My English Journal

From Lincoln NE to Seville, Spain, as scheduled. Cold Saturday evening at home.

2012-02-04T22:29:00.002+01:00

Good working week. The new materials I prepared for my courses functioned well and provided some interesting discussion. Cold Siberian wave, or so they say, these days. It started almost immediately after the sunny dry lapse of time that apparently coincided with a significant increase in the solar radiation according to what I read in the press on line some days ago. Today I have read an article by Steve Connor (The Independent, 4th February 2012) on the causes of this cold wave. He mentions some (scientific) theories that link it with, paradoxically, global warming, which is affecting the Arctic so deeply. More somber news on top of the economic crisis! There, but for the grace of God go I! This is an English set expression I learned when I was 15 years old. I deem it quite appropriate for the occasion, I must say. I still must keep the old BBC course somewhere! Long John Parrot is quite silent and feels cold! I have provided an extra old blanket, which has been accepted gladly. Time for supper in about two hours.

I have kept on thinking quite a bit about Lincoln Nebraska these days. I have found my old copy of John G. Neihardt's. Black Elk Speaks. (1932). It is a used paperback (original price $1.90). A Kangaroo Book published by Pocket Books, New York, 1972. I have also found a very good edition in pdf. on the web by the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Here's the link, just in case. Here's a brief quotation from the first chapter of this book: The Offering of the Pipe. Black Elk says that there is an old story that describes how the first pipe was brought to the Indians (the Sioux) by a "sacred woman." I only reproduce two brief paragraphs of the original "invocation" (if this is the right term). Here's my first photo as well:

Now I light the pipe, and after I have offered it to the powers that are one Power, and sent forth a voice to them, we shall smoke together. Offering the mouthpiece first of all to the One above--so-- I send a voice:

Hey hey! hey hey! hey hey!

......

Hear me, four quarters of the world ---a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.

Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, all over the earth the faces of living things are all alike. With tenderness have these come up out of the ground....

[John G. Neihardt. 1972 (1932). Black Elk Speaks. New York, Pocket Books, 4,5. A Kangaroo book.]

Of course, one thing leads to another and I started thinking of one film I saw when I was studying English Philology at Santiago de Compostela: Dersu Usala (1975) by Akira Kurosawa. However I do not recall exactly whether I saw the film in Santiago or in Vigo during a weekend or a summer vacation. One of my favourite films of all times. A logical association, I think. My second clip of the day is a postcard I write to Dersu about how I am feeling these days and also about my plans to travel to Seville in March to participate in Epics V, a very important conference on Relevance Theory (14th-16th March, Pablo de Olavide University). Here's the link to the page that I have created for this conference. You can find there the information I receive from the organizers and some complementary and useful stuff. I hope you'll like it!

I have also created a couple of toons on the Epics V occasion. Of course, to understand them completely (from the creator's perspective, I mean) it is necessary to keep in mind the titles of the two papers to be delivered on 15th March from 09:00 to 10:00. The first one is mine, the second and very promising one is by Sabina Tabacaru (Université de Lille 3). Some acquaintance with the key concepts of pragmatic (and relevance) theory is highly recommendable as well.

1.- “Relevance Theory and humour: using metalinguistic expressions in comic strips created for a grammar and pragmatics class." (Eduardo J. Varela Bravo).

Catch twenty-odd. (Dada 20087 Toonlets Link)

It is also necessary to know that the organizers of the symposium (say that) they gave the pass to about 70 proposals to understand this first strip. Knowing about Catch-22 and Murphy's Law is weakly relevant, but also accessible to pragmatic formalization.-

2.- Sabina Tabacaru's paper is on:

“Relevance in humor: a corpus-based analysis of interactional humor in House M.D. and The Big Bang Theory”

I have been playing a little bit with Big, Bang and Relevance Theory in the second strip. Some encyclopaedic knowledge about crooners and about crooked pronunciation is also welcome!

I must stress that the social dinner menu is really very good. Serious, no kidding about that! By the way, I'm feeling hungry. Ah, Long John Parrot starts complaining. Supper time! Time to start thinking of finishing this post. I dare upload however another clip card I composed last week when I received the update with the program for Epics V. A little bit too sentimental.... but I always become a little bit poetic when I think of Seville.

Al old photo from my first year in Seville (1983) immediately after my two American years in Nebraska and again me as an old ruin nowadays. Innocence and Experience of course. Literary references to Constantine P. Cavafy and Federico García Lorca (Triste (sad) Ramon de Sismundi!). Two songs in mind: Leonard Cohen's Take this Waltz and Lluis Llach's Viatge a Itaca to finally put an end to this quite long post. A little bit later than expected, but Long John was complaining too much. Now after supper it feels cozy and warm and is getting ready for the night. I need to eat something as well and relax "a little bit bite." Nice weekend to everybody. [First draft]

A little bit more on associations on this academic holiday.

2012-01-28T09:20:00.003+01:00

An extra day of holidays is always welcome to disconnect for a brief while from pressing work and do some creation. I foresee a quite busy weekend catching up with Internet messages, doing research and preparing classes. I have dedicated this extra free time to finish some more compositions that explore a little bit more the role mental associations play in recreating the past by means of present experiences. The beautiful red sunset on Vigo campus that led me to compose last week's Haiku made me think of the years I spent in Lincoln Nebraska (1980-82). The office where I used to work was on the 11th floor of Oldfather Hall and I loved watching the plain while I was preparing classes or studying there. In springtime the sunsets were impressive and the big red sun seemed to sink in the horizon as if it were in the middle of the ocean. This is a very usual comparison in the literature written about The American Plains, and it is true. I started searching the dusty shelves at home and I was lucky. It didn't take too long to find the 1982 pictorial calendar of Nebraska I was looking for. It was a present of my host family there, nice friendly people I will always remember. There was a red sunset on the cover page that I wanted to compare with the photo I took last week.

[Lincoln NE from Oldfather Hall 1122. 1981. Pentax MV camera]

[NEBRASKAland Magazine's Calendar of Color, 1982]

I also spent some time examining the objects from Nebraska I keep in my mother and sister's flat. Once in my apartment I composed another haiku and browsed some pages about Nebraska poetry. I also started piling up the books I keep from those years on my desk. I am planning to put them all together on the same shelf. My American experience was not very long (2 years) but it constitutes a key element of my experiential past. Doughnut or toast, (weak) coffee, cottage cheese, some honey, orange juice, milk, corn flakes, some fruit and the way from Neihardt or Selleck to Oldfather in the morning to start the day under the music of the clocktower. Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning (1962) usually in my mind. Nebraska is very different from Galicia, but I liked it there. People were frank, reliable and very practical. Weather conditions are very harsh there and -no matter modern technology- being able to keep regular control of yourself in all aspects of your daily routine is essential. You must control even your vices and or addictions if you want to be safely back home in a winter night. Generalized winter, you know. Nobody wasted anything there in the 80s. I don't know now. Conservative state, that's true, but respectful with the law and with the individual and collective freedom, at least in my experience. Of course those were the 80s, quite a long time ago. Here's my composition. I've tried to instill some of the Nebraska spirit into it:

If I recall correcly, Ak-sar-ben was the name of a sports and exhibition center near Omaha (?). I also remember having watched a rodeo exhibition with my host family there.

Saturday morning. About time to start the day. A dry winter day it seems. From Nebraska to Seville, friendly good news from the Spanish South these days. [First draft]

Pauvre Édouard is not Paul Éluard. Some creative pastime on this warm Saturday evening.

2012-01-21T20:41:00.002+01:00

Sunny and (too) warm Saturday evening. A little bit melancholic since Christmas, but classes resume next Tuesday and I will not have time "to live in the past" anymore as old Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) used to sing (1969)... and hopefully still does.

Happy and I'm smiling,
walk a mile to drink your water.
You know I'd love to love you,
and above you there's no other.
We'll go walking out
while others shout of war's disaster.
Oh, we won't give in,
let's go living in the past.

[www.collecting-tull.com]

[Youtube link Trichoone]

I must confess that even though my looks, manners and usual behaviour on the classroom stage and somewhere else are much more .... aaah.... "traditional" than Anderson's I have always been fascinated by Jethro Tull's music and by those "witty" features: puns, ambiguities, double pronunciations, intertextual references.... that are present in the lyrics of their quite difficult -at least for foreigners- and often erudite songs. Would it be legitimate to think of Francisco de Rojas' Celestina? You know, that kind of bitter, bleak, sarcastic sense of humour.... I have not time now to go and grab my copy of this classical, impressive masterpiece from the Spanish Golden Century and start comparing, but it is another first idea worth exploring in the future, when I find the time and if future. Me tense? Who, Dada 20087? Not at all: im...plausible, Mr. Malaprop! Oh well, I'd better stop this old-fashioned-and-not-even-absurd-anymore piece of automatic writing and finish this post!

I have been quite busy preparing classes and getting everything ready and organized for next week. Last Thursday I was quite lucky and I could take some photos of an impressive sunset while still on campus which are already available on my photography page. I have used one of the photos for my haiku composition. I have also prepared more materials for my teaching pages and done some Toonlets on "philological" humour that I have not yet posted on my Dodoedutoons site. I'm lagging behind. I must also send my academic friend and excellent literary blogger Sara Martín Alegre (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) the final version of the paper I delivered at the Aedean Conference last November. Interesting articles she publishes! Just the last revision and sent by the 22nd January.

I keep on writing some tentative haikus based on my photos when I have the (free) time and I am in a (creative) mood. I work hard to achieve some poetic quality.... but "Pauvre Édouard is NOT Paul Éluard," evidently. I have found on the web some haikus composed by this excellent surrealist poet which appear on a nice French blog: Antiochus. This evening Pauvre Édouard contributes with 2 photos and 1 tentative poem, Paul Éluard rounds it up with a short marsterpiece and wins the game!

Pauvre Édouard's full responsibility: "well-tuned phrases" as Joseph Blanco would put

[Paul Éluard's Haiku. Oh boy, it makes all the difference!]

Long John Parrot is complaining angrily. It is hungry and wants to turn in. Time to finish this post with a couple of quotations from the book of Proverbs and from the Song of Solomon... with respect to the first 2 lines in J.T.'s song:

Happy and I´m smiling,

walk a mile to drink your water.

[Lagoas, University of Vigo, 1st full moon of the 2012]

Drink the water from your own storage-well,

fresh water from your own spring

[The Proverbs 5:15]

She is a garden enclosed

my sister, my promised bride;

a garden enclosed,

a sealed fountain.

[The Song of Songs, 4:12]

My final confession this evening before putting an end to this post: I found the references on the web at Biblos, but I have finally decided not to copy and paste from that link and type the passages from my personal copy of The New Jerusalem Bible (1985 text, 1990 notes and introduction), Oxford University Press, which I bought in London in 2002 and I keep in my flat. Perhaps I wanted to perform some kind of significant undefined symbolic act. It goes without saying that my volume has all the pages and there are neither tobacco stains nor any (intentional) black spots of any sort! Peaceful and intertextual weekend to everybody therefore. Long John Parrot is getting impatient! [First draft].

First week already gone!

2012-01-13T07:19:00.000+01:00

This first workweek after Chrismas has gone quite fast. Cold and sunny winter days on campus. Somber news on the press on all aspects of human activity. We cannot fall into depression, let's take recourse to (romantic) imagination then! Here's a (bad) haiku I composed based on one of the photos I took at Samil beach last week. Why is it (potentially) unsatisfactory? In principle, haikus are sensorial and mine is conceptual and "philological." I am very fond of these short Japanese poetic compositions which have become very popular in the Western world. I always keep then in mind when I am taking photos. They contribute to make my walks more rewarding and pleasurable because they bring words and musicality to my chain of thought. They are very good language practice as well!

I must get ready to drive to campus. Morning dedicated to marking and class preparation.Work starts piling up for next week as well. Oh well, "better busy than idle." I am definitely "proverbial" today. Nice day to everybody then. [First draft]

Keeping active and illusioned. First new projects for the year 2012.

2012-01-03T19:31:00.002+01:00

Peaceful Christmas and New Year at home with my family. Cold and rainy days. Signs of the economic depression all around and also an acute sense of social disorientation and dismay. There is less money, but the main source of anguish is unemployment and the lack of clear prospects for the future. This can only mean that we must keep ourselves busy. It is only by means of hard, steady work we will be able to overcome the present situation. Our priorities at university remain the same: better courses, more research, more initiatives and creativity. We must also find more efficient ways of performing our activities in harder contextual conditions. Every educational system at all levels requires a minimum of stability and definition, something at jeopardy in the present circumstances. We must grant this stability with our daily effort in class. Peace to everybody and as much feeling of gratification and sense of achievement as possible.

[My old Indian pipe, a present from a couple of friends from Nebraska.

Christmas 1981. Thank you again.]

Personally, I have decided to keep on doing what I have been doing until now even better and more productively. Holidays are over, if ever holidays this year. Since Christmas Day I have been restructuring my photography site and I have also dedicated some time to scan and upload old prints from my trip to Paris at Easter 2001. I plan to keep on incorporating more old materials progressively.

www.photography.ejvarelabravo.com

Last December, on the 15th I received good news from Seville: my paper proposal for the EPICS V Symposium on Relevance Theory had been accepted! I wish Manuel Padilla Cruz, Reyes Gómez Morón and the other members of the organizing committee the best of successes. This means that I'll have the pleasant chance to visit Seville again, where I lived, taught and did my PhD from 1982 to 1990. The event will take place in March (14th-16th). Not at the old Tobacco Factory this time but at Pablo de Olavide University instead. It is a source of academic satisfaction to participate in a high level symposium on pragmatics centered on Relevance Theory. Deirdre Wilson and Robyn Carston will act as keynote speakers, an extra and important reason to be there and participate.

Yesterday I decided to create a special personal research page dedicated to this congress, similar to the one I published after Aedean Barcelona 2011 to collect organize and keep the materials and notes of the symposium. My personal evaluation of my Aedean page is positive in many ways. Three days of systematic work immediately after the conference made me go through and consolidate what I had learned during the sessions. Once the proceedings of the conference are published it will be time to do some more work on the page and keep it ready for the next Conference. I spent between three and four hours yesterday on this new EPICS V page, but it was definitely worth the effort. In that first session I searched and published some interesting information on the web about the member of the Organizing and Scientific Comittees (activity and research interests). I also arranged and published the information sent by the organization until now.

EPICS V personal study page Link

As soon as I collect more information about aspects related with this symposium I will publish them on the site until the beginning of the sessions. When EPICS V is over I plan to follow the same work plan as with my Aedean page.

Some more personal creative work:
I also publish today another first collage card based on an interesting article on John Edgar Hoover's (homo)sexuality, which appeared on the Guardian/Observer on the 1st January 2012. Anthony Summers while commenting the new film by Clint Eastwood on Hoover provides some interesting biographical information about hidden aspects of his personality, which seem to throw light on the ideas, prejudices and activities of the first director of the FBI. However, I must say that what attracted me of the article first was not the very interesting text, but the photo, which I immediately associated with another photo which became sadly popular some time ago, when the Norway killings. Iconic relevance established by association. A first intuition that I hope to be able to develop more consistently in the future. A basic first sketch: two photos two passages from the press online and a first brief comment with my first impression. Pragmatics, semiotics, propaganda, visual display and language: the usual old media evils.

As I wrote before, I established this association as soon as I read the article on January 1st and I chose the picture and article for today's collage. Apparently both the terrorist and the first director of the FBI liked machine guns and had some aspects in common: extreme right ideology and "difficult" personalities. Hoover was a cunning and very successful police and political figure though, while Breivik became a mass murderer. Interesting topic to study in some detail no doubt.

