Call Girl: Confession of a Double Life. by Jeanette Angell.
Jeannette Angell went to the US from France at the age of 21 after earning two university degrees. She went on to obtain three more in the United States, including a Masters in Divinity from Yale and studied for her PhD at Boston University.

At thirty-four, her live-in boyfriend ran off and cleaned out their joint bank account. She was left destitute. Despite lecturing and teaching at several universities, including Harvard, MIT and the London School of Economics, she saw no way out of her financial crisis until she read an ad for “escorts” in the Boston Phoenix.

This started a three-year dual career of teaching at universities in the daytime, while working as a $200/hour callgirl at night. Callgirl gives insight to a world usually distorted by caricature and stigma with honesty, humour and intelligence.(source)

Sounds very interesting…and what makes it so is that this person is not a random lost person. This is a highly educated person, with degrees from top universities (well. I guess this doesn’t really say much. I mean…George W. Bush went to Yale!)…is an educator. So what really drove her to take prostitution on as a second job while still keeping her daytime teaching job! I am looking forward to reading her confessions!
AND. Though this isn’t/wasn’t about prostitution, I still believe this (and similar) type of job could* be degrading to one’s dignity. But I will reserve my in-depth opinion of this book and prostitution till after I read it.

* (you know, because dignity means different things to different people and is measured differently)

P.S. I’ve always had a secret fetish for fishnet stockings!

“Everything in this world can be stolen, except the love that emanates from a human being towards a solid commitment to a just cause.” - Ghassan Kanafani

This Week In Palestine, May 2008

Some of this month’s In the Limelight:

“Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages which Were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948″

Refugee tent and embroidery thread, 8’ X 10’ X 12’, 2001

This piece is a document (or the remains) of a three-month community-based project. More than 140 people came through [Emily Jacir’s] studio to sew, memorialize each village and socialize; oftentimes there was live Arabic music. The people who made this Memorial were bankers, lawyers, filmmakers, dentists, consultants, playwrights, artists, activists, teachers, etc.
(via Picturesque Palestine and Emily Jacir)

(Read more)

(via willflickr’s)

What would you have written on this blackboard?

“Put two Steinways head to toe so that they form a square. Draw a circle with a piece of chalk.

The whole turns into a geometric figure, a ying yang only longing to sound. These two surrounded pianos, that’s Pop Art.

Two iron harps, and, sitting at the keyboards like symmetric figures on one playing card, Rami and Francesco, two runaway accomplices.

One is from the Levant, and the deep oriental singing. The other from some kind of North where the heaves curl up at the feet of steel bridges. They face each other. Almost.

One glance and … go! Double play of Pop Art. The union of the olive tree and the sprout, far away from solfege in an age of digital after-piano.

Here, it is all done in a flash on dual mechanic. It’s a system captured in a mirror. A shared reflection for an improvised Sonatine at the crossroads of the preludes. The piano overcame baroque music when architecture was inventing sounding modules and scattered perspectives. There’s something happening today under the song of these ruins. It has become a solitary machine at the center of the world. A self-repeating chromatic belt.

Diptych – multiples – ornamentation – response – 4-had match – loop…

Pop Art sounds and grooves, flows and brews.

The sequence profuses a flow of woody notes. The strings cringe under the fingernail like a scratch board or a boat adrift, pushed around by a lukewarm breeze. The two of them lead to the dance. One from the moon, the other from the sun. One in the clouds, the other on basalt.

One is a winged cat, the other a hidden fox. Heads or Tails, Pop Art or a kind of inventive atmospheric music, arpeggiating on the hills of the Eixample like a musical hide and seek.

A reverse shot filled with eighth-notes and catchy hitches. It is a dream machine of sound transporting us until its extinction under the vaults of profound grottos. The vault itself traces the volutes like an arabesque. A phylactery scrolls on the inner wall of the gypsum like a massive convulsive body.”

I like the crafted connection between the CD description and tracks’ names…

Beautiful melodies evoking mental, emotional and maybe even physical release … maybe I’ll explain more later, but for now get your copy here! and decide which yourself…

and explore more of Rami Khalife’s and Francesco Tristano’s work

“Poets For Palestine was published to unite a diverse range of poets, spoken word artists, and hip-hop artists who have used their words to elevate the consciousness of humanity. Sixty years after the dispossession of the Palestinian people, this anthology presents forty-eight poems alongside original works by Palestinian artists. All proceeds from the sale of this collection will go toward funding future cultural projects that highlight Arab artistry in the New York City area.”

Pre-order yours today!

Israeli tanks kill seven Palestinians, including mother and four young children in Beit Hanoun, Gaza.

Mother: Khadra Abu Mu’attaq, and children Ahmad Abu Mu’attaq, three-year-old Hana Abu Mu’attaq, four-year-old Salih Abu Mu’attaq, and six-year-old Rudayna Abu Mu’attaq. (source)

Rest in Peace - for our people back home, it seems the only place to possibly find it is 6 feet under!

Oh, how it feels to be able to - without any reservations what so ever - express your thoughts, your feelings, your dreams, your desires, your needs, every single thought that goes on inside your mind. In writing.

P.S. I’m contemplating burning them…

Who: Just Me

What: Two days and one night in Solitude

When: June, 2008

Where: 400 meters below sea level

Why: To experience something I have not experienced in a long time

How: By ‘falling out of line’

Shoot coward, you are only going to kill a man.

Need I mention who ‘allegedly‘ said that…? 

It’s always an accident. And through israeli lens, it is always justified.

“Joy, Sadness, Success, [Truth], Love and Memories” … Rest in Peace, Fadel.

There were two coffins in the funeral procession for Reuters cameraman Fadil Shana’a, one carried his lifeless corpse and the other his camera and his protective vest. Many tears were shed at the funeral. During his career Shana’a also shed many tears as he documented bereaved mothers and children.

Twenty three-year-old Shana’a always went in pursuit of the truth and the last moments of his life were spent in pursuit of that truth. His dead body was found lying among dead Gazan children targeted by Israeli tanks in the area of Juhor ad Dik in the Gaza Strip. The last shot his camera documented was the artillery shell that killed him. The Israeli authorities said he was killed accidentally.

An eyewitness, journalist Yassir Qadih, said, “Reuters journalist Fadil Shana’a was killed while he was in a jeep which was clearly marked ‘Press’.”

“There was nobody around us except a group of children who we were going to film. There were no resistance groups in the area” he added.
Television footage showed the jeep, with large signs reading “Press” and “TV” with a gaping hole blown in the driver’s side.

Reuter’s editor Nidal Al-Mughrabi was working with Shana’a up until he was killed, “The last picture Shana’a shot was a shell and suddenly we lost contact which meant he had been killed.” (Read on …)

Every single day is living proof that people are the worst disease to ever plague planet earth.

Just wondering if there are any sick disgusting people out there who would justify such… so the question is:

Is rape ever justified?

Why/Why not?