Christine Palma
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” –Theodor Adorno
Archive for November, 2007
November 27, 2007 at 8:36 pm ·
I.
In 2004, I lived with a crossword addict and caught the bug. I looked forward each Thursday for the (now gone) LA Weekly crossword. I rarely finished, but still found it relaxing to try. The person I lived with always finished.
Since then I’ve attempted to do the "easy" "coffee-break" crossword books
compiled by Will Shortz. I take much much longer than the target 15 minutes. It’s a foolish goal, but I want to eventually breeze through these. They taunt the newcomer:
Often the subtle pleasures in life are the most rewarding. And as any solver can tell you, a brisk morning, a hot cup of coffee, and a New York Times crossword puzzle can be one of those quietly perfect moments.From the pages of The New York Times comes this brand-new collection of light and easy puzzles… These solver-friendly puzzles allow you to sit back, relax, and lose yourself in a puzzle, all in the span of a coffee break.
Two weeks ago, I receive a phone call to audition for Merv Griffin’s Crosswords. I don’t know how they got my phone number, but I decide to give it a go. I arrive at Tribune Studios in Hollywood on a sweltering Wednesday afternoon and wait in line with ten people. The production assistants shoot polariods of each of us. I’m chatty, but can’t draw out the other would-be contestants.
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Filed under: Crosswords, Spiritual Materialism, Intellectual Materialism, Into the Dark Wood
November 18, 2007 at 8:24 pm ·
I don’t need them. I don’t need them. I don’t need them, but I want them badly. Crayola has "multicultural" fleshtone sets of their crayons, markers, paints, and clays. The crayon colors are: black, sepia, peach, apricot, white, tan, mahogany, and burnt sienna. How inspired!
And how funny. The burnt ochre-ish crayon (second from the right in the photo above) must be for asian. Or perhaps "apricot," fourth from the right.
Apparently muticulturalism in art education is a topic long flogged by critics, graduate courses and publications. Like the proverbial dead horse, it’s here to stay.
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Filed under: Political Correctness, Cultural Criticism, Design
November 18, 2007 at 4:56 pm ·
Yesterday, I was stopped at the intersection of La Cienega and Pico Blvd. when several fire trucks sped around me towards a 150-foot hydralic crane tipped on its side just half-a-block ahead. The 150-foot boom smashed into a building and maybe damaged a car. A pedestrian said yoga students from a neighboring business scrambled to get away and that kids were also in one of the buildings.
I snuck past the police line and climbed to the second story of an apartment around the back hoping for a nice photo. I didn’t stick around. This was my abortive attempt to pick up orange juice and flu medicine from the market before crashing to sleep myself.
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Filed under: Pico-Robertson, News
November 5, 2007 at 4:36 pm ·
I came across this on Wikipedia:
As expected for a common occurrence, laughter is frequently depicted in books and cartoons.
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Filed under: Cultural Criticism, Comics, Linguistics, Media and Entertainment
November 2, 2007 at 3:20 pm ·
Several months ago, I reread Alice Miller’s Drama of the Gifted Child as part of some research I am doing.
Last week I had time to read more from her body of work translated into English from the German and released in the late-80s and early-90s. This includes Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child; The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness; and Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries.
In all of her books, she speaks out against psychoanalytic theories as a form of intellectual self-deception that can only get in the way of recovery. She eventually breaks completely from psychotheraphy, unable to reconcile the role of therapist with this self-discovery. Actually, she is open to a new primal therapy proposed by J. Konrad Stettbacher which listens to the "language of symptoms." The logic is irrefutable: when all the symptoms are gone, then you’ve addressed the root cause or "the truth" and are well.
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Filed under: Psychology, Book Reviews, Writing
