Yeah, I used to have this (a print) hanging in my home... but I decided I didn't want it there - too powerful.
Phantom Stranger
JoinedPosts by Phantom Stranger
-
49
Maybe I'm not a cultured as I though. :- /
by Elsewhere ini just got back from going to the nasher sculpture museum in downtown dallas.
they are having a showing of a rare collection of picasso paintings and sculptures that everyone is talking about.. i'm starting to wonder... maybe i'm not as cultured as a thought.
nearly every time i looked at one of his works i found myself thinking: "what the hell was mug smoke'in when he did that?
-
-
-
101
Bush Bash, Anti-gay marrige.
by SC_Guy in.
i think bush is trying to screw this country one more time before he's voted out of office....
-
-
Phantom Stranger
Yeah, I've seen taht idea written up in a number of places, like here:
-
49
Maybe I'm not a cultured as I though. :- /
by Elsewhere ini just got back from going to the nasher sculpture museum in downtown dallas.
they are having a showing of a rare collection of picasso paintings and sculptures that everyone is talking about.. i'm starting to wonder... maybe i'm not as cultured as a thought.
nearly every time i looked at one of his works i found myself thinking: "what the hell was mug smoke'in when he did that?
-
-
Phantom Stranger
OK, that's it, now I am worked up! ;)
The last one is Guernica. It is intended to evoke the horror of war, and it is one of the most powerful pieces of modern art ever produced.
From The Shock of the New, Art and the Century of Change, by Robert Hughes
Only one humane, political work of art in the last fifty years has
achieved real fame -- Picasso's Guernica, 1937. It is the last of the
line of formal images of battle and suffering that runs from Uccello's
Rout of San Romano through Tintoretto to Rubens, and thence to Goya's
Third of May and Delacroix's Massacre at Chios. It was inspired by an
act of war, the bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.
The destruction of Guernica was carried out by German aircraft, manned
by German pilots, at the request of the Spanish Nationalist commander,
General Emilio Mola. Because the Republican government of Spain had
granted autonomy to the Basques, Guernica was the capital city of an
independent republic. Its razing was taken up by the world press,
beginning with The Times in London, as the arch-symbol of Fascist
barbarity. Thus Picasso's painting shared the exemplary fame of the
event, becoming as well known a memorial of catastrophe as Tennyson's
Charge of the Light Brigade had been eighty years before.
Guernica is the most powerful invective against violence in modern
art, but it was not wholly inspired by the war: its motifs -- the
weeping woman, the horse, the bull, had been running through Picasso's
work for years before Guernica brought them together. -
101
Bush Bash, Anti-gay marrige.
by SC_Guy in.
i think bush is trying to screw this country one more time before he's voted out of office....
-
-
Phantom Stranger
For my response to the above constitutionality question, please see http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/14/67541/1.ashx
-
49
Maybe I'm not a cultured as I though. :- /
by Elsewhere ini just got back from going to the nasher sculpture museum in downtown dallas.
they are having a showing of a rare collection of picasso paintings and sculptures that everyone is talking about.. i'm starting to wonder... maybe i'm not as cultured as a thought.
nearly every time i looked at one of his works i found myself thinking: "what the hell was mug smoke'in when he did that?
-
-
Phantom Stranger
"... almost everything is driven by money"?
Really? Do you mean that?
-
54
OK, I actually Saw the Passion
by Yerusalyim injust came home from seeing...the passion...after the movie there was a question and answer session with two rabbis that viewed it with us...and three priests from my parish...more on that at another time...though both rabbis said in their opinion the movie is not antisemetic, but that it could (would) stir up antisemetic feelings in those who already possessed them.. the movie was an overall good one.
it was interesting trying to figure out some of the symbolism...what did the baby represent???
i think i know, but i'd like to hear mel's take on it.. pretty gory stuff, not quite what i thought it would be, but still quite yucky.
-
-
Phantom Stranger
Schlock, Yes; Awe, No; Fascism, Probably
The flogging Mel Gibson demands.
By Christopher HitchensThe gay movement in the United States?and the demand for civil unions and even for actual marriage?has had at least one good effect with which nobody can quarrel. The closeted homosexual is a sad figure from the past, and so is the homosexual who tries desperately to "marry" a heterosexual, thus increasing misery and psychic repression all round.
