Guatemala's leading anti-narcotics investigator Adan Castillo has announced that he plans to step down in December after just six months in his post, leaving the fight against the 4000 or so traffickers in the country "in God's hands".
Part of the problem is that the narcos aren't keeping their own numbers in check any more by killing each other. As a unified force they have access to resources way in excess of those at the disposal of your typical Central American state. "They have speedboats with up to four motors, modern technology, the most modern communication systems and contacts all over the American Isthmus," Adan moans. "It's easy for them."
Perhaps someone could persuade the Colombians to switch to growing star anise, the price of which has soared tenfold in recent months.
As well as being used in traditional Chinese cooking and in the distilling of pastis these spice trees provide the base ingredient for the production of Tamiflu - shikimic acid. In a notoriously complex, multi-step process this is then turned into expoxide molecule which is then engineered into the bird flu medicine using an explosive chemical called sodium azide, which is also used to inflate vehicle air bags. The difficulty and dangers of manufacture, coupled with the fact that the Chinese have a finite amount of star anise are amongst the reasons that supplies of Tamiflu may never meet potential demand. Roche says that it takes 13 grams of star anise to make 1/3 grams of shikimic acide, which can then be converted into the 10 Tamiflu capsules needed to treat one person.
Quinic acid from the bark of the cinchona tree is a possible alternative, but its main source is the perennially destabilised Congo region of Africa. There's also a Professor Frost who reckons he can ferment the acid artificially using vats of genetically-modified microbes. Meanwhile Tamiflu's inventors Gilead Sciences are attempting to regain control of their little monster from Roche, claiming that not enough is being done to produce and market the antidote to global hysteria.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Napoleon Dynamite
A mostly charming vignette of high school life from Retardsville Idaho. Whilst there are plenty of little jokes we did appreciate, there's an underlying meta-joke that consistently eluded us. ("The phantom joke", according to V.)
You feel you ought to able to describe this film as original and different, but you can't really because all the characters are grounded in cliché and the overall scenario is too stylised. Compare for example Alexander Payne's Election, whose dramatis personae remain believable in all their kookiness.
You feel you ought to able to describe this film as original and different, but you can't really because all the characters are grounded in cliché and the overall scenario is too stylised. Compare for example Alexander Payne's Election, whose dramatis personae remain believable in all their kookiness.
Market Gardening
The MD of Garage Technology Ventures Guy Kawasaki has outlined what he thinks is the best approach to hooking up with consumer evanglists:
"To a large degree, evangelists find you. First, you have to "let a hundred flowers blossom" by sowing fields, not window boxes. Sure, you may think you have figured out exactly who your target audience is, but then get your stuff out. See where it takes root and flowers. Second, evangelists will emerge from these flowers. You just have to have an open mind to work with them."
This seems like sound advice, but I was less sure about his counsel for 'traditional' businesses:
"They should pretend that they are two guys or gals in a garage, in their senior year of college, broke, and with an idea to create a product that they themselves want to use. Furthermore, they should consider that to these types of people their own company is a big, fat, stinkingly rich cow. The question to answer is, "How can we kill that cow?" Because if companies don't kill themselves, then two guys/gals in a garage will. "
Yet he goes on to cite a list of companies with a great product which include several (Harley Davidson, Apple) that clearly thrive in opposition to a big fat cow. Kill the cow and they would lose a great deal of their brand differentiation.
Kawasaki is licking his lips at the prospect of Bubble 2.0: "I heard Barry Diller say...that if you get enough eyeballs, you can somehow find a business model. Deja vu. Bubble II. I need just one more bubble in my life -- this time I know what to do. I sure hope Barry is right."
"To a large degree, evangelists find you. First, you have to "let a hundred flowers blossom" by sowing fields, not window boxes. Sure, you may think you have figured out exactly who your target audience is, but then get your stuff out. See where it takes root and flowers. Second, evangelists will emerge from these flowers. You just have to have an open mind to work with them."
This seems like sound advice, but I was less sure about his counsel for 'traditional' businesses:
"They should pretend that they are two guys or gals in a garage, in their senior year of college, broke, and with an idea to create a product that they themselves want to use. Furthermore, they should consider that to these types of people their own company is a big, fat, stinkingly rich cow. The question to answer is, "How can we kill that cow?" Because if companies don't kill themselves, then two guys/gals in a garage will. "
Yet he goes on to cite a list of companies with a great product which include several (Harley Davidson, Apple) that clearly thrive in opposition to a big fat cow. Kill the cow and they would lose a great deal of their brand differentiation.
Kawasaki is licking his lips at the prospect of Bubble 2.0: "I heard Barry Diller say...that if you get enough eyeballs, you can somehow find a business model. Deja vu. Bubble II. I need just one more bubble in my life -- this time I know what to do. I sure hope Barry is right."
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Rome
"Dormouse anyone?"
Rome, HBO's new toga-shedding saga on BBC2 desperately wants us to know how well researched it is. Exotic and erotic it may be, but as yet it's far from epic. Michael Apted's cast of British thesps look generally bored with proceedings. If it wasn't for the fact that we know so many of these characters (and their outcomes) from far better dramas, this opening sortie would hardly have stimulated multi-episodic levels of enthusiasm.
Rome, HBO's new toga-shedding saga on BBC2 desperately wants us to know how well researched it is. Exotic and erotic it may be, but as yet it's far from epic. Michael Apted's cast of British thesps look generally bored with proceedings. If it wasn't for the fact that we know so many of these characters (and their outcomes) from far better dramas, this opening sortie would hardly have stimulated multi-episodic levels of enthusiasm.
Cross-Border Cooperation
Mexico's response this week to an extradition request for Alfonso Portillo has been to afirm that the former Guatemalan president is in their country legally. Strange, because prior to his victory in the 1999 general election much was made of the fact that Portillo was a fugitive from Mexican justice, following his involvement in a double homicide outside a bar in Chilpancingo 23 years ago. (He was studying there at the time.) He admitted to killing the two Mexicans, said to be rivals in a student election, but claimed that it was done in self-defence and that he only fled the country because he feared he wouldn't be treated fairly.
Another, less-publicised example of recent Mexican-Guatemala collaboration has been the teaming up of the zetas with a group of paratroopers from the kaibiles. The zetas were part of Mexico's special forces' mobile air group until they vanished from their barracks in the northern state of Tamaulipas and joined the drug cartel they were supposed to be fighting. The kaibiles are an elite Israeli-trained Guatemalan counterinsurgency unit founded in the 70s and named after Maya rebel prince Kaibil Balam. They style themselves as the "messengers of death".
It seems that the zetas invited some kaibiles to join them in the turf wars up north, and together they have been training the armed goons and hitmen of the Gulf Cartel, one of seven major drug trafficking organisations in Mexico. Amazingly, it's still not clear whether the five or so kaibiles that have now fallen into the hands of the 'authorities' are renegades or actual serving Guatemalan commandos.
A poll in the Prensa Libre has revealed that 84.6 per cent of Guatemalans believe that their politicians are better known for abuses and corruption scandals than for their ideas and proposals to help the country. What planet do the other 15.4% live on?
