Monday, August 30, 2004



Marry and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it... Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it. Hang yourself, and you will regret it. Do not hang yourself, and you will also regret it... This, gentlemen, is the quintessence of all the wisdom of life.
-Soren Kierkegaard

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: The desire to appear in a more flattering light
Simone Weil said in her book The Need for Roots (Routledge and Paul, 1952) that truth is a need of the soul. She went on to say: The need for truth is a need more sacred than any other need. Yet it is never mentioned. One feels afraid to read once one has realised the quantity and monstrousness of the material falsehoods paraded in even the books of the most reputable authors. Thereafter one reads as though one were drinking from a contaminated well.
Australia's Raimond Gaita on the need for truth.; [Inescapably, we learn by being moved, and that would be so even in heaven ]
• · Teachers and public-service announcements pound the reading-is-good-for-you message into children from an early age. But by the time many people reach adulthood, they've lost sight of what marketing gurus might call the takeaway value of books.
• · · Off The Wall Poetry The loo, the dunny, the can, restrooms, facilities, conveniences. Call it what you want - the toilet is one of our most interesting cultural spaces; [Dunnies changing the world!!! ; My Partner in Crime, Slavoj Zizek, Reviews Toilets: Russian, English, German, French etc ...]
• · · · How vanity is just a wistful form of ambition; [ The two creepiest words in the English language are Christian rock]
• · · · · A review of the funniest philosopher who ever lived: The Humor of Kierkegaard No one should be allowed to own any property, he says in a digression in Either/Or on how to solve the national debt. An exception should be made only for me. I shall set aside for myself one hundred rix-dollars in a London bank, partly because I cannot manage on less, partly because I am the one who provided the idea.
• · · · · · Modern biographers stick too closely to a Victorian formula but change will surely come A good biography is like a good portrait: it captures the essence of the sitter by being much more than a likeness