This may seem like an oblique way in which to approach Mel Gibson's ghastly movie The Passion. But it came back to me this week that an associate of his had once told me, in lacerating detail, that an evening with Mel was one long fiesta of boring but graphic jokes about anal sex. I've since had that confirmed by other sources. And, long before he emerged as the spear-carrier for the sort of Catholicism once preached by Gen. Franco and the persecutors of Dreyfus, Mel Gibson attained a brief notoriety for his loud and crude attacks on gays. Now he's become the proud producer of a movie that relies for its effect almost entirely on sadomasochistic male narcissism. The culture of blackshirt and brownshirt pseudomasculinity, as has often been pointed out, depended on some keen shared interests. Among them were massively repressed homoerotic fantasies, a camp interest in military uniforms, an obsession with flogging and a hatred of silky and effeminate Jews. Well, I mean to say, have you seen Mel's movie?
I think that it's a healthy sign for our society that so many Jews have decided to be calm and unoffended by the film, and that so many Christians say they don't feel any worse about Jews after having seen it. We have a social consensus where Jews feel more secure and Christians less insecure. Good. But this does not alter the fact that The Passion is anti-Semitic in intention and its director anti-Semitic by nature. Some people including myself think that Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League are too easily prone to charge the sin of anti-Semitism. But if someone denies the Holocaust one day and makes a film accusing Jews of Christ-killing the next day, I have to say that if he's not anti-Jewish then he's certainly getting there.
It's important to scan the Reader's Digest interview with Mel Gibson. He was questioned by Peggy Noonan, who was almost as simperingly lenient in print as Diane Sawyer was on the small screen. Noonan asked him a question that he must have known was coming, and which he must have prepared for, and she asked him in effect to "make nice" and agree that the Holocaust actually had occurred. His answer was, to all effects and purposes, a cold and flat "no." A lot of people, he agreed, had died in the last war. No doubt many Jews were among the casualties. It's one of the most frigid and shrugging things I have ever read. You would not know from this response that the war was begun by a fascist ruling party that believed in a Jewish world conspiracy, and thus that all of those killed were in part victims of anti-Semitism. (Some of the more tribal ADL advocates might also bear this in mind.)
But then, you were not brought up by Mel Gibson's father, who has repeatedly and recently stated that there was a population explosion among European Jews in the years 1933-1945 and that the Holocaust story is mainly "fiction." Young Gibson, when asked about this by Diane Sawyer, told her not to press him (which she obediently did not). But when asked by Noonan, he replied by saying that "My father has never told me a lie." It's not fair to expect Mel to trash his father. But he could have said that the old man was a fine daddy, albeit with a few odd ideas of his own. It was his very decided choice, however, to say that his male parent was an unvarying truth-teller. Why pick on that formulation? It's unlikely that Gibson Sr. has made a secret of his viciously anti-Jewish views when talking to his son, who shares with him a fanatical attachment to the Latin Mass and a deep hostility to the "liberalism" of the present pope.
So let us not be euphemistic about what is staring us in the face. Last Wednesday, the Lovingway United Pentecostal Church in Denver posted a sign on its roadside marquee. It read "Jews Killed the Lord Jesus." This pigsty of a church has, I think you will agree, an unimprovable name. But its elders, or whatever they call themselves, can't have had time to see the movie, which only opened that same Ash Wednesday. Nor, I think it safe to say, had they chosen the slogan only on the spur of the moment. No: They had been thinking this for quite a long time and were emboldened to "come out" and say so under the cover of a piece of devotional cinematic pornography. Some of us saw this coming. In America, I hope and believe, the sinister effect will be blunted by generations of civilized co-existence. But think for a moment what will happen when Gibson reaps the residual and overseas profits from screenings of the film in Egypt and Syria, or in Eastern Europe, where things are a bit more raw. Who can believe that he did not anticipate, and intend, this result?
