Dossier of an Autonomous Correspondent

Occupy LIFE

Lady of Press — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 04:06:39 +0000

If only I kept track of the times I have pressed “backspace” in the last half an hour, or the times I have yawned. It is a cause for great sorrow (and concern)— this vicious cycle of uninspiring content. How to break the cycle? I’ve got a serious case of writer’s block. A serious case of self indulgent writer’s block, the kind that prides itself with over analysis of one’s inability to produce a decent paragraph, even a line or two, of relevant none-nauseating content. It is not like I don’t have anything to write about. In fact, the opposite is true. There is so much to write about. So much livestock excrement to denounce. The predicament is always the same— time is evanescent, eternally evanescent.

The predicament mentioned above has encouraged me to propose the metamorphosis of the protests concerning Occupy Wall Street. I propose an introspective metamorphosis. Allow me to elaborate—
99% of Americans (as well as more than half the world’s population) lead lives which conform to the meaning of occupy as “be busy with”. In other words, we are absorbed into a routine with the pretext that it will guide us into the path of a perfect and content life. We are absorbed, we are busy, we are occupied. We are everywhere, yet we advance towards nowhere. We have everything, yet we are nothing. We are too occupied to truly occupy— seize, conquer— our lives. Unfortunately, time is evanescent, eternally and unforgivably evanescent. It is not the streets that which we should be seizing. It is our lives that which need some conquering.

Over the last couple of months I too have been too occupied with trivialities which leave nothing, but take more than one would want to. Trivialities, that though at times might appear to be important, in retrospect are not all that worthy of concern. So much energy invested into decomposing matter. Not enough energy invested into my passions, my intellect, my creativity, my happiness. I want to reoccupy my life. I think we all should. We ought to. I want to read more. Complain less. Write more. Learn more. Be more. I want to be part of the cure, not part of the disease (and yes, I just used Coldplay lyrics as philosophical resource).

Banish the routine. Banish the alarm clock. Banish the morning commute. Banish work. Banish idleness. Banish apathy. Banish negativity. Conquer your life. Time might be evanescent, eternally and unforgivably evanescent, but I rather have infinite ephemeral joys than a wastebasket of ephemeral miseries.

Occupy LIFE.

- Lady of Press

Felicem Diem Natalem

Lady of Press — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:26:00 +0000

Dossier of an Autonomous Correspondent turned 2 on August 31, 2011.
It has been 2 wonderful years of blogging and this correspendent— ahem, me— looks forward to many more years of prolific writing and enlightenment.

- Lady of Press

{The Briefing}

Lady of Press — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:58:41 +0000

• A couple of days old, relevant nonetheless:
Pro-Palestinian supporters, or better yet— a group of antisemitic hooligans— sabotaged the Israel Philharmonic’s performance at Proms last Thursday night. While the British press— ahem, The Guardian— seems to be sympathetic towards the protesters, The Telegraph’s Stephen Pollard understands the demonstration was clearly an antisemetic act. A notable Tweet by the Culture Minister, Ed Vaizey: “Demonstrators seem to have turned [the] entire audience pro-Israel.”

• Tennis superstar Rafael Nadal, currently ranked the No. 2 player in the world, suffered a cramp during a press conference right after winning his match against the Argentine David Nalbandian at the US OPEN. The video depicts a suffering Nadal that slips away under the table. But don’t panic— the defending champion is in good shape and will hopefully take the trophy home for a second year in a row.

As was expected Nadal’s cramp caused some fuzz, but women’s No. 1 tennis player Caroline Wozniacki took it to the next level. She would do great on SNL, though personally I found it a bit disrespecful.
Watch Wozniacki poke fun of Nadal:

• Addictions come in all sizes and packages.
Though people don’t often perceive it as such, the Internet can become an addiction. But fear no more, the Center for Internet Addiction is HERE (well, since 1995 really). I just took the “Internet abuse test” an score a 44, which means: “[I am] an average on-line user. [I] may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but [I] have control over [my] usage.” How would you score?

- Lady of Press

‎{Sounds of the Week} #3

Lady of Press — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:37:57 +0000

UK’s The Guardian described Alex Clare as a “nice Jewish lad”, but that is not the reason— well, the only reason— why I really digg him. Soulful and blue, and with a scruffy beard. Alex Clare is unto something.

# Too Close (Unplugged) by Alex Clare

This sound is: STIMULATING.

