Holy cow

This could become a habit, eh? Anyways, without further ado, dumping a few incoherently scattered links:

• Blondes to battle Latvia’s blues – time for some blonde jokes, perhaps?
• Family see Jesus image in Marmite – well, of course. Marmite, though.

With that light entertainment aside, something more substantial:

• Beware of Pity, Hannah Arendt and the power of the impersonal – always amazing how that magazine manages to publish such quality content. In these times, and all.

And to resume the light programming, this:

• Heavy Sifting: Broke Hop – Sasha Frere-Jones alerts us to a brilliant mix tape. And point us here for more, more, more of the good stuff.
• Examples of the Wisdom of Crowds in Daily Life – Mr. Powazek has some interesting observations.

Alive

Fiddled a little with a photo gallery (linked to on your right), so, I thunk to my own self: why not write one of these blog posts? At least dump these here links:

• In Defense of Eye Candy from A List Apart. Design and stuff, and why it actually does matter.
• Reading Hannah Arendt in Cafe Crema – I have recently begun reading Bob’s blog: This is a typical good post of his.
• Getting beyond: is photography a lost tradition? – an interesting discussion
• The Holy Ghost People – a remarkable documentary, free and all.

A minitheme: three links to articles that one way or the other speak about capitalism and work and what might be beyond it all. Mainly just to keep them around for my own sake:

• Minima Moralia by Theodor Adorno, as in ‘Rien faire comme une bête, lying on the water and look peacefully into the heavens, “being, nothing else, without any further determination and fulfillment” might step in place of process, doing, fulfilling, and so truly deliver the promise of dialectical logic, of culminating in its origin.’
• The Right To Be Lazy by Paul Lafargue, as in ‘If, uprooting from its heart the vice which dominates it and degrades its nature, the working class were to arise in its terrible strength, not to demand the Rights of Man, which are but the rights of capitalist exploitation, not to demand the Right to Work which is but the right to misery, but to forge a brazen law forbidding any man to work more than three hours a day, the earth, the old earth, trembling with joy would feel a new universe leaping within her. But how should we ask a proletariat corrupted by capitalist ethics, to take a manly resolution …’
• Useful Work versus Useless Toil By William Morris, as in ‘[..] it has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself – a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others. But as to those on whom they live, I recommend them not to take it on trust, but to look into the matter a little deeper.’

Orwellian

A book review by Julian Barnes (Such, Such Was Eric Blair) really makes David Ehrenstein get on his high horse and spew venom. The drink-soaked Trotters have a more balanced view in their Thoughts on Orwell, also talking about the Barnes thing. Their conclusion, “[h]is understanding was underpinned by a tetchy discontent and a discomfort with orthodoxy. He is disconcerting and that is why he is still worth reading and why he should never be romanticised. He was a serious and, at times, uncomfortable writer, not a prophet, even less a guru” sounds about right. IMHO.

Dumb tabs

As usual, dumping a number of links will be my ersatz for actually blogging:

• The 75 Albums Every Man Should Own from Esquire is, of course, an interesting list, and I do own a few of the albums. But, jeez: you sure have an eclectic taste if you went and bought all those discs…

• Slate’s Shoot the Recession Project. Photos for the new recession depression.

• In Love With A. Lincoln. My wife is afflicted, too (as I once said, I might prefer John Brown myself.)

• 10 Best Conservative Movies. “Matthew Broderick plays Ferris Bueller, who decides he has had enough of liberal indoctrination and skips school on the day of a test about European socialism in protest.”

• The Old, Weird America. Via. Wonderful.

Tab dump

In lieu of writing, linking…:

• The reactionary right-wing politics of the Gaza demonstrations by Sean Matgamna. I know, I know. But, still: Old Sean strikes a nerve…
• Reading Gaza — quite fair and balanced account, in step with the above.
• Thoughts on Gaza — and an anarchist view, as well.
• Willem Buiter: The US and UK as Banana Republics — do see Buiters original, too, but the lively discussion here is quite interesting.
• Seeing double: Avoidance scheme allegedly used by UK ads agency — not that I am surprised, or even outraged (as I would expect this behavior from our capitalist masters anyhoot), but, the cojones: “[…] the surprising truth is, that far from forking out £200m a year to the UK in corporation tax, WPP has paid very little on that score in recent years. It has instead made acquisitions and piled up debt in the UK, enabling it to claim large amounts of tax relief on the interest. WPP’s £200m tax payments went almost entirely to other countries.”
• Frozen in indifference: Life goes on around body found in vacant warehouse — for the shock value, if for nothing else.
• A Tribe Apart – Afghan elites face a corrosive past — simply a good read.

Tab dump

In lieu of writing, linking:

• What Obama can learn from ‘old Europe’ — haha: that will make someone spin and spit
• Is Europe’s welfare system a model for the 21st century? — if the previous story does not quite do the job, this will help…
• International Colouring Contest — “He was a president and the President is brown.”
• Directors of state-backed Lloyds asked for a pay rise — why, of course. But then we should strike words such as ‘decency’ from our dictionaries. Not useful no more.
• Climate Change Largely Irreversible For Next 1,000 Years, NOAA Reports — hey, you know: it was freezing this morning, so no global warming. QED. Or something.

Lists

As is customary, the owner of this site will also make a public fool of himself by showing how unhip and unconnected he really is this year. Or, in other words, what cultural artifacts were enjoyed these past 12 months?

Well… and the prize for the best movie I saw in 2008 goes to No Country For Old Men. As it happens, it did not hit the screens here in Denmark till well into 2008, so (this once) we are way cool on that account. In the words of one Roget Ebert, “(t)his movie is a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate. It is also, in the photography by Roger Deakins, the editing by the Coens and the music by Carter Burwell, startlingly beautiful, stark and lonely.” I can only agree.

And, surprisingly enough, we continue with a CD that was also issued in 2008 itself, so the price for best new album I listened to in 2008 is contemporary. Drumroll. And the winner is Home Before Dark by Neil Diamond. OMG; the horror of it all… but I actually like it. As the review on allmusic ends: “It is a stark and moving portrait of what an accepted artist found when he reached all the way down to face his fear, doubt, and knowledge, and brought the discovery into his work.”

Best new book I read in 2008 had me reeling for a while. I thought I had to make excuses for nominating Per Pettersson, but then I started reading a freshly made Danish novel just days before the year ran out. The book in question is Ubevidst Rødgang by Lars Frost; so far, AFAIK, only available in Danish. An “engineering novel” set in the early seventires as we move from the postwar boom into gloomier times. A seemingly “realistic” novel that actually undermines its own realism in a subtle ways. Also a damn good yarn.