The Month-Long Horror of the World Cup has
begun. Although I have to admit that the
own goal by Brazil (and a Real Madrid player at that) has added a certain
piquancy to the opening game which until this point has never been lost by the
host nation.
There
are two Barça players in the Brazil side.
And we might pause here and wonder at the fact that I know things like
this. And pause again because Neymar has
scored to equalize for the home side.
Croatia will now collapse and the game will become part of boring World
Cup history.
It
is a nasty thing to say, but I rather think that I want Brazil to lose and play
badly so that the fully justified opposition to the rampant corruption of FIFA
and the Brazilian government can be held up to the scrutiny that it
deserves. There were disturbances in Sao
Paulo but they have been overshadowed by the frankly embarrassing opening
ceremony and the excitement of the opening game. A lot can happen in a month, but I fear that
the vested interests that sucked the country dry with their extortion will be
able to enjoy the fruits of their illicit machinations without too many
explicit condemnations.
The
odious Blatter has sashayed his way through a congress of FIFA with a sick
political finesse which comes with complacency, corruption and money, lots of
money. He has promised each member
nation a total of 750,000 dollars of extra funding after the world cup. For the smaller non-EUFA nations this is a
lot of money and Blatter must be like a Father Christmas to them liberally
distributing other peoples’ money.
Blatter’s extraordinary organization (which modelled their conference
room on the War Room in Doctor Strangelove) has so-called ‘reserves’ of over a
billion dollars! They pay no tax in
Brazil during the World Cup; they have forced the Brazilians to enact a special
Budweiser Law to overturn the ban on beer in Brazilian stadia because that
company is a sponsor – they are, to all intents and purposes an amoral
organization which is not, and hasn’t been for some time, fit for purpose.
Which
brings me on to the tax people in Spain – who have demanded an extraordinary amount
of money from me for not working. A
situation which defies logical thought and conventional computation. But this is Spain where only the relatively
poor pay taxes and the corruption of the good and the great makes even FIFA
look like some sort of easy touch charity.
Whatever
my tax situation the real scandal in the country at present is the forthcoming
acclimation of the new parasite to take over the discredited throne of
Spain. The present holder of the office
has made the brand so toxic that he is not even going to the proclamation of
his tall son.
One
survey suggests that over sixty per cent of the population would welcome a
referendum about the continuation of the so-called royal family. Our government of worthless, time serving
yes-men, corrupt from top to bottom have rushed through legislation (easy given
that the demented population was deluded enough to give them an absolute
majority in parliament) and we will see the worthless Bourbon dynasty given a
continued mandate emphasising the anti-meritocratic approach that characterises
every innovation of the PP governing junta.
To
set against this unending picture of corruption and self-seeking arrogance in
the face of justifiable condemnation there are books.
My
box of delights from the student suggested book list for the next course on
Modern Art arrived in a large and heavy brown cardboard Amazon box. My delight was such that I immediately
improvised a song:
Libros,
libros, libros, libros,
Libros
para me,
Libros,
libros, libros, libros,
He,
he, he, he, he!
Now say that two and a half grand for a
course on Creative Writing was wasted!
More disturbingly we have been singing this for the past couple of days
and Toni has gone so far as to create a series of gestures to accompany these
deathless lyrics. One suspects that
Eurovision cannot be far away!
Although
I wanted to read all of the books at once and at the same time, I managed to
rationalize my desires into a more sequential form and started with
‘Philosophy, the basics’ by Nigel Warburton, published by Routledge. I have not read that many philosophy books –
at least not all the way through – but this one is easily the best that I have
attempted. It is lucidly written in
chunk size passages and the whole thing is organized around Big Questions. It is an engaging read and is going to be a
philosophy book I read the whole way through.
And that surely is a recommendation in itself!
Another
book that I have already read is more directly related to the Modern Art course
and is ‘What are you looking at? 150
years of Modern Art in the blink of an eye’ by Will Gompertz, published by
Penguin. This book is a delight and it
has pictures. Poor black and white ones
and a selection of full colour plates.
As I was reading it I tried to imagine how it would read if you were
coming to Modern Art for the first time.
There are lots of names, but Gompertz weaves them into a compelling
narrative of art which is written in a chatty and unintimidating style which
keeps you in because Gompertz wears his scholarship lightly. I learned a lot from this book, especially
about those little, seemingly unimportant facts that other books do not give
you. I recommend it wholeheartedly.
The
one thing I would suggest about it though, is to have an iPad next to you when
reading it so that you can look up illustrations of those paintings which
Gompertz does not illustrate.
As
someone who thought he knew something about the history of Modern Art, I was
disconcerted by the number of ‘key’ artefacts cited by Gompertz about which I
knew little or nothing. That, I suppose
is what education is all about, roll on next October and finding out even more!
In
the same series as the philosophy book, I have ‘Art History, the basics’ by
Grant Pooke and Diana Newall. This looks
a little more intimidating and is altogether chunkier – but it does have
pictures! This book is closer to my course
than the Gompertz as it is concerned with the ideas of Art History rather than
with a description of paintings – this is one that I need to get to terms with
as a clear start to the theoretical work that is necessary in the course next
October.
And
when I am reading and learning I am not thinking about the rampant corruption
which washes over everything
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