and supply the link. here's my contribution. from https://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1049893,00.html#article_continue HEADING - The player Footballing genius, amateur philosopher, now successful movie star: is there nothing Eric Cantona can't do? There is one little thing, says Amelia Gentleman - he's not too good at making sense Article - It isn't easy to persuade Eric Cantona to speak and when he does, it isn't always easy to make head or tail of what he is saying. When he played for Manchester United, Alex Ferguson used to dismiss requests for interviews, saying with some frustration: "I'm lucky if he speaks to me." On the few occasions he did talk, his comments were thoroughly bemusing. When the world wanted to know why he had chosen to karate-kick an abusive fan in 1995, Cantona offered the following answer: "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea." His answers now are not much more enlightening. Does he like watching football? "No. I like to stay at home and make cinema in my head." How does he spend his free time? "I try to find different ways of expressing myself. Without that I will die. I am searching for abstract ways of expressing reality, abstract forms that will enlighten my own mystery." In the mid-1990s, when Cantona was revelling in his image as the philosopher-poet who happened also to play football, a few cynics suggested that his fondness for the enigmatic soundbite was a smart way of disguising his shaky English. But he is just as cryptic in French and, besides, if he is confusing, he claims, it is only because he means to be. This is how Socrates likes to talk, he explains. "Socrates worked towards making people question themselves. He liked to provoke self-interrogation but wasn't particularly interested in the answers that emerged; he just liked to set off the thought process. Why does one have to give an answer?" he says. "That's clear? No?" Has he read much philosophy? "I didn't study; I live. You can't study these things - life teaches them to you. You don't find them in a book," he says. Then he adds inexplicably: "I've read a lot of Socrates on page three of the Sun." In some ways it is reassuring to find that Cantona has lost none of the intellectual exuberance that set him apart from his Manchester United team-mates. In most other ways he has changed profoundly. Six years after his unexpected decision to retire at 31, he has cut himself off from his football past and immersed himself in a new profession entirely. In France, where Cantona's footballing talents were often overlooked, he has finally been recognised as a serious actor - thanks to his latest film, L'Outremangeur (The Overeater), which became a cult hit this summer. In it he follows Gwyneth Paltrow and Eddie Murphy by donning a fat suit to play Selena, a 25-stone bulimic detective from Marseilles who spends almost all his time preparing and devouring unfeasible quantities of food, before writhing on the floor in paroxysms of self-loathing and vomit. The plot comes as a sideline to this extra-ordinary display, but revolves around his passion for a young and beautiful murderer who finds him repulsive. Some way through the film, he begins a crash diet and sheds all his weight. Swiftly, the heroine falls in love with him. Although he has made five other films, until now critics have been sceptical of his acting talents. (In the 1998 comedy Mookie he co-starred with a pet monkey, who was widely heralded as the better actor.) This time reviewers agreed that Cantona's performance carried the film. "He gets inside the skin of a deeply lonely man and manages to make him touching, even profoundly moving," Le Figaro concluded. He has only broken his customary silence now because negotiations are under way to find an English distributor. Producers want to get the film shown in the UK before the end of the winter, but Cantona is not certain that the dark thriller will appeal to his British fans. "This is quite an elitist film and I'm not sure that every Manchester United fan would like it. It's not an action movie that you might go to to relax," he says (he's much less cryptic when he talks about his film career). "There are a lot of silences in it that penetrate the whole piece. Most people don't go to the cinema to see this kind of thing." He isn't interested in acting in blockbusters. "I don't want to be in Terminator. I don't want to go to Hollywood. I like making films that I find interesting and intellectually challenging." Cantona says acting has preserved his sanity. It was his salvation from the alcohol abuse, drug rehab clinics and divorce that have tormented so many of his peers in the years following their departure from the pitch. "If you have only one passion in life - football - and you pursue it to the exclusion of everything else, it becomes very dangerous. When you stop doing this activity it is as though you are dying. The death of that activity is a death in itself," he says. "Often there are players who have only football as a way of expressing themselves and never develop other interests. And when they no longer play football, they no longer do anything; they no longer exist, or rather they have the sensation of no longer existing. Too many players think that they are eternal." In acting, Cantona has found a way of channelling energies that might otherwise have been poured into more destructive activities. He claims that acting is not as far removed from playing football as one might think. "Even as a footballer, I was always being creative. I could never have played a defensive role because I would have been forced to destroy the other players' creativity," he says. "In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself. You are constantly