idade da auga

Miguel Torga

2012-01-11T18:00:00.002+01:00

Torga, the author's pseudonym, is the Portuguese name for "heather" ("brezo"), common in Tras-os-Montes. I like the description of Coimbra as "an odalisque reclining in her private chambers".

MIGUEL TORGA

(Poet and writer of prose - 1907-1995)

by Rolando Galvão

Translated by John D. Godinho

I, A SINNER, CONFESS THAT I AM A SWAMP AND THE SWAMP'S MOONLIGHT, ALL MIXED...

WHEN IT ALL HAPPENED...

1907: Adolfo Correia da Rocha is born in S. Martinho de Anta (Vila Real district) - 1920: Emigrates to Brazil - 1925: Returns from Brazil - 1927: Presença, a literary magazine, is founded and he becomes a collaborator. - 1928: He enters the School of Medicine, University of Coimbra; publishes Ansiedade (Anxiety), his first book of poetry. - 1930: He leaves Presença. - 1931: Publishes Pão Ázimo (Unleavened Bread), his first book written in prose. - 1933: He graduates from the School of Medicine. - 1934: Publishes A Terceira Voz (The Third Voice), in prose, and begins to use the name Miguel Torga as a pseudonym. - 1936: O outro livro de Job (The Other Book of Job), book of poetry, is published. - 1937: A Criação do Mundo – Os dois primeiros dias (The Creation of the World – The first two days). - 1939: Opens a medical office in Coimbra - 1940: Publishes Os Bichos (The Animals). - 1941: Publishes the first volume of Diário (Diary); Contos da Montanha (Tales from the Mountain), later republished in Rio de Janeiro; Terra firme and Mar (The Sea), his first play. - 1944: Novos Contos da Montanha (New Tales from the Mountain), poetry. - 1945: Vindima (The Grape Harvest), his first novel. - 1947: Sinfonia (Symphony), a play. - 1950: Cântico do Homem (Hymn to Man), poetry; Portugal. - 1954: Penas do Purgatório (Punishment in Purgatory), poetry - 1958: Orfeu Rebelde (Rebellious Orpheus), poetry. - 1965: Poemas Ibéricos (Iberian Poems). - 1981: Publishes the last volume of A Criação do Mundo (The Creation of the World. - 1993: The last volume of Diário (XVI). - 1995: Adolfo Correia da Rocha dies.

THE MAN AND HIS ORIGINS

Adolfo Correia da Rocha, who will be known as Miguel Torga, is born on August 12, 1907, in S. Martinho da Anta, municipality of Sabrosa, in the province of Trás-os-Montes. His parents are country people and he maintains strong ties with his origins, his family, the rural environment and the nature that surrounds him. Even when they are not specifically mentioned, his father, his mother, his grade school teacher, Mr. Botelho, the crags, the mountains, the lean results of the earth obtained after much sweat and toil, the megalithic monuments so comun in the region, they are always present.

He enters the Seminary, but leaves soon thereafter.

He emigrates to Brazil in 1920. There, he works in his uncle’s coffee plantation havesting coffee beans. His uncle becomes aware of his qualities and pays for his enrollment and studies at Leopoldina High School, where his teachers also take note of his talent.

He returns to Portugal in 1925 and enters the School of Medicine at the University of Coimbra. He participates moderately in the carefree activities of student life. He publishes is first books while still a student. He graduates in 1933, thanks to the financial assistance received from his Brazilian uncle.

His family is one of the focal points of his life. He hardly needs any words to communicate with his father to whom he devotes much love and respect. “I cut my father’s hair and shaved him...He was always handsome, the old man.” He remembers the loving arms of his father holding his newborn granddaughter for the first time. He shows the same love for his mother in the poems he dedicates to her. And the same is true of the deep love and affection he holds for his wife and child.

There is a certain amount of arrogance, a certain detachment from other people, a type of shyness common to those who come from humble origins:

I haven’t always written that I am intransigent, difficult, using a type of logic that borders on inhumanity... I haven’t always admitted that I was irritated with this person or that friend...Unfortunately, people don’t let me alone, to think alone, to feel alone.

There is a desire for absolute perfection and truth:

That each phrase be a means of seduction, instead of an ingenious disguise...and that it be an act without subterfuge. To that end, I clean it scrupulously, removing all impurities and ambiguities.

He has the reputation of never giving anything to anybody. But that is idle talk, easily contradicted by the numerous patients that he takes care of, free of charge. He confides to some friends that his financial resources are limited. That is understandable: for political reasons, his wife, Professor Andrée Crabbé Rocha, is forbidden to teach, and, in the first few years of publishing his work, he finds that editorial costs are high...

The idea of death and solitude is always with him. Ever since he was a child, these feelings have been present in his body and spirit. They are mentioned in about half of the twenty-five poems included in the last volume of Diário. Not because he has reached a ripe old age or because he is suffering from some terminal illness. They were with him even before he reached his 40s. They are not felt as some type of fear, they are, rather, taken as a type of limitation. One night, when he was a child, alone, unprotected, confused, he witnesses the death of his grandfather. This event is not alien to his obsession.

At the funeral of Afonso Duarte (TN: Influential poet in Coimbra circles), he states, in his eulogy, that death purifies one’s feelings.

Man is, much to his misfortune, a source of loneliness: we are born alone, we live alone and we die alone.

He is a tireless traveler, in his own country and abroad. He travels to China and India when he is close to 80. “I must seem crazy running around my native land without even knowing the reasons for such pilgrimages.”

He is excited by monuments. The Jerónimos, Batalha and Alcobaça monasteries have a deep meaning in the soul of the nation. The convent at Mafra is a stupid affair which justifies any punishment for the kings who squandered gold to have it built. Paleolithic monuments fascinate him.

I am a crossroads where two natures meet. Those who know him well might add: innumerous natures...

He dies on January 17, 1995, and is buried in S. Martinho da Anta, near his parents and his sister.

OTHER PEOPLE

“Some of Camões’s verses were crudely hammered out”, says Miguel Torga.

His relationships with other people, whether on an artistic, literary or any other level, are not easy. They are even more difficult when it comes to personalities or people in the public eye, but they are friendlier when he deals with people from humble origins.

He quarrels with his friends at literary meetings. As a rule, such differences are not reconciled.

In the exercise of his profession, he treats many patients, free of charge. He becomes involved in long conversations with them, especially those of humble origins or those who come from his part of the country

He does not autograph or write dedications in his books, so as to leave the reader entirely free to make his own judgment regarding the contents.

An important political figure complains to the author regarding his refusal to autograph and dedicate a particular book. Torga replies that the complainer is luckier than a certain lady they both know. After all, he, the complainer, doesn’t have the attributes of beauty and elegance that she had but she was refused just the same...There was no double-entendre here, since he was not given to saying things in jest.

Nor does he lend himself to writing prefaces for the works of fellow writers, with rare exceptions. There’s a story going around Coimbra, perhaps exaggerated, that he once was asked by a young writer and his refusal was put in the form of a question: “What do you intend to publish, your work or my preface?”

He is not afraid to criticize the work of others, even those who have been placed on a pedestal. Of Camões, he says that some of his verses were crudely hammered out. Even the title Os Lusíadas, he says, is an expression of our insignificance and the verses are more illegible than those of the Divine Comedy. Nevertheless, he expresses great admiration for the bard and his poetry.

He says that the absence of any doubts regarding anything is the work of our brilliant thinkers always on duty.

He deeply mistrusts, and has very little patience with, intellectuals: “I talk only as much as I feel obligated to...I leave him as soon as I can and return to relationships which are less tense and more fruitful...,not depositing any hopes in men of letters..., in the company of illiterates where I can still find laughter, indignation and awe...”

THE FATHERLAND IS A MAGNET

The wonderful world of Trás-os-Montes is one of his great loves. He carries it in his soul wherever he goes; it seems that he sees it everywhere. It is always coming up in his prose, always praised as the land of God and of the gods.

It doesn’t belong to him alone, but it will belong only to those who wish to deserve it. So he says in Portugal, where he paints the picture of another one of his loves: his fatherland.

This type of worship leads to excesses. In the neighboring province of Minho he finds himself bored by the permanent presence of the color green. He is disheartened, looking for a Minho with less corn, less grass, less vineyards. He finds it where the grass gives way to barren, gray-colored soil, identified with the human landscape. In other words: his birthplace, Trás-os-Montes.

This is his territory and he sees in it things that others fail to see. A paradise where all one needs to do is hold out his hand and he will be presented with potatoes, figs, nuts, olive oil and other countless riches and gifts that are beyond anyone’s imagination.

But in the past he had spoken of Marão, which yields neither straw nor grain, where hungry children feed on the herbage available.

He recognizes that only with a full stomach can one admire the beauty of the colors and the skyline of the mountains...

His exaggeration reaches levels which can only be explained by a symbiosis of passion and poetry and by his boundless ingeniousness. The disputes among the local citizens, sometimes translated into physical aggression,...like wild animals, are the result of an exacerbation of pure and crystal clear virtues...

He is strongly attracted by the city of Évora and its monuments. It synthesizes the diversity of all the peoples who came before: the latins, the moors and the others...

His love for his fatherland, a magnet, comes through in every line he writes. He goes to Spain, to Verin, and is greatly pleased by the view of Portugal from the top of a castle.

Strangely enough, he accepts the idea of multicontinentality, though he tempers it with his universalist humanism. Later, he stresses the differences in the positive characteristics of the two ethnic groups.

Each monument, each stone, each tract of flat land, the sea, the mountains, they are all passionately glorified, as long as they are Portuguese...

He has a certain Iberian political theory: my civic native land ends in Barca de Alva...my earthly native land ends in the Pyrenees.

He does not reflect on a position regarding political union. Rather, his thoughts on the question are revealed in his references to a common destiny and a common cultural legacy. In A Vida (Poemas Ibéricos) (Life: Iberian Poems), he mentions the Basques, the Andalusians, the Galicians, the Asturians, the Catalans and the Portuguese, but he does not mention the Castilians. When he compares heroes, he calls Hernando Cortez inhuman and brutal, while he seems to merely shed the tears shed by Afonso de Albuquerque:

...And so, India

will go up in smoke

In those golden palaces

of Lisboa;

And so, the Fatherland

will lose its way

to the walls of Goa.

In a poem dedicated to Garcia Lorca, published before Iberian Poems, Torga anticipates the preface written by his wife for the bilingual edition (Portuguese and Castilian, translated by Eugénio de Andrade), when he says that “he is bringing heather to the rose of Granada” and that he will be present “as long as there is poetry, life and people in Iberia.”

COIMBRA AND TRADITION

Torga praises and disparages Coimbra.

Coimbra is one of Torga’s main connections with life. He studies there and, after 1939, that is where he practices medicine, where lives and where his creativity reveals itself like a volcano in permanent activity. He attends literary meetings, he has a number of friends and spends a few hours every day chatting with his friend João Fernandes, before he goes to one of the cafés, the Central, the Brasileira or the Arcádia.

Coimbra brings out in him conflicting feelings: passion and shyness, humbleness and immodesty, praise and disparagement of things close to him.

His political position reflects his concept and criticism of university teaching prevalent at the time. The University, a large building to teach country folk..., defends itself from any subsersive originality or thought...It is the mystification of the mortar-board and tassel.

A firm believer in everything that is beautiful and monumental, he does not dedicate one single word in his prose work Portugal, to the Santa Cruz Church, to the Old Cathedral, Almedina or the Church of Santiago. Not even one word for the narrow streets of the Lower City, with their special charm which leaves no one indifferent.

He opens the chapter dedicated to Coimbra with a line that Eça de Queiroz wrote for his character Conselheiro Acácio (TN: from Eça’s Cousin Basílio), saying that the city is “...an odalisque reclining in her private chambers...”

The so-called “idle talk tradition” explains this state of mind. This is more extensively spelled out in a section he calls A Fornatura (The Graduation) included in Memórias de Alegria (Memories of Joy), an anthology compiled by Eugénio de Andrade, where he discusses the practices and traditions of the academic environment. He always opposed them openly. The cape and the academic gown are anachronistic symbols which compose what he calls “the uniform.”

Committing a “social crime,” he wears a regular suit to his graduation ceremony, but he can’t prevent his garments from being ripped and torn by his classmates, following the tradition of ripping and tearing the cape and the academic gown.

Although this aversion softens with time, it never dies out. He considers A Queima das Fitas (The Burning of the Ribbons), of 1957, to be one of his funereal anniversaries...

But Coimbra is one of the loves of his life. That’s where he lives, works and spends his time. The most beautiful city in the country,...the setting for a perpetual rebirth of the spirit.

	POLITICS AND POLITICIANS
	Strictly speaking , it is not easy to classify Torga’s political orientation. Before April 25 (TN: The revolution that overthrew Salazar’s regime), he is, undoubtedly, a man belonging to the opposition. He is arrested several times and some of his works are apprehended. He goes to Paris and mingles with other exiles who, mostly, will come to organize the Socialist Party. They ask him to stay, but he refuses, explaining that he will never get used to the great distance between him and his country. He returns to Portugal, is arrested by the secret police and is sent to Aljube Prison. The authorities deny him a passport a number of times. He presides at the first meeting of the Central Regional Section of the Socialist Party. He makes it clear that he is not a member of the party and that his participation is in keeping with the socialist principles that he has always held. He is more sensitive to a code of ethics than to an ideology, more...a fraternal participant than a strict party follower. He states that the adoption of foreign systems and methods... will not permit us to be at peace with our constitutional nature nor will it lead us to the road of a growing democracy...that goal will only be reached by adopting original solutions....Capitalism does not hesitate even before a road of suffering; he sharpens his incorrigible frankness and, in another passage, he sees Judaic-Christian roots in communism. A few years before, speaking of intellectuals on the political scene, he had stated: there is nothing less sociological than the application of the strict spirit of the system to a living community. And he accuses Sartre of having placed preconception above conception in order to promote his own image, without any concern for the fact that, in the process, he was corrupting entire generations. His manifest impatience toward politicians and his shying away from the centers of power are consistent with his declarations that he has anarchist leanings. His political feelings are reminiscent of Pierre Joseph Proudhon’s socialism, marked by strong interaction with an anarchism which is noble, profoundly humane, and non-violent. He remains, always, in opposition to the government, since power means keeping the people at a distance, the people that give it support. The revolution of April 25 brings him a feeling of freedom but along with it come some disappointments – political persecution, the jockeying for government positions. Politics is for them (the politicians) a promotion and, for me, an affliction. He describes, with irony and disbelief, the conversations that he has with policians, irrespective of his agreement or disagreement with their political affiliation. He does not support, nor does he have any of sympathy for, the idea of a European Union. It offends his feelings of patriotism and his ideals for his native land. This is the repudiation by a Portuguese poet based on the lack of responsibility of a handful of accountants who have deprived him of his sovereignty...and Maastricht will be an indelible stain in the memory of Europe. He is jubilant when the Danish refuse to approve the first European Union referendum. Regarding the division of Europe into regions, he asks: “The world is facing the drama of diversities and now we, who have had national unity in territory, language, customs and religion for the past eight hundred years, should we commit the insanity of destroying it?”
	THE WRITER AND THIS OEUVRE
Adolfo Rocha decides to adopt the name “Miguel Torga” as his pseudonym. *Torga and his Animals,* with human attributions.**	He decides to adopt the pseudonym of Torga. He chooses it carefully. Torga means heather, a wild, low-growing shrub, that grows spontaneously in dry rural areas throughout Portugal, but especially in the mountainous regions in the north. It is the sturdiness of this plant that will characterize the poet and the writer of prose. This is more than a sign of things to come; it is an agenda that includes the refusal to submit to nature and to human, political, social and all other systems which make up his work, full of strength, independence and intransigence. Going against all barriers and interests which apparently are contradictory but, in fact, are mutually complementary, he exposes his truth without any restrictions when speaking of people, events or facts; he is not afraid to attack the established order, but, at the same time, he does not set aside those conservative principles in which he believes; he alters his position on a given subject as long as “his truth” demands it. There is no possible uniformity of criteria before the surprising and paradoxical diversity of life (Diário XII, p. 133). In the 1920s, his first published works, when he was still a student, are signed with his real name, Adolfo Correia da Rocha. Immediately upon its foundation, he joins the group Presença which includes the great poets of his time. But in 1930, he leaves the organization, together with Branquinho da Fonseca and Edmundo Betancourt, because he believes it imposes restrictions on the freedom to create. In Altitude, he equates death to the misfortune of holding positions without consistency. Efforts should be exerted in all moments of life and of literary production... Together with Branquinho da Fonseca he founds a new literary magazine called Sinal which has a very short life. Later he founds Manifesto, this time with Albano Nogueira, which is also short-lived. In 1928, he publishes his first book, Ansiedade, which is followed by Rampa. Both are books of poetry. This is the beginning of what will be one of the most extensive and profound productions in Portuguese literature, ever. Writing will be, from that moment on, a constant registration of emotions, difficult to equal. He publishes Tributo (Tribute) and Abismo (Abyss), poetry, and Pão Ázimo (Unleavened Bread) and A Terceira Voz (The Third Voice), his first books of prose. In this last book, he uses his pseudonym, Miguel Torga, for the first time. It will become his name not only in his writings, but for all other activities in his life, including his relationships with friends. The books mentioned above are either out of print or were apprehended or were simply removed from circulation. In 1936, he returns to poetry with his O Outro Livro de Job (The Other Book of Job), which is re-edited in 1944 and will have three new printings until 1988. Torga’s literary production begins to gain recognition. He continues to write poetry. He publishes Lamentação (Lamentation) (1943) and Libertação (Liberation) (1944), a hopeful appeal for the coming of the angel of visitations and poetry, and that he bring the wood and the flame for the fire he asked for. There follow Odes (1946) and Nihil Sibi (1948). In 1950, he publishes o Cântico do Homen (Hymn to Man), which was immediately reprinted. Without overlooking resistence and hope, the hymn laments the human condition: But the humiliating fruits of failure have a bitter taste that excites me ... Cover with flowers the ground of the old world: The future is upon us! Soon thereafter, he publishes Alguns Poemas Ibéricos (Some Iberian Poems) (1952). Then, in 1954, Penas do Purgatório (Punishment in Purgatory): ...this torment, present every day; ...this secret flame that within us exists And that, though quenched or controlled, still insists. Four years later, he publishes Rebellious Orpheus, profoundly in disagreement with the restrictions then being imposed: I sing as one who uses verses as a means of self-defense I sing, and never ask the Muses If it is terror or beauty what I sense. And in the same book: I was born a subversive. Starting with subversive feelings about myself – the main reason for my dissatisfaction. In poetry, he also publishes Câmara Ardente (Funeral Parlor) (1962) and Poemas Ibéricos (Iberian Poems), the latter being translated into Spanish and French. Not all of his poetical production is mentioned here. In 1941, he begins to publish his Diário (Diary) which, in a sequence of sixteen volumes, will include innumerable poems together with the most diversified types of prose: comments on a great variety of events, intimate thoughts, poetry, articles, political and social analyses, criticism of customs, notes on landscape, study of cultures, impressions from trips. This should be enough to qualify Torga as one of the greatest writers, not only of the century, but of all time, not just in Portuguese terms, but in terms of universal literature. The theater is also deserving of his creative efforts. He publishes O Paraíso (Paradise), Sinfonia (Symphony) (whose apprehension causes him much grief), Mar (The Sea), and Terra Firme (Terra Firma), a drama dealing with rural life and the endless waiting by brides and family for those who emigrated. In prose, he publishes The Creation of the World – The First Two Days (1938), the first of a series, which will be followed by The Creation of the World – the Third Day and then continues up to The Creation of the World – the Sixth Day (1981). In a sense, it it complemented by the Diário (Dairy) in its autobiographical nature. Portugal, whose last edition occurred in 1993, includes excepts from previous works and is explained by the poem Pátria (Fatherland), which is used as a prologue: ...Today, I know of only one thing that pleases me - a small piece of land trimmed with the presence of the sea. His most important work as a novelist is Vindima (The Grape Harvest). There is no question regarding the literary quality of this type of work, but it is not considered to be on a par with the rest of his production. This is so for reasons that have nothing to do with quality, in the opinion of António Arnaut. Many consider Torga’s short stories as the apex of his qualities as a writer. In Tales from the Mountain, he deals once again with the dramas of rural life. The Animals is published in 1940 and is re-edited soon thereafter. It is translated into innumerous languages. In it, he deals with animals with human feelings or human beings dressed as animals, or a brotherhood of animals and men, all joined by a plaster made of life. Nero, the dog, Tenório, the rooster, Morgado, the donkey, Ladino, and Ramiro. And Madalena, making her way against the contradiction between culture and life. His writings are listed in a number of anthologies next to the great names of world literature. There are translations of his books in a number of languages: Spanish, French, English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Croatian, Romanian, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Bulgarian. Some of these translations include prefaces written by Torga, himself
	PRIZES
	Jorge Amado, the Brazilian novelist, considers Torga to be above prizes, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, for which he was nominated in 1960. He did not received it, possibly due to the interference of people in power in Portugal at the time. He is nominated again a few years later but, as we know, is not successful. It is not his intention to show his disappointment, but it becomes quite apparent to his friends. Averse to honors and glory, he refuses the “Almeida Garrett” Prize, awarded to him in 1954. Nevertheless, he receives a number of other prizes. In 1976, he receives the “Knokke-Heist International Poetry Prize,” and, a few years later, the “Montaigne Prize” awarded by the F.V.S. German Foundation. He also receives Portuguese prizes among which are the “Camões Prize”, in 1989, the “Personality of the Year Prize”, in 1991, and, in the following year, the “Literary Life” Prize, which is awarded for the very first time. In 1969, he had received the literary prize given by the newspaper “Diário de Notícias” and, in 1980, together with Carlos Drummond de Andrade, the Brazilian poet, he receives the “Morgado de Mateus” Prize. His capacity to create will continue strong until close to his death, which occurs in 1995.

Mi Peugeot Country 200 del año 1995

2011-12-20T18:22:00.004+01:00

Esta bici sigue funcionando después de muchos años y muchas aventuras.

Ela viaje más largo que he hecho con esta Peugeot Country 200, del añ0 1995, de perfil cicloturista ha sido de Tarragona (en Cataluña) a Verín, que tuvo lugar en septiembre de 1995. Recuerdo que fue el años que Alex Zulle ganó la Vuelta, y durante el viaje precisamente fui escuchando los acontecimentos en la Vuelta y otras noticias en un pequeños transistor que había atado al manillar.

La idea había sido de llegar a Vigo, no terminar en Verín, pero me puse enfermo en en algún lugar entre Puebla de Sanabria y A Gudiña, de hecho pasé aquella noche en un hotel de Verín en una especie de delirio casi mortal, sin saber exactamente dónde estaba. Había adelgazado cuatro kilos (de 68 a 64) y estaba hecho un esqueleto andante, un espectro sobre dos ruedas. Pero eso fue después de un viaje magnífico por todo el país, que empezó en el Penedés, pasando por Aragón, el pueblo natal de Goya, Cariñena, un pueblo, donde por casualidades de la vida, he vuelto a visitar hace poco (recogiendo a mi sobrino), luego "mucha Castilla", lugares como Calatayud, donde tuve que comprar más cubiertas para las ruedas, Soria, Burgo de Osma, Vallodolid, donde mi compañera de viaje tuvo que abandonar, y finalmente la zona de Zamora, un pueblo que se llama Tábara, y el viaje entre allí y la carretera entre Benavente y Puebla se me hizo eterno, llegué ya de noche a Mombuey, pero no había plazas en el hostal porque ¡¡estaba lleno de empleados de las empresas de construcción que estaban haciendo la A-52!!! Al final cogí un taxi que me llevó a Puebla y allí dormi en un hotel antiguo, seguramente 8 o 9 horas seguidas con la fatiga que tenía en el cuerpo. El día siguiente tocó pasar por los altos de Padornelo y A Canda, y ya no me notaba nada bien, supongo que el cuerpo me estaba diciendo basta. De ese viaje me quedo con muchas imagenes: en el Penedés, los miembros de una familia pisoteado las uvas en una casa de pueblo, pasar Peñafiel (entre Aranda y Vallodolid), una bajada muy bonita a Catalayud, el puente sobre el río en Soria...en general, la sensación de ser un vagabundo y no tener "a care in the world".

Hold to a dream

2011-12-08T12:50:00.001+01:00

Particularly liked listening to this song, by New Grass Revival, in this context.

Characters in The Boyajian Section

2011-10-17T14:55:00.001+01:00

There's quite a lot of characters in the Boyajian Section, so this as well as a guideline for possible interested readers is also a list so I don't lose track of them.

I'm also looking for possible feedback about names, for example if any of the names could sound better, be improved, dont' sound right, etc.

Jacques Rivette, "JR", a police detective based in the fictional town of Marennes
Olivier Gasquet, the police detective assigned to the 2 missing people case but who has taken early retirement, the case thus being passed on to JR
Jeroen Djuidjam, a missing Dutch youth
Cristian Acuso, a missing Filipino merchant seaman
Valérie, JR's teenage daughter
Milène, JR's ex wife
The CC, Chief Commissioner,
La Salle, a police detective handling a large corruption case focused on Marennes
Shanti Mae, an American born life coach/guru who runs an enlightenment centre in the mountains above Marennes
Gino, a Dutch builder and non-conformist
Jean Laferriere and his wife Felicia, Jean being the grandson of Yves Laferriere, the man who set up the porcelain factory and really put Marennes on the map. Jean though has hardly any money, and the porcelain factory has long since closed
Alain Charnier, JR's ex-colleague from when they worked in the council offices together. Alain now works in the Port Authority
Isabelle, JR's ex-colleague also from the council, is now the Director of a local development agency
Michelle, a woman who JR meets and with whom he becomes involved
Tomas and Dagmar, who run an organic farm and are also loosely connected with an initiative to allow Dutch youths with drug problems to come down and work on farms in Southern France
Lieve, a Dutch girl who is a volunteer on Tomas and Dagmar's farm
Thierry, Sonia and José Balaguer, who run their own gardening and land clearing business, for whom Jeroen worked at one stage
Andreas, a German man who heads an association/cult called the Starfish Group, this group having relocated from Ibiza to near Marennes
Bear and Swan (couple). Bear is a Swiss-born sculptor, Swan a local painter; they live near and collaborate with Andreas and the Starfish Group
Dr Lee, a Korean acupuncturist who heals JR's shoulder injury sustained while playing tennis
Duke, an ex-combatant of Vietnam who now lives in a shotgun shack up in the mountains
Vardha Srinivasan, an Indian businessman who helps in finding one of the missing men
Georges Fabres, who runs the Champasank café with his Vietnamese wife, and who also proves to be of assistance in the case

And, of course...

The Boyajian Section itself, a line of rocks with peculiar properties and mineral content, which some people claim have special powers, and within the Boyajian Section, Coll Cabatalet, the highest mountain in the area

Despoblación en España...¿o oportunidad para la repoblación?

2011-10-16T20:51:00.002+01:00

Las últimas proyecciones muestran que muchas zonas del interior de España van a perder población hasta 2021. Provincias como Lugo o Palencia...provincias que por otro lado son preciosas. Sería desde luego una iniciativa interesante repoblar estas zonas con personas dispuestas a volver al campo, a cuidar el campo...personas, por ejemplo, como los indignados. Desde luego sería una buena alternativa a vivir sin esperanzas en una ciudad como Madrid donde los problemas sociales van a acentuarse en los próximos años.