However what interests me most about my card is the process that led me to associate both photos before reading Summers' article and compose the collage. There seems to be a layer of meaning in that pose that is not reducible to words. Not much erotic or appealing to me I confess. Serious sinister meaning, though. The two cobras seem to be a facile ad hoc first solution to the enigma: much more expressive than the actual words, but I am quite confident that good old Kali goddess will give me a B+ for my mythical fabulation in this composition!

Time to put an end to this first a little bit long, a little bit disorganized post of the new year 2012 and do some study and class preparation. Time to resume the course routine. My best wishes to everybody in this new year. [First draft]

Merry Christmas then.

2011-12-24T19:56:00.002+01:00

Cold and sunny in Vigo. My most sincere Christmas wishes to everybody: peace, happiness, comfort, human warmth and as much (contradictory) sentimentality and nostalgia as it suits this Festivity. Time to do the balance of the year 2011. A little bit too early to go beyond the preliminary steps and first projects in designing a strategy for the new year 2012, still too many open variables. As it is the tradition in our family a more substantial supper than usual but without excess. Days to think of the past. Madeleine cake, not croissant: the islands and the road of the whales, not Swan's. Marcel Marceau then? I am not that good or important, my dear Proust! I feel old, I confess....You know well that my sense of humour is pitiful.

The old family "nacimiento" , about 50 years old, Monsieur Bergson.

It seems as if it had been yesterday, though.

This morning I felt in a special kind of mood. I was thinking of those contradictory impulses in each one's personal experience which can lead to acute crises if one falls in the trap of confronting them. Further, many of these apparently contradictory aspects are not such if one learns to see them from a more general perspective based on elementary, non controversial universals of thought, belief and emotion such as pain, love, solidarity, fear, cruelty and hope. You are pronounced dead when -among other things- you cannot breathe anymore. I know of some real people who were arrested at supper and then disappeared. I know that some massacres of innocents have actually taken place.... and so on. When you think about these very elementary items of knowledge then you feel the need to draw the right line between tolerance and intolerance again. Then you evaluate your acts as positive and negative in terms of sincerity, frailty, passion, self interest and prejudice, you draw your conclusions about what and why you did wrong... and you keep on living trying to do better next time. Under this perspective, universal facts of human experience "in all possible worlds", Christmas Eve becomes a special occasion for concord and solidarity, not a day of confrontation social or personal. Old Father Time teaches us the essentials of the human condition again.

These ideas and some others inspired me in today's collage. A little bit personal, a little bit too abstract and intellectual. A first brain storming on the lyrics of 2 songs by Georges Brassens with the same music based on 2 poems, one by Louis Aragon (Il n'y a pas d'amour hereux. No love is ever happy) and the other one by Francis Jammes (La Prière. Prayer). Using the same music for two poems on love and suffering which reflect radically different views of the world (Aragon was a communist and Jammes a catholic) seems to be a paradoxical witticism at first (an act of frivolity?). However, in my perspective Georges Brasses manages to create a very effective artistic "reductio ad absurdum" which proves that those universals of love, pain, sadness and solidarity of human experience which I mentioned in the previous paragraph are the roots of human thought, feeling and instinctive belief. There are some Spanish Christmas carols (campana sobre campana) that allude to the sad destiny (the cross) of the infant king while they celebrate his birth. I suppose that in a way my collage today follows the same tradition on the contradictory nature of life in this valley of tears. I must say that Georges Brasses is not my favourite French singer, but I admire his solid and deeply intellectual artistic work and sense of irony.

This collage aims at reconciling different contradictory aspects of human experience on a Christmas Eve to represent the reality of our lives from a personal perspective. Winter season, end of the year, life goes on until the end of times. A new baby is born in extreme circumstances of persecution... not once but all too often. Another incontestable historical fact, I think. Merry Christmas to everybody therefore!

Georges Brassens in You Tube:

- Il n'y a pas d' amour hereux: http://youtu.be/Ujj-F4GJ4EY

- La Prière: http://youtu.be/dj9Rq8KCEyI

- Lyrics: http://fr.lyrics-copy.com/

About time to finish this post and help my family to prepare everything for supper. My special solidarity with these people who are or feel alone. Best wishes again to everybody. [First draft]

My final homework for José Antonio Fernández Romero

2011-12-19T21:06:00.002+01:00

Sad tidings, Dr. José Antonio Fernández Romero, worthy, wise scholar, excellent person, good friend and valuable, sincere advisor has passed away. I won't have the pleasant chance of talking with him about the Icelandic sagas and the Old English elegies on the bus from the campus to the city center anymore. Still crueler year for those of us who still remain in the middle yard longing for our final trip to the Elysian Islands to sleep and to dream! Fernández Romero was Head of the old Spanish Department years ago. National Prize of Translation, expert in Icelandic sagas and a highly appreciated and popular lecturer. A highly respected member of the Faculty until he retired.

This afternoon after reading the message our Dean, Rosa Pérez sent, I searched for my old copy of Sweet's Anglo-saxon Reader, went through the elegies and picked up a couple of lines from The Wanderer. Then I chose one of the photos I took yesterday evening from Mount Castro overlooking the bay and the islands and composed a card to pay homage to José Antonio, a man of great, poetic sensitivity and very deep religious feelings.

[It is good for a man to seek mercy and comfort from the Father in heaven,

where security stands for us all! ]

When I was teaching Old English in the English Philology Degree more than a decade ago, I used to pass the photocopies of my class activities to my dear colleague, who liked to review his very good knowledge of Old English with me while he taught me Old Norse, specially vocabulary and poetical expressions. This is the reason why I have also decided to publish here a scan of one of my old class collages (1999). His comments were always benign and supportive. I must say that José Antonio was of such an amiable nature that I never had a conflict with him, something very strange and significant taking into account my fastidiousness and sporadic irascibility.We belonged to two different generations and he was wiser, but we never had an argument or strong disagreement.

Cold sunny day today. Sad tidings, but at the same in a mysterious way a sense of internal and pacific joy. José Antonio Fernández Romero rests in peace and we will always keep fond memories of him to contrast with the bitterness of the world outside! Dagas sind gewitene!

My most sincere condolences to his wife and his family.

You don't dare 'accuse' anybody, do you? An exercise in counter-culture.

2011-12-17T22:45:00.003+01:00

One final week of classes before Christmas. Cold day. I was reading the press online in English this morning for a while and I did something I now repent: I read the news reports (Guardian, Telegraph, New York Times) of the preliminary sessions of Bradley E. Manning's trial. I have promised myself not to do that again, not because of any special (political or ideological) involvement, but because I must confess my sensitivity to any kind of potential irregularities, violences or abuses under the excuse of medication or psychiatric treatment or control before a process and verdict. I have read some alarming news on the press -I must say that my knowledge is incomplete and superficial- about the way Manning was treated before the trial. In fact, as far as I recall, even representives of the White House expressed either doubt or disagreement abut the way he was being -psychiatrically- controlled. I write out of memory, I may be inccurate. Let's take recourse to the old criminal gallery. What kind of Nazi criminal is the one I like least or fear most? Dr. Joseph Mengele, the "Angel of Death", of course. Using diagnoses, medical treatments and substances to torture or "correct" people is to me despicable and appalling because of its effects and also because it is often difficult to find out what really took place! I sincerely hope that this is not the case. I know that an army is not a civil institution, but the law is the law and being "smart" about the way it should be applied could go against what an exemplary judicial process should be and it would be very negative propaganda.

It seems, taking into account simply what I have read, that nobody can deny that what Manning did is illegal and potentially criminal acording to the law. Further, Manning is a soldier and all armies are very strict with respect to thievery, spying and potential treason... and everybody in the Wikileaks affair knew that. I am not going to be as naive as to start debating whether Manning and Assange are the reincarnation of Robin Hood and Ivanhoe and I will remain as silent as a cowardly rat if somebody makes the comment that what they disclosed was frightening and nauseating in many cases. However we all knew or suspected that, didn't we? Dirty politics, dirtier secret services. Unfortunately it is the case that some people who were prosecuted as terrorists and rebels end up becoming presidents of states and army leaders while others were tortured and killed and then become cultural and political myths. Others simply "disappear". Life on earth is a (paradoxical, blind, cruel, nihilistic) valley of tears, no doubt.

What is completely unacceptable is either a premeditated psychiatric "correction" before the trial under the disguise of authority or using Manning as a scapegoat for the present American political, social or military difficulties. I am not Emile Zola, Manning in principle seems to be guilty of stealing and distributing that information (something Dreyfus was not) and besides I am not American. What I am expressing here is a concern that affects me both in principle (misabuse of diagnoses, punitive medicine) and as a citizen of the contemporary global world in the present moments of confusion, war and generalized crisis. In my view, many of our present calamities are the result of duplicity, distortion and misinformation. What I fear is that another wave of sensationalism can distract "the powers that be" from the real problems our world is living. That is, I fear the repetition of what has unfortunatly taken place once and again in the last years with the very negative results we all know.

Two new more clipcards. I have created a new mediatic and highly argumentative Philological Hero: Edu Vigorr and his coat of arms for my first composition. I could try to start a popular comic series, unfortunately, I kind of doubt it would catch up. Too much pseudo-erudition. The second one is a first brain storming collage on what I have read about Manning's case. I have not based myself on any article or passage in special on this occasion.

Supper time. What can I do to infuriate John Silver my pet parrot? When it becomes angry it throws the water bin to the floor and then I "need" to punish it to keep it well under control and show the animal that I am the boss. What about writing a short story called "To kill a mocking parrot"....

-One hundred per cent original work man! O boy! I am getting definitely deviant and I have not drunk not even one single "Functional" Zero Zero beer yet! Nice and peaceful Saturday to everybody . [First draft]

Last European Tango for the Brits. No Cash!

2011-12-11T11:25:00.002+01:00

I spent yesterday's cold and chilly evening in splendid isolation at home reading the news, studying a little bit and doing some more collage on two main topics: censorship in the UK (an article about Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris on the Guardian online by Andrew Pulver) and Cameron's personal stand about the economy and the process of European convergence in the last summit in Brussels (8th-9th December) (article on the Telegraph online by James Kirkup and Bruno Waterfield). Britain (the Tories apparently) has disagreed with the other European countries (primarily on economic and social terms, I gather) in the last crucial meeting and places herself in a state of "splendid isolation", expression which takes its origin from Disraeli's conservative policy in the XIXth century.

It seems clear to me that in the Western world there are at present two different views of the state of the economy and of the strategy to follow to overcome the present global crisis: the Anglo-Saxon (United States and Britain) and the European continental (Germany and France). This means in principle two ways of doing business and two different sets of criteria to evaluate the state of the economy: the traditional liberal-conservative employed until now -with a remarkable success in speculative terms for a minority in my view- and the New European Deal alternative which tries to combine austerity with social justice by employing new, more realistic economic criteria based on the actual state of affairs in the world, not simply the old ideas about profit and security. This new alternative may raise doubts about its ability to control the expense, reduce the deficit and relaunch the economy.

Personally, I feel quite skeptical about each of the alternatives until key issues such as energy, global warming, economic growth and social balance are dealt with satisfactorily. We are still in the process of liquidating the old economic order based on easy resources and the good life. Everybody seems to agree in principle on the absolute need to economize and reduce expenses... but saving money per se is not enough, you need to create new solid -that is not speculative and "virtual"- growth and this means establishing a set of priorities and goals based on a realistic analysis of the present circumstances to establish then that kind of social -and democratic- order which enables the different nations to achieve those objectives. Harder times to come I fear until we start adapting to the new circumstances of austerity.

This involves a high degree of necessary, non dictatorial personal and social re-orientation. People and societies will need to develop new patterns of life. It will also require a high degree of fairness and transparency in the handling of information and in the taking of decisions, something that unfortunately has not been the case in the last years of (interested?) confusion and sensationalism. "Divide et vinces," this always seems to work. My collage incorporates some ideas brought by association when I was reading the article. Being a first draft they should be made more precise and worked in more detail in subsequent compositions.

What about university education then? I think that nothing changes basically in our priorities and main objectives. In Spain we need to consolidate the new European educational model, but the external social, economic and political conditioning will create further difficulties and we will need to show even more dedication, efficiency and imagination to overcome them. This means, among other things, a reappraisal of the cultural and artistic values under the new circumstances. At present we are living an ethical, moral, religious, symbolical controversy which may be to us teachers as important as the economic and political crisis because it involves crucial questions such as the freedom of expression and tolerance in the classroom and in related intellectual activities. When I read the article about Last Tango in Paris I recreated in my mind the most important details of the scandal at the time. The film was completely banned in Spain at first until 1978 and then shown with some important cuts, I suppose. I'd need to do some further study about this extreme.

I didn't watch the film until the the mid 80s when the democracy had consolidated. I could then appreciate the difference between what a quite deep intellectual and artistic work is and what a typical X-rated porn film, characterized by its immediacy, represents. My compositions express my personal sense of (pragmatic) humour and irony by providing a couple of misinterpretations of the meaning of "The Obscene Publications Act". My recreation however reproduces quite realistically a kind of (fatal) mistake that is quite frequent in exams: that prompted by the misunderstanding of a key lexical term ("act" in this case), which leads to a wrong reading and interpretation of the sentence.

The title of this post is based on a film called Tango & Cash (1989) about two narcotics detectives who need to join forces to fight the organized crime, but there is no further relation between the movie and this post .... about Last Tango in Paris, David Cameron and the European summit. Cloudy with sunny spells in Vigo. Nice Sunday. [First draft]. [Some corrections]

Some collage on photography on an idle day.

2011-12-08T20:35:00.003+01:00

Peaceful winter day at home. This morning I decided to start organizing and classifying the albums of photos -quite a few- I store on the shelves of the small bedroom where I keep John Silver, my parrot. I had not had a look at the old prints for ages. I also spent some minutes going through the small collection of analogical cameras: manual, pocket and reflex I keep in a suitcase in my bedroom closet. Digital photography is one of the most impressive innovations of the last decade no doubt. The old photography and its remarkable achievements have already become a glorious tradition: these beautiful pieces of machinery and high quality optical lenses are now potential exhibits in a design gallery or museum of technology. I should digitalize my old collections, but it takes a lot of free time, something I cannot afford now. I scanned a series of 33 photos I took in Paris in the year 2001 to upload them to my photography site and it took me about one hour!

I was also reading an interesting article by John Naughton on The Observer 4th December called Digital photography's bright new world. There are some very interesting remarks about how technology per se cannot grant good aesthetic effects in photography, what is absolutely right. Intuition, technique and artistic sense are as important in each composition. It's a little bit like corpora and big databases in Grammar and Pragmatics. You still need to become competent in the use of the language rules and conversational strategies to be communicatively successful. A grammar of photography? Of course.

I am very fond of photography because taking photos gives you immediate reward and a sense of achievement while you keep visual records of your experiences. It also makes you more sensitive and attentive to what you see and perceive. Taking a walk with a pocket camera is one of my favourite pastimes both in the countryside or in the city. Not only pastime, but also mental exercise and reflection on what I read and study. Photography can lead to highly motivating intellectual and poetic experiences which can be then recreated by looking at the photos again. Each photo album can also be completed with personal notes and other materials. The new digital cameras make everything much easier. You can repeat a photo as often as you wish until you have it right and then you save, store and print only the best ones. The number of pictures is not restricted to 24 or 32 as in the old rolls of film. However, something romantically good about the old limitations was that you became much more selective and careful at each shot. On the other hand, the old equipment was quite heavy while the new digital cameras are lighter, a positive asset on excursions.

