Happy birthday, Mr. Poe

Esta noche, aunque no podamos llevarle rosas a su sepultura de Baltimore, brindaremos a su salud.

Take this kiss upon the brow! 

And, in parting from you now, 
Thus much let me avow
You are not wrong, who deem 
That my days have been a dream; 
Yet if hope has flown away 
In a night, or in a day, 
In a vision, or in none, 
Is it therefore the less gone? 
All that we see or seem 
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar 
Of a surf-tormented shore, 
And I hold within my hand 
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep 
Through my fingers to the deep, 
While I weep - while I weep! 
O God! can I not grasp 
Them with a tighter clasp? 
O God! can I not save 
One from the pitiless wave? 
Is all that we see or seem 
But a dream within a dream?

Bonus track - The Raven (by Vincent Price)

Animal spirits

"A large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive. . .can only be taken as the result of animal spirits -- a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities."

John Maynard Keynes

Bonus track - Introducción a la "Teoría general"

Joyeux anniversaire, Tintin

Hoy se cumplen 80 años del nacimiento de mi viejo amigo Tintin.

Tintin fue uno de los comics de mi infancia, junto con Batman, Mortadelo y Filemon, y el pato Donald (en aquellos inolvidables paquetes gigantes que mi padre me compraba en Portugal). Cuando años después regresé al noveno arte (gracias al número 3 del Spiderman de McFarlane), acompañé de nuevo al joven reportero en sus aventuras por todo el mundo, disfrutando con otros ojos del genio de Hergé. 

Y es que como explicaba Nabokov a sus alumnos, cuando somos niños nos interesan las historias, porque queremos descubrir el mundo con nos rodea. Cuando nos hacemos mayores, el placer del arte proviene fundamentalmente de la forma.

Bonus track - Los insultos del capitán Haddock

Las pelis del 2008

And the winners are...

-Be Kind Rewind: por los recuerdos (y por Jack Black).

-Hellboy 2: por Mignola, por Del Toro, y por los cuentos de hadas.

-No me pidas que te bese...: por la ternura compartida.

-The Fall: por la inocencia. 

-Los Cronocrímenes: por la auténtica ciencia ficción (y por Dick).

-Caramel: porque lo más importante son los personajes.

-Charlie Wilson's War: por el día que me enamoré de América.

-The Changeling: por el viejo Clint.

-3:10 to Yuma: por recuperar de nuevo un género eterno.

-No Country For Old Men: por el paso del tiempo.

We love Katamari

Probablemente mi videojuego favorito del 2008: Katamari Damacy

Bonus track - Katamari Bento Box (eche curriño*, non si?)

*kawaii en galego

The girl is back

Jessica Alba, protagonista del nuevo calendario Campari.

Fontaneros, gorilas y princesas

Shigeru Miyamoto es la persona más influyente del mundo en 2008 (según Time Magazine).

Millones de niños que hemos crecido con los entrañables Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong o Lynx no podemos estar más de acuerdo.

Bonus Track: Miyamoto Unplugged - The Edge Interview

The Sensei Speaks

Hayao Miyazaki on nationalism:

The problems of the world come from the fact that nationalism feels that the world’s problems are due to multi-ethnicity. So in my case, at least, I won’t create films where peace comes about when people destroy evil. I feel that, when making films, you need to be well aware of the fact that all problems that exist, exist inherently within yourself, within your society and among your family members. It’s possible that the towns or the country that we love may turn into something that’s not good for the world as a whole. This is something which we learned from the past war, and it’s a lesson which we should not forget.

Read the full interview here.

Bonus track - "Gake no ue no ponyo" trailer

Birthday Pony

Thy eternal summer shall not fade indeed, for as the great Lincoln said "in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." And what a life it is!

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare - "Sonnet XVIII"

Y como bonus track, unos amigos de Washington te han dedicado una canción:
Fugazi - "Birthday Pony"

Incandescently beautiful

¿Cuándo fue la última vez que os emocionó un poema?

"What is poetry", by John Ashberry.

The medieval town, with frieze

Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow

That came when we wanted it to snow?

Beautiful images? Trying to avoid

Ideas, as in this poem? But we

Go back to them as to a wife, leaving

The mistress we desire? Now they

will have to believe it

As we believe it. In school

All the thought got combed out:

What was left was like a field.

Shut your eyes and you can feel it for miles around.

Now open them on a thin vertical path.

It might give us -- what? -- some flowers soon?

Bonus Track: One woman’s battle to bring poetry back into everyday life (via BookNinja)