SOCIEDAD | Proyección de la población hasta 2021

El 'invierno' demográfico de media España

Iglesia de Villacreces, un pueblo abandonado del norte de la provincia de Valladolid. | J.M. Lostau

La España interior perderá población desde ahora hasta el año 2021
Lugo, Ourense, Palencia y Zamora, las provincias más envejecidas
La costa mediterránea y los archipiélagos siguen aumentando población
La tasa media de dependencia (niños y ancianos) alcanzará en 2021 el 57,3%
Guadalajara será la provincia que gane porcentualmente más población
Barcelona y Guipúzcoa, entre las provincias donde caerán más los natalicios

Javier Rubio | Sevilla

Actualizado domingo 16/10/2011 06:05 horas

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Comentarios 53

Media España vive en invierno perpetuo. Una helada demográfica asuela el cuadrante noroccidental de la Península, donde el reemplazo generacional está cada vez más seriamente comprometido, como señala la Proyección de Población de España a Corto Plazo publicada por el Instituto Nacional de Estadística.

El invierno demográfico amenaza a provincias como Lugo, Ourense, Palencia y Zamora mientras otras a orillas del Mediterráneo y los dos archipiélagos viven una primavera que les permitirá seguir ganando población durante la próxima década, la primera en que disminuirá el número de residentes en España en la historia más reciente.

La contracción de la población española amenaza también con arrasar los brotes verdes que durante la primera década de este siglo supuso la inmigración en la España rural despoblada donde en algunos casos las 'flores de otro mundo' supusieron el 90% del cambio en las tasas de crecimiento poblacional.

Las 'flores de otro mundo' trasplantadas aliviaron el éxodo rural en la pasada década

Así sucedió, según un estudio del Real Instituto Elcano, en Albacete, Ciudad Real, Córdoba, Cuenca, Huesca, Jaén, Salamanca, Teruel y Zaragoza entre los años 2000 y 2008. Por el contrario, la inmigración extranjera no pudo paliar el constante éxodo rural en esos años en Asturias, Ávila, Badajoz, Burgos, Cáceres, A Coruña, León, Lugo, Ourense, Pontevedra, Soria y Zamora.

Del Bidasoa al Guadiana

El patrón de comportamiento establece -con la sola excepción de Salamanca- que las provincias al este de una línea imaginaria entre las desembocaduras del Bidasosa (frontera con Francia) y del Guadiana (frontera con Portugal) ganan población mientras la pierden las que están al oeste.

Los esfuerzos por revitalizar pueblos abandonados como el de Villacreces (al norte de Valladolid) que ilustra este artículo están coordinados en la Asociación Española de Municipios contra la Despoblación, nacida en Teruel una década atrás con resultados modestos.

Los dos extremos del exacerbado clima demográfico nacional lo representan Zamora y Málaga. La primera, en el 'agujero negro' poblacional del Noroeste, perderá el 12,74% de su ya de por sí escasa población en los primeros veinte años del siglo XXI de continuar las tendencias proyectadas por los estadísticos del INE.

Málaga, capital mediterránea, aumentará un tercio su tamaño en el mismo periodo. No es la provincia española que más va a crecer en el periodo 2001-2021, lugar de privilegio que cede a Guadalajara, con un incremento poblacional estratosférico del 54,05%.

El caso de Guadalajara

El 'boom' de Guadalajara se explica por su cercanía a un área metropolitana, la de Madrid, de la que también se beneficiará en menor medida Toledo y sucederá algo parecido con las tres provincias catalanas en torno a Barcelona.

El trasvase de población propiciado por la mejora de las comunicaciones explica en parte que estas provincias de interior se salgan de la norma que dicta que son las provincias mediterráneas e insulares las que ganarán población en la presente década mientras las dos Castillas, Asturias y la Galicia profunda seguirán desangrándose.

Es significativo el caso de Guadalajara, porque será la provincia española donde menos disminuya la tasa de natalidad de ahora hasta el año 2020 (sólo un 7,08% de variación negativa), pero, con todo, no ha sido hasta fecha bien reciente en que ha superado el techo de población que marcó en el censo de 1910 con 209.352 habitantes.

La provincia de Huesca alcanzó su techo de población en el censo de 1857

Al menos, ha conseguido invertir la tendencia. En este sentido, el caso más paradigmático lo representa Huesca, que viene perdiendo población censo tras censo nada menos que desde 1857, en que coronó su techo con 257.939 habitantes. Para 2021, la proyección estadística no le da más que 209.986 moradores, eso sí, con variación positiva desde primeros del presente siglo.

Abocadas al invierno

La mirada se vuelve más sombría al examinar el páramo noroccidental. No sólo porque son provincias con poca población, sino porque tienen muy pocas posibilidades de revertir la situación. Lugo, Ourense, Palencia y Zamora cerrarán la década con caídas superiores en todos los casos al 10%.

No es sólo que pocos elijan esa zona para irse a vivir, es que cada vez quedan menos jóvenes para traer hijos al mundo. El indicador de fertilidad de Ourense, por ejemplo, se resiste a pasar de 1: un hijo por mujer en edad fértil, cuando la tasa de reemplazo generacional comúnmente se acepta situarla en 2,1 descendientes.

Casi dos adultos entre 16 y 65 años por cada tres dependientes, niños y ancianos

Envejecidas, esas cuatro provincias acabarán la presente década con tasas de dependencia (el cociente entre la población mayor de 65 años más la menor de 16 entre la población activa) por encima del 60%. Esto significa que casi dos personas en edad de trabajar (aunque no lo hagan o estén paradas) tienen que sostener a tres dependientes (niños o ancianos).

Ourense seguirá siendo en 2021 la provincia española más envejecida con una tasa de dependencia del 68,4%. Toda la cornisa cantábrica más Álava y La Rioja marca tasas por encima de la media nacional. A este grupo de provincias 'declinantes' cabe sumarle otras zonas 'maduras' como León, Burgos, Soria, Teruel y Salamanca, donde el indicador de dependencia no bajará del 60%.

En general, las provincias del litoral cantábrico alcanzaron su tope de población en el censo de 1981 coincidiendo con los procesos de reconversión industrial que se vivieron a partir de entonces. La España interior había llegado a su máximo en las décadas de los 50 y 60 del pasado siglo, cuando la gran oleada migratoria se dirigió a los centros industriales de Cataluña, País Vasco y Madrid.

Barcelona envejece a pasos agigantados: su tasa de dependencia crecerá 13 puntos porcentuales

El indicador de la dependencia también ofrece otras sorpresas nada agradables, como la de Barcelona. La segunda provincia más poblada de España envejece a pasos agigantados: en diez años habrá pasado de una tasa de dependencia del 51,60% al 64,6%. Y eso que seguirá atrayendo inmigrantes nacionales y extranjeros, porque la natalidad prevista se desplomará: caerá un 25,68% en diez años y el crecimiento vegetativo de la población (diferencia entre natalicios y defunciones) sólo podrá sumar 89.773 personas en una población rozando los 5 millones.

Barcelona está entre las diez provincias donde más va a caer la cifra de nacimientos. Zamora encabezará el deshonroso escalafón con un tercio menos de nacimientos previstos en 2021 respecto del año en curso. Seguida de cerca por Guipúzcoa, donde en una década vendrán al mundo un 30,96% menos de niños.

Menos niños, más viejos

La caída de la natalidad se explica en este caso (como en el de Vizcaya, Barcelona, Valencia, A Coruña o Las Palmas, todas por encima del 20% de disminución) por circunstancias socioeconómicas más que demográficas. El nivel de vida alcanzado, el declive de la familia entendida al modo tradicional y la progresiva elevación de la edad de la mujer primípara pesan en el platillo de la balanza demográfica.

En el lado contrario están (entre las provincias con grandes capitales) Madrid, Córdoba, Zaragoza, Santa Cruz de Tenerife o incluso Teruel con suaves caídas alrededor de la media nacional del 12,01% entre 2010 y 2020. Pero, sobre todo, Sevilla y Málaga donde sólo disminuirá un 8,81% y 8,54%, respectivamente.

Tan sólo Ceuta mantendrá una variación positiva del número de nacimientos en esta década, la mayor parte de ellos de la población musulmana asentada en la ciudad autónoma norteafricana.

Diógenes, los perros y la tinaja

2011-09-29T10:09:00.000+01:00

De Wikipedia

Diogenes de Sínope (en griego Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς Diogenes ho Sinopeus), también llamado Diógenes el Cínico, fue un filósofo griego perteneciente a la escuela cínica. Nació en Sinope, ca. 412 a. C. y murió en Corinto en 323 a. C. No legó a la posteridad ningún escrito; la fuente más completa de la que se dispone acerca de su vida es la extensa sección que su tocayo Diógenes Laercio le dedicó en su Vidas, opiniones y sentencias de los filósofos más ilustres.

Diógenes de Sínope fue exiliado de su ciudad natal y trasladado a Atenas, donde se convirtió en un discípulo de Antístenes, el más antiguo pupilo de Sócrates. Diógenes vivió como un vagabundo en las calles de Atenas, convirtiendo la pobreza extrema en una virtud. Se dice que vivía en una tinaja, en lugar de una casa, y que de día caminaba por las calles con una linterna encendida diciendo que “buscaba hombres” (honestos). Sus únicas pertenencias eran: un manto, un zurrón, un báculo y un cuenco (hasta que un día vio que un niño bebía el agua que recogía con sus manos y se desprendió de él). Ocasionalmente estuvo en Corinto donde continuó con la idea cínica de autosuficiencia: una vida natural e independiente a los lujos de la sociedad. Según él, la virtud es el soberano bien. La ciencia, los honores y las riquezas son falsos bienes que hay que despreciar. El principio de su filosofía consiste en denunciar por todas partes lo convencional y oponer a ello su naturaleza. El sabio debe tender a liberarse de sus deseos y reducir al máximo sus necesidades.

Contenido

[ocultar]

[editar] Vida

Diógenes nació en la colonia griega de Sínope, situada en la costa sur del Mar Negro, en el 412 a. C. Nada se sabe acerca de su infancia excepto que era hijo de un banquero llamado Hicesias. Ambos fueron desterrados por haber fabricado moneda falsa. Diógenes se gloriaba de haber sido cómplice de su padre, y este suceso prefiguró, en cierto modo, su vida filosófica. Al parecer, estos hechos han sido corroborados por arqueólogos. Han sido descubiertas en Sínope un gran número de monedas falsificadas (acuñadas con un gran formón) que se han datado en la mitad del siglo IV a. C. y otras monedas de la época que llevan el nombre de Hicesias como el oficial que las acuñó. No están claros los motivos por los que se falsificó la moneda, aunque Sínope estaba siendo disputada entre facciones pro-persas y pro-griegos en el siglo IV a. C., y quizá hubiera más intereses políticos que financieros.

Los griegos eran muy aficionados a las artes adivinatorias y solían acudir a los templos para consultar sobre su futuro. Pero la ambigüedad con que respondían los oráculos podía dar pie a todo tipo de interpretaciones. Según la leyenda, Diógenes fue a consultar el oráculo de Delfos y éste le dijo: «Vuelve a tu casa y da nuevas instituciones a tu tierra». Y Diógenes, de acuerdo con lo que el oráculo le dijo, pensó que no estaría mal empezar por cambiar, o mejor dicho: dar el cambiazo, de moneda.

[editar] En Atenas

Diogenes sentado en su tinaja. Jean-Léon Gérôme (1860).

En su nueva residencia, Atenas, la misión de Diógenes fue la de metafóricamente falsificar/desfigurar la “moneda” de las costumbres. La costumbre, decía, era la falsa moneda de la moralidad. En vez de cuestionarse qué estaba mal realmente, la gente se preocupaba únicamente por lo que convencionalmente estaba mal. Esta distinción entre la naturaleza (“physis”) y lo convencional (“nomos”) es el tema principal de la filosofía griega y uno de los temas que dedica Platón en La República, en concreto, en la leyenda del Anillo de Gyges.

Se afirma que Diógenes se fue a Atenas con un esclavo llamado Manes que le abandonó poco más tarde. Con un humor característico, Diógenes afrontó su mala suerte diciendo: “Si Manes puede vivir sin Diógenes, ¿por qué Diógenes no va a poder sin Manes?” Diógenes será coherente riéndose de la relación de extrema dependencia entre las personas. Encontró un maestro, que no hacía nada para sí mismo, pero rechazó su ayuda. Le llamó la atención el maestro ascético Antístenes, un discípulo de Sócrates, que, según Platón, había presenciado su muerte. Diógenes pronto superó a su maestro tanto en reputación como austeridad en el modo de vivir. Al contrario que los otros ciudadanos de Atenas vivió evitando los placeres terrenales. Con esta actitud pretendía poner en evidencia lo que él percibía como locura, fingimiento, vanidad, ascenso social, autoengaño y artificiosidad de la conducta humana.

Diogenes buscando hombres. Cuadro atribuido a J. H. W. Tischbein (c. 1780).

Las anécdotas que se cuentan sobre Diógenes ilustran la consistencia lógica de su carácter. Este “Sócrates delirante”, como le llamaba Platón, caminaba descalzo durante todas las estaciones del año, dormía en los pórticos de los templos envuelto únicamente en su capa y tenía por vivienda una tinaja. Un día vio como un niño bebía agua con las manos en una fuente: “Este muchacho, dijo, me ha enseñado que todavía tengo cosas superfluas”, y tiró su escudilla. Cierto día se estaba masturbando en el Ágora, quiénes le reprendieron por ello, obtuvieron por única respuesta del filósofo una queja tan amarga como escueta: "¡Ojalá, frotándome el vientre, el hambre se extinguiera de una manera tan dócil!" Profesaba un desprecio tan grande por la humanidad, que en una ocasión apareció en pleno día por las calles de Atenas, con una lámpara en la mano diciendo: “Busco un hombre”. Diógenes iba apartando a los hombres que se cruzaban en su camino diciendo que solo tropezaba con escombros, pretendía encontrar al menos un hombre honesto sobre la faz de la tierra. En una ocasión, cierto hombre adinerado le convidó a un banquete en su lujosa mansión, haciendo especial hincapié en el hecho de que allí estaba prohibido escupir. Diógenes hizo unas cuantas gárgaras para aclararse la garganta y le escupió directamente a la cara, alegando que no había encontrado otro lugar más sucio donde desahogarse. Cuando Platón le dio la definición de Sócrates del hombre como “bípedo implume”, por lo cual había sido bastante elogiado, Diógenes desplumó un pollo y lo soltó en la Academia de Platón diciendo “¡Te he traído un hombre!”. Después de este incidente, se añadió a la definición de Platón: “con uñas planas”. Asistiendo a una lección de Zenón de Elea, que negaba el movimiento, Diógenes se levantó y se puso a caminar. Si es verdad que los atenienses se burlaban de él, también es verdad que le temían y respetaban.

[editar] En Corinto

Alejandro Magno visita a Diógenes en Corinto por W. Matthews (1914).

Según la leyenda, que parece ser creada con Menipo de Gadara, Diógenes en un viaje a Egina, fue capturado por los piratas y vendido como esclavo. Cuando fue puesto a la venta como esclavo, le preguntaron qué era lo que sabía hacer, respondió: “Mandar. Comprueba si alguien quiere comprar un amo”. Fue comprado por un tal Xeniades de Corinto, quien le devolvió la libertad y le convirtió en tutor de sus dos hijos. Pasó el resto de su vida en Corinto, donde se dedicó enteramente a predicar las doctrinas de la virtud del autocontrol.

Durante los Juegos Ístmicos, expuso su filosofía ante un público numeroso. Pudo haber sido allí donde conoció a Alejandro Magno. Se dice que una mañana, mientras Diógenes se hallaba absorto en sus pensamientos, Alejandro interesado en conocer al famoso filósofo, se le acercó y le preguntó si podía hacer algo por él. Diógenes le respondió: “Sí, tan solo que te apartes porque me tapas el sol.” Los cortesanos y acompañantes se burlaron del filósofo, diciéndole que estaba ante el rey. Diógenes no dijo nada, y los cortesanos seguían riendo. Alejandro cortó sus risas diciendo: “De no ser Alejandro, habría deseado ser Diógenes.” En otra ocasión, Alejandro encontró al filósofo mirando atentamente una pila de huesos humanos. Diógenes dijo: “Estoy buscando los huesos de tu padre pero no puedo distinguirlos de los de un esclavo”.

Aunque la mayoría de las leyendas sobre él dicen que vivía en una tinaja en Atenas, hay algunas fuentes que afirman que vivía en una tinaja cerca del gimnasio Craneum en Corinto. Diógenes Laercio dijo sobre él en Vidas, opiniones y sentencias de los filósofos más ilustres:

Al anunciar Filipo que iba a atacar Corintio, y al estar todos dedicados a los trabajos y corriendo de un lado a otro, él empujaba haciendo rodar la tinaja en que vivía. Como uno le preguntara: -¿Por qué lo haces, Diógenes?-, dijo: -Porque estando todos tan apurados, sería absurdo que yo no hiciera nada. Así que echo a rodar mi tinaja, no teniendo otra cosa en qué ocuparme.

Diógenes Laercio también comentó en este libro:

Solía entrar en el teatro topándose con los que salían. Cuando le preguntaron por qué lo hacía, contestó: "Es lo mismo que trato de hacer a lo largo de toda mi vida"

[editar] Muerte

Sobre la muerte de Diógenes circularon muchas versiones. Según una de ellas, murió de un cólico provocado por la ingestión de un pulpo vivo; según otra, fue como consecuencia de una caída, tras haberle mordido un tendón uno de los perros entre los que trataba de repartir un pulpo; y según otra más, murió por su propia voluntad, reteniendo la respiración, aunque esto sería algo metafórico, pues es imposible morir por dejar de respirar voluntariamente. También circula una leyenda según la cual sus últimas palabras fueron: “Cuando me muera echadme a los perros. Ya estoy acostumbrado.” Bastante tiempo después Epicteto le recordaba como modelo de sabiduría. Los corintios erigieron en su memoria una columna en mármol de Paros con la figura de un perro descansado.

[editar] Diógenes y los perros

Algunas anécdotas sobre Diógenes hablan acerca de su comportamiento como el de un perro y sus alabanzas a las virtudes de los perros. Esto tiene su razón de ser en la palabra cínico. El nombre de cínicos tiene dos orígenes diferentes asociados a sus fundadores. El primero viene del lugar donde Antístenes, su maestro, fundó la escuela y solía enseñar la filosofía, que era el santuario y gimnasio de Cinosargo, cuyo nombre significaría kyon argos, es decir perro ágil o perro blanco. El segundo origen tiene que ver con el comportamiento de Antístenes y de Diógenes, que se asemejaba al de los perros, por lo cual la gente les apodaba con el nombre kynikos, que es la forma adjetiva de kyon, perro. Por tanto kynikos o cínicos sería similares al perro o aperrados. Esta comparación viene por el modo de vida que habían elegido estos personajes, por su idea radical de libertad, su desvergüenza y sus continuos ataques a las tradiciones y los modos de vida sociales.

Quienes comenzaron a apodar a Diógenes como "el perro" tenían la clara intención de insultarle con un epíteto tradicionalmente despectivo. Pero el paradójico Diógenes halló muy apropiado el calificativo y se enorgulleció de él. Había hecho de la desvergüenza uno de sus distintivos y el emblema del perro le debió de parecer adecuado para defender su conducta. Los motivos por los que se relaciona lo cínico con lo canino son: la indiferencia en la manera de vivir, la impudicia a la hora de hablar o actuar en público, las cualidades de buen guardián para preservar los principios de su filosofía y, finalmente, la facultad de saber distinguir perfectamente los amigos de los enemigos. Diógenes decía irónicamente de sí mismo que, en todo caso, era "un perro de los que reciben elogios, pero con el que ninguno de los que lo alaban quiere salir a cazar". En mitad de un banquete, algunos invitados comenzaron a arrojarle huesos como si se tratara de un perro. Diógenes se les plantó enfrente y comenzó a orinarles encima, tal como hubiera hecho un perro. También le gritaron “perro” mientras comía en el ágora y él profirió: “¡Perros vosotros, que me rondáis mientras como!” Con idéntica dignidad respondió al mismísimo Platón, que le había lanzado el mismo improperio: “Sí, ciertamente soy un perro, pues regreso una y otra vez junto a los que me vendieron”.

[editar] Doctrina

Sabemos menos de la doctrina de Diógenes que de su vida. Como otros de los cínicos, se preocupó menos de formar escuela que de llevar una vida recta, de acuerdo con los principios de autonomía y desprecio de los usos de la sociedad.

Podemos, sin embargo, distinguirlo de su maestro Antístenes en varios aspectos. De éste se dice que consideraba la propiedad como un impedimento para la vida; Diógenes, sin embargo, no le daba valor alguno; se dice que enseñaba que el robo era admisible, pues "todas las cosas son propiedad del sabio". Otras doctrinas son comunes a ambos: la idea de que la virtud consiste fundamentalmente en la supresión de las necesidades; la creencia de que la sociedad es el origen de muchas de éstas, que pueden evitarse mediante una vida natural y austera; el aprecio por las privaciones, al punto del dolor, como medio de rectificación moral; el desprecio de las convenciones de la vida social, y la desconfianza de las filosofías refinadas, afirmando que un rústico puede conocer todo lo cognoscible.

El rechazo cínico de las formas de civilización establecidas se extendía al ideal de paideia que llevaba a los jóvenes griegos a practicar la gimnasia, la música y la astronomía, entre otras disciplinas, para alcanzar la areté; Diógenes sostenía que, si se pusiera el mismo empeño en practicar las virtudes morales, el resultado sería mejor. Despreciaba también la mayoría de los placeres mundanos, afirmando que los hombres obedecen a sus deseos como los esclavos a sus amos; del amor sostenía que era "el negocio de los ociosos", y que los amantes se complacían en sus propios infortunios. Sin embargo, consideraba que el coito era una necesidad física; es conocida la anécdota de que, frente al escándalo que provocó al masturbarse públicamente en el ágora, comentó desdeñosamente que desearía poder saciar el hambre simplemente frotándose el vientre.

Se sabe también que sostenía que la muerte no era un mal, pues no tenemos conciencia de ella. Se le considera inventor de la idea del cosmopolitismo, porque afirmaba que era ciudadano del mundo y no de una ciudad en particular.

[editar] Iconografía

Se han conservado algunos bustos antiguos de Diógenes (Vaticano, Capitolio, Louvre), así como un bajorrelieve en la villa Albani (Diógenes y Alejandro). Es uno de los sabios de la antigüedad más representados por la pintura barroca: Diógenes con la linterna, por Jordaens (Dresde), Ribera (Dresde); Diógenes tirando su escudilla, Poussin (Louvre), S. Rosa (Leningrado), K. Dujardin (Dresde).

The shadow and the red rock

2011-07-25T20:47:00.003+01:00

From "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?	365

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

M. Scott Peck The Myth of Romantic Love

2011-07-21T11:30:00.000+01:00

"The experience of falling in love is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience. We do not fall in love with our children even though we may love them very deeply. We do not fall in love with our friends of the same sex - unless we are homosexually oriented - even though we may care for them greatly. We fall in love only when we are consciously or unconsciously sexually
motivated."

These words are from a fascinating all-time bestseller "

The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition : A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by Dr. M. Scott Peck".

The book is an enormously interesting read and what you come away with after you've finished it, is worth every second and all the effort that you put in reading it. An interesting excerpt follows...

"To serve as effectively as it does to trap us into marriage, the experience of falling in love probably must have as one of its characteristics, the illusion that the experience will last forever. This illusion is fostered in our culture by the commonly held myth of romantic love, which has its origins in our favorite childhood fairy tales, wherein the prince and princess, once united, live happily forever after.

The myth of romantic love tells us, in effect, that for every young man in the world there is a young woman who was 'meant for him,' and vice versa. Moreover, the myth implies that there is only one man meant for a woman and only one woman for a man and this has been predetermined 'in the stars.' When we meet the person for whom we are intended, recognition comes through the fact that we fall in love. We have met the person for whom all the heavens intended us, and since the match is perfect, we will then be able to satisfy all of each other's needs forever and ever, and therefore live happily forever after in perfect union and harmony.

Should it come to pass, however, that we do not satisfy or meet all of each other's needs and friction arises and we fall out of love, then it is clear that a dreadful mistake was made, we misread the stars, we did not hook up with our one and only perfect match, what we thought was love was not real or 'true' love, and nothing can be done about the situation except to live unhappily ever after or get divorced.

While I generally find that great myths are great precisely because they represent and embody great universal truths, the myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. Perhaps it is a necessary lie in that it ensures the survival of the species by its encouragement and seeming validation of the falling-in-love experience that traps us into marriage. But as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters.

Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth. Mrs. A. subjugates herself absurdly to her husband out of a feeling of guilt, 'I didn't really love my husband when we married, she says. 'I pretended I did. I guess I tricked him into it, so I have no right to complain about him, and I owe it to him to do whatever he wants.' Mr. B. laments: 'I regret I didn't marry Miss C. I think we could have had a good marriage. But I didn't feel head over heels in love with her, so I assumed she couldn't be the right person for me.’ Mr. E., married two years, begins to suffer intense headaches in the evenings and can't believe they are psychosomatic. 'My home life is fine. I love my wife as much as the day I married her. She's everything I ever wanted, he says. But his headaches don't leave him until a year later, when he is able to admit, 'She bugs the hell out of me the way she is always wanting, wanting, wanting things without regard to my salary, and then is able to confront her with her extravagance. Mr. and Mrs. F. acknowledge to each other that they have fallen out of love and then proceed to make each other miserable by mutual rampant infidelity as they search for the one 'true love’, not realizing that their very acknowledgment could

mark the beginning of the work of their marriage instead of its end.

Even when couples have acknowledged that the honeymoon is over, that they are no longer romantically in love with each other and are able still to be committed to their relationship, they still cling to the myth and attempt to conform their lives to it. 'Even though we have fallen out of love, if we act by sheer willpower as if we still were in love, then maybe romantic love will return to our lives’, their thinking goes. When they enter couples group therapy (which is the setting in which my wife and I and our close colleagues conduct most serious marriage counseling), they sit together, speak for each other, defend each other's faults and seek to present to the rest of the group a united front, believing this unity to be a sign of the relative health of their marriage and a prerequisite for its improvement.

Sooner or later, and usually sooner, we must tell most couples that they are too much married, too closely coupled, and that they need to establish some psychological distance from each other before they can even begin to work constructively on their problems. Sometimes it is actually necessary to physically separate them, directing them to sit apart from each other in the group circle. It is always necessary to ask them to refrain from speaking for each other or defending each other against the group. Over and over again we must say, 'Let Mary speak for herself, John, and 'John can defend himself, Mary, he’s strong enough’. Ultimately, if they stay in therapy, all couples learn that a true acceptance of their own and each other's individuality and separateness is the only foundation upon which a mature marriage can be based and real love can grow."

---excerpted from the book The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition : A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by M. Scott Peck.

Kindle Bestsellers

2011-06-23T14:17:00.004+01:00

I just saw an interview on Sky News with Louise Voss and Mark Edwards, whose Kindle book "Catch your Death" is selling tens of thousands copies every week. That's a lot. Apparently they were unable to find a publisher through the normal route, in fact they couldn't even find an agent. Their book sells for 0.95 pence on Amazon, which for them is definitely a major reason for the book's success - together with a good cover and engaging blurb which starts off like this: "A secret conspiracy. A killer virus. A race to save the world. Imagine if Dan Brown, Steig Larsson and Michael Crichton sat down together to write a fast-paced medical conspiracy thriller set in the English countryside, featuring evil scientists, stone-cold killers, a deadly virus and a beautiful but vulnerable Harvard professor."