I upload 2 collages on the contrasts between the old and new photography together with a brief passage from the article I have mentioned in this post and the lyrics of an old fashioned sentimental song by Jim Croce I love: Photographs and memories (1972). I think that the associative process which led me to think of this song today is obvious and I don't need to explain it. Quite an easy text for grammatical comment as well. Thinking of the past always makes you feel nostalgic. Thinking of the past in moments of crisis makes me feel nostalgic and melancholic.

Photographs and Memories

YouTube link Crinale819

About time to start thinking of dinner and tomorrow's class. Nice peaceful evening to everybody. [First draft]

Cold December Sunday.

2011-12-04T22:03:00.015+01:00

This week has gone pretty fast. The December exams took me some extra time and I was also quite busy working on more materials and potential textbooks for the new course on Meaning and Discourse I am to teach in the Second semester and writing a new paper proposal and some personal compositions. Some more updates on my other pages as well. Official certified letter this Saturday from the Administration: expected news: less money to celebrate Christmas and start the new year. At this kind of news, Paradoxically, people at university usually react showing even more dedication to their work. Red brick university classrooms and offices become ivory towers and niches to fight the external hostile conditions! This melancholic evening I have been re-reading Ezra Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920). Of course, the Fascist lunatic poet was not making obscure prophetic allusions to the Ects University reform à la Nostradamus in that composition was he? Too surreal a connection, no doubt! Detestable humour and/or bile on my part I acknowledge!

____________

For three years, out of key with his time,

He strove to resuscitate the dead art

Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"

In the old scene. Wrong from the start--

........

the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.

 [Project Gutenberg online edition. Link]

 _________________

Two days of holiday next week (Tuesday and Thursday). Some extra time to read, write and perchance watch a couple of films and finish class preparation for the remainder of the semester. This week the attendance was not high due to the December exams. Let's see what happens next Friday in my grammar class scheduled for 09:00-11:00. Alas poor Faitic Tema Unit 3 1st lecture! I prepared it well, Horatio!

There were several interesting -generally quite gloomy- articles on the press online today. I have chosen one for my collage that I consider important and specially relevant for (university) teaching. Toby Helms reports on The Guardian that "Most Britons believe children will have worse lives than their parents" due to the acute global and generalized crisis. Unfortunately, I think that this poll in many other countries would throw a very similar result. This means to me that in Spain we will have to adapt our educational system again to the new harsh economic and social circumstances precisely after a very intense period of important structural changes due to the Bologna process still to consolidate in most cases. What worries me most is the negative repercussions on the students' attitude in these difficult circumstances.

What are the main sources of motivation for people to study first at school then at university? I can think of three obvious reasons: 1) because they have to, up to a certain age. It is compulsory, 2) because they need to be qualified to get a job, 3) because they like studying. Without jobs and without scholarships conditions can become very hard indeed. I cannot help thinking that there is something unfair, phony, in all this, but we'd better not think too much about the past and keep on working hard towards the future. The first goal is clear: dispel the present uncertainties, not to fall in the trap of disillusionment and prepare even more complete and imaginative classes and research projects.

My collage today reflects all these concerns. Besides the news from the Guardian I also mention Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the classical tragedy about adolescent love (Zefirelli's film) and the lyrics of a piece of music by Enigma I (kind of) like called "Eppur si muove". My usual bad taste witticisms about the Bologna process and about the Pisa results and another proverbial expression for practice (usual and slang uses): "to be under the weather"

Time to put a stop to this post. Some final December marking tomorrow, class preparation and study. Nice beginning of the week to everybody. [First draft]

Four weeks to Christmas. Who will do the balance of the year? Not me!

2011-11-26T19:42:00.004+01:00

First weekend after the General Elections. A sense of uncertainty, almost of existential anguish prompted by the imminence of a hard social and economic readjustment. It seems as if we were not the masters of our own lives any more. Even though we are all trying to adapt to the circumstances, there are at present too many external variables we cannot control. Depression, recession.... oppression: The Black Shadow haunts this land once again.

Hwaer cwom mearg? Hwaer cwom mago? Hwaer cwom maþþumgyfa?
Hwaer cwom symbla gesetu? Hwaer sindon seledreamas?

I should ask my colleague and friend Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso for advice on how to render this short passage from The Wanderer into Present Day English! At the conference in Barcelona about a week ago Jorge received the 2011 Aedean translation award for his Galician version of Beowulf, the first ever published in our language . Congratulations once more. Here's a (bad) joke to celebrate this good news.

[Dunkel Seaxna (and AlterEgo) is (are) a (couple of) fiendish character(s) I composed this morning on Ugo super-hero generator. Varelian -almost Marvelian demi-hero(s)]

Four weeks of classes to Christmas. Next week I have 2 extra December exams. I feel a strong need to do some reading, study and work on new projects. One of the best way of fighting the present uncertainty on a personal level is getting things done, no doubt and keeping in touch with the colleagues and family.

Yesterday I finished another personal project of application using the web 2.0 resources by publishing a page with the materials, photos and my first impressions of the Aedean conference held in Barcelona. The advantages are obvious: 1) the materials are classified and available on line, 2) I can always reedit the page in the future correcting its content and incorporate more information, 3) I can share this page with my colleagues, 4) I can link it to other pages of the same kind. Here's the cover and the link. I chose a plain template, as if it were a notebook.

I apologise beforehand for all the typos and mistakes, but it is still work in progress. I'd like to add up some more links provided by colleagues at the conference and also the scans of some of the handouts. One idea always leads to another. I must create a new directory with pages dedicated to conferences on my Grammar, Pragmatics, Communication page!

________________

Lonely Looking Sky [Envoi]

Yesterday in the grammar class I had one of these quotidian surprises that make me feel dated and old until I forget and recapture some of the old illusion again. We were contrasting in class: "alone, " "lonely," "loner," "loneliness" in one of the exercises and I mentioned the well-known? song by Neil Diamond: Lonely Looking Sky, part of the soundtrack of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull (1973) based on the story by Richard Bach. None of my students had ever heard about the song....or so they said! Sic transit! When I was 17 the book and the soundtrack rather than the film became very popular in Vigo. Seagulls had not yet become as ecologically and politically controversial as they are nowadays. (I think that in a way, Johathan Livingstone Seagull was our generation's Siddartha (1922): trascendental ideas of reincarnation, improvement and purification by means of loneliness and personal effort, but I'd need to work a little bit more on this first intuition). Once again in a class a realized that I was wrong in presupposing an item of encyclopedic knowledge from my students! However, after the first moment of dismay, I derived gratification in spending about two minutes commenting the song. The students liked the clip!

I took the photo here in Vigo on the 21st May 2011. The Youtube link is to:

jonathanlivingstoneseagull28.

................

Lonely looking night
lonely night, lonely looking night
and bein' lonely
never made it right
never made it right
lonely looking night
lonely looking night
lonely looking night

Sleep we sleep
for we may dream
while we may
dream we dream
for we may wake
one more day

one more day

...............

[www.allthelyrics.com]

It is getting dark and I need to do some shopping. Time to put an end to this post with a fragment of the lyrics of this song. Nice weekend to everybody. [First draft]

Back again. I'll play it conservative from now on, I promise!

2011-11-21T10:47:00.002+01:00

Very pleasant Aedean conference despite the initial difficulties. A very positive evaluation in all aspects on my part. The papers delivered and the plenary lectures had an excellent level. It was a real pleasure to meet the old friends and to make new contacts. Not much time for sightseeing, but I had the chance to take some photos of the area of Barcelona where the conference was finally held. Back home last Saturday at 13:20. Both flights uneventful. I spent Sunday organizing the notes and photos I took during the congress on a new page which is still restricted because I have not finished yet! Overwhelming conservative victory in most of Spain and/but nationalist victories both in the Basque country and in Catalonia. I think that we all expected this result. First necessary conclusion: still more efficiency and control. Need to adapt to harder circumstances to meet the new challenges.

Back in my office at 08:15. Tutorials until 12:00. I must catch up with classes and deadlines as soon as possible. Therefore only a first brief post today to resume my activity on this blog. I think that my paper produced a positive impression in the audience, something always encouraging. I post today a first creative clipart card on Aedean and the present political moment in Spain and also the cover of my presentation for the conference. Orwell's works: Homage to Catalonia and Down and out in Paris and London are the departing idea for my composition. The comment by Arias is from todays' BBC news online.

Cloudy day. People coming in little by little. Internet, marking and class preparation for the day! [First draft]

PS. Apart from Orwell, I should also mention all the references to self-discipline, poverty and the need of control based on the well known from the American depression: Brother can you spare a dime and on Chaplin's film: The Gold Rush. Dodoedu's contribution is a little bit silly, but hints at the same idea of stricter (self)regulation.

Aedean 2011 Barcelona. "Leaving on a jet plane today," but back soon.

2011-11-15T09:08:00.002+01:00

The 35th Aedean Conference starts tomorrow. In a few hours I'll be taking a plane to Barcelona. If everything goes as scheduled I should be there in the evening. During the weekend I was busy going through the paper I am to deliver on the 18th and making the final travel arrangements so I didn't have the time to write a post on this blog. I don't have much time this morning either. Only a sketch therefore with a first creative "after breakfast" brain storming on the first impression the excellent and lively poster Felip Soriano composed for the conference suggested to me.... in terms of language. The key word and concept is "feather" in my approach. I don't have to say that much about the bald funny little character depicted there. I don't do literature!

Strong motivation, almost enthusiasm on my part. I want to express here my solidarity with my colleagues from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (blogger Sara Martín among others) who have done an impressive job to guarantee that this first rate international conference can finally take place as originally planned despite all the extra difficulties involved in having to look for a new site due to unexpected circumstances with only a minor readjustment of the original schedule. My warmest congratulations beforehand.

I wish everybody good luck, but I don't want anybody to break a leg! Nice week to everybody. [First draft]
P.S. [I'm leaving on a jet plane is a song by John Denver]

Quite a pleasant evening: 6 new strips generated. Well, 5 plus 1 to be totally sincere!

2011-11-06T22:47:00.000+01:00

It had been a long time since I visited Stripgenerator to create a Burgess 09 strip. I like the site a lot and the results are usually good and effective, but it presents one important shortcoming when you are a little bit in a hurry: you cannot "edit" your old strips to create a new one, as it is the case in most of the other cartoon kits I use. This means that when I plan a series of related cartoons I tend to discard Stripgenerator from the very beginning to save time.

On this peaceful winter, not too cloudy Suday afternoon I conceived the project of constructing some strips as illustrations for a short popular version of Jack O' Lantern's story, the myth on which Halloween is based. Stingy Jack is cunning enough to trick the Devil three times successfully during his life, but once he dies he is not accepted either in Heaven or in Hell and he is condemned to wander about using a carved-out pumpkin (originally a turnip) with a burning coal from Hell inside as a lamp until the end of time. Trick or treat!

Another exercise on combining texts and strips creatively as language practice therefore. I finally decided to use the Stripgenerator online kit because of all the tiny little devilish characters and paraphernalia avaliable there, but in order to go fast and finish soon I also had to trick the devils of the page a little bit, like Jack O'Lantern did but for a good cause this time. I successively designed 5 strips, which I saved on my desktop and then I constructed a recapitulatory 6th one that I published on my Burgess 09 page. Quite a satisfactory result overall, but I would have preferred to keep the whole series on my gallery, of course. These are the strips. I have reproduced some passages from the short version of the story published on: Haunted Bay.

1.- The original trick.

2.- The second trick.

3.- The third trick.

4.- Neither here nor there. First punishment.

5.- Wandering about until the end of time. The Devils's treat: the coal and the pumpkin.

6.- Recapitulation. Strip published on Burgess 09. Stripgenerator.

A very pleasant afternoon-evening therefore and some positive -and creative result. Halloween is a good source of inspiration for language and folk culture activities at all levels.

I have also added some some more work on my Grammar, Pragmatics, Communication resource site. Yesterday I also had the chance to watch for the first time an excellent film noir : He ran all the way (1951). Interesting dialogues, very effective and creative photography and direction. This film presents an additional historical value: both the director (John Berry) and the main actor (John Garfield) also were investigated and blacklisted for their pro-communist ideas by the Anti-American Activities Committee very shortly after this very successful thriller was completed. Highly recommendable.

ClassicFilms123

YouTube link to first minutes

Productive weekend therefore. Only something to regret: I didn't go out much! Good Monday to everybody. [First draft]

A couple of sketches on a significant date.

2011-11-01T17:58:00.005+01:00

It's All Saints' (All Hallows) Day today, also called Samhain. Surprisingly sunny after yesterday's day, isn't it Falstaff? I have dedicated about three hours this morning to browse some information about a film on satanic pacts and practices I see as a modern classic: Alan Parker's Angel Heart (1987) featuring, Robert de Niro, Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet. I considered this film most didactic when I watched it in Seville that year -the year of my doctorate by the way- because it provided me with a good comprehensive descriptive synthetic overview of some key aspects of popular culture which, at least superficially, are manifestations of black magic and satanic rituals plus mental derangement, substance abuse and extreme ritualized violence. A good mix of the Mephisto waltz and New Orleans dixieland so to speak! I didn't like the macabre realistic details then, even though films nowadays show ultra-realistic effects that make this film dated and possibly ineffective for the younger generations. I am an average product of the old school. This means that I do not need that much gory detail because I am interested in the language used in the story and I fear that too many visual impressions can blur the picture and distract me from my main objective. The story was based on a case of criminal double identity. The main character, a private investigator called Harry Angel searching for the hearabouts of a popular singer called Johny Favourite is involved in a series of very cruel and ritualized crimes first as a witness.... until he remembers that he is the actual murderer and that he is trying to scape from his original pact with Lucifer himself (Louis Cyphre, his employer), whom he had tried to trick during the World War II by murdering a soldier to supplant his identity and get a second life once the time of his original contract had expired. I have not seen the film again since the late 90s, but I think that I remember the most important details quite well. I have created a new collage card (black humour?) on one of the sequences of the film I liked best: the conversation in which Lucifer (Louis Cyphre) interviews private eye Harry Angel and eats boiled eggs and black coffee for breakfast. The pacts with the devil are always a good occasion to refresh the old fashioned pragmatic notions of truth and compromise. Not even Lucifer accepts duplicity, lie and treason in a formal agreement, something I consider worthy of consideration in these moments of crisis, confusion and interested rumours.

tubepasta

Leaving aside now any kind of controversies, All Saint's Day is to me the archetypical, anthropological day which marks the end of the Fall and the beginning of the Winter, when nature "sleeps" until the arrival of the Spring and I think of our ancestors and our religious tradition, of course. A day to read some romantic poetry, listen to some Beethoven (Moonlight Serenade)or Litsz (Les Preludes) and to reflect for a little bit about the passing of time trying not to fall into melancholy. I wish everybody a good peaceful day. It's getting cloudy again!

Funeral in Berlin (1966), the 2nd film of the Harry Palmer series, featuring Michael Caine was not as good as The Ipcress File, but it showed a detail that I consider quite relevant today: the use of passports under the name of dead people by the Secret Services when they had to cross the Check Point Charlie in Berlin. Of course, the situation had not become as global as it is the case today, or so they say! Food for thought! Granny Smith apples rather than boiled eggs for me. I don't know what Mr. Louis Cyphre would consider or eat, not to mention his associates, not to mention his competitors, of course!
[First draft]

HarryPalmerMovieSite Link

Fighting the depression the usual way: 2 more cards and an evening walk.

