32 posts tagged “qotd”
What's your favorite song from a Disney movie?
"I'm Wishing", from Snow White, doppiaggio italiano.
So winsome: the echo, the unusual and groundbreaking animation with its subaquatic perspective, and the lovely Italian vocals.
At home or in the theater: What's the last great movie you watched?
That's easy!
The only movie that you could sum up as "Sophia Coppola meets Dario Argento."
Advertised at my local theater as a mirror rival to Twilight, Let the Right One In makes you intimately aware of the everyday horrors of an ordinary 12-year-old in suburban Stockholm: bullying, silence, and drunken indifferent parents. What's new: the young protagonist, Oskar, finds respite in the kindness of a barefoot, blithe vampire girl next door. When she shows him how to solve his Rubik's cube, that boy's in love.
The sound crew placed microphones in the most unusual places, recording sounds below eyelashes and next to throats, falling snow and corduroy pant legs (source: Kristen McCracken's interview with the director Tomas Alfredson). The result is a movie that's stylized but not pretty-pretty. The sound and visuals mean that certain little events are extra-perceptible in this movie, as if you'd borrowed heightened perception of a sensitive boy and a restless vampire.
What question do you hate being asked?
"What do you do?"
Lawzamercy!
I answer this question creatively. Trust me, brother, it's easier this way.
This lady rebuffs the question:
She reads a pamphlet titled "Women in Necessary Civilian Jobs": Rosie the Riveter was just one of many public attempts to motivate women to take on extra jobs, most of them blue-collar and ill-suited to pencil skirts and silk stockings.
The woman clad in sable brown and saffron yellow holds a matching yellow pencil where a cigarette once was: during this era's wartime, the homefront tried to spend and consume moderately to conserve resources for the war, and cigarettes were little luxuries. The hardship of war wasn't shuffled off to a record-breaking deficit, nor to the McCain campaign's "mental recession." Back then, even Vogue chipped in with fashion portfolios for job-hunters.
As it happens, I've inherited from my sister an armful of vintage suits, one of which is chocolate brown with a pencil skirt and a sharply tailored jacket. Très Rosalind Russell. Come autumn weather I'll summon the same jaunty pride as this Vogue lady while stalking through the skyways of downtown Minneapolis, job listings in tow.
[Vox's Question of the Day]: Why do you think it is some people don't get along with you?
Vox, I simply do not follow your line of questioning. What shadows lurk in thy user-generated heart? I'm as likerous as Alison, the carpenter's wife:
I dar wel seyn, if she hadde been a mous,
And he a cat, he wolde hire hente anon.
("She was so proper, and sweet, and likerous.
I dare well say, if she had been a mouse,
And he a cat, he would her hent anon.")
Besides, blogs are better suited to pictures of cats than to essays on self-loathing. Take as evidence a brilliant example of the former, Cute Overlord. While Cute Overload posts sweet and pathetic creatures, Cute Overlord collects more dubious animal "friends."
To glance at Cute Overlord's photograph of an irate Siamese kitten is to hear Ozzy Osbourne's plaintive wail: "Is this the end, my
friend? Satan's coming 'round the bend."
If you insist on Baudelaire over Black Sabbath, then remember the poet's assessment of cats (les chats):
Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres
(Friends of knowledge and pleasure
They seek the silence and the horror of darkness [...])
(original French and several English translations at fleursdumal.org)
What are five words you really like?
Submitted by purplesque.
yes (adv.)
Around the world, "yes" or its equivalent frequently tops surveys as the most beautiful word in a given language; for you, too, is it the only word that you really want to hear?
motherboard (n.)
Recently I consecrated three crazy days to the formatting of a new hard drive made in Thailand; while time erodes all such disks, I know I can trust my motherboard.
impedimenta (n. pl.)
Impedimenta, or baggage that physically impedes progress, is the favorite word and favorite encumbrance of Parisians with mad breakin' skillz in the French film "Kings and Queen." (Lively French and incoherent U.S. trailer, via YouTube, both featuring clips of the breakdancing sequence; directed by Arnaud Desplechin.)
