Jing-reed's Musings from Thailand

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a tongue-in-cheek contest that takes place annually and is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" – that is, deliberately bad.

The contest was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University and is named for English novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the much-quoted first line "It was a dark and stormy night". This opening, from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, continues floridly:

    "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The first year of the competition attracted just three entries, but it went public the next year, received media attention, and attracted 10,000 entries. There are now several subcategories, such as detective fiction, romance novels, Western novels, and purple prose. Sentences that are notable but not quite bad enough to merit the Grand Prize or a category prize are awarded Dishonorable Mentions.


     2012 Winner

As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.

 — Cathy Bryant, Manchester, England


     2011 Winner

Cheryl's mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.

— Sue Fondrie, Oshkosh, WI

 

Cloud Atlas

This week the New Yorker presents a lengthy profile of Lana and Andy Wachowski. those award winning filmmakers who produced the Matrix films, and the forthcoming 'Cloud Atlas'.


Beyond the Matrix

"The Wachowskis travel to even more mind-bending realms.

On the monitor screen, Tom Hanks’s eyes, in extreme closeup, flickered through a complicated sequence of emotions: hatred, fear, anger, doubt. “Cut!” Lana Wachowski shouted. The crew on Stage 9 at Babelsberg Studio, near Berlin, erupted in a din of professional efficacy, preparing for the next shot, while Hanks returned to his chair to sip coffee from an NPR cup. Lana and her brother, Andy, who are best known for writing and directing the “Matrix” trilogy, were shooting “Cloud Atlas,” an adaptation of David Mitchell’s 2004 best-selling novel of the same name.

The novel has six story lines, and the Wachowskis and their close friend the German director Tom Tykwer, with whom they’d written the script, had divided them up. They were shooting at Babelsberg, using the same actors, who shuttled between soundstages, but Tykwer had an unplanned day off. Halle Berry had broken her foot while on location in Mallorca and he needed to wait for her full recovery to shoot a chase scene. And now there was another problem: the actor Ralph Riach, who played a small but crucial role in one of the story lines that Tykwer was working on, had fallen ill and been hospitalized, and his state was progressively worsening. Tykwer had been on the phone with Riach, and the prognosis was, at best, unpredictable. Tykwer, with a bad cold and a large scarf around his neck which resembled a Renaissance millstone collar, had stopped by the Wachowskis’ set to discuss the situation. . . . . "

...“Cloud Atlas’ is a twenty-first-century novel,” Lana said. “It represents a midpoint between the future idea that everything is fragmented and the past idea that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end.” As she spoke, she was screwing and unscrewing two halves of some imaginary thing—its future and its past—in her hands. If the movie worked, she continued, it would allow the filmmakers to “reconnect to that feeling we had when we were younger, when we saw films that were complex and mysterious and ambiguous. You didn’t know everything instantly.”

The film opens on October 26.

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Alien Mind . . .

Geoge LoBouno published a book in 2010 entitled "Alien Mind; the Thought and Behavior of Extraterrestrials" available on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle edtion.

" Alien Mind begins where other books usually leave off. Rather than debate whether UFO's and aliens exist,  Alien Mind quotes human witnesses and informative aliens in a startling, new exploration of the thoughts and assumptions of our extraterrestrial neighbors. Sixty-five years after Roswell, evidence suggests aliens are trying to get humans to step beyond elite greed and failed ecology in order to develop a more mature kind of cosmic citizenship. Although some content may be unsettling, this book should help to fill in some of the blanks in public knowledge about aliens. Alien Mind introduces previously unreported sources and helps readers understand how aliens think and feel about interactions with humans and other aliens. It discusses alien science and how humans can both detect and identify different types of aliens and their energy networks. "


“For the next two or three days the saucers passed over the base daily. Sometimes they appeared in groups of four, other times as many as sixteen. They could outmaneuver and outflank us seemingly at will. They moved at varying speeds—sometimes very fast, sometimes slow—and other times they would come to a dead stop as we zoomed past underneath.”
     -- Astronaut Gordon Cooper, describing his first direct encounters with UFO’s while serving as a military pilot in Germany.

