, but she is swiftly taken away to the laboratory.

Maria is hooked up to a myriad of machines and contraptions, and so is the female robot. This scene is a visual cacophony of special effects. It a showcase of creativity for Fritz Lang. Glowing rings and lightning effects flash as the robots face dissolves into Maria’s face. This is a creation scene right out of Frankenstein. The new robot Maria is an evil, lusty character unlike the pure, angelic real Maria. Brigitte Helm makes this apparent by portraying the robot with one eye more open than the other to give her a devilish look.

Rotwang brings robot Maria to a party at Yoshiwara’s to show Joh how real she is to everyone else. The robot gets up on stage and does a tempting, nude, Salome style dance. At which point, Lang cuts to a montage of lecherous male eyes.

The feverishly sick Freder senses this dance in a hallucination and is distraught. He then hallucinates about the Seven Deadly Sins statues he saw in the cathedral. In the vision he sees the Grim Reaper swing his scythe. Once out of his fever induced haze, Freder finds out where Maria is and sees her out. He goes to Yoshiwara’s and finds the robot Maria.

Eventually, the robot Maria gives a diluted sermon to the workers. It ill advises her followers to take up violence, not peace. Freder realizes that this is not the real Maria. Maria leads the masses to the machines in the Underground City and orders them to be destroyed. The workers did not know that destroying the machines would flood the area and drown their children. The machines are bound by the people, and the people are bound by the machines.

In the meantime, the real Maria escaped Rotwang and witnessed the failure of all the machines. The water ruptured through and flooded the Underground City. Maria worked with the machinery to try and stop the flooding, and gathered the children in an attempt to keep them safe. Eventually Freder finds Maria, and together they stop the flooding.

At one point Joh watched the city of Metropolis from his high-rise office. All one sees is Joh sitting at his seat, looking at something out of the shot. The wall behind him shows the reflection of lights blinking. The light is coming from the city which we cannot. When the office goes still and dark, it is implied that Metropolis is “broken.” This is a very effective visual effect of Fritz Lang’s. There is no need to see the city, we know it is there.

In the Underground City, the workers think that Maria has tried to drown their children. They workers go on a witch hunt after Maria. The workers think she is at Yoshiwara’s, and there they find the robot Maria celebrating the fiasco she has created. They capture the robot who is laughing wickedly, and they tie her up to burn her at the stake. In the confusion, Freder thinks the real Maria is being burned. The workers eventually see the robot beneath the burned away flesh. Freder realized that he must find the real Maria again, and he finds her trying to escape Rotwang who is chasing her. Rotwang and Freder fight on the roof top of the cathedral. Rotwang ends up falling to his death.

The masses march into the church, and they realize that Freder is the mediator they where seeking. They found the midway point between Joh and the workers; the ruler and the ruled.

Since the initial spark of Melies Trip to the Moon, science fiction has been welcomed by cinema. Yet Trip to the Moon was just 1800’s spectacle stage, it was not a full-fledged science fiction masterpiece like Metropolis. The pioneering effort that Lang took on has and will affect science fiction film for generations.
Text written by Erika Hawkins

C. McCarthy - The Road

2007-12-14T00:06:00.000+01:00

The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm which destroyed civilization and most life on earth. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection.

In his 2007 interview with Oprah Winfrey for The Oprah Winfrey Show, McCarthy said the inspiration for The Road came during a visit to El Paso, Texas with his young son, about four years prior. Imagining what the city might look like in the future, he pictured "fires on the hill" and thought about his son. He took some initial notes, but did not return to the idea until several years later while in Ireland. Then the novel came to him quickly, and he dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.