Another, less-publicised example of recent Mexican-Guatemala collaboration has been the teaming up of the zetas with a group of paratroopers from the kaibiles. The zetas were part of Mexico's special forces' mobile air group until they vanished from their barracks in the northern state of Tamaulipas and joined the drug cartel they were supposed to be fighting. The kaibiles are an elite Israeli-trained Guatemalan counterinsurgency unit founded in the 70s and named after Maya rebel prince Kaibil Balam. They style themselves as the "messengers of death".
It seems that the zetas invited some kaibiles to join them in the turf wars up north, and together they have been training the armed goons and hitmen of the Gulf Cartel, one of seven major drug trafficking organisations in Mexico. Amazingly, it's still not clear whether the five or so kaibiles that have now fallen into the hands of the 'authorities' are renegades or actual serving Guatemalan commandos.
A poll in the Prensa Libre has revealed that 84.6 per cent of Guatemalans believe that their politicians are better known for abuses and corruption scandals than for their ideas and proposals to help the country. What planet do the other 15.4% live on?
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Another Unfortunate Event
London's long lost Roman amphitheatre, said to be roughly the size of the old Wembley stadium, turned up under the Guildhall in February 1988.
The amphitheatre at Pompeii was usually the venue for bloodier spectacles than those you could catch at its semi-circular rival in midtown. Yet in AD 59 it was the setting for what modern tabloid journalists insistently refer to as a tragedy. (Along the lines of "Heisel tragedy".)
It's an old model from 80 BC, pre-dating Rome's first amphitheatre by about a century. It lacks the later Colliseum's under-stage gizmos and sports just two main entrances at either end of the oblong arena which seated up to 20,000. Visiting Nucerians had a habit of scribbling graffiti on the walls advertising the comparatively modern facilities they enjoyed back home.
Tacitus explains how the clash between locals and the fans from Nuceria got going that day. "With the unruly spirit of townsfolk, they began with abusive language of each other; then they took up stones and at last weapons, the advantage resting with the populace of Pompeii, where the show was being exhibited." The lack of exits made the fracas especially lethal for the hard-pressed away supporters, many of whom tumbled to their deaths from the top tier.
After a party of aggrieved Nucerians travelled to Rome to complain to Nero about the incident gladiatorial games were banned in Pompeii for ten years. The amphitheatre was still used for less deadly activities and the magistrates rented out the spaces under the arches to working girls.
On a separate note, one of the more striking facts I have picked up since our visit to Pompeii was that you were much more likely to die of malaria if you had one of these attractive rectangular pools in your atrium!
The amphitheatre at Pompeii was usually the venue for bloodier spectacles than those you could catch at its semi-circular rival in midtown. Yet in AD 59 it was the setting for what modern tabloid journalists insistently refer to as a tragedy. (Along the lines of "Heisel tragedy".)
It's an old model from 80 BC, pre-dating Rome's first amphitheatre by about a century. It lacks the later Colliseum's under-stage gizmos and sports just two main entrances at either end of the oblong arena which seated up to 20,000. Visiting Nucerians had a habit of scribbling graffiti on the walls advertising the comparatively modern facilities they enjoyed back home.
Tacitus explains how the clash between locals and the fans from Nuceria got going that day. "With the unruly spirit of townsfolk, they began with abusive language of each other; then they took up stones and at last weapons, the advantage resting with the populace of Pompeii, where the show was being exhibited." The lack of exits made the fracas especially lethal for the hard-pressed away supporters, many of whom tumbled to their deaths from the top tier.
After a party of aggrieved Nucerians travelled to Rome to complain to Nero about the incident gladiatorial games were banned in Pompeii for ten years. The amphitheatre was still used for less deadly activities and the magistrates rented out the spaces under the arches to working girls.
On a separate note, one of the more striking facts I have picked up since our visit to Pompeii was that you were much more likely to die of malaria if you had one of these attractive rectangular pools in your atrium!
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is great eye-candy and mostly great fun too.
True to the traditions of fairy tales and more modern children's literature it's a thick gothic soup of blended undercurrents - Freudian, Dickensian, Dahlian, Burtonian et al. There are also thick dollops of self-mocking American Jewish angst and Brooklyn postmodern smartarsiness.
One to recommend unflinchingly, in spite of one of these undercurrents (I'd actually call it an undertow) - Potterishness - but I know I'm in a minority on that one.
On the other hand I've never been as Carrey-phobic as a good number of my friends, but it's clear from the deleted scenes that the director Brad Siberling had to carefully excise the parts where the Jim Carrey Show threatened to take over. Most of them make entertaining DVD extras however and Carrey's Count Olaf is possibly his most irresistible performance since the Cable Guy.
The animated end credits alone are a must-see.
Lemony Snicket is the fictional author/narrator created by Californian Daniel Handler. According to Wikipedia Handler originally came up with the name as a pseudonym when submitting his name to the mailing lists of several right-wing organizations he was then researching. Thereafter his friends used to order pizzas under using the alias.
V introduced me to Handler's work a couple of years ago, but I've never actually read any of the books. The "fateful film" crunches the storylines of the second and third of the series into that of the first. As there are twelve in total, we can expect some sequels.
True to the traditions of fairy tales and more modern children's literature it's a thick gothic soup of blended undercurrents - Freudian, Dickensian, Dahlian, Burtonian et al. There are also thick dollops of self-mocking American Jewish angst and Brooklyn postmodern smartarsiness.
One to recommend unflinchingly, in spite of one of these undercurrents (I'd actually call it an undertow) - Potterishness - but I know I'm in a minority on that one.
On the other hand I've never been as Carrey-phobic as a good number of my friends, but it's clear from the deleted scenes that the director Brad Siberling had to carefully excise the parts where the Jim Carrey Show threatened to take over. Most of them make entertaining DVD extras however and Carrey's Count Olaf is possibly his most irresistible performance since the Cable Guy.
The animated end credits alone are a must-see.
Lemony Snicket is the fictional author/narrator created by Californian Daniel Handler. According to Wikipedia Handler originally came up with the name as a pseudonym when submitting his name to the mailing lists of several right-wing organizations he was then researching. Thereafter his friends used to order pizzas under using the alias.
V introduced me to Handler's work a couple of years ago, but I've never actually read any of the books. The "fateful film" crunches the storylines of the second and third of the series into that of the first. As there are twelve in total, we can expect some sequels.
My Summer of Love
"Take that pudding away, it has no theme" Winston Churchill once said to a waiter. A lack of theme is something I usually steel myself for whenever I see the phrases "rite of passage" or "coming of age" in the gloss for a book or a film.
If it aspires to be re-watchable this sort of film really ought to have more than just eye-catchingly beautiful visualisations and accomplished performances (which MSOL most definitely has), it also needs memorable dialogue that opens up the characters' inner worlds to us and contributes to the key themes being explored by the plot.
Jean Cocteau observed that "a true poet doesn't bother to be poetical" and Pawel Pawilowski's improvised scripting takes such not-botherment to new levels, thereby contriving a possibly unintentional, yet buffeting contrast with the camerawork, which at times is painstakingly poetic (to the point of being una paja cinematica). Another opposition which ends up being more irritating than illuminating is that between the abstracted rural English setting and the realist representation of the girls' erotic friendship.
My Summer of Love, which collected the BAFTA for Best British Film last year, appears to have been conceived as an intelligent, foreign art-house film set on English soil. However, it's not an England you will readily recognise as the village where we see the girls growing close (a combination of Todmorden in West Yorks and nearby Bacup in Lancs) appears to be inhabited almost exclusively by a sect of mumbling religious nutjobs. It makes for a strangely exotic location which adds to the sense of unreality that dogs the story.
