I think having meaningful work to do does make having a day off more pleasurable.  Enjoy these gems below from Louise E. Boone’s book entitles, Quotable Business.  Happy Labor Day, y’all!     

• Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.  Demosthenes – Athenian orator and statesman
• We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.  Aristotle – Greek philosopher
• We work not only to produce but to give value to time.  Eugene Delacroix – French painter
• Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.  James Matthew Barrie – Scottish novelist and dramatist
• I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.  Thomas Edison – American inventor
• It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants.  The question is:  What are we busy about?  Henry David Thoreau – American naturalist and writer
• The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.  Vidal Sassoon – American hairstylist

DMC Leading the Sexual Transgression ~ DMC vol.4

Liberty Leading the People

"The first political work of modern painting." Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled Charles X. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricolore flag of the French Revolution in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other.

Napoleon Riding at the Satanic Emperor ~ DMC Vol.3

‘Napoleon Crossing the St. Bernard Pass‘

Napoleon Crossing the Alps is the title given to the five versions of an oil on canvas equestrian portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805. The composition shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps in 1800.

See Also : Hannibal, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Vifam and The Coronation of the Emperor and The True Shape of Liberty

Eugene felt rudderless and it showed in his recent paintings. Today's work lacked any creative spark whatsoever. He stared at the painting for a moment and felt his anger rise. He grabbed his father's old rapier and thrust it between the eyes of this poor, innocent, two-dimensional peasant with the crooked eyes.

Someone was searching on "how to achieve light in pastel" and through some combination of key words found me.  This I learned from my stats.  Don't know what post came up under this combination, or if the visitor found anything that resembled what he or she was looking for, but I am intrigued by the question.  It's the kind of question one often hears addressed in artists' manuals and in those few magazine publications devoted to technical aspects of art.

I raise the topic now because I try to be helpful, but also because it is so opposite the way that I think about art.  I don't know if I have ever wondered how one would achieve a quality of light in any medium, and so it prompts me to wonder how I would answer the person's question were I asked -- as well as to wonder what kinds of things I do try to achieve in my pictures.

What I've sought since the beginning of my artist's life was a way of understanding those works of art that I loved.  My desires began with individual pictures that I found compelling, and afterwards I found myself asking "how did the artist do that?"  Art always led the way for me, it led me into life, I think, rather than the other way around.  Or perhaps it disciplined life for me. 

I had always found things in life that were beautiful and moving.  But in art, I found life represented a certain way, and afterwards I wondered "what living circumstance would recreate the painting?"  So different artists -- and they were quite varied -- affected me and made me visually curious and provoked me into looking for the life situation that they had depicted.  So in effect they taught me to see life.  Different artists teach you to see different corners of existence.  And afterwards the things themselves almost resemble styles.  A sunset might be Turner, Delacroix or Corot.  Rural scenes might be Winslow Homer or Andrew Wyeth (quite a stretch there).  A suburban scene with its sidewalks and green lawns might contain all the linear sinuousity of Diebenkorn. 

In none of these things would I be looking for one facet separated out -- something like "light" -- but rather one finds a holistic sensibility, a way of organizing the world that resembles the ideas of one artist or period.  Naming artists George Bellows, Joan Mitchell, Durer, Titian, Rembrandt, Ingres, Giotto, Edward Hopper, and so on, is to evoke not techniques but personalities.

Thus any technical question could be answered so many different ways.  I don't ask "how does one deal with light," but "what features does Delacroix notice in a landscape and what means does he use to achieve them?"  Even to ask the question of one artist nets slightly different answers depending upon the medium.  Delacroix was very sensitive to the exigencies of pencil or watercolor or pastel or oil and employs each in quite precise ways to take advantage of the medium's strengths.

