Category: Best Read

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Best Read::rePost::Letters of Note: Be your own self. Love what YOU love.

Transcript
ray bradbury enterprises
[Redacted]
los angeles, california 90064
dear william stanhope:
most important decision i ever made came at age 9…i was collecting BUCK ROGERS comic strips, 1929, when my 5th grade classmates made fun of me. I tore up the strips. A week later, broke into tears. Why was I crying? I wondered. Who die? Me, was the answer. I have torn up the future. What to do about it? Start collecting BUCK ROGERS again. Fall in love with the Future! I did just that. And after that never listened to one damnfool idiot classmate who doubted me! What did I learn? To be myself and never let others, prejudiced, interfer with my life. Kids, do the same. Be your own self. Love what YOU love.
Best wishes,
(Signed, ‘RAY B.’)
Bradbury
10/28/91
via Letters of Note: Be your own self. Love what YOU love..

We kill the light of truth we have because

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rePost:: Sita Sings the Blues

Whilst searching for a torrent for Sita Sings The Blues I chance upon this. Beautiful.

Dear Audience,
I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.
You don’t need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues. Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom.
That said, my colleagues and I will enforce the Share Alike License. You are not free to copy-restrict (“copyright”) or attach Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to Sita Sings the Blues or its derivative works.
Some of the songs in Sita Sings the Blues are not free, and may never be; copyright law requires you to obey their respective licenses. This is not by my choice; please see our restrictions page for more.
There is the question of how I’ll get money from all this. My personal experience confirms audiences are generous and want to support artists. Surely there’s a way for this to happen without centrally controlling every transaction. The old business model of coercion and extortion is failing. New models are emerging, and I’m happy to be part of that. But we’re still making this up as we go along. You are free to make money with the free content of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share money with me. People have been making money in Free Software for years; it’s time for Free Culture to follow. I look forward to your innovations.
If you have questions, please ask each other. If you have ideas, please implement them – you don’t need my permission or anyone else’s (except for the copyright-restricted songs, of course). If you see abuses, please address them, but don’t get bogged down in arcane details of copyright law. The copyright system wants you to think in terms of asking permission; I want you to think in terms of freedom. We’ve set up this Wiki to get things started. Feel free to improve it!
I’ve got to get back to my life now, and make some new art. Thanks for your support! This film wouldn’t exist without you.
Love,
–Nina Paley
28 February, 2009
via Sita Sings the Blues.

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rePost:: Best Read::All the lonely people – Roger Ebert's Journal

Nice post read the whole thing.

When I was a child the mailman came once a day. Now the mail arrives every moment. I used to believe it was preposterous that people could fall in love online. Now I see that all relationships are virtual, even those that take place in person. Whether we use our bodies or a keyboard, it all comes down to two minds crying out from their solitude.
via All the lonely people – Roger Ebert’s Journal.

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rePost :: Greg Brillantes calls for more ‘light bringers,’ in whatever language

Great speech with several great lines, from gmatv.net here.

“Seven years ago, being myself afflicted with the GFN Complex, I wrestled with The Language Problem. In what tongue was I to express my Filipino soul? In what language was I to write the GFN that I thought was struggling to get out of my skin? Part of the reason I became a college dropout… was the conviction I had arrived at, that the language of my GFN could never be English. The characters I wanted to write about were people who spoke no English at all, or spoke it only when drunk. How could I make a jeepney driver curse the cop on the corner in English? I wrote about a housemaid once and though the story was accepted for publication in this magazine, Free Press, I thought it was funny to have a maid speak like a Maryknoll coed. None of the attempts made by established writers to render native speech in English could satisfy me.”
“I am talking of course, of the so called lower classes, those who have not had much of an education and can only afford the inexpensive pleasures of Tagalog movies and comic books. Higher up on the social scale. Higher up on the social scale,” said Mr. Lacaba, “one needs English to communicate and these are usually the people who are opposed to Pilipino as the national language, knowing as they do that it endangers their position as the current elite.”
And here is poet, critic, teacher and National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera on the language situation:
“In the bourgeois mind of the power elite, the interests of their small group represent the interests of the entire nation. What is good for their class is good for the entire masses…
“Perhaps the Philippine situation can never be fully understood by someone belonging to the power elite. The Westernization of those who have graduated from the university is practically complete. The students who have learned English easily are the same ones who have quickly embraced the culture embodied by the English language. They are the citizens alienated from their fellow Filipinos because they live in an artificial society, a society built on the principle and objectives imported through the use of English. It is surprising that many intellectuals believe that nationalism and the language problem are separate, that is possible to show concern for the country without supporting Pilipino…

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rePost:: ::{caffeine_sparks}: "On Carlos Celdran's Arrest" by Mahar Abrera Mangahas

I believe in what Mahar Mangahas is saying. I still believe that God exists, but I also believe that we exist in a democracy where ideas must be allowed to live or die, we just wont have that if the rules are different against Islamic Fundamentalist, Christian Fundamentalist and all the the other types of Fundamentalist. If this is how it is supposed to be lets just redistribute the world between all these groups and see who dies because of collective stupidity,overpopulation, selective belief in science and infighting .