I haven't read Helen Cross's original novel, but I understand that it ends more bloodily. As such it is probably clearer to the reader what has irrevocably changed when the last page has been turned. Pawilowski pulls up short of that sort of violent climax, perhaps leaving it understood that what comes next is the off-the-shelf adult life both girls had been seeking to delay, at least while summer lasted. This much at least is a universal theme, an allegory about all our sunny days of late adolescence.
Both lead actresses are posh southerners, which surely makes Nathalie Press's rendition of Mona the most striking performance in the film. (She originally tested for the part of Tamsin.) Emily Blunt's interview on the DVD demonstrated however that she had a firm grasp of her character's inner struggles and motivations; it's just a pity that the words she was given to speak didn't help her to communicate them better.
Might it have been just a little bit easier to expand the underlying themes if one of the pair, Mona in particular, had been male? A boy-girl love affair would have denied the story its trangressive appeal (perhaps a requirement for art-house success), but having talked through the possibilities, V and I were both convinced it would have forced the plot to demonstrate its point more convincingly. After all, what does the lesbian taboo angle really add to a narrative whose main ingredient is class?
If it aspires to be re-watchable this sort of film really ought to have more than just eye-catchingly beautiful visualisations and accomplished performances (which MSOL most definitely has), it also needs memorable dialogue that opens up the characters' inner worlds to us and contributes to the key themes being explored by the plot.
Jean Cocteau observed that "a true poet doesn't bother to be poetical" and Pawel Pawilowski's improvised scripting takes such not-botherment to new levels, thereby contriving a possibly unintentional, yet buffeting contrast with the camerawork, which at times is painstakingly poetic (to the point of being una paja cinematica). Another opposition which ends up being more irritating than illuminating is that between the abstracted rural English setting and the realist representation of the girls' erotic friendship.
My Summer of Love, which collected the BAFTA for Best British Film last year, appears to have been conceived as an intelligent, foreign art-house film set on English soil. However, it's not an England you will readily recognise as the village where we see the girls growing close (a combination of Todmorden in West Yorks and nearby Bacup in Lancs) appears to be inhabited almost exclusively by a sect of mumbling religious nutjobs. It makes for a strangely exotic location which adds to the sense of unreality that dogs the story.
I haven't read Helen Cross's original novel, but I understand that it ends more bloodily. As such it is probably clearer to the reader what has irrevocably changed when the last page has been turned. Pawilowski pulls up short of that sort of violent climax, perhaps leaving it understood that what comes next is the off-the-shelf adult life both girls had been seeking to delay, at least while summer lasted. This much at least is a universal theme, an allegory about all our sunny days of late adolescence.
Both lead actresses are posh southerners, which surely makes Nathalie Press's rendition of Mona the most striking performance in the film. (She originally tested for the part of Tamsin.) Emily Blunt's interview on the DVD demonstrated however that she had a firm grasp of her character's inner struggles and motivations; it's just a pity that the words she was given to speak didn't help her to communicate them better.
Might it have been just a little bit easier to expand the underlying themes if one of the pair, Mona in particular, had been male? A boy-girl love affair would have denied the story its trangressive appeal (perhaps a requirement for art-house success), but having talked through the possibilities, V and I were both convinced it would have forced the plot to demonstrate its point more convincingly. After all, what does the lesbian taboo angle really add to a narrative whose main ingredient is class?
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
The Day of the Dead
One wonders how last night passed off in Venezuela after Hugo Chavez had exhorted his nation's young not to dress up as brujas in slavish imitation of yankee customs. Trick-or-treating may not be the Latin way, but today and tomorrow will see quite a lot of fancy dress skeletons clanking around streets south of the border.
A bit further down in Guatemala, All Saints Day is a more sedate affair, but no less syncretic. Mayan villagers across the country gather to fly barriletes, massive multicoloured tissue-paper kites said to be able to soar high enough to catch the attention of the dearly departed. Elsewhere the traditional dish of the day, fiambre is consumed.
Anyway, November 1 is an approprate date within this insistently apocalyptic year to serve up a review of Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead. Gone are the malcos from the Romero classics, replaced by high-velocity guided mastication missiles, similar to the ones seen in 28 Days Later. The movie kicks off at a similarly frenetic pace to its chorus of unrestful dead, but then starts to shamble up the down escalator.
At one point midway through you suspect that Snyder has died and returned as a comedy zombie, which spends the last third of the movie lurching around jerkily. This unevenness of pace and loss of coordination is especially compromising during the build-up and execution of the mall dwellers' final break for freedom.
Critics that have seen the original (not me) point to a lack of irony in the remake. The unbitten few are still holed up in a mall, but there's little satire on modern consumerism and after a few tense moments, these survivors avoid the deadly internal strife that debilitated their predecessors. Yet there's undoubtedly a nostalgic feel to proceedings, as if they are being gently animated by the ghost of a long lost 70s formula. Along the way I was reminded of Yul Brynner in The Ultimate Warrior, John Mills in Quatermass, Charlton Heston in Omega Man and other such unmitigated visions of the end of days.
A bit further down in Guatemala, All Saints Day is a more sedate affair, but no less syncretic. Mayan villagers across the country gather to fly barriletes, massive multicoloured tissue-paper kites said to be able to soar high enough to catch the attention of the dearly departed. Elsewhere the traditional dish of the day, fiambre is consumed.
Anyway, November 1 is an approprate date within this insistently apocalyptic year to serve up a review of Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead. Gone are the malcos from the Romero classics, replaced by high-velocity guided mastication missiles, similar to the ones seen in 28 Days Later. The movie kicks off at a similarly frenetic pace to its chorus of unrestful dead, but then starts to shamble up the down escalator.
At one point midway through you suspect that Snyder has died and returned as a comedy zombie, which spends the last third of the movie lurching around jerkily. This unevenness of pace and loss of coordination is especially compromising during the build-up and execution of the mall dwellers' final break for freedom.
Critics that have seen the original (not me) point to a lack of irony in the remake. The unbitten few are still holed up in a mall, but there's little satire on modern consumerism and after a few tense moments, these survivors avoid the deadly internal strife that debilitated their predecessors. Yet there's undoubtedly a nostalgic feel to proceedings, as if they are being gently animated by the ghost of a long lost 70s formula. Along the way I was reminded of Yul Brynner in The Ultimate Warrior, John Mills in Quatermass, Charlton Heston in Omega Man and other such unmitigated visions of the end of days.
Top People
Yesterday saw the arrival of Leonor, firstborn daughter of the Prince and Princess of Asturias. Three weeks early, yet reassuringly gordita, the little Infanta will be the Borbón heir; possibly. Her birth has ignited a collective political enthusiasm for timely constitutional reform of the sort that would allow Leonor to be crowned Queen in due course no matter how many brothers she goes on to acquire.
Spain, the first Western European nation to legalise gay marriage, wishes to seize this happy moment to strike another blow for equality. "The logic of the times" demands no less according to her father Don Felipe. It would be hard to make a case that this Iberian nation is in all senses more liberal and tolerant than our own, but in Britain tolerance has come to mean doing things by halves. (See tobacoo ban, gay marriage etc.)