The landscape above is one example.  This particular landscape is filled with wonderful light effects, and the ways of analyzing it are multifold.  But one thing that leaps out at me, looking at it now, is the way he places alternating horizontal bands of light and dark throughout the entire picture, that extend through tonal and chromatic changes in the sky and which continue into the land below.  It's a device that one finds in 17th century Dutch landscape, something that well-versed Delacroix was quite aware of -- yet he does not follow this idea in any programmatic way.  Indeed, one feels quite sure that the effects we see in the picture mirror something that he saw in an actual landscape.

"La vérité est dans une nuance," he said. ("Truth is in a nuance.")  To quote it, one has to reemploy the French word.  The very notion of fine distinctions, it would appear, comes to us on the wings of a French idea.  Certainly it was pivotal to Delacroix's way of looking at things.  And one sees it exemplified in the picture above.  The landscape he drew has a thousand connections to works by other artists, to ideas about drawing, evocation, arrangement, tonality, space, that one finds in innumerable places from the aforementioned Dutch landscape painters to Claude Lorraine or even Turner.  Yet the scene has a distinctly Delacroix flavor.  And that impress of his personality is undoubtedly the "nuance."

Still I have not answered, have I, the question asked by my unknown visitor.  The answer to the question of how to achieve light in pastel is to take a motif in which the fall of light is a principal element and to use pastel to try to depict it.  Observe the subject, translate it through one's tools at hand.  Pastel itself poses an interesting problem since, of course, pastel colors do not blend as readily as paints.  They are at least a tone lighter from the outset because of the missing layer of oil medium, and thus much chromatic exaggeration and tonal suggestion is necessary to create an appearance of a full spectrum.  But you work with the pastel rather than against it, literally translating your subject into the "language of pastel," which might mean into lines or hatchings or rubbed tones and approximate color relationships. 

And afterwards over coffee, you look at your pastel and compare it with something done by a master in that medium.  And who might that be?  The comparison with Degas will yeild very different results than the comparison with Chardin or Millais -- or with Edvard Munch or Picasso or with contemporary artist Jennifer Bartlett.  All such different answers to the "how" question arise from different aims and different personalities. 

So, there's not an easy answer.  I think the one who asks the question has to ask further:  what am I trying to achieve?  What light do I seek?  And why?

And meanwhile the answer is not an answer in the ordinary sense.  It will not be simply one thing -- one hopes.  It will be many things, various discoveries that one makes in the acts of looking.

Jednak w malarstwie Delacroix było też wiele cech niezgodnych z impresjonizmem. Choćby to, że zazwyczaj mieszał farby na palecie, miast kłaść na płótno tylko barwy czyste, tak by widzowie mieszali je sobie sami, patrząc na obraz.

Jego malarstwo impresjonizmem więc jeszcze nie było, ale wpływ na ten prąd miało przeogromny. Obrazami Delacroix zachwycali się Cèzanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Seurat, Gauguin, van Gogh i wielu innych tuzów impresjonistycznego i postimpresjonistycznego malarstwa.

około 1852 r., olej na tekturze przyklejonej do drewna, 35 na 51 cm, Luwr

Vous aurez tous reconnu la célèbre peinture d'Eugène Delacroix: "La Liberté Guidant Le Peuple"

En fait, je me suis aussi inspiré de la pochette de l'album "Viva La Vida" de Colplay...

Manque juste un espèce d'effet dessin ou peinture que je n'arrive pas à recréer !

                                            When I was young I had never heard of Islam.  Now "Islam" seems to be everywhere you look.  That, however, is a common mistake about perception -- so let me get that much on the table early.  Perhaps you learn a new word.  Formerly it might have seemed not even to exist, then suddenly the "new" word is everywhere -- in every book you read.  Well, like a used car, it's "new to you." Islam has been around a very long time, for my entire life! -- and if I hadn't noticed it in my youth, it was still nevertheless out there.  In even the post-Cambrian age of my upbringing, we had National Geographic  -- and Lawrence of Arabia aired more that once on tv.

