Typos!

I've noticed that I've been making typos in my recent posts (and posting them - criminal!). Even Blogger's spell check, which puts irritating red squiggles under the misspelled words, doesn't catch everything (it cannot read the context within which a word is misspelled).

The most recent is in my post: Lilium longiflorum:The Easter Lily, where I write about "a smattering of Eater Lilies" (I did spell it "lilly" to start with, then was advised by Blogger's internal spell checker to change it to "lily."

Well, "Eater" is a real word, and "Eater lily" in not problematic for Blogger. I've corrected the spelling, and I apologize for any past and future spelling errors.

I'm trying to do many things at once these days, including trying to write a blog post at least daily. And there's a little project called "writing an e-book" which will hopefully evolve into a real book, the non-ethereal, worldly kind that can be held in the hands.

So, apologies once again, but the world is too interesting not to document in this blog (and of course, critique as well, since it's all about making this world "a better place" after all).

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Those conservatives are the death of her

Kathy Shaidle [Source: Enormous Thriving Plants]

Too bad this blogger is skewed so left, because she's funny. This reminds me that many Saturday Night Live skits were created by Canadian lefties, who put a humorous slant to their anti-Americanism, thereby making people laugh instead of hunt them down with those guns.

But, a funny (far)left-wing humorous Canadian's life is short-lived as Audrey II shows, since she now prefers to be tweetering on twitter, rather than blogging her lonely heart out.

Her blog started off full-steam with Ezra Levant lambasts. It ended about 31/2 years later with Michele Bachmann. Those conservatives are the death of her.

She's way funnier than the F³ blogger, who somehow got a footing into the internet netherworld with what I presume she takes to be (political) humor. I think people just like her crassness. A-II has linked to her here as the "unabashed, ham-fisted defen[der] of racism." Other "ham-fisted" Canadian conservative bloggers are scattered around her posts. Here's one, albeit a little more moderate. And here's an extra "ham-fisted" one, although that could be a prairies thing.

I suppose the blog's title is some kind of wishful thinking/humor, where A-II imagines her links spreading around the internet like enormous thriving plants. But, sadly, her blog doesn't make it past Michele Bachmann. Those conservatives are the death of her.

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Idiot Ilana Mercer Is At It Yet Again

Mercer with Peter Brimelow of Vdare
[Photo from ilanamercer.com]

I rarely reference other bloggers and writers with epithets, but Mercer earned this one after I ended my correspondence with her when she cleverly introduced "idiot" in conjunction with my name in one of her emails. Of course, I was writing to her in a formal, courteous manner (I don't have the time - nor the desire - to dig up those emails) since she was a former Canadian (immigrant) who might have had interesting insights on the U.S., the country she immigrated to from Canada.

So, here is another idiot blog post by Mercer on Ron Paul, where she comments on the presidential candidate on Jay Leno:

Update, Strassel's Non Sequitur:

I thought Paul was strong on Jay Leno, but should probably not have cozied-up to the Left in the way he did. More on that later: [video provided]

...About Bachmann, Paul Said, “she doesn’t like Muslims, she hates them, she wants to go get ‘em.’” “In reference to Rick Santorum, Paul said he can’t stop talking about ‘gay people and Muslims.’” (ABC)

Leave aside whether these statements are true or not: Paul has taken a classic Chris-Matthews kind of ad hominem swipe against Michele Bachmann: she hates Muslims. Santorum hates gays and Muslims [Mercer sounds fine so far]. Siding with the Left by adopting its arguments may be situationally advantageous, but it is wrong, and will backfire on a Republican candidate in the long run [Back to normal for Mercer. Ron Paul a Republican candidate? Libertarians always want to latch on to some "respectable" organization, to deflate their positions which ordinary people would not accept] .

This tactic, even if it was a not-so-funny joke, damages Ron Paul’s effectiveness from the vantage point of conservative libertarians [Oxymoron?]who think that liberty cannot be reduced to the non-aggression axiom and has a cultural and civilizational dimension.

This is the section that really needs attention:

Paul is wrong to imply, reductively, that Islamic terrorism in general and September 11 in particular are the sole consequences of American foreign policy. Libertarians cannot persist in such unidirectional formulations. Our adventurous foreign policy is a necessary precondition for Muslim aggression but it is far from a sufficient one.

The first paragraph starts off good enough, but as usual with Mercer, she goes full steam ahead to reveal her true libertarian colors.

