kalebeul: anythingarian bubbles and troubles from the land of the fretting nun
kalebeul's barcelona walking tour service. why else would i write this blog?
kalebeul anythingarian bubbles and troubles from the land of the fretting nun
esp · fra · ita · por | RSS2 · Atom

/ kalebeul / category / of philosophers / ernesto gimenez caballero /

The Sultan’s organ, and other stuff

There’s a good organ miscellania page here. The Sultan and I anecdote was one of the few useful pieces of information I knew as a child. The Spanish connection lies in the Novelda rock organ, of which more here, and the information that “Spanish organs of the 18th century include a number of mischievous sound [...]

Comments

Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Catalan totalitarianism

It’s a commonplace that essential similarities exist between the programmes of the Catalan left and the Spanish extreme right (I’m thinking in particular of ERC and the various Falangist splinters): an apparently psychotic obsession with the nation and its symbols, a determination to impose an all-powerful state, and a willingness (nay, a desire) to use [...]

Comments

Hitler’s failed Falangist marriage

“There could only be one. In the line of Spanish princesses like Ingunda and Brunequilda and Gelesvinta and Eugenia…”

Comments

Bullfighting and Germanic imperialism

As you know, Barcelona city council this week held a symbolic debate on whether to condemn bullfighting. During it, according to El Periódico (free registration), local conservative (PP) honcho Javier Basso
defended the “noble spectacle of the dance of bull and man” from harassment by “imperialistic cultures” like the “Anglo-Saxon and Germanic”. “Bullfights are [...]

Comments

This seems a bit harsh on the Barça president but the comparison is a standard feature of any Spanish debate:

People I know are voting for the motion of censure on Sunday to fack this one off rather than in the expectation that the next one will be less of a mafioso. Some of the family are nice so there’s hope yet.

A malfunction of the public address system produces a rather pleasing strobe:

At the end of this clip, a crude example of the wagon wheel effect, caused by what the brain, fooled by the camera, takes to be a succession of evenly spaced, identical Quercus ilex:

More educational train journeys here.

The May monsoon endowed plants with a Made-In-China verisimilitude:
poppy

Knee-scratching thistles are now several metres high, and Karik and Valya could have told you all about the monstrous dragonflies:

In the spot where just a moment or two ago there had lain a tiny dragonfly, there now moved a thick, long, log-like, jointed body with a huge hook at the end of it. The brown body, covered with turquoise blue splashes, was contracting in spasms. The joints moved, sometimes sliding over each other, sometimes turning sideways. Four huge transparent wings, covered with a dense web of
glittering threads, trembled in the air. A monstrous head hammered upon the window-sill.

This is the trailer (currently unsubtitled) for El infierno vasco, about the ethnic cleansing conducted by the nationalist government and the terrorists with a view to reducing the non-nationalist vote and thus achieving a pro-independence majority. The process, of which the latest episode is the removal of the constitutional right to use Spanish in schools, has been assisted by both the PSOE and the PP in government, trading the feasible need for the support of nationalist deputies for silence. It hasn’t found a commercial distributor in Spain. Maybe it will elsewhere.

Homosexuallord Fields votes for Los Shakers from Montevideo. Scroll down the post for MP3s.

  • Michael Meyer, Life in the vanishing backstreets of a city transformed in Destruction of old Peking
  • Yan Larry, The extraordinary adventures of Karik and Valya in Poppy
  • Anon, The Acts and Negotiations, Together with the Particular Articles at Large, of the General Peace, Concluded at Ryswick, by the Most Illustrious Confederates wit the French King. To which is premised, The Negotiations and Articles of the Peace, concluded at Turin, between the same Prince and the Duke of Savoy in Siege of Barcelona by the French in 1697

RSS2 · RSS2 Comments · Atom · Copyright © 2004-2008 kalebeul · Contact · kalebeul is grateful to the CIA for its kind support
kalebeul open source and uses Linux, Apache, MySQL, WordPress, PHP · Sing along with Moo Way (MP3) · 34 in 0.859