The Problem

Make my week-end!

How To Make A Tom Collins Classic Cocktail

Radiohead

Mofo the Maverick

Thank You, Perez.

Yacoubian

REVIEW: THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING,(the film).

Released in 2006, and presented at the Berlin Film festival, the Egyptian film 'The Yacoubian Building' is currently available for rental as a video. L. and I watched it on Sunday, and unlike those European 'snob' films I bring home which she claims are unwatchable, she actually sat through the whole 2:30 hours of it. I, on the other hand, trekked to the kitchen a few times.

Who is one supposed to root for in all this, and why? The female characters at the beginning are difficult to keep apart: everyone has identical jet black hair and heavy make-up. The males are all old and sex-mad and the one youngish hero gets totalled in a terrorist attack. Indeed the homosexual newspaper editor gets murdered, and the old alcoholic gets the girl. Strange and stranger.

Seriously, the film is an Oscar-winner caliber overview of Islamist society which seems to have gone under the radar in popular film culture. The original 2002 novel was written by an older man (born 1957) and made in 2006 by a 30 year old but a combination of the two sensibilities gives a stunning portrait of character and mood. I would have guessed that the film was fairly low-budget but I read it was the highest budgeted film of Egyptian history...Perhaps because the honour roll of Egyptian actors is featured. They are all wonderful.

Here is an excerpt from the novel (Which I am translating from the French, which was translated from the Arabic):

Terrace society is no different than any other popular social group within Egypt: children run barefoot and themselves half-naked, the women spend their days preparing food, and get together to gossip in the sun, where they often fight and exchange the most injurious insults only to, suddenly, reconcile and go back to perfectly cordial relations, as if nothing had transpired. Then they exchange warm and sonorous kisses, even cry, so moved are they and so enamoured. As for the men, they do not attach much importance to feminine quarrels, which they take as proof of their insufficient brains to which the Prophet has alluded, prayer and blessings from God be with him. The men of the terrace spend their days in a rough and merciless battle to insure their subsistence and, at night, they come home aspiring to their three little pleasures: a nourishing and appetizing meal, a little bit of a good smoke, with hashich if available, which they smoke in a pipe, alone or in good company, on the terrace, summer nights. As for the third pleasure, it is that of sex which the inhabitants of the terrace honour in particular. p. 23 Actes Sud, 2006.

Cult British Commercial

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/videos/index.php?id_video=3943

Sketches by Lyse

Kaïn

Fashion-Flash

Morning Game

http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-bloxorz/index.html

Fay

Best of M.

It's on Vimeo!

Nightfall from Valentin Schwind on Vimeo.

from: Le Nouvel Observateur

U.S. Population

Awesome!

Good Reviews

Beijing - China

Been cruising the Internet like a lost soul for information about Beijing and China in particular. It is so sad to not be there. I follow the medal count in the L.A. Times and Canada is a proud last with zero medals. They are all happy with M. Phelps, of course. He's 23, and had a ADHD diagnosis as a youth which led him to go into swimming.

Bei-jing means Northern Capital (Nan-jing would mean Southern Capital) although on the map, Nan isn't that much more southerly. Just a big country with a long history. Actually China is a region with many peoples, more so than Canada which is full of relatively recent immigrants. One doesn't really get a sense of the overpopulation because the esthetic bent is precisely to create enclaves of charm and rest. One tourist site mentionned that it is from the air than one sees it with little village lights everywhere.

Beijing itself is a city which has radically transformed itself in the last ten years to become a world metropolis, and the decision to grant them the games merely added to the process. There are some to decry the lost of traditional housing with internal courtyards and they are no doubt correct to mourn the passing of a certain sensibility. Paris as well went through a terrible rasing before taking its present form. Yet from here, China is a country with a relatively decent climate. More power to them!

Map - Beijing

http://www.chinahighlights.com/beijing/map.htm

Trash

Games

Go for it!

Paris for Prez

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

The Skinny

Diez consejos para contrarrestar nuestra preferencia por los dulces
1. Conozca lo que provoca el deseo
2. Estabilice el nivel de azúcar en la sangre
3. Aumente el consumo de carbohidratos más complejos
4. Reemplace el azúcar por fructosa
5. Abastezca la cocina con inteligencia
6. Haga ejercicio físico
7. Pruebe productos sin azúcar
8. Controle el tiempo
9. Busque distracciones
10. Controle las porciones

Source: MSN Latino

From France

Le Figaro reports today that sales for personal computers are totally booming in France, with an expected 10 million units sold this year. And half of these should be laptops, whose average price has gone down from 860 to 650 Euros. "Traditional sellers such as HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and Apple are meeting costs in dollars: their production of PCs is mostly in China and Taiwan." explains the news-site. Add to that a strong Euro, and the market is ebullient.

There is also a charming quote from the president of Intel: "In spite of economic problems in the U.S., our business is so international that we detect no slowing in the sale of P.C.s."

Experts here seem to be arguing against buying cheap mini-laptops. I wonder why...

Gotta go, I still have another article to read about how well IBM is doing!

Fly One

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/aug/01/electric.kite

From Spain

Troublemaker

From Europe

Columbian Artefact