"Our adventurous foreign policy is a necessary precondition for Muslim aggression but is far from a sufficient one" reads like a mathematical formula gone wrong.

Muslims don't need any "necessary precondition" such as an "adventurous foreign policy" to launch their Jihad - a word which Mercer doesn't use once in her "explanation" of Muslim's war-like behaviors over the centuries. Muslims simply follow the mandates they receive from the Koran, and their prophet Mohammed's various texts explaining and expounding upon the Koran, telling them to eradicate the world of infidels, through conversion, submission and Jihad. Various writers, of various scholarly and non-scholarly backgrounds, have shown again and again that the overriding purpose of Muslims vis-à-vis the rest of the non-Muslim world is to achieve Allah's Ummah (has Mercer read any of them?). Muslims are strategists and tacticians while planning their invasions. They are not irrational aggressors (i.e., they have their own purpose and logic). Whether the infidels sit quietly, or start wars with them is irrelevant to Muslims.

More than ten years after the Jihadi attacks on America, and countless other ones that occur throughout the world since, Mercer is unable to report on the real news.

There's for idiocy for you.

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The Empty Landscape of Libertarians

The Persistence of Memory
1931. Oil on canvas,
9 1/2 x 13" (24.1 x 33 cm)

Salvador Dali, Spanish, 1904-1989
----------------------------------------------

The world of libertarians reminds me of those empty landscapes of the surrealists, where normal natural laws are not followed (aren't libertarians big on "Natural Law"?). I especially got this imagery after reading (well 3/4 of it) Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

I try to find some redemption in the ex-Canadian and now a somewhat obscure American libertarian "pundit" Ilana Mercer. I have her site book marked but don't click on it until some big news hits the screen. Yes, the Republican debate, with Ron Paul in the mix, merited that click.

As usual, I read a couple of lines of Mercer's barely-a-blog, then skim to the next paragraph, but by then I've found something that annoys me. Then I switch off. Then I try to be fair and return to finish the sentence or the paragraph I started. No can do. I'm out.

Here's what irritated me at my most recent skimming:

- Under the post Wrong About Ron:

First sentence of first paragraph:

The DC Establishment, left and right—the engorged organism I call the media-military-congressional complex

Mercer has some fascination for alliterations. But even poets don't use them as frequently as she does. That to me is a lack of imagination. Also, it is a psychological indication of inner, unreleased anger (shooting out those words! We are talking about the surrealists, here), and writing a weekly punditry might be psychotherapy for her.

This one especially takes the cake with its crude imagery (try not to visualize that image) and its ugly stabbing at the military (Mercer was a regular writer at the mad Justin Raymond's Antiwar.com).

- And in Perry's Political Pedigree:

Ron Paul was one of only 4 congressmen to endorse Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president.

This is about when I stopped in this one. A libertarian candidate as a spokesman for Ronald Reagan. What happens when Ron Paul has to start using the military, for example. Will he channel Reagan then?

So yes, this is about when I clicked out. Mercer is not as smart as she thinks she is, which is perhaps a defect amongst libertarians. I would try to psychoanalyze, but I think Dali, and his fellow-painters, would do a better job.

Now, I should really go back and finish Atlas Shrugged.

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Recent Posts

I seem to be posting more than one post/day recently. I've added a new feature under "Recent Posts" where I'm listing my last five or six posts.

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Shovel Ready, Etc.

For some reason, I posted four long entries yesterday. It is difficult to read earlier blogs that have been posted on the same day especially if they're longer than a paragraph, so here are the titles and links to those posts.

I had sworn never to blog about Michelle Obama, but never is a long time, so she's baaack!

- Jennifer Lopez's Wriggles at
American Idol Didn't Help Her Marriage

- Michelle and a Shovel (has a certain rhyme to it)

- "I'll See You in My Dreams"

- More of My Photos and Articles

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Blogger (Mis)Behavior

I am thankful that Blogger lets me put up my blogs for free, and never asks for contributions, back-payments, due bills, or anything else. I assume the blogger folks - who mysteriously fixed the recent glitch - use (all of us) free bloggers in some way to generate revenue. But that's O.K. (I think) with me.

Here are a couple of fellow-bloggers who got caught in the recent blog silence.