Well, I nonetheless had an odd and novel encounter with Islam today.  I was working on this blog, actually, [previous post entitled Easy -- and yes, I still have time for painting] at a public computer in a university music library.  A young man at a computer near me was listening to something on headphones and laughing frequently outloud.  He couldn't seem to contain his mirth and self-consciously apologized to anyone who peered in his direction for the distraction he caused.  I figured he was listening to a comedy routine. 

After my own work was complete, I happened to run into the man as he was leaving and found him politely apologetic once more.  So I asked him in a spirit of friendliness what he had been listening to, and he told me rather soberly that he was listening to a lecture by one of his favorite Muslim clerics on the topic of marriage.  Feeling most of the blood draining from my face and wondering privately to myself what could be so amusing in this context, I listened as he went on rather soberly still to explain that the cleric thought young men should marry young and thus avoid the problem of "fornication."  He so obviously meant well as he explained the cleric's account of how "400 years ago" women were veiled from head to toe, and young men got married.  But today women are not veiled, and "nobody" gets married.  [Revisit: the "new word" phenomenon explained above.]

I asked him if he was going to get married soon, and he looked confused and said "yes" rather vaguely.  Thus I assume that the young bride-to-be hasn't been selected yet, though evidently she'll need little in the manner of qualifications other than the possession of an X chromosome.  Wishing to give this young stranger some advice, which clearly he rather desperately needs, I offered this:  I said "why don't you talk this over with your mom and dad."  I'm taking a wild guess, but maybe his parents aren't as Muslim as he is. Yeah, though you're taking the humorous advice of Ahmed bin Jon Stewart, why not also consult the two human beings on the planet who know enough about "marriage" to have arranged for your existence?

What has happened in America?  Why is a young student in an American university getting his advice on life's more compelling questions from the funny stand-up cleric whose counsels include extolling the mores of a culture 400 years old?  By the way, back in 17th century England John Milton was defending both divorce and freedom of speech, so I guess we in the West have been hip longer than we realize.

As the blood went back to my face, while I strove to address this well-meaning young man in a kind, tolerant way, I was thinking to myself: Hey, Sparky, I'm not wearing a veil because of your misguided understanding of your young hormones.  A young man who contemplates marriage to avoid "fornication" not only does not believe that he'll ever fall in love -- maybe he doesn't even believe that love exists.  Why would anyone who believes in love abandon its possibility for the sake of a very temporary solution to physical urges?

I have hardly thought of anything else the rest of the afternoon.  What is manhood now?  What is it in the West?  If one reads, say, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, we find a world in which the ideal of manhood includes both love and dignity.  The avoidance of "fornication" exists in that fictive world though it would never be alluded to so crudely.  Indeed, the stronger idea of the heart -- the sense of human intellect and of dignity are its terms of discourse.  You hope for love because you know it exists, and a person of sense watches for love because to settle for anything less is disappointing to say the least and degrading to say the worst.  Of course, Austen was the unmarried daughter of a Christian minister but the ideal she represented in her stories was hardly her property alone.

One has certainly a right to wonder why "fornication" (as bad as that is) is worth the loss of one's character -- or, more to the point, one can ask how precisely would he be avoiding "fornication" if the chief, perhaps the only virtue of his bride was that he could satisfy his urges on her.  It would seem to me that the fornication still exists and has added to it only the trappings of a marriage license and a bit of ceremony.  On the contrary, as Miss Austen was at pains to demonstrate, nothing makes a person more chaste than love -- for what person, man or woman, looks upon their beloved as simply an object upon which to satisfy animal feelings?  It is love, in fact -- mature, deep, soul-touching, self-disclosing love -- that brings one into awareness of the larger compass of life. 