Could this change the publishing business as we know it? It seems it might, but because of the cheap price the authors even if they sell thousands and thousands are not going to make serious money.

They have already written another very successful book, published for Kindle, called "Killing Cupid". Here's another interview I found with them from Lorna Fergusson's literary site about that book.

Kindle Publishing: Part 2 of Interview with 'Killing Cupid' authors Mark Edwards and Louise Voss

Yesterday I posted the first part of an interview with Mark Edwards and Louise Voss, whose unusual dual-narrative thriller, Killing Cupid, is available on Amazon Kindle for the stunningly good-value price of 70p. In Part 1, they described how they wrote the book together and opted to publish it on Kindle. We now discuss how things unfolded from there.

Lorna: How did you set about generating interest in the book?

Mark: It's hard work. Very hard work. My poor girlfriend feels neglected as I spend so much time trying to drum up interest in the book and I must admit it's become something of an obsession, especially checking sales figures and our rank on Amazon. I even drive myself crazy, especially on slow days. There is no secret recipe for success. You need to have a great cover, title and blurb, and then you have to let as many people as possible know about the book. We started with our own friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter, and I am sure all of our sales in the first few weeks came from them. I have spent a lot of time networking with other writers on Kindleboards.com and various Facebook groups. I interview writers for my blog, www.indieiq.com which specialises in featuring the best indie writers. We have both done interviews and guest posts for other bloggers. (By the way, I approached Mark and Louise for this interview, not the other way about! L.) We have submitted review copies to various review sites. And we generally hustle wherever and whenever we can - while trying not piss everyone off by just trying to sell sell sell. You can buy exposure on sites like Kindle Nation Daily and Pixel of Ink but I have no idea how effective this is. I have also tried Google ads but it's too expensive. I am convinced the only way to really take off is for your book to start appearing in the 'Customers who bought this also ...' slots, which we've just started to do. But it's getting harder and harder to make any kind of impact. When I published Killing Cupid I went straight onto Kindleboards and posted an announcement. Within minutes, 4 or 5 other books had appeared above it and my post had vanished off the page. As Stephen Leather says, 'the slush pile has gone online' and you are competing with just as many writers as you are when you submit to agents or publishers. The world is awash with wannabe writers and getting yourself heard is a hell of a struggle.

Lorna: How well is the book doing now?

Mark: We have sold a grand total of 800 copies now (4th May). Since April 30 we are doing an average of 40 a day. On Saturday we had the thrilling experience of hitting No 1 on Amazon's movers and shakers chart, meaning it was the fastest rising book on Amazon.co.uk that day. We keep floating around the bottom end of the overall top 200 on Kindle. I am desperate to hit the top 100!

(Lorna's note: This is a brilliant result and is a just reward for their astute presentation and the quality of the book they've written.)

Lorna: Do you intend to bring out a print version of Killing Cupid?

Louise: That's a good question ... I think that if Killing Cupid ended up being really successful, and a conventional publisher was offering to publish it, we certainly wouldn't say no (as long as we got to keep the e-publishing rights to ourselves, of course!) But we're not desperate to see it in print at this stage, I mean, we haven't got any plans to go down a Print-on-Demand route or anything.

Lorna's comment: Personally, I feel they should try POD - I think it helps if a book is available in different formats, and there is an increasing sense that readers are quite prepared to buy both an e-version and a printed version of books they enjoy. See, for instance, Joanna Penn, who has also marketed her e-book Pentecost with great commercial savvy - offering a printed version as well. (As for conventional publishers - would they let Mark and Louise do a deal with them which didn't also include e-publishing rights?)

Lorna: Would you e-publish again? Are you hoping that, like Amanda Hocking, your independent route will bring you a conventional contract - if one were offered to you, would you accept it?

Mark: Yes, we are definitely going to e-publish Catch Your Death, our next novel. I would like to be conventionally published, because there are a lot of people who only read print books. But then again, self-publishing puts all the control in our hands and we can get stuff out there much much quicker.

Louise: I've just had the rights to my four other novels revert to me, and fully intend to e-publish these too. Prior to this, the publishers asked if they could e-publish on my behalf and I said no. Knowing that they wouldn't do any promotion for them made me think, well, I'd have to self-promote anyway, so I'd rather not have to give away most of the proceeds ... It would be great to have them readily available at a low price, and hopefully gain a whole new audience.

Lorna: Exciting news that Killing Cupid may make it to the screen! Tell us more about this!

Louise: That whole thing has been quite strange - and fortuitous. What happened was that, a few years ago, a BBC producer read one of my other books and asked for a meeting, during which she said that although she really liked the book, she didn't quite see herself developing it for TV and did I have anything else she could read? At that stage we'd recently finished Killing Cupid, so I gave her the manuscript and to our delight, she loved it, and optioned it for a two-part drama (which was another reason why we thought we might find a publisher for it ...)! Then it went into development hell, and, according to the producer, popularity for two-part dramas nosedived practically overnight. It all fizzled out after a couple of years, which was disappointing, but at least we'd got a bit of cash for the option, and some interest in the book. Fast-forward a few years to this February, in fact, the same day that we put Killing Cupid out on Amazon Kindle, and I received an email out of the blue from the same producer, who was about to leave the BBC and set up her own film company, having won a BAFTA last year. She said she had always seen Killing Cupid more as a feature film and was now in a position to develop it. Plus, last year my partner (a TV director) and I wrote our own treatment for it which is currently out with a couple of other producers, so we are waiting to hear back from them. We'll let you know what happens! Exciting times!

Lorna: Can you tell us anything about your next book? When will it be available?

Mark: Our second book is called Catch Your Death and is a more straightforward thriller than Killing Cupid, which is more a comedy thriller. Catch Your Death came about back in 2006 after Louise started thinking about writing a novel set at the Common Cold Unit, which was a research centre near her hometown of Salisbury. For years, they invited volunteers to stay and be given a cold so the scientists there could carry out research in their quest to find a cure. I had, at that point, just read The Da Vinci Code (marvelling at the awful prose but also the compelling plot) and was also aware of the coming bird flu scare. I wanted to write a fast-paced conspiracy thriller and thought Louise had come across an ideal setting. We decided to have another go at writing together, and created a chase novel involving deadly viruses, mad scientists and robotic killers. Great fun. I had to do an awful lot of research into virology and became slightly more paranoid than previously. Catch Your Death will be released for Kindle in the first half of May.

Louise: It will be interesting to see how this one goes down. As Mark says, we made an effort to write a 'straight' thriller, so it's less quirky than Killing Cupid but faster-paced and more high concept. Hopefully we'll give Dan Brown a run for his money!

Thanks so much to Mark and Louise for these insights - I wish them continued and increasing success with Killing Cupid and look forward to reading Catch Your Death when it comes out! For further discussion of whether to opt for self-publication, please take a look at my second post on the Oxford Literary Festival - http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/04/oxford-literary-festival-part-2.html my report on the Kingston Conference on Self-Publishing - http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2010/09/self-publishing-conference-at-kingston.html and Joanna Penn's guest post on my blog - http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/02/indie-publishing-what-it-is-and-why.html. As I've said before - self-publishing offers you speed and control over what you choose to write and how you publish it. But you do need to be very aware that it demands enormous amounts of energy and commitment and that you will be up against it when it comes to making your voice heard. Without the filtering processes of having to go through agents and editors, a great deal of dross is being let loose on the world. If you choose to go down the self-publishing path, then do it clear-sightedly, and with a truly professional approach to your work. Plan your campaign, create your author platform, spend money on professional services like cover design, formatting, editing. And, as with conventional publishing, don't ever blithely assume you'll make a fortune!

Bill Drummond and the KLF

2011-06-19T12:49:00.003+01:00

A couple of videos about the Justified Ancients of Mumu. It all goes back to a work of science fiction.

En defensa del pepino español

2011-06-07T22:52:00.002+01:00

Bueno, ya sabemos que podemos seguir comiendo los pepinos españoles. Además, creo que este "pepinogate" o "Cucumbergate" puede ser un punto de inflexión para el maltrecho estado anímico del país en general, el punto en que la gente empieza ya está bien de que nos tomen el pelo, que ya está bien con la crisis y todo lo que está cayendo que encima se meten con nuestros pepinos.

Pero esta entrada tiene que ver con los cultivos hortícolas en sí, los pepinos, pimientos, fresas, sandías, etc, que se cultivan en el sur de España. Hace unos 6 años en mi seguna visita a Cabo de Gata pasé por la zona de invernaderos de Almería, y como mi amigo tenía curiosidad, hasta paramos y nos metimos dentro para ver cómo eran los invernaderos por dentro. En ese momento no me parecía un entorno muy natural. Para luego un día en San José recuerdo ojear un periodico local en que se hablaba de la lucha biológica contra los depredadores, de que tal empresa había demonstrado un alto nivel de éxito contra tal mosca utilizando otro bicho. Como son ambientes cerrados, estas plagas son más fáciles de controlar con depredadores naturales. No sé si este método es también aplicable a cultivos exteriores, me imagino que en algunos casos que sí.

Lo último es que un amigo me ha aconsejado comprar unos bichos vivos, una especia de nemátodo, para tratar un problema que tengo con mis tomateras, un problema que parece ser "la mosca del suelo" - lo mosca en sí es bastante inofensiva pero pone sus huevos en la tierra y las larvas se comen las raices. Voy a ver que tal van los nemátodos.

Creo que el control biológico de las plagas se está extendiendo. Y este remedio tan natural es bueno para los pepinos, bueno para el medio ambiente, y bueno para España.¡Viva la pepa!

Aquí pego un artículo sobre el pepino de la página web de la empresa holandesa que fabrica mis nemátodos.

A.swirskii: el aliado del pepino

El ácaro depredador Amblyseius swirskii es capaz de realizar un control eficaz de mosca blanca y trips, dos de las principales plagas que afectan a los cultivos de ésta cucurbitácea.

El pepino es uno de los cultivos hortícolas de mayor importancia económica en España. Aproximadamente el 70% de la superficie se concentra en las provincias de Almería y Murcia, mostrándose ambas como las áreas productoras más importantes.

Pero independientemente del área de cultivo, al pepino le afectan diversos problemas causados por diferentes enfermedades y especies plaga de importancia económica variable. De este modo, dentro de estas últimas cabría destacar las moscas blancas Bemisia tabaci y Trialeurodes vaporariorum y el trips Frankliniella occidentalis, que podríamos considerar como las plagas que más afectan a este cultivo.

Su control ha sido difícil los últimos años mediante el empleo de agentes de control químico, debido por un lado a la falta de eficacia de estos y por otro a los bajos umbrales poblacionales permitidos para estas plagas.

Sin embargo, estudios realizados recientemente así como la experiencia de una empresa líder en el sector como Koppert, han mostrado como este ácaro depredador Amblyseius swirskii es capaz de realizar un control del todo eficaz de ambas plagas, ya que se pudo observar como la población de mosca blanca y trips se redujo en un 99% y 96% respectivamente en las parcelas donde se liberó el depredador respecto de las parcelas en las que no fue introducido.

Además de A. swirskii es interesante realizar introducciones del parasitoide Encarsia formosa como complemento frente a la mosca blanca, sobre todo al inicio del ciclo de cultivo o en casos de desequilibrios.

Pulgón y araña roja

Otras especies plaga, aunque de menor importancia económica, que suelen aparecer en los invernaderos de pepino son los pulgones, si bien su control biológico es también posible mediante la utilización de parasitoides como Aphidius colemani o Aphelinus abdominalis y depredadores como Aphidoletes aphydimyza o Adalia bipunctata. Además, la introducción de los parasitoides de pulgón puede realizarse en combinación con plantas banco, las cuales con un manejo adecuado pueden incrementar significativamente la eficacia frente a los pulgones.

También cabe destacar la araña roja Tetranychus urticae, que en ocasiones puede llegar a provocar graves daños a los cultivos. A su control contribuye también A. swirskii, si bien es necesario la introducción de otros ácaros depredadores como Amblyseius californicus o Phytoseiulus persimillis para garantizar un control óptimo de la plaga y evitar con ello la aparición de daños graves. Los minadores, pertenecientes al género Liriomyza spp., son también otras especies que pueden ocasionar daños al cultivo de pepino y cuyo control no suele resultar difícil mediante la combinación del parasitoide Diglyphus isaea y agentes químicos compatibles.

Mejor que El Retiro, La Sierra del Rincón

2011-05-17T08:38:00.005+01:00

Primero, tengo que decir que nunca he encontrado tan excepcional el parque del Retiro de Madrid. Se llena demasiado de gente, sobre todo de gente profesional, y turistas que no tienen ni idea del resto de Madrid. Y no olvidaré un día que pasaba por allí con un amigo en bicicleta, y había una especia de maratón urbano internacional, de gente de muchos paises, pero sobre todo norteamericanos. Ese día parecía que El Retiro era Central Park. Pues bajando por una pista, nos encontramos con una fila de gente haciendo footing, y al pasar unos de ellos me espetó "Get out of the way, asshole."

Lo siento, para mí El Retiro siempre será el parque de la gente aburguesada que vive en el barrio de Retiro y Salamanca, y los pobres turistas medio idiotas que están encantados de encontrar un espacio verde que en muchos aspectos se parece al parque de Luxemburgo en París o dicho Central Park.

La Casa de Campo, mucho mejor. Allí no llegan los turistas...es un poco más difícil, demasiada coordinación, demasiada logística...¿Hay que coger el metro? ¿La línea 10? Uufff. Aunque con lo de la renovación del la zona del Manzanares hay que decir que ahora pueden ir bajando desde la plaza de España y Príncipe Pío.

La Casa de Campo está bien. Aunque aún allí hay el peligro de chocar con algún despistado o niño si vas en bicicleta. (Por cierto, si piensas ir en bicicleta por el anillo verde o las "vías ciclistas" - como por ejemplo la de la calle O'Donnell - ten mucho cuidado que podrías atropellar muchos peatones ocupando la vía, parece que no saben lo que es un carril bici).

Tirando hacia el sur del centro de Madrid, tienes el parque Tierno Galván o él de Pradolongo (el tercer más grande de Madrid, con un buen jardín botánico). Los dos muy recomendables. Y ningún turista a la vista.

Para ir más allá, para escapar totalmente de este entorno urbano, tenemos la sierra muy cerca. El problema viene a ser quizá que lo de Navacerrada, La Pedriza, Cotos, etc, está muy visto, y allí circulando en bicicleta por ejemplo siempre habrá algo de tráfico circulando. Por la zona de la Morcuera y Canencia menos.

Si no quieres encontrarte con casi nadie, acaso si tienes uno de esos días que Madrid o la humanidad en general, te agobia, os recomiendo la Sierra del Rincón, también conocida como La Sierra Pobre o del Norte (si no me equivoco). Este domingo pasado tuve la idea de poner a prueba mi nueva bici Cannondale en una zona aislada. Después de pasar por Torrelaguna, empecé la ruta cerca de El Berrueco, pasé por el embalse de El Villar (precioso), hasta Pradena de la Sierra, luego sufrí mucho en un Puerto (el de la Puebla), hasta Puebla de la Sierra, y finalmente una larga travesía por una carreterra en pésimas condiciones (M-130) y me llevó otra vez a Robledillo de la Jara y de allí otra vez al Berrueco. Más de 80 kilómetros y todavía no sé como subí ese Puerto. Si os digo la verdad, aquello parecía Tras-os-Montes, o Transilvania, pero está a poco más de una hora de Madrid. El tramo de la M-130 entre Puebla de la Sierra y Robledillo hay que verlo, es alucinante.

En todo la excursión ví muy pocos vehiculos, unos cuantos motoristas, y sólo tres ciclistas (de bici de montaña).

Os dejo un par de videos de un motorista para ver cómo es la zona.

Eduardo Souto de Moura

2011-03-30T13:02:00.002+01:00

Eduardo Souto de Moura acaba de ganar el premio Pritzker 2011. Ha hecho muchos proyectos grandes, pero también casas unifamiliares, algunas de las cuales se encuentran en la zona norte de Portugal, como por ejemplo en Moledo (Miño), y ésta, que está en Baiao, en las orillas del Duero.

Una casa que se integra en la naturaleza, haciendo que la marca del hombre sea casi invisible. En definitiva, un buen sitio para escaparte del mundo.

Casa em Baião - Arqtº Eduardo Souto Moura

Gosto bastante destas casas do souto Moura integradas na paisagem, quase que desaparecem.

Neste projecto só dispensava a tijoleira vermelha/laranja no pavimento, optava por outro material mais nobre.

Estas fotos foram tiradas da net, mas se alguém quiser as plantas diga, que scano duma revista dele.

On Scotland

2011-03-28T14:59:00.001+01:00

Happy Hogmanay - and to celebrate, let's put Scotland into liquidation

By Niall Ferguson 12:01AM GMT 01 Jan 2006

An interesting article by one of the FP of my old school, Glasgow Academy.

Comment

Well, did you? Did you sing it? Worse, did you put on a kilt and sing it? Worst of all, did you drink half a bottle of malt whisky and sing it? I am referring, of course, to Robert Burns's Auld Lang Syne. No song - not even Lennon and McCartney's Yesterday - can match its status as an authentically global anthem.

Last night, as the bells struck midnight to usher in the New Year in one time zone after another, many millions of people sang it, beginning in Auckland and ending in Alaska.

Only a tiny minority will have sung it in tune, but what the hell. The wonderful thing about Auld Lang Syne is that it is free. There is no Burns Foundation to collect a royalty as we belt it out. Nor does anyone care if we get the words wrong, since hardly anyone knows what Auld Lang Syne actually means (Old Long Since).

All that matters is to get what Burns what have termed "fou and unco happy" - in other words, thoroughly inebriated - to hold hands with perfect strangers and to raise the rafters.

Whatever else 2006 may bring, whatever unknowns the future may hold, a Scottish Hogmanay makes one thing absolutely certain: the New Year will start with a fearful hangover. God knows I have had a few of those. But not this year. No, this year has started differently for me. No Auld Lang Syne. No kilt. And no whisky.

To be absolutely sure of escaping my Caledonian heritage, I have fled south - to Cape Town, no less. And as you read this, the only headache I am worrying about is the one I risk getting if I spend too long in the golden summer sun.

Yes, I have finally reached the parting of the ways as all of us Scots emigrants do. We go through a long period, which can last up to 20 years, of telling whoever will listen that Scotland is God's Own Country; that its Highland scenery is matchless; that its people invented all that is worth preserving in the modern world - Scotch, golf, economic liberalism, penicillin, television and, er, Scotch - and that it is only a cruel fate that consistently robs its sporting representatives of the resounding victories to which they are entitled by dint of Scotland's proud history.

Yes, that was me, practically from the moment I got on the train from Glasgow to Oxford in 1980-something. For two decades I consistently and tiresomely corrected any Englishman or woman, my wife included, who dared to confuse the terms "English" and "British".

I banged on incessantly and tediously about the superiority of Scottish education, Scottish law, Scottish rugby, Scottish water, Scottish tweed, Scottish holidays - you name it. I quoted Burns. I quoted Carlyle. I quoted the statistics that showed that Scottish regiments were the ones that did the real fighting in the First World War.

Now, this wasn't behaviour attributable to an inferiority complex. That would have been forgivable. But the Scottish problem is the opposite. As a nation we are cursed with a superiority complex. We really do believe that we are better - not just better than the English; better than everyone.

We regard it as only right and proper that the world sees in the New Year by singing a Scottish song. We take it for granted that half the broadcasters on the BBC are Scotsmen. We don't envy the English. We pity them. There is no Scottish cringe, in the Australian fashion. There is only the Scottish swagger - a swagger inspired by the authentically Calvinist certainty that we and only we (by which of course I mean we White Aggressively Scottish Protestant males) are the Elect.

Well, it really is time to bin all that and face up to some harsh realities - realities which I think moving from England to the United States has made it easier for me to acknowledge.

1. Scotland is a small, sparsely populated appendage of England. Those who called it 'North Britain' in the 18th century had it right.

2. The weather is impossibly wet.

3. Most of the land north of Loch Lomond is barren rock.

4. Scotland lost its political independence 300 years ago and the creation of a Scottish Parliament, a glorified county council housed in a risible and over-priced folly of a building, has not restored it.

5. Educational standards in Scotland, once the highest in Europe, have - with a few exceptions - collapsed.

6. When it comes to sport - and I do not count the one decent tennis player - Scotland is the Belarus of the West.

7. In fact, when it comes to just about everything, it is the Belarus of the West.

8. That is why so many Scots emigrate. As I did.

This is not to say that there were not once things about Scotland that were truly wonderful. The country's transition from a theocratic Reformation to a bountifully creative Enlightenment was one of the great makeovers of modern history. The point is that (in the words of a mawkish song all Scotsmen know) "Those days are gone now / And in the past they must remain."

It's over. Over the way countries are sometimes just over. Over the way Prussia is over. Over the way Piedmont is over. Over the way the Papal States are over. Or, if you prefer, over the way General Motors will soon be over.

My modest proposal for 2006 is quite simple. The country hitherto known as Scotland should go into liquidation. The assets, such as they are, should be broken up, sold off and the proceeds (which won't fetch much) distributed to the creditors and, if anything remains, to the shareholders.

The Scottish Parliament should be wound up and its ridiculous building turned into a multiplex cinema or a shopping mall. The Scottish Football Association should be taken over by its English counterpart and Rangers and Celtic should go where they belong, which is pretty near the bottom of the Premier League.

The Scots can keep their accents, just as Yorkshiremen keep theirs. They can keep their lawyers, too; I would hate to send any more business the way of those fat London barristers. But the idea that Scotland might one day "be a nation again" should simply be dropped. We had our chance, when everyone else in Europe had it, in the 19th and 20th centuries. But we calculated that the Union and the Empire were a better bet than independence. Well, live with it.

And before you Scottish readers inundate me with incandescent emails and letters, let me remind you that good old Rabbie Burns would not necessarily have disagreed. Burns was too universal a man ever to be consistently a Scottish nationalist; he alternated between half-cut Braveheart mode ("Scots Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled") and deep cynicism ("Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!"). He too earned his crust from the British state, making sure that Ayr's "honest men and bonnie lasses" paid their excise tax. He too contemplated emigration, nearly taking a job on a plantation in Jamaica.

Yes, Burns understood the Scottish condition even better than he understood the human condition, which was well. The best of Scotland, like "Old Lang Syne", belongs to the world; it refuses to be confined to the bleak lands north of the Tweed. It's the rest of Scotland I can do without. Frankly, it's the one "old acquaintance" I'll be happy to see "forgot" this sunny, Southern New Year.

• Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University www.niallferguson.org

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2011-03-19T12:31:00.001+01:00

Fee fi fo fum...I smell the blood of an Englishman

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2011-03-10T12:34:00.004+01:00

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Old Skool Rap

2011-03-10T11:45:00.002+01:00

(Puppet style!)

Do you hate Facebook?

2011-03-09T12:23:00.006+01:00

I hate FB: lots of reasons to hate Facebook.

(I agree with this article. Not only have I come to hate Facebook, I also despise the whole Web 2.0 concept, all other social networks, I-phones, mobile applications, unnecessary GPS devices, etc. If this is the modern world then I don't like it. Can we please go back to the way things were before? (as Mary Magdalene says to Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar). Just Internet, e-mail, Google. That's all you need.)

Facebook, I absolutely fucking despise it, the whole idea of its existence is one which makes me feel sick to the stomach. The very mention of its name by somebody, anybody, first thing in the morning makes me want to puke on my Shreddies. It was great at first, a tool for getting in touch with old friends, until you become hooked and begin to despise it. But you know that you can't delete the bleeding thing because you would subsequently have 411 friends wondering why you have decided to cut them out of their lives, or you have three people that live 5000 miles away that would cost you £1/$1 a minute to phone. Much of my justification for hating Facebook focuses around its completely and utterly grotesque sell out, the rest of my reasons are listed on this thread.

Things I Hate About Facebook....

Facebook is pretty much a self-inflicted privacy eradicator. Signing up on that little registration page so that you can see pictures of your distant relatives new baby seems innocent enough, how many of you realise that facebook then own every single piece of information that you ever upload/write on their site? I may as well put an advert on craigslist/gumtree giving people my address, leaving my door unlocked, and telling them when I will be on holiday.
People 'poke' you. In real life I do not want people that I haven't seen for four years walking up to me and 'poking' me. This is in my opinion rather odd behaviour. Facebook would be a lot better if it had a 'Punch Me' button.
It is now seen as acceptable for old people to join facebook. Having your grandmother adding you as a friend means that you can no longer post pictures of young people having 'fun', this in turn takes any sliver of fun that may existed on facebook firmly away. Great.
Why do people insist on inviting you to a group over and over again until you 'accept'? You have been invited to join a group on 18th Century Steam Engines 'Reject Invitation', You have been invited to join a group on 18th Century Steam Engines 'Reject Invitation' You have been invited to join a group on 18th Century Steam Engines 'Reject Invitation'. Would those same people post you 28 letters inviting you to a wedding? or would they perhaps get the point? Facebook it seems has also legalised harassment.
Why do people get upset when they do not feature on somebodies 'top friends'?, would this perhaps have something to do with either a). They do not actually like you enough or b) you spend so much time on facebook that you think your staying in touch with your friends, whilst they still have real life trips to the pub together?
People that invite all 500 of their friends to a group because they "have lost their phone and need everybody's numbers", when they actually only had about 50 numbers on their phone and haven't called most of those for three years?
Friends 'Suggestions', which always show about two dozen people that you are 100% certain you have never met in your life. I will continue to make my own friends in real life without your suggestions, but..... errrr..... thanks for the suggestion?
The dozens of people that add you despite having not seen you for over 5 years, just because facebook 'Suggested' that they might know me?
Notifications. You make one comment on one photo/status/wall post and you subsequently get 34 notifications telling you that other people have also commented. Fuck you facebook, I just wanted to say that the photo looked nice.
The whole world knowing when you have a temporary tiff with your fiance, resulting in you becoming officially 'facebook single', then subsequently putting this back to 'engaged' two hours later..... only to have your droves of 'suggested friends' congratulating you on your engagement..... fuck you imaginary friends, I have been engaged for four years. Actually, this is a good indication that it has become time to remove some people from your friends list.

Comments Follow (1)

Uninvited Writer 19 months ago

That was great, had me laughing. I use Facebook to keep in touch with family, and play bejeweled. I turn down so many bloody requests for applications it's not funny anymore.

ryankett 19 months ago

Haha, glad you enjoyed it, I have been meaning to check out some more of your stuff Uninvited... you always seem so quick to check out other peoples hubs which is great. Facebook is one of those things that I have a love-hate relationship with, I might a hub for reasons to love facebook - i'm sure that there are a few ;-)

tantrum 19 months ago

So here we go again ROFL!!!! I hate facebook. I have an account that I use as a directory 2 contact long lost friends, under another name with Aleister crowley's pic LOL, so nobody can find me. So as you see I'm a deceiver. By the way thanks for your kind invitation.I'm sure that if I go you'll get a hell of a surpeise LOL!!

tantrum 19 months ago

multiple choise

I'm a :

a.thirtyish drag queen

b.circus midget

c dyspepsia suffering old mom

d. sexiest blonde.

e.none of the above

Ladybird33 18 months ago

So funny and so true! Enjoyed this hub and completely related.

ryankett 18 months ago

Thanks for your comments guys, glad that you enjoyed it ;-)

megs78 18 months ago

had me laughing! and its all true. i use facebook for friends and family, i admit, but only because i live too far away to see them in person. for that reason, I appreciate it. but youre absolutely right on all you pointed out, had me giggling while reading. merci!