- Lady of Press

{The Briefing}

Lady of Press — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:28:23 +0000

• Meet Jack, I mean Jackie, a ten-year-old girl-wannabe who is really a boy, and is now being labeled as a transgender child. Yep, I can’t make this stuff up. Jack(ie)’s family and their “modern problem” was featured on ABC’s “(Extra)Ordinary Family”. This is bizarre. I might elaborate on a later post. Click to watch the episode.

• First Lady Michelle Obama has many cousins, but only one is a Rabbi. Rabbi Capers Funnye is the rabbi at the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, Illinois. What can I say— everybody wants to be a Member of the Tribe!

• Vandalizing the Jewish cemetery of Venice, Italy, will result in the reading of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and no allowance for a week. That will surely teach two middle schoolers how not to be antisemitic and moronic.

• Visual poetry by the hand of Rishi Kaneria

- Lady of Press

{Sounds of the Week} #2

Lady of Press — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:45:44 +0000

Today’s sound is courtesy of an American indie duo that defines the “less is more” approach.

#2 Good by The Dodos

This sound is: INTRINSIC .

- Lady of Press

{The Briefing}

Lady of Press — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 22:47:07 +0000

• I was grieving over the fact that Ingvar Kamprad, aka IKEA’s founder, was a Nazi sympathizer. Guess IKEA was not to keen on the bad publicity and decided to donate $62 million to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. Good PR move.

• After sixty-six years of silence Brunhilde Pomsel, former secretary of Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, speaks up. Though one would think that sixty-six years would allow Pomsel to come up with a half-decent excuse for her involvement with the Nazi movement, the decrepit embecile just said— “I didn’t know about the Holocaust. I was a stupid, politically uninterested little sausage of simple means. I only learned about the Jewish extermination programme after the war. Goebbels never mentioned it in his correspondence.” Mrs. Pomsel, the Nuremberg trials are over, fear not. You still are stupid nauseating little sausage.

• Celebrating 100 years of style. The Brits know a thing or two about fashion. The video was created to countdown to the grand opening of the Westfield Stratford City (shopping center).

Flawless execution; props to The Viral Factory.

- Lady of Press

{Sounds of the Week} #1

Lady of Press — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:57:29 +0000

A day without music is a day not lived.
This is the inaugural post for a BRAND NEW segment titled {Sounds of the Week}.

#1 What The Water Gave Me by Florence + The Machine

This sound is: FLORESCENT.

Lady of Press

Sound (Not Noise)

Lady of Press — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:58:42 +0000

Sound (Not Noise)
for the people of Norway

The once green pastures are now stained with traces of vivid carmine—
sparkling blood, blitzkrieg, no time to run.
The meadow at the foot of the hill is now of a carmine hue,
Oslo cries on a Friday afternoon.

To impose with death what you esteem so dear,
you take away my dear and esteem death, terror and fear.
A crimson spot adorns the waters as the silhouettes float across Utøya.
Oh where are you my endeared tolerance?

The pastures will grow and the roots the blood will absorb.
Farewell crimson spot—
for the blue is too vast a mere stain shall you become.

A man who makes noise is not one to listen.
The kinsmen and their silence proclaim the sound,
the beat of this drum makes sounds— not noise.
The kinsmen compose rhythmic love.

Meadow at the foot of the hill and Island across the water—
the sounds will reach your pastures,
the sounds will reach your shores.
Only sounds with rythm, never again abominable noise.

- Lady of Press

Adieu Writer’s Narcolepsy, Adieu!

Lady of Press — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 01:57:45 +0000

I can hardly recall the last time I wrote a post.
My absence brings liquid melancholy at the brink of my eyes…oh, my previously fertile blogging days! When did my inspiration abandoned me? When was my prose diagnosed with a sever case of writer’s narcolepsy? Or perhaps have I been neglecting my greatest passion? In the past months time has eluded me, time— and inspiration. The content has always been there, but I have failed, miserably, to deliver.

Indeed during my absence I have accomplished the completion of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and The Jewish State by, my homeboy, Theodore Herzl. I have also plunged in the depths of poetry—writing a few killer rhymes. Thus my intellectual combustion has not extinguished. My intellectual combustion has internalized, but the time has come to let it, once more, burst outside the confinement of my thoughts.

This autonomous correspondent is back.

- Lady of Press