I Skyped Blogger and enquired, only to be told:

"No one to talk with,
All by myself...
No one to walk with,
But I'm happy on the shelf...
Ain't misbehavin',
I'm savin' my love for you!
I know for certain,
The one I love,
I'm through with flirtin',
It's just you I'm thinkin' of...
Ain't misbehavin',
I'm savin' my love for you!"

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Liberals Throwing Children Under the Bus

Perez Hilton, patron of the website Perez Hilton,
a pseudonym which is a mesh of Paris Hilton and
the Hispanic last name Perez. Perez Hilton also
has a fashion blog he calls Coco Perez. There is
admiration, and then there is emptiness. Is this a
homosexual trait that they have to inhabit other
people in order to be accepted?

Perez Hilton can include "children's book author" in
his repertoire.
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In a previous post "Youth, Change the World!" I wrote about Spike Lee's foray into children's books:

"Youth" is a recurring and important category that liberals love to use, as though they are benign, protective adults. Instead, what they are doing is systematically, through schools and various media including children's books, building their army of fascist children, who are trained to be foaming at the mouth, and to destroy then rebuild society according to the gospel of their liberal/fascist parents.

This is what the openly, and flagrantly, homosexual "celebrity" blogger Perez Hilton, who is also producing a children's book of his own, clearly has on his mind. He says about his book:

"This story is about every kid that's ever had a dream, felt excluded, wanted to belong, and hoped that one day they could do what they loved and make a difference."

There is not one critical voice in the media on this book. Some are merely concerned that Perez Hilton might now be "nicer" to celebrities since he's advocating for those who "felt excluded" and "wanted to belong." This is what the Examiner opines:

Perhaps all of this is Perez Hilton's way of making good on his 2010 pledge to stop harassing celebrities, and to try and be a more positive celebrity force.

The liberal world is once again ready to throw children under the bus at a chance to promulgate its world view.

These "grown-ups" parallel innocent young children, who have very little control over their environment and influences, with "celebrities" who are nothing but powerful - they have money, status and many play around political fields as though it is basketball.

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The Thinking Housewife

Portrait of a Thinking Housewife

I love it when bloggers show us their photos. An important member of the blogging community has posted her portrait. It will be a pleasure to associate the posts at The Thinking Housewife with the intelligent, thoughtful and kind face of Laura Wood.

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Posts at Our Changing Landscape

Please note that if I'm a little slow with my posting here at Camera Lucida, I usually have posts going on at my other blog Our Changing Landscape. I have an RSS feed link there too.

In the next while, I will be posting my final impressions on the Olympics, a (quick) review of a review of Avatar, and some more thoughts on the "live-in" partner of the Toronto mayoral candidate, as discussed by Toronto "conservative" TV host Michael Coren.

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Some Computer Glitches

I'm having some computer glitches, so blogging won't be as frequent.

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The World Keeps Turning

Even if we stop for a short while

Sorry for the hiatus, dear readers, but there is a lot to report on. Starting with my review of a documentary on the Sherman brothers who wrote some of the most memorable children's musicals, the Pope on beauty, Sarah and Hillary, and Martha on Rachel. And many more to follow in this fascinating world of ours.

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New Blog Links

The Aussie, the fighter and the housewife

I've added three new links to my list of blogs, Oz Conservative, Ezra Levant blog, and The Thinking Housewife. I don't expect my list to grow into the fifty, sixty, or more blogs that some bloggers like to display. In fact, this is the first time I've updated my list in quite a while - I think that brings the total to fifteen! 

I've been reading Oz Conservative for a while. I found his site originally through google while I was doing my research for my article on the Buz Luhrmann film Australia. He writes mostly on social issues such as race and feminism, and with a traditional conservative stance. His writing is thoughtful with well-researched and referenced articles.

Ezra Levant is on a one-man battle against the Human Rights Commissions. That is not entirely true, since he does have numerous conservative writers and activists helping him out. But, he is certainly holding the torch.

The Thinking Housewife's blog is just that, a thoughtful assessment of society and culture from a housewife's point of view. One funny part was that Laura Wood (who is the author of this blog) had never watched an Oprah show until recently. I think she was left quite impressed. But, I would be cautious with Oprah. There are many things she gets wrong. 

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Apologies to my Readers

My Spelling Problem



I do think I'm a pretty good speller, and that I have a substantial vocabulary. And I don't think my grammar is that bad. Thus, I do apologize to my readers for my small errors, which I try to correct as I see them. I know "outrageous" is not spelled "outragious" or however I spelled it recently. And that "somethin" needs a "g" at the end. And so on. (Just to make myself feel better, I read somewhere that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a pretty bad speller - but do novelists count?).