“These (gray aliens) were living, breathing creatures, just as mortal as you and I. They had feelings, they had families. They had a cultural society. The one thing they didn’t have was hate, hostility. They had anger, from what I observed—and I don’t know how to explain it better than stating—it was an intellectual anger. They could not... comprehend how a species such as us, that had such great potential to do such wonderful and marvelous things, could do such horrible and nightmarish things to one another.”
     --Master Sgt. Clifford Stone, ret., who testified that he encountered “gray” aliens while working in a US Army unit that retrieved crashed extraterrestrial vehicles. 2001



Online version of 'Alien Mind' is here  - 32 chapters . [Not the usual 'UFO story' with bad grammar, atrocious spelliing and questionable syntax, but rather a lucid, well written account of intellegence from beyond our small planet and why the aliens are interested in Earth.


    Alien Analysis - George L. - Coast to Coast AM   [July 5, 2005]

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I ♥ Google

Google has a bit of fun for April Fools day.
Real 8 bit maps.

.....and it actually works. 
Go to 'Google Maps' and hit the 'Quest' button.

Google Maps 8-bit for NES

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Vladimir Nabokov, Butterflies and 'Прощай'

..... I am often reminded that the internet is not unlike a gigantic cosmic ballet composed of words and images.

It all began with the photo above of Vladimir Nabokov, one of my literary heros, examining a butterfly. This was on the site Scientific Illustrations, which also had a link to a New York Times article.  Many people are not aware of the fact that Nabokov a literary giant, was also a poet and  was the curator of lepidoptera at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

    

In 1939 his love of writing, words, languages and butterflies merged when he began writing 'Lolita'.  And I was led to the article subtitled 'Getting schooled in the arts and sciences, or what literature has to do with lepidoptery'..

After its publication in 1958, Nabokov's Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best-known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature.  Many in the U.S. called it pornographic trash.  However, today, Lolita is considered by many to be one of the finest novels written in the 20th century. In 1998, it came fourth in a list by the Modern Library of the greatest English-language novels of the 20th century.  The name "Lolita" has even entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious girl. 

    

Which leads inexorably to 'Прощай', one of the lovliest of Russian words.  And a poem by Nabokov.

The most common form of saying good-bye in Russian is 'до свидания' [da svidaniya] but 'прощай' [prashchai] is always uttered softly, much like a whispered prayer. The sound of the Russian consonant 'щ' [shch] is rather difficult for many non-Slavic speakers to master, since they tend to make it rather harsh sounding.  But it is indeed soft, flowing and lovely. 

 [And of course, the softest tongue of all, is that of a butterfly.]

     SOFTEST OF TONGUES
             by Vladimir Nabokov

To many things I've said the word that cheats
the lips and leaves them parted (thus: prash-chai
which means "good-bye") -- to furnished flats, to streets,
to milk-white letters melting in the sky;
to drab designs that habit seldom sees,
to novels interrupted by the din
of tunnels, annotated by quick trees,
abandoned with a squashed banana skin;
to a dim waiter in a dimmer town,
to cuts that healed and to a thumbless glove;
also to things of lyrical renown
perhaps more universal, such as love.
Thus life has been an endless line of land
receding endlessly.... And so that's that,
you say under your breath, and wave your hand,
and then your handkerchief, and then your hat.
To all these things I've said the fatal word,
using a tongue I had so tuned and tamed
that -- like some ancient sonneteer -- I heard
its echoes by posterity acclaimed.
But now thou too must go; just here we part,
softest of tongues, my true one, all my own....
And I am left to grope for heart and art
and start anew with clumsy tools of stone.

The Strange History of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

The Strange History of Don't Ask, Don't Tell — HBO documentary on military gay ban to premiere on September 19 at midnight. 

On the day the U.S. military will officially lift its ban on gays and lesbians in the military, HBO will screen the new documentary from filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato “The Strange History of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  The film will have a sneak preview Monday September 19 at midnight and will air again Tuesday, September 20 at 8PM.

