Here’s a look at the animated version of Animal Farm produced in 1954. It’s available to watch on YouTube as an eight part series originally broadcast by the BBC. Outside of the credits, it seems remarkably contemporary, probably because retro styles have come back with animators. I liked the opening in particular, and the evil drunken farmer.
Somehow, I had always missed reading the whole thing. I knew the plot, several of the catchphrases, but had never actually read the book. It was worth it. An easy read, bit of a fable, with a sly straightfaced narration, the book describes a politic inevitable in communes and corporations: the ascent of power, the reality of greed. Orwell drums up sympathy for Boxer, though we know he’s a sucker. In fact, the entire struggle of the animals is both frustrating and mortifying. Working in a large company, I hear the platitudes ” a smile is part of your uniform!” or “there’s no I in Team!”. The horror of pigs walking is another familiar scene: the promotion of an incompetent brown nose. O, I have seen pigs walk. Curiously, it remains to be seen whether Animal Farmwill be a good or a bad influence personally. In the modern workplace, some grab the propaganda, and others work in spite of it. My own tendency is to enjoy the irony, and Animal Farm gives ample quotes for the worker.
I haven’t been reading much, and this book took me forever. A brilliant compilation of research on attachment, technology, and sexology, I skipped through it and doubled back. I don’t know why. A few laborious passages on pets or prostitution left me cold, but in the end I think I got it. I certainly discussed it, teaching ‘teledildonics’ as the word of the day at my job. I was in between appalled, and YES! to his credit, David Levy spends considerable time exploring the ramifications of feminine sexuality and sexbots; the credits on sex tourism and gigolos were enlightening. More than anything, I was touched by the fact that emotional intelligence was so accessible to programmers, and such a high priority.
The hard part is the follow through. We hear all the time about the dangers of processed foods, and many of us have experienced first hand the benefits of a healthy diet, at least a healthy meal or two, and the satisfaction of real food. I feel better physically if I eat my vegetables and my conscience is soothed by naturally raised meats. But at this point, I have a modern life: I do my shopping at a supermarket, and have little time to cook. The best part of Micheal Pollan’s book is the last chapter, where he expounds on a set of simple rules to guide our food choices.
Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
This is great advice, and not hard to remember. Don’t eat things when you can’t recognize the ingredients on the label, don’t eat products processed and packaged beyond recognition. He goes on to suggest several other rules:
Shop on the edges of the supermarket, stay away from the center.
The real foods in the market are on the periphery. The dairy and meat, the produce, the bakery. Everything in the middle is unrefrigerated and packed in cardboard or plastic. I found myself thinking about this the last time I shopped, and consciously stayed out of the aisles I didn’t need. The rest of the book is heavy with research and history on the economy and evolution of the food industry; an interesting read if you’re interested in all that, but if you just want a few good ideas about how to eat smarter, skip to the last chapter, read twenty pages, and change your experience buying food. Plus he gives you permission to have butter and wine. Great book.
All my blogs have been on hiatus over the holidays, not so much because of the usual events, but because I moved twice in the last three months. I have finally settled in Culver City, a couple of blocks south of the Ballona Creek Bike Path. I live just ten minutes from the beach now, and am still wandering around learning the neighborhood. My initial impression is that its a better place to be a cyclist; less traffic and better roads than Downtown, not to mention cleaner air. As the sun set on Wednesday I stopped to snap a few shots seaward on the trail.
Augusten Burroghs is a talented writer with a tormented past. His memoirs have made best-seller lists; he is riding the cutting edge of literary trendiness. Memoir! You should write a book! Its all the rage these days; I hear it myself at cocktail parties. How flattering to think we could finally be recognized for all of our sufferings, given credit for our foresights, appreciated for our nobility. Mr. Burroughs had a sociopathic father; he was distant and manipulative. Father’s games were complicated: a pastor and philosophy professor has detailed dysfunctions. And on top of everything, Mother was a hopeless wreck. Still, I never quite fell for it. My childhood was no picnic, but I rarely ever discuss it. One good friend of mine (if it adds cred, let me say she was victim of incest), “Your parents have you, for the most, for eighteen years. You can’t take more time to recover than what it took for them to do the damage.” This is a hard rule: we live in a culture of pity and excuses. I couldn’t help feel that Mr. Burroughs’ writing was a painful revel. There are people who need to read this book. No doubt it will heal them. But Augusten was rarely beaten, never sexually abused, generally neglected. The Wolf at the Table is a sad book, not just because a child was abused, but because it took him so long (until the death of his father) to separate himself from his abuser. I’m not a fan of Jesus either, in the context of celebrity suffering.
I found this hipster-lit vid on YouTube. I will probably soften up on Augusten Burroughs as I read more of his work. At the moment, though, I’m asking myself, “If you got famous for making art out of your most miserable experiences, would you ever stop thinking about them, and just enjoy your life?”