Adam B 18 months ago

Funny Hub, I wrote something along these lines as well called "Let's Go Back to the Future." Check it out if you get a chance.

Lily Rose 18 months ago

So funny! I resisted joining for a long time because I hate it, too, but I ultimately joined FB - get this - to play scrabble with some friends - really! I really didn't join to find out what so-and-so is eating for dinner or planning to watch on tv tonight - why the heck should I care?! I love scrabble, though!

ryankett 18 months ago

@megs78, Adam B, Lily Rose - many thanks for checking out my hub, glad that you enjoyed it ;)

broussardleslie 17 months ago

Excellent hub, Ryan. Thank you for sharing opinion regarding Facebook.

Leslie

Dido 17 months ago

I love it!!! I hate facebook too...and it's something you can't live with and can't live without. I just deactivated my account!

wyanjen 17 months ago

I joined FB about a month ago. I reconnected with an old friend I had not seen in 20 years! It was awesome!

Then we had a giant fight. Vicious. I'm normally a peaceful kind of hippie, but for a day or so my wall said: FUCK RIGHT OFF.

Now the other dozen or so old friends I had reconnected with don't seem notice when I say hello.....

stupid facebook makes people do stupid things.

It did inspire me to write a hub about the topic though.

A few of the people who witnessed the gruesomeness did actually link up to it. Score!

Wendi M 17 months ago

Very funny and very true, but what would I do without my Farmtown?

Dolores Monet 17 months ago

This is hilarious and so true. I am on Facebook because I feel like I have to - have been instructed to by a writer - you are a product and Facebook is a great place to sell yourself and blah blah blah. I don't get the poking thing but I am poking everybody I can.

My son joined some kind of free united Ireland group and now has terrorist types trying to be his friends -people in sunglasses with odd head gear and frightening scowls.

gary777g 16 months ago

"...odd headgear and frightening scowls" yes, and strange tatoos and bleary-eyed drunken pictures is why 'old' people attend to these places and then say "No" when daughter wants to go out with potential serial killer(s).. thanks Facebook and the other one Myspace!

ryankett 16 months ago

Cheers for your comments everybody.

@gary77g - lol, point taken. It is tongue in cheek, a 'love-hate' relationship.

bekaze 16 months ago

i agree.. totally! i feel the same. how annoying but addictive! perhaps i should follow China to block FB for my own sake.

Tammy Lochmann 16 months ago

I have a love/relationship w/ FB... they have those stupid avatar games like "farmtown" I have at 15 invites right now which I ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore...LOL

Dencer 16 months ago

You say you hate facebok, but you are on twitter?

That seems a little bit contradictory.

ryankett 16 months ago

@Dencer - Sense of humour failure perhaps? I can't see any contradiction there at all, they are completely different websites. I am however on facebook, that is hypocritical, what would you like me to say? I'm sorry for hating facebook?

KBell 15 months ago

I have hated facebook ever since it became the device through which my marriage was almost destroyed. It was a forum through which I met someone from the UK who convinced me that he was in love with me and should leave my husband for him. When I realized I was unable to, the relationship went south, and now I'm left with a shattered marriage which I'm trying to rebuild and emotional issues, while he is divorcing his wife and shacking up with a younger woman now that he's free. Wish I had never joined facebook and had stayed in the real world where I never would have met this guy. FACEBOOK=HEARTACHE

MJ 15 months ago

I loved your commenting on the friends suggestions. When I first started I was scratching my head trying to figure out who these people were Facebook wanted me to add as friends. Finally figured out they were taking random people from others friends list. The thing that gets me... it keeps suggesting I add myself. What's up with that?

kirstenblog 15 months ago

I only signed up with facebook because when you publish a new hub you can post to facebook with a click, I have not actually checked my profile or whatever since then! I post new hubs every time but thats it!

PurpleOne 15 months ago

I have thought about deleting my facebook account many times but just can't seem to do it. I do think the whole lack of privacy thing on there has gotten way out of control and even though you can increase your privacy setting, a lot of people don't and really don't fully comprehend just how many people can see what they're writing until it's too late.

maggiebeans 15 months ago

"Facebook would be a lot better if it had a 'Punch Me' button." Hilarious.Hmmmm I wonder if you can add that as an application.

My favorite facebook parody is on youtube called the 'facebook rap' or you can view it on my facebook if you add me.

monika 14 months ago

I hate facebook too!was on it for a whole year, deactivated my account a couple of times until finally i decided to completely close it by deleting all my friends.fbk is just a way to broadcast our lives to not so good friends and distant relatives.All those stupid updates surely do pple think we care?!

OpinionDuck 14 months ago

One of the most annoying things about facebook is trying to find someone woith a common name, that generates several hundred hits. Unless, the person that you are looking for has put some information about school, work, or locations in the public search, you can't find Waldo.

ryankett 14 months ago

@OpinionDuck - If they want you to be their facebook friend enough, then you would/should have their email address ;)

OpinionDuck 14 months ago

ryankett

That part is true, but what about friends that you have lost contact with over the years, and facebook is your opportunity to find them.

ryankett 14 months ago

@OpinionDuck - Yes I suppose that is true, and it can be a pain in the backside. It has been easier since they sorted people by number of 'mutual friends' when you search - that generally groups together old school and university friends. Im not sure how the new privacy changes will affect that though, I barely use it now!

Audrevea 14 months ago

I hate it too. Mine is deactivated but apparently it's a drama to get it actually deleted once and for all. It's like our society has a constant need of attention facilitated by all the technology we have now. I just want to be left in peace for the most part.

And you also hear horror stories of a friend or a friend of a friend getting access to something they really shouldn't see (like the boss reading about how much you hate your job).

danb357 14 months ago

I totally agree man. Face book is a product of people with an utter lack of social skills and is therefore a connection tool for the idiotic masses. I have never been on facebook and never will. If I ever want to meet people I will take a wander down the local pub. Apparently people are unable to make friends without a ridiculous social network of moronic computer generated fuckwits. I regularly e mail my friends to tell them just how sad and pathetic their need for a fucking farm or fish tank is. I will always stay a true hater of this recluse inducing crap. Good luck to all the pricks who take part and add to a ever growing army of sad middle aged parents, friendless dorky teenagers and out and out liars who are in no way anything like their so called profile. Fuck facebook and every dickheaded member....!!!!!!

notme 14 months ago

amen danb357! you said it all!

fuck facebook. that shit needs to be shut down!

i dont even bother signing in anymore im sick of seeing the same old crap. thingo became a fan of breathing. WOOO!

posers posting unfunny photos of drinking and acting like idiots. losers posting lame status updates.

add a friend who you don't even know!

play a stupid game!

answer a fricken quiz!

fuck off facebook you're wasting my time.

Kori Lee F.P. 14 months ago

Great Hub- so true and terrible - like a Greek Tragedy- We have to do technology or be a total loser!!! Even though I totally agree with danb357. Anyway what it does is remind us all of high school and the quest for friends and most of them were these false pathetic excuses for life. So today I find my long lost friend and go to her site to ask for her address and there is my photo plastered right next to the girl I did not like in H.S. All the years of trying to get over the low self esteem blows because I wasnt one of the "Gossip Girls" I tried to forget my H.S years and now it is like a resurrection of the lame ass!!! So now I am joining the F*** Facebook camp- even though I can't stop it now right? I feel like Oedipus once he finds out he married his mother and killed his father-OK no that is going too far- but you know what I mean. Sick Really!!

Karen Russell 14 months ago

THAT IS TO MUCH FOR ME, I ENJOYED YOUR HUB, THE REALITY OF THE HUMOR WAS OUTSTANDING, KEEP UP THE GOOD WK, THANKS...LOL, R.K./LP

reeltaulk 14 months ago

facebook is dumber than dumb....Facebook loves to instigate--- I deleted my account and they desperately gave me the option to come back. Weird and freaky! I cant even remove it from Google....STALKERS!!!!

RosWebbART 14 months ago

So true; great hub.

bozzie123 14 months ago

Facebook is amazing way of socialising, and meeting new people, meeting someone in a pub or club has now become whether you have facebook or not rather than asking straight for their number. You can track down friends that live abroad i have lots of mates that i cant ring because its too expensive so we keep in touch. As for the things you listed about group invites and relationship status' theres options to not show these at all. I defend facebook as being the best form of social networking available to date and deffinately a step forward for web 2.0. Just read danb357's comment, how can you shed to much hate for facebook when your second line of your comment states "i have never used it". I think you have the whole idea of facebook wrong, its not a way of adding strangers and talking although im sure this does go on in some circumstances, its a way of keeping in contact with mates that maybe you dont know well enough to have their number, its a good way of sharing photos or nights out and stuff, its amazing really.

wildkc 13 months ago

FB is just another way for people to gossip, compare, and keep tabs on other people. Think about it...what has our society become???

With FB, our society has become a "real time" version of the old ladies in the hair salon from the 1970's.

Why do they gossip and keep tabs on people? Well, this hasn't changed - - - They are not happy with their own life.

Shinkicker 13 months ago

I'm with you on this Hub Ryan. Facebook is full of trivia and irritating application requests.

Jo 13 months ago

I hate facebook, I don't even have it! My way of protesting...

Phlo92 13 months ago

I'm with you ryankett! Honestly the lone thought of facebook irritates me to the point of no return. Almost every single one of my friends waste their time on Facebook, including my girlfriend. She posts embarrasing pics of me that I thought that only she would see and always brings up her "oh so awesome" guy friends on Facebook when she's around me and it makes me absolutely sick. Remember when chat rooms and instant messeging services were looked down upon because you could be potentially be a victim of a sexual assult because they got some of your information? I remember too, and Facebook seems like the oh so perfect place for just that to happen. So go ahead facebook addicts: waste your time, neglect your real friends, get lured into sexual assult, and completely cut yourself off from the real world. I can't wait until the day that facebook is shut down over privacy invasions and you'll have no friends to resort to considering your former obsession. What do you think guys? Am I crazy or just plain truthful?

ladyjane1 13 months ago

I so agree with you and I actually wrote a hub about it called Facebook is so annoying. I had seen this video that you have on your hub and was going to use it but decided on another one. Its hilarious. You can check it out if you want. Good hub.

b-rilly 13 months ago

totally true. I don't know what else the world can do though, everyone has gotten so addicted to it. i suppose everyone could go back to inadvertently giving their personal details back to Myspace.... or maybe making phone calls to people they know rather than depending on a social networking tool to remind them of who they are supposed to care about. :P :P x 1000

Crazdwriter 12 months ago

lol Ryan loved this hub. Yea I use facebook to keep in touch with family and friends...I actually have 2 FB profiles. 1 is for my author friends and also once I hopefully get published use that one to promote my writing and everything. But yea I do hate FB. Great hub, Ryan, graet hub. I tried Twitter once and not going back there though I might have to in order to promote books. lol

Guinivere 12 months ago

i like the ease, convenience and just colors of Myspace.

much more simple, less cluttered.

i joined FB for two weeks and was tired of being poked, (you stole my line, lol, i put this on another blog) and having my IQ compared with others. i hate it. and the fact that so many people just blindly accept it, rave about it in some cult-like trance and look down at me because "myspace is so passe," is just ANNOYING TO NO END

Joshua Mkhwananzi 12 months ago

I started realising that Facebook is Good, ( And was good when it started like all things in life (As it was fit for it's PURPOSE)).

1. In life, excess leads to inbalance (... look at how the layout has become cluttered...) There is that Suggestion and Ads box on the right which displays annoying suggestions of friends to be with. Imagine life was like that, where newspapers and even billboards were full of SUGGESTIONS, SUGGESTIONS & SUGGESTIONS of people to be your friend.

2. Remember how when you only had 1 or two friends when you first registered, how you would look forward with eagerness to Status updates from your real friends (usually it's our closest friends we search for first)... Now you have so many friends through HABIT of just clicking ADD AS FRIEND which you developed when you were eager to have a satisfactory level of friends you desired at first.

3. The owners of Facebook actually make it harder for users to change BASIC HOUSEKEEPING SETTINGS because they comprehend the human need to WANT IT NOW. Get me a profile now! ( And users even forget or just sub consciously keep their privacy settings on default)

4. Now ask yourself. Why are there so many websites on "How to do X" on Facebook??????????

~Joshua Mkhwananzi~

Applescal 12 months ago

YES! I agree.

I would just always rather see or speak to a small group of friends, than constantly read the statuses of old schoolmates. Sadly I have become completely isolated from these close friends because of their Facebook obsession. It really hurts, especially when it isn't the only way of communication. I always used email and msn, I never saw that as an especially "private" way of talking to a friend at the time, but it's clear the difference now.

I just feel very lost and confused. I mean I am 18,

and feel a severe disconnect with it all. Though I do feel strongly that whilst activities like joining FB groups is very sad... this kind of stuff is still harmless compared to the accepted openness of everything else. I just find it really disturbing, and I think it could only be dangerous for a relationship than add anything to it.

Sorry if that was a bit heavy :) I just really haven't felt like anyone I have met has, or would understand me on this.

Jeniferr 12 months ago

I take the good with the bad. Sure, I got a lot of friend requests from high school 'acquaintances' but also reconnected with a few friends that I sort of lost track of.

The thing I dislike the most are the constant Mafia Wars, Farmville, Island Whatever It's Called updates. I wish people would turn those off.

BristolBoy 12 months ago

Great article - very amusing!

Peanut 11 months ago

I dont see why people love it so much... I mean seriously! It's basically pointless! Everything they tell you is! I don't want to know that my friend added some random douche! Some random douches even add me! My friends even ask how many friends i have on facebook. I tell them 100 cause i rarely go on. They spas at me. Literally.

sydney 11 months ago

I believe that facebook is the root of all evil. I want to throw up everytime I hear about it. I CRY everytime I am reminded that I can't delete it off my phone. I get sick everytime I hear someone mention bejewelled or farmtown or any, even the tiniest problem/drama from that site. I miss the days of phonecalls. when will people learn there is a life beyond facebook? I can't go anywhere without fucking hearing about it! I can't even look at a craft magazine without reading about it. I believe I am the only 21 year old who will not make a facebook. I am on the verge of throwing up right now just from being so upset

Miss Moo 11 months ago

I hate face book, as simple as that, and believe me I have used it alot. no more, I'm outta it now.

Moss 11 months ago

Go watch the I.T. Crowds episode about FriendFace. (5th episode series 3) Says it all.

Judith 11 months ago

I deactivated my account two days ago - for good. I know people who could build themselves up & make themselves look like they are such caring, kind-hearted people when I know the truth about some of them. The "fakeness" was getting next to me so I thought it best to get rid of it once & for all. FB is evil. And a waste of time. Get out & enjoy life & get away from the computer. And leave your mobile phone turned off.

vaccine 11 months ago

While some of the reasons are valid, there are ways to protect your privacy.

FB has changed their privacy settings, thanks to those who have constantly written about hating FB.

I have suggested privacy settings for friends, esp for those who are new to FB and are concerned about their privacy, and so far, it has worked out well.

liamkeegan 11 months ago

I also hate Facebook, in all the ways you have mentioned, but especially the whole adding of "friends", most of whom aren't your friend! Facebook should really change the "friends" button to "people who you may or may not know"!

Liked the post

spirit 11 months ago

i hate facebook

i have facebook

NOT!

FACEbook is bad

but i think you guessed that

lol

and i have twitter

so boom!

suck it up!

JackTheDonkey 11 months ago

This past year, I launched a social network called JackTheDonkey.com, the community where your time online supports the charity of your choice. JackTheDonkey.com donates 1.1 cents every impression to your choice of more than 20 charities from Canada, The US and UK. The number of impressions and how you create them is up to you...

Why? There are a bunch of reasons...but I remember when Facebook was all about pictures, thoughts & profiles. I was starting to miss that...and that's what we are bringing back...a community free from Farmville updates polluting up your new feeds...we call it www.jackthedonkey.com & this ass gives a poop.

HOWEVER....In the next couple of weeks, unsigned musicians will be able to get more exposure for your talents…while your music drives change to the 24 charities from Canada, the US and UK now on JackTheDonkey.com…here’s an update in my blog about what’s coming:

www.jackthedonkey.com/JackDonkeyBlog_MjY=.html

If you’re an unsigned musician who gives a poop, and would like to be to notified when iGiveapoop goes live on JackTheDonkey.com please send an email to stayintouch@jackthedonkey.com with the subject “musician” (helps me figure out what is spam and who is human) and I will send you an email when it’s live.

If you’re an individual who gives a poop…please feel free to join jack and start giving a poop freely, regularly and socially for the charity of your choice: www.jackthedonkey.com/register1.aspx

Thanks,

David

twitter.com/inyourfacebook

Bob Kick Ass 11 months ago

I hate facebook. its full of 8 year olds pretendin to be 18, and 65 year olds pretendin 2 be 14. its grose and a fucking waste of time

R-Truth 11 months ago

Okay, so do you want to take action? I did! Here are steps in deleting your FB account:

--change profile settings: name, address, gender, age.. anything that identifies you.

--remove all of your pictures

-- remove all tags of you in other ppl's pics

--delete every post on your wall (including comments)

--remove your self from all groups

--delete any FB applications from your profile

--finally delete FB account in settings

It took me about 3 months to fully delete my FB account!! But now I'm truly free :)And I know that my personal info will now be harder to find on the FB servers. ( I believe they hold all info for 6 months...so even my data that has been deleted is there for 6 months!) But that is why I deleted my profile the looong way, so I know in 6 months NOBODY will have access to any of MY info.

Whateverrrrrr 11 months ago

Bob Kick Ass, you actually have summed up the site quite well.

Springboard 10 months ago

lol. I can't say it's the greatest invention, but ah hell, what is privacy anymore these days anyway? Everyone has a camera on their cell phone.

hardinflash 10 months ago

Lol love hearing rants and opinions. I personally like it quite a bit, it makes networking really easy and helps me keep in touch with friend and others that I rarely get to see. Until a great alternative comes out I'm gona have to stick with facebook.

Amin 10 months ago

According to me , its better to keep our life Real, if you found all your old friends on facebook and you are happy, then if they are your real friends why they disconnected you, in general life you can't be a friend with 150 people or 400 or more as a friend, except your family members or relatives, this is kind of personal disease when you got 500 friends or more in your life, in fact they are not your friend except the ones which you know since your childhood or high school as a close friends , well later you start wondering, why they are not beside me when i need them, why they can't help me with a proper advice to live my real life as normal,and the other applications whats the main purpose,just waste of time,posting your pictures in front of everybody just to give you feedback or comments, (you are sexy, you are cute,i like it, you are amazing,etc...) what ever the comments , just trust your beauty and cuteness and yourself, live your real life, get a real comments, get a real friends not a digital friends, you don't need to share your own privacy with everybody, people gone crazy they want to post pictures for them even when they are taking shower come on people for God sake, is that a kind of Hysteria or sharing your love with people, at the end my advise is: keep your life real don't live in the digital world share every moment and picture with your family members and relatives no need to went out of the circle,keep your surprises in the right time don't ruin it with a single post, Cheers

Mark Cassidy 10 months ago

Facebook is probably in recent times one of the most vile approaches for the people in power to further bring down the people with none to begin with. Everyone assumes now that they must have a facebook or else they must be hiding something. The truth is, it's a great way to keep people from freeing themselves up to live the lives that the INDIVIDUAL would otherwise truely WANT to live, in their short time on this earth. But instead, you join the 'norm', you get your laughs and your little kicks and thrills, until 'oh wait', anything ANYBODY would want to know about you is available right in front of them. Obviously you can "control yourself", but if you had any real self control to begin with you wouldn't have given in to such social pressure. Oh right but then there's privacy settings, well let's put it this way...if you're a suspect in a crime, officials WILL search your facebook. "Oh no but facebook won't allow any broken confidentialities". I can easily see facebook becoming one of the police and fbi's top general questions to an investigation. " They got a facebook? " I really dont know how people even do it. Doesn't reading everybody else's crap everytime you sign in twist up your mind to the point that you 'just dont know anymore?". I think that's exactly what the doctor called for. More ignorance = The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And like it or not, it's fair game in this beautiful country, but that's what you get for being a sucker. Learn how the system works people !!!! Can't say it loud enough !!!!

timothy 10 months ago

Some people follow others, lead others, or do their own thing. I am the latter which are you? I am pretty secure in the fact that I don't need to view my 351 friends or chat up someone by poking them. The best is when your spouse spends more time talking to her Facebook friends and ex's than with you! REAL MEN DON'T FACEBOOK

H 10 months ago

You know... I will not signup for FB again. I have had 2 accounts disabled. I had friends that added me from my high school days and people that I've met through traveling. But they request you to add them and then never speak to you. WTF I think it's such nonsense. Why should I give someone access to view my personal life online when they are not even communicating with me? Why should I spend endless hours or take so much of my precious time to look at their photos or what they are up to? Or vice versa? I actually feel that maybe people are spying on other people because they have nothing better to do. Or it's all fake? Most of it I think. Yes maybe it's valid that you do can keep up with friends and family. But it just seems there is no point. Pick up the phone or go visit them. Email them. I personally feel there is a time and place for everything. It just seems to me more and more that society has been brainwashed in that there is no such thing called privacy. Don't get me wrong I'm not blaming society. Who want's to really put their life on display for strangers ? But yeah, there is something called free will. And not everybody will like what you like. There is also a thing called Identity theft. So be careful for those who like FB. But I say get a real life. Go exercise, find a hobby and in the process make real friends. We all have the potential to make real true friends and write down goals and achieve them, instead of wasting your life on something as dehumanizing as FB. GET YOUR LIFE BACK!

Mark 10 months ago

Yeah, I just deactivated my account which I checked every three months or so. I loathe Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg is laughing all the way to the bank as he cashes in on the internet crack he has so many people addicted to. And he's what, like 8? The nation is full of sheep following this kid.

Nic 10 months ago

I'm just informing friends I'm leaving for good, gathering email addresses and then I'm coming off Facebook! There's already been a big family fall out, there is a section of the family I now no longer have anything to do with, all coz of Facebook. I have fallen out with friends via Facebook and am always seeing things that upset me - mainly my very close friends communicating with other very close friends (we're all a group of friends) which I would never usually see, nor wish to see, it ends up with me getting stupidly paranoid that they like each other more than they like me etc etc. Really bizarre behaviour I would never usually get involved with!

Not to mention the friends who add you then never speak to you, the stupid suggestions for people you've never heard of and never wish to hear of, the hate groups which are prejudiced, racist, harassing, insulting etc etc, the rows, the jealousy and that I am in fact old enough to know better, to remember a time before Facebook and to know that life goes on without it... I will in a few days officially be an Ex Facebook User, and proud!!

Origin 9 months ago

I don't really visit my Facebook page much, the entire urge to use it is pretty much gone. Of course, I was using Myspace before that and the entire social aspect was worn out by the time I joined Facebook.

Dawg 9 months ago

I am dropping facebook for good, it pisses me off all the crap that gets posted... oh look lil timmy learned to wipe his ass today yay for Timmy who fucking cares....

Stephen 8 months ago

Very nice entry man, loved it! i dont have a facebook and never will but totally agree with everything you have said and hate it for all those reasons and many more! nice work

liamoreilly 8 months ago

good hub. hilarious. I'm still on facebook and I'm about to travel to south Korea so staying in touch is easier with facebook.

I have to admit a few years ago I deleted everyone on my friends list and started over because I couldn't stand it anymore - I realise most people delete thier account instead.

Have you ever experienced the facebook effect? Be careful what you say on facebook because when you meet friends/relatives/old chums in real life they'll remember what you wrote and realistically one size doens't fit all. It can bite you in the ass or bring you closer to people in real life.

The alternative is saying something over facebook and everyone can read it but your never really sure if they actually do! That can be confusing.

I think hubpages is definitely a better website to collaborate and discuss on a wide variety of topics without the 'facebook effect'. Plus each hub is rated so you can definitely tell where you stand.

James Wallace 8 months ago

The #1 reason I hate Facebook is because they banned me for no reason, no way to get in contact with them... only a FAQ page which is useless. I'm going to start a Facebook hate website!

Garoto73 8 months ago

I hate it. Big mistake. I envy the few coworkers that are not on it. I hate people tagging me in photos. I can't reject my boss cause it would be trouble but then now I can't rant about him on FB. I hate people bragging about every success in their lives. I have 200 "friends" but no one to go to lunch with. Friends from childhood/school should stay like that no need to revive them in this artificial world. I hate people posting quotes like they are great poets or something. Yuck I want to vomit now...

Adam Tenas 8 months ago

LOL... Deleting your facebook really is saying F you to all your friends haha!

Hasan 8 months ago

o.m.g,,,,, u were too good with that.. btw all these points used to b in ma mind but i never lifted them out,

my goodness,,, da way u said awl dis. so true.. so so so damn funny.. awesome brothaa.. literally hats off to u.. hahaahahmind blowing..

John 8 months ago

I agree entirely. I mean I am only 18 and did my time on facebook a year or so ago. 3 months with that shit was enough to realise how fucking pointless it is and how it corrupts my 'friends' minds into immature little shits that love to gossip online. Fuck it and all its users. I truly hope they see sense and deactivate their accounts like I did.

Never will I join again. Good old phonecalls/text messaging and a bit of MSN/SKYPE is all I need. Facebook is a cesspool and information gathering exercise. I dont know how all you addicts are so blind to just hand over your information to thousands of companies and organisations and not even think twice about it.

Louise 8 months ago

I got rid of my facebook account about 2 years ago now and I still keep in touch and even see my 'real' friends more now than I used to when I was stuck in front of the computer screen.

I used to also be obsessed with seeking out current boyfriend's ex's and it just wasn't healthy so I just got rid of my profile and now life is MUCH better without it :-)

FacebookHater 8 months ago

My reason for facebook being the most rediculous webpage on earth is that people who have never seen a computer in their goddamn lives thinking that posting pictures of everything from waking up in the morning, to taking a crap, to thier child's most precious moments is being "cool". Unfortuantely, those people have become very dispicable, coming from a farm in thier home country where the only technology they had was a wilis with a bad motor, running with pigs and chickens. Now, since they have everything at thier fingertips and think that they own everyone and everything. I had a facebook for about two years before I started hating it. Generation Y were fine with it. We didn't post our lives on there, maybe an outing with friends...maybe some of us had a little more to show and nothing to lose, but once Generation X came in and thought that posting pictures of their kids picking up snow, birthdays, first communions etc... let me tell you something... I went to a public library once to print out some information and the man sitting next to me...was looking only for pictures of children on facebook...people need to take care of their kids and stop paying attention to all the goddamn rumors that go around on a webpage.. when your kids get abused and you start crying..you'll then regret so much technology...

surf traveler 8 months ago

Halleluja Ryan,

I have only been working on content websites for two months now, and everywhere I turn, I'm getting suggestions that I should be using FB. I have never signed up and really don't want to, your hub made me laugh so hard. Who knows, out of shear desperation to make some dough I might sign up one day, but your hub surely has given me the willpower to say screw it for a few more weeks :)

ihatefbtoo 8 months ago

i think fb destroys families. most of the time people from what i hear is everyone posting comments about other - gossip, their job, and their day... how messed up is that? go talk to your family about your day etc. it is really not a way to be close to anyone you truly care about. i went on a date and the guy asked me when was i going to set up my fb so we could chat? you have got to be kidding right? needless to say things did not work out - every time i checked his profile - he had added about 20 more women. glad not to be apart of the norm, go along with the crowd group of people... fb to me if for the immature, lack of self esteem, need to be seen and heard crowd. GET A LIFE and talk in person so you can know someone is sincere.. for those who truly have distance between them and are trying to honestly connect with family/friend - these comments do not apply to you.

