AND ANOTHER THING…
Am I alone in finding Quentin Tarrantino’s films slick, banal, unfunny & self-indulgently visceral to the point of monotony? Occupying the same broad (if largely shallow) territory, Scorcese’s Goodfellas manages to turn the stomach with its depictions of uncompromising & mindless violence. But at least one feels afterwards that one has spent a soul-sickening hour or two on the edge of a world that actually does exist. Tarrantino seems concerned solely with refining the aesthetics of violence, purifying the essence of the medium without at any point embodying it with a message.
#
A beautiful evening. An almost entirely empty Cambridge-blue sky with just a bank of intricately carved cloud resting along the eastern horizon. No breeze shifting the cherry blossom outside the kitchen window & then suddenly a flight of five White Chinese geese flying north-west. This afternoon there were two mighty claps of thunder & a brief but intense hailstorm. Tomorrow we return to the gloomy security of heavy rain.
#
I came across the following list of euphemisms in a curious article about writing obituaries in the latest edition of the UK lit-mag Ink. Next time you listen to a funeral eulogy you’ll be able to hear between the lines:
- “Uncompromising ladies’ man” = a borderline rapist.
- “Vivacious” = alcoholic.
- “His door was always open, day or night” = professor with an eye for the student body.
- “Prone to exaggeration” = compulsive liar.
- “Irrepressible raconteur” = could bore for England.
- “Did not suffer fools gladly” = bad-tempered harridan.
- “He never married” = homosexual.
- “Loved the outdoor life” = was unhappily married.
10:23:15 PM 
|