The Borbóns continue to demonstrate that there can be a role for monarchy in a modern democracy. Unfortunately it's a role the Windsors seem unable or unwilling to perform; since the Second World War at least. Of course, our two countries have had very different post-war histories. As we have been reminded over the past fortnight Nelson ended the Spanish imperial dream prematurely at Trafalgar, so there was no chance of Juan Carlos adopting the end of empire as a lifelong hobby like our Elizabeth and the remnants of her aristocracy.
Another instructive contrast between Britain and Spain comes round every Saturday night. Over here we have the X Factor, whilst across on TVe they have Gente de Primera. ("Top People"). There are a number of significant little procedural differences. For instance, each contestant in Spain has a famous vocalist 'godparent', but the judging panel is independent, and serious, not a preening set of upwardly mobile celebs.
But the biggest difference of all is the ingredient most absurdly absent in the UK show, what Flamenco artsists call duende, that extra quality that vocal talent needs in order to move the listener with song. The X Factor isn't looking for young artists with the ability to touch an audience, it's trying to tag individuals that personify the values and aspirations of lower middle class Britain (and hence might sell shitloads of records).
No wonder our monarchy has become such a sideshow when the public dreamscape is full of such clutter. Soon the last remnants of the old way, David Attenborough and the rest, will have gone, and we Britons will be left to confront the messy, mongrel, mediocre muddle of a country that we have allowed to take shape around us.
Spain, the first Western European nation to legalise gay marriage, wishes to seize this happy moment to strike another blow for equality. "The logic of the times" demands no less according to her father Don Felipe. It would be hard to make a case that this Iberian nation is in all senses more liberal and tolerant than our own, but in Britain tolerance has come to mean doing things by halves. (See tobacoo ban, gay marriage etc.)
The Borbóns continue to demonstrate that there can be a role for monarchy in a modern democracy. Unfortunately it's a role the Windsors seem unable or unwilling to perform; since the Second World War at least. Of course, our two countries have had very different post-war histories. As we have been reminded over the past fortnight Nelson ended the Spanish imperial dream prematurely at Trafalgar, so there was no chance of Juan Carlos adopting the end of empire as a lifelong hobby like our Elizabeth and the remnants of her aristocracy.
Another instructive contrast between Britain and Spain comes round every Saturday night. Over here we have the X Factor, whilst across on TVe they have Gente de Primera. ("Top People"). There are a number of significant little procedural differences. For instance, each contestant in Spain has a famous vocalist 'godparent', but the judging panel is independent, and serious, not a preening set of upwardly mobile celebs.
But the biggest difference of all is the ingredient most absurdly absent in the UK show, what Flamenco artsists call duende, that extra quality that vocal talent needs in order to move the listener with song. The X Factor isn't looking for young artists with the ability to touch an audience, it's trying to tag individuals that personify the values and aspirations of lower middle class Britain (and hence might sell shitloads of records).
No wonder our monarchy has become such a sideshow when the public dreamscape is full of such clutter. Soon the last remnants of the old way, David Attenborough and the rest, will have gone, and we Britons will be left to confront the messy, mongrel, mediocre muddle of a country that we have allowed to take shape around us.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Blogs - profit or loss?
25% of employees in the US spend on average 3.5 hours per week or 9% of their time engaged in some way with non-work blogs according to a report by Advertising Age. Perhaps companies could use another handy javascript tool to enable them to track the difference between what they could potentially make from blogs and the workplace productivity they already seem to be bleeding?
Friday, October 28, 2005
Scruffy
Somewhat mis-cued CNN piece yesterday on how Guatemala has "shed its bloodstained reputation", that refuses to confront the irony that Latin America's war-zones have become much more dangerous places for visitors since the locals stopped systematically fighting each other.
The fact that Antigua's name even means old is obviously a key draw for the more discerning gringo visitor!
After Hurricane Stan Panajachel must surely have enhanced its reputation as a "scruffy beachfront town". Beta not go there right now.
The fact that Antigua's name even means old is obviously a key draw for the more discerning gringo visitor!
After Hurricane Stan Panajachel must surely have enhanced its reputation as a "scruffy beachfront town". Beta not go there right now.
Pyramid of the Crescent
Scandalously overlooked by the MSM yesterday was this story about what US-based Bosnian archaeologist Semir Osmanagić claims to have discovered within the suspiciously pyramid-shaped hill of Visočica - nothing less than a 12,000 year old Teotihuacan-style tiered pyramid built by an a obscure race known as the Pre-Illyrians. Osmanagić believes that the project would completely change Bosnia's significance in the world of archaeology. Indeed it would, as it would have been erected several thousand years before Mesopotamia and the discovery of agriculture!
Compulsive Viewing
British TV studios may echo to the famous warning about children and animals, but Ankawa, one of TVe's flagship programmes since its launch last June, amply demonstrates the deep-seated Spanish psychological need for spectacles of incipient danger and unruly bedlam.
Hosted by Andaluz crooner Bertín Osborne and involving a panel of small kids and lots of visiting exotic animals, you could say it was a children's programme - except that unlike say Blue Peter, it has a prime-time slot (10pm-midnight) and features outbursts of verbal obscenities, racism, sexism, animal-porn, in fact, you name it, it has it. Except perhaps expert naturalists; and safety, as the show's regular activities include blindfolded z-list hispanic celebrities sticking their hands into boxes containing surprise fauna, such as cobras, parrots and lobsters, and tigers and elephants often wander freely around the set.
The kids on the panel are almost as freakish as their pets. The other night a little girl invited to talk about her pet canary* mentioned that she had visited Africa and Nachete, the most inaguantable brat in residence, screeched "Allí hay mucho negro!" (There are loads of blacks over there). There used to be a black kid on the panel, but he appears not to have survived.
Another piece of compulsive Spanish television viewing is Vamos a Cocinar hosted by prestigious Asturian cook José Andrés. Not since Keith Floyd has TV cooking been such fun to watch, and unlike the itinerant dipsomaniac, José Andrés regularly comes up with dishes that look as if they might also be fun to prepare and consume yourself! His kitchen monologue, a mix of informative and witty chatter, is irresistible - a vast improvement on that blathering old woman Rick Stein and the muculent Gary Rhodes.
When not appearing on TVe José Andrés is Washington-based and has related to his viewers the problems he faces smuggling specialist Iberian embutidos (sausages) into the USA. (If you've seen Maria Full of Grace you will understand how challenging this might be!) He has four restaurants in DC - Jaléo, his flagship, along with Café Atlantico, Oyamel and Zaytinya.
Credited with having introduced the 'small plate' concept to America, it appears that ungenerous portions come naturally to a fellow that has the canny look of a parsimonious provincial. (V calls his salads ensala-nadas!) Yet small can be beautiful - such as his simple little tapa of serrano ham chopped up with the scooped-out interior of a ripe fig. Olive oil is something he never stints on though.
Watching him wiping his eyes as he cut up some onions for an escabeche the other night it was plain that he has yet to discover V's trick for avoiding this sort of tearful chopping - if you place a little glass of water near the onions the offending molecules seek out this liquid instead of your eyes. The only other way is to use a very sharp knife which doesn't break down the cells so much. (Since I originally posted this José Andrés has recommended cooling the onions in the fridge before chopping, a tactic which makes the emerging sulphur gases less volatile.)