I concluded that the young man, who seemed to think the funny cleric had hit upon all the facts of existence, has been duped for a fare-thee-well.  Does he think that no one ever figured these things out before?  We have in our own culture a similarly funny idea:  "Nobody buys the cow, when you can get the milk for free."  Got Milk?  Yet we have not abandoned the dignity of women for the sake of this notion.  Quite the contrary, we are only beginning to really understand fully the larger scope of women's dignity, now in this era of women judges, doctors, lawyers, Secretaries of State, astronauts, writers, musicians, scientists -- and on and on.

The Islamic world, with its many centuries old obsession with male hormones, has missed the whole point.  Their own culture acknowledges as much, too.  In their acceptance of polygamy, they show how vacuous a cure "marriage" is for male desire.  When one wife's physicality gets a little dull, a new "wife" is required. 

So, give me the Western way, please! Particularly since I look horrible in a scarf -- and moreover because I am not the kind of person who likes to be ordered around.  I find within myself a natural tendency to lead.  Others have noticed it in my nature also and have told me I am a good leader, and I believe them.  I'm teaching my leaderly skills to my daughter.  No scarf for me, and all that the scarf denotes.  I prefer to believe in True Love (which is always capitalized).  Perhaps it is rare, perhaps some never find it.  But the ideal itself lifts us all -- even those who never marry.  The ideal points toward the union of man and woman as something more than a biological urging.  It gives us glimpses of a deeper spiritual communion that's possible within landscape of the heart.

A man or woman who really loves will accept all kinds of privations for the sake of the beloved.  And, believe me, that selflessness comes in real handy in life's twists and turns.  Real love goes far beyond the physicality of youth.  Conversation is nice too, especially in one's "golden years," and married men and women will find more to talk about if the desires that first brought them together go a little deeper than mere hormones. 

Young man, you were in a university library.  Why weren't you studying?  Why not learn something to make yourself interesting.  Women today are using their minds.  If you want a wife, perhaps it's education that you need.  Because, you know what?  In this culture the woman has a choice, and she might find chaste maiden life more to her liking when it comes with freedom and ideas than a hormonal life of servitude with you.  Something to think about in this era of East meets West.

I had qualms about whether I should write on this topic here since it has nothing to do with art.  But upon further thought, I realized it has everything to do with art.  After all, it was only because I'm an artist that my schedule lent me this freedom to be in the university library today.  Moreover, in this young man's 17th century idea of Islam, I'd wouldn't have a choice to be  an artist.  I'd be washing socks and milking goats, two activities for which I have no talent or interest whatsoever.

So, it does relate to art rather robustly.  In the 21st century West, a woman can be whatever she likes.  And this one likes art.  I hope you do too.

[Top of the post: Eugene Delacroix's 19th century drawing of a Young Arab Man -- more relevant than ever.]

Am 13. Juni ist es also endlich soweit. Fast schon traditionell 3 Jahre nach Veröffentlichung des letzten Albums "X&Y" kam der Nachfolger "Viva la Vida or Death and all his Friends" in die Plattenläden. Und der hat es wahrlich in sich. Ein atmosphärisch dichtes Stück Musikkultur findet auf dieser Platte seinen Weg durch die 10 Titel. Wer einen Nachfolger von Coldplay´s "X&Y" erwartet wird allerdings enttäuscht. Denn "Viva la Vida" erinnert eher an Radiohead und U2, als an die rockige Vorgängerscheibe. Was ihr allerdings keinen Abbruch tut, entfaltet dieses Album doch bereits beim ersten Durchlauf seine volle Wirkung. Stilistisch in neuen Sphären, sind Einflüsse von Radiohead, Travis, den Beatles und U2 nicht zu überhören. Das Cover ziert das Gemälde "Die Freiheit für das Volk" von Eugène Delacroix aus dem Jahre 1830. Für mich eine der fünf besten Platten des bisherigen Jahres.

