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2009-07-04
无题--- 5 - [时间的裂痕---Cooler Memories]
每个怀有成为另一个苏珊 桑塔格 （Susan Sontag）的奢望的人，尽管这种奢望是绝对隐性的，模糊混沌的，打死也不愿意让羞耻感尚存的自我察觉的，必须意识到这一点，苏珊的发言圈立足在美利坚。美利坚的某种声音可以被看作为一个消解了国籍的，自由知识分子的形象，且是个身强力壮的知识分子。如果能肯定，提供自己发言的环境与苏珊的有丝毫的相似，再开始做场靠谱的好梦。信息与知识在传播方式上的普及会造成一种错觉，让人们甜蜜地认为信息与知识亦是对等的，共享的。又如同普通民众与大众情人的关系-----你觉得知他/她如比邻，带着说得出口的狂热不拿人家当外人。
---- lico
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2009-07-04
Life is wonderful - [爱子]
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Q, call me up otherwise....
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上次写奢侈品与日本人的稿子，分析到了-集团意识-，这里有段特死板的英文的解释。
Group-oriented mentality:
One of the most important national characteristics of the Japanese people is that of their group-oriented mentality. In fact, it influences the way that people behave to a very large extent. For example, everybody simultaneously belongs to a number of social groups, such as family, school classes, one's company and all sorts of clubs. When a decision has to be made within such a group, Japanese people tend to assimilate with others and avoid confrontation, because they believe it is the best way to mantain a harmonious relationship. If one does not follow the majority, he or she may be excluded from the group. This equates to an extremely severe punishment for noncompliance with the group.
调和，顺应，都是体面的说法。
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2009-07-02
无题---4 - [时间的裂痕---Cooler Memories]
如果她不得不失去她的乳房，她将获得一个绝好的机会，开始另一场彻底而簇新的人生。以弱者的身份和光明正大的善意的姿态远走高飞， 重要的是，她与纠缠她的他们，不再成为那些扰人的剩余力量的受害者。
文艺从业者，最初总幻想着能在小圈子里得到最广泛地支持，然后事态螺旋变幻，总有那么一些倒霉的人，最后在大圈子里获得最小的呼声。
如果将贝小戎的脑袋与lico的脑袋作个透视比较，会很容易地发现，贝小戎的是数码单反成像，lico的是手机效果。（虽然她坚持说好歹也是个i phone。）
---- lico
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今月注文した本です：
1 "消費社会の神話と構造 普及版"
ジャン ボードリヤール; 単行本（ソフトカバー）2."パワー・インフェルノ－グローバル・パワーとテロリズム"
ジャン ボードリヤール; 単行本3. "不可能な交換"
ジャン ボードリヤール; 単行本4."複製技術時代の芸術 (晶文社クラシックス)"
ヴァルター ベンヤミン; 単行本今年前半注文した分:
1．堕落する高級ブランド
2．On Photograph/susan sontage
3.Regarding the Pain of Others /susan sontage
4.走ることについて語るときに僕の語ること
5.1Q84
etc
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2009-07-01
在各国的投宿问题 - [外国男友，Gay男友以及他们的女友们]
lico终于要踏上环游世界80天的旅程了。在正式出发之前，她觉得有必要确定一下在各国各地的住宿问题----谁说出门在外靠朋友来着？虽然她的朋友大多是男生朋友。
msn上，
lico先遇到位意大利人，
“没问题！”意大利人看上去很兴奋，“你要来了就住我家，你想怎样就怎样。。。。（红心）。”
lico马上把窗口给关了。
lico又遇到位德国人，
“行啊，”德国人说，“把你的行程具体写一下，我再帮你计划计划。”
lico想，是挺靠谱也太麻烦。
lico又遇到个日本人，
“实在抱歉啊。”日本人说，“你知道我每天下班都在晚上十一二点以后，太太小孩在家，也一定会吵闹到您的。真的对不住您。请多原谅。”
