-
07 November 2006
Tue, 07 Nov 2006 10:29:02 GMTHeart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
I had a sort of hunch that this was the book behind Apocalypse Now, nobody had ever told me, there just seemed to be some sort of connection. Once I read the first page I knew for sure. There’s just an atmosphere shared between the two.
I the ending of the book, Marlow goes to see Kurtz’s girlfriend/fiance/wife and spends a few pages talking. I can’t remember the ending to Apocalypse, which I’ve seen twice (which is a lot of times for me to see a movie), which makes me think it wasn’t particularly good.
I’m happy that Conrad used the word station so often in the book. Good word.
I follow the instincts of vain-glory and humility natural to all mankind For it can hardly be denied that it is not their own deserts that men are most proud of, but rather of their prodigious luck, of their marvelous fortune: of that in their lives for which thanks and sacrifices must be offered on the altars of the inscrutable gods. 64, Authors Note
-
27 October 2006
Fri, 27 Oct 2006 16:20:22 GMT An Elephant Crackup?via Kjell Olsen2034 days agotoday’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.
100 years from now will we be looking back on our desecration of the elephant in africa as we look now upon condemnable acts of human vs human genocide?
Because psychologically, it’s looking like elephants aren’t all that different from us humans. They share tremendous social bonds within their herds, which are really just large familial units.
The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and hyperaggression.
Neural studies of elephants are now underway
. Holy shit. How long until we can figure out what they’re thinking, even communicate with them?Some might think that the way I describe the elephant attacks makes the animals look like people. But people are animals. Eve Abe
Figuring out how to live with elephants
will demand the ultimate act of deep, interspecies empathy.
I like to think that animals on the most part are so far advanced than us feeble humans that we can’t even comprehend it. We only take the delusional point of view that god made us in his own image to be caretakers of the world. Nature really does have things under control; it’s just waiting for us to overstep the bounds, so it can blow us all to hell.
-
15 May 2005
Sun, 15 May 2005 18:47:00 GMT TIME.com: On the Beach With Dave Chappellevia Kjell Olsen2564 days agoDave Chappelle is a funny guy, and I can’t help but admire him for just up and leaving everything in the last few weeks. But he was due to get tracked down by someone, and he gave up a nice interview.
“Let me tell you the things I can do here which I can’t at home: think, eat, sleep, laugh. I’m an introspective dude. I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking here.” Dave Chappelle
“During my ascent, I’ve seen other people go through that wall to become really big. They always said that fame didn’t change them but that it changes the people around them. You always hear that but you never really understand it. But now that I’m there that makes a lot of sense and I’m learning what that means. You have to have people around you that you can trust and aren’t just out for a meal ticket.” Dave Chappelle
He seems obsessed with making sure the material is good and honest and something that he will be proud. “I want to make sure I’m dancing and not shuffling,” he says. “What ever decisions I make right now I’m going to have live with. Your soul is priceless.”
He says that he’s only been recognized five or six times in the two weeks he’s been here. “It happens so sporadically that when it does it freaks me out because I have to remember, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m famous.’” At the end of our interview/photo shoot an American woman does recognize him. “Number seven,” he cries. “Wow, I’m not that big in Africa. I’ve got to do an action film here.”
-
07 May 2005
Sat, 07 May 2005 15:20:37 GMT A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AFRICAvia Kjell Olsen2572 days agoBreathtaking set of photos from all over Africa, all taken by different photographers.
-
Also somewhat recently