01. Life in Technicolor
02. Cemeteries of London
03. Lost!
04. 42
05. Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love 
06. Yes
07. Viva la Vida
08. Violet Hill
09. Strawberry Swing
10. Death and all his friends

11. Lost! Acoustic Version (Bonus) 
12. Chinese Sleep Chant (Hidden Track)
13. The Escapist (Hidden Track)

Die "Viva la Vida Tour" führt die vier Briten neben Stationen in Großbritannien, den USA, Kanada, Japan, Frankreich, Spanien, Österreich, Ungarn, Tschechien, Schweden, Norwegen, der Schweiz, Italien, den Niederlanden und Belgien auch für 4 Stationen nach Deutschland:

02.09.2008 Mannheim, SAP Arena
12.09.2008 Köln, KölnArena
14.09.2008 Hamburg, Colorline Arena
15.09.2008 Berlin, O² World

für die Einführungswerbung der neuen Platte hat sich Coldplay Apple´s iTunes-Store als Partner ins Boot geholt und einem, der Platte entsprechenden, atmosphärischen Clip produziert.

A banda inglesa colocará todas as faixas de seu no CD, “Viva la vida”, na sua pagina no MySpace. O álbum estará disponível para qualquer um hoje às 15h pelo horário de Brasília em streaming e ficará disponível por uma semana. O disco estará disponível para a venda no dia 12/06 em todo mundo. O álbum foi produzido por Brian Eno e as composições tiveram uma grande influencia da turnê que a banda fez pela América Latina. A capa do CD que aparece na foto é retira da pintura no francês Eugène Delacroix e o titulo inspirado numa pintura da mexicana Frida.

Para acessar a pagina do MySpace do Coldplay clique aqui.

A banda já havia disponibilizado a faixa “Violet Hill” de graça na internet em maio. Os downloads ultrapassaram 2 milhões e os acessos derrubaram o site oficial da banda inglesa. A banda também fará dois shows grátis nos dias 16 e 23 de junho em Nova York e Londres respectivamente.

Ce qui fait precisement de ce croquis l'expression par excellence de l'idee , c'est, non pas la suppression des details, mais leur complete subordination aux grand traits qui doivent saisir avant tout. La plus grande difficulte consiste donc a retrouner dans le tableau a cet effacement des details, lesquels pourtant sont la composition , la trame meme du tableau.....

Paris 23 avril, 1854

Now, I won't make you guess who said this!  It was Eugène Delacroix, the great 19th century French painter.

Super Youkai Warhead blog consecrated the term "Boobs of the Rebellion". Call it "Sex and Psychological Operations", "Babe Theory of Political Movements", "Democracy titties" or better simply "Boobs of the Rebellion", it's all the same.

If the medium is the message, boobs are truly the essence of Revolution. Think about it. Humanity always fights for boobs. Sore dake. Boobs no Tatakai. Boobs no Senso. Make more sense than library wars, no? Reversely to kill a rebellion, you just need to cover up the bosom.

Boobs leading the People

Liberty Leading the People

The communist art historian Giulio Carlo Argan defined this canvas as the first political work of modern painting.

Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled Charles X. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricolore flag of the French Revolution in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other.

Wait ! Charles X ? like in Charles Vi Britannia .. hum ... interesting ...

In 1829 Charles X appointed prince Jules Armand de Polignac as chief minister. Polignac initiated French colonization in Algeria.

Conquest ? Colonization ?...Aera 11 ?

Yuri Leading the Feminists

The Meat a beat (???)

Chiba Police Leading the Crime Repression- Mitsuyuki Nakano - July 2006 (priceless)

NakaG Prime Minister Manifesto - September 2006

¿Eres curios@? El sátrapa y la obra del artista , El drama de Byron

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (April 26, 1798 – August 13, 1863) was the most important of the French Romantic painters. Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott, and the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on color and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.