lico气死了。
lico遇到位美国人，
“行！”美国人说，“我家房贷每月一千美金，你付一半，或者按天算？”
lico立马婉谢了。
lico最后遇到个法国人。
“可以可以，”法国人说，“我有三处地方，你要住哪儿？”
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ps lico最后的最后遇到位中国人，中国人会怎么说呢？如果分别为北京人和上海人，将有什么不同呢？哪位同学帮忙想想？ 评论会稍后显示。
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2009-06-30
读苗炜的《一块肉的觉悟》 - [读书]
Andreas Gursky 作品苗炜的新小说《一块肉的觉悟》， 第一章讲吃驴肉，情景在“我的回忆”中展开。 “我”和“我的胃”是绝对的主角，饭食的色味香由“我”的体验直接传达给读者，读起来很鲜活，文字单纯而直接地刺激着读者的舌胃----“我”的舌胃与读者的之间仿佛只隔着张电脑屏幕。
第二章开始，艾米出现。 艾米是谁？苗炜小说里的人物很多都没有具体的面目特征。 他很少在视觉形象上花笔墨。我们只知道她很“干净”，是个美食专栏作家，却好像不食人间烟火。相形之下，和青蛙有得一拼的“我”却似乎俗不可耐，但不管怎样，“我”的胃口被艾米调动起来了，食欲混杂着暧昧而模糊的色欲。
故事往下延续，第三章里，“我”终于有机会和艾米去了迪拜-----一个富得流油的地方。
第四章与第五章对“吃”与参观“吃”的描写，是Andreas Gursky的相机下的文字版。 苗炜的文字直观，机械，却恰到好处，传达着饱和状态下的饱和感知。 第四章里，艾米和“我”好像就要发生什么了，作者和同样充满色欲的读者开了个玩笑。（王朔也干过这个。。。）
第六章，在沙漠里，美食家艾米不争气地吐了-----“仿佛将她这些年来吃下去的东西都吐了出来——有价格昂贵的意大利摩德纳香脂醋，有产自希腊的上好的橄榄油，有俄罗斯黑海之滨的鱼子酱，有京都一家百年老店的大酱汤，有白霉奶酪和味道更重的蓝纹奶酪”。 而我，“茫然的站在她身边，抬头看见被风沙遮盖的日光，好像看到神灵出现，对一个暴饮暴食之人施以处罚”；这几天的迪拜见闻，让我内心开始对“吃”产生纠结，“我”试图抗拒食的诱惑，“我”和艾米之间产生了小小的争论，彼此引经据典，但胜利者显然是艾米，作为一个美食家，她“一直在给我们一个更为强大的胃，这个胃不会蠕动，没有分泌，它强硬的存在于我们的意识之中，妄图尝尽人间的一切美味，它没有任何饮食上的禁忌，也不用考虑生理层面的问题，它吞噬一切，见草吃草见肉吃肉。不反刍，也没有排泄渠道。”
第七章，开始出现Chuck Palahniuk小说的魅影仙踪，衣着比基尼的艾米不再是一个隐蔽的色欲的对象，她更像是适合烹饪，“像艾米这样吃了好多年的好饲料，肉质肯定错不了”。饭桌上例行的交谈充满着高智识八卦的气氛，吃婴儿，吃胎盘。。。真正令人心生寒气的，是讲着这些道听途说来的故事的人，没有任何多余的表情与渲染，如同讲解着该怎么喝茶，或在飞机上该选择海鲜还是牛肉饭。人人津津有味，且振振有词。“我”对饭桌上“喋喋不休的艾米感到一丝厌烦”“夹杂着自卑、羞愧”----“我”终于离开了艾米所在的饭桌和与艾米的罗曼史的诱惑，一个人提前离去。
苗炜小说里的“我”是个败者，在欲望膨胀的世界里，他做不到如艾米那般平衡而超脱----而艾米显然更像是一个人类的特殊变种，她由一个干净的，“我”幻想中的美丽女人，变得与她笔下的美食一般，充满着被吞食的诱惑，活该被吃掉。----- “她强调一道菜的文化属性和阶级属性，最终让人们意识到：你吃什么东西，你就是什么样的人。” 好似只有吃了这个女人，才能战胜所有的沮丧与无能为力，让这个花花世界的吹捧者与代言人早点闭嘴，也好让“我”在面对四小时一次恼人的空腹感时，回到普通人的内心的平静。
苗炜小说中的“我”，常常带着一种模糊的第三视角的影子。用第一人称写作，一般而言，作者容易投入强烈的个人感情，“我”中往往把掌着某种语言强权。而苗炜小说中的“我”更具有一般性，是个隐蔽而内敛的视角。他的作品有种默片时代的幽默感，行文速度均匀，浸透着滑稽，荒诞，与身处其中的“我们'的困惑和无能。
“照此说来，我最美好的聚餐还是徐水的那顿驴肉火烧，无数像驴一样辛苦劳作的农民坐在长条凳子上，吃掉一头又一头的漕河毛驴，然后开始新一天驴一样的劳作。” 第一章最后的这句话，有股大气魄，揭示了食与人之间最本质的关系，或许也是整篇小说最打动人心的地方。
有兴趣的朋友可去苗炜的博客看一看或购阅《小说界》。
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Tracey Emin 老师， 艺如其人。
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2009-06-29
无题---3 - [时间的裂痕---Cooler Memories]
沟通也有可能是完全没有必要的。 保持适度的张力与神秘性，保持彼此的想象力。 但如果其中没有默契，“缺乏沟通”在字面意义与实际内涵上都是灾难。
Leonard Cohen与Nick Cave之间有种奇怪的连系。
“写”是什么意思呢？ “我必须写”与“我想写”之间的“距离”不是个二维空间的概念。
那个过于正义凛然的借口，完美得像文艺作品。 当意识到那其实是个借口时，看不见的理想与看得见的现实之间出现了一个台阶。
---- lico
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2009-06-27
暗中进行的事情 - [时间的裂痕---Cooler Memories]