Here is a book that knows what the modern novel is about: a postmodernist classic. David Mitchell makes skillful use of his writer’s bag of tricks. The storyline is chronologically creative; a series of short stories link through coincidence and theme. The characters are unique, while the theme develops historically and ideologically. By the end of the book, its hard to tell the winners from the losers. Ambiguity is part of the lesson. It is ultimately a book about the politics and mechanics of oppression, I think. I have long taught that each of us will be at some point an oppressor, oppressed, and a witness of oppression. Witness becomes an important idea in the novel. The testimony of bystanders, be they live or on camera, is an impetus for action toward freedom, either because the victim senses support, or is motivated by the recognition of their plight. Though not an easy read (I’ve met several people who gave it up early on) the second half of the book pulls it together, and the reward is a story worth reading, and recommending. A final note is due: the top paid authors of the last decade were all genre authors; the first lit author made the list at number fifty in a recent internet article. Cloud Atlas is an homage to genre. It runs the gamut from historical fiction to mystery to sci-fi. Rarely do we see a ‘serious’ author commend and imitate the styles of the mere genres, but it makes the work entertaining on a technical level, beyond the author’s obvious eloquence.
This absurd and compelling animated trailer reminds me of Mike Whiteside’s stories, which all began, ” I was sitting in this bar in Hollywood..” I may actually read the book, since I dug the flow of the prose.
June 6th, 2010video
Somehow, I had always missed reading the whole thing. I knew the plot, several of the catchphrases, but had never actually read the book. It was worth it. An easy read, bit of a fable, with a sly straightfaced narration, the book describes a politic inevitable in communes and corporations: the ascent of power, the reality of greed. Orwell drums up sympathy for Boxer, though we know he’s a sucker. In fact, the entire struggle of the animals is both frustrating and mortifying. Working in a large company, I hear the platitudes ” a smile is part of your uniform!” or “there’s no I in Team!”. The horror of pigs walking is another familiar scene: the promotion of an incompetent brown nose. O, I have seen pigs walk. Curiously, it remains to be seen whether Animal Farm will be a good or a bad influence personally. In the modern workplace, some grab the propaganda, and others work in spite of it. My own tendency is to enjoy the irony, and Animal Farm gives ample quotes for the worker.
I haven’t been reading much, and this book took me forever. A brilliant compilation of research on attachment, technology, and sexology, I skipped through it and doubled back. I don’t know why. A few laborious passages on pets or prostitution left me cold, but in the end I think I got it. I certainly discussed it, teaching ‘teledildonics’ as the word of the day at my job. I was in between appalled, and YES! to his credit, David Levy spends considerable time exploring the ramifications of feminine sexuality and sexbots; the credits on sex tourism and gigolos were enlightening. More than anything, I was touched by the fact that emotional intelligence was so accessible to programmers, and such a high priority.
The hard part is the follow through. We hear all the time about the dangers of processed foods, and many of us have experienced first hand the benefits of a healthy diet, at least a healthy meal or two, and the satisfaction of real food. I feel better physically if I eat my vegetables and my conscience is soothed by naturally raised meats. But at this point, I have a modern life: I do my shopping at a supermarket, and have little time to cook. The best part of Micheal Pollan’s book is the last chapter, where he expounds on a set of simple rules to guide our food choices.
Augusten Burroghs is a talented writer with a tormented past. His memoirs have made best-seller lists; he is riding the cutting edge of literary trendiness. Memoir! You should write a book! Its all the rage these days; I hear it myself at cocktail parties. How flattering to think we could finally be recognized for all of our sufferings, given credit for our foresights, appreciated for our nobility. Mr. Burroughs had a sociopathic father; he was distant and manipulative. Father’s games were complicated: a pastor and philosophy professor has detailed dysfunctions. And on top of everything, Mother was a hopeless wreck. Still, I never quite fell for it. My childhood was no picnic, but I rarely ever discuss it. One good friend of mine (if it adds cred, let me say she was victim of incest), “Your parents have you, for the most, for eighteen years. You can’t take more time to recover than what it took for them to do the damage.” This is a hard rule: we live in a culture of pity and excuses. I couldn’t help feel that Mr. Burroughs’ writing was a painful revel. There are people who need to read this book. No doubt it will heal them. But Augusten was rarely beaten, never sexually abused, generally neglected. The Wolf at the Table is a sad book, not just because a child was abused, but because it took him so long (until the death of his father) to separate himself from his abuser. I’m not a fan of Jesus either, in the context of celebrity suffering.
Here is a book that knows what the modern novel is about: a postmodernist classic. David Mitchell makes skillful use of his writer’s bag of tricks. The storyline is chronologically creative; a series of short stories link through coincidence and theme. The characters are unique, while the theme develops historically and ideologically. By the end of the book, its hard to tell the winners from the losers. Ambiguity is part of the lesson. It is ultimately a book about the politics and mechanics of oppression, I think. I have long taught that each of us will be at some point an oppressor, oppressed, and a witness of oppression. Witness becomes an important idea in the novel. The testimony of bystanders, be they live or on camera, is an impetus for action toward freedom, either because the victim senses support, or is motivated by the recognition of their plight. Though not an easy read (I’ve met several people who gave it up early on) the second half of the book pulls it together, and the reward is a story worth reading, and recommending. A final note is due: the top paid authors of the last decade were all genre authors; the first lit author made the list at number fifty in a recent internet article. Cloud Atlas is an homage to genre. It runs the gamut from historical fiction to mystery to sci-fi. Rarely do we see a ‘serious’ author commend and imitate the styles of the mere genres, but it makes the work entertaining on a technical level, beyond the author’s obvious eloquence.
