Montana's Beef Short Ribs

 حیفم اومد از Beef Short Ribs که دیشب تو Montana's خوردیم ننویسم. لامصب خیلی خوشمزه بود خصوصا باربیکیو سسش که سیب - کارامل بود عالیش کرده بود. البته Montana's همیشه خوبه. 


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Invention of Lying - Shaw on Demand

رامین فیلم رو تو هواپیما دیده بود و اصرار داشت من هم ببینمش. علیرغم سادگی و کم خرجی فیلم قشنگی بود که چند تا موضوع مهم رو خیلی خوب و صریح به نقد کشیده بود. اگه رو فیلمنامه پرداخت بیشتری می شد می تونست خیلی بهتر شه.


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Invitation to a Beheading

   
    Invitation to a Beheading begins with the announcement that its fragile hero, Cincinnatus C., has been sentenced to death for the crime of "gnostic turpitude": in a place where all citizens are required to be transparent, he is opaque. The principal characteristic of this world is its arbitrariness; the condemned man's only privilege is to know the time of his death-but the executioners keep even this from him, turning every day into a day of execution. As the story unfolds, the reader discovers with increasing discomfort the artificial texture of this strange place. The moon from the window is fake; so is the spider in the corner, which, according to convention, must become the prisoner's faithful companion. The director of the jail, the jailer and the defense lawyer are all the same man, and keep changing places. The most important character, the executioner, is first introduced to the prisoner under another name and as a fellow prisoner: M'sieur Pierre. The executioner and the condemned man must learn to love each other and cooperate in the act of execution, which will be celebrated in a gaudy feast. In this staged world, Cincinnatus's only window to another universe is his writing.
    The world of the novel is one of empty rituals. Every act is bereft of substance and significance, and even death becomes a spectacle for which the good citizens buy tickets. It is only through these empty rituals that brutality becomes possible. In another Nabokov novel, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Sebastian's brother discovers two seemingly incongruous pictures in his dead brother's library: a pretty, curly-haired child playing with a dog and a Chinese man in the act of being beheaded. The two pictures remind us of the close relation between banality and brutality. Nabokov had a special Russian term for this: poshlust.
    Poshlust, Nabokov explains, "is not only the obviously trashy but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive." Yes, there are many examples you can bring from everyday life, from the politicians' sugary speeches to certain writers' proclamations to chickens. Chickens? You know, the ones the street vendors sell nowadays-if you lived in Tehran, you couldn't possibly miss them. The ones they dip in paint-shocking pink, brilliant red or turquoise blue-in order to make them more attractive. Or the plastic flowers, the bright pink-and-blue artificial gladiolas carted out at the university both for mourning and for celebration.
    What Nabokov creates for us in Invitation to a Beheading is not the actual physical pain and torture of a totalitarian regime but the nightmarish quality of living in an atmosphere of perpetual dread. Cincinnatus C. is frail, he is passive, he is a hero without knowing or acknowledging it: he fights with his instincts, and his acts of writing are his means of escape. He is a hero because he refuses to become like all the rest.
    Unlike in other utopian novels, the forces of evil here are not omnipotent; Nabokov shows us their frailty as well. They are ridiculous and they can be defeated, and this does not lessen the tragedy-the waste. Invitation to a Beheading is written from the point of view of the victim, one who ultimately sees the absurd sham of his persecutors and who must retreat into himself in order to survive.
    Those of us living in the Islamic Republic of Iran grasped both the tragedy and absurdity of the cruelty to which we were subjected. We had to poke fun at our own misery in order to survive. We also instinctively recognized poshlust-not just in others, but in ourselves. This was one reason that art and literature became so essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity. What Nabokov captured was the texture of life in a totalitarian society, where you are completely alone in an illusory world full of false promises, where you can no longer differentiate between your savior and your executioner.
    We formed a special bond with Nabokov despite the difficulty of his prose. This went deeper than our identification with his themes. His novels are shaped around invisible trapdoors, sudden gaps that constantly pull the carpet from under the reader's feet. They are filled with mistrust of what we call everyday reality, an acute sense of that reality's fickleness and frailty. There was something, both in his fiction and in his life, that we instinctively related to and grasped, the possibility of a boundless freedom when all options are taken away. I think that was what drove me to create the class. My main link with the outside world had been the university, and now that I had severed that link, there on the brink of the void, I could invent the violin or be devoured by the void.


Reading Lolita in Tehran

گل شاه پسند

خیلی برام جالبه که یه مدتیه خاطره‌ی گل شاه پسند بزرگی که وسط باغچه‌ی بزرگ خونه‌ی خیابون چهاردستگاهمون بود مدام جلوی ذهنمه. همون باغچه‌ای که پر از پرتقال و نارنج و محمدی بود. همونجایی که توش خشت کبریتی می ساختم و می ذاشتم جلوی افتاب خشک شن یا پروژه های آبیاری با لوله پولیکا و شلنگ پیاده می کردم. شاه پسند خیلی بزرگی بود و همیشه پر از گل، همیشه پر از رنگ و بهتر از همه چیز همیشه پر از پروانه. حتی پروانه های سیاه. برم خونه می گردم شاید بتونم عکسی ازش پیدا کنم. دلم واسش تنگ شده. شایدم هنوز تو خونه‌ باشه، البته می دونم که بعیده. خیلی گذشته ولی میرم از محسن می پرسم که هنوزم دارنش یا نه. اگه بود حتما بهش سر می زنم.