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2009-06-26
God and lico --- 2 - [外国男友，Gay男友以及他们的女友们]
lico wrote to God, "Dear God, I feel bad again. You told that its better learn how to cook blueberry cheese-cake by myself a few weeks ago, which I tried, still, unfortunately failed. " lico thought for a while, then added, "Do you think its really necessary for an intelligent woman doing things like this? I probably have no time for it. And.....please forget chocolate, I'm definitely bad at this kind of sweet things, also never want to share with the others."
God replied, "Dear lico, I knew you are difficult! You're not only lazy, but also having no patience! Well," God added, " I think the best way is to give you back the ring you lost, which you asked for at the beginning, somehow turned to be chocolate then blueberry cheese-cake."
"Really?!" lico got excited, "Thank you! ..... But When? Where? and How? Is it the same one I had??"
"Not sure, lico," God answered, " Too bad I don't remember what exactly you lost....the truth is you are always losing things! ..... Anyway there is a ring for you, which I can't promise could suit you well or not...Okay, lets say, this summer."
"But where?" lico asked.
"Somewhere." God smiled, going to finish the letter, " I'll help you get out of the time capsule now. Enjoy the flow, you'll figure out where it is soon."
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2009-06-26
Michael Jackson - [读人]
God decided to leave the earth.
: (
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人离一个灾难越来越远时，也就离下一个灾难越来越近。 这个句式也适合所有乐观的想法。
------ lico
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For you, the one who wants to kill himself but without lost the life:
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You cannot have your cake and eat it too
You cannot eat your wife and fuck her too
You cannot fuck your life and save it too
----- Jean Baudrillard
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2009-06-25
Facebook-----7 - [我们]
How could I name it, the arms or the tears?
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2009-06-25
汉语水平 - [外国男友，Gay男友以及他们的女友们]
尤伦更: fan dien.
lico: Means Restaurant.
尤伦更: Not hotel？
lico: Oh..
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See, 病入膏肓。
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1.レバー野菜いため。２．ローストポークのサラダ（青じそドレッシング）
私の担当美容師さんサトウちゃん
盗撮させてね（なんか私の表情がアヤシイ。。。）
いけめんのIkeちゃん
Anyway I look stupid with a funny head.
