Alonso Alvarez Barreda: short

This beautiful 4 min short, The Story of a Sign, won the Cannes 2008 online competition. Watch it here.

campaign chair

This is a replica of a chair used by my friend's dad, Jack Sanguinetti, during the Second World War. Campaign furniture was built during the 19th and 20th centuries for ease of transport--this one is totally collapsible and can be packed up and carried in a bag! These chairs were army inventory that the Army & Navy store used to supply. It traveled with Jack (right) when he was serving with the King's African Rifles in Kenya and then later in Burma (where he served with Mountbatten). Oh it's all so romantic and wonderful and like a movie I can hardly stand it. And as if that weren't enough to make your heart hurt, here are his three children all sitting on it (susie my friend is the one eating the teddy and looking a bit surprised--perhaps it wasn't as tasty as she had envisaged). Today also happens to be her birthday. Happy Birthday Susie Campaign Chair Queen of the Teddy Bear Eaters. (It's also Emily's Birthday, my niece, so happy birthday to Emily The Glorious Princess Nieceness, too) More here.

Jorge Luis Borges lecture, "A Poet's Creed"

Here is the last of these very short (1-3 min) audio excerpts from two of the six Norton Lectures Jorge Luis Borges delivered at Harvard in 1967 and 1968, recently discovered in the Harvard University Archives.

A Poet's Creed (Lecture 6):
advice to writers...

Bardot Before; Bardot After

The photograph on the right was doctored by the “beautification engine” (sounds like something out of a scary novel) of a new computer program that "uses a mathematical formula to alter the original form into a theoretically more attractive version, while maintaining what programmers call an 'unmistakable similarity' to the original." Clearly, they still have some work to do before they even get close to the maker's original. More in this New York Times article.

Jorge Luis Borges lecture, "A Poet's Creed"

Here is the next of these very short (1-3 min) audio clips from two of the six Norton Lectures Jorge Luis Borges delivered at Harvard in 1967 and 1968, recently discovered in the Harvard University Archives.

A Poet's Creed (Lecture 6):
I try not to understand it...

FedEx Lemmings to Leaders Commercial

just silly... couldn't help it.

Jorge Luis Borges lecture, "A Poet's Creed"

Here is the next of these very short (1-3 min) audio excerpts from two of the six Norton Lectures Jorge Luis Borges delivered at Harvard in 1967 and 1968, recently discovered in the Harvard University Archives.

A Poet's Creed (Lecture 6):
when I began writing...

Warship back in New York

More here.