The dominance of Google is radically changing written language on the internet – through their search engine and advertising programmes such as AdSense they are homogenising the meanings of words. This provides a strong impetus for newspapers to ignore whatever editorial ethics they had left in their desperate rush towards the money from online advertising.
A selection of the best work from this year’s Art Basel, Design Basel Miami, Volta 4 and Liste 08 fairs. Taken in Basel by our intrepid Dealer-At-Large.
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Ninety-seven percent of women in Egypt have had some sort of genital mutilation. The majority of these cases are Type 1, clitoridectomy, involving the removal of the prepuce (clitoral hood). A smaller percentage involve complete removal of the clitoris, and an even smaller minority involve the removal of part or whole of the labia. According to polls, this practice is embraced by men and women of all races and religions in Egypt.
Five years ago almost no women in Egypt wore the headscarf (hijab). Now they nearly all wear it. A man cannot address a woman in public. Marriages are arranged, and the couple usually meet under parental supervision. Women are subordinate to men, and a woman whose honor is in question, through infidelity, rape or pre-marital promiscuity, may be killed by her family so that they save face. Without honor, a man cannot find work, and his entire family will bear the shame.
In 1979 a law passed to protect women’s rights made it more difficult to marry several women, and more difficult to divorce. In 1985 another law reversed the earlier 1979 law. But I ask you, is a law that protects a woman’s right to an inherently one-sided relationship really a protection of her rights? It still remained nearly impossible for a woman to ask for a divorce.
The 6th of July is George W. Bush’s birthday. To celebrate this infernal occasion, for one week only Viralux are making their song Happy Birthday Mr. President available to download as a high-quality MP3 – just click below…
[Edit: Unfortunately the week has come to an end. Subscribe to the blog using RSS or the email subscription box on the right to receive updates as soon as new blogs like this are posted.]
Happy Birthday Mr. President:
Lyrics and vocals: Trish Lyons
Produced by: Viralux
See more about Viralux on LoveHowlMuse »
Send us a message if you want the lyrics…
“This place is ready to explode,” she said to me with great relish. Her name was Karen or something, and I stood there having a nice conversation with her and her fiancee. They were from northern California. At that moment we were in an art gallery during the opening of a new collection of photographs of graffiti. She was really excited by the idea that Cairo was on the verge of violent revolt.
I am not convinced. However, I left her with her enthusiasm. People need drama. They really will die without it. Have you ever met someone without any sense of passion or imagination? Zombies are real.
One theme that has run throughout the Democratic presidential primaries in the USA has been people’s pleasant amazement that, unless there’s a huge upset (remember George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004?), the next president of the USA will be either a woman or black. This is celebrated as proof of how far the country has come in terms of racial and sexual equality. But, certainly in terms of the political commentary in the media, the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama brings a further bitter twist to Yoko Ono’s comment that “woman is the nigger of the world” (later turned into a song by her and John Lennon - watch it, including a great introduction by Lennon, on YouTube).
Clinton’s appearance features heavily in the coverage of her campaign, for example Carl Bernstein’s disgust at her “thick ankles”. If we’re talking about appearances, what about Obama’s fat lips? Can you imagine the McCain audience question “How are we going to beat the bitch?”, to which he replied “good question!”, rephrased as “How are we going to beat that black bastard?” There’s a whiff of suspicion that, admittedly along with other concerns about Clinton, the commentators would prefer a man to win, even if he is black.
At a party in Bristol a few years ago, I met a barrister who had recently started to train as a magician. He was an intense person, standing a bit closer than people normally do, and fixing me with a stare. When I realised that he was dangling in front of me the watch that he’d removed from my wrist, I have to admit I was impressed. It’s a pretty standard trick, but I count myself as being an alert person, almost to the point of edginess, and it’s unusual for something like that to escape my attention.
What he was using is called “misdirection” – a simple trick where the magician makes you more interested in something else (in this case his close proximity and the close attention he directed at me) while removing your watch. (Having said that, and to his credit, you still have to be extremely dexterous to do something like that).