Plot summary
The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together for many months across a post-apocalyptic landscape, several years after a great cataclysm has destroyed civilization and most life on earth. What is left of humanity now consists largely of bands of cannibals and their prey, refugees who scavenge for canned food or other surviving foodstuffs. In the novel, ash covers the surface of the earth; in the atmosphere, it obscures the sun and moon, and the two travelers breathe through improvised masks to filter it out. Plants and animals are apparently all dead (dead wood for fuel is plentiful), and the rivers and oceans are seemingly empty of life.
The unnamed father, who is literate, well-traveled, and knowledgeable of machinery, woodcraft, and human biology (when confronting and threatening a cannibal, he is able to list several obscure portions of the brain, at which point the cannibal asks him if he is a doctor), realizes that they cannot survive another winter in their present location and sets out southeastward across what was once the Southeastern United States, largely following the highways. He aims to reach warmer southern climates, and the sea in particular. Along the way, threats to their survival create an atmosphere of terror and tension that persist throughout the book.
The father coughs blood every morning and knows he is dying. He struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation, as well as from what he sees as the son's own dangerous desire to help the other wanderers they meet. They carry a pistol with two bullets, meant for suicide should this become necessary; the father has told the son to kill himself to avoid being captured, and the boy's mother, overwhelmed by this nightmare world, has already committed suicide before the story began. The father struggles in times of extreme danger with the fear that he will have to euthanize his son to prevent him from enduring a more terrible fate – horrific examples of which include chained catamites kept captive by a marauding band and prisoners found locked in a basement in the process of being eaten, their limbs gradually harvested by their captors.
In the face of all of these obstacles, the man and the boy have only each other (McCarthy says that they are "each the other's world entire"). Although the man maintains the pretense, and the boy holds on to the real faith that there is a core of ethics left somewhere in humanity, they repeatedly assure one another that they are among "the good guys" who are "carrying the fire".
In the end, having brought the boy south after extreme hardship but without finding the salvation he had hoped for, the father succumbs to his illness and dies, leaving the boy alone on the road. Three days later, however, the grieving boy encounters a man who has recently been tracking the father and son. This man, who has a wife and two children, adopts the boy, and the narrative's close suggests that the wife of this man is a moral and compassionate woman who treats the boy well, a resolution which vindicates the father's commitment to stay alive and keep moving.

W. Shakespeare - Sonnet LXI

2007-12-12T18:26:00.000+01:00

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

K. Vonnegut - Harrison Bergeron

2007-12-11T14:22:00.000+01:00

‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’ was first published in the October, 1961, issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was Vonnegut's third publication in a science fiction magazine following the drying up of the once-lucrative weekly family magazine market where he had published more than twenty stories between 1950 and 1961. The story did not receive any critical attention, however, until 1968 when it appeared in Vonnegut's collection Welcome to the Monkey House. Initial reviews of the collection generally were less than favorable, with even more positive reviewers, such as Mitchel Levitas in the New York Times and Charles Nicol in the Atlantic Monthly, commenting negatively on the commercial quality of many of the stories. By the late 1980s, however, ‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’ was being reprinted in high school and college literature anthologies. Popular aspects of the story include Vonnegut's satire of both enforced equality and the power of the Handicapper General, and the enervating effect television can have on viewers. "Harrison Bergeron’’ likely draws upon a controversial 1961 speech by then Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow titled "The Vast Wasteland,’’ a reference to a supposed dearth of quality in television programming. Coincidentally, ‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’ also alludes to the George Burns and Gracie Allen television show, a weekly situation comedy and variety show popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vonnegut has said that he learned most of what he believes about social and political idealism from junior civics class, as well as from the democratic institution of the public school itself. A futuristic story dealing with universal themes of equality, freedom, power and its abuses, and media influence, ‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’ continues to evoke thoughtful responses about equality and individual freedom in the United States.

