TANCANT L’APARTAMENT DE LA PLATJA

Ja està net i endreçat.
Els armaris tancats, com les finestres.
No ens hem descuidat res damunt dels mobles.
El dormitori amb el llit fet,
la tauleta de nit amb el retrat
de la noia amb els ulls il·luminats
per un somriure.
Tot l’hivern sola i escoltant el mar.

Joan Margarit

http://www.joanmargarit.com/

I strongly defend such motivation. At least this way you take back home something nice.

Would you argue that the cover, the once disposable dust-jacket, is nothing but the contrived marketed wrapper of an otherwise pure art form? The immaculate fruit of thought, transcribed painstakingly to words, is therefore betrayed by the glistening candy wrapper? Then, on what basis should we choose the book we decide to buy (and possibly read)?

• Someone told you you should read it: this someone is probably very dull and his choices are rubbish; or worse, he has never actually read the book, but thought it was socially advisable to recommend it.
• You read a nice review in the paper: you must be joking here.
• The author is good looking (in writer terms): well, this is an unobjectionable reason for reading a book. The problem is, if he or she wasn’t agreeable to the eye s/he wouldn’t have published in the first place. Plus, sometimes the small b/w picture on the flap, hand on chin, of an undifferentiated bust, doesn’t say enough to choose.
• Backcover praise: all this gibberish that creeps up books’ backs, covers, first 12 pages, all this “the most compelling trilogy about the love of an Egyptian princess and a football quarterback ever written”. Well the problem now is that every book has theirs, and lots of them. My theory is that praise blurbs are written by praise bots, and the names of the supposed newspapers, critics and fellow authors responsible of the “an accomplished writer”, “the new Don DeLillo” and other disposable phrases are auctioned in a specially designed market. Publishers bidding for a Jonathan Franzen’s or an Albuquerque Chronicle’s quote would have to pay far less than for a cheerful Tom Wolfe’s or The Times’ one.
• The title is hot: again an unquestionable reason, but you might end up buying Sex, by Madonna.

So, stop worrying and choose by the cover. The recently published Eighty Years of Book Cover Design, by Joseph Connolly, celebrates 80 years of covers by Faber. This review in The Guardian is accompanied by a tasteful selection of some of the instances chosen for the book:

Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi (2008). Design by Darren Wall

“There’s no question I’m a better actor, and you leave behind a certain typecasting. I was like the corset bimbo.” She stops, has a slurp of smoothie, a bite of toastie and starts again. “Well, not quite bimbo, but you know what I mean. The corset sex symbol, I suppose. Now I’m not going to be the sex symbol, I’m going to be the granny.” She changes her mind by the mouthful. “Well, not quite granny.”

Y además, un estupendo reportaje fotográfico!

'I’m often criticised for what I wear. That’s my main label in the press now: disastrous dresser!' Photograph: Gustavo Papaleo

I used to watch the German music channel Viva a lot. It was before the internet killed the music video stars. We had no MTV at home, but we had Viva through satellite. Most of the music they played was awful, but, hey, I grew up loving music videos, so I liked even the bad ones (obviously, those had pretty girls as a substitute of nice music).

Then as now, I didn’t speak any German, so I would listen to the hosts trying to catch the names of the bands and songs to play next among their unintelligible lines. I remember Charlotte, and her program, Fast Forward, from back then. She had the best music in the R&B dominated channel, and a lot of incomprehensible talking on her part too .

So here is Charlotte interviewing Thom Yorke, from the days of Hail to the Thief. It is both funny and interesting, and it comes in three parts. (part 1)

(more after the break)

And here are parts 2 and 3 of the interview:

And in this last video, Charlotte talks about her book:

via fashionfever (

via whoalarissa (

via How My Heart Behaves) ) )

El Barça acaba de editar un libro que recoge fotografías de la temporada del triplete. Y la magia de las palabras clave y los índices invertidos hace que si escribes en Google el título del libro: “Barça. El mejor año de nuestra vida”, aparezca entre los primeros resultados este blog.

Pero aquí no encontrarás gran cosa al respecto del libro conmemorativo. Mejor, dirígete a está página de la web del Barça.

‘The Dot and the Line’ , una historia de amor entre ‘el punto y la línea’, basada en el libro del arquitecto y autor Norton Juster, publicado en 1963 por Random House; que en 1965 el famoso animador Cuck Jones adaptaría gracias a la producción de la Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Narrado por Robert Morley, este cortometraje fue nominado a los Oscars y ganador de la Palma de Oro de Cannes en 1966.

Póngase por ejemplo el caso de los piratas del Océano Índico y los atuneros españoles. La Ministra de Defensa afirma que la protección de los atuneros vascos cuesta 75 millones de euros al año. Al parecer hay una flota de 15 barcos y 1500 tripulantes. Nos faltaría saber qué beneficio total anual obtienen los 15 barcos. Si se va a subvencionar la actividad privada de pesca de los atuneros españoles con 75 millones de euros, a lo mejor sería más sencillo repartir dicha cantidad entre los atuneros, y que se queden en sus casas.

Pero claro, no es todo tan sencillo. Porque parece ser que [según información del corresponsal de El Correo en Bruselas, Fernando Pescador] la Marina y el Ejército del Aire españoles están en el Indico no para proteger a los atuneros, sino como parte de la operación conjunta europea “Atalanta”, cuyos objetivos son: (1) dar cobertura de seguridad a los buques del Programa Mundial de Alimentos de Naciones Unidas, en su día amenazado por los piratas, y (2) garantizar la libertad de tránsito por aquellas aguas. Así pues no se puede decir que la protección de los pescadores cuesta 75 millones.

Queremos los datos. Los datos reales. Para formarnos opinión.

(Véase, por ejemplo, el estupendo blog de Kiko Llaneras, En Silicio. Explorando la realidad usando datos y gráficas)

Later, right before the main act appeared on stage, the pushing flow of short chavvy kids was a hint of what kind of atmosphere we would have later. When Rise Against strummed their first riff, a thoughtless pushing to the front row and elbowing began. Then I had to ask myself, has it always been so idiotic? The shoving, pushing and punching wasn’t any new. The look in people’s faces was surprising, though. They didn’t seem to be enjoying it much. There were the aggro alpha males probably having fun, and then an undifferentiated mass of kids being pushed around. Shoving my way into the crowd I got eventually close to some people who actually smiled to each other, and it was possible to have some fun.

Urban dictionary’s got a ridiculous number of definitions of mosh pit, but I’m not convinced. It feels like jumping into a gym’s locker room with a bunch of hypertrophied bare-breasted adolescents and licking sweat off their torsos.

I remembered this comment by one of the members of Refused, in their posthumous DVD:

Sometimes, punk rock is beautiful because it’s a reflection of what life should be, and sometimes, it’s just a stupid clique for adolescents.

Refused Are Fucking Dead, a documentary by Kristofer Steen