However, Delacroix was given neither to sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire:

"Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible." \

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix

>[...] das ganze Universum ist nichts als eine Vorratskammer von Bildern und Zeichen, denen die Phantasie den entsprechenden Platz und Wert anweist; es ist eine Art von Nahrung, die die Phantasie verdauen und umbilden muß. Alle Fähigkeiten der menschlichen Seele sollten sich der Phantasie unterordnen, die sie alle zugleich in Beschlag nimmt. So daß eine gute Kenntnis des Wörterbuches noch nicht notwendig eine Kenntnis der Kunst der Anordung bedeutet und auch diese Kunst noch nicht eine allumfassende Vorstellungskraft. Ein guter Maler braucht kein großer Maler zu sein, aber ein großer Maler ist zwingend ein guter Maler, denn die allumfassende Vorstellungskraft schließt das Wissen um alle Mittel und den Wunsch, sie zu erwerben, ein.<

Charles Baudelaire schreibt über den Maler Eugène Delacroix

I don’t know whether this is true or not but I am all for life-enhancing activities and till such time there is a Life Extension program or something similar as in Ubik, my dear fellow men indulge. Before writing this post I was contemplating whether to write this post mainly because I live in a society where repressed sexuality is the order of the day and any open talk of this sort is blasphemous. I know many of my female friends (see how cleverly I avoided the term girl friends) and readers will be shocked at my post (i.e if at all they read it ;)) and there will be a lot of moral fatwas issued against me. I say goddamn, goddamn!

I was watching this amazing movie Cashback yesterday by Sean Ellis which is about a painter who loves to paint the beautiful female form with all its contours, curves, lines and indentations. I realized how honestly the Europeans can depict their love about two of the most beautiful and natural things in a near perfect way. Watch Fellini’s Amarcord or City of Women. Watch The Dreamers by Bernardo Bertolucci. These are masterpieces in their own right but the depiction of the female: pristine, uninhibited and unadulterated is what I am talking about.

I have always envied painters because of their ability to represent the female nude beautifully on canvas. A very good friend of mine is one heck of a painter or rather sketcher as he calls himself. He makes amazing nudes and I am not talking here as a pervert but as someone who appreciates art and the female body.

Coming back to the topic of the bosoms.

The importance of breasts through ages can be understood from the following:

When Heracles was a baby his father, Zeus decided to let the infant Heracles suckle on his divine wife Hera's milk when she was asleep, an act which would endow the baby with godlike qualities. When Hera woke up and realized that she was breastfeeding an unknown infant, she pushed him away and the spurting milk became... the Milky Way.

Carolus Linnaeus's coined the term Mammalia, from the Latin mammae (milk-secreting organs), even though milk secretion is a characteristic of only half the human race.

Eugene Delacroix's bare-breasted portrait of "Liberty Leading the People" demonstrates the breast's potential as a political symbol which alas is forgotten in the times of the Wonderbra and Victoria and her secrets.

These are proof of the way we have looked at the female breasts through the ages.

If you are a male above 18 and you haven’t seen Anita Ekberg in Fellini's La dolce vita, my dear friend you have wasted a lifetime. Forget about above 18...If you are male and you haven’t seen Anita Ekberg you have wasted a lifetime. Thankfully due to my love for Italian Neo-realist films (La Dolce Vita isn’t neo-realism though) that I came across this Goddess of a Swede. The moment when she goes and gets drenched in the fountain of Trevi is one moment that I want to get frozen for eternity.

Our own Raj Kapoor, who knew the thin line between sensuality and titillation and often crossed it, after making Satyam Shivam Sundaram famously commented that people will go to see Zeenat’s tits and come back remembering the movie. That it is he who created the archetype of a white saree clad semi nude female getting drenched under a waterfall or rain is a credit to the genius of the man.

I can go on a limb and say 99% males are closet breast worshippers. The rest 1% are breast worshippers.

People like Russ Mayer made a career out of well endowed actresses. Russ who once was a photographer with Playboy went on to make seminal cult movies like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Vixen! and Up! never ever underestimating the importance of the female form (read breasts).Once when participating in a panel discussion at Yale University, he was confronted by an angry woman who accused him of being "nothing but a breast man." His immediate reply: "That's only the half of it." J

Which reminds me of Marilyn Yalom’s “History of the Breast”

and an old limerick:

There once was a woman who was quite begat. She had three babies named Nat, Pat, and Tat.