I just think I would rather be looking at the composition of a visual image, and I really do dislike editing. If I ever become a famous writer (:-)), I will have to hire an editor right away. It's always been like this. I would rather look at the "shape" of the writing: beginning, middle and ending; how the different parts interrelate; how divergences can be rerouted to fit in with the original idea; and so on. I don't think this is laziness. Partly it is that I post almost immediately whatever I have written. Partly it really is to do with time. I admire people who can look at a sentence and edit it on the spot.

Blogging helps me to work out many ideas. The archive system allows me to file my posts by date, and thus track the evolution of my ideas. I can refer to those ideas and posts, and try to make sense of the world. For example, my twin blog Our Changing Landscape was created after I realized at Camera Lucida that Muslims (and liberals) were exerting huge amounts of influence on our culture. If this were to continue to its logical conclusion, we (or I) would have no art, architecture, design, music, literature, and all those "cultural" things that interest me, to blog about.

So, dear readers, please do have patience. And pay more attention to my overall concepts and ideas, rather than the detailed (but important) things like spelling. I will take more care of that as I continue to blog.

Now, if you see any errors in this post...

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Search for Camera Lucida

I've added a "search" function for my blog. It works pretty well. Of course, I also have divided the posts into "topics" to make it easier to access previous posts.

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Bloggers

Going bust

Now this is pretty funny. Pajamas Media, a blogging network that actually paid bloggers to post their bits, was losing money from the beginning, with the CEO saying that people were getting their checks from a "stipend", which his laid-off bloggers took to mean...welfare. Bloggers are mad, and Pajamas Media has washed its hands off the whole enterprise.

Now, I don't really know how people make "full-time" salaries from blogging, although a few have claimed to do so. Most make money off donation drives. One financial adviser to the PJ Media, who was unceremoniously dropped very early on, explains that if you are a narrow and well-defined blog with the potential to sell specific products, like a photography blog which can sell camera-related items, then you have some chance of making a living out of your ads on your blog. Otherwise, it takes a lot of work and marketing to get it all going. Hence the lack of success for PJ Media to make any profit.

I used to have Google ads on my side panel. But, I started getting Muslim dating ads regularly since I blog on Muslim issues. I didn't like that, so I just discontinued them. I made $0 out of them, anyway (thank God?)

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Canadian Bloggers Packing It In

Another Canadian blogger packs it in, officially this time.

Gone is Blazing Cat Fur, whom I only recently started reading.

Gone from my list are also:

The immigration blogger, Dispatches from the Hogtown Front, who still has very good archives. Thankfully, though, the slack has been very well taken up by:

Canadian Immigration Reform Blog.

And the ever erudite, high caliber (quality) blogger The Ambler is still silent.

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The Year (Or Three) In Review

How I'm keeping up

It's been now 31/2 years since I started blogging. I am very happy to say that I have absolutely kept to my original mandate. I never wanted this to be a "diary" blog, but one which tries to record social and cultural issues through a somewhat "artistic" lens. It was also meant as a record of my ideas, an evolution from the kernels of my first thoughts to their later developments. In fact, some of these ideas have generated into full-blown articles, which have been getting published online.

I started blogging because there was no way for me to develop some thoughts I had without appearing like a slightly wacky guest (or friend). I remember talking to a Jamaican woman about the Amhara, and inadvertently I said, "well, they're different from other Africans." This set off a sarcastic (as only Jamaicans can do it) comment, and she was actually being kind to me. Another time, a black friend said that his black (literally black colored) car was called Cleopatra. And of course I said "Cleopatra wasn't black!" At another moment, I tried to make a point that the Ethiopian religious art was successful because it tried to emulate Western art, which it borrowed from some few icons available, or through "ambassadorial" visits (which were coerced into years) of Italian painters at the Kings' courts. This was very badly taken by those around me.

And these were just "social" commentaries. Think of what I went through with the infinitely more difficult environment where I voiced my artistic viewpoints; difficult since it is "experts" who are always called upon, and anyone not voicing the current beliefs is no expert.

So, I was already developing a thesis of the particularity of culture, and the importance of preserving the Western culture, which was getting chipped from all sides - by blacks, whites, multiculturalists, liberals, you name it.