The elevation of hair washing began in India with the Sanskrit name of a plant whose oils were used to massage the scalp; from there, the word morphed into the Hindi "champu" to refer to the kneading of the scalp, and gradually re-encompassed the name of the product used to perform the act.
The category of uncanny does not comprehend all strange or unfamiliar things; rather, only those entities that appear obscure, inaccessible and potentially nefarious are uncanny. ("The Uncanny" is one of Freud's niftier essays and it is online in English translation at this site.)
Many good words share, with "impedimenta," quaintly evident Latin or Greek roots: bellicose, peripeteia, imbricate, hortatory, autotelism.
What are you most grateful for in your life right now?
Submitted by Becca-Pink.
my admirable family
mon homme
friends, far away
charismatic students
spices in this chai recipe:
Approx. 1 t coriander, 1.5 t cardamom, 2-3 T grated ginger, .5 t black peppercorns, 1 cinnamon stick, 3 cloves, pinch of allspice and nutmeg, 1 t anise seed or licorice root.
Add spices to two cups water. Bring to boil. Let sit overnight. Strain and add 1-3 cups of milk; heat. If desired, add 2-3 T black or green tea to the blend of warm milk and spice; strain out the tea and serve.
The resulting concoction is naturally sweet but you can add sugar, or try pouring some chai atop a bowl of hot oatmeal with brown sugar.
Who's the coolest culinary celebrity?
- Julia Child
She had force créatrice (creative force), she lived in Jetztzeit (now-time), and she was undaunted by life's cammina dura (difficult path). Kowtow to her!
Julia Child's dazzling philosophy of life is showcased by Regina Schrambling in this obituary from August 2004 from the New York Times.
Her kitchen, where all the magic happened, is in the possession of the Smithsonian. The small room was reassembled in the museum right down to the egg separator and the recipe for pain de mie (bread with a crumb, as opposed to a crusty baguette). The Smithsonian is closed for renovation until summer 2008, but the exhibit's web site continues to offer a virtual tour, annotated lovingly.
"Because of media hype and woefully inadequate information, too many
people nowadays are deathly afraid of their food, and what does fear of
food do to the digestive system? [...] I, for one, would much rather
swoon over a few thin slices of prime beefsteak, or one small serving
of chocolate mousse, or a sliver of foie gras than indulge to the full
on such nonentities as fat-free gelatin puddings."
- Julia Child, The Way to Cook,1989.
Which runway show at New York Fashion Week do you wish you could attend?
"Although I'm not a fan of Roland Barthes, I do subscribe to his idea that language is a self-contained system of signs."
- Prof. Tim Gunn (now with his own Bravo reality show about the grammar of makeovers)
Signs denoting madness: Those specs! Those ruffles!
What is the silliest thing you've ever spent more than $30 on?
Submitted by Terri.
Deci Delà wasn't a big hit outside of Ile-de-France
and the isle of Manhattan, so eBay was my source for it, and for other forgotten products like 1970s issues of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. Through online bidding about 10 years ago,
I procured one
orange bottle of Deci Delà; in each successive residence I've crafted an altar around this trinket, this bibelot.
It is imperviousness to popular tastes,
bottled and boxed and wrapped in plastic. The flacon or perfume bottle is
asymmetrical, made of matte satin glass in blood-orange, hot pink, or
tomato red, etched with gilt arabesques, and topped with a golden bean. Is this object beautiful? It is probably too quirky or funny to fit that qualification. Is it useless? Maybe so, because I avoid the actual perfume. Disseminated in a broad mist, Deci Delà is a sneeze-inducing bouquet of rice,
patchouli and peach: an ill match for the fanciful youth suggested in the advertising campaign.
"De ci, de là" means "from here and there" and must have been confounding to all but a few opera buffs: it is the alternate title of "Donkey Duet", a sticomythia-laden number
from Messager's 1898 operetta, Véronique.
The fact that this entirely peculiar concept received the green light from corporate heads is, maybe, a small victory for the perfume's apparent target audience: oddball créatures indépendantes.
