Never

I shall never ever buy a book with Digital Restriction Management.

I buy a lot of books and i prefer to be buried in paper, pay more for moving, pay more for bigger apartments with bigger bookcases, than to buy files that i can’t copy any way i want.

No DRM book. Never.

Amazing

Kanye West wrote a book. That’s what he has to say about it:

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.”

I am a proud non-listener to hip-hop.

Hip-hop is not a crime. Hip-hop is not bad music. Occasionally i listen to a hip-hop song and enjoy it.

But i don’t get why some people talk about “innovative” hip-hop. Nothing changed in hip-hop in the last twenty years or so.

I heard a lot of talk about Kanye West lately. I haven’t heard any of his songs. So i tried a few on YouTube.

Fuck it. Kanye West is not innovative. M.I.A. is not innovative. Timbaland is not innovative. Eminem is not innovative. Dr. Dre is not innovative. Danger Mouse in not innovative. None of them have ever been innovative. Some of them are good artists, but none of them is innovative, never been.

And no, there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in rock music for many years now. Interpol, Elbow, Decemberists, Shins, Libertines, Arctic Monkeys – none of them are innovative. Some of them are good artists, but none of them is innovative. That’s unfortunate, but at least nobody makes such a big deal out of it as it is with hip-hop.

Kas buvo tai nebus

In the last couple of years i fell in love with Israeli literature, especially poetry – from Y. L. Gordon, H. N. Bialik and S. Chernihovski, through N. Alterman and J. Amihay all the way to the present days’ M. Arad and D. Manor. Because of this – among some other things – i decided to study for a minor degree in Hebrew and not in Chinese.

In school i learned about Israel’s poetry like this: There was a literature teacher. We started to study Bialik. She said: “There are common meters – amphibrach, anapaest, iambus, dactyl, and so on, and according to the program you are supposed to study them now, but it is hard for you, and i am not in the mood, so we won’t do it.” She hardly even mentioned Chernihovsky, Shlonsky, Alterman and Avidan – they are, according to her, also “hard, and you can do fine without them”. And so i received the reasonable 75 grade in the matriculation exam in literature in an Israeli high school, but in fact hardly studied any Hebrew literature at all, and for nearly ten years after the school didn’t read a single Israeli book, and not much foreign ones, either.

So now i am replenishing this. At the university i was quickly taught the basics of poetic meters and devices, and suddenly realized what a terrible crime that teacher committed. Without understanding these mostly simple rules it is very hard to read poetry. And he who learns them a little, becomes more educated and opens for himself a new exciting world.

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The complete collected works of David Avidan are being released these days. I saw the book in the shop and thought – to buy or not buy? Previously, Avidan seemed very hard for me. I looked through a few pages and understood – now i’ll be able to enjoy it. I looked at the table of contents and all of a sudden saw a title of a poem in Latin letters, and not in English – “Kas buvo tai nebus”. It seemed familiar, i thought that it was Latin, but no, obviously not Latin. And after a moment i realized that it was in Lithuanian: “What was, shall not be”. Here is an attempt in translation:

Two Lithuanians, remembering their mother tongue
Less than they remember
Their mother, meet in a cool evening
In an open coffee house and begin
Remembering. How does one say
The past in Lithuanian? Really, how does one say
The past in Lithuanian? Very awkward, indeed
Very uncomfortable. Maybe there is
Someone here in this nice environment, within a radius of a
Kilometer or two who will be able to fix
This depressing linguistic short circuit? But
The time is very late, and all
The Lithuanians, who arentdeadyet are already asleep.

How does one say sleep in Lithuanian?

1964

(The poem may have been already translated into English, maybe even by Avidan himself. As for “arentdeadyet” – Avidan often stuck words together as a literary device.)

I don’t know what prompted Avidan to write such an unusual poem. Lithuanians, as far as i know, preserved their language much better than did most peoples of the USSR. But perhaps he spoke of the Lithuanians in America or in Israel.

But i bought the book, of course.

The more you drive the less intelligent you get

Since i remember myself, i had trouble falling asleep at the right time. I often spend hours bored in the bed until i actually fall asleep. Only in the last couple of years i finally discovered the cure that millions of people already found before me: reading.

Thank you, God, for giving me this insomnia. Reading books is great.

Lately i am reading even more, since i ride the train all the time. Driving would be much cheaper for me, but i choose paying for the train so i could read books.