Fedup 8 months ago

I think facebook is the worst thing for a marriage that anyone could participate in. I deactivated my facebook about 2 weeks ago now when my husband kept adding bimbo actresses. Or the real killer now single high school women kept leaving what I found to be double meaning post. I would try to comment below and he would delete the whole thing because I some how embarrassed him. After almost 28 years of marriage I embarrass him because I make a comment after a now single high school friend. Give me a break! He now brings his laptop to bed and thinks I have a problem because I get upset when I am talking to him and he can not even listen to a word I am saying. Honestly screw facebook! Screw the women that lurk on married men pages. Screw my husband for participating. He claims I am the one he wants to be with but has no time to turn off from the digital world he has immersed himself in. If we would not have these people over for dinner if we could I feel they don't belong taking time you could be spending with your family or loved one period! Do I think he will cheat? No, not really. It is a respect thing to me at this point. It is like them checking out someone when you are standing next to them. Total lack of consideration and respect for the other. Plastic world we live in now. Very sad!

Louise 7 months ago

Facebook = A social network of loosers!

I don't care what you had for breakfast or what you're watching on TV ... no one cares so don't put it on facebook!!!!!!!!!!

Louise 7 months ago

Yes me again ...

And I also think it's a shame that people upload all their photos on the web. Photos should be a personal thing stored in fancy photo albums. Photos just aren't personal anymore.

milwivessaving 7 months ago

hahahha, omg, i just LOVE this article :) thanks for making me laugh!!!!!

facebook user 7 months ago

this is so fuckingly funny !!

oasisgirl 7 months ago

fab article! loved the video!

i was on facebook for a couple of years. i kept contemplating on deleting my account,but the last straw was when i kept seeing people i wanted out of my life on facebook,through mutual friends' profiles.

i thought enough!! if i want to keep in touch with someone, i'll call them or email them. these pseudo mates of mine on facebook weren't a good enough reason for me to stay. i wasted so much time logging on 30 times a day to see if any profiles were updated; it just wasn't worth it!!

i deleted my account in may and feel relieved,to say the least!

i dont miss it one bit. i have no privacy fears. i feel free!!

so anyone out there contemplating on deleting their accounts,go for it!! you wont miss it. i promise you.

Rookie70 7 months ago

Out of all the people who commented, there was one honest guy who admitted that he liked Facebook. Well, I will be honest and say there isn't anything wrong with Facebook, I like it to. I don't think people should complain about social networks, they are designed with tools to enable communication over the internet, and this is good for people who don't want to run up the phone bill calling long distance. Facebook is one of the best social networks on the web. Yahoo Chat is probably number one. There, you get to set up webcams and speak to your contacts through a microphone. I do wish Facebook had the same features.

Unplugging 7 months ago

If you have a family and it takes significant time away from the family it is a problem. If you use facebook to build your ego it is a problem. Pick up the phone or meet and have a face to face conversation. If you would not do either with people on facebook then there is a problem. Keep business contacts separate from friends and family. If you bring your laptop to bed you have a HUGE problem. End of Story! I'm guessing you are not married and do not have a family. Unplug people we might as well be robots!

Si_woods 7 months ago

I disagree with Rookie70, a lot of people don't like Facebook. I for one had it for a year for the usual reasons - contacting old friends - and got rid of it months ago because it was a waste of time and it irritated me to see the rubbish that people put on there. Why do i want to know that a friend of a friends sister has just put her baby to bed and is drinking a glass of water???

If i need to contact someone accross the globe, i use a very simple tool and it's known as email. If i don't have their email address then they aren't that important to me.

The other thing i like doing is actually leaving my house and visiting physical public sites - like a pub. I find this quite effective for being "Social" and talking to the people who matter to me.

Rookie70 7 months ago

For one, just because you have a family, it doesn't mean you can't spend time doing other things and meeting new people. I hate it when people use "family" as a cop-out to put off being social. I have a family too, and that doesn't stop me from making connections elsewhere. I also have an education in music performance and composition. Right now I am working with a community center aided by government funds. There I tutor in music and piano, and I am the chess coordinator for the chess club. I work on the side. I have accounts on the websites as well, and I contribute enough time to everything I am involved in. If the Lord had a special purpose for people who thought they could only do one thing at a time, He, (the Lord) would choose somebody else who was more faithful. It pays to be multi-talented. People need to stop being anti-social and selfish. There is more to life than just family. There is a more important duty to reach out to other people, and share your knowledge and gifts. I salute Facebook, myspace, soundclick, Kompoz, Hubpages, Blogger, yahoo, google, for all they do.

ryankett 7 months ago

@Rookie70 - Calm down! The reason that nobody is stating that they love facebook is because they all find this hub after searching for variations of the search term 'Hate Facebook'... If I had written a hubpage about Loving Facebook, then people who love facebook would be finding the page. Don't take yourself so seriously dude, I still use facebook, and I finished the hub with a light hearted video. It was actually supposed to be a lightly humoured hubpage. Nobody has to share your views by the way, just because you like the site doesn't mean that everybody else has to.

rgarnett 7 months ago

I loved this! I agreed with pretty much all of it, and yet I still have an account - I actually love having facebook, because I think I have an aversion to the phone. I think that stems from answering the phone for 10 hours a day. I still don't talk to half the people who are my friends :P

Rookie70 7 months ago

ryankett, I am not upset because of someone else's honest opinion, I was upset because people are always using the same cop-out excuses that they heard somebody else say. That is why I get upset. I could care less about what others think. It is the sorry cop-outs that get me heated up. If I used the same excuse everytime a discussion arose, people would get tired of hearing that because they've heard it so many times. I'll take a chill pill.

unplugging 7 months ago

Well Rookie70 I hope you spend time with your wife and not just a plastic website. You are missing the point entirely. I could care less if someone wants to be social. But there is a huge difference between that and what becomes an obsession for so many.

Sunnyglitter 7 months ago

I love Facebook, but this article was pretty funny!

Jelly+Fish 7 months ago

I love Julian Smith! The most awesome man in the whole world!

hater 7 months ago

facebook makes me wanna s..t my balls out. some of my friends are 100% fb addicted. i use to have myspace and its more or less the same. first u have fun but after some time you just find ur self being 4,5,6... hour "online".

also i dont understand how people can give so many inf about their personal life. some people know how to turn this inf against you and rob ur house or f...k ur life up.

Rolla98 7 months ago

Awesome Hub. The only thing that I hate about FB are ther hackers hacking people accounts.

annika 7 months ago

What a relief to read all this.

Irene 7 months ago

I hate Facebook too. Sooooo much. I actually have a fobia. Cheaters love it, narcisists love it, bored people loooove it. And if you are not on Facebook, you don't exist! Good! I rather not exist. DIE FACEBOOK, DIE!!!

turtlegr14 6 months ago

I have to admit I'm on Facebook & have the stupid farm & all that junk but I know how stupid it is & this hub reminded me of that! LOL This was hilarious!

aileena 6 months ago

i love facebook.!!!!!!!!!!bt those were so true.!!!!!!loved that too.. u might have me thinking do i still want my facebook

ddh 6 months ago

I do agree with a lot of people-I dislike facebook too! I was on there a year ago, and like a lot of other people said, I got request to be friends with people that I don't even know. So I accepted them because it got to the point that they kept bothering me until I accepted. It was okay at first, but then, I started getting harrassed by some people on there that I tried to ignore. Well, that didn't work, and the harrassment continued. I reported it to facebook, but they didn't do anything about it. So I deleted my profile and haven't been on there since. I still get emails from them wanting me to come back, but hell no! I like my privacy way too much! It wouldn't bother me much if facebook got completely shut down!

P.S.-where do you sign up for the F*** Facebook club? Lol

meli 6 months ago

i didnt think facebook had top friends? that was why i like it better than myspace. top friends is horrible.

i hate how you are forced to be friends with people you just want to forget about because you dont want to be rude and make them think you dont like them. i just dont want to know whats happening in the lives of every person i've met in my life and i dont want them to know about mine

i hate it how people can compare people to other people based on their page.

i hate how its so distracting and addictive, and i cant help stalking people.

fbhypetrafficx 6 months ago

I always new there would be someone thinking against the crowd. Funny hub Thanks

debra john 6 months ago

I loved your words of wisdom i really did you know from day one i have hated facebook and i am an intelligent (well i reckon lol) person, but was just unable to say why in the way you have so, now im copying your reasons lol only kidding but your so right!""""""

sam young 6 months ago

face book is a jerk...I have just left it

Facef**k 6 months ago

All of these people who whine `I only use Facebook because I live too far away from my friends', wtf is wrong with emails?

If Facef**k made bog roll, I wouldn't wipe my f*cking arse on it.

Ann Marie 6 months ago

why do people put their spouse or partner living with them on their facebook account. Is it so they dont need to have an actual conversation at home?

dad03 6 months ago

Facebook will have a lifecycle like everything else on the net, it will get bloated with too much clutter on the interface (myspace and now eBay is getting so annoyingly hard to use!!!), too much advertising, too many people trying to sell you stuff, some random criminals using it to spread child porn, and it will be casually replaced by some other more 'useful' site; but with 500 million accounts, this will take some time.

I hate facebook; it is so obvious that people will tire of how fake most people are, posing that their lives are so great, when we all know full well, each of us can probably count our true 'die-hard' friends on the fingers of ONE hand, that would be there for us if we got in a jam.

ON a business front, it surely is the biggest scam ever to aggregate the "like" and fan pages, and music and movies and interests so they can aggregate marketing campaigns (yeah, they are coming folks) so if you want to be bombarded by ads, useless quips about diapers, and fake events, just stay on facebook and have fun sifting through the ads.

AT the end of the day, there is such a critical mass on it, it would take for something significant to replace it.

Some_Guy 6 months ago

Too true dude, Faceshitbook is a goddamm fad. Last year when I signed up I quite liked the idea, where I could see embarassing pics of old friends. However, fast-forward a year and I feel like getting rid of it completeley. It's all everyone ever talks about! And everyone is on it! Everybody! It sucks balls. Plus, what really pisses me off is that you find out your best friend has about 150 other "Best Friends" that you've never even heard of! It is a load of bollocks and people bore the shit out of me every goddamm time they mention it.

Emilia 6 months ago

It goes like this:

"Every Post you make

Every Pic you take

Every Friend you fake

For Facebook’s sake!!"

J 6 months ago

I dislike facebook! I used to like it but now it is just annoying! People post and change their status a lot and announce things all the time that is not necessary! Who wants to hear all this stuff? I have a certain friend (one of my best friends) that lied to me and said that she was too busy to keep in touch with me the time she was out of the country but yet she is always on facebook blogging and commenting on people's statuses! Another friend of mine text me asking me if I removed him from my friends list when I did not remove him! Give me a break! Do these people have nothing better to do in their lives than this! Facebook offers no privacy at all! It is so fake and unreal and unpersonal.

Geraldine 5 months ago

I hate facebook! somebody hacked my account and they asked me so many questions. in the end i wasn't able to restore my account.

BELLE7 5 months ago

Facebook is a way for friends,fakes,enemies,exes,stalkers,and significant others to blog,post,spy,lie,and hook up. DIE FACEBOOK!

MEGHA 5 months ago

I HATE FACEBOOK . IT IS A DESPERATE THING . HAMESHA LOG IN HAR 2 MIN KE BAD .

I HATE IT

Cremacious 5 months ago

Your argument has many flaws. You can easily adjust your privacy settings so nobody sees all your information. You can still post pictures, but have it so your grandma can't see it.

ryankett 5 months ago

@Cremacious... your comment 'has many flaws'...

1) You couldn't do that 13 months ago.

2) This isn't an argument, it is my opinion.

3) 'Many' suggests more than one, what are the rest?

Anna Marie Bowman 5 months ago

This was so much fun to read!! I admit, I hate facebook, too. Mostly because it wastes soo much of my time. I started my facebook to keep in touch with old friends, and newer friends, because I move a lot, and don't see a lot of my friends nearly as much as I would like. It has since turned into an ugly monster that tortures me and keeps me up at night. Thank you for writing this!!

BELLE7 5 months ago

Thank you so much ryankett for this article. I'm just so glad that I'm not the only hater; that there are others that feel the same, and i must say this again...DIE FACEBOOK!

Evil Regan 5 months ago

Great article, made me laugh. Thanks for posting it.

Here's ONE of the reasons I hate facebook!

I hate facebook because they took away one of the ONLY cool features that there was to customize your own page and make it look different. I am referring to the removal of the FBML & Extended Info Apps that use to work on the SIDE WALL. Now you can ONLY post lame stuff that is ONLY FACEBOOK'S lame apps/boxes like the 'photos' 'video' 'events' that EVERYONE has.

At least with the FBML you were able to put up cool images and banners on the side wall.

It took a while to figure out what would work on the side wall and what wouldn't, and guess what, now all that time was wasted for nothing since it was all taken away.

Now, facebook absolutely sucks more than it did before...if that is possible.

Anonymous Guy Rants 5 months ago

Awesome post. I hate facebook too, but only because like you said, it's a privacy destroyer and its just pathetic. I played some game once called Mobsters on there and saw that some people really dont have lives. They create these weird ass clans or groups to "protect" each others walls from negative posts. The internet has allowed some anti social morons that survival of the fittest would have done away with already, had it not been for facebook, socially acceptable. Now those weirdo, barely takes a shower once a week, man cheese between the legs, 30 year old virgins, who would have made space for those with a functioning brain had they offed themselves like they were supposed to, have become your facebook friends. Fuck facebook.

Jeff 5 months ago

I can proudly say I've never had a facebook account in my life! Why its gotten to be so big blows my mind, these people don't care about you or your personal information they just want to make more money plain and simple. Do you enjoy it when you call like DirectTV and you want just a simple question answered and you get bombarded with sales makes the 1 minute would be task into 10-15minutes! All these places want to do is keep tabs on you and own you like a number. This kid that started this doesn't impress me either, just got lucky being in a college, server and wide bandwidth, I'm sure this idea was on every highschool girls mind who where in charged of the shcools year book at some point. The only reason why Facebook is so popular is becuase for some reason everyone wants to feel like their lives are so important. Once people get their heads out there ass I see the privacy thing becoming the destroyer. Thankgod too, I hate all big companies, greedy ass ceos, who on this planet is worth that much money and who actually earns it. Elite groups hoarding earnings will be this country's down fall.

Facebook ruined society 5 months ago

I agree with most of you. I especially give credit to those who had the balls to say they hate facebook. What good does it really do to a person? Weighing the pros and cons I definitely see more cons in these instances. I know so many people's lives go downhill from this site. My cousin for one, her marriage shattered from this site. And I myself would be bothered by my friends ALL the time. They would say things like "Katie why haven't you been on lately?" Or "Check out this photo of me and my boyfriend" BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA! Its like why the fuck do you think I haven't been on facebook lately?! Its overrated, huge waste of time, just another way for people to bother you and stalk you, but most of all it CHANGES YOU AS A PERSON. Soon you'll be so addicted that your life is revolved around it.

teresa 5 months ago

Facebook is a lynch mob. Your kids can go on there and use other retarded adults against you. People believe EVERYTHING they hear. I hate gossip, and i HATE creepy grownups using this to socialize with kids. Its a perverse violation of privacy. Grownups need to GET A LIFE. GROW UP and MYOB. I HATE Facehook,, never had an acc and never will. Evil is brewing up here. Facebook has and will become a social lynchmob, and likely will give way to sites that will in a BAD way. Mark my words.

reshma 5 months ago

i hate fb

my ex is there .. my granny is there ... my brother is there.. my neighbor is there..my teacher is there ... my dog is there always watching me what i am doing...i dont find a right photo on time to upload that shows how happier and smarter i am than my friends.

Jenny Le 5 months ago

I hate facebook! I like had three accounts already! The people keep deleting my account and I dont know what the hell happens but my account gets deleted and then I have to resend 200 friend requests. SERIOUSLY??!!

RETARD LOL! 5 months ago

Facebook is stupid! You post a comment and nobody reads it! Then other people are all "Oh hey! I love you baby" And those stupid game requests! I had like 323 farmville and yoville requests. DUDE! GET A LIFE! Seriously, we'll all be alien zombies if we keep doing this! One day in the future teens will be soooo over facebook!

Cheeky Girl 5 months ago

I laughed my ass off reading this. The "Punch me" instead of "Poke me" button is hilarious. Yes, I even have a few people I'd like to do it to, I'm just not going to tell them. Maybe facebook is just addictive and a great way to contact people from one medium to another like from Phone to PC, which is great.

I think Facebook is trying to replace Skype in some ways. I have friends all over the world who can FB me if the price of the call is too high. Facebook is everywhere, I am not sure I will delete it, as those people who are family can find me anyway...Facebook just makes it handier (and a lot more annoying! LOL!) but then I hear everyone is raving about People String. Like what the hell is that? Another Facebook clone? Anyway, thanks for the great and very funny hub. The Julian Smith video is cool too! The bottom line is this - what out there on the Internet is better than Facebook? If there is something better, then I will use it. Cheers! :)

Sonya 5 months ago

Add me as another of those that absolutely loathes FB. I resisted joining for a long time because it seemed like a boring waste of time...which, it turns out, it was! I finally gave in and got an account about 7 months ago, just to keep in touch with a handful of people I'm friends with in real life. After growing increasingly annoyed with all the irrelevant, uninteresting b/s people post, I started hiding more and more feeds and finally purging some off my "friend" list. I finally deactivated my account a few weeks ago, which really means nothing. You log back in and it's like you never left.

Here's how I sum up FB: "A bunch of self-absorbed people who pretend to be interested in each other's lives, but aren't." I found that FB turns people into uninteresting bores and my opinion of many of those on my "friend" list dropped significantly after reading the crap they posted.

I also realized that there is just no one I know that I need to hear from on a daily basis, especially people that haven't been in my life for over a decade. I don't want to see pictures of your dinner posted from your iPhone, hear about your political rants or read the inane details of your boring life. I keep those things to myself because I *know* no one cares. The few nuggets of neat or interesting that would get posted by a tiny minority of people were lost in the sea of dull and insipid status updates and comments.

I have now taken steps to permanently delete my account - you can do this by going to the FAQ section on your FB page. I did this a few days ago, and after 14 days, 100% of my information is supposed to be gone, useless friends and all. I'll never go back.

And to those of you who don't return emails or phone calls because you're too busy being an attention whore on FB: screw you!

anonymous 5 months ago

If people want to keep in touch with family then use e-mail. It's not hard to e-mail pics. Do we all really think we are so important that everyone wants to see your vacation pics and know every stupid thing you do with family and friends. Seems to me people are so very lonely to join facebook and use keeping in touch as an excuse to cover that loneliness that and being so full of themselves thinking their lives are so important.

ava 5 months ago

i cant believe people are so addicted to facebook, its all you ever hear abour lately.

ea 4 months ago

I'm just about completely deleted from Facebook and it'll be a joyous day when it's official. I know it's a dinosaur but in my opinion MYSPACE was so much better. Now it seems all profile sites suck so let's just all go back to email, chat or how about a novel idea of getting out and meeting face to face? Good riddance Facebook.

mc588 4 months ago

i feel like facebook is threatening my private life.

izettl 4 months ago

This was totally funny. Does having a fb account really make anyone more interested in another person's life or more interested in their own life that they post on their page? I just wrote a similar type of hub, but after I saw the movie "The Social Network". I've never really liked fb.

Gypsy Willow 4 months ago

So funny! A definite love hate relationship but I am addicted and a grandma, I am one sick addict. How do you get off this nightmare time waster. (Cue for a new hub!) Glad you have made a success of hubpages. I earned $38 in a year and got banned for TOS violation so I'm glad you made it. Good luck with your new degrees.

Stan Fletcher 4 months ago

I was going to write this very hub, but you've done it for me. And a helluva' job you did, I must say. I too would like to just delete the whole darn thing out of my life. On the joy/pain scale, FB leans towards pain every time. At least for me. Great hub!

no1special 4 months ago

The down side of Facebook is that people who utilizes it way too much are "too needy". They hungrily want to be noticed and are longing and wanting attention. Constantly posting useless and adverse information in hopes to collect useless friends like merit badges while volunteering all their thoughts and idiosyncrasies. With Facebook and blogs, we don't have to read minds. There are way more creepy people on it than there are those who have the right intent.

Onomatopeic Marmot 4 months ago

Dude!

Great hub. I work at university in Western Europe. We have a computer room that is intended to use by students to work on their homework etc. At any given moment in time, you can pass through that room and you notice that 75% of people use FB, nothing more. I'm 30, work with technology. I understand the internet revolution and all that. But honestly, FB is the best indicator how our, modern society deteriorates day by day. Students become less and less focused on knowledge and more on social-networking. Everything seems to revolve around FB nowadays...

Effin' FB, I honestly detest everything it represents.

Anonymous 4 months ago

Very funny, I hate facebook too,especially some of the games like farmville which just try to scam you for money. I Deactivated my account ages ago because I loath facebook that much!

Nettuno Rayne 4 months ago

Got rid of it today, deleted all insificant fake friends who just use you to be popolar , I feel better now :), If I ever rejoin i'll add very few few few close friends or relatives,

Ed, Cambridge 4 months ago

I deleted all online profiles months ago. Facebook is hideously annoying. As if it wasn't time consuming enough for all these people but then they chat about it outside in the real world.

Marsha 4 months ago

You left out the biggest reason to hate FaceBook. I'm not a fan, I'm a friend. Don't direct me to your FB account if you have pix's to share; shoot me an e-mail instead. If we're not friends on that level, then I couldn't care less about your pix's. No, I don't remember playing tennis with you in highschool. In fact, I don't remember you at all because I've had something called "a life". You should get one.

If I want to know how someone is, I'll ask them. Its incredible how others will share w/ anyone the minutia of their boring, uneventful lives.

Frequent FB posters must have friends that number into the millions because, there isn't time for them to reach out individually to any of us little peeps.

Ratluver 4 months ago

I HATE facebook! Its stupid, waste of time, artifictial joy, false sense of belonging and completely pointless!

ADRIANA 4 months ago

I REALLY HATE IT. RIGHT NOW I HAVE SPENT 1 HOUR JUST TRYING TO DELETE A NOTE THAT I WROTE BY MISTAKE ON A GROPUP WALL IN FACEBOOK. SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE: I have followed FB instructions, but no way. then, I have tryed the FB help forum and it is amazing, but in NO place a found how to ask a question. I HATE, HATE, HATE this stupid website!!!!!!

Emma 4 months ago

Woohoo finally a video about hating facebook!!!!

I hate all the 25 things you hate Julian :)

George 4 months ago

Great read and totally agree. Joined facebook. Had a look around. Seemed very pretentious, and didn't really give me the sense that I was secure in anything I wrote. Ended up joining another site (onpin.com) simplified online networking at it's best.

Monica 4 months ago

OK. Aside from horrible tense in grammar, Stan is right. Also, it's fair to say FB brings out the WORST in us, socially speaking. I normally don't give a fuck what people think of how I speak, dress, etc. But somehow I felt entitled, with FB, to write, like, EVERY thought that came to my head...AND WANT to irritate people!! MADDENING!! FB suicide....best thing I ever did.

jenn 4 months ago

i hate facebook...i dont get the hype..its a way for socially retarded people to sit on a computer and advertise everything their boring selves are doing 24/7...and make it seem exciting-- effing losers seriously...this society is so pathetic..facebook is a tribute to stupidity...and people's idiocy...i hate it...these idiots live on it..they freak out if u delete them...what is wrong with the sheep of this society...dont they ever learn...from tehir idiotic ways...

New Rourke City 4 months ago

dinosaur is a dinosaur! everybody loves a dinosaur! Mickey Rourke supreme emporor and dictator of the world! He will win 2012

Xenofexx 3 months ago

Can't believe we're slaves to this system:

http://s1083.photobucket.com/albums/j384/xenofexx/

ja'got Kharcotta 3 months ago

Im new to fb so Im learning as I go along. My problem with FB is that when you write someone a message they can easily misinterpret what you meant for good even though you meant no harm. I wanted to talk with someone I had'nt heard from in 7 years so I FB the individual 5 or 6 messages. They were pissed at me for doing so and threatend to have my fb account terminated if I contacted them again and even had me blocked. Another case was back in the 1990's I had a crush on my cousins friend, at the time I didn't have the courage to tell them that. Years later I FB them they left me a nasty letter about me introducing myself to them, I even explained that we met at my cousins apt years prior it made no difference. People can be very mean on fb and it is not necessary. A simple yes its okay to contact me or please do not contact me would suffice.

debbiesdailyviews 3 months ago

O-M-G

I'm so HAPPY !!!!!

I now have a great excuse to RANT !!!!

I know, or should I say KNEW ! someone ( as I have exercised my 3 strikes, and your out ) who uses FACEBOOK to cyber bully people.

And she's a grown WOMAN ARGGGHHHHH OMG I am so ashmed that I knew her...

Her whole day center's around facebook shite !

She uses it like a drinker with a problem put's a drink first and foremost .

Pathetic, horrid creature, who is nothing without her facebook.

In reality she wouldn't say BOO to a goose !, and without it, she has nothing to say.

Thank you Thank you Thank you !

I feel soooooo much better now.

Great Hub, as usual, I love your Hubs

MORE please !!

zee 3 months ago

i deleted my fb recently...best thing ive ever done!!

Steve 3 months ago

I recently deactivated my facebook account. I had people making comments on gossip applications, plus I was coming in drunk giving away too much information. It's not a good thing glad I'm out of it.

diana 3 months ago

i hate that i'm not on facebook and my friends take and post pictures of events with me i rather keep between us and/or they'll post pics of me that they think are funny but i think are awful and i have no say whatsoever

AutumnLockwood 3 months ago

interesting hub!

Unknown 3 months ago

I fucking hate facebook as well ! Thank god i found this site to express my self, to me facebook is like a god damn disease ! Everytime i even look at it i feel like vomiting. Its so fucking artificial, half the friends you have are not even real life friends. If there's something you enjoy and all of sudden a young spoiled brat posts it on facebook, all of his/hers friends all of a sudden like it as well ! And you completely lose the interest in it. People post pictures of themselves taking a shit. Whatever picture they have they post. And even people you don't know ask you to be friends, just because they know someone you know. People post whatever they can on their walls. Like "i lost a tooth" and everybody feels sorry. WTF ?! People are dying across the world, and your tooth gets a 100 comment. Omg, and everybody has to announce how happy they are ! Aaaargh. Facebook is a complete waste of time and human intelligence. Android phones and Iphones have made it all worse, now people can gain access to their facebook profile from wherever they are. I really hope from the bottom of my heart that some group of elite hackers break facebook down. More people will mourn then on the day Michael Jackson died (R.I.P) The day facebook dies i will buy a cake and some balloons and

get drunk and celebrate. Can't wait

DIE FACEBOOK DIE !

hatebookguy 3 months ago

Facebook is for losers have nothing to do with their lives! I refuse to ever have 1

Arthur 3 months ago

It is not facebook you idiots, it's faceshit.