2011-10-29T19:42:00.004+02:00

Sunny, but cold weather after the days of strong wind and heavy rain. Depressing news on the press: unemployment, economic stagnation, energetic uncertainty, social unrest. The educational system becomes a social priority in this context. We must fight disillusion and dismay with all our might and keep on thinking about a better future, even though we all fear that the situation will become even bleaker. I've decided to go out for a walk after finishing this post and see what's going on in the city center.

In the last 2 weeks the people who scattered the crumbs to feed the pigeons under my mother and sister's balcony at early morning has stopped doing so. I ignore the exact reson, even though I am of the opinion that the regular police patrols have played a decisive role. This has supposed a big relief to me because I do not need to be that vigilant as in the near past and I can concentrate in my work. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that the problem is definitively under control. I have lost many hours of extra, ungrateful work which has affected my regular contribution to my blogs and sites negatively. Dadaedutoons has finally been updated and I plan to do the same with my photo gallery pretty soon. I may use next Tuesday 1st November: All Saints' Day.

This morning I have been working on My English Log, my course diary. I am quite satified with what I am writing there. It means extra work, but I know that at the end of this course 2011-12 I will feel a lot of gratification when I go through its posts and review what I have ben doing during the last year of English Grammar before the course enters it terminal stage. After lunch I have created two more (bad) collages that represent some of my ideas, feelings and associations after having read the news: The big topics today have been the economic depression, the energy crisis and the raise of prostitution in Spain. I have used Midnight Cowboy (1969) for my composition, but I also thought of The French Liutenant's Woman (1981). Midnight Cowboy is a depressive film I think I saw at Santiago de Compostela when I was doing my English Degree. John Schlesinger director, with Jon Voigt, Dustin Hoffman and Sylvia Miles. I also reproduce two photograms from YouTube depicting Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940) and Shoulder Arms (1918) a short silent and very funny film: First and Second World War.

1.- HOT AIR.

Allusions both to the Great Depression between the First and the Second World Wars and to the present economic and social crisis. A somber but sincere representation of some of my worst fears at present. Back to my Grammar Ivory Tower as soon as I can. I promise myself!

Some dictionary work. The illustration (Alice in Wonderland) has been taken from WP. Clipart

2.- GENERAL ELECTIONS.A rather predictable -and mild- Dadaedu black humour script and collage. Prostitution becoming popular among the adolescents again? Quite symptomatic in my view.

Now for this walk. I wish verybody a nice weekend and also a good beginning of the winter. [First draft]

A modern classic: The Ipcress File. Some under the counter-culture today.

2011-10-22T18:21:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I was quite tired after lunch so I decided to watch the DVD of an old spy film I think I saw when I was doing 4th year of Bachillerato (Secondary School) at the Jesuits here in Vigo on a Saturday matinee. That year some senior students had organized a cycle of movie sessions to get funds for their course summer excursion and one of the films they showed was The Ipcress File (1965) by Sidney J. Furie staging Michael Caine among others.Today I can say with satisfaction that I remembered the film quite well, not much blur, not much distortion after so many years. At that time I was a sensitive adolescent and I was shocked at the "refinement" of the psychiatric tortures depicted in the film. Nowadays, in terms of "reality" the movie is much more than soft. Much more cruelty in any new avatar designed for children.

I belong to the old school, however.This means that I only need a short passage to get all the symphony with quite a good degree of accuracy. I have always loved the old heavily intellectualized spy films, because they describe the different manifestations of duplicity and treason of the secret wars, they have puzzling, seemingly coherent plots and besides the predominant dialect is usually the standard variety of British English, which is good practice. All these spies have received an education, you know. On the other hand the double (Soviet, Chinese....) agents are linguistically characterized by speaking too formally and pretentiously, which provides me with an extra "gothic" source of amusement, while the ordinary criminals speak lousy, vulgar, substandard English. I don't know if there are many sociolinguistic and textual studies of the language of this kind of movies, but it is intuitively a fascinating topic of research, at least for a non native. The scripts of this subgenre are usually very solid, at least in their classical period.

I have always wondered why so much arbitrary cruelty and "refinement" in the tortures and crimes of the secret wars and the underworld. The most convincing reason I can think of is that inspiring absolute, blind fear and provoking ever further cruelty inspires the well-known ritual "the earthly powers" have always paid heed to since the origins of the civilization well before Christianity. It is evident that to torture somebody you only need some pills from the drugstore, some electricity, a bathtub, a damp basement, free time, money ... and that "psychiatric" intuition that is required to drive a human being nuts and with sequels for the rest of his/her life. Does this torture ritual lead to archaic, anthropological, ancestral religion in all these cases? Are all the tortures believers? Yes in my opinion! Impossible to get out once inside Beatrice!

Something that disturbs me nowadays is that in the spy movies and novels duplicity and treason were always the characteristic of the traitors and of the enemy, not of a democratic regime. What I am reading on The Guardian online these days about police informants is a little bit depressing in terms of the old pragmatics and truth values. In the past intelligence agents had to be reliable. They ran enormous risks, but there were rules and some boundaries even in that underworld. However it seems that the duplicity and falsity which we associate with double agents have been widely adopted by people who hold posts of responsibility in all areas of activity everywhere in the world and this is very difficult to take! Whom to trust?

Being a double agent is not the same as living a double life. It is not the same as taking naive liberties or committing petty irregularities. However there is so much (interested) confusion nowadays that political crime, social crime and personal weaknesses seem to have merged into a continuum. The responsibility of the information services and of the mass media seem (too) obvious to me.

This morning I have been working on some clipart cards based on my impressions after yesterday's movie session. I hope they make some sense to a potential reader. They make sense to me... but it is a literary and artistic (also communicative) axiom that to express yourself and "get some satisfaction" you need a friendly reader and some feedback. "A rolling stone gathers no moss".... no academic recognition either.

As for double lives, I also mention another film in today's work: The Graduate (1967) by Jack Nichols featuring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross. I did NOT see this film at the Jesuits, but at old Cine Disol also in Vigo. I was 16-7 and quite an avant-garde experienced intellectual already. This film is not about drugs, but about adultery and sexual experimentation in California, I gather. Also soft core for today's standards. I must confess that in my intuition politics, drugs, sex, rock and roll and the old Galician cauldron were the essential ingredients of the "University of Compostela's experience" in the years 1975-80. I always keep in mind that many of the best-known politicians nowadays not only in Galicia but in Spain belong roughly to that generation. Thirty years have lapsed and we all know about their triumphs and miseries. Some of us did not have much money then and it seems that our savings are at some risk now. In my view, we should consider these 5 factors under a double perspective, international and national to find some relevant first answers to some key aspects of our present situation of prostration.

I also make an allusion to Rosebud , Otto Preminger's movie, which should be traced back to the original article by Tom Watson about Murdock on today's The Independent on line. There are some other intertextual alusions, which are not that difficult to detect.

1.- The Ipcress File.

2.-Ostensive-Inferential.

3.- Edu's pizza factory.

Nice weekend in peace to everybody! [First draft].

"The beautiful and damned". A sketch on Liam Fox's case.

2011-10-19T10:07:00.001+02:00

Sunny day, but not very hot. Not much free time, I'm afraid. I need to work on the my next grammar sessions. I publish today a parodic sketch on a headline on Liam Fox's resignation taken from The Guardian (18th October 2011) which could be used to discuss some aspects of vocabulary, pragmatics and (conventional) meaning. The spelling "sphynx" (not "sphinx")is intentional this time. Intertextual alusion to a novel by Scott Fitzgerald The Beautiful and Damned (1922). Precise and illuminating vocabulary and expressions in the article to describe a first important irregularity in the handling of political and economic affairs based on favoritism and overconfidence that could have led to another corruption scandal in the global world. Too many pieces of negative news nowadays. Let's focus on something positive, like work and study, for instance. Nice day [First draft]

Some more strips for grammatical analysis.

2011-10-17T10:49:00.013+02:00

Last Sunday I found some free time to compose three new strips based on expressions from news headlines. Namely:

____________________

I.- United Kingdom.

1.- BBC. About Liam Fox's resignation as Defense Minister:

1.1.- [Defence Secretary Liam Fox has resigned after a week of pressure over his working relationship with friend] and self-styled adviser Adam Werritty].

1.2.- [Mr Fox was being investigated amid claims he broke the ministerial code.]

1.3.- [In a letter to David Cameron, Mr Fox said he had "mistakenly allowed" personal and professional responsibilities to be "blurred"].

____________________

I personally like the use of the verb "blur." You can blur something (taint somebody) intentionally or unintentionally.... or you can have somebody do it for you with or without being notified. This .... extended social political and economic weakness is one of the most alarming symptoms of the way affairs were and are being conducted in the context of the present global crisis. If leadership and management is vitiated then there is no possibility of controlling generalized abuse corruption and distrust, which is most undesirable in these critical moments. Depression becomes deeper and social dismay and dissatisfaction increase. I wonder what his Excellency Benito Mussolini would think (and do) nowadays. Why do I mention him? Well, Mussolini was an active socialist and a virulent anticlerical until he was expelled from the Socialist Party in 1914 (Wikipedia). What is leftist and what is righteous in the new political panorama? I still can't tell in many extremes. I suppose it is clear that I am not making any judgements about political movements or politicians. I simply say that there is a lot of potential confusion in what is going on globally nowadays.

____________________

II. Spain.

2.- El Mundo. (151011). José Blanco: 'Soy creyente y no tengo nada de qué arrepentirme.' ( I am a believer and I don't have to repent of anything).

3.- El Mundo. (170111)

3.1.- Mariano Rajoy: '(Prometo) una política económica como Dios manda.' (I promise a proper economic policy).
3.2.- Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. 'Como esperemos a que Dios nos mande indicaciones, vamos listos.' (If we have to wait for God's indications..., we've had it!)

____________________

Something I do not like at all about the political controversies in Spain nowadays is the war of symbols and beliefs. It can be taken as a facile way of raising confrontation to avoid discussing the real structural problems. Anyway, humor is always a good defense to neutralize extra tension. Cold feet. That's all!

1.- Bitstrips.

2.- Toonlet.

3.- Toondoo

About time to come back to my Grammatical Ivory Tower! I need to start thinking about this week's first assignment and about the list of paper topics. Nice week to everybody [First draft] [ToonDoo strip corrected]

[P.S. In my Bitstrips I mention a well-known song by the Monkees ("I am a believer," 1966). When I was a child (about 8-10 years old) there was a television series called "The Monkeys, which was very popular." Just in case here's the Youtube official music video).]

boydkoers

Bread, butter and some jelly, please! Some reg'lar work on today's holiday

2011-10-12T22:25:00.015+02:00

It is definitely too hot for this time of the year: about 30 degrees Celsius today. Sunny and dry weather for the remainder of the week. It is, Our Lady of the Pillar 's, feast day today, national holiday. I spent some hours in the country during the morning. Then lunch with my family and evening work at home.

I have decided to achieve something positive of the "breadcrumbs mystery" I have written about in previous posts. It is my philosophy that a sense of humor is indispensable, especially in moments of distress. I have not reread Hansel and Gretel yet, but I have spent a couple of hours searching for the most usual slang meanings of "bread" and "crumbs"in the dictionaries on the web to compose the two slides with some definitions and examples I publish now.

WPclipart.

I started exploring the expression "breadcrumbs" yesterday with the composition of 2 new Toonlets I also publish today. Another complementary activity for about 10 minutes' practice in an advanced class which could later be extended to other similar English sayings and expressions, combining search online, study, discussion and creative work.

http://toonlet.com/creator/dada20087

I had in mind the classical film Goodbye Mr Chips! (Herbert Ross 1969, original black and white film by Sam Wood 1939 when I did the second strip. About the first.... perhaps Polanski's Chinatown (1974), but this is only tentative and approximate! [First draft]
....

Also yesterday I received a friendly message from Rose King (Best Online Colleges) with the link to an interesting post on the origin and meaning of (American) expressions: “The True Origins of 10 Weird American Expressions”. Here's the LINK. Going through these 10 expressions in an advanced language and culture class can be an interesting and useful activity. No doubt!

An exercise on critical counter culture

2011-10-09T20:20:00.002+02:00

Dry and hot weather this weekend. The economic and political news were so appalling that I took refuge in creative collage. Quite a peaceful rest despite the problems in my neighbourhood. Family weekend, some reading and some study to fight the global depression. To become inactive or disperse now would be a very dangerous trap which would ruin the effort and hard work of the last years. We must keep our students in mind, who may be experiencing even a bitter disappointment than the veterans. This is precisely what I had in mind when I created my first composition:

The (new) angry young (wo)men 2011 generation.

The (old) cheated old professors 1975 generation.

Who has cheated? Not me!

As the problem in my neigbourhood is distracting and taking energy from me, I must reconduct it in a positive and creative way. My first collage is another attempt in that direction.

I suppose that associating urban degradation with petty delinquency, unhealthy habits and drugs is quite natural and not necessarily that conservative. I spent some time this afternoon refreshing my knowledge about a film I saw at Santiago in the late 70s: Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Richard Brooks, 1977) on drugs, alternative life and love relations which become increasingly marginal and violent leading to the murder of the female character at the end of the movie. I saw the film 30 years ago, but I have the impression that I am witnessing the final consequences of what is described there in what is going on nowadays. Keeping always in mind the generational gap (2 generations in fact) and the technological revolution, of course. I am becoming definitely old, I should try Zola's Germinal now! Definitely critically counter cultural today.

My English grammar course is going pretty well: organized , participation and with a good number of references and activities for personal study. New research initiatives in the near future. Final version of the paper I delivered at the II International University Teaching Conference before summer ready for publication. Already registered for the Aedean International Conference in Barcelona, where I also present a paper. Some new research ideas. [First draft]

[PS. Tim Handorf has sent me a link to the post on 50 facts You should share on World Teacher's Day, which is useful to learn interesting facts about the state of education in United States of America at present. Here's the link:

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2011/10/04/50-facts-you-should-share-on-world-teachers-day/

On alienation, education and related topics.

2011-10-01T19:22:00.005+02:00

Hot weekend. Today I could see how the pigeons were being fed (birdseeds) at 14:30 by the shop below my mother and sister's balcony while the owner of that shop and a couple of neighbors were chatting.This means they receive two meals a day. I wonder it they also give them supper. Their number was about 40. The "pigeons open light mystery" is still unsolved. I want a new Alfred Hitchcock in the neighborhood, an uncommon want. Urban life seems to be full of these petty irregularities these days in very centric areas. The real problem with small irregularities is that they can lead or they can mask something big. I'd like to mention Enid Blyton at this respect, whose mystery novels I devoured when I was a teenager. Here's the link to the Enid Blyton's society. I should ask about my colleagues Veljka Ruzicka and Celia Vázquez if there is somebody specialized in Enid Blyton in their Children's and Teen Literature research group, a very active and prestigious circle at our university.

In fact, one of the characteristics of small delinquents -I am not being Romantic now- is their charm and special attractive, at least at first, even though this glamour starts vanishing after a couple of bad deals. There are hundreds of literary works and films on this topic. Last week I was re-reading Cervantes' Rinconete and Cortadillo in an online English version. Monipodio's techniques seem to be at least as effective today as in the Spanish Golden Century. Intuitively, they should be even more powerful because of the easy recourse to portable telephones, cars and computers, not to mention the new substances.

