Crazed Teacups

Live Action Pacman

Cute video from the Go! Team:

Quote of the Day

One of our most well known posters was done ages ago, in 1989: It says: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met museum?” We went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and did what we like to call “the weenie count.” We counted the number of naked males and naked females in the paintings versus the number of female and male artists [whose works were on display]. Less than 5 percent of the artists were women, but 85 percent of the nudes were female. A couple years ago, we went back to the Met and counted again. We were sure it would be so much better! But in 2005, we found the statistic was less than 3 percent of artists were women and 83 percent [of the] nudes. So, a few less women artists but a few more naked men.

- Guerilla Girl "Kathe Kollwitz" in an article in this week's WW.  The Guerilla Girls ("a feminist collective") turn 20 this year.

Uprise

Here's that great commercial showing the Blazers on their way to and at the rally downtown a couple weeks ago. Blazers, visualize all these fans in Houston for game four! 

Quote of the Day

From a NYT review of new translations of the work of C.P. Cavafy, an Egypian poet:

I ask myself whether in antique times
glorious Alexandria possessed a
youth more beauteous,
a kid more perfect than he.

This poem, “Days of 1909, ’10, and ’11,” extols the beauty of a working-class boy who sells his body to buy expensive clothes. The tensions between high and low are registered in the diction. Following a line dominated by Latinate words (glorious, possessed, beauteous), the Germanic and colloquial monosyllable in the third line carries an unexpected poignancy: a kid.

This shift in diction lets us hear something crucial about Cavafy’s tone (a directness that is never not elegant), but it also lets Mendelsohn’s translation exist fully as an English poem. Because of the polyglot nature of the English language, the sound of great English poetry is the sound of monosyllabic Germanic words chiming against multisyllabic Latinate words (Shakespeare’s “seas incarnadine” or Tennyson’s “immemorial elms”). Echoing such effects, Mendelsohn makes me wonder if it wasn’t the deliciously mongrel nature of English, which Cavafy spoke and wrote perfectly, that first provoked him to forge his own hybridized idiom. The fact that the few poems Cavafy wrote in English contain phrases like “penetrating eye” and “transcendent star” (the Latinate word wedged against the Germanic) suggests that the poet’s ear for English was at least as acute as his translator’s.

Quote of the Day

My book is thumbed by our soldiers posted overseas, and even in Britain people quote my words. What’s the point? I don’t make a penny from it.

- Martial, a Roman poet, as quoted by Mary Beard in this week's NYT Book Review Essay. It's a great article comparing the similarities of book writing, buying and selling to our modern day practices.

Quote of the Day

From an essay by Jessica Valenti, author of the book The Purity Myth, on the Powell's blog:

And that's really what the myth is: this lie that women's sexuality has some bearing on who we are and how good we are. The purity myth is ensuring that young women's perception of themselves is inextricable from their bodies, and that their ability to be moral actors is absolutely dependent on their sexuality. Because whether it's delivered through a virginity pledge or by a barely dressed tween pop singer writhing across the television screen, the message is the same: A woman's worth lies in her ability — or her refusal — to be sexual. After all, when young women are taught about morality, there's not often talk of compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity. There is, however, a lot of talk about hymens (though the preferred words are undoubtedly more refined — think "virginity" and "chastity"): if we have them, when we'll lose them, and under what circumstances we'll be rid of them. While boys are taught that the things that make them men — good men — are universally accepted ethical ideals, women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs. Literally. Whether it's the determining factor in our "cleanliness" and "purity" or the marker of our character, virginity has an increasingly dangerous hold over young women. It affects not only our ability to see ourselves as ethical actors outside of our own bodies, but also how the world interacts with us through social mores, laws, and even violence. ("Good" girls need to be protected, and "bad" girls need to be punished — even today.)

They're Coming!

Cinematic Titanic is coming to Portland!  They'll be at the Newmark Theater on May 29, showing East Meets Watts (a very funny kung-fu blaxploitation movie we saw in Seattle under the name of The Dynamite Brothers), and Danger on Tiki Island, which certainly sounds promising.  Tickets go on sale on May 4, or on April 27 for fans.

Don't know Cinematic Titanic?  Check out this trailer for a previous movie they've done:

Photo of the Day

From The Simpsons.  Thanks, Serious Eats.

 

Quote of the Day

Here is The Onion's direct response when you follow them on Twitter:

i suppose we should thank u for following us, but do the gods thank man for his dutiful sacrifices? we're watching you.

The Onion

 

Quote of the Day

I JUST WANT TO BE A DOPER PERSON WHICH STARTS WITH ME NOT ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE HOW DOPE I THINK I AM.

- Kanye West, posting to his blog (caps his) after South Park skewered him (and his ego) on a recent show. Thanks to HuffPo for the link, but it's worth reading the whole post. 

Kanye reminds me of why I love the Gallaghers so much - you get all this audacious bravado one minute, and then moments of clarity, of a fragility and intense sensitivity, the next.