I tried to make the tone of this blog a moderate one. After all, those who advocate the superiority of their choices have a right to do so, and in some ways, it was understandable. So, I wasn't going to berate anyone. And in fact, I like and respect some of these people on many other levels. Plus, I didn't want to lose all my energy decrying them, when I needed all that I had to try and come up with solutions and exits to this horrible problem.

I think the arts are perhaps one of the most revealing aspects of our societies: our buildings, our literature, our paintings and fine arts, and of course our movies. Even the most atrocious of attempts can be model works, telling us not only the time-old preoccupations of mankind (life, death, love, happiness), but also the directions in which we are going. They become records and prophecies, all in one. So, I actually think there is a reason why we reached this strange impasse. And I don't necessarily think it was a malicious strategy, only a misdirected on. Certainly there are monsters - my favorite one is Daniel Libeskind, who designed the atrocious Royal Ontario Museum extension. But for the most part, people are led, down that proverbial cliff. And some of us have to guide them away from there.

So here are some of my three-year revelations, and modest guides to slowly extract us from our condition. I have linked each of the headings to the series of posts that come under that category in my blog.

Architecture
How architecture has become the final frontier in modernism. The Damien Hirst "art" atrocities in practice affect only the few fools who spend millions on that "art. But architecture is out there in the public sphere, the final vanity of the "artist". It is there for all to see, and to be affected by. Libeskind does more damage per square foot than Damien Hirst ever could per $1 Million.

Books , Multiculturalism
Post 1960s multicultural and ethnic literature , after generations of "assimilated" and even highly educated authors, still is full of alienation and lack of belonging. Second or third generation Indians, Chinese, Africans have not found their place in Canada and the US.

Islam - under the sister blog "Our Changing Landscape"
Islam, which seems like any other religion, is actually going through a stealthy, covert, cultural take-over of the West. Not only that, it is parasitically using Western traditions to make its headway.

Film
Post 1960s (again! Is there a trend here?) films are often a disappointment. Their overarching desire to please rather than to tell the truth (as all serious art should aspire to do), deflates their messages, makes bad actors out of their stars, and always leave us wanting more.

Multiculturalism, Immigration
Urban landscapes (and even suburban ones) are increasingly being defined by immigrants. This might be a good thing, but what if small stores are now brazenly emitting Arabic music (full of Allahs and Habibis?) Or Somali restaurants are being searched for illegal drugs such chat, a common herb in Somalia but illegal in Toronto? Or we have the "Summers of the Guns", where black Caribbean youth wreck havoc and death through gang-related gun fires? Or our TV shows are beginning to succumb to the bullying of special-interest immigrant groups?

Design
Design, the fundamental point of communication of cultures, is becoming obscured and illegible. The recent Olympics Team uniform was so convoluted - having a myriad of Chinese symbols (on Canadian athletes!) that I am sure it contributed to a psychical withdrawal of the athletes. The problem was actually very logical: the designers who took over the project were both of East Asian origin.

Music
I started a youtube music site, Cameramusica, where I upload some of my favorites, or music that has affected me one way or the other. They are mostly classical, although I will start putting up non-classical as well. Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, I think could be considered a classical piece. He certainly wrote it as an opera. Here is one realm, music, where I tried to be not too critical!

You can read full entries on these topics, and many more, by linking to the side-panel of "Topics". For articles, you can link directly to the online publications, also on the left panel.

So, what are my solutions? Well, one way is of course this blog.

The other way is to promote my work, my designs, as careful processes which take into consideration the culture, landscape, design and art traditions of my own environment. It is a difficult task I've given myself. But, the whimsical, abstracted, internalized, "ethnic" and remotely-referenced works wont part of my palate make. At times, yes, of course, and certainly. But, that will not be my modus operandi.

So, having given myself a lofty task, I think I have borne it reasonably well over these years, with some ups and downs, but always walking down the course.

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Whacking a Billy Goat

A good lesson for Mark Steyn too?

Lawrence Auster at VFR kindly introduced my article from American Thinker on his website.

He has a funny anecdote about a billy goat - whose name is... you guessed it - who needed a whack on the head with a stick to stop his charging ways.

This then became a good metaphor for Mark Steyn, who also had his own article about Little Mosque a couple of years ago as I wrote here, who needs a whack (or two) on the head to stop his frivolous ways.

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Our Changing Landscape

New Post

Niqab-wearing Muslim woman, posted at the sister-blog "Our Changing Landscape".

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