Posts by Geoff Lealand
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I sense a drift towards a discussion of semiotics here..The study of signs can be taken to excess but I reckon it can also be an exciting and fresh way of regarding the world and the making of meaning... I use the example of traffic lights with my students and the encoded meaning of red (in both Western and other societies) eg how the dominant meaning of the amber light in the sequence of the traffic lights signifies "Slow Down and get ready to stop" (the dominant reading) but for some drivers it also means "Speed up and get through the intersection before it turns read" (an aberrant reading?).
Barthes is probably the most accessible and readable in the pantheon of French theorists (read his piece on the meaning of pro wrestling, for example) and I think he would have appreciated the cause of his death, when he was run over by a laundry truck? Why a truck? Why a laundry truck?
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I am less concerned about Whitcoulls (except, of courses, for those who might lose their jobs) than on-campus Bennetts bookshops such as at Waikato Uni and Wintec. They are pretty damn essential.
My favourite story about the 'patchy' customer serrvice at Whitcoulls was when I went in search of a copy or two of Dickens' Little Dorrit. The response from the gormless youth behind the counter: Who is he? Is he a children's writer?
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Jeez. For that amount, you should have got a whole new head.
Are the amounts dentists charge justified?
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By all accounts, Frank was a character as well as a character actor. We need more interesting old buggers like him on the screen.
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@ Sally. Crikey--I think we need the film of your life. I do agree that the proposition that a little rub-a-dub puts you in touch with your 'dark side' rather adolescent.
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A well-written review, Craig and do tend to side with you in respect of the displays of excess, and the not totally convincing slide into madness. But I do wonder if it might be a gender thing. My beloveds (wife and daughter) responded to it more strongly than I, for the themes of self-harm and hysteria resonated with them, in respect of how many teenage girls behave.
Still, Aronofsky does have a thing about self-harm cf Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. -
The human body can't be improved by human intervention other than a good hair cut
Well, all those pharmacy companies selling potions and lotions which claim to halt the aging process, and the hawkers of botox and plastic surgery, seem to believe otherwise.
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Perhaps it was the translation but Mubarak's speech this morning was the deepest dung-pile of self-serving tosh I have heard for a long while.,
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The Guardian Bookshop has a special online offer of 6 pounds on the book.
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Damn! I was at Sufjan Stevens and so enjoying it, I forgot to request a MySky booking. Will ep. 1 be repeated anywhere?