Apparently seeking to curry favor, Gibson announced a few weeks ago that he had cut the scene where a Jewish mob yells for the blood of Jesus to descend on the heads of its children (a scene that occurs in only one of the four contradictory Gospels). Gibson lied. The scene is still there, spoken in Aramaic. Only the English subtitle has been removed. Propagandists in other countries will be able to subtitle it any way they like. This is all of a piece with the general moral squalor of his project. Gibson's producer lied when he said that a pope Gibson despises had endorsed the film. He would not show the movie to anyone who might object in advance. He will not debate any of his critics, and he relies on star-stricken pulp interviewers to feed him soft questions. Now, as the dollars begin to flow from this front-loaded fruit-machine of cynical publicity, he is sobbing about the risks and sacrifices he has made for the Lord. A coward, a bully, a bigmouth, and a queer-basher. Yes, we have been here before. The word is fascism, in case you are wondering, and we don't have to sit through that movie again.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a regular contributor to Slate. His most recent book is A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq.
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2096323/ -
23
How are you financialy?
by ball. inhow are you financialy?.
i don't know if i am am a typical brit, but i guess i am a fairly typical rags to riches storey.
i have just managed to finish paying off my house at age 32 after growing up a pioneer penny-less until 22, meaning now i can save for the future and buy stuff i want, but until now it's been a strugle.
-
-
Phantom Stranger
Americans are good, as a rule, at letting the cash flow back out as they spend it. We as a nation have terrible saving and investing habits.
I'm doing pretty well - about 3.5-4X my dad's best year ever, and without a degree. But I don't have much cushion... and things are tight with the house we just bought a few months ago (for toher reasons unrelated to income).
Self-employment can be a challenge - but I like it.
-
41
Constitutional Amendment : Slippery Slope
by patio34 inthis was too good to leave on the bush/gay marriage thread so i'm starting a new topic on it: .
the following was sent to me recently: .
as certain politicians work diligently to prevent marriage between two people of the same sex, others of us have been busy drafting a constitutional amendment codifying all marriages entirely on biblical principles.. after all, god wouldn't want us to "pick and choose" which of the scriptures we elevate to civil law and which we choose to ignore:.
-
-
Phantom Stranger
I feel the same way in general, C, but it should be noted that the purpose of a constitutional amendment is to introduce law that wouldn't pass the constitutionality test any other way - i.e., it would be contradicted by the constitution as it currently stands.
Emancipation and female suffrage required amendments because the original language of the Constitution would not have permitted them.
This from http://slate.msn.com/id/2096309/:
Can a proposed amendment to the federal Constitution be declared unconstitutional? The short answer is no. The reader who posed it may be thinking of the process by which a provision of a state constitution can be declared unconstitutional.
Frequently, state amendments are declared unconstitutional because they are found to violate the U.S. Constitution. The "supremacy clause" of the federal Constitution states: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Consequently, the federal Constitution trumps any state constitutional provision.
But it's improbable that any court could declare an amendment to the U.S. Constitution unconstitutional, because the amendment itself would already be a part of the Constitution and would therefore be implicitly constitutional. Scholars might argue about whether it's possible in the abstract. But as a practical matter, the courts are most likely to read a newly amended constitution as internally consistent, and try to reconcile any provisions that seem to contradict each other.
-
49
Maybe I'm not a cultured as I though. :- /
by Elsewhere ini just got back from going to the nasher sculpture museum in downtown dallas.
they are having a showing of a rare collection of picasso paintings and sculptures that everyone is talking about.. i'm starting to wonder... maybe i'm not as cultured as a thought.
nearly every time i looked at one of his works i found myself thinking: "what the hell was mug smoke'in when he did that?
-
-
Phantom Stranger
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
John CiardiThe aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
AristotleThe history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
Paul GauguinArt is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
Marcel Proust -
41
Constitutional Amendment : Slippery Slope
by patio34 inthis was too good to leave on the bush/gay marriage thread so i'm starting a new topic on it: .
the following was sent to me recently: .
as certain politicians work diligently to prevent marriage between two people of the same sex, others of us have been busy drafting a constitutional amendment codifying all marriages entirely on biblical principles.. after all, god wouldn't want us to "pick and choose" which of the scriptures we elevate to civil law and which we choose to ignore:.
-
-
Phantom Stranger
I think tyrant is not actually accurate... a tyrant would throw the thing out. And he's not really trying - just wants to look like he is so he doesn't get blamed by his base for the deficit too bad.
I have been waiting for the open homosexuality of the Greeks, inventors of our form of government, to be debated (that's why they are not longer around! No, that's not it - etc.)