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上次的那个日文笑话是这样的----
客船要沉了，救生艇不够。 船长指示男性乘客跳船入海。 船长对不同国家的乘客所说的话是什么？
对美国人说，跳吧，跳了就能当英雄了。
对英国人说，跳吧，跳了就能成绅士了。
对德国人说，跳吧，跳海是铁规。
对意大利人说，跳吧，跳了女人们会对你着迷。
对法国人说，别跳！
对日本人说，跳吧，你看大家已经都跳了呀。
客船が沈没しそうになったが、救命ボートの数が足らない。そこで船長が、男性の乗客に船から飛び込むように指示を出した。そのとき、船長がそれぞれの国の客に言ったセリフは？
アメリカ人に対して、「飛び込めばヒーローになれますよ」
イギリス人に対して、「飛び込めばジェントルマンになれますよ」
ドイツ人に対して、「飛び込むのが規則になっています」
イタリア人に対して、「飛び込めば女性にモテますよ」
フランス人に対して、「飛び込ないでください」
日本人に対して、「もうみなさん飛び込みましたよ」 -
2009-06-24
so you think you can cook - [食诱]
１．あさりと椎茸のクリーム煮（あさりを蒸すときにワインがなくて、代わりに焼酎を入れました。：ｐ ）
２．牛タンとトマトのサラダ（イタリアンドレッシング、レモン汁入り、酸っぱさが最高！）
ｐｓ、左のお皿はちょっと笑える。。。
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2009-06-23
Facebook-----6 - [读像]
黑暗中寻找刺目的鲜艳-----尤伦更
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写不出稿子时的我---1.抓耳挠腮。2. 逮个人聊天。3. 漫无目的地走来走去。4.再看看好看男生的照片。5.把衣柜打开欣赏一下旧衣服.........都不太对，主要是读好玩的笑话。。。。
客船が沈没しそうになったが、救命ボートの数が足らない。そこで船長が、男性の乗客に船から飛び込むように指示を出した。そのとき、船長がそれぞれの国の客に言ったセリフは？
アメリカ人に対して、「飛び込めばヒーローになれますよ」
イギリス人に対して、「飛び込めばジェントルマンになれますよ」
ドイツ人に対して、「飛び込むのが規則になっています」
イタリア人に対して、「飛び込めば女性にモテますよ」
フランス人に対して、「飛び込ないでください」
日本人に対して、「もうみなさん飛び込みましたよ」 -
剔除掉色彩的空间----- Ikeda Ryoji
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2009-06-22
无题---2 - [时间的裂痕---Cooler Memories]
杯子被磕掉一角，没有全碎，她的第一反应是或许还可以继续用。。。丢弃东西形成了巨大的心理负担，不可燃，月二次，这个破杯子暂时该如何存放。行为责任，后事处理，这个社会变得越来越胆小谨慎，同时这个社会又以层出不穷的新产品举世闻名----它自己的臣民担负着弃旧购新时所有经济负担和心理负担，那么给地球的更多的灾难就让进口国去欢天喜地地创造吧。这里没有严格的因果逻辑，或许存在末端论---当然仅限于伦理学范畴。
定期写出有愚蠢思想的博客成了和排便一般的活动。 今天没有排，那么明天！一定！ 三天没有出来，身体一定是出了问题。思想就像身体的某个排泄物，只要努力，花足时间呆在卫生间，多少会有点结果；同时还有众多的助泄药---书籍，网络，电视，意料之中的畸形新闻，打了鸡血般的网民言论，etc。
----- lico
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2009-06-21
Roppongi back yard - [Tokyo]
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尤伦更去了韩国，坐在街边，边喝啤酒边用skype和我聊天。 原来汉城这么爽，到处都是无线网。 旁边还有人打架，空气中飘逸着Kimuchi的腥香。
至于说到村上春树老师的性向。。。喜欢晨跑算是一个hint。 1Q84仍是全日本缺货，但我就要读完了。 在商业区买肯定是买不到的，这和奢侈品牌的限定品一样，有钱的人好这个，也就没您什么事了。 尤伦更在早稻田大学闲逛，发现大学附近的书店有该死的1卖，速即购入。 我打死也不愿意在amazon上买二手且多要70块人民币的-----这是气节，也是个伦理问题，尤伦更同学成了救星，加二十分。 以后这也成了购书方法论，学院派都是有范儿的，畅销书在那儿没什么大不了的---- 昂莉就不看，我也不好意思说自己在看。
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Tokyo Metro
日比谷線
---- 尤伦更 摄
Beijing 老陈工作室
---- 费德里克 摄
ps. 看这些照片突然想到，这个贞子头的fashion女victim果然是写奢侈品的最佳人选啊。。。。从上至下照片中的包---
1.无印良品 2.爱马仕 3.古驰
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2009-06-20
God and lico - [外国男友，Gay男友以及他们的女友们]
"Dear God," lico wrote in an email, " I lost my favorite ring in May. I feel bad, please, please help me."
