the jargon of authenticity

Things weren’t going well for sincerity even before Hallmark strip-mined it down to muck. Lionel Trilling pronounced it dead some 40 years ago. Snark and irony have long had more cultural cachet. Among its many pitfalls is that the more you seek or proclaim it, the less sincere you seem. (Only politicians have yet to get the message.) Another small problem: if people truly did say what was in their hearts on a regular basis, marriages would rupture, friendships would founder and [so on...].

neal burns - study for a portrait of a 100-year-old neighbour

enGulfed?

by Anthony El-Murid  

Qatar and Saudi Arabia decided to enhance their security by applying the 'manageable chaos' strategy to their neighbours. There is a probabilty, nonetheless, that this chaos would break the dam by engulfing the authors themselves.

 ©

erin cone (b. 1976)

Collected (2012), 102x102cm, acrylic

neal burns (b. 1979)

Stratified (2012)

transgenderism no longer an illness -- happy? not quite

when it comes to certain human conditions, all of the debates around the issue of whether to diagnose or not to diagnose are stuck between a rock and a hard place. what could be nicer: to avoid over-clinicising or over-pathologising of people who can otherwise have a hope of (at the very least; at most: to be a Jan Morris!) a 'reasonably ok', that is, functional life in the mainstream society! and yet, the victims (the stigmatised, the underdogs -- whichever sounds more awful) as well as their representatives have a slightly more complex view to offer.

support the besieged Syrian nation!

let's say a vehement NO! to a multinational corporate plunder of Syria under the guise of 'democracy'