The film follows the history of the bill, from the lead-up to Bill Clinton’s signing the policy into law to its repeal earlier this year.  The policy has resulted in the discharge of 13,368 active service members.

The film features interviews with Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Iraqi war vet and former Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, and more.

 

DADT from a US Service member. Currently nameless and faceless, but will post his 'coming out' video on September 20.

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My military service was successfully completed more than 50 years ago, during the end of the Korean War and the Occupation of Japan - long, long before DADT became official policy.  On the day that I reported for duty at a special intelligence gathering school on the east coast I met my roommate for the next six months.  It was love at first sight, not only were we aware of this, but accepted it completely. 

Gay personnel have always been a part of the military. There are, and always have been, gay soldiers, sailors, marines and airforce personnel. Why has it taken the US military so long to accept this basic fact of human nature?

Two chapters from 'The Repository', about being gay in the military during the 1950s [pdf files]

Download The Repository 05 Gregg    PDF file

Download The Repository 06 Really Butch  PDF file

'Business & Law' and the DEA

Why DEA is Against Legalizing Smoked Marijuana

"As the clamor for legalizing marijuana peaks in US, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) remains adamant on its stand that smoked marijuana is harmful. Since the prescription medicine Marinol, which is a synthetic form of Delta-9-THC, the chemical found in smoked marijuana that treats distressing symptoms, is available for the medical consumption, DEA believes that legalizing smoked marijuana will only lead to misuse. . . . . . "

Fortunately, or occasionally unfortunately, I do abundant reading on the internet.  The above has to be one of the most moronic pieces of drivel I have ever encountered.  Everyone knows why the DEA is against legalizing marijuana - the vested interest of a gigantic government bureau and because it will potentially reduce the amount of funding they receive.  It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do actual facts.

In fact of the 85 comments posted every one echoes my feeling of "WTF" ???  [Personally I think the DEA. AMA and Big Pharma,  probably paid B&L a hefty sum for printing this pointless merde.] 

And the very last paragraph easily wins the non sequitur award of the decade.

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The Importance and Necessity of Free Speech

Johann Hari: We need to stop being such cowards about Islam

"This is a column condemning cowardice – including my own. It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read. The Jewel of Medina was written by a journalist called Sherry Jones. It recounts the life of Aisha, a girl who was married off at the age of six to a 50-year-old man called Mohamed ibn Abdallah. On her wedding day, Aisha was playing on a see-saw outside her home. Inside, she was being betrothed. The first she knew of it was when she was banned from playing out in the street with the other children. When she was nine, she was taken to live with her husband, now 53. He had sex with her. When she was 14, she was accused of adultery with a man closer to her own age. Not long after, Mohamed decreed that his wives must cover their faces and bodies, even though no other women in Arabia did.

You cannot read this story today – except in the Koran and the Hadith. The man Mohamed ibn Abdallah became known to Muslims as "the Prophet Mohamed", so our ability to explore this story is stunted. The Jewel of Medina was bought by Random House and primed to be a best-seller – before a University of Texas teacher saw proofs and declared it "a national security issue". Random House had visions of a re-run of the Rushdie or the Danish cartoons affairs. Sherry Jones's publisher has pulped the book. It's gone. .

In Europe, we are finally abolishing the lingering blasphemy laws that hinder criticism of Christianity. But they are being succeeded by a new blasphemy law preventing criticism of Islam – enforced not by the state, but by jihadis. I seriously considered not writing this column, but the right to criticise religion is as precious – and hard-won – as the right to criticise government. We have to use it or lose it.

Some people will instantly ask: why bother criticising religion if it causes so much hassle? The answer is: look back at our history. How did Christianity lose its ability to terrorise people with phantasms of sin and Hell? How did it stop spreading shame about natural urges – pre-marital sex, masturbation or homosexuality? Because critics pored over the religion's stories and found gaping holes of logic or morality in them. They asked questions. How could an angel inseminate a virgin? Why does the Old Testament God command his followers to commit genocide? How can a man survive inside a whale?