battling against your own weaknesses to make a good performance. You can lose in cinema too if you don't put on a good performance." He believes his acting talents have been helped by his capacity to allow the strength of his emotions to overcome his rational side - the kind of passions he demonstrated with his karate kick. For someone who prides himself on being articulate, this was an unusual way to behave, but Cantona still thinks it was justified. "Sometimes in life one experiences an emotion which is so strong that it is difficult to think, or to reason," he explains. "Sometimes you get submerged by emotion. I think it's very important to express it - which doesn't necessarily mean hitting someone. I am very mistrustful of people who are constantly overintellectualising things. It kills passion. You have to allow yourself to lose control from time to time." Any rage is now poured into his acting career, and Cantona reveals that he is also in psychoanalysis to help him deal with residual emotional problems. "I feel a need for it. It is a world that fascinates me. It is enjoyable to make things visible which are invisible. The better you understand yourself, the better you can understand other people." On the stands at Old Trafford, Cantona is mourned in a way that Beckham is not; the crowd still chant "Ooh-aah Cantona" with glee. But he doesn't much miss England, pointing out that the extremes of passions reserved for football stars in our country make life much harder for them. He prefers his reclusive existence in Marseilles. "You get greater anonymity here. I'm proud of what I achieved there, but a life built on memories is not much of a life." The only time he gets anything like that adulation now is when he steps out as player-manager of France's barefoot beach football team (which made it to the European finals a few weeks ago, but lost). But he stresses that recent reports that he might be ready to return to mainstream football as a coach are nonsense. "I might have said that," he concedes. "But on the whole I talk a lot of rubbish."
A basic guide to harmony(not world peace) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been due to write this for awhile so finally took the time out to do it. It's the first of two or three lessons I planned out and the later sections are quite useful for musicians in general. In the next few posts, I'll try to give you what little I've collected from music theory and downloading karaoke tracks to listen to the backup vocals. The terms I use might be incorrect or self-invented so I’d appreciate some proof-reading. First the basic harmonies. The typical barbershop quartet 1-3-5. Pick a key. Any key. Sing a note in that key. Any note. Sing it. Think of the note you’re singing as the root note of the chord corresponding to the key you’re in and sing the 3rd and the 5th of the chord. That would be your basic harmony. This is difficult to explain without examples. Let’s actually pick a key. I pick my favourite….C major. Let’s take a look at all the notes in the C major scale: C D E F G A B C Now we examine the chords corresponding to the notes of the scale. I’m including this here since I’m not sure we have a reference guide for this and I want the lesson to be as complete as I can hope for it to be. C- The root of the scale. Corresponds to a major chord..i.e.- C major D- The second note of the scale corresponds to a minor chord. D minor. E- Third note corresponds to minor chord- E minor. F- Fourth note corresponds to a major chord. F major G- Fifth note corresponds to a Dominant 7th chord. G7. However, you may also just exclude the seventh note and play a G major. A- Sixth note of the major scale is known as it’s relative minor since the natural minor scale with this note as the root is the same as the original major scale that we spoke of. Eg- A is the relative minor of C. A minor scale is A B C D E F G A which is the same as the C major scale played from A to A. The chord would be A minor. B- The seventh note of the chord. It corresponds to a half-diminished chord(also known as a minor 7th flat 5th). The barber-shop quartet type harmony revolves around the Major or minor chord corresponding to the note you’re singing. The note that the first person sings is taken to be the root. The second person sings the third and the next person sings the fifth and the resulting sound is the same as you’d be getting from a major or minor chord Now I pick a random melody and harmonize it. Suppose there are 3 people singing together and the lead singer is singing these four notes: C-D-E-D The second person could sing- E-F-G-F And the third person would then sing- G-A-B-A That would be your basic harmony. Now to take things a step further, we get into slightly advanced territory. This section could be useful for a lot of instruments since its basic music theory and does not change. When we come up with chord progressions, we look at the melody lines we’re creating….usually an ascent or descent of notes. For example....a “pedestrian” (in the words of elitists) progression like C G Am G F Fm C. Look at the bold notes in the tab --0---3----0---3----1----1---------------------------- --1---3----1---3----1----1----------------------------- --0---0----2---4----2----1---------------------------- --2---0----2---5----3----3---------------------------- --3---2----0---5----3----3---------------------------- ------|3--------|3----1----1------------------------- Take a look at the basic melody line in bold running through the chord progression. It is usually some line like this that they backup chorus is singing in songs as the “aah or ooh” part. Yeah, I’ve been working on this for a while now so I’ll do the rest in another post where we’ll go in for slightly more harmonies.