She said it was fun in the breeding, but found it was hell in the feeding when she saw there was no tit for Tat.

N.B: I don’t know why I wrote this post. May be because I was entirely jobless today or may be because I wanted you to appreciate the twin wonders of nature. Whether you liked it or not it was the breast I could do.

Suggested reading:

· Wikipedia

· Marilyn Yalom’s “History of the Breast”

I never liked trying to sound American by talking nasally.  I'd sound like someone with speech problems like some people I know.  Hehe.  So, I went into training and since I am not at all an idiot, I learned what I was supposed to learn within the period allotted for the process, far more quickly, I believe.  Our trainers were a bunch of characters.  But then again, trainees---and students for that matter---always make fun of their trainers and teachers. 

The first month was a lot of fun.  Our American department head gave us the permission to take 10-minute breaks in between 60-minute of straight serious work.  Those were on top of our lunch breaks and two 15-minute breaks.  That was pure heaven for smokers like us and for non-smokers who took the same breaks as we did to chat and talk about the "characters" in the office.  Since we were told to speak English at all times then, we did.  So breaks were a bunch of breaks indeed filled with funny anecdotes in English.  There were 9 of us in our batch.  We were supposed to be a part of the first batch of 12 but since the first three---who later became our supervisors---were taken in before the Christmas break and they needed hands on deck (not on the dick, you, you!) then, we were considered the 1 1/2 batch.  Hehe. 

So anyway, the main criterion for the beauty contest---er---for hiring us was our English speaking skills.  Our American department head conducted one on one interviews and if you pass his standards---meaning he understands the way you speak and you get to deliver the answers to his questions the way he wants to hear them---then you're hired.  So we were super proud to have been hired into a position that promised at least a basic fee of twenty grand, well, not in dollars, but in pesos.  We were also given the chance to earn commissions.  It was a good deal!  I will keep mum about what went on after that in terms of monetary concerns because I don't want to rouse the sleeping monsters here and there. 

The first day we went live---call potential clients---we got lost.  One of the major problems?  Pronunciation of last names.  Pronouncing places wasn't much of a problem because somehow, I already knew how to properly most of them, like Tucson/TOO-sahn/in Arizona,  Cayce /KAY • see/ in South Carolina, Des Moines /dih-MOYN/ in Iowa, Leicester /LESS-tur/ in Massachusetts, Reading /RED-ing/ (not like READING from the base verb READ!) in Pennsylvannia and many others. 

Nope, we were not given any help in that department.  What I did was create my own pronunciation guide.  Well, it all boils down to etymology for some.  And if you really can't pronounce it properly, it's best to politely ask the owner of the name.  I once looked for a Miss Augusta Something only to find out that he's a HE.  Some countries don't go by the usual Filipino convention of names ending with (Mario) O or U for men and A (Maria) for women.  By the way, my parents names are Gregorio and Gregoria.  Talk about soulmates!  LOL. 

My research enabled me to learn some new things and to affirm those that I already knew.  I thought it would be nice to share the fruits of my research here.  How's that?  Most of them are from Inoglo, About.com and The Budget Fashionista.

I started with author's names. 

