Thursday, November 25, 2021
Talibans être beaux - Les Goguettes (en trio mais à quatre)
Jury Justice? Dangerous!
Haphazard Jury Verdicts
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/haphazard-jury-verdicts-c7d831baae1c
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Que la honte change de camp !
Friday, November 19, 2021
Breakdancer or Breaksinger?
Orlinski and His Divine Soul
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/orlinski-and-his-divine-soul-65a86d35608a
Orlinski
is a divine devil titillating our spiritual libido. Let your senses respond to
his teasing. He is not teasing your physical senses but your sixth sense, the
mind of the Buddhists. He is teasing you with a very strong and pure vision of
the Christian God and the love we owe Him. No sensuous or sensational emotions
here. Just the respect to the supernatural that is also the transcending
dimension of our life. And don't believe he does not know what sensuous
emotions are, physical ecstasy is. He is a breakdancer as well as a singer and
as such he can feel every single fiber of his body straining for satisfying
experiences. The devil I am speaking of is in his spirit, in his head, under
his skull and his power is mesmerizing for the audience. Let him hypnotize your
pleasure.
Medium.com 2021
Thursday, November 18, 2021
Stephen Breyer in COVID-land
Justice Breyer is Dangling in a Social Margin
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/justice-breyer-is-dangling-in-a-social-margin-215fb5b05bc3
The
Supreme Court is an intellectual virtual ghetto in which the justices are
locked up from society and are thus protected against all sorts of social
movements, pandemics, and other illnesses and sicknesses like ideological
campaigns, advertising bombardments, and simple human and humane
considerations. They are only dealing with the constitution, mind you, if you
have a mind of course. They are only dangling non-modifiers in the margin of
real-life and the comfort of the upper-class.
Medium.com 2021
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Be sure there is asniper around every street corner
STEPHEN KING – BILLY SUMMERS – 2021
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/let-king-snipe-your-mind-e1d5ab543284
You will of course
recognize some of the references to or recollections of other works by Stephen
King. The most important one is probably The Shining since in the
mountain-refuge the story comes to Bill and Alice can go on a short walk and
come to a bluff overlooking a valley and on the other side they can see the
place where The Overlook hotel used to be, a hotel that burned down to the
ground in the old novel, or at least we can assume it did, and a painting of some
the hedge or garden animals carved in some evergreens are represented in that
refuge, in the outer summer-lodge, as a framed picture, and this painting seems
of course haunted with a lion that seems to be advancing. That’s the only
surreal or supernatural element in this novel that is, in fact, a story that
wants to be extremely realistic.
The second element
is the fact that Billy Summers is a veteran of the war in Iraq where he was a
sniper. And this veteran is cast into the character of a writer in order to be,
in due time, the shooter who will kill some other hitman for a serious amount
of money. The novel here contains a detailed description of his mission or
missions in Iraq and what came afterward, how he became a hitman for some
criminals. He pretends he only shoots bad people, but that does not change the
fact he is a hitman and as such has no ethical dimension at all. He has no
reason to take justice in his own hands, even if in Iraq he just did that in
his uniform, with many others as if it were teamwork – though it is purely
colonial imperialism – under the US flag and the authority of the Commander in
Chief.
The war in Iraq was
a mistake and a catastrophe and a complete defeat. The book was written in
2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, and before the escape from Afghanistan in
2021, a debacle, a complete defeat since those they ousted came back into power
even before the US troops and other personnel were out. The story about Iraq is
that of a brutal, totally unjustified and unjustifiable invasion, with daily
actions that were resented as imperialistic and traumatic systematic mass
killings. It is summarized in one word, lalafallujah, from the Fallujah
neighborhood in Baghdad the Americans literally destroyed, and this lalafallujah
is set in parallel with LA-LA-Los Angeles, and thus, is just reduced to a
bloody cinematographic long-lasting film that becomes military propaganda in
the USA and that is military extermination for the Iraqis.