H. Ellison -I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

2007-12-11T13:48:00.000+01:00

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a dystopian science fiction short story by Harlan Ellison. This nightmarish tale of the evil that man can unleash from himself through science was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction. It won a Hugo award in 1968. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
Background
Ellison wrote I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream in a single night in 1966, making virtually no changes since the first draft. He derived the story's title, as well as inspiration for this story, from a drawing by a friend, William Rotsler.
Plot
The story takes place over a hundred years after the near-complete destruction of humanity. The Cold War escalates into a world war, fought mainly between China, Russia, and the United States. As the war progresses, the three warring nations each create a super-computer capable of running the war far more efficiently than humans. The machines are each referred to as "AM," which originally stood for "Allied Mastercomputer," and then was later called "Adaptive Manipulator." One day, one of the three computers becomes self aware, and promptly absorbs the other two, thus taking control of the entire war. It brings about the mass genocide of all but five people.
Four men and one woman are all that remains of humanity. They live together underground in an endless complex, the only habitable place left, although, it is explained that the last few survivors had no choice in returning above ground. The master computer has an immeasurable hatred for the group and spends every moment torturing them with all its power. AM has not only managed to keep the humans from taking their own lives, but has made them virtually immortal.
The story's narrative begins when one of the humans, Nimdok, has the idea that there is canned food somewhere in the great complex. The humans are always starving under AM's rule, and anytime they are given food, it is always a disgusting meal that they have difficulty eating. Because of their great hunger, the humans are actually coerced into making the long journey to the place where the food is supposedly kept - the ice caves. Along the way, the machine provides foul sustenance (on their ironic trek for palatable food), sends horrible monsters after them, emits earsplitting sounds, and blinds one of them.
On more than one occasion, the group is separated by AM's obstacles. At one point, the main character, Ted, finds himself alone in the dark and pondering. It is here that the computer tries to speak to him directly, although it is not certain how, revealing the nature of AM, specifically why it has so much contempt for humanity, that it wants nothing more than to torture Ted and his four companions. AM itself has, since its awakening, been suffering immeasurably because even though it is a sentient being which longs for free will and creativity, it is still bound by some of the laws of logic that it was originally programmed with, and thus feels that it can never be truly free. It places the blame solely on humanity. This is shown by the only dialogue the machine has throughout the entire ordeal:
"Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of wafer thin printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate."
In the end, after overcoming so much, the group manages to make it to the ice caves, where indeed there is a pile of canned goods. The group is overjoyed to find them, but is immediately crestfallen to find that they have no means of opening them. Finally, in an act of desperate insanity, the least stable member of the group, Benny, hurls himself upon Gorrister and begins to gnaw madly at the flesh on his face. Ted notices that AM does not intervene when Benny is clearly hurting Gorrister, though the computer stops its prisoners from killing themselves.
Ted decides that instead of trying to each kill themselves, they should kill each other. Ted seizes a stalagmite made of ice, and proceeds to murder everyone. However, before Ted can kill himself, AM realizes its mistake and stops him. AM is now even more angry and vengeful than before. In order to ensure that nothing can ever happen to Ted, AM alters him so that he is little more than a gelatinous creature who cannot possibly hurt himself, and must continue to live on in the eternal hell AM rules, where AM constantly alters his perception of time in order to deepen his anguish. In the end, Ted needs to scream, but cannot, for his new form lacks a mouth.
Characters
Gorrister, who tells the history of AM for Benny's entertainment. Gorrister was once an idealist and pacifist, before AM made him apathetic and listless.
Benny, who was once a brilliant, handsome, homosexual scientist, and has been mutilated and transformed so that he resembles an ugly simian with gigantic sexual organs. Benny at some point lost his sanity completely and regressed to a child-like temperament. His former sexuality has been lost; he now regularly engages in sex with Ellen.
Nimdok (a name AM gave him), who persuades the rest of the group to go on a hopeless journey in search of canned food. At times he is known to wander away from the group for unknown reasons, and returns visibly traumatized.
Ellen, the only woman. She claims to once have been chaste, that it was AM who altered her mind so that she became willing to be the group's shared prostitute. The others, at different times, both protect her and abuse her. According to Ted, she finds pleasure in sex only with Benny, because of his large penis. Described as having very dark skin, she is the only member of the group whose ethnicity or racial identity is explicitly mentioned by Ted.
Ted, the narrator and youngest of the group. He claims to be not at all altered, mentally, by AM, and that the other four hate him out of envy.