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I took the quote in the title from the cover of Radiohead’s “I Might Be Wrong” EP. Google suggests that a very similar quote appeared in the movie “Repo Man“; it’s not the first time i hear about it, so i guess i should rent it.

Wish

An open letter to Amazon.com:

Hi,

I’ve been shopping with Amazon.com since about 2002 and now i suddenly see that my order history and wish list are completely gone. My order history is empty and my wish list, which used to have about 20 pages of CD’s and books that i planned to buy now only has 3 CD’s that i added to it today. (Dengue Fever, a superb band i discovered today.)

Can you please restore it? I guess that i can live without the history of spending my hard-earned money, but that wish list was a work of art on which i worked for years and i am shocked to see it disappearing into the limbo without any warning.

Thanks.

Josephine

Everyone who wants to do anything serious about music—that includes mere listening—must read Kafka’s “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk”.

Cats on the Wing 2

“If you told the truth, that was all well and good,
And if you told the un-truth, well, that’s still well and good.” (Bob Dylan, Chronicles Volume One)

Lentils and Spinach

On my trip to Catalonia i couldn’t miss the fact that nearly all of the writing on signs there is in Catalan (and in Val d’Aran it’s in Aranese, but that’s a separate story). It’s easy to pick up the basics of Catalan if one knows some French, Italian or Spanish, and i know a little of them all, so I’ve been studying Catalan since. I listened to some music and read some literature in that language, and i’ve been waiting for that great, language-defining sentence. I mean, Catalans love it, ‘cuz it’s their own, and their passion for it is quite infectious, but is there something that will catch my imagination and make me really fall in love with Catalan instead of just adding it to the list of languages which i pretend to know?

I bought four CD’s of Catalan music in Barcelona – Mazoni, Sanjosex, Refree and La Troba Kung-Fú. They are all good, but La Troba Kung-Fú quickly became my “band of the year”. They have a few great catch-phrases on their excellent album; here’s a couple:

“Prou sang pels reis i pels senyors.” – “Stop blood for the kings and for the lords.”

“Calor, calor, que em falta calor, acosta’t una mica per favor.” – “Heat, heat, how I miss heat, get a little closer to me, please”. (You absolutely have to hear the song to get the feeling of it – it’s amazing. There’s an MP3 of “Calor calor” on the website; don’t be ashamed ask me if you can’t get it. If you know the smallest thing about me, then you must agree that if i’m telling that a Latin song is “amazing”, then something must be really special about it. Also note, then “que em” is pronounced as if it was written “cam” and “per” is pronounced as if it was written “par”.)

OK now, but that’s music; music is easier to catch. How about literature?

In addition to a bunch of dictionaries and grammars, i bought two reading books in FNAC Barcelona: Sergi Pàmies’ “Si menges una llimona sense fer ganyotes” (“If You Eat a Lemon Without Making a Grimace”) and Manuel de Pedrolo’s “Mecanoscrit del segon origen” (“Second Origin Typescript”). Pàmies’ book caught my attention in the bookstore because of its funny name, because it was the fourteenth printing since it was first published a year ago (which must mean that it’s popular), and because it was a collection of short stories, which is good for learning a language. I asked a lady who stood nearby what does she think of it; luckily she spoke good English. She told me that it is quite hard and surrealistic and suggested to get the Mecanoscrit.

I read the Mecanoscrit first. According to Wikipedia, this book has been wildly popular among Catalan readers for many years. Indeed, it’s a pretty good book of science fiction and it’s not too hard to read. I enjoyed the plot – except the disappointing ending, and the language was easy enough, but it wasn’t too exciting either.

Hoping to see some more interesting language, i moved to Pàmies. It’s not too surrealistic. It is a bit depressing. It’s funny in some places. Maybe it is funnier for native readers and i just don’t understand it well enough to get the jokes. But it was here, that i finally saw this great sentence, that great language-defining phrase. The story tells about a guy who hates one of his neighbors for some unknown reason:

Si tens preferències de paladar que ni tu mateix t’expliques, i t’estimes més un plat de llenties que no, posem per cas, un d’espinacs, ¿per què no ser igualment arbitrari amb els veïns?

Translation:

If you have taste preferences that even you cannot explain to yourself, and you would like a plate of lentils and not, for example, one of spinach, why then can’t it be equally arbitrary about the neighbors?

Changing my life with a wave of her hand

Lately i’ve been reading the printed version of Richard Stallman’s book Free Software, Free Society.

