sunset over the Mississippi

songs rattling in my head....

ok, Avenged Sevenfold sound so much like "white boys' rock" and Metallica, but maybe I'm just in the mood for it.  Memories from the past and memories from the future.

joined Google+

(thanks, Ricky!)...it's time to have fun learning something new.  I would have been the perfect Collie dog.

So I've joined Google+
I will keep you posted but at the moment I'm trying to figure it out, and it's not that straight-forward, which might explain why they still are in their "testing" phase.

Campaigner Charlie Dewar said: 'U2's multi million-euro tax dodge is depriving the Irish people at a time when they desperately need income to offset the Irish government's savage austerity programme.
'Tax nestling in the band's bank account should be helping to keep open the hospitals, schools and libraries that are closing all over Ireland.
'Bono is well-known for his anti-poverty campaigning but Art Uncut is accusing him of hypocrisy.'

I've always loved the way Bono created this halo around him, preaching us about what we need to do, but....wait!  he's not paying his taxes!  I am so fed up with rock stars with the God complex, I'd count Bob Geldof among them.  And so fed up with people who appropriate others' half-chewed ideas, and tell you that you should not be shopping in Walmart, while wearing a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt made by a 5 year old Cambodian girl who works 12 hours a day.  The worrying part is that they lack that side of brain that perceives the essence of contradiction and dissonance, so they go through life feeling rather good about themselves and preaching to the rest of us. 

Reading with a pencil in hand

"There are two kinds of reader: those who read with a pencil in their hand, and those who don't. (For "pencil", you may read, if you like, "pencil or pen", though inking marginalia strikes me as decadent and hubristic.) For me, a pencil is a reading tool, and since bookish types are no less prone than anyone else to commodity fetishism, I have developed a profound interest in my favoured kind of implement, surely among the greatest inventions of mankind: the mechanical pencil."

I am one of those people.  Except that my writing tool requirements are incredibly complex, depending on the topic, the type of paper, the amount of comments I am likely to make, whether it's sunny today, whether I am reading fiction or non-fiction.  This choice of writing tool has the same importance to me as deciding what to wear in the morning, what to eat for dinner or where to go on holiday.  This is big stuff.  I write on my hands, on additional pieces of paper, on kitchen towels, calendars, diaries, and...uhm...sometimes on my own body too.  There is always something that needs to be written down, like a word I hear, the lines of a song I'm listening to, fragments of phone conversations with significant others.  Sometimes drawing my thoughts feels good.  This usually translates into drawings of complex-patterned mazes to which only I have the key.  I could never understand people that read without taking notes.  In a way I'm jealous.  I need the writing to feel the connection to both the text and the context.

Aung San Suu Kyi tells of Burma's struggle for freedom and its cost

"What is this passion? What is the cause to which we are so passionately dedicated as to forgo the comforts of a conventional existence?" she asks. "Going back to [former Czech dissident leader] Václav Havel's definition of the basic job of dissidents, we are dedicated to the defence of the right of individuals to free and truthful life. In other words, our passion is liberty."

From The Guardian

Saudade

One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love, and which is lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade.

Goodbye, Yvonne.