I should have walked another way. I had so many things I wanted to do, when I was younger. I even remember having “dream jobs”. Now I just look at the photographers and wonder why I didn’t have the guts to do that, even though they’re gonna have a hard time making money. I look at the cooks and wonder why I didn’t have the guts to do that, even though they don’t have a life outside the kitchen. I look at what I paid to learn, and I just wonder why.
*
I’m sure that even though we’ve never done it for real, when I look back at this I’m going to admit we broke up a long time ago. And that’s all I really have to say on where we stand.
*
I am three weeks away from a month out of University. I feel so empty. Once upon a time, I was this huge box filled with ambition, with courage, with talent, with rage, with wits, with running legs and, at the bottom of it all, a fine layer of dust called hope. Those past 7 weeks have taken all that out, and I’m pretty much left with the clean, shiny impression of having to fill it all again – just to have it taken out once more. When people tell me I’m a hard-worker I don’t understand because I never feel like I’m giving anything my best. And yet, now I realise I just don’t have a best to give, I just have a limited amount of stuff to sacrifice. I’m not a hard worker. I’m just the guy with the curvy knife, waiting for the virgin on the altar.
And that’s a bad use of a virgin.
*
Well to be honest I expected something greater, but it’s still good.
http://www.youtube.com/user/themcrookedvultures
My favourite still is New Fang, but the first one ends with a Frank Zappa-esque riff that I can’t help but find awesome. And trust me, I tried to find it bad, I really tried.
There’s a theory about the press saying that stuff is becoming more and more trashy and dumb because that’s what the readership is / wants. Tell me, you, the one and only reader I’ve had this far today, were you expecting The Sun or the Financial Times? Because I’m not sure stripping will do me any good, and i’m pretty certain this isn’t highly intellectual enough to be dumbed down.
Then again, I’m not really concerned about readership. This is mostly the 22yo me writing stuff down for the older me to be ashamed of. No big deal.
She sat on the table. She always did. She actually left a mark on the wood. She left marks, for sure. She got angry. Saying stuff about him leaving her. About him being a fool to think he could live on his own. It’s not like she had a point or anything. But when she’s angry, he can’t really help but feel like he has to answer. He was watching her body. He couldn’t find her eyes. He could hardly find his anyway.
He tried to argue. She interrupted. She was cold and resolved to be the one in power, as always. She complained. He was always bringing it all back to himself, she said. She said he would not even be half the man he was without her, and he already wasn’t that much of a man to begin with. He accepted that. He felt it was true.
The naked light bulb in the kitchen cast its dirty light on the mouldy walls. It’s not strong enough to cast a reflection on her body. Her voice became softer. She said he doesn’t really want it to end. She said that if he did, he wouldn’t have taken a glass out. And he had. She was sitting on the table, like she always did. A glass was between them. “Come on,” she said. He took her, filled the glass and put her back, where the mark was. “I’ll drink you once more,” he said, “but this is the last time.”
*
It’s less than 10°C, I’m falling back into Bon Iver, and I’ve been cooking stuff for the 4 past days (cake, shortbread, pancakes, and some sort of marmite today).
Come on winter. I’m waiting.
This is what I have written for my first published article. They corrected my mistakes as I must have made some, and they put a lot more quotes in it but that was the original copy. In retrospect, it isn’t very good and it sounds like I know what I’m talking about, athough not being an American, I doubt i can. But hey, even with the subs’s mistakes, it’s been branded “a good article” by the senior staff. I feel cheated.
- Obama wins 2009 Nobel not-George-W-Bush Prize.
BARACK Obama is to the international community what Amy Winehouse is to gossip. He is a constantly present, often surprising and always observed public figure who never fails to ignite debates and declarations around the – international – lunch table. His status as the first Black man to sit in the White House and his potential as the first American President people worldwide can actually like since Bill Clinton are qualities few can deny. However, his responsibilities as the most influential World leader will keep the debate running. And lately, a fierce new argument has been engaged in the fragile household of the international community: should Barack Obama have won the Nobel Peace Prize?
The President of the United States being rewarded for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” certainly is a ground-breaking event after George W. Bush’s eight years of presidency. He was the one who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the one whose administration stigmatized most of the Arabic community. He certainly was not a running candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. But was Obama a credible nominee? It has been assumed as soon as February 2009, only 11 days after he took office and a mere few weeks after his election, that his name was amongst the 205 on the secret list of those who have been nominated for the prize. And we should not forget that three out of six past Peace Prizes have been awarded to opponents of the Bush administration, so there is logic to be found in this choice. The Nobel Prize committee is indeed arguing that the Peace award is often given as a sign of encouragement, and is here meant as a blessing for Obama’s stand on international politics.
Since he took office in January 2009, Barack Obama has indeed drastically changed the United States’s approach to foreign policy. He has repeatedly stated his will to rid the world of nuclear weapons, he has been working to improve the relationship between his country and the Muslim world, and by closing the Guantanamo camp he has given a strong blow to the military image of the past administration. His campaign to raise awareness about global warming has also been seen as a radical change from George W. Bush’s previous behaviour on the subject. Overall, the international community is endorsing Obama’s actions when it comes to most of the new US foreign policies.