Some have commented that Celdran deserves his punishment because what he did was offensive—that certain places are special and thus should be immune to an individual’s demonstration of his politics. A church, some argue, is not the place where politics should happen. Never mind that it too is very much a public space. (Which, seeing that it’s not taxed, is indirectly subsidized by the government.)
The thing is, what makes a church special? Because we believe it is? Because it was consecrated? Sanctified?
The truth is it’s just a pile of cement which has become special because people just say it’s so. Dangerously, the idea that this space is special has given its occupants more armor against criticism. The Church has shown it is willing to engage in public demonstrations against government—in fact, that’s part of its threat to oppose reproductive health bills—but apparently, for a citizen to show displeasure in a creative manner at a church is forbidden because it just isn’t done.
This is foolish. No edifice should be allowed to isolate and protect people, notably leaders, religious or not, from the very criticism that we deserve and have the right to deliver. Various pulpits across the country have been used as platforms against government, individuals and philosophies present in society. The difference is we are vulnerable to the Church wherever we might state our issues against them, as they are allowed to entreat their followers to harass officials at the gates and shout down public meetings from the rafters. Yet they are the privileged who can retreat to their sacred spaces and continue to deliver the worst of the their messages with relative impunity.
via {caffeine_sparks}: “On Carlos Celdran’s Arrest” by Mahar Abrera Mangahas.

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Best Read Today :: The Ghost of Bobby Lee – National – The Atlantic

Read the whole thing!

Finally, there's the question of how we claim ancestors, a question that is more philosophical than biological. Africa, and African-America, means something to me because I claim it as such–but I claim much more. I claim Fitzgerald, whatever he thought of me, because I see myself in Gatsby. I claim Steinbeck because, whether he likes it or not, I am an Okie. I claim Blake because “London” feels like the hood to me.
And I claim them right alongside Lucille Clifton, James Baldwin and Ralph Wiley, who had it so right when he parried Saul Bellow. The dead, and the work they leave—the good and bad–is the work of humanity and thus says something of us all. And in that manner, I must be humble and claim some of Lee, Jackson, and Forrest. What might I have been in another skin, in another country, in another time?
via The Ghost of Bobby Lee – National – The Atlantic.

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CDF :: Crazy Deranged Fool

the pic is here

This print is the logo for an earlier incarnation of this newsletter, which I called “Crazy Deranged Fools”.
A CDF is my term for somebody like me, i.e. somebody who actually has the temerity to TRY to do what he loves for a living, as opposed to shlepping for his daily crust.
I'd say most of the people who read my work on a regular basis would consider themselves CDFs. The desire to “unify work and love” is a powerful driving force in society, and I see it getting more powerful by the day. The days of just turning up and getting paid well for it are over. The world is just too interesting and competitive now.
And Thank Goodness for that….
via .

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rePost :: Failure, success and neither :: Seth's Blog

Loved reading this short post from my favorite Seth Godin.

Failure, success and neither

The math is magical: you can pile up lots of failures and still keep rolling, but you only need one juicy success to build a career.
The killer is the category called ‘neither’. If you spend your days avoiding failure by doing not much worth criticizing, you’ll never have a shot at success. Avoiding the thing that’s easy to survive keeps you from encountering the very thing you’re after.
And yet we market and work and connect and create as if just one failure might be the end of us.

via Seth’s Blog: Failure, success and neither.

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rePost :: antala at kaligta: The Great Fudgee Complex: Almost Famous

Jayson pa nakaw.

Lester Bangs: That’s because we’re uncool. And while women will always be a problem for us, most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem. Good-looking people don’t have any spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we’re smarter.
William Miller: I can really see that now.
 Lester Bangs: Yeah, great art is about conflict and pain and guilt and longing and love disguised as sex, and sex disguised as love… and let’s face it, you got a big head start.
William Miller: I’m glad you were home.
Lester Bangs: I’m always home. I’m uncool.
William Miller: Me too!
Lester Bangs: The only true currency in this bankrupt world if what we share with someone else when we’re uncool.
via antala at kaligta: The Great Fudgee Complex: Almost Famous.

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Best Read Today :: “a child would not hesitate to pack up a sleeping bag and sleep on a pier under the stars with you” | gapingvoid

Read the whole thing.

A child would not hesitate to pack up a sleeping bag and sleep on a pier under the stars with you.
Since that flight, whenever people asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I replied, “I want to be a child.”
So if you ever wonder why I share so much of myself with the world, from the sacred to the profane, the answer is that I think everyone could use this license to be who they are and enjoy what that means. We do live in a society with norms about what we can and cannot share, what we can and cannot do, but as Einstein once said: “if the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” That’s what I want to do – I want to change the facts.
Your wants are beautiful, your truths are powerful. Maybe you want to sleep on a pier or share a fairytale kiss under every triumphal arch in the world. Maybe you dream of diving the wreckage of a galleon or quitting your job and starting your own company.
They’ll say you’re crazy. They’ll say, “I wish I could be as impulsive as you are,” and that you should grow up. Life isn’t like that – there are norms, you know. There are ways to do things. You don’t talk to people at the security line at the airport. You get through it as fast as possible, go to your gate, wait for them to board you, sit down and be quiet. You go to your job, bust your ass, go home, change, go to some social thing, entertain the same questions, go home, watch bad television and do it all over again. Polite, proper, efficient. That’s life, right? Then you get old and maybe play some golf, then you die.
Fuck no.
via “a child would not hesitate to pack up a sleeping bag and sleep on a pier under the stars with you” | gapingvoid.