Reinterpretation and ridicule crow-barred Christianity open. Ask enough tough questions and faith is inevitably pushed farther and farther back into the misty realm of metaphor – where it is less likely to inspire people to kill and die for it. But doubtful Muslims, and the atheists who support them, are being prevented from following this path. They cannot ask: what does it reveal about Mohamed that he married a young girl, or that he massacred a village of Jews who refused to follow him? You don't have to murder many Theo Van Goghs or pulp many Sherry Joneses to intimidate the rest. The greatest censorship is internal: it is in all the books that will never be written and all the films that will never be shot, because we are afraid.

We need to acknowledge the double-standard – and that it will cost Muslims in the end. Insulating a religion from criticism – surrounding it with an electric fence called "respect" – keeps it stunted at its most infantile and fundamentalist stage. The smart, questioning and instinctively moral Muslims – the majority – learn to be silent, or are shunned (at best). What would Christianity be like today if George Eliot, Mark Twain and Bertrand Russell had all been pulped? Take the most revolting rural Alabama church, and metastasise it. . . . . . "


In the following video Mr. Hari speaks not only about Islam, but this intelligent and impassioned plea is extended to include and challage ALL of the world's religious fundamentalists. [Thanks to Unreasonable Faith for the heads up on this video.]

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit attrocities" - Voltaire

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Us vs Them

Us vs. Them: Good News From the Ancients!

"Us against them" seems a staple of human psychology as unsinkable as "That's mine!" for a 3-year-old or "I wish they'd quiet down" for a senior citizen surrounded by teenagers.

.....Looking through a recent New York Times, you couldn't help thinking that the notion merits a separate daily section to organize stories efficiently: North Korean vs. South Korean, North Ivorian vs. South Ivorian (those hard geographical divisions help), e-book reader vs. traditional book lover, New York Giant vs. Dallas Cowboy, boomer vs. Gen X'er, man vs. woman.

Are we just boringly binary? And why, as both Rodney King and distinguished science writer David Berreby asked, for different reasons, can't we all get along?

Back in 2005, Berreby tried to open our eyes on the subject with his noncontentiously titled Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind (Little, Brown and Co.). We can't help being tribal thinkers, Berreby explained, because organizing other humans into kinds is "an absolute requirement for being human." It is, he wrote, "the mind's guide for understanding anyone we do not know personally, for seeing our place in the human world, and for judging our actions." There is "apparently no people known to history or anthropology that lacks a distinction between 'us' and 'others,' " and particularly others who don't rise to our level.

.....Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, by Erich S. Gruen, out this month from Princeton University Press, like all excellent scholarship massages the mind in useful new directions. Gruen, a Berkeley professor emeritus of history and classics, wields his command of ancient sources to shake a widely shared historical belief—that ancient Greeks and Romans exuded condescension and hostility toward what European intellectuals call the "Other." For those Greeks and Romans, that largely meant peoples such as the Persians, Egyptians, and Jews. Even if Gruen doesn't wholly convince on every ground that Greeks and Romans operated like Obamas in togas, regularly reaching out to potential enemies, his careful readings of Aeschylus, Herodotus, Tacitus, and others introduce us to a kinder, gentler ancient world. His analysis confirms how even back then, tossing people into a category and then hating them en masse was a choice, not an evolutionary necessity. ....."

Young Reader

  [Young boy  - photograph used with permission of photographer, R. Prakasa.  Click to enlarge]

I recall with nostalgic fondness when, as a young boy in Slovakia, I first learned how to read.  It was an absolutely magical time and set the tone of my life forever.  Now many years later I still spend a portion of each day reading, in books or on the internet. For many years, one of my favorite authors has been Gabriel García Márquez , the master of 'magical realism' and he has created worlds in which the lines between objective reality and dreams are magically blurred

This photograph by Rarindra Prakarsa of Indonesia, is from his gallery of exceptional photographs hosted by Photo Net.  The way in which Mr. Prakarsa manages light and subject matter in his photographs is not unlike a visual form of 'magical realism'.  Absolutely enchanting works of art. 

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