" Dear lico," God replied, " Don't worry. I'm going to send you a gift in June. Cheer up! "
In June, lico got a package, she opened it up, oh, its a chocolate.
"Dear God!" lico wrote again, "Thank you very much for the gift, but!" lico decided to be honest, she continued, "If you really want to cheer me up, give me back the ring, or, send something else..... I'm afraid I'm not that in chocolate, my favorite is blueberry cheese-cake!"
"Dear lico," God replied in a minute, " a. Guess you have seen `Lord of the rings`.... Try to watch it again if you have any confusion. b. I'm sorry about chocolate, and.... you are a difficult woman! ( I miss Eve.) c. As for blueberry cheese-cake, why don't you give a try on learning how to cook it by yourself? You'd enjoy the time and the taste than ever. Cheer up!"
独舞者
细节
详细见小贝博客
Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon - so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that's two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as 'nice' in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It's only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.
Posted by: Alain de Botton | Monday, 29 June 2009 at 01:52 PM
The book review on de Botton's “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.” by Caleb Crain
Toil and Trouble
Work is activity that earns money. Lucky people enjoy their work, but even they might not do it without pay. To the extent that pay motivates, people work for the sake of something else — so they can buy food, shelter, clothing, security, luxury or leisure — and against their inclinations. Now, to do anything against one’s inclinations is to put one’s dignity at risk. It is fascination with this cold truth that draws children to blend sludge out of refrigerated leftovers and then dare one another: “Would you drink it for a hundred dollars? For a thousand?” Everyone has a price in theory; a worker is someone who has agreed to a number. He is exposed as someone under constraint, like a prisoner in a stockade. To mock him for being less than perfectly free in his thoughts and actions is easy.
Unfortunately, the British essayist Alain de Botton indulges in this kind of mockery in his new book, “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.” De Botton starts with noble intentions, claiming in his first chapter to have been inspired to write about work by the intense, unabashed interest taken by cargo-ship spotters, the hobbyists who track the comings and goings of the enormous oceangoing vessels that help to make globalization possible. The spotters “know what it is about the world that would detain a Martian or a child,” de Botton writes. But in his praise of their wonder, there is a note of condescension: “Admittedly, the ship spotters do not respond to the objects of their enthusiasm with particular imagination. They traffic in statistics.”
The note is soon revealed to be an ostinato. In Chapter 3, de Botton meets the “design director” of an international cookie company named Laurence — “rather than Lawrence, a distinction he repeatedly emphasized,” de Botton writes, as if it were a character flaw to try to ensure that a journalist spells your name right. Laurence holds forth on the sociology and psychodynamics of the business, explaining that he designs cookies to appeal to consumers’ emotional needs, like longings for attention and understanding. De Botton rewards his candor by describing him as “intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance” and gradually develops the idea that the modern way of making cookies and crackers is grandiose — swollen with self-importance on account of its enormous profits but diluted of meaning by the task’s dispersal into the hands of biscuit packaging technologists, regional sales managers, brand supervision coordinators and hundreds of others.
