Arnon

What do you mean by 'noble'?

Ah the pimp, the name still stirs the imagination.
There is a rather good book about ‘Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom’ by Pasolini by the Belgian philosopher Frank Vande Veire ‘Neem en eet, dit is je lichaam’.
By the way animals mostly sleep (in nature although).

Jan

i agree again. Work is a neurotic invention made up so in the case people prosper they might interpret it as a sign that they have been chosen by god (could it be Max Weber?).

Sad day

One of the Olson Twins is mating with Bicyling Gellyfish Lance Armstrong. I am really sad.

@Neria
Max Weber. Yes I remember a small discussion here about him, mentioned by Batta..
Work then. When I was a toddler I was fascinated by wires and I wanted to become an electrician. An aunt answered me, you should become an engineer and let the people do the work for you. I was thinking for a while and then I replied, No, no! I want to do it myself.
You see, I considered work as an extension of playing, the adults then already tried to put the connotation of punishment or burden into the word ‘work’. I never got rid of the idea of playing in whatever I do. Is this what we call ‘joie de vivre?’, although I am also fairly neurotic, by the way.

@Neria
By the way, you (and whoever wants to) can always contact me on thysmeister@gmail.com
(Please do not make silly jokes about the name proposed by gmail…)

Because, at home my new PC is suffering from the terrible message [A script in this movie is causing Macromedia Flash Player 7 nt to abort the script?]. So I am unable to read the Grunberg log properly during weekends ato run slowly. If it continues to run your computer may become unresponsive. Do you wand vacation days. (Flash player is working on a solution.).

Sorry the message is messed up completely.

@ Jan

You say you wanted to become an electrician as a todler. You once mentioned here you are a kind of assistant, but I'm curious, what did you become? Do you consider your job a game or is it hard work, something your forced to do ,to have a living. I was forced to stop working two years ago, since then I started a new education, something I always wanted to, sculpting and painting. Though in some respect I consider it to be my new job, I see the creation process itself as a magnificant game in wich I find great pleasure. Finding solutions f.e. for the technical problems almost as challenging as the artistic ones.

@Mieke
Yes, your new job sounds very much of what I had in mind about playing and working. Lucky for you.
Yes, as a toddler, but a few years later, if asked what I would like to become I could only answer ‘nothing’, I think this happened as a the result of severe corporal and mental abuse. From then on I lived a fragmented life as in a state of permanent shock. I ‘became’ simply what was presented to me: an assistant in an office. Besides I got involved in several different activities (mentioned earlier). In a way a sense of humour prevented me from total madness. Books helped me too (see Freud on Daniel Paul Schreber, for example). The intense abuse provoked very vivid and frequent hallucinations during my early childhood, similar to those reported in torture rooms, I am aware of that now.
I try to make the best of my situation, like everybody else.

Shouldn't that be Accattone ("The Scrounger") ?

@Mieke
I smiled when I read what Arnon once said, I try to quote ’Somehow I know I had to excel to obtain privileges in life’. Exactly the same words I spoke to myself as a youngster. Unfortunately ‘to excel in something’ only provoked more punishments so I abandoned all hope and lived a life thorn between exuberant behaviour and depression.

Yes Arnon, somehow you can still make me jealous, you bastard.

Enough now about the mechanics of the psyche.

As I washed the glasses of my colleagues drinking wine on a Friday noon - I do not drink anymore - I was thinking about … Anton Morsick!
Arnon, no offence whatever I called you, please.

Jan

i'm sending you a hug!

To Arnon, and others - on optimism

One of the last living friends of Kafka was interviewed by the Belgan (Flemish) magazine Knack

http://www.knack.be/nieuws/cultuur/-kafka-zag-de-schoonheid-in-het-leven-niet-/site72-section44-article10179.html

@Neria
Thank you very much.

(No wonder I like Kafka too)

Jan T

Sander is working on a solution for people with outdated computers. For this reason he recently traveled to the Philippines, India and Bangladesh. We would like to reach more less-privileged people than we are doing now.

Neria

In this context I meant with noble nothing more than decent and fulfilling. There was an ironic touch to it -- many people would argue that a pimp by definition is a bastard. Nowadays they might have a point.
I tend to believe that once upon a time a pimp could have been a jolly fellow.

Pjötr

Thank you. The interview confirms my suspicion that Kafka was not a very pleasant human being to be with.
I found his Letter to his father almost unbearable and sometimes pathetic.
By the way I don’t think that Ischa Meijer’s letter his mother is a masterpiece -- for almost the same reason.
If you take your own pain too seriously you should stop writing and vice versa.
This will offend readers who are in love with their pain. I apologize. I feel your pain but I don’t want to read about it.

Rob H

Yes, you are right. I changed it.
Thank you for alerting me.

The Macromedia error is common with fast new computers…so no need for travelling far.

@Arnon
Do not worry about too much pain. I do like to read about it, but not all the time. I once left a girlfriend (a psychologist) because she was crying all the time for a broken heart and a bad childhood. I agree we should not overdo it, but not neglect it neither.
With love.

Me, leaving a girlfriend, because she could not stop sobbing and whining… Sometimes I am a real bastard…, you see.

Jan T

Sometimes?