May 4, 2008

Calvin knows best

But the rest...


I can't say what made me fall in love with Vietnam - that a woman's voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. Nothing like the filthy rain in London. They say whatever you're looking for, you will find here. They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived.



(Taken from The Quiet American, directed by Phillip Noyce, 2002)

May 3, 2008

Tony Harrison, "Book Ends", II

The stone's too full. The wording must be terse.
There's scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it--

Come on, it's not as if we're wanting verse.
It's not as if we're wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker
(I think that both of us we're on our third)
you said you'd always been a clumsy talker
and couldn't find another, shorter word
for 'beloved' or for 'wife' in the inscription,
but not too clumsy that you can't still cut:

You're supposed to be the bright boy at description
and you can't tell them what the fuck to put!

I've got to find the right words on my own.

I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling,
mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can't squeeze more love into their stone.

Belecole

May 2, 2008

Your Time 100

TIME asked who people thought should be on the list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Over 200 candidates were given a rating of 1 to 100. And your #1 choice? Shigeru Miyamoto! The video game designer had almost 2 million votes, over 300,000 more than runner-up, Rain. After a tight race at the top, Stephen Colbert came in third place with close to 900,000 votes.


Here are the 100 finalists:



It is worth a few minutes...it is curious to see that the high school musical cast is more influential to Americans than even Oprah Winfrey...



Have a nice weekend!