Facebook Hater 3 months ago

Why is it that you surf the net and after I joined facebook

all these people from facebook likes that site every page

you surf WTF Who cares if they like it or not!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arthur 3 months ago

There should be specifically made website named : ihatefacebook and people who hate facebook, join the cause - Hating facebook...or faceshit in that case.

Facecrap does not have any privacy etc etc etc.

adolf hitler 3 months ago

too many jews on facebook

Maddy alias Matty 3 months ago

Thaks Raynkett,

I typed 'Why to hate Facebook' in google and your's blog is first in search.

I sucessfully deleated my five facebook accounts today. Yes i deleated not just deactivated. You can see how much people spent time with just one account, then you know how much i waste on five accounts. So i decided to change, and deleated it 15 days ago. Now i am no more a facebooker. It feels a lot of freedom now.

b n 3 months ago

Absolutely loved your article. Thank you for pointing out all of the annoyances, especially the 'Notifications' one. I could have written it myself. I will admit, I am guilty as I used to have an account, but left this past summer for good. The only thing frustrating is that my best friend on the other coast posts up pics...but only on there so I can't see them. Which leads me to think, what kind of best friend is that?

John Mollman 3 months ago

This is so true! I agree with everything about the video. How about the person you don't know who adds you. You send them a hello asking who they are and they get weirded out and not talk (or use short talk). Facebook is becoming more and more of a waste of time. You log on and have no requests, so you surf other people's profiles wasting time when you could be studying.

Or the people who post a status update like "dogs :)" and they get about 13 likes and 25 comments on that one word. Do people have that much time on their hands?

Brian Priest 2 months ago

I concur, facebook sux and its taking over the web.

Constant updates on mundane things people are doing, who gives a flying fornication? Get a life fakebook fruits! Reality shows arent' much better, how can it be reality when every one knows the camera is rolling? What kind of brainless nimkapoots have we become?

Dee 2 months ago

Facebook can be good and it can be bad..I just dont like the fact that if you go to a friends page, it will show if there mutual friends are friends of yours as well! I don't like that, it can cause drama and cause a lot of people to get caught up!If you are engaged or married, I would not suggest creating a Facebook page, I have seen so many people break up over this.. It is kool to reconnect with a lot of people I lost contact with over the years, but some people go to overboard, it is like they have no life and they post random shit like every hour! I just shake my head, some folks just need to get a life..I do have a page but I don't go overboard with it like most people, and I am single, so it is kool...

Technokat 2 months ago

You can find online farming games WITHOUT joining Facebook. I already am a member of two of them--and I don't have to deal with the FB garbage.

BookyBeka 2 months ago

Hey Ryan!

Wow I did not realize how many people actually dislike Facebook, but I am glad to find people who have logic. I loved your Hub because you keep it proper, clean, and humbly true. You make great points without hurting someone's feelings and that shows how effective a writer you are! I myself posted a Hub on my reasons.(most mentioned, but maybe 1 or 2 others.)I on the other hand, am a bit ruthless when I vocally express my utter loathing for the site! I feel like I will like Hubpages because one can write in formal sentences and not feel strange for doing so (in the sake of wanting to be clear!)

~Rebecca

Cristy Vandenhende 2 months ago

I pretty much fucking hate facebook too. I was on it for a very short time, and at first thought it looked ok. Then I started getting all these farmland or what ever the hell it is......like "jerry just watered your withering corn crop" and I finally had to delete the people who played these games, cuz they started to take up the whole page. Next, I contact an old "sorta friend" from middle school and 'snap' they don't remember me....um k, fine. Then I start to post a few things that I am doing....no one responds. Then I contact a couple more friends and some of them start to bug me TOO much, (just the opposite of the "I don't remember you incident" SO what do you do then? I mean YOU are the one who contacted THEM! NOW they are buggin the shit out of you and asking you, NO demanding to know personal accounts of the last 19 years of your life, that you don't want to divulge. Especially online. THEN, all the ads. Plus, and lastly, I felt that a lot of people were on facebook to see who could get the biggest list of "friends"....I began to think I spending a bit too much time on facebook too. DOING NOTHING!!

So I deleted the damn thing. If you know about facebook, you know you can "undelete" your account at any time. Which is what I do occasionally to look up someone and check out their pics, or what ever , and I message them in private. Most the time I get a response and then I give them my personal email or phone number so we can talk in private.....that is how I now use facebook....basically hardly ever..ANNOYING AND A WASTE OF TIME!!

kh2master 2 months ago

i hate facebook too, i dont kow y everyone likes it so much. no, i dont blame the creator. i dont like how people treated me on facebook, but really badly. just because i made one for my cats, a lot of people hate me now. i'm sick and tired of repetitive blocking and deleting me as a friend for no or stupid reasons. yes i had been cyberbullied another reason. pretty much its a waste of time plus its addicive

Abi 2 months ago

Facebook is horrable. My best friend got it and now she is completly ignoreing me. DON'T GET FACEBOOK. please. who's with me. Its completly devistating what people do on it. BRAG.. BRAG.. and let me think.

BRAG.

dont go on facebook get windows live instead. it's way more safe, and fun. Trust Me. The dude/girl who wrote this is TOTALY right.

Geraint Real 2 months ago

I hate Facebook. It has completely ruined my life. If it hadn't been for this utter piece of shit then i would never have got to this point in my life. Met a girl on one of the applications made for facebook and i have regretted that every day since. Had 2 children with her in an on off relationship over the last 2 and three quarter years, and now she has met someone else off facebook and is refusing me any access to my children because she thinks this new guy is more father material.

Had it not been for Facebook i would never have met this parasitic woman who has used me and bled me dry for almost 3 years of my life. Fuck you facebook.

Hashim 8 weeks ago

facebook is a piece of shit because i joined to reunited all of my friends i used to go to school with and somehow, i get a message from facebook and they temporary blocked me from adding friends for 4 days. the last time was 2 days because some stupid idiot reported on me that they think ia am spamming them which i am not. i only add friend to make networking. cuz i wanna get to know them. but hell, they dont even wanna be my friend cuz they are fakers and bullshit. but that's alright because one day when i get my account reactivated, and if anyone adds me as a friend and if i dont know that person, i will turn that around and block that motherfucker cuz they did the same thing to me.. i will get my revenge and they will get the taste of this from me! facebook should be doomed forever!!!

Gareth Wills 8 weeks ago

A couple of years ago, as a joke, my friends posted on my facebook that I was dead and left all the relevant reply's and such so it looked authentic. A couple of days later my Niece who is 20 and should know better thought that this was a true story and proceeded to tell the rest of my family thinking that my parents must have just forgotten to tell her or something. This caused a lot of problems and soon I had the whole family ringing to find out if it were true. Then she had the cheek to confront me about it and blame the whole incident on me. This is why i hate facebook and i never use it anymore. I would rather meet up with friends or women in real life. Doing it over the internet shows no sociable skill and if we were to all do the same i can see the human race becoming so dumb that they will believe anything they're told over the internet. Look at wikipedia for example nothing written on there can be claimed as factual so why should anything else.

Stina 8 weeks ago

Aside from everything I have read thus far including friends, old family members etc...

As blunt as I always am, the reason I hate Facebook is because there are billionaires out there getting richer and richer with my life. Why can't I get rich with my life?

Sometimes ignorant people don't understand that every little thing you write and every little thing you click is being used by them to sell information to do advertising. If they know that 1 million women in Orlando likes starburst, you will see an advertisement about starburst in webpages of people who say they live in Orlando.

You are filling out a daily survey without knowing it and I know how much I love surveys because I have to administer for a living!

The sad part is that because of this stupid website children have been raped, people have been murdered, and families have been destroyed. Then people ask themselves: why me????

Julie 8 weeks ago

Im 22 and dont have facebook. I really can't be bothered. I did have myspace but deleted it as it took too much of my time.

Most people I meet always ask if im on there. Get in the real world and talk to people in person, call, email etc.. And as for taking pictures I like to put them in a photo album so I can look back at them when im older.

Lie is just missing a "k". 7 weeks ago

A lot like to lie. Like is like a lie! We don't have human friends. It only seems like we do. Too many don't wanna realize that. Ego friends are often truth's and virtue's enemies! I don't have to seem normal or positive to really be! You just seem like you are. that's the materialistrick. Trickstar..

I Hate Illusins!! 7 weeks ago

Long before the internet who really ever had a friend? Who's honest here? Actually, what u had for breakfast is what a lot care about. time u go to work. time u woke up (tho u never really did). lol. how cold or warm the weather is. classic songs. who won the game. happy birthday (which is false to the Day of Judgment). etc.. something to really think about. Shallow or small talk is materialistic!! u just highly contradicted your care for things if that's all you want. All people wanna talk about is material (personal) likings. Those cannot be real friends or real people. People contradict most when they don't care to respect or talk about intellectual (virtuous, spiritual) things. That's the same as talkin to some dumb ass person or fake friend who you may actually like. It's the same thing. Nothin different. It's actually worse! That's the core of all sickness and bullsht! The real problem is vanity (self-interests), idolatry, and denial of truth and virtue! Materialistic (hedonistic) thinking! thats why so many are deceiving. They just claim they're only innocent!.. Whether or not proven guilty..

P.S. Accept me cause of sincerity; not personal liking! Reject me cause of vanity; not personal disliking! Otherwise there's no real good reason to! Nor real friend or enemy to have. Stop deceiving you sick biches!!

Richard Williams 7 weeks ago

I honestly don't know how it happened. Maybe because I was working as a freelance writer and thought it would be a good networking tool, but joining Facebook is easily one of the most asinine things I have ever done.

Of my 60 or so friends, I count maybe 5 as close friends.

I have tried conducting a long distance relationship with a girl I met whilst travelling on FB, only to see it as a tool to pry into her apparently man-filled life (I don't know if that is a good thing or bad).

I feel I have had to give up too much personal information to the site, which is completely irrelevant to the "social" side of social networking and in the end does anyone use FB as an networking tool?

Truth be told, I get less out of the information I receive in updates from "friends" than companies who dredge Facebook for marketing purposes while others just use it as a means of creating an online persona completely the opposite of their real life, sat behind their laptop on Facebook, selves.

Does anybody actually have 500 freinds that they have to hear from all the time? Do some people just accept anybody on their Facebook as a means of obtaining self esteem? That's almost sadder than having no self esteem to begin with.

At least MySpace was a good place to go trawling for obscure bands.

Cristy Vandenhende 7 weeks ago

Yes, Richard...ALOT of people accept just anybody on their Facebook. You know why? Because they want to look "big" ....for some people it is a contest to see how many "friends" they can get.

Also, I bet Facebook goes under real soon...ok maybe not gone completely, but I would imagin highschool and college kids are fleeing in droves. Why? Because their MOM and/or DAD gives them a friend request....they know they have to accept it. of course! Then they stop posting the stuff they used to post....like stuff about ..bongs, passing out, and people they are hooking up with..LOL

FB won't last for the younger crowd. Actually, it is my opinion that some younger people went to Facebook...and stopped using their My Space accounts...because their PARENTS were on it ...I mean people, if you are past 40 you just look dumb posting "sexy" pics of yourself...and you embarrass your kids.

Emma 7 weeks ago

I just deleted my facebook account why because too much of you life is on display for the world. you get requests from ppl you dont know and about 95% of you "friends" are mere aquiatances who you ever hardly see yet chat online.

Noely 6 weeks ago

Facebook= 500 pictures of some girls night out...etc...so annoying I hate Facebook and I am never using it again. It really is a cop out and daunting at how fake plastic and phoney it is, I can see why some folks like it, but not me. I also have no desire to pictures of my ex girlfriends new boyfriends.. The whole thing annoys me.

Josh from Mexico 6 weeks ago

I really hate the facebook people, here in Mexico we have a lot of problems like discrimination... Facebook only increase the egoism and make the people beleive their better than others like if their were famous or something.

I don't know but L think the real relationship with the world must be personal, in real life not just in a computer.

Sorry about my english...

I hate facebook and I would give my life to eliminate it

Fred 6 weeks ago

It's nice to know that there are other people out there who feel the same as i do.

But we should remember that FB is a tool used by people. Most of the negative experiences commented on here are the result of action by people, and our interpretation of those actions.

Good or bad, FB shines a light on how individuals can behave, however distorted by FB it seems.

If you use it, and get something out of it, then fair play to you. Otherwise, i'll pass thanks.

PaulLCN 6 weeks ago

With growing popularity of Facebook. Its never been important before for parents and elders to keep safe their kids on Facebook. There are plenty of ways where your kids can be part of something that isn’t good and even they can effect them in future when they start their practical life.

OLLIE (UK) 5 weeks ago

I HATE FACEBOOK!!!

All my friends have it and they keep asking me to make an account but the simple fact is this... NEVER made one and NEVER WILL!!!

Zara 5 weeks ago

Facebook also kicks you off without a valid reason I had a former name on facebook and legally getting my name changed as of monday and facebook decided it isnt my real name. Ive seen some weird names on facebook, also there is no warning on disabling your profile i think its disgusting!!!!!

Ruth 5 weeks ago

People use FB to keep in touch with family and friends! What a joke! Remember the phone! Remember the pen and paper! FB is for people who don't want to really talk to people, they just want to be nosey and find out stuff about them. It's sad.

Ranzi 5 weeks ago

I was a facebook addict. Checking one status update and five hours later finding myself in a heated debate on a friend's wall. Neglecting my studies, cleaning and most important my novel that I was supposed to be editing. Well today I deactivated my account and I feel like the shackles of addiction have been taken off.

Jonas Valero 5 weeks ago

Facebook is getting on my nerves, one classmate convincing me to be in it! NO, NEVER! In my opinion, you are just talking about unimportant bullshit, looking at static, exposing your privacy,and never face to face-heart to heart, down to earth conversions. Oh, should I add that 90% of my class uses Facebook?! It's proof this world is going down, I am slowly losing faith in humanity.

bleh 5 weeks ago

I joined FB because of peer pressure, I admire the few who are able to resist the pressure until the end :)

kk 4 weeks ago

Love it

kk 4 weeks ago

The post I meant not Facebook, also called it a day bye bye FB

dude 4 weeks ago

i hate hate hate it too. twitter is better

TylerVega 4 weeks ago

im still pretty convinced that i am

the only person left on earth

who has yet to EVER make a facebook

account

i guess i just gave up on sn's

after myspace's got ran out ha

Z 4 weeks ago

we should make an anti-facebook group.

Jane 3 weeks ago

This video is the best i've seen about facebook critics, so far.

I admire those who resist stay away from the social network!

Now seriously, i have fb account and when i log in just to play some game (or just for the hell of logging in, as most of the times), and then suddenly i start to read the first wall post in home page bla bla bla,,, ok, scroll down, i keep on reading, bla bla, and when i realise i slap myself because omg, i'm reading all this cr*p they posted, It feels like voyer or something and i go back to what i actually was about to do there when i logged:

"Susan broke my blueberry phone, god damn her but she's so sweet, you naughty girl!"

"My kids are having bath, it's justin's first day school and he is so excited!"

"OMG, It's FRIDAY!!" - Like i wouldn't know...

"just came back from a 48 hour super party and had _SO MUCH FUN_!" - followed from 20 pictures with all the same face/expression.

And much more as you well know.

Really, fb "invites" to the act of "voyerism" and narcissism from the ones who post (and overpost).

corwin 3 weeks ago

Then there's the questions or kisses or games or apps requests that sit there on the left taunting you because they have a number by them. FB knows that we're conditioned to do something about them.

Then, when you click on it, it's over, there's no freaking way to end the damn process!

If I accept a kiss for example, you then get a request for permission. If you "allow" it, you then are faced with the kind of kiss and whether or not to accept. Then you have to answer if you want to post it to your wall!

If you say "skip" then you have to write a thank you note! And even if you cancel it keeps you in the same damn app!

Then there's the "View your matches" which only has a yes or a next button, so it just hangs there until you either do something or scream at the screen how much you !@#$%&! hate Facebook!!!!!

Aaaargh!

sylvia burres 2 weeks ago

Un poco de cine

2011-03-01T22:51:00.005+01:00

Hace tiempo que Chulo y yo disfrutamos de las críticas de Carlos Boyero. Disfruto viendo que hay alguien que ve las cosas de la misma forma que yo, alguien con que casi siempre coincido; a veces siendo más que una crítica de una película, termina siendo un ejercicio de consuelo metafísico.

Irreprochable discurso real, pero sin valor de ley

El País, 1 marzo 2011

Ves una figura que avanza por el escenario renqueando y ayudado por un bastón, pero con una energía que te resulta familiar. Cuando observas su maquillado y operado rostro tienes la sensación de que todo en él es una máscara excesiva o que es el abuelo del doctor Spock. En la primera fila de invitados hay un señor con pinta espléndida que se levanta como un resorte al ver a ese anciano y le aplaude con gesto emocionado, con la veneración y el tributo de un alumno aventajado a un maestro de primera clase. El homenajeador se llama Jeff Bridges, ese señor tan atractivo como actor magistral. Y el desinhibido viejo es Issur Danielovich Demsky, el hijo del trapero, alias Kirk Douglas, una de las mejores cosas que le han ocurrido a la interpretación en el cine. Douglas ha sobrevivido a una parálisis devastadora, tiene 95 años, pero solo necesita su intacta personalidad y su estilo para ignorar el guión que debe recitar, para vacilar con gracia a la modosita Anne Hathaway y a las impacientes actrices a las que debe entregar un Oscar, para crear espectáculo en un escenario en el que casi todo va a ser aséptico o soporífero.

El otro momento de la gala que ayuda a despertarse es la presencia, desgraciadamente breve aunque hipnótica, de Billy Cristal, el conductor más divertido e ingenioso que han tenido nunca los Oscar. El resto es fatigoso o previsible, incluida la sosería de James Franco y la esforzada simpatía de Anne Hathaway, por muchas entrañables y complacidas abuelas y madres que nos presenten entre el distinguido público.

Mi consciente o mi subconsciente me aseguraba que algo muy agradecible en esta fiesta sería que el humano pero también pesadísimo capítulo de dedicatorias iba a ser leve, disponía por ley de un tiempo mínimo que si era sobrepasado hacía que sonara la alarma, pero en esta ocasión la mayoría de los premiados desdeñó esa ley tan razonable con la paciencia de los espectadores.

Actrices que amo como Melissa Leo y Natalie Portman, mujeres que interpretan con la mayor sobriedad, que se expresan inmejorablemente con sus ojos, sus manos, su cuerpo, se soltaron un rollo inacabable al recibir sus muy justos galardones. Esa locuacidad expresiva se le contagió hasta al enigmático Aaron Sorkin, una afilada, inteligente, y anfetamínica metralleta verbal escribiendo guiones, pero al que en público me lo imaginaba como un hombre sobrio y secreto. Las escuetas palabras de Charles Ferguson, codirector del premiado documental Inside Job, que al parecer describe los mecanismos de esa barbarie financiera que están pagando los inocentes, al asegurar que ninguno de los responsables de aquel excesivo robo está en el trullo, fue la dedicatoria más lúcida e inaplazable de la noche. El coro final, tan meloso él, con infinitas criaturas multirraciales cantando Over the rainbow, puso la indeseable guinda de una ceremonia olvidable.

¿Y los premios? Sin sorpresas, al sagrado gusto del público, otorgando la parte del león a una película tan irreprochable como El discurso del rey, y despreciando la grandeza, la poética sombría, la complejidad, el renovado clasicismo de esa obra maestra de los hermanos Coen titulada Valor de ley, o los humanísimos y geniales dibujos animados que te alegran el corazón y te hacen sufrir por su destino en la maravillosa Toy Story 3.

Nada que objetar a los premios técnicos que le cayeron a la inentendible estupidez Origen, pero sentías temblores ante la posibilidad de que ese reconocimiento se alargara a otras supuestas artes. También pilló estatuillas La red social, ese retrato modélico de personajes que me repugnan, de los aviesos niñatos cuya intuición está cambiando el mundo, de gente a la que no deseo tratar ni en el cine ni en la vida. Christian Bale, ese actor que huele a Método, está perfecto haciendo de exboxeador yonqui y desquiciado en la excelente The Fighter, y tardas un rato en reconocer que es la camaleónica y admirable actriz Melissa Leo la que está interpretando a su temible y vampírica madre.

Nathalie Portman ha sido desde cría una actriz superdotada que también te puede enamorar. Resulta difícil no admirar el talento y la sutileza de Colin Firth en una gama muy variada de personajes. Pero les ha tenido que caer el anhelado Oscar (¿cómo no?) por interpretar a una esquizofrénica y a un tartamudo. Las taras físicas y mentales son fundamentales para que el Oscar bendiga una interpretación. Debido a ello, Cary Grant y John Wayne siempre lo tendrían crudo para acumular estatuillas.

El discurso del rey está brillantemente concebida, escrita e interpretada (el mérito de Geoffrey Rush dando vida al logopeda es comparable o superior al de Colin Firth), pero la dirección del laureado Tom Hooper se limita a la eficacia sabiendo combinar tantos atractivos. También le sobran demasiados y efectistas angulares. No es justo que les haya levantado el premio a la mejor dirección a los cada vez menos posmodernos y más sabios hermanos Coen. Valor de ley mantendrá su dureza, su encanto, su tristeza, su humor, su emoción y su lírica cuando exija trabajo recordar algunos Oscar de esta edición.

Mis comentarios:

- a mí también me da un poco de repelús esta generación Facebook/Twitter, y desde luego no iría a ver "La Red Social". Por otro lado, creo que están cambiando el mundo para bien. Es un poco difícil de explicar, pero creo que me entendéis. En los años ochenta, pre Internet y pre Facebook, las empresas nos explotaban, no teníamos acceso a información, no sabíamos nada. Todo eso ha cambiado.

- Estoy de acuerdo sobre "Origen" (Inception). La empecé a ver y me pareció bastante aburrida. No necesitaba crear un mundo tan grande para explicar algo tan simple como alterar sueños. Habria sido mejor hacerlo con unos pocos personajes, como en "Memento". Y además no tiene mucho sentido ser un "arquitecto" de sueños, si el paisaje de los sueños cambia todo el tiempo. Los sueños son surrealistas. Me quedo con la primera entrega de "Matrix", que tiene más sentido.

- No he visto "Valor de Ley" pero no soy un gran fan de los Cohen, creo que están sobrevalorados. Muchas de sus películas no tienen una estructura narrativa coherente, p.e. "Barton Fink" o "El Gran Lebowski", aunque siempre tienen imagenes potentes e impactantes. No me gustó el final de "No es un país para viejos" por ejemplo, no es un final digno para la película, no se resuelve la historia. Leí que lo hermanos Cohen estaban muy emocionados con como la gente receibía su última película, les decían que era la mejor de todas. ¿Será casualidad que es un remake y la estructura narrativa ya existía?

Anywhere out of the world

2011-02-11T17:11:00.003+01:00

Listening to the song by Dead Can Dance (from the excellent album In the Realm of a Dying Sun), I checked its interesting lyrics on Google and found that it refers back to Baudelaire's poem with the same title.

Dead can Dance:

We scaled the face of reason
To find at least one sign
That could reveal the true dimensions
Of life lest we forget

And maybe it's easier to withdraw from life
With all of it's misery and wretched lies
Away from harm

We lay by cool still waters
And gazed into the sun
And like the moth's great imperfection
Succumbed to her fatal charm

Any maybe it's me who dreams unrequited love
The victim of fools who watch and stand in line
Away from harm

In our vain pursuit of life for one's own end
Will this crooked path ever cease to end

Baudelaire's poem (French):

Cette vie est un hôpital où chaque malade est possédé du désir de changer de lit. Celui-ci voudrait souffrir en face du poële, et celui-là croit qu'il guérirait à côté de la fenêtre.

Il me semble que je serais toujours bien là où je ne suis pas, et cette question de déménagement en est une que je discute sans cesse avec mon âme.

«Dis-moi, mon âme, pauvre âme refroidie, que penserais-tu d'aller d'habiter Lisbonne? Il doit y faire chaud, et tu t'y ragaillardirais comme un lézard. Cette ville est au bord de l'eau; on dit qu'elle est bâtie en marbre, et que le peuple y a une telle haine du végétal, qu'il arrache tous les arbres. Voilà un paysage selon ton goût; un paysage fait avec la lumière et le minéral, et le liquide pour les réfléchir!»

Mon âme ne répond pas.

«Puisque tu aimes tant le repos, avec le spectacle du mouvement, veux-tu venir habiter la Hollande, cette terre béatifiante? Peut-être te divertiras-tu dans cette contrée dont tu as souvent admiré l'image dans les musées. Que penserais-tu de Rotterdam, toi qui aimes les forêts de mâts, et les navires amarrés au pied des maisons?»

Mon âme reste muette.

«Batavia te sourirait peut-être davantage? Nous y trouverions d'ailleurs l'esprit de l'Europe marié à la beauté tropicale.»

Pas un mot. -- Mon âme serait-elle morte?

En es-tu donc venue à ce point d'engourdissement que tu ne te plaises que dans ton mal? S'il en est ainsi, fuyons vers les pays qui sont les analogies de la Mort. -- Je tiens notre affaire, pauvre âme! Nous ferons nos malles pour Tornéo. Allons plus loin encore, à l'extrême bout de la Baltique; encore plus loin de la vie, si c'est possible; installons-nous au pôle. Là le soleil ne frise qu'obliquement la terre, et les lentes alternatives de la lumière et de la nuit suppriment la variété et augmentent la monotonie, cette moitié du néant. Là, nous pourrons prendre de longs bains de ténèbres, cependant que, pour nous divertir, les aurores boréales nous enverront de temps en temps leurs gerbes roses, comme des reflets d'un feu d'artifice de l'Enfer!»

Enfin, mon âme fait explosion, et sagement elle me crie: «N'importe où! n'importe où! pourvu que ce soit hors de ce monde!

(In English)

This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds. One wants to suffer in front of the stove and another believes that he will get well near the window.

It always seems to me that I will be better off there where I am not, and this question of moving about is one that I discuss endlessly with my soul

"Tell me, my soul, my poor chilled soul, what would you think about going to live in Lisbon? It must be warm there, and you'll be able to soak up the sun like a lizard there. That city is on the shore; they say that it is built all out of marble, and that the people there have such a hatred of the vegetable, that they tear down all the trees. There's a country after your own heart -- a landscape made out of light and mineral, and liquid to reflect them!"

My soul does not reply.

"Because you love rest so much, combined with the spectacle of movement, do you want to come and live in Holland, that beatifying land? Perhaps you will be entertained in that country whose image you have so often admired in museums. What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts and ships anchored at the foot of houses?"

My soul remains mute.

"Does Batavia please you more, perhaps? There we would find, after all, the European spirit married to tropical beauty."

Not a word. -- Is my soul dead?

Have you then reached such a degree of torpor that you are only happy with your illness? If that's the case, let us flee toward lands that are the analogies of Death. -- I've got it, poor soul! We'll pack our bags for Torneo. Let's go even further, to the far end of the Baltic. Even further from life if that is possible: let's go live at the pole. There the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness suppresses variety and augments monotony, that half of nothingness. There we could take long baths in the shadows, while, to entertain us, the aurora borealis send us from time to time its pink sheaf of sparkling light, like the reflection of fireworks in Hell!"

