Alejandro Giacometti - Latest Comments

Re: I stole your nuts for my wife

janrito — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:38:26 -0000

I was walking up the street after this happened and I was laughing aloud by myself thinking about all the things that I could have said. Every single one seemed better than the last...
- Bone appetit
- They are extra salty today, I've been walking the whole day
- You can't just take them, at least give me a hug.

Re: I stole your nuts for my wife

Francesco — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:26:56 -0000

jajaja que buena papa!

Re: I stole your nuts for my wife

justin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:26:50 -0000

you know, the more I think about it, this is just like a Hemingway short story!

Re: I stole your nuts for my wife

justin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:26:00 -0000

hahahaha, you should have told him you needed them back when she was done with them.

Re: Volver

Vie! — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 05:13:59 -0000

Extracts from Graham Swift's Waterland:
"So how do we know - lost in the desert - that it is to the oasis of the yet-to-come we should be travelling anyway, and not to some other green Elysium that, a long while ago, we left behind? And how do we know that this mountain of baggage called History, which we are obliged to lug with us - which slows our pace to a crawl and makes us stagger off course - is really hindering us from advancing or retreating? Which way does salvation lie?
No wonder we move in circles."

"(...) there's this thing called civilization. It's built of hopes and dreams. It's only an idea. It's not real. It's artificial. No one ever said it was real. It's not natural. No one ever said is was natural. It's built by the learning process; by trial and error. It breaks easily. No one said it couldn't fall to bits. And no one ever said it would last forever."

"My humble model for progress is the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-endingly retrieving what is lost. A dogged, vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn't go mistaken the reclamation of land for the building of empires."

Re: Volver

raden — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:50:48 -0000

There will always be a dissatisfaction for what is when held up to the memories which impugn out daily lives as distracted by their own transcience, because memories are at once without time and without discomfort and thus can never be tainted by either. The only utopia is that of nostalgia because we remember things more for what they mean than what they are. And would we really want it to be different. What art can there be if there is not conflict?

Re: Volver

Yen — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:00:59 -0000

I miss it, because it rings the bells of innocent youth. I believe it, because reality must be tempered with imagination. I hope for it, because it keeps us hopeful.

Re: Fagaras

Klausica — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 12:53:32 -0000

Addendum: web site for My Second University http://ddusleag.home.insigh...

Re: Fagaras

Klausica — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:30:06 -0000

This is a an accurate description of the state of affairs in provincial post-communist Romania, especially coming from an outside observer. . . .

Nevertheless, I would like to add some details to the story of the castle pictured above: "FÄƒgÄƒraÅŸ Castle was first mentioned in 1310, built on the former site of a 12th century wooden fortress. Placed in the center of a feudal estate, the fort was rebuilt and enlarged between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, to serve as protection against Tartar and Turkish invasions. The citadel, accessible only through a bridge, served as residence to Iancu de Hunedoara (1455) and Michael the Brave (1599â€“1600), and included Maria Theresa (1740â€“1780) as one of many owners. By the end of the eighteenth century, the fortress was turned into a military garrison and in 1948 was seized by the Communists, who misused it as a dreadful political prison. Nearly 5,000 individuals were detained here in the 1950s. Since the early 1960s, the castle has housed the Museum of FÄƒgÄƒraÅŸ County." An exhibition describing the struggle of the local population against communist rule has recently been added to the museum.

FÄƒgÄƒraÅŸ's tragic history is directly responsible for its current socioeconomic shortcomings and out migration. An example of that history is in the above mentioned memoir, My Second University. . . .

Re: Fagaras

Editor — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:34:35 -0000

Thank you for the beautiful photograph and the cogent and well-informed remarks.

One should add a further piece of history to the jig-saw puzzle of Fagaras; The "castel" in the picture was turned into one of the most infamous prisons under the communist regime and only now, after the demise of Ceausescu, stories start to trickle down from the families of those pollitical prisoners who died at Fagaras and whose bodies were thrown into unmarked graves.
Numbers of people killed by any regime in the world should not be a statistical means of relativising the bestiality of a dictator or a dictatorship, but if one is to take into consideration the figures recently suggested by the Romanian presidential committee of Investigating the Crimes of Communism there could be as many as 1.5 million of people who died, or simply vanished during the five decades of "people's dictatorship" (the exact figures will never be known because records were never accurately kept and documents have been destroyed by the secret services. So if one is to use statistics to gage the ferocity of dictators since WWII, perhaps only Pol Pot might have scored a greater number of genocide then the Romania's communist dictators.
Indeed by comparison with Gheorghiou-Dej, Ceausescu's predecessor and with ceausescu himself many of their counterparts of Latin American fame might appear to be quite benign. Please do not misread such statement: this should not absolve any criminal of its misdeeds, because even a handful of victims represent an unprescribable crime, yet the crimes perpetrated against its citiozens of all social classes by the communist regime of Romania are little known elsewhere in the world and their attrocity and sheer inhumanity defies imagination.

An account of a survivor of the Fagaras prisons was a medical doctor whose memoirs were published by his grandson in the United States; the book is entitled "My Second University" (found on Amazon) and the review appears on:
http://www.romanianstudies....

Re: Havaianas

dean — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:52:02 -0000

havaianas fanatico here!!! deanyorker@aol.com

Re: Fagaras

raden — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 23:47:02 -0000

we lament outsourcing for the same reason, but how can you fault the people the jobs are going to when they are generally better educated and will do the same job for less. the system is broken. everone complains but nobody seems to want to take acountability to fix it.

great post buddy.

Re: Fagaras

Cliff — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 06:28:04 -0000

Excellent post. Thank you for sharing.

Re: Iraq in Fragments

Cliff — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 17:14:55 -0000

I found your blog through a link. Hope you don't mind that I've linked you. I love your pictures on here.

Re: Agorafobia

Sarsparilla — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 19:57:03 -0000

"I have the feeling I need to be following a calendar, that I have never seen" I think that dizzying sense of vertigo about the future is the standard reaction to exiting any serious institution. It will pass.

Re: Havaianas

nathan — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 07:56:45 -0000

hey! i like your post! are you a havaianatic yourself? tell me more...email nathanmusicfreak@yahoo.com

Re: Havaianas

justino — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:19:52 -0000

I really like what you've done with the site man.