Haunting, this.
Category Archives: Reflections
Hell has finally frozen over… twice….
- I actually bought a single track (from iTunes–as it was not available somewhere more convenient)
- I am actually posting a YouTube video.
Two firsts.
The following is called “I Do” and is written, arranged, and performed by Yoko Kanno, a composer and musician with which animé fans will be quite familiar. The vocal is performed by Ilaria Graziano, and is in Italian, a language which shares some mechanics with Japanese in that both languages are unaccented–very unlike English in this regard. This makes both languages very suitable for libretto.
The Italian here is beautifully pronounced–crystal clear, bell-like–and is very easy to understand due to the pure vowels and consonants of the language; I have only a passing acquaintance with it (although my father spoke it fluently.)
This piece was used in its entirety during the closing credits of a special episode of “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.” There are perhaps better links to the audio on YouTube, however this one offers up the Original Italian and an English Translation. I found a few more links there, one of which is actually a section of the show in which the song was used. The audio in these is somewhat better than in the embedded video below. Enjoy!
Continue reading
4(Steve) + Martha= Ubermensch
See there! You made me smile yet again! I somehow missed Blackadder and saw two of his co-conspiritors Mr. Fry, and Mr. Laurie, late of “Gregory House” fame, in an adaptation of PG Wodehouse’s “Jeeves and Wooster” first; which, if you have not yet seen it, is classic Fry and Laurie! Later of course, I enjoyed all of Blackadder–oh my, his Christmas special was…
But, I really came here to share with you a different type of post; more I should say, inspired by you, than was the previous one on which you were kind enough to comment.
http://sonnetblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/after-a-fair-bit-of-searching-i-have/
Too Big to Succeed
“Can you think of any problem [...] of human endeavour [...] whose long-term solution is [...] assisted [...] by further increases in population locally, nationally or globally?”This is an amazing statement to those who have made it a habit to study history in any significant way. Because its answer seems a glaring “yes, most definitely, in practically every conceivable instance.” With the possible exception of an instance wherein a large population is under a great degree of repression and control, as is the case in China. Such regimes ultimately undergo rapidly dwindling population, such as in the former Soviet Empire whether they engage in wholesale slaughter or not–as in the case of Europe, having to offer remuneration to couples to have adequate numbers of children.
Such regimes are in the business of removing impetus, and as history also shows us, it takes very little such removal to cause the rest of it to dwindle to nothing. It appears that once this process has begun it is, unfortunately, not reversible excepting the instance wherein–as history also shows–a very high price is paid for such a reversal. Most of that price has traditionally been paid in blood; and I am quite afraid, unless somehow the advent of technology has had some heuristic effect upon the way in which human beings interact in a crisis–which we may pray it has–that such continues to be the only currency in which the price for any such reversal in the future.must be paid.
Although I do hope that somehow this is not so.
[This was first published on 14 December 2011, and I want you to apply what you are reading here to the education article I published this morning, there will be more on this coming, because it is one of the most important issues we have.]
I’m going to draw heavily on Simon Black‘s Sovereign Man post today for this, it’s a guest post by Tim Price. The link is here, it’s also dead, sorry.
Albert Bartlett, emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder has asked,
“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavour on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted or advanced by further increases in population locally, nationally or globally?”
I can, actually, the long-term labor shortage that the United States has suffered for several hundred years, which has…
View original post 1,079 more words
Art Game’s Silent Night With The Ice Queen
I am not sure what this post is al about; I confess I am just relaxing, sitting back, watching quite random TV with my sweetheart, and absent-mindedly thumbing up posts in the reader, as do most of us here. But I’ am taking the time to reblog this because the photo is… well… cool….
Wyrdpooka
contributed ” The Ice Queen” image to the Art Game’s Silent Night
Thanks so much for this image Wyrdpooka :)
to
A Light Queen
by
SpoiledBrat
and into
The Ice Queen
by
Chlly
But now in this Art Game’s Silent Night there is
A Freezing Chicken
by
ThoughtsOfMyBrain
Luckily
Mr. Bean’s Car
is just on time to give that freezing chicken a lift! :)
by
ActeurComique
Let’s go guys and let’s have some fun!
Click the logo for more details about this fun and join us 
Art game continues…. to Tuesday 12pm (GMT) and then a new image will be post on Wednesday and so on.
This is fun… Come and join us!
wild & precious, crazy orange life
Gracious me! I do remember my first pair of Nikes! Sometime in the late 19708ies I believe it was. The lightweight, light blue, track style variety, were they–the ones with the square cleats if any one should remember.
I remember well from that first moment upon wearing them how, for the first time in my life, my feet felt as light as air.
Here are a couple of photos from Albany all the way to Texas with bright orange dreams and stuff.
So really, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one precious and wild life?
travel? work? create? have fun? see things differently? sit in a pile of leaves?
life’s short. just do it already.
Tone: I think this post was most inspired by…
…rarasaur, because of the smiles I find to be left upon my face after visiting her site and reading her stories. I would be very interested to read what any of you out there reading this might think regarding this subject:
This morning I have been thinking upon the nature of not just artistic blogging, but blogging in general. Those sites to which I enjoy–and to which I find myself returning again and again, tend to have a constant tone. Particularly are these the ones which, after having visited for a while, I find have left me feeling enriched in one way or another–not necessarily happy, I should remark, but certainly further along on any number of emotions which might be though of as positive. Continue reading
David Emeron: Sonnets 