I have been thinking a little bit about this problem and its negative repercussions in the psychology and health of different kinds of people: elderly, children, teenagers, neoghbours who live alone, handicapped, women and men under pressure and abuse and so on. The first composition I publish now is about this topic and also about the role education can play to try to find some explanatory clues. It is a problem that concerns me quite directly, but which does not become obsessive. Life is life both in its positive and negative aspects and we must always aim at doing something constructive.

This composition is from last week. I had come across a HARDtalk interview with Ken Loach by Sarah Montague about the recent riots in the UK. The film director used the classical term "alienation". It is a first draft, a first brain storming in which some facts may be not totally accurate.

The second item I publish today is a humorous composition based on a quotation from the speech Michael Gove delivered at the Conservative conference in Manchester, which appears on today's Guardian on line. In more than one way it is a sequel to my first sketch, but I neither say nor imply that Michael Gove is an advocate of Dr. Ludovicus's methods, just in case. I simply thought of Clockwork Orange when I read the article. That's all.

Finally, I upload a couple of Toonlets on some of the concepts ("standard," "prescriptive" and so on) I am teaching in class now. I did them during last week

Too hot, honestly. I wish everybody a good weekend. [First draft]

Glorious Sunday evening, but very hard Monday morning.

2011-09-26T12:45:00.000+02:00

Quite rewarding weekend. Pretty miserable early Monday morning. Yesterday afternoon I had the chance to spend some hours of peace in Abilleira, Peitieiros. I was a little bit apprehensive though, because my telephone had ran out of batteries and my sister could not contact me in case of emergency. Later on I found out that she had taken my mother to Salvaterra de Miño, to spend the afternoon-evening. She told me on the phone at supper time that they had enjoyed the excursion. Here's a photo of yesterday's sunset. Lovely day.

I also publish here now a new Toonlet exploiting a little bit further socialist candidate Rubalcaba's unfortunate reference to alcohol free beer (zero zero beer) when he has criticizing Mariano Rajoy's as "a zero zero poltical alternative" (my expression). The socialist candidate has established a new comparison which replaces a similar expression which was quite popular in the past: "decaffeinated." In both cases the idea is that there is no "substance" in a political proposal. However some of us must take care of our health and cannot run too many risks. This is why I consider this comparison "unfortunate" at least with some people who must eat diet food and consider themselves spirited enough.

Alternance....You mean?

Quite fruitful weekend. I also picked up some chestnuts for dessert! Quite relieved that my family is doing well. However this morning I had to face harsh reality again. The capricious and falsely ecological anonymous person(s) who up to now was spreading breadcrumbs on both sides of the entrance to the building where my mother and sister live knows quite well that I sweep them to the sidewalk curb every morning and has changed tactics to make it a little bit harsher to me. Instead of crumbs he uses tiny birdseeds, which take longer time and effort. S/he also places them underneath the motorbikes to make it more difficult. Today's photos are quite relevant (in the old colloquial and pre-theoretical sense of the word, of course). In fact my pragmatic relevance could be condensed in five words: "cunning and vindictive antisocial behaviour". In English the expression is "to sow discord" in Spanish (a little bit more biblical): "to sow darnel." ("sembrar cizaña").

My personal investigation is almost over. It's about the time to talk to the authorities. A tiny problem in a global dimension can become big and dangerous on a personal or familiar scale. All the lonely people where do they all come from, all the lonely people where do they all belong? (The Beatles). No Eleanor Rigbys in my family if I can avoid it and my deepest respect for everybody's suffering. My solidarity with all the students (female and male) who are going through extra difficulty due to anti-social behaviour.

Nothing in special in the Internet and some friendly talk to the colleagues.Now to the bank to pay the registration fees for the Aedean International conference to be held in Barcelona from the 16th to the 19th November. Then classes and study. [First draft].

Reflective humour, that's the spirit!

2011-09-24T12:19:00.006+02:00

Once Selectivity is over back to (welcome) class routine. The situation in my neighbourhood is still unsolved and I am afraid that sooner or later the police will have to take some kind of preventive action. It is evident that the person(s) who deposits food on the street by the building where my mother and my sister lives is watching me. Instead of crumbs they are throwing birdseeds since yesterday, which are more difficult to sweep and they also change the places occasionally, but I do not follow their game and stick to my objective: the entrance to the building. I suppose it is a matter of persistence and resignation until the situation changes. I must say that this extra work is taking me about one hour of discomfort and tiredness a day. However, it does not seem to be affecting either my university classes or my relation with the teachers and students. I have the problem quite well studied and delimited and I know that the Law would protect me 100% in case of danger.

Cloudy Saturday. I publish today a new Bitstrips on a quite unfortunate comparison the Spanish socialist candidate Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba made between alcohol free (0.0. beer) and his conservative rival Mariano Rajoy. I am very fond of alcohol free beer myself mainly because of health reasons and, leaving politics aside, I did not like the comment much. I used the sentence in my grammar class to explain a basic linguistic and communicative principle: no matter how careful and skilful you are, you always run the risk of producing the wrong effect if your addressee takes what you say personally due to a variety of reasons: ideology, personal experience, belief, and so on. As I commented in My English Log, Rubalcaba has made the mistake of taking recourse to traditional (macho) ideas and values about drinking alcohol. Of course I didn't pick on him or on Rajoy. I presented the case in grammatical and communicative terms. I am a pro!

This morning, after sweeping the street and having breakfast I composed a new pragmatic comment on an editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich which appears on Gocomics today. I have assigned "personal relevance" to this strip. I'd like to dedicate it to my excellent friend and excellent teacher and researcher Dr. Ignacio Palacios Martínez.
Nice weekend to everybody. [First draft] [Important correction: editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich, my apologies)

[PS. I have used the term "redneck" with the sense of:
A white person regarded as having a provincial, conservative, often bigoted attitude.
(The Free Dictionary).

However his term usually refers to the poor rural whites living in the Southern States of the United States.]

Drawing some conclusions from the present difficulties.

2011-09-13T12:59:00.001+02:00

This morning then cleaning work was a little bit lighter because little by little I am getting into the routine trying to be more efficient and selective. I was over with the 3 heaps of crumbs on the sidewalk by the entrances today at about 6:40 and made sure that everything was OK in my family's flat. Then I went too my apartment, got ready for university life, came back to check again, went back again home, got into my car and drove to campus. Arrival at 08:05. Full moon and clear sky. I took some pictures before going to my office.

I have dedicated the first part of the morning to some reflective and personal work. A first creative brain storming in which I have tried to draw some conclusions from the difficulties I am going through at the beginning of the course from the perspective of education. The notes I have written this morning remind me quite a bit of the kind of comments I used to write when I was studying at university both in Spain and in United States. I used to be considered at the time quite a good student with original and usually constructive ideas by professors of different ideas, beliefs and races. They usually lamented that I did not take care of the details and that I was not ambitious enough and they were right. After years of (problematic) experience I think that my silly mistakes and lack of ambition are the result of fatigue. I usually get quite tired when I am writing or creating something very attentively and once the main ideas have been developed I get distracted and loose at the end unconsciously. The consequence is that the final product is never rounded up and I feel frustrated. It is a little bit the same kind of effect I feel when I am running or doing some violent physical effort for a long while. Once the main difficulty is over I start suffering, precisely when everything should be easy and more relaxed progressively until the end.

Of course at that time, when I wrote those comments professors used to like we were going through the democratic transition in Spain and in United States the political and intellectual atmosphere was still quite tolerant (President Carter, first year of President Reagan). It goes without saying that the economic situation was much more prosperous than nowadays, the computes were still rudimentary and the negative effects of globalization, climate change, terrorism and military confrontation were not (or did not seem to be) as acute as nowadays.

Anyway, as a (university) teacher) I have always stressed the need of definition and clear boundaries to avoid abuse, specially the kind of systematic abuse that can conceal dangerous irregularity, exploitation and petty crime. I consider myself pretty tolerant and I try not to bother or interfere with people of different tastes or ideas perhaps a little bit too much in terms of social life. If you need to fight and struggle through the social context where you live, your intellectual and professional life will resent and your life will become quite miserable. Postulating academic excellence when you need to fight the basic battle of survival is absurd, even cruel.

Selectivity starts at 18:00. Nothing important in the Internet until now. Classes going on, but the real activity will start after the official opening of the course on the 16th. Nice day. [First draft]

September Selectivity starting tomorrow evening.

2011-09-12T22:44:00.000+02:00

Little by little catching up with my work even with the unexpected difficulties I described in my last post. You are welcome to read my last entry on My English Log to find out about my early work as a street cleaner this morning. I always was "an early bird," but I never thought it was going to be that literal and mean that much unpleasant work. The situation today was practically the same as last week as the photos I took show. I keep these images in a restricted page to write a report and issue a complaint if necessary.

I have updated DADAEDUtoons. Now I need to start finding some time to work on my resources page. However I feel the feedback of the classes to find motivation to search and classify more materials and get fresh ideas.

Selectivity starts tomorrow evening. I have used some time to compose the clipart card I publish now. Some onomatopoeic and conceptual verbal play inspired by the School where the exams are to take place: The School of Mining Engineering.

Time to stop for now. [First draft]

Home, sweet and sour home these days.

2011-09-10T19:25:00.000+02:00

First weekend of the new course. Cloudy and some drizzle this morning. The week on campus was quite positive on the whole. You are welcome to read my first comments on the first two sessions I posted on my blog: My English Journal, access on the right hand side of this page. Next week Selectivity. I will resume my grammar classes on the 22nd September.

I commented in my previous entry that I would need a couple of weeks to catch up with regular work on my blogs and sites. I have started creating some strips (1 Toonlet, 1 Bitstrips, 1 Toondoo) I publish here before including them in my DADAEdutoons page before they get too old.

The week has not presented special problems with respect to university, but it has been somewhat tense and tiring with respect to my family security and stability. I need to help my mother and my sister to protect their flat from the degradation, dirt and health risk provoked by people who deposit food (breadcrumbs and similar stuff) on both sides of their building main entrance at dawn (between 5:45 -6:30) so that pigeons, seagulls and other animals (cats) come and invade the area. This has been taking place for some time now and I ignore the reasons why people dare go against the city laws on a regular basis and so methodically, which means that is not a slight irregularity any more. As it is systematically repeated day after day it has become pretty serious in our case as the pictures show.

[It seems something accidental at first sight. Somebody was eating a sandwich and left some crumbs. But...]

[Usual day in the morning and at lunch time. The pigeons on the sidewalk fly up to the first balcony, where my family lives. Some seagulls come to have breakfast early in the morning, but then they fly to the roofs and lamp posts.]

[There are crumbs everyday! Somebody feeds them early in the morning and perhaps also later during the day. As far as I know doing this on purpose goes against the law. Pigeon's droppings everywhere, a potential health risk and a source of discomfort for people accessing the building. The food is carefully deposited on both sides of the main entrance of the building.]

[No accident. Repeated action creating a permanent focus of attraction around the building.]

[No coincidence, morning after morning. Between 05:30 - 06:45 this week.]

[Therefore a new complementary course as a street cleaner every morning!]

[Before grabbing the broom.]

[After tidying up a little bit. I have not dared do anything beyond marking the irregularity, taking note of the approximate hour of the deed and also taking some photos.

I don't know who does this, but is done by an individual I guess at a very early hour when there are very few passers by.]

My mother is 84 years old and my my sister does all the heavy work in their flat. There are pigeon droppings all over the entrance and somebody has to clean the balcony and the main entrance so that their conditions of life do not start deteriorating. To cut a long story short, I have started getting up quite early, at about 05:30. After breakfast I come from my apartment to Mum and sister's flat, take some pictures of where the food has been carefully disseminated to attract the animals, get a broom and sweep all the crumbs in two heaps. Then I take some more photos and wait until the pigeons and seagulls start showing up (almost immediately). On weekends I get a bucket of water with some bleach and a thick brush to clear the droppings of the access to the building and of my mother's balcony. This means one hour of heavy and unpleasant work per day -a little bit humiliating as well, I confess because I am supposed to be getting ready to start my daily intellectual activity, not because I frown at manual work or despise cleaners- before coming back to my apartment to get tidy and ready for my work on campus.

We live in downtown Vigo in a centric area. It is true that some of the buildings are relatively old, (not ancient) but it is not a rundown area. However, it seems that some people are interested in their degradation and some others seem to be insensitive about it, maybe because they do not mind living in a degraded area. From my perspective it is a quite serious social matter which worsens the negative aspects of the social and economic crisis we are going through. It can also lead to tension and violence in the area. Once I have enough, clear evidence of what is going on I'll submit a report to the authorities asking for the proper legal solution and the clarification of responsibilities, but I still need to study the situation a little bit more. Some more time of hard work and extra tension which, hopefully will not interfere that much with my academic work. Let's see the positive side of the problem: a good opportunity to do some pragmatics as applied to social issues!

Bad beginning of the course therefore due to some systematic antisocial behavior that needs to be controlled. I love animals. Long John Silver, my parrot,has been in my apartment for about 12 years now and is the boss there. It is quite well kept and healthy. I bought it legally with an official certificate. My sister loves hamsters and little puppies. I know that there will always be some pigeons and some seagulls around. It is the same as flies, but nobody is entitled, as far as I know, to feed the birds on the streets and to attract them to certain precise and well delimited populated areas,without an official permit and following precise regulations. What may be the reason, the interest for these antisocial actions? What are the first relevant conclusions for our present educational concerns at Vigo university. Are there other teachers or students living similar situations?

Quite sunny now. Time for a walk. Good beginning of the course to everybody. [First draft]

First weekend after summer holidays.

2011-09-04T00:19:00.000+02:00

Back to teaching then starting next Monday. The first two days on campus went quite fast getting ready for the beginning of the classes. I still have some photos to classify and I need to resume working on my resources page, but I have started cartooning again and I have also done some work on My English Log, where I posted some reflections about the main structural weaknesses of the English Grammar course I need to correct this year and also about the materials I posted on my office door.
I managed to get some work during the last week of holidays even though the weather has been quite bad. Cloudy and rainy today. A melancholic day.

This evening I decided to do some homework for my grammar and pragmatic classes with another card based on a comic strip. I chose Jerry Bittle's Shirley and Son (GOCOMICS link ). Today's strip made reference to the beginning of classes and besides some of the expressions could be used as examples for analysis and discussion in a grammar and pragmatics class. I must confess that the card took me some more time and effort than usual. Still a little bit out of shape, a little bit disperse, but I'll catch up in a couple of weeks I m sure!
I wish everybody a pleasant first week of class. [First draft]

One week break? Can I afford it?

2011-08-22T12:02:00.002+02:00

Very heavy storm yesterday at night. Cloudy and rainy today. I've decided to disconnect for a week from this blog and get some rest before the beginning of the next academic year starting on the 5th September. I also need to pay attention to some pressing familiar and personal matters before I get busy with my classes. Since the last post I have done some work to simplify the design of this blog and make it more functional now that I have combined it with my other pages. I have decided to keep only those lists of links (blogs, sites, news) that are central to the (cultural, and grammatical) topics I write about in my posts on My English Journal. All the other links are available now at my reference site: Grammar, Pragmatics, Communication. Photography and DADAEDUtoons are updated on a regular basis. My English Log will remain silent until the beginning of the classes.

Today's clipcard is another reflection on the dirty ways used in political, social and economic "competition." It is also an informal activity on performative verbs (reporting use). It is also an exercise on intertextuality. Some key terms have been taken from Relevance theory.

