78 posts from 2007

Year of the Rat, 2008

That's "Have a Happy New Year Please!" in Japanese. Of course you have to say "please" in Japan when you wish someone a good year---heaven forfend you should impose your good wishes on some poor stranger. So rude!  ;-)

2008 is the Year of the Rat in the Chinese Lunar Cycle. Actually, the Chinese New Year doesn't start until February 7 this year, so January is still technically the Year of the Boar. It was supposed to be a good year as the fat, happy Boar is considered a lucky animal in China: but the Boar is a water symbol, and in the cycle of elements 2007 was a fire year. (Chinese astrology doesn't just rely on the animal year, but on the cycle of 5 elements---metal, water, wood, fire and earth---and the position of the "flying stars" to predict how auspicious the year will be.) Fire and water are opposites, with one extinguishing the other, so any new project begun this year was doomed to fail, according to Chinese almanacs. Readers were warned not to build a new house or start a business this year.

(I hope the guy who demolished my old house and is building a McMansion on the lot reads this.)

This year is supposed to be better because Rat is a water symbol and 2008 is a earth year, though it strikes me that if you combine earth and water you get mud....but mud won't kill you. Rice paddies begin in mud, and the rat symbolizes the beginning of a new lunar cycle, so it should be a good year to start a family, begin a new career or make a fresh start. Unless you were born in the year of the Horse.

It's complicated. I can't explain it all in one post, so I will refer you to this feng shui site which does a fair job of explaining why what's good for Rats is not necessarily good for Horses. Just keep in mind that it's run by people who specialize in selling feng shui cures, so if it appears as if you're going to have a crappy year in say, romance, they will offer a cure for a few quid. (It's a British feng shui site. Ah, globalism.)

I'm a Monkey, and according to the almanac my year will suck, career-wise. Which is interesting, as I'm job-hunting this year. But for $120 I can buy a feng shui cure kit that will drive out all of those bad vibes and bring in the luck like rats to a Wisconsin cheddar barn. (Or monkeys to a Dole banana boat. Whatever.)

BOO!

Monty wishes you a Happy New Year.

What was the best movie you saw this year?

I stopped watching movies over the summer when the big remakes blockbusters were being released (Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Shrek 3, Oceans 13, etc.) so I must say sadly that my list of films seen this year is very limited.

I liked 300, which was a surprisingly good adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel, but which had me thinking

Unlike the Athenians,however, the Spartans were not a true democracy. Only those of the warrior class could participate in government, while serfs and slaves were expected to farm the land, manufacture goods and perform "menial" labor. The result was a society that was rigidly stratified and wealth and power concentrated among a small elite.

They are often compared to the samurai, but Japanese culture has an ingrained respect for the arts and even the samurai were expected to know how to write calligraphy and poetry and have some appreciation for aesthetics---their swords are themselves works of art. The samurai themselves were often subservient to educated, refined elites who ruled the imperial court, and being a warrior in Japanese society was no guarantee of wealth or prestige.

I guess that's where I would say inasmuch as I liked 300 I preferred Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, which was

What's the best book you read this year?

Out of the almost 48 books I had to read this year, and the dozen I read for fun?

"Best" meaning important? Most entertaining? Most stylistically sophisticated?

All I can really cite are those books that actually stood out, said something that made me think a little harder, a little differently about the world.

From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map: Essays

Edward W. Said

So: Edward W. Said's From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map, his posthumously published essays on Palestine, the Middle East and the post-9/11 world, which actually was published in 2004. Said's insight into the nationalist cant generated not only by the Bush administration but by the Sharon government in Israel and the various European powers is both depressing---he knew before it even started that the U.S. was headed for war with Iraq---and exhilarating in that he opens up all of these difficult issues and lays them out so clearly that it blows all neocon arguments off of the table. His isn't the easiest prose to read, but he's trying to parse out some very complex ideas and problems, not always successfully. He's best when he's discussing the Western bias against Muslim culture, such as Samuel Huntington's narrow, bifurcated vision of the modern world in his "Clash of Civilizations," or when Said points out that the poverty and ignorance that young Arab men are subjected to make them easy converts to Islamic fundamentalism, as it promises---much as drugs do for poor young African American and Hispanic men in the inner cities---empowerment and easy wealth.

Said died in 2003 after a long struggle with leukemia. I miss his presence in American letters terribly, as he was one of the few American academics who could write about literature and politics and classical music with passion, grace and vision.

This story reminded me a lot of my mother's experience as a teenager in Japan. Merry Christmas and peace to the world.

Christmas Tree Survives War, A-Bomb - RealTime

http://realtime.com/realtime_news/rt_...

When he was still a child his father was lost at sea off Hawaii. With no breadwinner, his family was forced to move to Japan, where Iwatake was drafted during the war. He lost a brother when the bomb fell on Hiroshima.

Share your favorite holiday song.

04 Santa Baby

Rev Run & The Christmas All Stars

The legend of Jofuku

What old wives’ tale have you discovered to be totally untrue? 
Submitted by Jack Yan.

"Old wives' tale" is a sexist term for folk wisdom passed down by generations of women who were responsible for caring for the sick, the injured or pregnant in their families or villages. Granted, a lot of these have been proven false or even dangerous, but in places where there were no doctors or schools, "old wives' tales" were the only form of medical care or education. Dismissing them is a facile metropolitanist response.

And you compare them to old husbands' tales, and I'll take old wives tales any day.

(I'm saying this after being trapped in a corner the other night at a holiday party by this old codger husband of a friend of mine. He talked non-stop about his days in Pusan, Korea, after I told him I wasn't Korean and knew nothing of the culture. There is something about military service that makes older men think it was the most interesting time of their lives. Maybe it was. Which is sad.)

Anyway, that doesn't answer the question, so: my mother used to say that if you sneezed three times in a row, someone was talking about you. This might be uniquely Japanese: I saw a Japanese comedy some years ago in which a man's many girlfriends began comparing notes about him, and the camera cut to a shot of the man sneezing repeatedly.

Since I don't know if people have been talking about me behind my back---you can always guess, but you don't know for sure unless someone tells you they are---I can't prove the veracity of this. I suspect my parents talk about me a lot, but I'm not sneezing all the time either.

Show us what you hope Santa brings you.

Pony

I know, but in spite of that damned Verizon commercial, I still want one. 

What was your major or field of study in college? Did you wind up working in that field or using that degree? If not, what field have you wound up in? 
Submitted by sneuf. 

History, specifically, 19th-Century Western European Intellectual History.

European Intellectual History Since 1789 (6th Edition)

Roland N. Stromberg

No, don't be ridiculous. You can't do anything with a BA in history. My parents tried to make me go to law school, but I messed up so badly on the LSAT it was out of the question.

I became a newspaper reporter for awhile but hated it. Then I spent some 15 years trying to make a living as a freelance writer. Emphasis on "trying."

When my kids began studying literature with a capital L like in Western canon, they would ask me to help them with their papers analyzing the texts. I would pitch out ideas and help outline and organize their papers. And they actually said to me, "Gee, you're really good at this. You should have been an English professor." (And if you know teenaged kids, that was a shock for me to hear.)

So now I teach English. But not for a moment do I regret taking history. Literature wasn't conjured out of thin air. It sprang out of the zeitgeist the writer lived in. And history also taught me that college ain't no vo-tech school. It's supposed to generate a critical intelligence.

But try teaching that to a business major.