As if on a mission to wipe out the memories of some of the less entrancing experiences of continental cuisine on our recent trip V has had a very inventive month in the kitchen. The highlights have been a side-dish of red cabbage cooked slowly with balsamic vinegar honey and sultanas, and quince shallow-fried with white wine and honey and served with a mixture of basmati and nanjing black rice. She's also done great things with the orecchiatte we bought near Modena.
Another denizen of the wild Iberian frontier of political correctness is Maria-Rosario-Cayetana FitzJames-Stuart y Silva, the Duchess of Alba, one of Europe's great aristocratic eccentrics and a descendent of our own James II. More on her another day perhaps.
*The bird actually belonged to her grandmother and has 'died' four times, each time seamlessly replaced to spare the old lady from grief, though the little girl had failed to consider the possibility that her abuela was watching the programme that evening.
Hosted by Andaluz crooner Bertín Osborne and involving a panel of small kids and lots of visiting exotic animals, you could say it was a children's programme - except that unlike say Blue Peter, it has a prime-time slot (10pm-midnight) and features outbursts of verbal obscenities, racism, sexism, animal-porn, in fact, you name it, it has it. Except perhaps expert naturalists; and safety, as the show's regular activities include blindfolded z-list hispanic celebrities sticking their hands into boxes containing surprise fauna, such as cobras, parrots and lobsters, and tigers and elephants often wander freely around the set.
The kids on the panel are almost as freakish as their pets. The other night a little girl invited to talk about her pet canary* mentioned that she had visited Africa and Nachete, the most inaguantable brat in residence, screeched "Allí hay mucho negro!" (There are loads of blacks over there). There used to be a black kid on the panel, but he appears not to have survived.
Another piece of compulsive Spanish television viewing is Vamos a Cocinar hosted by prestigious Asturian cook José Andrés. Not since Keith Floyd has TV cooking been such fun to watch, and unlike the itinerant dipsomaniac, José Andrés regularly comes up with dishes that look as if they might also be fun to prepare and consume yourself! His kitchen monologue, a mix of informative and witty chatter, is irresistible - a vast improvement on that blathering old woman Rick Stein and the muculent Gary Rhodes.
When not appearing on TVe José Andrés is Washington-based and has related to his viewers the problems he faces smuggling specialist Iberian embutidos (sausages) into the USA. (If you've seen Maria Full of Grace you will understand how challenging this might be!) He has four restaurants in DC - Jaléo, his flagship, along with Café Atlantico, Oyamel and Zaytinya.
Credited with having introduced the 'small plate' concept to America, it appears that ungenerous portions come naturally to a fellow that has the canny look of a parsimonious provincial. (V calls his salads ensala-nadas!) Yet small can be beautiful - such as his simple little tapa of serrano ham chopped up with the scooped-out interior of a ripe fig. Olive oil is something he never stints on though.
Watching him wiping his eyes as he cut up some onions for an escabeche the other night it was plain that he has yet to discover V's trick for avoiding this sort of tearful chopping - if you place a little glass of water near the onions the offending molecules seek out this liquid instead of your eyes. The only other way is to use a very sharp knife which doesn't break down the cells so much. (Since I originally posted this José Andrés has recommended cooling the onions in the fridge before chopping, a tactic which makes the emerging sulphur gases less volatile.)
As if on a mission to wipe out the memories of some of the less entrancing experiences of continental cuisine on our recent trip V has had a very inventive month in the kitchen. The highlights have been a side-dish of red cabbage cooked slowly with balsamic vinegar honey and sultanas, and quince shallow-fried with white wine and honey and served with a mixture of basmati and nanjing black rice. She's also done great things with the orecchiatte we bought near Modena.
Another denizen of the wild Iberian frontier of political correctness is Maria-Rosario-Cayetana FitzJames-Stuart y Silva, the Duchess of Alba, one of Europe's great aristocratic eccentrics and a descendent of our own James II. More on her another day perhaps.
*The bird actually belonged to her grandmother and has 'died' four times, each time seamlessly replaced to spare the old lady from grief, though the little girl had failed to consider the possibility that her abuela was watching the programme that evening.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Can you trust CGM?
A couple of days ago the Guardian set out to undermine some of our confidence in consumer-generated media by assembling a team of topic experts to review a fairly random set of Wikipedia entries. You have to wonder whether any of them went on to correct any of the errors they detected, which is after all the whole point of this marvellous resource.
Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World (highly-recommended!) gives the Wikipedia article on the Basque people 7/10.
He cites three main objections to it, one of which reads as follows: "The entry talks of Navarra as though it is a non-Basque region where a lot of Basques happen to live. There are actually seven Basque provinces, each with its own dialect of Euskera and slightly varying traditions. Four of them are in Spain and Navarra is one of them."
Hang on. There are three provinces in the autonomous Basque region of Spain, and Navarra isn't one of them. It may be part of the mythical fatherland, but so was Czechoslovakia as far as the Germans were concerned in the 1930s.
Navarra/Nafaroa/Navarre has always been an unusual trans-pyrennean hybrid. It almost became a nation state in its own right and gave the Bourbon/Borbón dynasty (not generally Euskera-speaking) their first monarchical gig before they went on to rule both France and Spain. Although the north of the old kingdom is indeed culturally Basque, the Navarrese sided with Franco in the Civil War.
Anyway, the "territorial agenda" is once again big news in Spain. Yesterday ETA indulged in some small scale bombings, just to remind everyone of their continued existence. The nationalist-dominated Basque parliament is pressing for direct EU representation and want to scrap the Statute of Guernica (part of the 1978 constitutional fudge), in order to reposition the three provinces as free associates of the Spanish state.
The debate is now more open as Zapatero has established an annual parliamentary debate on regional matters. His predecesor Aznar didn't exchange a single word with the Basque leader ('Lehendakari') Juan José Ibarretxe for the last two years of his premiership. Indeed the former PM probably signed up to Dubya's coalition of the willing partly in order to give the War on Terror some domestic dentures. He managed to outlaw Batasuna, the political wing of the more hard-line Basque nationalists, but the strategy came unstuck when his party was ejected from power after trying to pin the blame for the Madrid bombings on ETA.
The Basques have more to lose than the Catalans, who appear to be driven primarily by a wish to have to pay less for the lackadaisical diegos of Andalucia. (Catalunya knocks up 18% of Spanish GDP). They too have drafted a new 'Estatut' which the PP says threatens the inviolability of the Spanish state. Is this the beginning of balkanisation or readjustment to changed international institutional circumstances? The role of the traditional nation state in the global economy is certainly not the same as it was in 1978, but these debates are spiced up with the condiments of identity, culture and historical politics.
Zapatero sits on top of an informal coalition. His party, the PSOE has historical sympathies with the Catalan workers, and right now he needs to hold their support in parliament. Interesting times.
Another one of Kurlansky's objections to the Wikipedia piece on the Basques was that "It says: "Aquitanians spoke a language which is proven beyond doubt to be akin to Basque." I am not familiar with the Aquitaine language but would be very surprised if it bore any relation to Euskera, the Basque language."
Yet clearly some scholars do believe that the Aquitanii had Basque roots; and when you search Google for 'basque AND aquitanii' you find several pages that support this - such as this one on answers.com, which refers to "Basque names of deities or people in late Romano-Aquitanian funerary slabs."
Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World (highly-recommended!) gives the Wikipedia article on the Basque people 7/10.
He cites three main objections to it, one of which reads as follows: "The entry talks of Navarra as though it is a non-Basque region where a lot of Basques happen to live. There are actually seven Basque provinces, each with its own dialect of Euskera and slightly varying traditions. Four of them are in Spain and Navarra is one of them."
Hang on. There are three provinces in the autonomous Basque region of Spain, and Navarra isn't one of them. It may be part of the mythical fatherland, but so was Czechoslovakia as far as the Germans were concerned in the 1930s.
Navarra/Nafaroa/Navarre has always been an unusual trans-pyrennean hybrid. It almost became a nation state in its own right and gave the Bourbon/Borbón dynasty (not generally Euskera-speaking) their first monarchical gig before they went on to rule both France and Spain. Although the north of the old kingdom is indeed culturally Basque, the Navarrese sided with Franco in the Civil War.
Anyway, the "territorial agenda" is once again big news in Spain. Yesterday ETA indulged in some small scale bombings, just to remind everyone of their continued existence. The nationalist-dominated Basque parliament is pressing for direct EU representation and want to scrap the Statute of Guernica (part of the 1978 constitutional fudge), in order to reposition the three provinces as free associates of the Spanish state.
The debate is now more open as Zapatero has established an annual parliamentary debate on regional matters. His predecesor Aznar didn't exchange a single word with the Basque leader ('Lehendakari') Juan José Ibarretxe for the last two years of his premiership. Indeed the former PM probably signed up to Dubya's coalition of the willing partly in order to give the War on Terror some domestic dentures. He managed to outlaw Batasuna, the political wing of the more hard-line Basque nationalists, but the strategy came unstuck when his party was ejected from power after trying to pin the blame for the Madrid bombings on ETA.
The Basques have more to lose than the Catalans, who appear to be driven primarily by a wish to have to pay less for the lackadaisical diegos of Andalucia. (Catalunya knocks up 18% of Spanish GDP). They too have drafted a new 'Estatut' which the PP says threatens the inviolability of the Spanish state. Is this the beginning of balkanisation or readjustment to changed international institutional circumstances? The role of the traditional nation state in the global economy is certainly not the same as it was in 1978, but these debates are spiced up with the condiments of identity, culture and historical politics.
Zapatero sits on top of an informal coalition. His party, the PSOE has historical sympathies with the Catalan workers, and right now he needs to hold their support in parliament. Interesting times.
Another one of Kurlansky's objections to the Wikipedia piece on the Basques was that "It says: "Aquitanians spoke a language which is proven beyond doubt to be akin to Basque." I am not familiar with the Aquitaine language but would be very surprised if it bore any relation to Euskera, the Basque language."
Yet clearly some scholars do believe that the Aquitanii had Basque roots; and when you search Google for 'basque AND aquitanii' you find several pages that support this - such as this one on answers.com, which refers to "Basque names of deities or people in late Romano-Aquitanian funerary slabs."
Kasbah
The King of Norway's big white yacht, Norge, is still moored beside St Katherine's Dock this morning. It's crew, mostly gathered aft at a wooden table when I passed, were all wearing black sweaters and berets giving the impression that the vessel might belong to a vintage Bond villain.
The Queen of Norway and crown princess Mette will attend a literary luncheon at the Groucho Club in Soho today. Not the sort of thing our own philistine monarch goes in for.
CNN has had little time for Wilma, even when it whooshed up the west coast of Florida - they're definitely bored with storms now. Hurricane coverage is all about the story, not the news. Katrina fed the story of American social and racial division and the incompetence with which Louisiana's officialdom went about sheltering their population. Wilma could have fed a story about how surprisingly competently the Yucatan authorities went about a similar task, but this story isn't about Mexicans and they have been almost totally invisible within the blanket media coverage about dream holidays that became a nightmare.
Talking of which, Kasbah (2000) is a Spanish-Argentine take on the holiday from hell formula. Spain is the only Western European nation with (more or less) one of those American-style frontiers with Third World otherness, permitting its citizens to climb into their cars and drive south into a dusty place full of dirty, dodgy indigenes and proactively unhelpful officials.
The plot is baroque and increasingly ridiculious and soap opera-like as its unwinds. Essentially though it is about Mario (Ernesto Alterio), bastard son of a wealthy bastard, who finds himself vacationing in picturesquely inhospitable Morocco with his beautiful, money-worry free half sister Laura (played by Elena Ballesteros), who promptly vanishes - a key moment, because up until that point she was probably the main reason for watching the film! Cue dodgy natives and unhelpful officials, obligatory jail room scene etc.
Mario's situation at first seems unfortunate but he seems to invite more and more trouble for himself. His salvation clearly lies in falling into the slinky arms of kooky hippie Alix (Natalia Verbeke - who also starred with fellow Argie Ernesto Alterio in El Otro Lado de La Cama) and avoiding the more muscle-bound alternatives attached to the torso of pyschotically-chippy trucker-mercenary Rodrigo.
By the time Laura reappears it no longer seems important, as the film appears to have degenerated into a video for its own soundtrack. Entertaining enough though.
The Queen of Norway and crown princess Mette will attend a literary luncheon at the Groucho Club in Soho today. Not the sort of thing our own philistine monarch goes in for.
CNN has had little time for Wilma, even when it whooshed up the west coast of Florida - they're definitely bored with storms now. Hurricane coverage is all about the story, not the news. Katrina fed the story of American social and racial division and the incompetence with which Louisiana's officialdom went about sheltering their population. Wilma could have fed a story about how surprisingly competently the Yucatan authorities went about a similar task, but this story isn't about Mexicans and they have been almost totally invisible within the blanket media coverage about dream holidays that became a nightmare.
Talking of which, Kasbah (2000) is a Spanish-Argentine take on the holiday from hell formula. Spain is the only Western European nation with (more or less) one of those American-style frontiers with Third World otherness, permitting its citizens to climb into their cars and drive south into a dusty place full of dirty, dodgy indigenes and proactively unhelpful officials.
The plot is baroque and increasingly ridiculious and soap opera-like as its unwinds. Essentially though it is about Mario (Ernesto Alterio), bastard son of a wealthy bastard, who finds himself vacationing in picturesquely inhospitable Morocco with his beautiful, money-worry free half sister Laura (played by Elena Ballesteros), who promptly vanishes - a key moment, because up until that point she was probably the main reason for watching the film! Cue dodgy natives and unhelpful officials, obligatory jail room scene etc.
Mario's situation at first seems unfortunate but he seems to invite more and more trouble for himself. His salvation clearly lies in falling into the slinky arms of kooky hippie Alix (Natalia Verbeke - who also starred with fellow Argie Ernesto Alterio in El Otro Lado de La Cama) and avoiding the more muscle-bound alternatives attached to the torso of pyschotically-chippy trucker-mercenary Rodrigo.
By the time Laura reappears it no longer seems important, as the film appears to have degenerated into a video for its own soundtrack. Entertaining enough though.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
The Autumn of the Patriarch
I got through this novel the same way it was written; fitfully. García Márquez spent the best part of seven years (1968-1975) refining it before finally submitting it for publication in Madrid and it has taken me almost twice as long to cross the finishing line.