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یادم باشه اسم لاتینش هست Lantana Camara

An unfinished miniature

Nassirn came in next. She had brought two boxes of nougats: presented from Isfahan, she declared. She was dresses in her unusual uniform- navy robe, navy scarf and black heelless shoes. When I had last seen her in class, she was wearing a huge black chador, revealing only the oval of her face and two restless hands, which, when she was not writing or doodling, were constantly in motion, as if trying to escape the confines of the thick black cloth. More recently, she had exchanged the chador for long, shapeless robes in navy, black or dark brown, with thick matching scarves that hid her hair and framed her face. She had a small, pale face, skin so transparent you could count the veins, full eyebrows, long ashes, lively eyes (brown), a small straight nose and an angry mouth: an unfinished miniature by some master who had suddenly been called away from his job and left the meticulously drawn face imprisoned in a careless splash of dark color.


Reading Lolita in Tehran

روش بقا

به نظرم وقتشه نگاه دیگه ای به وضعیت موجود جامعه‌ی ایرانی بندازم. بهتره به جای غر زدن از فساد جاری و بدتر شدن هر روزه‌ی جامعه بهش نگاهی ریشه یابانه تر داشته باشم. نگاهی که فقط محکوم نمی کنه و سعی نمی کنه دور و دورتر بشه. نگاهی که سرزنش نمی کنه بلکه این تغییر رفتار رو تحولی اجتماعی برای بقای افراد می دونه که فارغ از نتیجه گیری های اخلاقی اکثریت افراد جامعه رو درگیر خودش می کنه.


می دونی شاید دیگران به خاطر سرنوشتشون چندان هم قابل سرزنش نباشن. اونها مثل تمامی موجودات زنده سعی می کنن باقی بمونن و این رو از طریق المان های رفتاری مختلفی نشون می دن که می تونن تو معیارهای اخلاقی گاهی به عنوان ارزش و گاهی به عنوان ضد ارزش شناخته می شن. 

Domes and Minarets in Architecture


Today when I was following a funny link on toilet signs, I encountered pictures using architectural shapes like domes and minarets resembling 'men’ and 'women' signs for toilets. Then, I could not stop myself thinking of the fact that these architectural shapes which have been very popular in world's history might really be related to women's breasts and men's penises. I know there are other explanations on roots of these monuments as a part of human history such as:

- Dome resembles the sky (as a sign of god) and minaret shows the highest effort of human to get closer to it.

 - Simply dome is the most stable structure you can have for very big open areas (a very large span). This role has been changed after using truss structures. Minaret is the tallest structure with lowest area (i.e., cheapest) that human could build then.  Also minarets have been used for calling for the prayer in islumic world (i.e., athan) which can be covered by a larger area if it is from the highest point of minaret.

- Domes gives people the feeling of gathering under an umbrella of support (from evils by god??) and minaret shows the tininess of human being in the world and also the long way he has to reach the sky. In other words, they impose both feelings of humility and need for protection. 

 

I believe none of these reasons is wrong. All together serve to explain how these structures have been remaining as human's favorites and are continuing during during  history. But I want to add the idea that it is impossible to ignore or even underestimate the fact that they have been resembling human sexual organs [off course unconsciously].

به مناسبت ویکی شدن کتاب کوچه - اندام، خوابگزاری

"گر کسی اندر خواب ببیند که او را اندام‌ها همی بریدندی چنان که وی کم شدی، سفری کند که مردم خاندانش سراسر از وی جدا شوند و پراکنده گردند."

[خوابگزاری، صفحه‌ی 288]

شمس الحق

چقدر دلم تنگ شده که بنشینم و مکاتیب را دوباره بخوانم. می دانم اگر این بار بخوانم طور دیگری خواهم خواندش. چرا دل من دوباره برای خواندن شمس تنگ شده ولی شوقی برای خواندن فیه ما فیه ندارم؟ می دانی عزیز؟ شمس کس دیگری است. شمس جور دیگری است. شمس لاابالی است. شمس کجا و مولانا کجا؟  شمس وحشی است و سر به هوا. سرگشته و یک لاقبا. شمس پرنده است....


کاش دوباره بخوانمش....

کار صواب

صبح‏ است ساقیا قدحی پر شراب کن

دور فلک درنگ ندارد شتاب کن

زان پیشتر که عالم فانی شود خراب

ما را ز جام باده‌ی گلگون خراب کن

خورشید می ز مشرق ساغر طلوع کرد

گر برگ عیش می‌طلبی ترک خواب کن

روزی که چرخ از گل ما کوزه‌ها کند

زنهار کاسه‌ی سر ما پر شراب کن

ما مرد زهد و توبه و طامات نیستیم

با ما به جام باده‌ی صافی خطاب کن

کار صواب باده‌پرستی‏ است حافظا

برخیز و عزم جزم به کار صواب کن