When you have
digested this enormous crime against humanity, you may understand why some
veterans become completely corrugated and berserk with PTSS or PTSD or paranoid
schizophrenia, or any kind of drug addiction or any sort of psychosis. Bill
summers who transformed his sniper’s talent into a real vocational and
professional talent and competence is a rare case of sanity. He remains sane in
his murderous profession, even if he is considered by some of his “employers”
as simple-minded if not retarded, a simple person, not highly intelligent, not
swift at all, and in no way – except his sniping – competent at any social or
intellectual or thoughtful mental work. In fact, this dumb surface is a game, a
disguise that enables Billy Summers to anticipate the moves of his employers,
and that becomes important with the last mission of his because the
order-giving client has decided to get rid of him as soon as his mission is
fulfilled.
That’s the next
level. How Billy Summers is extremely flexible and thus able to integrate any
community under a fake identity with a fake profession, etc., for several
months. He is intelligent enough to consider that getting out after the
completion of the mission is his own responsibility and to organize it secretly
as his alternative to the plan of his order-giving client because he considers
that is not this client’s responsibility and thus there must be something fishy
cooking under this piece of rock. Stephen King uses, in fact, overuses, this
deductive power with some allusions to the use of the Internet, even the black
Internet, and some acquaintances in the criminal world, to find out what is the
real plan of the client. He thus is able to escape the client’s plans, to then
disappear, and later on go back up the chain of command, clean up all levels
that were not clean in the order given by the client to get rid of Billy Summers
as soon as the mission was fulfilled. And that will lead him to the real
client.
That’s where the
story is well told but is not really logical. He had practically no time with
Nick, the casino criminal of Las Vegas who was the go-between with the client,
and yet he tells later on a whole long and detailed explanation about the
client, who he was, what he did, the orders he gave, etc. Billy was not able to
get all that from Nick, which makes the whole section where he tells Alice
about it artificial and in many ways unfounded in the story itself. It is not
because it is logical that it justifies it in the story as such and as told.
Along the same line,
it is amazing how Nick was not really protected in Las Vegas against Billy’s
invasion. He only had six people to protect (one to serve) him. And even worse
the client, Klerke, is, in fact, living alone with only one security person in
his enormous estate somewhere in New York. These top elite criminals normally have
more bodyguards, security personnel, and furthermore servants, than a king or a
queen in some European kingdom.
The end of the
story, the fake one, told or written by Alice, as well as the real one told
afterward by Alice again, save these weak shortcomings because these two
endings are absolutely and amazingly emotional and humanly powerful. And yet
something is missing in this novel and Stephen King is trapped by his own
desire to teach a lesson – to whom indeed apart from Alice – about how to write
a story. He certainly has it right when he says that the story itself is total
truth and if it is the telling of real events, what the story tells about these
events is the truth within the story, provided it is logical and consistent.
The real existential and experiential truth within the events themselves for
the people who took part in them is totally evanescent, inconsistent, and
unnecessary because in the story only the characters have to be right within
their own characterization. Stephen King does not teach us a lot about this,
far from it. Any good reader knows that since it is the basis of the cathartic
power of any work of fiction.
Another and last
element I was kept dissatisfied about in the whole novel is the reference to Emile
Zola’s Thérèse Raquin because apart from the title and the author, this
fundamental novel of late 19th century’s French literature is not really
specified enough for the readers to see how it may find its place in this
novel. The Guardian proposes (excerpt) a brief summary of the plot: “Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1867) is a
story of lust, madness, and destruction set within the dingy backstreets of
Paris. The eponymous protagonist – a repressed and silently resentful young
woman – is married off according to her aunt's wishes to her sickly cousin
Camille. When Thérèse meets Camille's robust and earthy friend Laurent, a
turbulent passion is unleashed that drives them ultimately to violence and
murder.” (August 1, 2010[1])
It obviously has nothing to do with the situations experienced by the main
characters. It’s not because Thérèse Raquin and her lover become criminals that
it brings any meaning to Stephen King’s story in which the people who become
criminals are, in fact, highly successful elite businessmen in the USA and even
the world; or the victims of war like Iraq and Afghanistan, and no war of this
type occurred in Zola’s lifetime; or the victims are made criminals by
disrupted families. As far as I know, in Thérèse Raquin there is no kid of seven
to ten years of age shooting cold-dead the violent lover of his mother after
this lover has trampled the sister of the young boy to death. Some other
references are more justified, especially those coming from the English or
Anglo-Saxon tradition, like music for example. But Stephen King should get some
advisor on French literature. The fact there is no connection between this
reference in the first and the last paragraphs of the novel and the plot of
this novel explains why there is no effort to expand this reference to some
dramatic dimension.