that ^^^ was too technical for me to figure out. besides the link was not provided. but hasn't anyone else on igt come across any funny articles on the net?
sure ... just supply the link too and dont post epic sized stuff. here's Mark Twain on Mastarbation - from https://www.rotten.com/library/***/masturbation/mark-twain/ One evening in Paris in 1879, The Stomach Club, a society of American writers and artists, gathered to drink well, to eat a good dinner and hear an address by Mark Twain. He was among friends and, according to the custom of the club, he delivered a humorous talk on a subject hardly ever mentioned in public in that day and age. After the meeting, he preserved the manuscript among his papers. It was finally printed in a pamphlet limited to 50 copies 64 years later. My gifted predecessor has warned you against the "social evil--adultery." In his able paper he exhausted that subject; he left absolutely nothing more to be said on it. But I will continue his good work in the cause of morality by cautioning you against that species of recreation called self-abuse to which I perceive you are much addicted. All great writers on health and morals, both ancient and modern, have struggled with this stately subject; this shows its dignity and importance. Some of these writers have taken one side, some the other. Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, "Give me masturbation or give me death." Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, "To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion." In another place this experienced observer has said, "There are times when I prefer it to sodomy." Robinson Crusoe says, "I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art." Queen Elizabeth said, "It is the bulwark of virginity." Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, "A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush." The immortal Franklin has said, "Masturbation is the best policy." Michelangelo and all of the other old masters--"old masters," I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction--have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, "Self- negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse." Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time--"None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise." Such are the utterances of the most illustrious of the masters of this renowned science, and apologists for it. The name of those who decry it and oppose it is legion; they have made strong arguments and uttered bitter speeches against it--but there is not room to repeat them here in much detail. Brigham Young, an expert of incontestable authority, said, "As compared with the other thing, it is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." Solomon said, "There is nothing to recommend it but its cheapness." Galen said, "It is shameful to degrade to such bestial uses that grand limb, that formidable member, which we votaries of Science dub the Major Maxillary--when they dub it at all--which is seldom, It would be better to amputate the os frontis than to put it to such use." The great statistician Smith, in his report to Parliament, says, "In my opinion, more children have been wasted in this way than any other." It cannot be denied that the high antiquity of this art entitles it to our respect; but at the same time, I think its harmfulness demands our condemnation. Mr. Darwin was grieved to feel obliged to give up his theory that the monkey was the connecting link between man and the lower animals. I think he was too hasty. The monkey is the only animal, except man, that practices this science; hence, he is our brother; there is a bond of sympathy and relationship between us. Give this ingenuous animal an audience of the proper kind and he will straightway put aside his other affairs and take a whet; and you will see by his contortions and his ecstatic expression that he takes an intelligent and human interest in his performance. The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: a disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke and tell indelicate stories--and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures. The results of the habit are: loss of memory, loss of virility, loss of cheerfulness and loss of progeny. Of all the various kinds of ***ual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private--though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh. My illustrious predecessor has taught you that all forms of the "social evil" are bad. I would teach you that some of these forms are more to be avoided than others. So, in concluding, I say, "If you must gamble your lives ***ually, don't play a lone hand too much." When you feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your Vendome Column down some other way--don't jerk it down.
