Log24

Friday, April 25, 2008

Friday April 25, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 am
Destabilizing
the Locus
 
"It is the intention
 of this piece
 to destabilize the locus
  of that authorial act…."

— Yale art student
    Aliza Shvarts,
quoted today in
The Harvard Crimson

From Log24 on
March 14:



Rite of Spring

From the online 
Harvard Crimson —

Anatomy exhibit at the Harvard Women's Center

Related material:

A figure from  
Monday's entry —

Mandorla from center of ovato tondo

— and  
June 30, 2007's
Annals of Theology,
with a link to a film:
The Center of the World.

The center referred
to in that film is the
same generic "center"
displayed at Harvard
and in the above
mandorla: not the
Harvard Women's
Center, but rather
the women's center.

See also Yeats —
"the centre cannot hold,"

Stevens —
"the center of resemblance,"

and Zelazny —
"center loosens,
forms again elsewhere."

Related material
from Google:

JSTOR: Killing Time
with Mark Twain's Autobiographies

… frame "writing" within his own writing in order to destabilize the locus of his authorial voice and to promote a textual confusion that doubly displaces …
links.jstor.org/… – Similar pages

Other ways
of killing time:

From Log24 on April 21, the date of Mark Twain's death–

Psychoshop, by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny:

His manner was all charm and grace; pure cafe society….

He purred a chuckle. "My place. If you want to come, I'll show you."

"Love to. The Luogo Nero? The Black Place?"

"That's what the locals call it. It's really Buoco Nero, the Black Hole."

"Like the Black Hole of Calcutta?"

"No. Black Hole as in astronomy. Corpse of a dead star, but also channel between this universe and its next-door neighbor."

The Pennsylvania Lottery
yesterday, April 24, 2008:

Mid-day 923, Evening 765….

and hence Log24, 9/23 (2007), and page 765 of From Here to Eternity (Delta paperback, 1998):

He stayed that way for eight days, never what you could really call drunk, but certainly never anywhere near sober, and always with a bottle of Georgette's expensive scotch in one hand and a glass in the other. He did not talk at all except to say "Yes" or "No," mostly "No," when confronted with a direct question, and he never ate anything when they were there. It was like living in the same house with a dead person.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Friday March 14, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am
Rite of Spring

From the online 
Harvard Crimson —

Anatomy exhibit at the Harvard Women's Center

Related material:

A figure from  
Monday's entry —

Mandorla from center of ovato tondo

— and  
June 30, 2007's
Annals of Theology,
with a link to a film:
The Center of the World.

The center referred
to in that film is the
same generic "center"
displayed at Harvard
and in the above
mandorla: not the
Harvard Women's
Center, but rather
the women's center.

See also Yeats —
"the centre cannot hold,"

Stevens —
"the center of resemblance,"

and Zelazny —
"center loosens,
forms again elsewhere."

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Saturday June 30, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:04 pm
Where
 Entertainment
is God

Frank Rich in
The New York Times:

 November 2004–

Desperate Housewives ad on Monday Night Football

Controversial
"Desperate Housewives"
ad on "Monday
Night Football"

"Desperate Housewives"… ranks No. 5 among all prime-time shows for ages 12-17. ("Monday Night Football" is No. 18.) This may explain in part why its current advertisers include products like Fisher-Price toys, the DVD of "Elf" and the forthcoming Tim Allen holiday vehicle, "Christmas With the Kranks."

Those who cherish the First Amendment can only hope that the Traditional Values Coalition, OneMillionMoms.com, OneMillionDads.com and all the rest send every e-mail they can to the F.C.C. demanding punitive action against the stations that broadcast "Desperate Housewives." A "moral values" crusade that stands between a TV show this popular and its audience will quickly learn the limits of its power in a country where entertainment is god.

— "The Great Indecency Hoax," a New York Times column by Frank Rich quoted in Log24 on Nov. 26, 2004

The entertainment continues.  A rabbi's obituary in today's New York Times (see previous entry) served as ad-bait for "Joshua," a Fox Searchlight film opening July 6.

A search for a less sacrilegious memorial to the rabbi yields the following:

Project MUSE link on Rabbi Abraham Klausner

The "Project MUSE" link above
works only at
subscribing libraries.

  It seems that here, too,
the rabbi is being
used as bait.

  For a perhaps preferable
 reference to bait, in the
context of St. Peter as
a "fisher of men," see
the Christian "mandorla"
or "vesica piscis,"
a figure hidden within
the geometry of Rome's
St. Peter's Square–
which, despite its name,
is an oval:

Mandorla and ovator tondo in St. Peter's Square” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For the geometric
construction of the
 Roman oval, see
"ovato tondo" in
Rudolf Arnheim's
The Power of the Center.

For a less theoretical account
of the religious significance
of the mandorla, see
the 2001 film
The Center of the World.

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