Another more threatening example was when my mobile phone got stolen. I was sitting outside a cafe when some kids came up to me and one thrust a piece of paper with something scrawled on it into my face, mumbling something unintelligible – all my attention was on the fact that the first kid was too close for comfort, and I didn’t notice that the second one had simply picked my mobile up from the table until they were long gone. Misdirection can seem like magic, but in a different context you can feel like you’ve been conned.
Advertising and marketing have adopted this trick of misdirection, except it’s more subtly done, and it aims to avoid the feeling that you’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes – on the contrary, it aims to please. This move towards misdirection has been recent, as advertising has become steadily more sophisticated. Have a look at this Persil advert from the 1960s:
The 6th March edition of the London Review of Books includes Riots, Terrorism etc. a review by John Lanchester of what appears to be a fantastic book – Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. John Lanchester has been writing some excellent articles for the LRB over the last year, including Warmer, Warmer about climate change, and Cityphilia about the current crisis in the financial markets.
Essentially Riots, Terrorism etc. is a précis of the entire book, with some observations along the way – and it makes both fascinating and depressing reading. Hyperbole generally disgusts Lanchester, but he starts the review with a bold claim:
‘Important’ is a cant word in book reviewing: it usually means something like ‘slightly above average’, or ‘I was at university with her,’ or ‘I couldn’t be bothered to read it so I’m giving a quote instead.’ Very occasionally it might be stretched to mean ‘a book likely to be referred to in the future by other people who write about the same subject’. Nick Davies’s Flat Earth News, however, is a genuinely important book, one which is likely to change, permanently, the way anyone who reads it looks at the British newspaper industry.
Patron saint of musicians, composers and church music
trismos
/uploads/2007/11/trismos.mp3Her name means ‘blind’, she lived for three days after the executioner failed to de-capitate her. He struck his blow three times and ran away in fear when he had failed in his task. Blindfolded she lay and waited for death all the while singing hymns for her true love.
Sounding a trismos, the steady whistling noise that is a sound reserved exclusively for dead souls. Oh Cecilia you’re breaking my heart. You’re shaking my confidence daily. Shakin’ my cocaine and saltine. A misheard lyric. A misplaced sound. It’s much more important how language sounds than what its concrete content is. Oh Cecilia I’m down on my knees and begging you please to come home.Your blood pearl necklace of tangled fences. A song heard in dreams that carries us across the breach of sleep. A bridge, the middle 8. Richard Pryor’s funeral pyre. Bob Dylan’s burning guitars and boxcars. Clickity clack clack, don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back. Bridges burned and backs turned. A structure seeks stasis by balancing forces in tension and compression. Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge Verse Chorus Verse again.
Sea shanties, football chants, cowboy songs, church house songs, song of songs, protest songs, drinking songs, poor ol’ me songs and ballads.
Imagine your lover teases you into a position you never dreamed possible – you discover a passion you never knew you had – you flail and plead – and scream for a god – and surrender and surrender – you are undone. Selfish Cunt in all its innocence knows how to take you there – this is not an idea – this is not an image – this is your undoing.
What do you do when you put THAT before an unadventurous lover – someone who secures power in their routine? What do THEY do when their power is shown to be a pastiche?
So many questions, so many questions, when all that there really is, is desire.
The Royal Festival Hall wakes up to desire…
Selfish Cunt take the stage dwarfed by Motorhead’s Marshall stacks – that probably go up to 11 – and render them irrelevant. A black hole opens – and screams – YOU’VE GOT IT ALL WRONG! Right from the start there’s a misunderstanding about what you’re expecting and what you’re going to get.
What if what we see when we feel can be heard?
Is this what is meant when we say that music touches us or that a painting moves us? LoveHowlMuse was formed by such questions.
Founded on the principles of cross-fertilization, LoveHowlMuse works with London-based artists and musicians who draw from the fertile grounds of punk and street culture, documentary filmmaking, junk stores, artist's studios, recording studios, film sets, wine cellars, archives, laboratories, observatories, lavatories, forces of nature and appetite.
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