Paulo Coelho---paw-LU ko-wel-YU (my own version based on the IPA guide)

Chuck Palahniuk---chuhk PALL-uh-nik

Ayn Rand---ine rand

Roland Barthes---roll-AH(NG) bart

J.R.R Tolkien---"TOLL"-keen

Ivan Illich---ih-VAHN IH-lich

Jodi Picoult---JOE-dee PEE-koe

Marcel Proust---mar-SELL proost

Kathy Reichs---KA-thee ryks

Jon Scieszka---jahn SHESS-kuh

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky---FYOE-dur mih-HY-loe-vich dahs-tuh-YEF-skee

J K Rowling---"rolling"
 

Then artists:

Jan van Eyck---yahn fuhn ike

Caravaggio---kar-uh-VAHJ-o

Rembrandt---REM-brant

Eugene Delacroix---uu-ZHEHN deh-lah-krwah

Edgar Degas---ED-gar duh-GAH

Claude Monet---kload moe-nay

Paul Gauguin---pall go-GA

Jean-Auguste Ingres---zhahn-o-gust angg

And what last name pronunciation guide would be complete without fashion designers?  So here's a not-so-complete guide from The Budget Fashionista.  They're divided into A-G, H-M, and N-Z. 

Giorgio Armani: Jor-ji-o Ar-ma-nee
Manolo Blahnik: Muh-no-low blah- nick
Andre Courreges: AN-Dre Courreges
Balenciaga: Bal-en-see-AH-gah
Bottega Veneta: Bo-TAY-ga Ve-NE-tah
Roberto Cavalli: RO-ber-to Ka-VA-lee
Chanel: Sha-nel
Chloé: KLO-ee
Comme des Garcons: KUM de Gar-SOHN
Christian Dior: KRE-shtaan DEE-or
Dolce and Gabbana: DOL-chay and Gab-BAH-nah
Ellen Tracy: EL-lin TRAY-see
Salvatore Ferragamo: Sal- va- tor Ferr-A-ga-mo
Gianfranco Ferre: Gee-an-fran-ko Ferr-ay
John Galliano: Gall-lee-a-no
Givenchy: Gee-von-she
Halston: Hall-stun
Hermes: Air-mez
Hugo Boss: He-you-go Bo-s
Imitation of Christ: Em-ma-ta-shun of Cry-st
Marc Jacobs: Ma-rk Jay-kob-s
Betsey Johnson: BET-see JON-sun
Calvin Klein: CAL-vin KLYIN
Donna Karan (DKNY): Don-NAH KA-ran
Michael Kors: My-kal Ko-ors
Karl Lagerfeld: Ka-ral La-ger-fell-d
Helmut Lang: Hell- Mut Lay-ng
Jeanne Lanvin: John La- vin
Ralph Lauren: LORE-in
Nanette Lepore: Na-net LA-pour
Christian Louboutin: KRI-shtaan Lu-bu-TAHN
Louis Vuitton: Lu-wee Vee-tuhhh
Catherine Malandrino: KATH-er-in Mal-an-DREE-no
Alexander McQueen: Al-ex-AHN-der Mac-KWEEN
Isaac Mizrahi: Eye-zak Miz-ra-hee
Issey Miyake: E-say Me-ya-kay
Zac Posen: Zak Poo-zen
Proenza Schouler: pro-en-za skool-er
Emilio Pucci: E-MEE-lee-o POH-chee
Tracy Reese: TRAY- cee Ree-s
Elsa Schiaparelli: EL-sa She-a-pa-REHL-lee
Anna Sui: AN-na SOO-ee
Gianni Versace: Gee-a-nee Verr-sha-chie
Diane Von Furstenberg: DY-an Von FUR-sten-berg
Vera Wang: Veer- ra Way-ng

About.com also has an audio pronunciation guide on how designers' names and brands are pronounced.  Check it out here.  It contains the correct pronunciation guides of Balmain, Byblos, Ermenegildo Zegna, Jean Paul Gaultier, Les Copains, Yves Saint Laurent and many more.

As a largely English-speaking country, I believe that pronouncing these foreign names and last names---English and Anglicized---are not merely about sounding good or whatever but it means giving respect to people from other countries whose names are not that easy for us Filipinos to pronounce.  My name is constantly mispronounced and misspelled either and while I have gotten used to it, it still gets annoying sometimes.  So, I think learning how to pronounce these names properly is a way of giving respect to others.