Borges famously observed of Gabo's One Hundred Years of Solitude that "The first 50 years aren't bad at all". Here it's not so much that you feel that you are progressively moving from the depths to the shallows, but that you are getting less and less out of this imaginative swirl of hyper-history.
'Patriarch' has an Amazon sales rank today of 53, 486, the lowest of the Colombian writer's three acknowledged masterpieces. (One Hundred Years of Solitude is at number 513, whilst Love in the Time of Cholera is a respectable 2,759th.) There's no doubt that it's a much more challenging read than the others. It sports an experimental style Gabo is said to have borrowed from Faulkner, but reminds me of nothing less than the sparsely-punctuated emails I get from friends and family in Guatemala, with their never-ending sentences often bearing sudden, disconcerting shifts of perspective.
It belongs to an illustrious quartet of novels that represent the worst excesses of Latin American despotism in the twentieth century. The others are Yo, el Supremo (1974) by Augusto Roa Bastos (not one I've read), Miguel Angel Asturias' El Señor Presidente (1946) and Mario Vargas Llosa's La Fiesta del Chivo (2000).
Gabo deliberately made his patriarch a composite, containing elements of all the solitary, paranoid tyrants he had ever read about, and while this makes for an elaborate and powerful portrait, at times it lacks the red passion of real history in its veins - a quality the others have in abundance. This tendency towards the generic is further exacerbated by Gabo's intention to use this exploration of the "solitary vice of power" to throw further light on the character-type, abundant in all his novels, that is congenitally incapable of the emotion (and virtue) of love. The resulting re-imagined archetype is eerily reminiscent of not only of the twentieth century's most notorious dictators, but also of some of its Popes and celebrities, most obviously Michael Jackson.
Just outside the big trio of the Gabo canon lies Chronicle of a Death Foretold, possibly my favourite of his works. It too is stylistically complex, beginning with its own conclusion and then spiralling around the preceeding events before returning on the last page. It's also a lot more like a real story, with the necessary elements of dramatic tension so clearly missing in 'Patriarch'.
Still, there's no question that this novel deserves its reputation as a masterpiece. Every ten pages or so Gabo distills a landmark hyper-truth from another striking image that emerges triumphantly from the metaphorical glut. This literary sorcery is just enough to keep you turning the pages.
Gabo's anciano crepuscular has the walls of his palace toilet whitewashed each day so that he can keep up to date with the latest malicious graffiti-gossip, yet by the end of his unfathomably long reign it is he alone who is scratching "Que viva el General!" onto these same walls, while in the afternoons he watches ersatz episodes of telenovelas on CCTV, created specially for him.
In this autumn of his rule, after his nation's gringo creditors have carried off the Caribbean sea in numbered pieces, the General discovers that it is "impossible for him to give an order that had not been carried out long before", that his officers and ministers are keeping him in "the senile backwater of the hammock", yet don't dare kill him because they know that afterwards they would have to kill each other.
"We ended up not understanding what would become of us without him" admits one of the many voices making up what one critic has called the "stream of national consciousness".
Gabo is said to have recommended Gregory Rabassa's English translation as an improvement on his original! This may have further embittered Guatemala's Nobel Laureate Asturias whose own masterworks fared less well in translation. In spite of the faults of the English-language version, El Señor Presidente ('Mr President'!) is still my strongest recommendation to anyone that only has the time (or stomach) for one Latin American literary tyrant.
(PS: It was Edith Grossman not Gregory Rabassa who rendered Love in the Time of Cholera in English and bizarrely skipped a whole page in the process. The mistake is hard to detect because fortuitously some continuous sense has been preserved, but it does significantly change the meaning of the scene that has been thus accidentally abridged.)
Borges famously observed of Gabo's One Hundred Years of Solitude that "The first 50 years aren't bad at all". Here it's not so much that you feel that you are progressively moving from the depths to the shallows, but that you are getting less and less out of this imaginative swirl of hyper-history.
'Patriarch' has an Amazon sales rank today of 53, 486, the lowest of the Colombian writer's three acknowledged masterpieces. (One Hundred Years of Solitude is at number 513, whilst Love in the Time of Cholera is a respectable 2,759th.) There's no doubt that it's a much more challenging read than the others. It sports an experimental style Gabo is said to have borrowed from Faulkner, but reminds me of nothing less than the sparsely-punctuated emails I get from friends and family in Guatemala, with their never-ending sentences often bearing sudden, disconcerting shifts of perspective.
It belongs to an illustrious quartet of novels that represent the worst excesses of Latin American despotism in the twentieth century. The others are Yo, el Supremo (1974) by Augusto Roa Bastos (not one I've read), Miguel Angel Asturias' El Señor Presidente (1946) and Mario Vargas Llosa's La Fiesta del Chivo (2000).
Gabo deliberately made his patriarch a composite, containing elements of all the solitary, paranoid tyrants he had ever read about, and while this makes for an elaborate and powerful portrait, at times it lacks the red passion of real history in its veins - a quality the others have in abundance. This tendency towards the generic is further exacerbated by Gabo's intention to use this exploration of the "solitary vice of power" to throw further light on the character-type, abundant in all his novels, that is congenitally incapable of the emotion (and virtue) of love. The resulting re-imagined archetype is eerily reminiscent of not only of the twentieth century's most notorious dictators, but also of some of its Popes and celebrities, most obviously Michael Jackson.
Just outside the big trio of the Gabo canon lies Chronicle of a Death Foretold, possibly my favourite of his works. It too is stylistically complex, beginning with its own conclusion and then spiralling around the preceeding events before returning on the last page. It's also a lot more like a real story, with the necessary elements of dramatic tension so clearly missing in 'Patriarch'.
Still, there's no question that this novel deserves its reputation as a masterpiece. Every ten pages or so Gabo distills a landmark hyper-truth from another striking image that emerges triumphantly from the metaphorical glut. This literary sorcery is just enough to keep you turning the pages.
Gabo's anciano crepuscular has the walls of his palace toilet whitewashed each day so that he can keep up to date with the latest malicious graffiti-gossip, yet by the end of his unfathomably long reign it is he alone who is scratching "Que viva el General!" onto these same walls, while in the afternoons he watches ersatz episodes of telenovelas on CCTV, created specially for him.
In this autumn of his rule, after his nation's gringo creditors have carried off the Caribbean sea in numbered pieces, the General discovers that it is "impossible for him to give an order that had not been carried out long before", that his officers and ministers are keeping him in "the senile backwater of the hammock", yet don't dare kill him because they know that afterwards they would have to kill each other.
"We ended up not understanding what would become of us without him" admits one of the many voices making up what one critic has called the "stream of national consciousness".
Gabo is said to have recommended Gregory Rabassa's English translation as an improvement on his original! This may have further embittered Guatemala's Nobel Laureate Asturias whose own masterworks fared less well in translation. In spite of the faults of the English-language version, El Señor Presidente ('Mr President'!) is still my strongest recommendation to anyone that only has the time (or stomach) for one Latin American literary tyrant.
(PS: It was Edith Grossman not Gregory Rabassa who rendered Love in the Time of Cholera in English and bizarrely skipped a whole page in the process. The mistake is hard to detect because fortuitously some continuous sense has been preserved, but it does significantly change the meaning of the scene that has been thus accidentally abridged.)
Creepshows
Both Creep and the recent remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre demonstrate the extent to which gruesomeness has become the standard surrogate for genuine suspense in this genre.
