Word of the day

ur·bane

   [ur-beyn]  Show IPA

adjective

1.

having the polish and suavity regarded as characteristic ofsophisticated social life in major cities: an urbane manner.

2.

reflecting elegance, sophistication, etc., especially inexpression: He maintained an urbane tone in his letters.

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to all my city dwellers - courtesy of  Roslain Bayzilla  

Customise Your Personal Business with Customisation

WAAAAAAAAAA... sneaky peak at at my degree show piece 

She whispered to me ' They're Angels'

Bill Viola makes beautiful videos

His videos remind me of this (please excuse the music)

Thirteenth-leading cause of death worldwide

And so, having (at 6:30 am) this morning finished the book I've been slowly reading, over this last month..

I thought it would be nice to review it with you all!

At the beginning of July this year (as her last few days were slipping away), I picked up 'Madame Bovary' by Gustav Flaubert at the cancer hospice my Grandmother was dying in.

(Before I go making the devil out of myself, I managed to leave my own book that I was reading at the time, there. So we can say karma has allowed a fair swap!)

 I started Madame Bovary with her, reading it aloud as wasn't sure what to say. At the time she was 'semi-vegetative' and I wondered to my-self, 'what can I say to this woman who cant answer me if I talk to her. Who, I'm sure can't understand what I'm saying anyway!' It was a very odd experience. 

Back to the book

If you give a shit about what happens in the book, it is summarised here.

Long story short, Madame Bovary ends up dead.

She kills herself.

I thought it drew a strange parallel - for me anyway.

So

Here I am thinking about death, in a kind of death and taxes way. Perhaps more than some, less than others, whatever.

I was having a bit of a hard time grasping the death of my grandmother, as she is the first person i've known who has died. Im not religious. I'm not sure if she was particularly.

I know that she saw the priest a lot before she died and expressed regret that she was not going to be living anymore.

My grandmother was old and didn't have a choice about the terminal cancer that killed her.

Young Ms Bovary killed herself.

OK Ms Bovary is fictional, but the concept is'nt.

What has happened to her soul? What is death?How do people die?

Why do people choose death?

Questions Questions

Answers?

This guy (Mr Shelly Keagan) is a lecturer from Yale, and has given me a bit of existential Hypothesising to help in the possible answering of some of these questions. 

Watch it on Academic Earth

Interested in death, definitely worth looking at the whole course lectures!

There is also economics courses amongst otherthings. YA

What did i learn?

That life is a lot more complicated that just being alive. 

And death is unfathomable.

Thats all 

I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. -- Jewish Proverb

Biggup to kwabena Adjepong.

Beautiful soul. Peace and Love

The Trouble With Abyssinian Gold

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

Safe.


Its been a fairly mad week here in old Pecks.Mad times rioting. Houses on fire and kids acting BADMAN!
Fucking Shocking. I love Peckham, really I do. But Tuesday day was the most fucked up I've ever felt walking up the hight street. Usually a certain amount of paranoia accompanies one when down in Pecks, this was different. The Police were Everywhere, all shops shut by 3. Even the butchers! Wow, this is special.

Having myself lived in and around Peckham for the entirety of my earthly time. I know as well as any Peckhamite what it is to live on benefits, surrounded by council estates and in the midst of unemployment, low education levels and what seems to be a vacuum of love. There is a lack of love in all levels of British society. Here is a prime example;

The Prime Minister made an impassioned attack on the feckless parents, failed education policies of the past and welfare handouts which led to the ‘sick and irresponsible’ behaviour of young thugs.
‘There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick,’ he said.

- Daily Mail


Now, to be fair it isn't terrible to say that within our society (within us all ) there is something sick, something that potentially could drive us all in to a similar frenzy of opportunistic looting and thoughtless violence (given the right scenario). For sure there are videos all over of what appears to be whole families walking out of broken into shops, arms full of stolen goods.


But that is not what he meant right.


He meant that those people in Hackney,Lewisham, Tottenham, Eltham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol etc. who were involved  in the looting were the 'sick' part of our society!  

How is it that our own leaders can say that! Instead of condemning this part of society, we should be reassessing our actions. The last couple days have held a mirror to each of us. There  are obviously problems in these areas that need to be seriously looked at. As this young black boy in Clapham Junction, South London said when talking to mayor Boris Johnson.

I personally have no qualms about politically motivated rioting or the looting  of corporations, but these people are doing it for temporary gain, there is no articulate reasoning, they can't even see that once the dust settles the police will (murk) get them. And for all the fun of rioting an getting a 50" flat screen, its not worth the police record. Or even worse jail time. Its just not worth it




If we have any hope, it will of course be within the young. we need more educated, self confident youngsters like the guy in the video above. We all need to take responsibility. Compassion and education. This is how we stop this sort of thing from happening again!