Welcome to my Blog!
I hope to share here my irrepressible thoughts on news, music, books, arts and such like. In general these will be items, events and issues I feel have no place on my website.
The item immediately below this would be the latest posting.

Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself. - Charles Baudelaire
Esse est percipi (To be is to be perceived) - Bishop George Berkeley

First book I read by James Lee Burke: Neon Rain. The writer was mentioned in a yearly review of 'Detectives & Thrillers' (Vrij Nederland) and many titles of his came highly recommended.
So I picked up a few secondhand paperback and wasn't disappointed.

Neon Rain is the first of the Dave Robicheaux series, a New Orleans homicide detective. The setting is vividly described as a hot, blistering, often steamy, kind of place. Meet the Deep South.
In Neon Rain (a title which I cannot explain, nor want to bother with), the trouble starts when Robichaux insists on investigating the murder of a young prostitute... and the lone ranger takes off. Robicheaux is a veteran of the Vietnam War and has a few traumas to contend with, being a former alcoholic being just one. He is not in sync with both the underworld and the authorities, and he finds himself running way ahead of the pack, even on the run at some point, when he is being framed for killing an officer of the Treasury.
A well written book, with atmosphere, feelings and settings nicely narrated. But a bit too much of the Lone Ranger to my taste, esspecially when there is not sufficient evidence to suggest Dave Robicheaux is either stupid or set for self destruction. Perhaps the time of writing (Neon Rain was first published in 1987) has something to do with it. Times have changed, haven't they..?
But I won't hesitate to try another James Lee Burke novel, nor one that has Dave Robicheaux featuring in it.
www.jamesleeburke.com

By someone who is much better in praising this brilliant CD:
..."Waits's latest album is a primer of what a reality TV show host might call his best bits. It is the sort of disc you can hand to a Waits novice or sceptic with the confidence that this collection of brawlers, bawlers and bastards (as he characterised the three-way split in his work on his 2006 compilation) will do the job of conversion. All Waits is here, more or less: the barfly, the romantic, the curmudgeon, the method actor and the self-parodist." ...
From www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/oct/23/tom-waits-bad-as-review
by Kitty Empire, The Observer, Sunday 23Oct2011

Well known artists contributed on this album: Charlie Musselwhite plays harmonica and Keith Richards on guitar, so does David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) and Marc Ribot.

The song I liked best: Hell Broke Luce - http://t.co/j2BkTrOi

My interest in Scandinavian crime drama started with the Swedish Police Inspector Wallander, Danish Police Inspector Beck and Norwegian Varg Veum series. Last year I was thoroughly thrilled watching The Killing and The Killing II, Danish productions and published in dvd boxes by Lumiere.be
Both The Killing series had political plots interwoven in the storyline. 'Borgen' has no murder mystery and the plot is dictated by (Danish) political shenanigans, deceit and play, interwoven with media interest.
The storyline is very lifelike, the drama portrayed could be a mirror image of many European party governments with coalition interests.

The main characters, whom we follow also in their privat life, are Birgitte Nyborg Christensen (Prime Minister, married with a husband and two young children), Kasper Juul (spindoctor) and Katrine Fønsmark (young, ambitious, naive tv presentice) - remarkable roles by Sidse Babett Knudsen, Johan Philip Asbæk, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen.

A political drama about a prime minister's rise to power, and how power changes a prime minister. The ten episodes of 60 minutes pass very quickly, well worth watching indeed!

'Religion for Atheists' by Alain de Botton, subtitled 'A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion'.

Rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them - because they are packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies.
Blending deep respect with with total impiety, de Botton (a non-believer himself) proposes that we should look into religions for insights into, among other concerns, how to:
-build a sense of community
-make our relationships last
-overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy
-escape the 24/7 media world
-go travelling
-get more out of art, architecture and music
-create new business designed to adress our emotional needs

It was our 18th-century forebears who began to consider what human beings would miss out on once religion faded away.
During the 19th-century studies such as Philosophy, Art, Literature, History and Anthropology were established, to create building stones for the secular secular society, building stones already woven in the fabric of religions.

In the present secular society we see that modern universities teach these subjects for the facts but much less for the reasons they were intended for: to enhance a non-religious society. This book unravels religion to strands we can recognize as showing direction and meaning to life, then finding similar strands in a parallel universe, the secular society. And often find them missing or easily ignored.
Suggestions for alternatives are made, going as far as describing a secular religion.

The book is a strong advocate to embrace many ingredients offered in religion, taken for granted and too easily disgarded and ignored by those who have chosen the secular path.
Reading this book was an enriching experience for me.