Isn’t all that swell? He sure seems to be a good guy, and he has been saying a lot of wonderful things that certainly encourage world peace. However this is all about what Barack Obama said, and there is really only one thing he has done: closing Guantanamo bay. Now wait a minute. How come the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is the leader of a country which is engaged in two wars, one of them going on since 2001, and both so controversial that the highly symbolic detention camp of Guantanamo could not possibly be allowed to run any longer? Not to forget that on the very same day Obama was awarded his prize, he war-suited up and sent more troops to Afghanistan. These soldiers might be there to maintain peace, but they’re doing so by making war, which is hardly synonymous to a Nobel Peace Prize. Furthermore as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, despite the President’s aspiration of ridding the world of them, the American arsenal still counts more than 5500 warheads.
It remains true that he has made a lot of efforts to mend the bridges between the United States and the Muslim world. But then again, after what the Bush administration did to these bridges, it seems only natural for his successor to repair past mistakes. It is not that such actions are not to be noticed and congratulated, but they are a logical conclusion to years of abuse. If a bully realizes he has been wrong and stops bullying, he is usually not given a prize for it.
On the subject of global warming, it is again also true that even during his presidential campaign Obama has made environmental issues a central piece of his program. Nonetheless since the beginning of his presidency, the environment seems to have fallen behind on his agenda. Early after his election, he was promising that America would play its full role in the renewing of the symbolic Kyoto protocol (protocol the United States still haven’t signed). However such inspiring declarations have been scarce ever since.
Fellow Democrat Al Gore must be seriously wondering where this year’s award is coming from, being himself a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2007 for his remarkable work to put environmental issues in everyone’s mind, and for his fight against climate change during his years has Bill Clinton’s vice president.
It is difficult to blame Barack Obama for his intentions or his actions, maybe because there are not many actions to observe. The Nobel committee has been defending its choice, arguing that few like Obama had “captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” But for those like Tim Marshall, Sky News’s foreign affairs editor, this Nobel Peace Prize would have also been suitable for any Miss World, because “every year Miss World comes on and says ‘I want world peace and the world free of nuclear weapons’.”
What concerns the international community is that through this choice, the symbolic message of the Nobel Peace Prize has been devalued, acknowledging aspirations rather than outstanding actions.
Wei Jingsheng, a Chinese dissident, has spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for criticising the communist regime in his country. Piedad Cordoba, a Colombian Senator, has been fighting throughout her political life for the rights of women in Colombia and helped in the liberation of several hostages from the FARC rebels. Sima Samar leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and she serves for the U.N. in Darfur. They and many others have been active in their fight for freedom and peace for more than 10 months, and this is not Barack Obama’s case. He just happens not to be George W. Bush.
*
It’s kinda funny, but this journal’s readership radically dropped since my post about incompetents. I went from around 20 readers to something like 6. Nice.
Being published and exposed to the readership of 27 000 should be exciting, or at least a small form a success. It is not. My article was not very good I admit it, nothing worth of a Pulitzer, but it was made according to the tone I was asked for, and it was made according to the readership I was told to consider. I would have found some kind of comfort in that, had it been published has I had meant it.
You may not know this if you’ve never been interested in journalism, but the articles are not written by journalists alone. Once the journalist has typed his copy like he thinks he should, he files it. Then the editor might have a look at it and make some corrections (or more probably send it back to the journalist for corrections). But even if the editor doesn’t look at it, subs will. Their job is to make sure the spelling, grammar and style of the publication are respected. They check the facts, and they change the copy according to their perceived notion of what should have the right to be published.
Right now I’m studying journalism and part of that implies that I work for the University’s newspaper. It works exactly like a real newspaper would, except for the fact that here some students are assuming positions of power. They do have to answer to the senior staff that ultimately decide of the wrongs and rights (and give us all grades) but still, they are our editors for this term, and we are content providers. The subs are also students. Subs, editor and desktop publishers are on the production team, and we are their minions. The fact that those teams have been decided according to the kind of degree we are aiming for doesn’t really help, but that is far from being the worst thing about this nice little set up.
Today, the first edition of our university’s newspaper was published for the 09/10 school session. I can’t even begin to describe how bad it is. The content providers must have their share of mistakes to account for, I know that a lot of them are disorganised. But they’re not in power. And, more importantly, their mistakes are not the ones who make the paper bad. The layout is so bad my eyes are bleeding. Widows at the end of nearly all paragraphs. Picture credits so far from the picture they step over the copy. And the copy… The subs just went crazy. There are more typos in there than in this whole journal. And how do I know it’s the sub’s fault? First because it’s is job to check for them, but mostly because the typos are made in paragraphs that were so obviously added after the original redaction of the article, or rewriting of a paragraph. How is it obvious? Mostly because it doesn’t make any sense or doesn’t fit the rest of the copy. The worst example is what they’ve done to my article. They added a quote that was unneeded, and credited it to the AFP. AFP means “Agence France Presse” (translates as “French Press Agency”). They wrote “Agent Française Presse” which is not only inaccurate, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Subs have it nice because it is not their names written at the top of the article. They are not the ones who have to answer to these stupidities. And yeah, I kind of find it very hard to stomach that an article written by me, a French man, contains French words I didn’t write, and mistaken words at that. Even if it were the only stupid thing they had done to my copy (it is not), even if it were the only obvious mistake they had made in the whole paper (it certainly is not), I would still find that worth kicking in the nuts the assholes who didn’t even consider I’d like to have a look at the edited version of my article before sending it to print.
Use your head; you’ll keep your balls.
