[Ozymandias]

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."



Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

My aliases seem to propagate :o :D  :P, and that makes me somewhat elated - hey, more visitors to the site!  8)
But seriously - it's not intentional. Lost power and later Internet, switched to a diff. provider. So, if you see more Svens around here, they are all just the same old Sven2. Or 3. Or whatever.

Cheers!

[Not Yet]

Not Yet


Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.

Out the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch—
one maple leaf lifted back.

I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:

Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.

Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured; not-yet-

Not-yet-not.

I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.


--Jane Hirshfield

[David Milch eyes 19th-century New York politics for new series]

David Milch eyes 19th-century New York politics for new series

by Alexandra Richmond on May 13, 2014 at 10:45 am

Here's a reason to go to an arts festival: To hear David Milch read from his new script about Boss Tweed, the "boss" of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine that helped "fix" things for certain people in city and state politics in the 19th century.

David Milch, creator of Deadwood and one of the smartest and most creative people creating television today or ever, blew people's minds at Vulture Fest when he brought out pages to read, during an on-stage interview with Matt Zoller Seitz. He called Tweed "a thief of prodigious dimension. He was also very fat."

An excerpt:

    Milch then read a chunk of script, starting with a very Milchian moment of Tweed in jail, writing a letter:

    "I'm an old man, broken in health and cast down in spirit. As to the charges standing against me, through unpublished statements, I've received some assurance that the vindication of principle and purifying of the public service are purposes you would have me serve. Recognizing further resistance as a futility, offering unqualified surrender and supplicating mercy, I herewith submit my testimony.

I am herewith on the edge of my seat.

Milch rarely gives interviews, but is known for his no-bullshit frankness. Back in 2007 at the New Yorker fest, Vulture wondered if Milch was the best or worst dinner party guest ever  as he pointed out "the fallacy of the dichotomy between cable and network (basically, everyone's selling something: on network, it's soap in the commercials, on HBO, it's upper-middle class values, "the same bullshit The New Yorker's selling"); the reason Jews are overrepresented in Hollywood (he asked the panel who there was Jewish; four out of five — including Milch — raised their hands, with Moore the odd man out) and how the "seeming doubleness" of Jewish life makes Jews perfect for the entertainment biz; the inadequacies of HBO in general, including a classic jerk-off hand motion — which is weird, since the channel aired (and, yes, killed) Deadwood and the indecipherable John From Cincinnati; and the David Milch mystique. "When they buy me, they know what they're buying," he said. "'Oh, David Milch, he's nuts.' And that's what I'm selling." He also slagged the clip they'd shown from Weeds, basically dismissed House, and slammed the petit bourgeois sensibilities of, yes, The New Yorker."

Milch said all that while at the New Yorker Fest. Which is the only reason to go to a fest: to hear your hero tear the world apart.

from:
http://www.technologytell.com/entertainment/43663/david-milch-eyes-19th-century-new-york-politics-new-series/

[David Milch Talks New Boss Tweed Show]

David Milch Talks New Boss Tweed Show

By Vulture Editors

At this weekend's inaugural Vulture Festival, David Milch sat in conversation with our TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz. Over the 90-minute discussion, Milch talked about his Emmy-winning work on Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue as well as his years as showrunner on HBO's Deadwood. Milch also discussed at length, for the first time, a new dramatic work he is writing for HBO — "I'm working on a bunch of shows ... But this one that I've brought a sample of is about Boss Tweed, who was a political figure in the late 19th century, ran Tammany Hall here in New York City, and was a thief of prodigious dimension. He was also very fat." Milch then read a chunk of script, starting with a very Milchian moment of Tweed in jail, writing a letter:

    "I'm an old man, broken in health and cast down in spirit. As to the charges standing against me, through unpublished statements, I've received some assurance that the vindication of principle and purifying of the public service are purposes you would have me serve. Recognizing further resistance as a futility, offering unqualified surrender and supplicating mercy, I herewith submit my testimony."

from:
http://www.vulture.com/2014/05/vulture-festival-david-milch-talks-new-show.html

[Happy Valentine's!]

Happy Valentine's!

I might have had more than one as I recall, signing in from different locations with different IPs, the problem is how to get to my Sven2 log in now that I am permanently logged as sven. Do you know what I should do?

Wow, I'm writing this in a state of confusion, nothing earth shattering, of course. I was made to update Firefox and as a result lost a lot of links, "remembered" passwords, etc. Not sure what happened here, but when I got a new password for this site, I had a mailbox consisting of only 2 messages (from June 2010 I think), that I've never even seen before.
I wonder with what signature this post will appear and if there is a possibility to retrieve my old messages. Trishah, help.