Finally, my soul explodes, and wisely she shrieks at me: "It doesn't matter where! It doesn't matter where! As long as it's out of this world!"

And thinking back to a book of short stories by Antonio Tabbuchi entiotled "Little Misunderstandings of No Importance" it realised that one of the stories has this same title - the story is set in Lisbon, which is the first place Baudelaire mentions for anyone who would like to "get out of the world".

"Windfall" by Dead Can Dance (another song from the same album)

Porta XIII: Associaçao Poética de todas as artes

2011-01-30T20:54:00.004+01:00

He descubierto en café/taller de poesía / librería aquí en el pueblo, enfrente de Caixa Geral de Depósitos. Es una asociación de poetas, antes se juntaban para hacer tertulias en el Convento Sanpayo (que tiene su propio museo, exposiciones y jardines, y donde hay muchas esculturas de José Rodrigues). Ya lo sabéis: Vilanova de Cerveira es "a vila da arte e natureza".

“Visto que não havia porta treze…
No princípio eram umas tertúlias no Convento de San Payo do Monte sobranceiro à vila de Cerveira e ao rio Minho de onde, em dias límpidos, quase se avista o Brasil para lá das montanhas da Galiza…
… e meses mais tarde, no regresso de uma dessas tertúlias, já na vila, descendo a Rua Queirós Ribeiro frente à antiga Livraria Luís Pedro (que informalmente funcionava de «centro cultural» desde a sua fundação em 1960), se viu que faltava a porta 13 em sua fachada. Da sorridente observação às suas simpáticas proprietárias nasceu o nome para uma – logo ali perfilhada – tertúlia, ou o que quer que fosse, que celebrasse a poesia como a mais alta expressão da arte literária!
E se ajuntou um grupo de doze fiéis discípulos de Camões, o Luís Vaz, que decidiu formar uma associação com esse fim único de convívio poético. De todo o mundo com a poesia. E da poesia com todo o mundo. De todo o mundo e ninguém, como manda a tradição literária, poética. Que todo o mundo diz a querer amar e ninguém diz que a vai trair.
O futuro falará, só pela voz das nossas acções.
Porta Treze, a nossa associação, rigorosamente cultural para fins de solidariedade social, está aberta a todos quantos a queiram e em celebração da poesia da língua portuguesa.

Só isto: a poesia – que é a nossa vida; a língua portuguesa – que é a alma que essa vida guarda.”

- Luandino Vieira

Chulo y las redes sociales / Merry Christmas from Chulo

2010-12-20T20:52:00.005+01:00

Ahora estamos en pleno invierno en o Baixo Miño, y la verdad es que estos días está haciendo un tiempo horroroso. Está lloviendo día y noche, y está muy oscuro todo, muy cubierto, creo que no he visto el sol en tres días. Muchas veces - y sin alarde de ser pretencioso - cuando oigo el grajo me vienen a la mente algunas líneas de MacBeth o King Lear, y la forma de tiene Shakespeare de describir aquellos paisajes de invierno, pienso en la locura de Lear o la maldad de lady Macbeth, la muerte de Duncan, la ceguera de Gloucester, y todo el tiempo el fondeo de los grajos, los bosques, el frío. Es en esto momentos cuando se agradece el tener un buen amigo cerca, un buen amigo que te quita ese frío que tienes en el corazón, te hace reir...también se agradece el tener un amigo sincero, sin pelos en la lengua, que te diga las cosas como realmente son. Un buen amigo como puede ser Chulo, por ejemplo. Un gato que es como es, que efectivamente te hace reir, que tiene muchas historias que contar, y que ha recorrido medio España, desde Bulla, su lugar de nacimiento, (Murcia), pasando por Badajoz, Madrid, para terminar en el Baixo Miño, un gato que ha aceptado las arbitrariedades que la vida tenía reservado para él, sin rechistar...un buen amigo, que te ve las cosas positivas de la vida en momentos como estos.

Claro está que Chulo tiene sus defectos (como os he comentado), como cualquiera. En un principio, por ejemplo, no me hizo mucha gracia el hecho que entró en mi casa furtivamente para robar comida de mi gata. No hace cosas semejantes ahora, ahora que somos amigos. Pero a veces se pone un poco borde con los otros animales de valle, y todo su chulería se saca a relucir. El otro día, por ejemplo, ví como se instaló dentro de la casita del perro de la vecina, y el pobre perro no tuvo valor para expulsarle, se quedó allí fuera mirando bajo la lluvia. Y todo esto porque la dueña de Chulo le habría dejado fuera de casa, según me explicó despues Chulo. Está claro que las leyes de la propiedad no van con Chulo.

Pero bueno, le considero un buen amigo. También me cae bien Chulo porque a pesar de que en el fondo es un gato callejero, barriobajero, que usa tacos, también sé que disfruta leyendo las críticas de Carlos Boyero en El Pais, y otras cosas. Pasó varios años en Madrid durante la etapa de la movida y le marcaron. Tiene un buen criterio para el cine, aunque no va de cultureta ni gafapastas ni nada de eso.

Yendo un poco al grano, estamos hablando de una crítica de Carlos Boyero el otro día, ahora no recuerdo que película era. Durante la conversación, salió el tema de "las redes sociales" (por la película que ha salido, pero nosotros hablamos de otra), Chulo me preguntó qué era esto de las "redes sociales". Entonces le empiezo a explicar esto de Facebook, y un poco sobre Twitter, y Chulo me escucha atentamente. Le explico que tus amigos te pueden añadir, que tú les puedes añadir a ellos, tú lees sus comentarios, sus gustos ("likes"), que hay gente que tiene miles de amigos, y gente que tiene diez o veinte. Le explico que entre la gente joven de ahora, de entre 15 hasta 25 años, por ejemplo - lo sé por mis sobrinos y sobrinas - lo normal es tener quizá doscientos o trescientos amigos. Mientras le cuento todo esto, pienso que es curioso que algunos de mis mejores amigos ni siquiera están en Facebook, ni quieren estar.

La reacción de Chulo no se hace esperar. Termindada mi explicación, con todo tipo de detalles sobre el funcionamiento de Facebook, donde yo entré más que nada para promicionar mi libro, su respuesta es la siguiente: "Todo esto es una puta mierda, amigo. Parece mentira que pierdas tiempo con semejantes chorradas. Es la mayor estupidez que he oído en mi vida."

Al oir sus palabras tan contundentes, es como que me sintiera liberado. En el fondo yo también pienso que es una estupidez...Nos quedamos los dos un buen rato ríendonos a carcajadas. Pues sí, vaya tontería, pienso, y pienso también, que Chulo es un amigo de verdad, no uno ficiticio. Un amigo que está cercano en días como estos, con este cielo tan gris.

Que conste que Chulo sigue siendo amigo de los blogs, es un fan de Inés y su blog, él manda un beso para ella. También dice que es un fan de mi amiga Lola, de Ferrol, le gusta mucho sus artículos en el Faro de Vigo, manda bicos para ella.

Chulo aprovecha para decir MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE!

Notes towards the devaluation of Woody Allen

2010-12-04T14:30:00.002+01:00

The Filmoteca in Madrid are putting on a season of Woody Allen films this month - as if we haven't seen so many seen any of his films already. I loved Play it Again Sam, Sleeper, Zelig, and many others, but didn't think so much of films liked The Jade Scorpion (in that fil, for example, I didn't even find any of his wisecracks that funny). The funny thing is that in the program they reprint parts of an article by Jonathan Rosenbaum entitled "Notes towards the devaluation of Woody Allen". Not a flattering article at all, which makes me wonder why they are putting on a season of Woody Allen in the first place. But I couldn't help agreeing with practically everything Rosenbaum says, such as the fact that Allen steals from Fellini and Bergman, but only from them, not from Rosellini or other lesser-known directors, for example. And also his observation that there is something extremely annoying about this cosy middle-class Jewish way of life, the class of people who subscribe to the opinions handed down from the New Yorker. Annoying, and repetitive. And I particularly like the observation, made before, that part of the magic of "Manhattan", is that it is a white, or jewish, Manhattan, with practically no blacks or Latinos.

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Notes Toward the Devaluation of Woody Allen

This appeared originally in the May-June 1990 issue of Tikkun, and was reprinted in my first collection, Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism, five years later. — J.R.

“Why are the French so crazy about Jerry Lewis?” is a recurring question posed by film buffs in the United States, but, sad to say, it is almost invariably asked rhetorically. When Dick Cavett tried it out several years ago on Jean-Luc Godard, one of Lewis’s biggest defenders, it quickly became apparent that Cavett had no interest in heating an answer, and he immediately changed the subject as soon as Godard began to provide one. Nevertheless it’s a question worth posing seriously, along with a few related ones — even at the risk of courting disbelief and giving offense.

Why are American intellectuals so contemptuous of Jerry Lewis and so crazy about Woody Allen? Apart from such obvious differences as the fact that Allen cites Kierkegaard and Lewis doesn’t, what is it that gives Allen such an exalted cultural status in this country, and Lewis virtually no cultural status at all? (Charlie Chaplin cited Schopenhauer in MONSIEUR VERDOUX, but surely that isn’t the reason why we continue to honor him.) If we agree that there’s more to intellectual legitimacy than name-dropping, what is it in Allen’s work as a comic Jewish writer-director-performer that earns him that legitimacy — a legitimacy that is denied to, among others, Elaine May and both Mel and Albert Brooks?

The issue isn’t simply one of respect, but one of identification and outright infatuation. The implication is that a good many of Allen’s fans view his comic persona in very much the same way that they like to view themselves. If movies in general owe much of their appeal to their capacity to function as Narcissus pools, offering glamorous and streamlined identification figures to authenticate our most treasured self-images, film comedy tends to heighten this tendency in physical terms, so that it would hardly be an exaggeration to state that how we respond to such figures as Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd, Jacques Taft, Lewis, and Allen has something to do with how we feel about our own bodies.

As a comic writer, Allen is easily the equal of Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and S. J. Perelman, and conceivably within hailing distance of James Thurber. As a performer, it is largely his lack of actorly presence — his badge of authenticity — that endears him to the world at large. His self-hatred and lack of physicality may make him an unlikely love object, yet nothing is more reassuring about his persona than the acute sense of failure that he brings to every activity, making every small victory, every flicker of warmth or hope into an inspirational triumph.

As a writer-performer-persona, he is probably as personal as it is possible for someone in his position to be. But as a director and filmmaker, even after nineteen features, he remains strangely unformed and unrealized — not a creator of forms or even a distinctive stylist who can exist independently of his models. This can be seen not only in his use of Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman’s cinematographer, on several of his pictures (usually to create a clinically antiseptic look that evokes Scandinavian seriousness), but also in the visible derivations of Bergman’s CRIES AND WHISPERS in INTERIORS, SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S SEX COMEDY, and WILD STRAWBERRIES in ANOTHER WOMAN; of Fellini’s 8 1/2 in STARDUST MEMORIES and AMARCORD in RADIO DAYS; and of Fellini’s episode in BOCCACCIO ‘70 in Allen’s episode (OEDIPUS WRECKS) in NEW YORK STORIES, among other examples. Even in ZELIG, one of his more original conceptions, the periodic statements by Jewish intellectuals playing themselves — Saul Bellow, Bruno Bettelheim, Irving Howe, Susan Sontag — are used in a way that makes them clearly indebted to the statements of the “witnesses” in Warren Beatty’s REDS, which was released two years earlier. (The validation of ZELIG’s fictional world offered by “real” intellectual celebrities, paralleled by the appearance of Marshall McLuhan in ANNIE HALL, is of course quite different from the dialectical function of the witnesses in REDS, who remain unidentified, but the appropriation of Beatty’s technique is again characteristic.)

Most often these borrowings, when they’re noticed, are rationalized in the press as “homages”; yet arguably they reveal the same sort of aesthetic immaturity that a beginning writer shows by imitating, say, Hemingway or Faulkner. Imitation can be a sincere form of flattery, and there’s no doubting the sincerity of Allen’s Bergman and Fellini worship. But beyond a certain point there’s a question of whether this kind of emulation is being used as a tool for fresh discoveries or as an expedient substitute for such discoveries — a shield labeled “Art” that’s intended to intimidate nonbelievers.

There’s a world of difference between the application of film models by a Jean-Luc Godard or a Jacques Rivette, which offers critical insights into a particular film or director (such as the compressed references to MONSIEUR VERDOUX and PSYCHO in Godard’s WEEKEND, which point up the links made between murder and capitalism in both earlier films), and the simple transposition of a look or manner employed by Allen. Perhaps if Allen’s cinematic frames of reference were wider — taking in, say, Carl Dreyer as well as Bergman, and Roberto Rossellini as well as Fellini — his appropriations might not seem so willful and automatic. One reason why Rivette’s creative uses of Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir seem much more fruitful is that neither of these filmmakers is tied exclusively to a single country or culture. The styles of Bergman and Fellini, by contrast, are linked indigenously to the respective cultures of Sweden and Italy, so what point is there in transposing these styles to an exclusively New York milieu? Yet Allen is often treated in the press as if he were even more important than the directors he copies.

In an illuminating book about film editing called When the Shooting Stops. . .the Cutting Begins, Ralph Rosenblum describes in detail how he substantially reworked Allen’s unformed and scattershot rough cuts on half a dozen early features — even successfully demanding that Allen shoot new endings to TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, BANANAS, SLEEPER, and LOVE AND DEATH, and transforming a self-centered smorgasbord called ANHEDONIA (”the inability to experience pleasure”) into a graceful romantic comedy called ANNIE HALL. Although Rosenblum no longer edits Allen’s pictures, perhaps as a consequence of writing this book, Thierry de Navacelle’s more recent Woody Allen on Location, a diary of the shooting of RADIO DAYS which includes in parallel columns the original script and the first “cutting continuity,” amply shows that as recently as 1987 there was still a yawning abyss between Allen’s conceptions and what wound up on the screen. Part of this appears to be a judicious pruning of compulsive morbidity: TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN originally ended with the bloody annihilation of its hero, whereas RADIO DAYS originally began with awkward radio coverage of the drowning of a Houdini type in an underwater stunt. But an equally important part of the problem seems to be that Allen usually starts with a literary conception rather than a filmic one. As he pointed out to Godard in a videotaped interview conducted in 1986, he regards the intertitles in HANNAH AND HER SISTERS as a literary device (as words), whereas Godard uses them in his own films as a cinematic device (as shots).

Obviously there’s nothing wrong with this in itself; the American literary cinema has few sustained talents to call its own, and there’s no doubt Allen’s talents as a writer enhance that cinema in certain respects. Nor can Allen really be blamed for the inordinate claims made for his movies by Vincent Canby and others; his own remarks about his pictures tend to be much more modest. One also respects his passion and seriousness in speaking out against colorization and his refusal to let his only film in CinemaScope, MANHATTAN, be scaled down to the ratio of the television screen by losing its left and right borders — something that neither Bernardo Bertolucci nor Steven Spielberg has been able to accomplish with the video and television versions of THE LAST EMPEROR and EMPIRE OF THE SUN, for example.

But one still needs to ask why Allen has been nominated and all but elected our foremost “artistic” filmmaker and the poet laureate of our collective uncertainties in so many circles, most of them upscale and middlebrow. What does he do for this audience that is deemed so essential and irreplaceable? To what extent is his stature a progressive factor in our film culture, and to what extent is it reactionary? How much does his status as an intellectual filmmaker represent genuine intellectual inquiry, and how much does it suggest something closer to the reverse — a representation of intellectuals for nonintellectuals and even anti-intellectuals that serves to satisfy curiosity about intellectual concerns without any sort of intellectual challenge?

Why are the French so crazy about Jerry Lewis? Well, for one thing, some of them see him as being very much like America: infantile, hysterical, uncontrolled, giddy, uninhibited, tacky, energetic, inarticulate, obnoxious, sentimental, overbearing, socially and sexually maladjusted, and all over the place. (By contrast, at least on the surface, Allen is adolescent, neurotic, controlled, whiny, inhibited, preppy, lethargic, articulate, cynical, wormy, socially and sexually maladjusted, and confined.) It’s not so much a matter of necessarily loving all these qualities as it is envying or admiring or identifying with some of them, and being horrified by others — a sort of compressed model of the love-hate that many French people feel toward America as a fantasy object. I suspect that what many French people experience as the overcultivated constraints of their culture finds a welcome release in Lewis’s explosiveness and ungainliness, and their taste for freewheeling fantasy is partially met by Lewis’s remoteness from realism — the sheer wildness of his ideas as a writer-director, and the deconstructive habits such as the vulgar modernism that he shares with Mel Brooks, which periodically reminds us in various self-referential ways that we’re watching a film. (At one point in the mid-1960s, Godard described Lewis as “the only free man working in Hollywood.”)

None of this, however, should be regarded as monolithic or exclusive regarding French tastes: the French also happen to be crazy about Woody Allen. But it’s worth remarking that the French are less prone than we are to regard Allen as any sort of improvement on or substitute for European art-film directors. The essence of any taste is largely a matter of what it excludes as well as what it includes, and the ascendancy of Woody Allen as an art-film director in the United States coincides with a steady drop in interest in foreign-language art films. We can count on every Allen film being readily available in one form or another all over the United States, but not every film by Bergman or Fellini (whose last feature, INTERVISTA, has never been released here); in the cases of Antonioni, Godard, and Alain Resnals, most of their last several films remain unavailable in the United States.

Allen is far from being the only comic director who thinks verbally more than visually; the same is true of Mel Brooks, and an overall orientation toward the word rather than the image may have something to do with the nature of Judaism as an oral culture. When someone in Brooks’s HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I remarks, “The streets are crawling with soldiers,” one knows in advance that Brooks will have to follow this with a non sequitur visual equivalent — giving the word and voice primacy, literally making it flesh by spelling it out in rebus form. “Death was greeted with a certain amount of awe,” intones narrator Orson Welles near the start of the same film, and everyone standing around in the perfunctory, instantly forgettable shot who isn’t supposed to be a corpse goes “Awwwww — .” Saying as well as spraying it, chewing and spewing words until they overspill and start to fill in some of the cracks left by the illustrative images, Brooks’s characters and their shticks go much farther into literalism than Allen’s do, to the degree that they often make consecutive, coherent narratives impossible, adhering to the more freeform structures of standup routines. (For the record, Allen’s uncharacteristic first feature in 1966, WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY?, was as wild and deconstructive as anything by Brooks or Lewis.)

Allen, by contrast, depends mainly on stories with naturalistic underpinnings; whatever the stylistic varnish given to any particular film, the form more often than not is relatively conventional (which helps to account for what makes his movies relatively accessible). But Allen’s heroes remain fundamentally standup personalities, and what is most often funny about them is their wisecracks. This tendency is tied, in any case, to the increasing formal problem in Allen’s work of integrating his comic, actorly persona with his more serious aspirations as a narrative filmmaker. His last several comic films have proposed different solutions for injecting Woody into a plot: incorporating him into mock newsreels (and uncharacteristically depriving him of a voice) in ZELIG, bringing him back as a sympathetic romantic hero in BROADWAY DANNY ROSE and as a Kafkaesque hero in OEDIPUS WRECKS (in NEW YORK STORIES), using Mia Farrow as a partial Woody substitute in both THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO and RADIO DAYS, using Dianne Wiest as a female Woody in HANNAH AND HER SISTERS and RADIO DAYS, and isolating him like a bacteria in the parallel plots of both HANNAH AND HER SISTERS and CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS.

A better sense of how Allen handles these problems of language and persona can be deduced by comparing his strategies with those of Chaplin, Tati, and Lewis. For Chaplin, speech brings about a transformation of the Tramp at the end of THE GREAT DICTATOR, and then his elimination from all the subsequent films. Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, initially designed to appear only in MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, is furnished with a wealthy sister and nephew in MON ONCLE, multiplied and universalized by various lookalikes (to prove that we are all potential Hulots) in PLAYTIME, brought back in desperation as the central hero of TRAFIC after the commercial disaster of the former film, and finally abandoned with relief in PARADE. In all these films, speech is overheard more than heard, and sound is generally used to complement and punctuate (rather than illustrate) the images. Lewis in his own films — although doing little to alter his character (apart from adjusting to the effects of aging) — accompanies his bodily deformations with deformations of language, creating a kind of spastic Jabberwocky at moments of hysteria to reflect his gangling physical instability.

Like Allen, these figures can be regarded as autobiographical artists in the deepest sense, their gags springing directly from their own lives and experiences. (This might seem less obvious with Lewis, but it’s worth noting that his last feature, CRACKING UP, has slapstick sequences alluding to both his open-heart surgery and his near-suicide.) All three can also be said to be animated by a conflict between narcissism and self-hatred in relation to their comic personae. Where they differ crucially from Allen is in the degree to which they express this conflict dialectically. Rather than work both sides of the street, as Allen does, they usually maintain enough distance from their own characters to allow audiences to have a critical perspective on them. Allen, by contrast, is too close to Woody to allow us this detachment; his task is to seduce us into sharing his character’s confusions and ambivalences without being able to sort them out. (After all, Woody can’t sort them out, so why should we?) And rather than propose an artistic solution to a personal conflict as Chaplin, Taft, or Lewis do, he offers a kind of aesthetic smoke screen designed to keep us from realizing that the conflict isn’t being squarely faced.

Intellectuals and anti-intellectuals, liberals and conservatives, can all walk away from Allen’s movies feeling that their own worldviews have been corroborated and illustrated because no issue is ever forced to a point of crisis — a few potshots in every possible direction usually suffice. The gag in ANNIE HALL about Dissent and Commentary merging into Dysentery has something for everybody: readers of both journals feel grateful for this uncharacteristic form of recognition in a commercial movie; people who feel distaste for the intellectualism associated with both publications are rewarded; and even those who might bristle at the political incompatibility of the two magazines are likely to be amused by the pun.

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS offers another case in point. A film that professes to address the rampant amorality and self-interest of the 1980s gives us an ophthalmologist (Martin Landau) who arranges to murder his mistress and gets away with it and a socially concerned documentary filmmaker (Allen) who isn’t rewarded for his good intentions. But both characters seem equally motivated by self-interest, and we are asked to care much more about Allen’s character as a fall guy than about the murdered mistress (Anjelica Huston). Landau’s masochism about his initial feelings of guilt are matched by Allen’s masochism about being a loser. There is a lack of ironic distance on this aspect of both characters, and if the film is genuinely attacking self-interest, it is seriously handicapped by being unable to see beyond it.

A major distinction here is social context. Chaplin and Tati offer characters whose main problem is coping with the world; Lewis and Allen’s characters, however, are concerned with both coping and scoring, and the importance of scoring — greater in Allen’s case than in Lewis’s — implies a different relationship to the society in question. Scoring is the aim of the extrovert hungering for society’s approval and applause; and for all their apparent maladjustments, Allen’s heroes already belong fully and integrally to the society they wish to succeed in. They never suggest total outcasts, as Lewis’s heroes often do.

One thing that makes both Chaplin and Tati profound social critics is the fact that their characters’ difficulties in coping with society lead to a consideration of society’s difficulties in coping with them. Lewis carries over some of this process (see, for instance, THE NUTTY PROFESSOR), but Allen virtually abandons it. Apart from the loving self-deprecations, and the daring jibes against his audiences in STARDUST MEMORIES, his social critique seldom gets beyond the range of one-liners, whereas the obsession with success and scoring usually implies that it is the oddball individual and not the society that needs to make adjustments.

One of the most disturbing facts about contemporary American life is its rejection of the concept of victims; the current synonym for “victim” is “loser.” When Allen’s character in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is listening to his sister describe her humiliation at the hands of a sadist after answering a classified ad, Allen’s horrified responses are telegraphed to the audience as invitations to cruel and derisive laughter, not pity. This is a curious ploy in a film that professes to be protesting the erosion of moral and ethical values, but one that is consistent with Allen’s usual methods, because it’s much easier to laugh at a loser than at a victim.

Evenly matching the dichotomy between Winners and Losers in Allen’s films is the dichotomy between Insiders and Outsiders. Allen generally places one foot in each camp — looking with contempt at Insiders (Alan Alda’s television producer in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS) from an Outsider’s position, but also looking with contempt at Outsiders (the movie fans in STARDUST MEMORIES) from a privileged Insider’s position. In RADIO DAYS, the warm superiority assumed by the narrator (Woody again) toward his family and the abject inferiority felt by Sally (Mia Farrow) toward radio stars (before she becomes one herself) are cut from the same cloth. Suffusing both realms with nostalgia while taking swipes at each side from the other, Allen refuses to commit himself wholly to either group or even to own up to that refusal — a decision that would shape and delimit the scope of his gags and allow them to work together. By shifting allegiances, he can make all the characters lovable or fair game whenever he wants. A higher laugh quotient is attained by this process, but a much fuzzier moral perspective, because complacent vanity and a lack of commitment to either faction become the prerequisites for such a position. A generous reading of this trait would be to call it a form of objectivity; a more skeptical response would be to regard it as opportunistic.

It’s been noted more than once that part of what makes the Manhattan in MANHATTAN so “attractive” — apart from strains of Gershwin and black-and-white CinemaScope views of favorite spots and haunts — is the nearly total absence of blacks and Hispanics. Insofar as this is the Manhattan that a certain class of whites already “see,” or want to see, MANHATTAN both validates and romanticizes this highly selective view of the city.

Poverty in Allen’s films, apart from the occasional one-liner, is almost invariably Jewish poverty and is rooted somewhere in the past; the contemporary plight of the homeless, for instance, may be apparent to anyone who walks for a couple of blocks in Manhattan, but it is not apparent in the urban exteriors of ANOTHER WOMAN, OEDIPUS WRECKS, or CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, and neither is the presence of racism. All of Allen’s major characters are protected from such problems by the interiority of their concerns, and by implication the audiences of these films are similarly protected. Serious soul-searching about major world problems and the decline in moral values is the exclusive property of a few upwardly mobile urban whites, whose exclusive vantage points we are invited to share, and any set of assumptions that is located beyond the purview of The New Yorker or The New York Times is bound to be deemed both esoteric and provincial.

Robert Warshow’s critique of The New Yorker as a cultural institution (in “E. B. White and The New Yorker“) seems particularly relevant to the nature of Allen’s special appeal:

“The New Yorker has always dealt with experience not by trying to understand it but by prescribing the attitude to be adopted toward it. This makes it possible to feel intelligent without thinking, and it is a way of making everything tolerable, for the assumption of a suitable attitude toward experience can give one the illusion of having dealt with it adequately. The gracelessness of capitalism becomes an entirely external phenomenon, a spectacle that one can observe without being touched — above all, without really feeling threatened. Even one’s own incompetence becomes pleasant: to be baffled by a machine or by a domestic worker or an idea is the badge of membership in the civilized and humane minority.”