Reading and thinking to myself – here i am, reading a book, which is revolutionary to a certain degree. Which is naïvely (?) written and edited in a way that is supposed to be understood by people who are not computer geeks. I am sure that it fails. I even think that there’s a slight possibility that someone who doesn’t understand computers will actually read it, misunderstand it, and start some extremist group.

It makes me think – is it revolutionary like The Kapital? No, it is not. The Kapital is rather scientific, with historical and economical research behind it. Stallman is not so good with providing references for his claims. Some company did that, some guy did this, someone sued somebody else – almost without any reference. (It doesn’t mean that the whole Free Software movement sucks at reference – Lawrence Lessig’s excellent book Free Culture is very well referenced.) Yet the tone is convincing. I read it and i like to imagine Stallman speaking. This part is particularly powerful – he is talking about the first time he tried to get the source code for something and was refused:

See, he had promised to refuse to cooperate with us — his colleagues at MIT. He had betrayed us. But he didn’t just do it to us. Chances are he did it to you too. [Pointing at member of audience.] And I think, mostly likely, he did it to you too. [Pointing at another member of audience.] [Laughter] And he probably did it to you as well. [Pointing to third member of audience.] He probably did it to most of the people here in this room — except a few, maybe, who weren’t born yet in 1980. Because he had promised to refuse to cooperate with just about the entire population of the Planet Earth. He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Now, this was my first, direct encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and it taught me an important lesson — a lesson that’s important because most programmers never learn it. You see, this was my first encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and I was the victim. I, and my whole lab, were the victims. And the lesson it taught me was that non-disclosure agreements have victims.

Transcript of Richard M. Stallman’s speech, “Free Software: Freedom and Cooperation”, New York University in New York, New York, on 29 May 2001.

I may not agree with every word, but i deeply respect this kind of universal radicalism – to see society and humanity beyond the dry legal texts.

I like to amuse myself with the idea that this book is revolutionary; that i am a revolutionary; that i read the right revolutionary books of the generation. And then i think that i am not sure that i would be very proud if as a young person a hundred years ago i would read Marx. Well, i am quite sure that had i lived then, i wouldn’t think that Marx is my kind of revolutionary, anyway, although i don’t know who would it be.

But guess what makes Stallman a little like Marx after all, even though it is probably not important to him?

They are both Jews.

I didn’t know it until today. Look at this: R. Poynder interviews R. M. Stallman (PDF).

Gmar khatima tova, everyone.

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Oh (edit): H.L.A., thanks for the corrections.

Reality – Nikolai

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol in form of graffiti in Jerusalem.

Grapes of Wrath 2007

Winograd committee (standard!) which investigated the Second Lebanon War published its first official report today.

It is generating a lot media attention, but i wanted to point out two little things.

First – Retired Justice Eliyahu Winograd is the head of the committee. Winograd means grape in Russian. Thought you’d like to know.

Second – i like epigraphs and opening phrases. Great opening phrases, such as “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (which is probably an incorrect translation, but who cares), “On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature”, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”, “Perl is a language for getting your job done”.

The Winograd report doesn’t have a great opening line.

But it does have an epigraph: “Weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country” (Jeremiah 22:10). And the explanation: “This report is dedicated to the memory of beautiful flowers, the soldiers of IDF, that were cut down before their time in the second Lebanon war. They left after them a crying mother, a worrying father, a sad brother and a baby”.

The epigraph is taken out of context. The verse is incomplete. The full verse is “Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.”

As far as i understand the passage in the Bible refers to captive people. It is related to the war, because it started after soldiers were captured; but the explanation to the epigraph refers to soldiers who died in the war itself.

Israeli judges usually seem to write very good Hebrew in their reports and verdicts. I think that they slipped a little this time.

Hook

Sorry about the rare and the disappointing updates. I’m off the hook. No more internet connection at home at least for a few more weeks. A change will do me good.

I’m planning a huge pics upload some time soon, and it’s not just the wedding.

In the meantime, enjoy some vegetarian spam:

crash-land lady beetle
mole-blindedly Konia-ladik
mis-space frame worker
quasi-living quasi-living
bang beggar monitory letter
gas-lampy quasi-living

Also, since i’m off the hook, i re-discovered books that are printed on paper. Recommendation: Try the short story “Pecheneg” by A. P. Chekhov. It’s rather pointless yet very enjoyable.