Be Prepared

 

Be prepared. OK, but what for?

Find out in this extended ghost story for a young audience by Anne Adeney (illustrations by Yannick Robert, Pocket Chillers series by Harcourt Education)

The that’s progress haiku

 

Some programmer got 
busy – made a box smaller,
saving room for adz.

– Leonard Blumfed (© 2022)

Note
The ugly truth and nothing but. Now that the Congrats box has been shrunk, Microsoft can not only display one ad but two at the same time! Pure genius! Just as we were getting undersugared from too few adz.

Terminology explanation
What are adz? Same as ads (advertisements), only much cheaper! It's like the difference between music and muzak.

Suzhal – The Vortex

 

Tamil thriller series (season 1, 8 episodes), released in June 2022 on Amazon Prime Video. Written, produced and created by Pushkar-Gayathri, directed by Bramma G. and Anucharan Murugaiyan. The stars are Kathir, Aishwarya Rajesh, R. Parthiban and Sriya Reddy.

Set in the fictitious town of Sembaloor in Tamil Nadu, the series revolves around a police investigation in a missing person case as well as a fire at the local cement factory. All against the backdrop of a Hindu goddess festival, in the course of which the case gets solved.

Suspenseful, good acting, decent plot and dialogues. What more could you want?

Pardon me

 

  

if I sound naive, 
but is baited breath like bad
breath? Would like to know.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

The Melinda haiku

 

Dear Melinda, stop
putting your label on all 
the apples you sell.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Note
Melinda is probably Italy’s best known producer of apples and pears. Its products can be found in most supermarkets throughout the country. And each fruit comes with its own little sticky plastic Melinda label. The company’s website goes on and on about sustainability, bio, etc. How about really doing something good and leaving off the damn labels? Not only are they a nuisance to remove but they also create waste. How important can fruit branding really be?

You think I'm lonesome? So do I, so do I

Most mornings I wake up with music going around in my head. Sometimes it's a piece I've heard the day before, but mostly these songs crop up out of the blue. Like many of the dreams I have, which are mostly weird and inexplicable.

The song this morning was Luxury Liner, written by Gram Parsons and performed by Emmylou Harris, and I have no explanation why this particular song and the particular line from it came to me. She and the Hot Band performed it during the 1977 concert of hers I attended in Munich, Germany. Well, that was a long time ago, no recent association there!

You think I'm lonesome?
So do I, so do I.
- Gram Parsons, Luxury Liner

Gianmaria Testa: Aerial View

 

Gianmaria Testa (right) in concert with Paolo Fresu. Ludwigsburg castle,
Germany, June 2011. Photo by Johannes Beilharz.

Aerial View

Of this aerial view 
Almost nothing remains
The ghost of the steeple 
No longer smiles
Gliding over the ancient hills 
Again and again
You meet nothing 
But worn-out straw hats
The glasses are empty 
But no one notices
The glasses are empty 
And no one notices.
And you
What will you do tomorrow
And you
What will you do tomorrow

Of this season gone I won't forget anything 
Unless September insists 
On erasing it
Talking again and again 
About what has just been 
I unwillingly wipe the salt 
Off my hands
The glasses were full 
And someone emptied them
The glasses were full 
But someone emptied them
Now I know 
What you'll do tomorrow
Now I know 
What you'll do tomorrow

– Gianmaria Testa (1958-2016)

Title of Italian original: Veduta aerea. Translated by Johannes Beilharz (© 2022). The song is from the album Altre Latitudini of 2003.

The following video shows Gianmaria Test performing the song at another venue in the same area of Germany (Baden-Württemberg), the Franz K. in Reutlingen (May 4, 2010). 

The snot catcher haiku

   

Silver horseshoe 
dangling from mademoiselle’s
dainty little nose.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Note
I occasionally wonder whether there is a practical reason for this facial jewelry...

All the Old Knives - brief film review

 

A brand new spy movie just out on Amazon Prime – All the Old Knives (USA 2022, directed by Janus Metz Pedersen), based on the eponymous novel by Olen Steinhauer (2015).

Couldn’t say anything bad about this movie. Filming and acting – the stars include Chris Pine, Thandiwe Newton, Laurence Fishburne und Jonathan Pryce – are competent, and the plot, convoluted and meandering between past and present as it is, ultimately makes sense and keeps up the suspense. However, the film is more a somber, ponderous drama – with some sex and nudity thrown in for good measure – about the consequences of a highjacking gone wrong in the past than an action-packed thriller.

Product placement is quite obvious – I wonder how much a particular car brand had to pay for everyone to drive shiny new vehicles with the three-pronged star.

Would I recommend watching this film? It’s all right, but there’s no need to rush and get Amazon Prime just to see it. It strikes me as one of the many that come and go without leaving much of an impression.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Slow March

When I posted the preceding haiku, I realized that I had not posted a single thing in all of March.

Guess I didn't have anything to say that couldn't wait 😃. 

However, I also went on a trip for a week, being on the road in Italy, Switzerland and Germany. Of which the above photo is witness.

Taken in Chur, Switzerland. Leica R4 with 50 mm Summilux-R on Silberra Color 100 film, scanned from negative.

Much more of my photo work can be seen here (Tumblr) and here (Unsplash).