I’m willing to accept on faith Allen’s claim in “Random Reflections of a Second-Rate Mind” (Tikkun, January/February 1990) that his reputation as a “self-hating Jew” may be somewhat displaced. (”[W]hile it’s true I am Jewish and I don’t like myself very much, it’s not because of my persuasion.”) But because of the autobiographical elements in his work, it is still difficult to account for the strong relationship between scoring and winning the love of a beautiful WASP woman (usually Diane Keaton or Mia Farrow) in most of his film comedies — although, to be fair about this, his persona does wind up with a Jewish woman just like his (dreaded) mom at the end of OEDIPUS WRECKS. What seems more problematic is the failure of most of Allen’s films to face this issue squarely — to the degree that Elaine May’s THE HEARTBREAK KID does, for instance, when the Jewish hero (Charles Grodin) ditches his Jewish wife (Jeannie Berlin) during their honeymoon in Miami in order to chase after Cybill Shepherd. The fact that in this case May is directing a Neil Simon script (based on a Bruce Jay Friedman story) which never alludes to the ethnic nature of the conflict in the dialogue makes her success all the more striking: to put it bluntly, May’s direction of the actors repeatedly and even uncomfortably exposes the degree to which Grodin’s libido is affected by his own anti-Semitism. Allen’s hero in OEDIPUS WRECKS may have changed his name from Millstein to Mills, and it’s clear that he’s dating a shiksa, but these are merely givens in the plot — the conflict is never explored in psychological terms, either in the dialogue or the direction, and eventually it gets resolved sentimentally when the plot offers him a Jewish girlfriend to replace the shiksa.

The usual reluctance of Allen to alienate his constituency — with notable and courageous exceptions, such as STARDUST MEMORIES and his op-ed piece in The New York Times criticizing Israeli soldiers — generally mean an avoidance of controversial issues and positions in his movies, in spite of their topical gloss. This is, of course, typical of the commercial American cinema, and it might be added that Allen’s popularity with American intellectuals does not automatically mean success at the box office. (Interestingly enough, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS has been a commercial disappointment in spite of its rave reviews, and there have been many other such instances in Allen’s career.) His unusual freedom to go on making personal films of his own choosing clearly has a price tag attached to it — the necessity of turning enough of a profit on some pictures to keep this arrangement going — and it would be naive to assume otherwise. Allen’s representation of himself as an artist and an intellectual (as opposed to a “mere” entertainer) obliges us to take him at his own word; and once we do, the issue of what intellectuals and artists both are and should be in our culture immediately comes up. To exempt Allen from that issue is to accept the sort of imposture that the film industry itself is famous for — the notion that art is a form of entertainment that makes money, and that “intellectual” is just a synonym for “pseudo-intellectual.”

Noam Chomsky has written, “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass without comment. Not so, however. For the modem intellectual, it is not at all obvious.” Whether or not we regard Allen as an intellectual depends, in the final analysis, on whether or not we accept Chomsky’s view of what should be obvious.

So if we want to see a comedy that tells us something about, say, American idiocy in blundering through the Third World and the Reaganite equation of entertainment and politics, a disreputable piece of goods like Elaine May’s ISHTAR will actually come closer to the mark than any movie we can expect to get from Woody Allen. (The notion of a show-biz agent negotiating a peace settlement in the Middle East as part of an entertainment deal might get by as a one-liner in an Allen effort, but only May would have the nerve to use it integrally, as a resolution of her plot.) If we want to learn some of the truth about unemployment in the United States in the early eighties— a revelation that might make us shudder as well as laugh — Jerry Lewis’s HARDLY WORKING is a better place to go than any film by Allen, just as even a wobbly Mel Brooks effort like SPACEBALLS has more to say about the mercantilism of the film industry than anything we could expect from Woody. Similarly, for a genuinely satirical treatment of blinkered Yuppie sensibilities, one must repair to Albert Brooks’s LOST IN AMERICA, not to HANNAH AND HER SISTERS or CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. By contrast, what we find in Allen’s movies, apart from a lively stream of patter, is flattery to our egos as right-thinking individuals and a kind of soul-searching that excludes any possibility of social change — a provincial narcissism that corresponds precisely to our present situation in relation to the rest of the world.

Yo también soy hijo de Pedro Páramo

2010-11-24T14:11:00.003+01:00

Pedro Páramo, de Juan Rulfo

Vine a Comala porque me dijeron que acá vivía mi padre, un tal Pedro Páramo. Mi madre me lo dijo. Y yo le prometí que vendría a verlo en cuanto ella muriera. Le apreté sus manos en señal de que lo haría, pues ella estaba por morirse y yo en un plan de prometerlo todo. "No dejes de ir a visitarlo -me recomendó. Se llama de este modo y de este otro. Estoy segura de que le dar gusto conocerte." Entonces no pude hacer otra cosa sino decirle que así lo haría, y de tanto decírselo se lo seguí diciendo aun después de que a mis manos les costó trabajo zafarse de sus manos muertas.
Todavía antes me había dicho:
-No vayas a pedirle nada. Exígele lo nuestro. Lo que estuvo obligado a darme y nunca me dio... El olvido en que nos tuvo, mi hijo, cóbraselo caro.
-Así lo haré, madre.

Pero no pensé cumplir mi promesa. Hasta que ahora pronto comencé a llenarme de sueños, a darle vuelo a las ilusiones. Y de este modo se me fue formando un mundo alrededor de la esperanza que era aquel señor llamado Pedro Páramo, el marido de mi madre. Por eso vine a Comala.
Era ese tiempo de la canícula, cuando el aire de agosto sopla caliente, envenenado por el olor podrido de la saponarias.
El camino subía y bajaba: "Sube o baja según se va o se viene. Para el que va, sube; para él que viene, baja."
-¿Cómo dice usted que se llama el pueblo que se ve allá abajo?
-Comala, señor.
-¿Está seguro de que ya es Comala?
-Seguro, señor.
-¿ Y por qué se ve esto tan triste?
-Son los tiempos, señor.
Yo imaginaba ver aquello a través de los recuerdos de mi madre; de su nostalgia, entre retazos de suspiros. Siempre vivió ella suspirando por Comala, por el retorno; pero jamás volvió. Ahora yo vengo en su lugar. Traigo los ojos con que ella miró estas cosas, porque me dio sus ojos para ver: "Hay allí, pasando el puerto de Los Colimotes, la vista muy hermosa de una llanura verde, algo amarilla por el maíz maduro. Desde ese lugar se ve Comala, blanqueando la tierra, iluminándola durante la noche." Y su voz era secreta, casi apagada, como si hablara consigo misma... Mi madre.
-¿Y a qué va usted a Comala, si se puede saber? -oí que me preguntaban.
-Voy a ver a mi padre contesté.
-¡Ah! - dijo él.
Y volvimos al silencio.
Caminábamos cuesta abajo, oyendo el trote rebotado de los burros. Los ojos reventados por el sopor del sueño, en la canícula de agosto.
-Bonita fiesta le va a armar -volví a oír la voz del que iba allí a mi lado-. Se pondrá contento de ver a alguien después de tantos años que nadie viene por aquí.
Luego añadió:
-Sea usted quien sea, se alegrará de verlo.
En la reverberación del sol, la llanura parecía una laguna transparente, deshecha en vapores por donde se traslucía un horizonte gris. Y más allá, una línea de montañas. Y todavía más adelante, la más remota lejanía.
-¿Y qué trazas tiene su padre, si se puede saber?
-No lo conozco -le dije-. Sólo sé que se llama Pedro Páramo.
-¡Ah!, vaya.
-Sí, así me dijeron que se llamaba.
Oí otra vez el "¡ah!" del arriero.
Me había topado con él en Los Encuentros, donde se cruzaban varios caminos. Me estuve allí esperando, hasta que al fin apareció este hombre.
-¿A dónde va usted? -le pregunté.
-Voy para abajo, señor.
-¿Conoce un lugar llamado Comala?
-Para allá mismo voy.
Y lo seguí. Fui tras él tratando de emparejarme a su paso, hasta que pareció darse cuenta de que lo seguía disminuyó la prisa de su carrera. Después los dos íbamos tan pegados que casi nos tocábamos los hombros.
-Yo también soy hijo de Pedro Páramo -me dijo.
Una bandada de cuervos pasó cruzando el cielo vacío, haciendo cuar, cuar, cuar.
Después de trastumbar los cerros, bajamos cada vez más. Habíamos dejado el aire caliente allá arriba y nos íbamos hundiendo en el puro calor sin aire. Todo parecía estar como en espera de algo.
-Hace calor aquí -dije.
-Sí, y esto no es nada me contestó el otro-. Cálmese. Ya lo sentirá más fuerte cuando lleguemos a Comala. Aquello está sobre las brasas de la tierra, en la mera boca del infierno. Con decirle que muchos de los que allí se mueren, al llegar al infierno regresan por su cobija.
-¿ Conoce usted a Pedro Páramo? - le pregunté.
Me atreví a hacerlo porque vi en sus ojos una gota de confianza.
-¿Quién es? -volví a preguntar.
-Un rencor vivo -me contestó él.
Y dio un pajuelazo contra los burros, sin necesidad, ya que los burros iban mucho más adelante de nosotros, encarrerados por la bajada.
Sentí el retrato de mi madre guardado en la bolsa de la camisa, calentándome el corazón, como si ella también sudara. Era un retrato viejo, carcomido en los bordes; pero fue el único que conocí de ella. Me lo había encontrado en el armario de la cocina, dentro de una cazuela llena de yerbas: hojas de toronjil, flores de Castilla, ramas de ruda. Desde entonces lo guardé. Era el único. Mi madre siempre fue enemiga de retratarse. Decía que los retratos eran cosa de brujería. Y así parecía ser.; porque el suyo estaba lleno de agujeros como de aguja, y en dirección del corazón tenía uno muy grande, donde bien podía caber el dedo del corazón.
Es el mismo que traigo aquí, pensando que podría dar buen resultado para que mi padre me reconociera.
-Mire usted -me dice el arriero, deteniéndose- ¿Ve aquella loma que parece vejiga de puerco? Pues detrasito de ella está la Media Luna. Ahora voltié para allá. ¿Ve la ceja de aquel cerro? Véala. Y ahora voltié para este otro rumbo. ¿Ve la otra ceja que casi no se ve de lo lejos que está? Bueno, pues eso es la Media Luna de punta a cabo. Como quien dice, toda la tierra que se puede abarcar con la mirada. Y es de él todo ese terrenal. El caso es que nuestras madres nos malparieron en un petate aunque éramos hijos de Pedro Páramo. Y lo más chistoso es que él nos llevó a bautizar. Con usted debe haber pasado lo mismo, ¿ no ?
-No me acuerdo.
-¡Váyase mucho al carajo !
-¿Qué dice usted ?
-Que ya estamos llegando, señor.
-Sí, ya lo veo. ¿ Qué paso por aquí ?
-Un correcaminos, señor. Así les nombran a esos pájaros.
-No, yo preguntaba por el pueblo, que se ve tan solo, como si estuviera abandonado. Parece que no lo habitara nadie .
-No es que lo parezca. Así es. Aquí no vive nadie.
-¿ Y Pedro Páramo ?
-Pedro Páramo murió hace muchos años.
Era la hora en que los niños juegan en las calles de todos los pueblos, llenando con sus gritos la tarde. Cuando aun las paredes negras reflejan la luz amarilla del sol.

Carlos Oroza III

2010-10-21T10:07:00.004+01:00

En El Faro de Vigo. He estado ojeando mi copia de "Alicia," con las serigrafias de Enrique Gran. ¿Qué tendrá Vigo, que es a la vez tan caótico y tan poético?

Carlos Oroza se asoma al gran balcón de la ría, una de sus fuentes de inspiración, en el paseo del Náutico. Nelson Villalobos

Carlos Oroza (Vivero, 1933) es el gran poeta gallego vivo, pese a que escriba en castellano. Su obra, tan corta como brillante, está destinada al canto, y él es su mejor juglar. Entre sus títulos destacan Cabalum, (1980), En el norte hay un mar que es más alto que el cielo, La llama prestada (1998) y Un sentimiento ingrávido recorre el ambiente (2006)

ROGELIO GARRIDO - VIGO El poeta de la luz. De la naturaleza. De la mujer. De lo invisible. Puro. Soñador. El que renunció al mundo para disfrutar de la vida. La pasión poética. El hombre que transita por los márgenes para no extraviarse del centro. Concéntrico y excéntrico. El uno y la otredad. El raro. El maldito. Un resistente. La piedra en el zapato del sistema. El que ama al hombre pero abomina de sus máscaras. Romántico. El poeta sin bandera, patria ni fronteras. Universal. Libre. Juglar anhelante. Poeta doliente. Poeta dichoso. El cantor inocente. Sinfónico. El que ve más allá porque se detiene en lo más cercano. El caminante que sale al encuentro y encuentra porque jamás busca. El que sueña con ninfas y se alimenta de versos. Circular. Extático. Solar. Es Carlos Oroza. EL POETA.

“Una marea blanca
Una tierra más alta
Una frente sin rumbos”
(“Cabalum”)

¿Cuándo tuvo conciencia de su condición de poeta?
- El poeta nace cuando le sorprende la primera palabra. El problema es saber escucharla. Yo construyo mis versos a través del otro yo, el yo interior. De repente, cuando surge la primera palabra, yo me recluyo en un espacio donde no exista nada que me entretenga. Y me quedo quieto, y espero a que suene la voz, que es la otredad. El poema se construye como si fuese una sinfonía, no con rima sino con ritmo interno. Porque la palabra tiene un ritmo interior; la rima es una cosa escolástica.
- El poeta tiene una mirada distinta...
-Completamente. A veces te quedas alelado ante cosas que no ven los otros: un árbol, la marcha de un río, una perspectiva donde tu mirada alcanza mayor longitud... Ahí está el poeta, en la codicia de lo lejano.
- Y a los 18 años se quedó enganchado en la poesía...
- ¡Me quedé atrapado por el canto! Como dijo Hölderlin, la poesía es un juego peligroso por su carga de fatalidad. De tal manera te hace víctima, que si se marcha de tu hombro ese pájaro que canta, te quedas sin nada, sin territorio y sin ti mismo.
- La poesía es, entonces...
- Mi condena y mi salvación. Un mal y su cura.
- ¿Con cada poema se siente vacío o pleno?
- Si el poema es un logro, alcanzas la totalidad del universo, pero entonces se produce el vacío de volver a empezar. ¡Y eso es tan difícil! ¡Volver a la lucha! Por eso, a veces, un solo verso es más importante que todo un libro.
- Este mundo no parece estar para los poetas.
- Somos bichos raros. Un poeta es un tipo solitario, que va escuchando, no se sabe bien qué, y que tampoco se sabe bien adónde va, porque va prendido del canto.
- Tipos peligrosos...
- Mucho. Somos un mal ejemplo, pero yo sólo puedo ser poeta pero cuando se es poeta de verdad, se es todas las cosas. El poeta organiza el caos, da sentido al absurdo de la existencia.
- ¿En su carné se leyó alguna vez de profesión: poeta?
- Jamás, porque para el sistema eso es algo inconcebible.
- Está fuera del sistema...
- Totalmente. Soy un outsider.
- ¿Y eso le agrada?
- A veces sí, a veces no. En ocasiones me constituyo en el enemigo máximo de mi propia existencia. El cansancio de verte todos los días en el espejo, el tener que cambiarte todos los días de ropa... Lo cotidiano mata, poco a poco, lentamente.
- Nuestra sociedad se mira poco al espejo...
- Sí, porque nos tenemos miedo. Empezamos a detestarnos porque eso buscamos la compañía, sobre todo la del televisor.
- Cuando se le ve caminando por las calles de Vigo, alguien puede pensar que está matando el tiempo...
- ¡Pero si estoy trabajando! Mi marcha es una marcha poética. Voy al encuentro de una guirnalda o de un poema, y si no me lo da la realidad, entonces la sueño y la transformo.
- Usted está en el mundo y al tiempo fuera de él.
- Fuera y dentro. En el mundo pero sólo en aquellas cosas esenciales, las que me alimentan. Por eso me siento extraño en este desierto emocional, donde la palabra fue raptada. La palabra alma, la palabra espíritu... ¡tan mal utilizadas!
- Malos tiempos para la palabra.
- Vivimos en el mundo de la pasarela, de los objetos. La gente acude a los grandes almacenes como si fuesen catedrales. Nunca tuvimos tanto y nunca tuvimos tan poco.
- ¿Se siente un bicho raro?
- En realidad, yo encuentro raros a los otros, a todos.
- ¿Dónde está la inspiración?
- Las palabras están sonando en una realidad escondida. Yo voy al encuentro de las musas, que pueden ser una cosa humilde, una flor, cualquier espacio inundado de emoción. El mundo esencial está detrás de los muros de la realidad. Vivimos rodeado de contenciones, de fronteras, siempre represivas. Hay que ver más allá. Tus ojos tienen que alcanzar la perspectiva de la longitud de la naturaleza. El hombre del desierto tiene la mirada más larga y profunda porque vive en un espacio libre. Su mirada es más rica. Nosotros vivimos en un territorio marcado por paredes, fronteras... Nuestra mirada es pobre.
- Defiende el valor de la inocencia.
- Quien conserva la inocencia vive en un estado poético. La inocencia no es idiotez ni culpabilidad; es permanecer en un estado especial: ser capaz de sorprenderte, como un recién nacido que está descubriendo el mundo. La inocencia es la mirada de ese niño que te está preguntando con los ojos. La inocencia es Hölderlin.
- ¿Y la libertad?
- Esa palabra está tan manoseada que me niego a pronunciarla. ¡Ser libre, libre, libre...! Pufff
- ¿Prefiere la palabra soledad?
- La soledad sólo tiene sentido si es para hacer algo. Sin embargo, la otra soledad ni bajo un techo se soporta.
- ¿Y el silencio?
- Ahora todo es ruido, y la poesía es silencio, cadencia, melodía, música... tu propio hálito.
- En un mundo tan hipertecnologizado, ¿es el último artesano?
- Sí, el arte-sano, el arte de la salud.
- Disfrutó en Madrid de éxito y bienestar material, pero un día decidió renunciar a todo...
- Lo abandoné todo. Decidí salir de ese mundo, de ese desierto emocional y penetrar en la esencia de las cosas, en busca del poema y la sinfonía. Así que regresé. Y el lugar más parecido a mi idea infantil de Galicia es Vigo, y aquí estoy. La poesía exige una renuncia total. Yo he dejado todo por esto, pero esto es mucho más placentero y digno. Decidí perder para ganar. Soy un romántico. Ya lo escribí: “Todas las tardes paseo mi derrota por las calles de Vigo, alguna vez me paro en la orilla y espero algún barco”.
- ¿Jamás se ha arrepentido?
- Nunca. Vigo es la luz y yo vine en su búsqueda. La luz, no el sol... ¡La luz!
- Vigo, una ciudad industrial y caótica, no parece poética...
- Pues yo he encontrado aquí la poesía. En mis paseos he descubierto un tránsito poético.
- ¿Es útil la poesía?
- El sentimiento de lo útil y de lo inútil es moralista. Lo más inútil es verdaderamente lo bello.
- Por eso renunció a la poesía social, reivindicativa...
- Me parecía un discurso coyuntural, crónica periodística. Aquello era kármico.
- ¿Con qué está comprometido?
- Con mi poesía. En eso soy egoísta. Busco un poema de hoy que sirva para mañana, aunque las futuras generaciones pueden rachar con todo, porque “lo que ayer fueron grandes verdades, hoy están puestas en duda, no obstante las mareas se precipitan, no hay nada, pues, de lo que fuimos que nos pertenezca”. Lo único que nos pertenece es la tradición; el pasado es hemeroteca.
- ¿Cree en la perfección?
- Para ser poeta hay que sentirse incómodo. En una ocasión, el Papa viendo una obra de Miguel Ángel le reprendió. “Todo está tan bien organizado, pero ese ángel, ese de ahí, ese angel que ha pintado se va...” Miguel Ángel le respondió: “Pues ese ángel es el que más me gusta”. La perfección excesiva es academia. A veces los errores te enseñan. Hay que reivindicar el derecho a equivocarse. En el error sobreviene el acontecimiento y ahí surge el poema.
- Hay quien le reprocha que su trabajo poético es corto.
- Están equivocados. Son gente que defiende la abundancia, el llenar las neveras por si mañana hubiera guerra. Un poema surge de vez en cuando... ¡De vez en cuando! Aquí hay mucho libro inútil que no vale para nada.
- ¿Está orgulloso de toda si obra?
- Si dijera eso, sería un imbécil. Hay cosas que pongo en duda.
- Su poesía es un canto.
- Está hecha para ser escuchada. La imprenta es un fenómeno de nuestro tiempo; la poesía, anterior. El pueblo necesita oración, canto, palabra y silencio.
- Reivindica a los jóvenes...
- Sí, debemos salvarlos para salvarnos.
- ¿Se puede mentir en poesía?
- Nunca, a lo sumo imaginar. La poesía es la verdad mas profunda del espíritu, pero se encuentra muy oculta y necesita ser cantada. Por eso a la poesía no debe puntuarse ni ponérsele comas. Es un canto libre.
- Es un creador de palabras.
- Yo no domino el diccionario. Me repugna. Así que cuando me falla una palabra, la invento. La clave es que esa palabra permanezca, que sea acogida como una aportación a un lenguaje que yo trato de enriquecer, pero no de forma caprichosa; debo encontrar una pieza que encaje en el puzzle. Por ejemplo, cuando canto “Ómniva, Ómniva, Ómniva”.
- Detesta las fronteras.
- Yo tengo un poema que dice: “Dejad que el trigo crezca en las fronteras, porque una flor no puede ser hermosa si no dejáis que el trigo crezca en las fronteras”. La frontera es la cosa más ilegal que hay en el mundo. Es repartirlo, cuartearlo. La infancia es la patria y lo demás, una añadidura.
- Usted ha dicho: “No puedo soportar a los poetas y a los pintores de domingo”.
- La poesía es una actitud permanente. No se puede salir de una clase y escribir un poema, porque eso es caer en la deformación, en el culturalismo más falso. La cultura es sólo un punto de partida. A partir de ahí debemos seguir en la búsqueda de algo superior. Por eso no me gusta la poesía ni la pintura académicas; me gusta el arte de creación. No creo en los poetas de horas libres. El poeta lo es en todo instante. El poema tiene que ser coherente con tu actitud vital; lo que escribes, tienes que vivirlo.
- ¿Se siente un provocador? ¿Cree que los demás lo ven así?
- Me siento indiferente hacia los demás, ni me provocan; al contrario, de vez en cuando los amo.
- ¿Ha sentido odio o envidia?
- Eso sería una carga insoportable, y yo soy muy vago y débil. El rencor es el arma del fracaso más absoluto.
- ¿Cómo encaja en el mundo intelectual y cultural?
- ¡Pero si yo no ando con nadie! No me interesa mucho, porque se repite. No me divierte, no me suena al oído.
- La mujer es otro de sus grandes temas.
- La mujer es un misterio, el eco de tus propias cosas, de la naturaleza. Haber tenido a un individuo como yo dentro de un vientre... supongo que habrían deseado expulsarme urgentemente. Nunca he entendido a las mujeres, sólo las he sospechado.
- ¿Cree que le comprenden?
- Pues por alguna, sí. Alguna tan rara como yo.
- Usted es un gran cortejador.
- Me gusta seducir, como divertimento. Es algo hipnotizante.
- ¿La poesía sabe?
- La poesía se mastica. Cuando escribo, me huele el paisaje.
- ¿Y duele?
- Claro que duele. El dolor es la tendencia a la derrota.
- ¿Lo peor es repetirse?
- Una cosa es hacer poemas repetidos, y otra tener una poética. Cuando tienes una poética siempre estás haciendo el mismo poema, con variaciones.
- La muerte es un tema que esquiva.
- Porque es el fin de todas las cosas. Prefiero la vida y que la muerte me sorprenda cuando le dé la gana.
- ¿Es eso cobardía?
- Sí. Soy terriblemente miedoso.
- Por eso no habla de la noche.
- He soportado la noche con maquillaje. La noche es una mentira literaria. Yo anhelo el sol, la esperanza... ¡la luz! Hasta la palabra es bonita.
- ¿Y qué espera?
- Nada, yo sigo caminando al encuentro de esas cosas que la gente no percibe y pisa.
- Cuándo recita su poesía, ¿qué siente?
- Estoy unos segundos en lo divino.
-¿ Y cómo compone?
- Yo vivo la aventura del poema en mi cabeza. Lo escucho, lo compongo y cuando está acabado y memorizado lo paso al papel, lo convierto en signos.
- Entonces en su cabeza hay poemas por salir...
-Algunos, y ahora estoy luchando con ellos. Ahí están, dando vueltas. Hasta que salen, hay que dejarlos en paz, pero siempre muy alerta.
- ¿Y desecha?
- Rechazo todo lo que me suena a cotidianeidad, a tópico. No soporto la obviedad. La poesía tiene que trasladar el lenguaje, darle una aristocracia. Para eso está la prosa. ¡Que hagan prosa ellos! ¡Son prosaicos!
- ¿La poesía puede abandonar al poeta?
- Eso ya le pasó al prodigioso Rimbaud. Cuando la poesía te abandona, si el canto te deja... ¡es terrible! Es la desolación. Si eso pasa, se acabó la aventura.
- ¿Necesita ser entendido?
- No. Yo busco la gente entrañable, humilde; que recibe el poema aunque no lo entienda; que está sin estrenar; que tiene capacidad para emocionarse. Ahí encuentro una proximidad de espíritu. Porque el que está contaminado por la cultura es insoportable. ¡Es un pedante! ¡Un verborraico! Sufre de incontinencia verbal. La demagogia es nauseabunda. El cultismo, no; la cultura, sí.

Carlos Oroza II

2010-10-21T09:31:00.003+01:00

De Vigo Blog. Otra entrevista a Carlos Oroza, en esta ocasión en la Voz de Galicia. Interesante que no le gustan los nacionalistas, ya somos dos. En la entrevista en O Xornal, Oroza dice que escribió su mejor obra en Vigo, dice que ahora no le interesa mucho los poemas de "protesta" que escribió en su época en Madrid. Lo que viene a confirmar en mi opinión que la poesía tiene poco de político o de ideología en el fondo. Las personas que quieren utilizar la poesía o una determinada lengua - por ejemplo, el gallego - puramente para fines políticos, feministas, etc, seguramente no comparten el criterio de Carlos Oroza. Pero yo me quedo con su criterio.

idade da auga

Miguel Torga

THE MAN AND HIS ORIGINS

THE FATHERLAND IS A MAGNET

COIMBRA AND TRADITION

POLITICS AND POLITICIANS

Mi Peugeot Country 200 del año 1995

Hold to a dream

Characters in The Boyajian Section

Despoblación en España...¿o oportunidad para la repoblación?

El 'invierno' demográfico de media España

Del Bidasoa al Guadiana

El caso de Guadalajara

Abocadas al invierno

Menos niños, más viejos

Diógenes, los perros y la tinaja

Contenido

[editar] Vida

[editar] En Atenas

[editar] En Corinto

[editar] Muerte

[editar] Diógenes y los perros

[editar] Doctrina

[editar] Iconografía

The shadow and the red rock

M. Scott Peck The Myth of Romantic Love

Kindle Bestsellers

Kindle Publishing: Part 2 of Interview with 'Killing Cupid' authors Mark Edwards and Louise Voss

Bill Drummond and the KLF

En defensa del pepino español

Mejor que El Retiro, La Sierra del Rincón

Eduardo Souto de Moura

On Scotland

Nadal and the Beanstalk

Valparaiso

Old Skool Rap

Do you hate Facebook?

Things I Hate About Facebook....

Un poco de cine

Anywhere out of the world

Porta XIII: Associaçao Poética de todas as artes

Chulo y las redes sociales / Merry Christmas from Chulo

Notes towards the devaluation of Woody Allen

Yo también soy hijo de Pedro Páramo

Carlos Oroza III

Carlos Oroza II