I suppose that those politicians everywhere who talk about the need of strengthening the educational values and also about the need of building up a new social ethics are well aware of all the corruption AND vitiated habits of their recent past. Not to mention the information services and personal dossiers, of course. You cannot ask your citizens or subjects to do what you do not do. Any excessive radicalism on my part? One of the worst aspects of the present global crisis is the frequent discredit of the democratic institutions and the basic human rights. Whom to trust? Who is to administer justice?

Anyway, my best wishes for the remainder of the summer to everybody. Take care when you travel abroad and/or you have to stay at a hotel. Let's all wait for better days. [First draft]

Links: Article on the Guardian
WPclipart

Some summer homework.

2011-08-15T16:10:00.002+02:00

The first half of the summer vacation is gone! Some work has been accomplished, but not as much as I wanted. There were some unexpected accidental damages in one of the walls of my mother and sister's flat some days ago which I am at present trying to solve and repair. This means that I had to alter my original vacation plans and stay around. However, I have kept on working a little bit on my pages (a significant number of new photos) and also on the design of this blog.

I have also found some time this morning to compose another grammar-pragmatics clipart composition based on the first lines of an article by Oliver Wright which appears on The Independent today. An exercise on (seemingly) (radical) editorial cartooning. UM! I wonder what mum's is cooking for lunch today, I am starving!

The political controversy at UK shows quite clearly that the present global crisis is systemic and affects not only the economy but societies and nations as a whole. The still recent bonanza good old days are definitely over everywhere. Experts in economy should be honest about this. We need now: 1) fair and effective measures to grant stability so that the depression and recession can be kept under control, 2) a well meditated long term strategy to build up the foundations of a new prosperous and stable world in the future. This long term plan must avoid all the unnecessary controversy which can lead to generalized armed confrontation. This means keeping all informative and propagandistic distortion well under control and this also means to try to harmonize extreme particular interests on behalf of the common good. Granted that crime and violence cannot be tolerated and that the proper level of legitimate strength and control must always be applied, but we must also keep well in mind at all times the ideal of a tolerant civil society conformed by a body of (democratic, constitutional, representative) rules, always perfectible by the social dynamics in which different interests and life styles can coexist in peace. There has never been one totally homogeneous social reality but several which are bound to share the same place and time at a given point in history. It is quite evident that we are facing not only the end of an economic order but also the subversion of the old natural ecosystem. We must start developing a sensitivity as a species to all these changes and we'd better follow clear and fair principles based on reason, practicality reliability and efficiency rather than follow interested or preconceived ideas or prejudices blindly. What to teach nowadays? What for? Under what conditions? Expecting what? These are not easy, facile questions. This is to me the most immediate challenge at the beginning of the next academic course 2011-12.

It goes without saying that my clipcard is a personal recreation of the impression I received when reading Oliver Wright's article. I wanted to express some of the obvious ideological or cultural associations that came to my mind. I am not qualified to deal with the critical situation the United Kingdom is going through simply because I am not familiarized with the basic details that could provide me with a comprehensive view of the situation. I sincerely hope that the crisis can be soon overcome. I simply wanted to design an activity in language, grammar and communication following my usual method of combining image, quotation from the press and grammatical and pragmatic analysis which could be used in an advanced class. [First draft]

Enough for the day! Time to go out for an evening excursion. I'd like to thank Tim Handorf for sending me a link to a blog article he has recently published: 55 Grammar Offenses That Make Teachers Go Mad. Useful tips that we should always keep in mind. I warmly invite you to have a look at it! Here I reproduce Tim's point 13:

Teach/learn

Some students still struggle with reversing "teach" and "learn" with one another, though
instances seem to be steadily decreasing

Thank you very much, Tim. I have learned something FROM you today!

A new grammar and pragmatics first draft.

2011-08-07T11:10:00.001+02:00

It is sunny today after a cloudy, foggy and rainy week. I think I'll go out on an excursion until lunch time. I have started to introduce some changes in this blog to make it more functional, especially now that the links to my other pages enable me to distribute the different items of information better, in a little bit more specialized way.

Yesterday I did another (boring) sketch on grammar, pragmatics and communication based on a short quotation from the news (CBS this time). I focused on lexical, morphological and semantic aspects for a change. The notions: "entailment", "inference" and "implicature" may be difficult for the students taking my Meaning and Discourse class. Logic was never a popular subject at the Spanish secondary schools and I may need to spend some extra time explaining what "truth values" are and why they are so important in linguistics and, especially in formal semantics and in pragmatics.

Well, I'd better get started for the day. Nice Sunday to everybody. [First draft]
Links.
CBS News.
Office microsoft clipart:

Baiona's walk: time regained, not yet the Paradise.

2011-08-04T16:43:00.002+02:00

Cloudy and foggy today. Yesterday some drizzle in the morning, but sunny evening. Pleasant walk and chat at Baiona's Parador with an "AAa colleague and friend" (joke, black humour based on encyclopaedic relevance) from the times we both studied English Philology at Santiago de Compostela. Calling forth the old ideas and illusions to fight the present depressing milieu. Positive, negative, also tragic news exchanged in the conversation: gorgeous sight of the Cies islands and the open sea while we explored, once again "la condition humaine" (keeping René Magritte in mind and what his work may mean and signify nowadays). The same concern and compromise to work for better and more efficient educational standards. Efficiency and reliability are the key words to grant basic quality. It was not "Swann's road", it was Baiona's walk by the old castle walls, and it was sweet and gentle.

I plan to start spending some time in the countryside once the weather improves. It does me good: it helps me to disconnect from my present concerns, which sometimes become a little bit obsessive. I am using these days to do some more studies and cartoon practice, to search for more references and utilities, to do some pragmatics and to upload more information to my grammar and pragmatics resource page, not to mention some more photos and other activities. That is, am using the positive and liberating qualities of the web 2.0 to find some gratification, to learn about new things, to be creative and to keep on working in a less constrained way.

The same old Story.

Today I publish a Commix on the present economic and political situation. I have also created some Stripgenerators on examples taken from Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. 1995.Relevance: communication and cognition. Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Exploring not humour, but [meta-linguistic (meta-humour)] this time. You are always welcome to browse my DADAEDUtoons, link on the right hand column of this blog for the latest.

Enjoying summer? As much as I can. Seizing the sweet and sour days ,trying to combine pleasure and study -the old recipe- in the best possible way. Nice holidays to everybody. [First draft]

(Some more) LINKS:
1.- René Magritte:

2.- Marcel Proust:

Proust Reader. Blog

3.- R. Sikoryak's homepage (Commix artist)

R.Sikoryak.

4.- Carpe Diem poems.

Poet's Corner.

[I'd wish to dedicate this post to my colleague and friend

Ana Fernández Soliño]

Transition day. Also a sincere homage.

2011-07-31T16:17:00.000+02:00

It is difficult to disconnect from work at first. In fact this weekend has been like many other weekends during the course. The big difference, of course is that tomorrow, Monday 1st August, the real holidays start, so I'd better think of doing something new to get some necessary physical and psychological rest.

Yesterday I went downtown, had a look at what the old and second hand book Fair at Plaza de Compostela had to offer, visited a photographic exhibition and walked a little bit around the Old fishing quarter. There were some popular attractions and I took some (lively) pictures. Here's one I like:

This morning I composed a new Parasite and Bug on the economic crisis that I publish now. I have spent some time improving my DADAEDUtoons page as well (see on the left of this blog): finally I have managed to publish all my Burgess09 Stripgenerators. It takes some time to organize and upload the old collections.

I am at present writing this blog at the family flat in Vigo, Vázquez Varela street, therefore in the Casablanca quarter of this Galician city. My mother and my sister have gone to Panxón to spend the evening and I plan to take the boat and cross the bay to Moaña to take some pictures and do something different from my usual routine once I finish here. Sunny summer day.

When I was having a look at Faro de Vigo, the local newpaper this morning, I read that excellent cartoonist Quesada, whom I have always followed and admired, retires today after 50 years's work for that journal. I am going to miss his cartoons on different aspects of the local life and politics, same as many other readers. I was born in Vigo in 1958 and I must say that Quesada has always exerted a deep and positive influence on my way of looking at things... with a smile and some (tender) (sweet and sour) detachment.My tribute of admiration, Prof. Fernando Quesada! I wish you a happy retirement! Here I reproduce the news with his last strip published on Faro de Vigo online. In his strip, cartoonist Quesada echoes the well-known classic film Casablanca.... maybe he (rather his alter-ego) is thinking of "playing it again". We humans never know! [First draft]

Link to Fernando Quesada's official homepage

Long weekend over. Relating ideas.

2011-07-26T08:48:00.003+02:00

Two items of news that I read during the weekend inspire my clipart composition today: the criminal attacks in Norway by a right-wing extremist with at least 85 mortal victims (see my previous post) and the decision taken by the Israel Chamber Orchestra to play a composition by Wagner at a concert to be held in Germany today (Tuesday) which was published by the Guardian online yesterday. According to conductor Roberto Paternostro, it is necessary to differentiate between Wagner's "terrible" ideology and the quality of his work (my interpretation). I agree with him, but not only in Wagner's particular case of course. Being able to differentiate between what may be positive from what is negative and despicable in a person, in a social group, in a scientific method, in a new technology, in an ideology has always been an essential aspect of human learning and improvement. You need to study a complex process in detail and examine in what way you can put it to good use. Fire can be destructive and negative or constructive and positive. Poison is lethal unless it is transformed into a medicine and so on. We always need to study and learn from our enemies or competitors in order to save our integrity and this does not mean being hostile or negative or aggressive, at least at first. I may need to study how sharks or how wolves act in order to protect myself from their attacks, but this does not mean in principle that I want to exterminate them if they are kept in their natural habitats because they may perform a necessary ecological function. In fact, we must acknowledge that quite often we perceive and fear that our enemies or competitors are more successful -better- than us in many aspects. We must always be able to develop an objective, detached attitude to articulate an effective response. Symbols, facts, emotions and beliefs: we need to integrate them constructively in our daily activity keeping always a sense of progress and improvement. Oh well! I must put an end to this first brainstorming after breakfast and get ready for work.

During the weekend I was doing some search on a high quality Norwegian writer: Knut Hamsun, Nobel Prize for literature (1920)- who openly held pro-nazi ideas when Norway was occupied by in the Second World War. I must confess that I do not know much about the history of that Nordic country. I remember reading two novels by Hamsun when I was a teenager at home in Spanish translation: Hunger (1890) and Pan (1894). I was quite impressed by both novels. This does nor mean that I sympathized with the atmosphere and view of the world depicted there, but I considered that these works were very effective, well constructed and very expressive in terms of style. This long weekend, when I was browsing web pages about Hamsun, I came across a site with a reproduction of the cover of an old Penguin edition of Hunger. I was amazed: it was a painting by the "degenerate" (as labeled by the Nazis) Norwegian artist: Edvard Munch, who had secluded himself in his study when the Nazis occupied Norway not to collaborate with them! Poetic justice, I suppose. Anyway, not only Wagner, but also Hamsun and I suppose (many) other high quality artists with totalitarian, racist, antisemitic and xenophobic ideologies to think about. It would be interesting to try to contrast Hamsun's early ideas with his public pro-nazi position in the 1940s, but this requires quite a bit of systematic thought and study. Not only study, but a lot of honesty, integrity and detachment. Time to work. Nice week to everybody. [First draft]

Sophistry? Please, define.

2011-07-23T14:32:00.008+02:00

Final week on campus before summer. Sunny day, 2 sunny days on a row! Time to organize readings, study and leisure to try to make the most of the vacation. A "right wing Christian fundamentalist" (Los Angeles Times) responsible both for the bombing and the shooting in Norway which killed at least 91people last Friday? Why did he do that? What was the precise motivation, the actual reason for his behaviour?

Another individual criminal act performed by an insane? In principle, I always find it hard to believe that a single person can become so devastatingly efficient, but there are many attested cases of people taking sudden decisions of this kind on their own which take even their fellow activists by surprise. There is no obvious relation, of course, but I cannot help relating the news about this massacre with what I read (yesterday? On the BBC page?) about the legal removal and cremation of Rudolph Hess' bones from his tomb at Wunsidel, Bavaria, which had become a extreme right-wing shrine. I read on the web now (Yahoo news among other articles) that after the cremation his ashes were "scattered at sea". The association is obvious to me. Rudolph Hess (Wikipedia) surprised everybody, especially the Nazis, when he decided to fly to England on a personal negotiation initiative during World War II which was deemed as individual and insane by everybody at the time. It is an intuitive appreciation, but it sees to me that it is characteristic of the extreme right to perform individual criminal and terrorist acts which obey to highly symbolic (narcissistic) ideals and values while the extreme left normally operates in organized gangs with different levels of autonomy following a predetermined strategy against the common enemy (ghost). Two poetics of heroism that can be traced in the literary works of all times? Interesting first idea I'd like to meditate upon in the future.

[Clipart on composition: WP.clipart

"Money, money, money, then! (Isherwood's Cabaret). I also upload today a new clipcard on a working hypothesis for a mock-thriller. Patricia (Highsmith) Ripley and John (Le Carré) Smiley associate to try to benefit from the present economic uncertainty by speculating in the (cyclical) moments of panic provoked by a report or item of bad news published on the press. I do not deny or diminish -I would be insane- the deep and acute economic social, political crisis we are living .... but I consider that the way this crisis is being depicted has entered a vicious descriptive circle (maybe unintentional) that can contribute to dangerous disinformation and to the taking of the wrong decisions. If the economy is global and highly interdependent nowadays, then the diagnosis should be global as well: not only Greece, not only Europe, not only Afghanistan or the American debt ceiling as in a mosaic or puzzle. Partial ad hoc short term measures can only endanger the situation and lead to further conflict and depression. Structural measures based on the principles of justice and fairness should be enforced right now, but this means reconsidering the old notions of truth and objectivity in the new global context and abandon those petty personal partisan vitiated ways of taking decisions and doing politics at all levels which have contributed strongly to the present depression. It also means designing a middle-term and long-term strategy adapted to the new harsh circumstances with clear objectives and ways of action that can bring about a new period of stability, peace and progress in the future... on new grounds, not a remake of the old bonanza times. The areas of uncertainty and speculation should be kept well under control, a measure which should not be confused with totalitarianism. There should be no room for arbitrariness or personal advantage. The first necessary step to ask people for sacrifices is to tell the truth. Of course, this truth can be presented in a number of different ways when interpreting reality and deciding therefore on a course of action (hopefully not "blood, swear and tears" Winston Churchill dixit) but all these ways of dealing with the truth should be legitimate, consistent and according to a legal body of rules.

A little bit of sophistry today! Saturday afternoon: some reading, some more work on my pages and some leisure time. Peaceful and gratifying weekend to everybody. [First draft]

Summer holidays? Working on that!

2011-07-21T13:30:00.000+02:00

This morning I've spent some time adding some more references and links to my Grammar, Pragmatics, Communication resource page. I plan to keep on spending some more time on this activity during the remainder of the week. I have also composed a new Toonlet on "collocations" I hope you like. Besides, I have worked on my strips page uploading and organizing old materials and done some reading and study as well. Another project I have in mind is the remodelling of this blog to make it more attractive and complete. Summer holidays? Working on that!

Absurd "sort of dadaist" joke

keeping (in mind) Aelfric's Colloquy as a vague reference (in mind).

