kessenich's New Writeups

Dada (thing)

2002-08-09T22:28:00Z

The Dadaists and the Surrealists had opposing views on the degree of influence of the unconscious mind, by how much they recognized "poetic interference" from the conscious world. Hans Arp "clearly established the fact that conscious feedback played a major role in his creative credo"¹. The Dadaists did recognize forethought in their works. Jacques Rivière discerned behind "Dada's provocative nonsense a serious intent to apprehend an absolute psychological reality...comprising not so much the mind's incoherence as a primordial coherence anterior to the development of the notion of contradiction" ². The Dadaists differed from the Surrealists by their acknowledgment of conscious thought and the Surrealist's partially-realized, Freudian-based position of a conscious/unconscious melding in the mind/brain.

¹ Sellin, Eric. Reflections on the Aesthetics of Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism: a Prosody Beyond Words (p 84)

² Brown, Clifford. André Breton: Arbiter of Surrealism (p 52)

Krispy Kreme (thing)

2002-04-20T21:26:00Z

Krispy-Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. was founded in Winston-Salem, N.C., to be specific, and sells approximately five million doughnuts a day and more than two billion doughnuts each year. Its shares surged in the fourth quarter of 2001 to $8.3 million (14 cents per share) from $4.3 million and 8 cents per share. Total company revenue also rose, $81.9 million to $117.1 million. The company expects growth of 57 percent in 2002 and 39 percent in 2003. Earnings rose 55% in Q1 of 2002, and they earned $8.9 million (15 cents a share) for the period ending 4 August, up from $5.9 million, or 10 cents/share the previous year. In Q2, their net rose 50% from strong sales as well as manufacturing and distribution revenue, which rose 41% to $35.1 million. The company expects to earn 16 cents/share in Q3, up from 11 cents the previous year and 18 cents/share in the fourth, up from $8.3 million or 14 cents/share.

Krispy Kreme's first stores outside of North America will be in Australia and New Zealand, in a…

Being an Agent is Their Difficult Job (thing)

2002-04-06T00:54:34Z

"Works Like a Barry White Album," says Putin

If you associate the words 'tomfoolery' and 'ballyhoo' with 'Kremlin banquet,' you're not alone. But the year 2000 celebration in Moscow for the 80th anniversary of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police, was poignantly nostalgic in tone. Chekist Day is observed annually to commemorate its founding by Felix Dzerzhinsky on 20 Dec 1917.

The foreign intelligence agency SVR released a 22-track compilation CD of agents' favorite songs about the cloak-and-dagger profession. It was not released to the public, since few people (I imagine) would be eager to wax rhapsodic over Stalinist police oppression, and because, according to Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov, the songs would be "incomprehensible" to those outside the field. He also mentioned that the CDs "went like hotcakes at…

That Touch of Mink (thing)

2002-03-09T00:41:25Z

That Touch of Mink

1962
Directed by Delbert Mann
Written by Stanley Shapiro and Nate Monaster

A romantic comedy starring Cary Grant and Doris Day, about a wealthy businessman's amusingly problematic involvement with a straight-forward country girl and her three soy-eating lesbian monkeys. Okay, just the girl. The following is a strangely exhaustive run-through.

Day is Cathy Timberlake, a sweet, um, Doris Day-type girl from Upper Sandusky, daughter of a schoolteacher and druggist. She works a "computing machine," and you see in the movie that it's UNIVAC. It seems that she's a punch card operator, because she…

Einhard (person)

2002-03-03T02:49:21Z

(ca. 770-840) A Frank, and the royal biographer of Charlemagne. He was trained at the Fulda abbey, a great center of learning. His biography of Charlemagne was the most notable one of the ninth century.

short is better than non-existent.

Alcuin (person)

2002-03-03T02:36:18Z

Alcuin popularized a style, or form, of writing known as Carolingian miniscule, which was a significant improvement over the messy and rather indecipherable late Merovingian scripts. After leaving Charlemagne's court, Alcuin founded a scriptorium at the St. Martin monastery at Tours, where he was abbot. They meticulously edited Bible texts and other liturgical works (however, the Carolingian miniscule was developed at a different abbey).