By Chapter 3, in other words, de Botton has already lost track of his initial goal. After all, if it’s admirable to monitor cargo ships merely to satisfy one’s curiosity, it can’t be much less so to think in excruciating detail about what kinds of cookies people might like to eat. Either geeking out is shameful or it isn’t. De Botton is untroubled by the contradiction, however. He offers up his theories to Renae, an employee at the company who reminds him of an attractive blonde in an Edward Hopper painting, and suggests that her human value exceeds that of the business she is in. “A terrified expression spread across her features and she asked if I might excuse her,” de Botton writes.
He wins points here for self-satire. He soon loses them, however, for mean-spiritedness, during a visit to one of the company’s plants in Belgium. Describing a manager who feeds him lunch, de Botton writes that “years of working around noisy machinery had left my host mildly deaf in one ear and given him a concomitant habit of leaning in uncomfortably close during discussions, so close that I began to dread his enunciation of a word with a ‘p’ or a ‘g’ in it.” For good measure, de Botton adds that the man bores him, perhaps as a result of his “surprisingly intense pride in the plant and its workers.” If de Botton were genuinely concerned that work today lacks meaning, surely here was an opportunity to ask questions. But is he worried that work today lacks meaning? Or just that some work means more to other people than he thinks it should?
In the book’s most promising passage, a career counselor invites de Botton into his home office in South London to observe sessions with a client, a 37-year-old tax lawyer. He listens as the lawyer sobs in despair, and later as the counselor asks about what she likes and whom she envies in an attempt to cipher out what might make her happy. But just as revelation seems under way, de Botton’s narrative drifts, and he frets for pages about self-esteem-boosting bromides that he hears the career counselor dispense at a seminar, worrying that in feeling superior to them he may be depriving himself of a psychological advantage. In the end, anxiety about social status undermines the chapter completely. The counselor’s office, de Botton has noticed, smells “powerfully of freshly boiled cabbage or swede,” one of several signs that the enterprise doesn’t securely rank as upper-middle class, and he comes to feel it’s “strange and regrettable that in our society something as prospectively life-altering as the determination of a person’s vocation had for the most part been abandoned to marginalized therapists practicing their trade from garden extensions.”
This is a superficial judgment, as de Botton himself all but admits. Moreover, it’s an abdication of journalistic responsibility. If a disinterested writer won’t try to distinguish the efficacy of an endeavor from its trappings, who will? What else was the counselor hoping for, when he agreed to share his experiences with de Botton? Well, de Botton reveals that the counselor hoped to publish a manuscript on “career as an act of selfhood” and asked for the name of a literary agent. Cruelly and unnecessarily, de Botton also reveals in the chapter’s punch line that after correspondence with 12 literary agents the book remains unpublished.
Such spite would have been more understandable as a reaction to de Botton’s interview with the London-based chairman of a large accounting firm, unnamed, though some of the book’s illustrative photographs, taken by Richard Baker, are identifiable as from Ernst & Young. Though the executive is unconventional in forgoing the perks usual to his office, he yields nothing but upbeat, cautious, noncommittal generalizations, delivered under the protective gaze of his company’s public relations chief, whose monitoring presence in the room de Botton professes not to understand. “After 20 minutes of this,” de Botton writes, “I am tempted to ask when he was last troubled by his bowels in a meeting.”
De Botton decides that he pities the man for his hollowness. But it is evident that he was outplayed — that he wasn’t prepared with questions detailed or insightful enough to oblige the executive to take him seriously. It shouldn’t have surprised him that the head of an accounting firm would know well how to keep his cards to himself while going through the forms of transparency. Somewhat pettishly, though no doubt with some truth, de Botton asserts that the chief executive’s success will depend mostly on luck. He attributes that of a partner in the firm to “15 years’ worth of graft,” without explaining what he means by that charged word.
“The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work” succeeds as entertainment, if not as analysis, when de Botton allows himself to geek out, as when he flies to the Maldives to follow a tuna’s journey to a dinner table in Bristol, traipses after a painter who has devoted years to an oak in East Anglia or rummages through a graveyard of mothballed airplanes in the Mojave Desert. The misfires seem to come when he steps into an office. Whether that means he desperately wants to work in one or couldn’t abide to is for him and a career counselor to determine. “The Oxford Companion to Food” recommends stir-frying cabbage to reduce the smell.