Aelfric.      What do you need summer holidays for?
Student.    To work even harder and harder and sleep better at nights!
Aelfric.      But why do you need to sleep at all? You're too bland! Have you ever thought of that?
Student.    I am not qualified to provide an answer. I have not studied either Biology or Medicine yet !

Collocat-ED!

http://toonlet.com/

Nice day to everybody. [First draft]

Another boring grammar and pragmatics activity.

2011-07-19T14:45:00.002+02:00

Designing activities based on strips for a grammar and pragmatics class is both serious work and a pleasant pastime. It combines creativity, reasoning, application and knowledge. It also plays a central role in organizing one's ideas about a topic taken from the web press so that it can be presented under a new and original perspective.

This morning I dedicated some reading and study time to the analysis of 3 articles on the present economic situation:

1.- Gold price hits record at $1.600 on debt uncertainty.
BBC.19th July 2011 www.bbc.co.uk/news/business.

The price of gold jumped above $1,600 (£1,000) an ounce for the first time as debt
worries in the US and Europe continued to trouble investors.

Main Clause (metaphorical use of the verb"jump"). Temporal subordinate clause (catenative verb). Coordination on the level of phrase ("in the US and (in) Europe").

2.- Greenspan Says Greece Default ‘Almost Certain,’ MayTrigger U.S. Recession.
Bloomberg. 16th June 2011. By Vivien Lou Chen www.bloomberg.com/news

The U.S. debt issue is becoming “horrendously dangerous,” said Greenspan, who added he doubts lawmakers have another year or two to solve it.

(Reporting Main Clause, the Predicative Complement is a literal expression. Non-defining relative clause with another reporting verb followed by a complex subordinate clause. Disjunctive coordinator used to express approximate span of time)

3.- China's Treasury Holdings Makes U.S. Woes Its Own.
The New York Times.18th June 2011. By David Barboza www.nytimes.com

Beijing might prefer to respond by starting to dump some of its American debt. But in this financial version of the cold war, analysts say, both sides fear mutually assured destruction.

(Hypotethical modal in catenative construction. Coordinator at the beginning of second sentence to express contrast. Reporting verb)

Finally I composed this My Funny Strips (editorial cartoon) in a first and reflective brain storming.

I have used the strip to express a global view of the most pressing problems the United States are facing at present. Their retreat from Afghanistan and the European economic crisis are "horrendous", but we also need to take into consideration the US debt with China, the budget deficit and the need to keep high standards for investments and therefore a strong economy to have the whole picture. This is why I have "manipulated" a quite frequent proverbial expression based on what pirates did to their victims (in the past?). It is quite usual in times of crisis: between the sword and the deep blue sea. Time to stop for now. [First draft]. [Almost full rewriting of the first paragraph. It seem that I missed the introduction when I revised the document after uploading the strip!]

Some cartooning after lunch

2011-07-16T18:20:00.002+02:00

It's Virgin Carmen's feast today -the patron saint of the sea- and both my mother and sister are called María del Carmen, so we had celebration at home: shrimp omelette, Galician pie, fruit (peaches, watermelon) and cream and chocolate cake. Bread, of course, mineral water, (exceptionally) some cider (5.6% alcohol) and expresso.

Not so hearty a lunch, but I've been sort of dozing off and procrastinating for the last 2 hours in the sitting room. It is cloudy and sticky outside as if a storm were approaching, but there is some slight wind. I have been going through my colection of My Funny Times strips (not many only 8 on the playground) and I have composed a new one: an amateur editorial cartoon based on an item of news I read on the web recently. I could use it for a language and culture activity and also in a pragmatics class to talk about literal, non literal and figurative meaning.

Apparently, Moody's is considering to lower the rating of the American obligations (Aaa) if the public deficit is not reduced while President Obama has been asking to raise the American debt ceiling and China is showing signs of impatience. This seems to indicate that the global crisis starts affecting the USA in a unprecedented way: internally, not only with respect to the foreign trade. It also seems to indicate that the economies of the western world as a system, not only some individual instances, are taking measures and risks which diverge from the orthodox (liberal?) economic principles used by Moody's and other evaluating agencies.

I don't know to what an extent the economic principles and methods used by Moody's can be challenged and falsified by other approaches, in the same way as a medical diagnosis can be put to question by another diagnosis, for instance. It may be that Moody's et alii are too strict.... or not. What worries me most are not the reports as such but the way they can be used in a speculative economic war. Of course, I am not as naive as to deny what is evident: we are living a very deep and acute economic crisis which presents even a more pessimistic prognosis because of the present state of fluctuation and indecision. What are the basic guidelines for a real recovery on new grounds? Sources of energy? Structure of social groups? Basic products? Kinds of activity? Criteria for economic growth and actual quality of living? What is evident to me is that it is not the time to be very fanciful or ambitious.On the contrary we should be precise, practical, methodical, efficient. Anyway, as I do not know a word about economy, I'd better put an end to this post here. I hope you like my strip. Nice weekend [First draft]

Some more pragmatic fun.

2011-07-13T22:07:00.004+02:00

Summer day: sunny and quite warm here in Vigo. Busy morning, but most of the pending work at university has already been done, as I comment on today's post on My English Log (link on the right of this blog). I upload a couple of sketches on the pragmatics of strips and related "topics", "themes" and even "subjects" (bad philological joke). The first one is a pragmatic comment prompted by a strip by Jeff Stahler (Moderately Confused) which appeared on Gocomics on the 12th July: a
joke with linguistic and pragmatic potential for a class from my perspective. As contrasted with Harry Bliss (on the previous post, no words) the joke here is based on the language used. The set expression (frame) used by the girl to politely decline the boy's invitation (suggestion) "to come out and play" by explaining "why she can't" has been slightly modified by the cartoonist in a way that produces a humorous effect. I have written in red my outline of a potential class on grammar and pragmatics.

When I finished the first draft, I used the sentence of the first cartoon in an associative way and I composed a clipcard, quite different from the original strip, which reflects some of my present concerns about, well you know, about what is going on in the global world. It also incorporates some cultural and literary aspects that could lead to another class: on thrillers and (spy) films, mainly. The same sentence used in a different context acquires a new meaning and dimension that calls for some more pragmatic comment. The clipart is Microsoft Office. Not a genial, composition but good practice!
Time to call it a day. Transition day tomorrow. [First draft]

Some free creation.

2011-07-10T20:53:00.003+02:00

Nasty summer cold I caught last Friday! I felt weak and sleepy and I spent most of the weekend at home. I only went out briefly on Saturday morning to do some shopping and have a quick lunch at "Mum & Sister's Tender Arms" (infantile joke) and this morning to fill up my Xantia's gas tank. As I had some light fever I, could not concentrate and do much serious work. However, I managed to do some pragmatic comment on a cartoon by Harry Bliss and also some humorous writing on a Toondoo I composed last Friday. I have also finished a mock editorial cartooning on the presente political and economic situation from my perspective. I think that we need to use commonsense in these moments of crisis and aim at efficiency and solidity to fight interested alarmism and sensationalism. The global situation is complex enough not to fall in the usual traps speculative lobbies and toralitarian groups tend in this kind of circumstances.

Harry Bliss's strip attracted me because of the action depicted in a cartoon in which no language is used. It is not the same to construct a pragmatic interpretation based on coded language as to try to interpret merely what you see in a drawing that represents an action taking place. This remark could lead to some discussion about what kinds of information we need to take into account when reading and interpreting a comic strip in a pragmatics seminar. For that day I should re read both the novel Bliss written by Peter Carey and published in 1981 and the papers on pragmatics I wrote and published based on texts taken from this and other novels by this contemporary Australian writer. I have reproduced the strip as it appears on the Gocomics page (http://www.gocomics.com/bliss/) All the comments in red are mine.

About my Toondoo (http://www.toondoo.com/user/dada20087) is a humorous -soft-libertine- composition on how to articulate a second reading to refer to sex with concepts taken from Linguistics and Pragmatics. A classical humanist sub-genre which may be used both as pastime and as first reflection on different aspects of life such as reality and appearance, as it is the case here. You know: "carpe diem, but take care as well."

Finally, Parasite and Bug discuss the present political situation. Some "radical" ideas expressed. It is an extremely radical clipcard no doubt because it simply uses common sense to articulate some ideas about the global situation nowadays. All the images are Micrososoft Office. The cue for my comment is one of the latest jokes on http://www.ajokeaday.com/. Time to stop today. Not completely rounded, but I need to rest for a while, read the Internet messages and start thinking about tomorrow. I have my last July exam scheduled for 09:30. I must be there. Nice beginning of the week to everybody. [First draft]

Somber first week of July.

2011-07-08T10:57:00.004+02:00

Cool, cloudy and rainy week. I have been busy with exams, oral presentations and marking. I still have two more sessions next Monday and Tuesday. I have also dedicated some time to complete and perfect my course guides for next years (B.A. and Master). Hopefully I will be over with the final details by next Monday. The marking process should be over by the end of the next week.

I have composed a couple of clip cards using some free time after lunch. The first one is "another lousy & boring activity on vocabulary, definitions and pragmatics" based on a recent cartoon. The second one is my first, intuitive reaction when I read on the web that the Codex Calixtinus had been stolen from Santiago de Compostela's cathedral. Dies Irae, indeed! In the Middle Ages, this sinful act would have acquired apocalyptic dimensions. If I were to teach an old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon class today, I would choose Wulfstan's address to the English (Sermo Lupi ad Anglos) and I would try to relate what is described there with what is going on nowadays. Intuitively, my first impression when I read the news was that it had been done by a professional organized gang, even though stealing that Medieval codex from Santiago acquires a lot of symbolism in the present moments of confrontation and war between the Western world and the Islam. My intuition seems to be confirmed by a preliminary report on today's Guardian (Giles Tremlet, Madrid 7th July: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/07/codex-calixtinus-manuscript-stolen-santiago-compostela

(I confess I have forgotten to label the black shadow on the clipcard composition as WPclipart. I apologize for this unintentional omission).

I think I have read that this kind of works of art are difficult to sell for a good price. They are too important and well-known, therefore dangerous to keep privately. Besides, being a little been fanciful - I am thinking of Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, also of Tutankhamun's tomb now- it may well be the case that besides their religious spiritual excommunication the thieves have actually been damned by both angels and devils for stealing a sacred book and therefore raising hell far beyond their competencies! We can find exemplary stories depicting the sad fate of those who dared ransack tombs and temples in all kinds of literatures, not only Christian. A pagan example that I could also use for that Anglo-Saxon class is the beginning of the second part of Beowulf: when the dragon finds out that a vessel which is part of the treasure in the burial mound under his vigilance has been stolen and decides to take revenge. I refer to the film The Italian Job (1969), because the kind of gang I have in mind is similar to the group of thieves commanded by Michael Caine and Noel Coward in that film, using state of the art computers, laser technology and sophisticated materials and fabrics nowadays, of course. On the other hand, the Yellow Kid is again the main guest star because of the extraordinary global economic circumstances we are going through. Phon(e)y business from my perspective, I should go and visit the ducks this evening, but it is raining (drizzle)!

Somber times rather than Moody. By the way, I do not like the way some statistical economic indicators are being used nowadays. This kind of specialized reports, as any kind of objective reports, cannot exceed their scope and cannot be used for open speculation in the stock markets. Moody is becoming "trendy", "fashionable" and "the main criterion" to take drastic economic decisions which affect some countries in economic hardship. This is highly symptomatic and projects a very negative view of the way the global economy is handled. From my perspective Moody has started to be associated to (used in?) sudden speculative manoeuvres in which some groups need to get some fast big cash by means of abusive commercial and economic competition. Reports are being used to spread rumours and raise the alarm in the stock market. This way of using "objective, scientific facts" and "methods" for the wrong purpose is quite dangerous and rings a bell about the similarities between the present situation and the worst moments of economic and political depression in history.

Transition week

2011-07-04T19:22:00.001+02:00

Short weekend. The 2nd International Congress on University Teaching here at the University of Vigo finished for me last Saturday at about 15:00. I left the final buffet at the dessert. There was still plenty of Spanish tortilla, and Galician pie, apart from cake and pastries. Plenty of white and red Galician wine, beer, mineral water and soft drinks as well. However, I felt really tired, so I decided to leave early after having said goodbye to new and old friends. This morning, I wrote a post on My English Log about this Congress (headline on the right of this blog). I also provided a link there for a Photobucket album with most of the photos I took during those 3 days.

Today I upload a Toondoo which I composed as a personal recapitulation of some of the most important issues dealt with during the congress, but specially in the final plenary lecture delivered by Prof. Dr. Antonio Nóvoa, President of the University of Lisboa. Deep, global and seminal talk about the future of teachers at university. Creativity, efficiency and quality in teaching and research are some of the key issues. Dr. Nóvoa said that even though universities had to adjust themselves to economic principles and contribute as much as possible to social and technological development, they should not become private enterprises. Dr. Pedro Membiela, who was chairing the session agreed with him on this particular point explicitly. Food for thought in the near future, but now I must come back to correction and to the reading and marking of July papers in this transition routine week. Best wishes to everybody. [First draft]

The old pragmatic truth.

2011-06-29T21:03:00.003+02:00

Gregory, (but not ~~Greg~~) Ward in his last and friendly Internet message reminded me of some interesting facts about names and nicknames that all teachers and researchers in grammar and pragmatics should always keep present. Personal names are specialized referential expressions that identify individuals. Nicknames are in principle short or derived forms we use to refer to people informally instead of using their full first names. This does not mean that we can use these short forms freely in an informal situation. Some people do not go by their usual nicknames, some others favor a form that is different from the one their interlocutors use. Some people may dislike being addressed by their nicknames either because they associate it with something negative in their experience or because they consider it impolite when used by somebody who does not belong to their intimate circle (distance, politeness, face and all that). For instance, as far as I recall now , in my case, the form "Edu", short for "Eduardo" is only used by my family. If a colleague or friend would use this form, I would feel a little bit surprised, at least at first. Some nicknames have also developed specialized uses to describe archetypes: literary or folk characters or types rather than individuals. A fascinating area of research for people doing pragmatics, sociolinguistics or cultural studies no doubt, but too broad. Today I have created a Toondoo on some of the potential slang and informal meanings of nicknames which derive from the (my) first name "Edward". It could be used as a first activity to discuss names, nouns and referential expressions in a Semantics and Pragmatics class.

Everything ready for the II International Conference on University Teaching. Busy, but very pleasant end of week. Communicative competence: the need and the right to be properly informed! Over for now. [First draft]

Very hot weekend.

2011-06-27T07:31:00.002+02:00

Hight temperatures and plenty of bright sun this weekend. "Some like it hot," they say. I confess I am not that perfect: I prefer mild weather. Getting ready to drive to campus in about half an hour. Today I publish 2 strips I composed during the weekend. The first one is based on the term Prof. Gregory Ward favours to refer to the movement of elements in non-canonical, derived, marked structures to first position in the sentence: "preposing." The second strip is a personal reflection on weather and the Spanish condition nowadays after having downloaded the photos I took last Saturday, which I have already published on my "Photography" page. Plenty of symbolism "and all that jazz." Gregory Ward did not frown at my previous post on his seminar when I sent him a link, which is very nice. A very friendly Internet message he wrote indeed! (constructed, intuitive non-canonical example I am not that confident on, I should check with a native speaker). Anyway, back to the usual routine. By Wednesday the program for the Meaning and Discourse course, the July Grammar exam and the slides for the 2nd International Conference on Teaching. I have also downloaded and stored all the relevant documents and materials from the course on evaluation Alfredo Prieto shared with us in Dropbox. Nice beginning of the week to everybody. [First draft]

1.- About preposing.