Roger Ebert said of the latter film that it is "vile, ugly and brutal..don't let it kill 98 minutes of your life". Well, it only killed about 60 of mine as I switched on just as the first young hippie was being scrapped for parts.
From what I saw it actually felt more atmospheric than Creep which made ineffective use of its promising location in London's Underground and sewer network. First-time director Christopher Smith decided for some reason to replace the dead glamourous teen formula with a dead unlikeable adult formula, thereby depriving his film of the approbation of shallow end of the market.
Roger Ebert said of the latter film that it is "vile, ugly and brutal..don't let it kill 98 minutes of your life". Well, it only killed about 60 of mine as I switched on just as the first young hippie was being scrapped for parts.
From what I saw it actually felt more atmospheric than Creep which made ineffective use of its promising location in London's Underground and sewer network. First-time director Christopher Smith decided for some reason to replace the dead glamourous teen formula with a dead unlikeable adult formula, thereby depriving his film of the approbation of shallow end of the market.
Storm Season Update
There's some photographic evidence today that damage to Playa del Carmen has been less severe than initial accounts suggested.
Nevertheless it is being reported that Hurricane Wilma may cost Mexico 0.25% of economic growth this year and that damages may add up to $1.5bn. The regional association of hoteliers is seeking a $500 million loan from Mexico's development bank, claiming that their collective losses are running at $7m a day.
At 10pm Friday (local time) the eye of Wilma was located directly above the Mayan Palace Hotel, a particularly nasty example of mass tourism development along the coast between Playa and Cancún. (It would be too much to hope for that this gruesome structure requires demolition now!)
BBC Breakfast this morning featured a telephone interview with some moaning Brits, stuck in their ruined hotel in Cancún and wondering when someone English-speaking will come along and help them.
The eye of the storm passed well to the north of Tulum, whose beaches are reported to be re-opening already. Cozumel faired less well, as Wilma devastated the same northern portion of the island lashed by Wild Gilbert in 1988. (With 882 millibars of pressure Wilma briefly exceeded Gilbert's record low of 888.)
Cozumel was hit again by Roxanne in 1995, then the first category 3 in the western Caribbean sea since Hurricane Hattie (category 4) in October 1961 - the storm that destroyed Belize City.
Nevertheless it is being reported that Hurricane Wilma may cost Mexico 0.25% of economic growth this year and that damages may add up to $1.5bn. The regional association of hoteliers is seeking a $500 million loan from Mexico's development bank, claiming that their collective losses are running at $7m a day.
At 10pm Friday (local time) the eye of Wilma was located directly above the Mayan Palace Hotel, a particularly nasty example of mass tourism development along the coast between Playa and Cancún. (It would be too much to hope for that this gruesome structure requires demolition now!)
BBC Breakfast this morning featured a telephone interview with some moaning Brits, stuck in their ruined hotel in Cancún and wondering when someone English-speaking will come along and help them.
The eye of the storm passed well to the north of Tulum, whose beaches are reported to be re-opening already. Cozumel faired less well, as Wilma devastated the same northern portion of the island lashed by Wild Gilbert in 1988. (With 882 millibars of pressure Wilma briefly exceeded Gilbert's record low of 888.)
Cozumel was hit again by Roxanne in 1995, then the first category 3 in the western Caribbean sea since Hurricane Hattie (category 4) in October 1961 - the storm that destroyed Belize City.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Membrillos
"Membrillo!" V chirped excitedly, and quickened her pace towards the entrance of Domaine Morizet in Viré.
Christelle Morizet turned out to be the most welcoming of cave-dwellers we came across in Burgundy. At a long table with a chequered table-cloth we had a compact feast of cheesey delicacies washed down with Viré-Clessé, their delectable local white wine.
At the end of the session she sent her daughter out to collect some membrillos for us, a bulbous velvety-skinned fruit known to the French as coin, and to the English as quince.
Native to the Caucasus, the Greeks brought quince to the Med. The Romans carried them on westwards to Spain, where they are today cultivated in greatest density around Córdoba (Roman Corduba). The Romans also concocted an alcoholic beverage called Cydonium from this naturally bitter fruit.
We later found another good example of a quince tree in the middle of a peristyle courtyard in Pompeii. The fruit has a long association with Venus, Goddess of Love and patroness of the Campanian city. In earlier Greek myth it was in fact a quince that was awarded to Aphrodite following the Judgement of Paris.
Presumably it the Spanish and Portuguese that carried membrillo to the New World. V's mother used to make mermelada from membrillos. Indeed the English word marmalade comes from the Portuguese word for quince - marmelo. When V was around eight she remembers regularly accompanying her father on trips to one of his terrenos near Paramos called El Rastro.
Many years ago there used to be an adobe brick slaughterhouse close to this plantation and the bones of dead cattle still emerge from its dusty soil and buzzards dally in the skies above as if genetically-programmed for this long-discontinued blowout. (Similarly, vultures return annually to the great gorge of Ronda in Spain where the carcasses of horses killed in the bull-ring were tossed before the advent of more humane times..when they chucked dead fascists down there instead.)
While her father was distracted in his negotiations V would slip away into a neighbouring plantation, climb up into the upper branches of a quince tree and begin the harvest. You're not really supposed to be able to enjoy membrillos raw, but V swears that her afternoon spoils were always thoroughly delicious. We shall see what culinary fate awaits the membrillos we brought back from Viré.
Christelle Morizet turned out to be the most welcoming of cave-dwellers we came across in Burgundy. At a long table with a chequered table-cloth we had a compact feast of cheesey delicacies washed down with Viré-Clessé, their delectable local white wine.
At the end of the session she sent her daughter out to collect some membrillos for us, a bulbous velvety-skinned fruit known to the French as coin, and to the English as quince.
Native to the Caucasus, the Greeks brought quince to the Med. The Romans carried them on westwards to Spain, where they are today cultivated in greatest density around Córdoba (Roman Corduba). The Romans also concocted an alcoholic beverage called Cydonium from this naturally bitter fruit.
We later found another good example of a quince tree in the middle of a peristyle courtyard in Pompeii. The fruit has a long association with Venus, Goddess of Love and patroness of the Campanian city. In earlier Greek myth it was in fact a quince that was awarded to Aphrodite following the Judgement of Paris.
Presumably it the Spanish and Portuguese that carried membrillo to the New World. V's mother used to make mermelada from membrillos. Indeed the English word marmalade comes from the Portuguese word for quince - marmelo. When V was around eight she remembers regularly accompanying her father on trips to one of his terrenos near Paramos called El Rastro.
Many years ago there used to be an adobe brick slaughterhouse close to this plantation and the bones of dead cattle still emerge from its dusty soil and buzzards dally in the skies above as if genetically-programmed for this long-discontinued blowout. (Similarly, vultures return annually to the great gorge of Ronda in Spain where the carcasses of horses killed in the bull-ring were tossed before the advent of more humane times..when they chucked dead fascists down there instead.)
While her father was distracted in his negotiations V would slip away into a neighbouring plantation, climb up into the upper branches of a quince tree and begin the harvest. You're not really supposed to be able to enjoy membrillos raw, but V swears that her afternoon spoils were always thoroughly delicious. We shall see what culinary fate awaits the membrillos we brought back from Viré.
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