But of course, Stephen King’s storytelling is so good that
these shortcomings do not prevent you from or even slow you down in reading on
from the beginning to the end, turning the pages so fast you may create a
hurricane in your mind or Colorado.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
Saturday, November 13, 2021
Death addicted, the poet reconstructs the spirituality of death
JEAN GENET, MORTIFEROUS GENIUS
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/jean-genet-mortiferous-genius-a7f6f93d6a1
A collection of poems known asf Le Condamné à Mort. Jean Genet is in love with death row characters who will be executed soon or deported to forced labor camps in Guyana to die there of exhaustion or malaria. His fascination for death is strikingly spiritual, but love is such a monstrous being, no one will be surprised by this poetic addiction.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Two Years To Revolutionize foreign language teaching
ISAPL-SYMPOSIUM ON TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES
We will
tackle foreign languages and their teaching all over the world and we want
French to be one of these foreign languages: it is one of the major world
languages taught as a foreign language, besides it is also an official language
in many countries, especially in Africa.
Doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.11735.80803
Monday, November 08, 2021
Celebrate the northern wit of New England
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/invading-good-samaritan-d63d7d1f77ec
If
Lincoln had not been assassinated in the third act of this play, would it have
been able to survive the 19th century? It is pathetic how an invader from
America imposes his own elitist vision that saves the local British aristocracy
from bankruptcy and at the same time he provides himself with a wife that just
inherited the fortune he should have gotten if he had not been honest enough
and revealed the will of the patriarch from America. No empathy to be wasted on
this charade. But funny plays on words. God damn it!
The
play only exists because of the assassination of Lincoln in the third act.
Otherwise, what can you think of it? Anti-Indian, not to say racist, the blacks
are totally absent, hence slavery is ignored, and the British aristocracy
depicted here is vain and totally incompetent for the industrial society that
is coming up. What can we do with this play? A vaudeville circus exposition in
the form of a farce à la Grande Bartholomew Fair by Ben Jonson.
Medium.com 2021
Saturday, November 06, 2021
Thinking means walking and running
Simon Prentis and the Origin
of the Brain
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/simon-prentis-and-the-origin-of-the-brain-87767fbebecc
SIMON PRENTIS
– SPEECH! HOW LANGUAGE MADE US HUMAN – KINDLE – 2021
The
author is no phylogenist of language and despite remarkably interesting ideas
and the a priori assumption that all languages can say everything in a way or
another, he ignores the following elements and that is regrettable.
Publication Date: 2021
Publication Name: Medium.com
Friday, November 05, 2021
From Covid-19 to Climate Crisis: No Vacation Time
Psycho-Linguistics in this Brave New World
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/psycho-linguistics-in-this-brave-new-world-ae8fcfaaa097
ISAPL
Bulletin XXV n. 1 October, 2021
This
issue begins with Dr. J. Coulardeau’s, ISAPL Vice-President, ISAPL News, also
in French, calling for contrinutions to the 13th ISAPL International Congress
and his contacts with international institutions and persons and respective
results. We also began publishing the first ISAPL members’ papers, this time,
Prof. I. Panasiuk’s paper “Translation Process from the point of view of
translation polyvariety” under the translation didactics aspect, aimed at
determining the translation process cognitive mechanisms, and J. Lanier’s works
review by Dr. J. Coulardeau, specifically, Lanier’s 2017 book, Dawn of the New
Everything, Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality, his 2011 book, You Are
Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, and his 1994 CD, Instruments of Change. We
finisg this issue with a submission deadline extended, calling for texts,
inspired by the discussions held during the 12th ISAPL International Congress
to Signo journal, n. 88, v. 47, 2022.
Publication Date: 2021
Publication Name: ISAPL
Bulletin