2.- Sunny Summer at Vigo.

3.- The proverbial expression.

My old pragmatic hobby horse.

2011-06-24T12:14:00.001+02:00

Unfortunately, I could only make it to the first of the 2 sessions of the Seminar on Information Structure and Word Order Variation Professor Gregory Ward (Northwestern University) imparted here at our School of Philology and Translation on the 22nd and 23rd of June 2011. Last Thursday I was busy all morning in Alfredo Prieto's (University of Alcalá de Henares) course on Continuous Evaluation, so I missed Prof. Ward's practical session and also a lot of fun.

I enjoyed the first part of the seminar a lot. Gregory Ward is clear, entertaining and loves digressions. He studies word order using syntactic, informative, intonational and pragmatic criteria. He combines intuition, the use of corpora and psycholinguistics in his handling of examples and cases. A very informative and interesting first session. The composition I publish now is based on one of the first examples from Alice in Wonderland he used in his presentation. In short, an academic extra bonus this week that I welcomed and appreciated.

Quite intense rhythm these days: exams, selectivity, Conference on Teaching Innovation and three seminars: Lachland Mackenzie, Alfredo Prieto and Gregory Ward. Next week I will cooperate with Pedro Membiela and other friends in the II International Teaching Conference at the University of Vigo, where I will also deliver a paper. The 2nd round of exams begins on July 1st. Things should start slowing down at in the 2nd half of the month. Hopefully I will find some more time to write here, but my first priority now is the program of the new course on Meaning and Discourse. I plan to finish the draft during this weekend. [First draft] [Some minor corrections]

Transition week, at least in principle

2011-06-20T06:55:00.002+02:00

A lot of dissatisfaction on the streets during the weekend: still more pressure on the educational system, which must prove efficient and reliable. Quite peaceful weekend which I used to take it easy and recuperate from last week and visit a couple of exhibitions in the city center (Afinidades Selectivas at Casa Galega da Cultura and Diego de Giráldez at Novacaixagalicia). I also found the time to do some creative work. Today I plan to fill in the official transcripts of my courses and design the program of the new subject on Meaning and Discourse I am to teach next September. In the evening I must work a little bit more on a course on Evaluation given by Alfredo Prieto (University of Alcalá de Henares) I have registered for. Tomorrow we have a contact session at Miralles which will take all morning. I still need to catch up in many of the positive things that took place last week. These are two photographic compositions (on the Xornadas de Innovación Educativa and on Selectivity 2011) I did during the weekend. I wish a peaceful and gratifying beginning of the week to everybody. [First draft]

Some first practice on pragmatics after a while.

2011-06-18T17:37:00.000+02:00

Nice and sound sleep. I needed it! Sunny day. Coming back to the usual routine with some practice on newspaper articles. Resuming work in webpages. Catching up in an online course on evaluation that started on the 10th. A card with some ideas on education, methodology and pragmatics prompted by excerpts from an article on Michael Gove who mentions "the need for exam boards to sharpen up their act" (my reformulation) written by Jonathan Paige on the Guardian, and a clipcard where I try to convert last week's bad experience into something positive by means of humour. It is a quite difficult card because it "presupposes": 1) some: background/shared/mutual knowledge on the "cartography" of the incident I have promised myself to forget after todays' walk along the city center, 2) an item of encyclopaedic knowlege: Stairway to Heaven is a well-known song by Led Zeppelin (1970) which was very popular in Spain in the years 1974-75, 3) A weak exploitation of relevance to "decypher" its message based not only on strict inference or in figurative reformulation but on association of ideas, 4) a creative reading in which the main message is complemented by a second and subliminal message in some expressions (reference to the American general Patton and to the use of transmitters in a military operation, also some icons in going uphill from one building to another building) which connects this card with yesterday's post on "the green devils of Montecassino", being this clipcard therefore a second reformulation of the same idea in a way, but also first positive reference to the Xornadas de Innovación Educativa on the left of the card: "Finally I made it... and I have my certificate!" Michael Gove's board of examiners meet to sharpen up their academic act: "Difficult," (the monkey) is the Head examiner, "Poet" (the ugly bird) symbolizes the public and "Lazy as Hell" that is Edu Dodo (i.e. me) needs to pass the exam. In a nutshell: to be successful he needed "to buy a stairway to heaven"... and he did!

Of course this clipcard is quite personal and hermetic and a little bit on the surreal or on the eccentric side or on both. But it could be useful to discuss notions such the need of some specialized, shared, mutural knowledge between creator and reader in order to agree on a first common interpretation (strict relevance) before its creative and weak exploitation in terms of personal relevance. As for Speech Acts, Communicative Acts and Discourse Acts some other day. There are also some (Latin) expressions such as "more hispano" (in the usual Spanish way) which may be misleading at first and need to be explained. I decided not to exploit the expression "sharpen up" iconically (for instance by means of a pencil sharpener) to avoid making this clipcard too dense. Nice lunch at Mum's after many days. Sister working at hospital. Mum watching the telly and me preparing myself to take a walk and relax for a while. Nice peaceful weekend for absolutely everybody. [First draft].

Sweet & Sour Selectivity.

2011-06-17T12:08:00.001+02:00

Friday 17th June. This year's Selectivity is over. Tutorials today and some personal study. Official transcripts next Monday. I must find the time to write about all the positive things that have taken place in the last days both in terms of work and in terms of social relations, also about some good prospects for the future, but I still need to catch up with the routine. Not everything was good an pleasant, however. Last Thursday I went through a quite disappointing and tense situation at Selectivity that has affected me in my activity since then, even though I have fulfilled all my tasks normally. I have tried to reflect some of the most negative aspects of that experience by means of the two collages I publish today.

When some weeks ago I received the official notification for the Selectivity this year, I realized that there was a potential conflict on Friday 10th with the Conference on Teaching Innovation (Xornadas de Innovación Educativa) where I was to present a paper which I tried to solve immediately. However, that conflict finally originated on Thursday evening: the kind of "personal favour due to exceptional circumstances" that the President of my Tribunal was ready to bestow on me made me change my plans and not accept his offer of partial leave for Friday morning. I decided to fulfill my duties with Selectivity strictly and go to the conference on Innovation at 15:00 to present my paper and listen to as many other papers as I could only when all my responsibilities had been completed to the last minute and detail. I also communicated that President that I had decided to issue a formal and reasoned complaint about the way he had exerted his authority. In my view, his performance was quite poor and unprofessional both in personal and in administrative terms. I do not treat my students or colleagues this way and I do not confuse objective necessity with personal convenience or special favour. If he could not or did not want to solve the problem he should have informed me about that extent transparently and clearly using unambiguous and precise language first, and then he should have directed me to the proper official instance where I could ask about a possible, reasonable and legal solution. To cut a long story: a "sweet and sour" Selectivity, the worst I have even gone through since 1992.

The School of Biology is at the very bottom of the Lagoas Marcosende Campus while the School of Telecommunications is almost on the top of a hill: 12 minutes of steep walk full speed. Doing me the favor of letting me attend the morning session at the conference from about 11:00 to 13:00 to go down at 13:30 to help around with the exams and take my leave and then go uphill again "to have a quick bite" before the afternoon session is no favor at all taking into account the place and circumstances. It rather seems one of these stereotypical jokes people crack in Spain about the use and abuse of authority (a sergeant at an army barracks, a cook at a restaurant, a manager at a bank, and so on). I did not want to face the risk of creating a bad impression in a carefully planned and well organized conference. Therefore, I decided to have a slight snack at about 13:00, do the Selectivity in full until 15:00, take my leave then and walk up to the 15:30 session taking it easy to avoid sweat and suffocation as much as I could. I managed to reach Teleco at about 15:20, greet my friends there, forget about what had taken place in the morning and give my paper and enjoy the other papers as much as I could. The afternoon-evening was great and highly rewarding. Besides, as I had performed all my duties in Selectivity minute after minute from 08:00 to 20:00 on Wednesday and Thursday and from 08:00 to 15:00 on Friday there was not much I had to worry about, apart from three brief tenses moments -no insults, no threats on my part- to lament. Anyway, almost forgotten now.

One final hour of tutorials. I must start writing a little bit about the very positive and interesting things that took place during the week and start concentrating on an online course that also started on that particular Friday on students' evaluation in the new university context. Best wishes to everybody. [First draft]

One week already gone!

2011-06-07T23:47:00.002+02:00

It's been a long time! I use one free hour at home before starting the Selectivity tomorrow at the School of Biology at 09:00 A.M. to reconnect with this blog. In principle, all the marking is finished, even though some students want to talk about their results next week. Apart from the correction of assignments and papers, I also attended the seminars by Ruslan Mitkov (University of Wolverhampton) and Gloria Corpas (University of Málaga) on computational linguistics, machine translation and the use of corpora and search engines when translating. I have written some comments on My English Log on this two events you are welcome to read. Interesting and useful talks, nice and friendly people.

I received an Internet message some days ago informing me that two sites specialized in comics I follow have merged. Comics.com has migrated to Gocomics. I need to find some time now to rearrange my strips and tidy up my collections. Going through yesterday's cartoons on the page, I came across an interesting example of an intentional mistake in Shoe which I have used for a first sketch on pragmatic comment. Gloria Corpas, at the end of her seminar last Friday, mentioned the difficulty to translate those texts in which some Spanish words have been replaced by English near homophones to produce a humorous effect. If you come across expressions such as: "Es un Ascot" intentionally used by somebody who has written a comment on the stylish women's hats worn at Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton instead of the correct Spanish expression "Es un asco" (it's a load of crap), you face two main problems: 1) you need to understand the witticism first and then 2) you need to find a way to translate the expression (or at least to provide a footnote explaining what it means).

Shoe's strip is based on a mispronunciation (letter/litter) and a subsequent humorous effect on the same language: English. There's also the expression "letter from litter" in Joyce's Finnegan's wake, but this literary reference is not essential to achieve a relevant interpretation of the strip, at least at first. A little bit hasty today, but I must put an end to this post here and start thinking of the Selectivity. I may write a little bit more elaborate on these ideas in the near future, but first things first. Nice week to everybody. [First draft]

Comic strips are hard work

2011-05-31T11:00:00.000+02:00

I spent most of the evening yesterday creating a new site to collect all my toonlets. I plan gradually to do the same with my other strip collections as part of the (continuous) work of redesign and sytematization of my online work. More than 100 cartoons on this site only! I miss the time and the tranquility to write extensive comments of what I want to express in each case. Pragmatics and Poetics, I should write about that! No time, no time! I publish now the cover of this new site together with the link. Very positive sense of accomplishment. The only way to become competentent in any skill or ability is by means of practice, innovation and consolidation. The new posts on this site will appear on the right, on the same colum as my other sites. Busy day, which I plan to dedicate to marking and to preparing the Grammar exam on Thursday. Nice day to everybody! [First draft]

Dada20087toonlets:

http://www.dada20087toonlets.ejvarelabravo.com/

Exam week

2011-05-29T23:23:00.001+02:00

Quite busy weekend in the countryside cutting grass and weeds: all Saturday morning (about 6 hours) and 3 more hours today. I have done quite a bit, but I still need half a day more to finish. It has been stormy this evening and it has rained a litle bit, but not enough: quite a humid and hot night. I have spent the rest of my time marking assignments and preparing the next week, during which the official exams for my courses will take place. I have also dedicated some time, not much to compose a collage about the 2nd Intenational Conference on University Teaching, which will take place at Vigo university from the 30th of June to the 2nd July. I will contribute with a paper and with all the help that Pedro Membiela and his team may need during these days. I am sure that this new edition will be as successful as last year. Very friendly and participative event. I haven't had much free time for this blog, lately due to marking. Nice week to everybody. [1st draft]

Collage illustrations:

WP clipart ( http://www.wpclipart.com/)

Toondoo ( http://www.toondoo.com/ ) I composed for my Grammar course on Tema Platform

II Internationall Conference on University Teaching. Link:

http://webs.uvigo.es/congresodocencia/prog_es.htm

A little bit more on the concept "redundacy."

2011-05-25T21:00:00.002+02:00

Usually in colloquial speech, especially in moments of economic and social crisis, "redundancy" is a negative term which refers to unemployment. Declaring a worker redundant is a legal euphemism which translates roughly for "giving this person the sack" in other colloquial registers of the English language: "No literary metaphor, boy. There's no work for you now. Pick up your jacket, go home, wait and be patient. We'll call you in case something appears." In my previous post I used the term redundancy when writing about my scooter in a different sense. [I confess that I have browsed a couple of dictionaries (Cambridge online, the Free Dictionary.com, Wikipedia) to write this post, but I declare that I have not plagiarized and that both the wording and the ideas are my elaboration].

Broadly speaking, the term "systemic redundancy" points at the need to always have a second, subsidiary system ready in case the main one does not work properly and there is the risk of total or partial failure. For instance, when there is a problem with the operating system of a computer there is the first recourse of restarting it in the security mode to keep the basic operations going until a solution is found. If the software or the online help is not enough, there is also the possibility of employing other computers and access the hard disk to try to repair the damage. The way some languages use inflections to mark grammatical agreeement -as opposed to poorly inflected English nowadays- is a good example of redundancy in language -you are welcome to have a look at the posts I published on this blog about Prof. Carlos Acuña Fariña's seminar on agreement some time ago. Redundancy from this perspective is positive because -if efficient and sustained- can guarantee the functioning of a complex system in difficult circumstances.

Redundany is the basis of the composition I upload now. Of course, there is some (literary) humour in the three items of bibliography I have listed, but the main content is serious. It is about how my ideas about this topic and my daily teaching interact. Keeping solid, reliable redundant systems which cover all the basic areas of social activity is one of the priorities in moments of crisis if we do not want to fall into depression, confrontation o chaos.

Quite busy morning. All presentations over. Now for some dinner. Quite hot today. [First draft]

[Some references:

- Cambridge online dictionaries: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

- The free dictionary com: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundancy]

No idle thoughts.

2011-05-23T10:18:00.005+02:00

Sunny summer day on campus. Quite a busy day. I need to prepare this afternoon interviews and keep on marking. I have used my breakfast time and the hour before tutorials to compose a couple of cards inspired in some of the topics I keep on thinking about today, always related in a way or other with the results of the municipal elections and the situation of impasse we are to live in this country until the general elections next year. This situation of uncertainty will demand even more work from everybody at university, no matter their political ideas or tendencies: we have to grant the stability of the educational system (teaching and research). We have to keep the old illusion more than ever now and finish the academic course as successfully as possible.

During the weekend I introduced an innovation in my web pages (Grammar, pragmatics, communication, Photography and My English Log) I am quite proud of. I have introduced Atom feeds in those pages, so that any time I publish something new it will appear on the right hand margin of this blog, as usual and expected. This (positive) change increases the functionality of My English Journal and increases my sense of accomplishment. A. What have you been doing lately, Ed? B. Just have a look at this blog! I still have a lot of things to perfect, but I confess I am quite proud of my achievements.

The first clip card is the sketch of a pragmatic analysis of two lines from today's BBC World page on the Spanish elections and the second a reflection on the need of always securing the necessary systemic redundancy in all areas of activity. I always think of redundancy any time I have to use my old B emergency resources in moments of need. We all depend on B-equipment and people in moments of emergency. We should never forget this basic truth. Nice productive day to everybody. [First draft] [Some corrections in the first clip card. Second correction in the clip card]