she became perfectly sane.

via biblioklept

Whistle in the elevator!

(...)

HAPPY: (...) The trouble with you in business was you never tried to please people. 

BIFF: I know, I -

HAPPY: Like when you worked for Harrison's. Bob Harrison said you were tops, and then you go and do some damn fool things like whistling whole songs in the elevator like a comedian. 

BIFF (against Happy): So what? I like to whistle sometimes.

HAPPY: You don't raise a guy to a responsible job who whistles in the elevator!

(...)

BIFF: I don’t care what they think! They’ve laughed at Dad for years,and you know why? Because we don’t belong in this nuthouse of a city! We should be mixing cement on some open plain or — or carpenters. A carpenter is allowed to whistle!

(Willy walks in (...))

WILLY: Even your grandfather was better than a carpenter. (Pause. They watch him.) You never grew up. Bernard does not whistle in the elevator,  I assure you. 

BIFF (as though to laugh Willy out of it): Yeah, but you do, Pop. 

WILLY: I never in my life whistled in an elevator! And who in the businessworld thinks I'm crazy?

(...)

from Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, 1949.

Ghost World.

If you don't read my blahblah about it until the end: 
at least read the comic & watch the movie (in this order!)
Btw.: I'll not spoil anything just want to get you hooked and share some thoughts ;)
***

To blurt it out directly: I am very pleased with the movie-adaption of Ghost World (and this even though I love the comicbook!). What Terry Zwigoff makes from Daniel Clowes artwork is very discrete from the original, but also very, very close in the mood and insight it transports. 

The director of the movie seems aware of the specialities of comics as a medium, he respects it as an artform for itself and doesn’t just (ab)use it as a script/ready-made story board. Thus the film shows many variations in the storyline but they do not seem helpless, they don’t try to hide. They’re obvious, honest. They say: „Look, I am not just a reproduction“.

GW is kind of specific in adressing readers. The main characters Rebecca and Enid are not exactly those you want to identify with, neither in comic, nor in the movie. They are kind of cynic, pseudo-intellectual outsiders. Even though I’d say that they stay more abstract in the comic and therefore maybe a bit more open to identification (which must not be true, it could also be the case that they are more sympathic in “real” person in the movie and that being abstract in the comic also keeps the reader on a distance...).

They are “too cool for the world’ and see themselves as coolness outriders. Outsiders or outriders – in any case the comic depicts the teenage typical moments of opposition to all conventions and rules, of provocation (expressed for example in the extensive use of youth slang in the comic). That offers identification potential to pretty much everyone who lives or remembers his/her teenage years.

Foxy & Swan & Wisent

These images (especially the fox) by Stefano Unterthiner remind me of the long silent walks I took in the forest near our house when I was young.

I had read the book "Försters Katja" (which would translate as something like: Forest Ranger's Daughter Katja) by Ilse Kitzinger and Katja went deerstalking in the book, which inspired me to do the same. I remember how I was overwhelmed how much is to discover and observe when you just walk alone, silent and calm with your eyes open for what is going on around you, how close you can come to the animals. I guess it was one of those "nature-experiences" that still impress and mould me today.

The book is from 1968 already, my mother read it when she was a young girl and I loved to get all her old books out of the cellar and devoured them! And I will definitely keep them!

As the world burns.

Oh what a nice pretty book. And such a colourful cover. And how sweet it is illustrated. Look girls! Isn’t it just too cute?

No. It isn’t. It hits you rigt in your face. Bam.

„As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to stay in denial“ by Derrick Jensen & Stephanie McMillan comes to you innocent. Nothing would prevent you from reading it, no „oh not another inconvinient truth“, no „but I’d rather read some entertaining not-so-tough-stuff“. If you hesitate, then it’s because you might fear it is just another irrelevant comment on scouts-world-saviour-behaviour (of wich I myself may definitely be „guilty“ every once in a while... and sorry, no offend to scouts!).

The style of the book might remind of IKEA-assembley-instructions: Reduced, simplified (right along the conceptual edge, floating between the picture plane top and the „meaning“ corner of Scott McClouds pyramid) and thereby universally understandable. But this doesn’t mean it’s not complex and manifold too. We can see that word-specific panels prevail, but we also find some very strong image-specific panels. Very often we have a word-image relation that is additive, so that you can understand the meaning (or jokes) only „between“ word and image (for example where the president is „killing the bad guys“ – in a computer game).
The panel structure is also very various, next to the dominating one-to-five-rectangular-panel-pages we find unframed (full page) panels as well as irregularly scattered smaller panels, combinations of framed and unframed panels in one page do also very often occur.

If you read the title carefully, you might not be blinded by the „50 simple things you can do (...)“ but will prick your ears (well, actually your eyes might do something like that...) at reading „(...) to stay in denial“. The title already reveals that we will be confronted with irony and maybe a little cynicism (and a lot of fun!). Eventhough this is an ongoing undertone, transported especially in the slightly (but just slightly) overdone caricatures of the politicians, the book stays „friendly“ in so far, as the reader is in the first place identifing with the naive blonde girl „Bananabelle“. Bananabelle is constantly „corrected“ and taught by her best friend who seems to have all knowledge about how it really goes – but her friend still loves and supports her. So we, as the readers, do not have to feel all too bad about sharing naive ideas about environmentalism – Kranti (the blackhaired girl) will also teach us throughout the book. And at some point she will be pround on how our eyes are opening and how good we understand and how we get angry.

by Frost, Robert.

Dust of Snow:

The way a crow/ Shook down on me/ The dust of snow/ From a hemlock tree/ Has given my heart/ A change of mood/ And saved some part/ Of a day I had rued.

images: by me, my phone-cam and iPhoto. taken in Istanbul, somewhen in january