| From mother to madrasa
I would stop playing, run to her, jump on her lap, and put my left arm around her neck. She would open a slim, rather torn booklet, and start reading: Bismi llahi l-rahmainl-irahim. In the name of God, the beneficent, the merciful. I remember how she would pronounce each word distinctly. .
This Course May Make You Uncomfortable
Life is tough, people should roll with the punches—and learn to fight back. Why should we accommodate sensitivity, much less cultivate it, anymore than we should accommodate bad grammar or sloppy reasoning? I try to get it across to students that it’s alright to be wrong, that they shouldn’t take things personally, etc. But it really goes against the grain so, to avoid hassles, I work hard to pull my punches. But I not only don’t like that and don’t think it’s a good thing. When I present a paper and respond to questions, and even more so when I’m a commentator, after "I want to thank Professor X for his very valuable and interesting discussion..." I pull out all the stops and go full blast. I’ve also been beaten up myself. But all this is ok—it’s one of the pure pleasures of academic discussion, in my field in particular.
Suspect in August shooting arrested
That day, police said, an 18-year-old friend of Horton's and three other men planned, as they shared drinks beside his grave, to stake out a liquor store on Rainier Avenue South they believed the killer frequented. Alerted by witnesses reporting a man with a shotgun, police showed up and found the teen with nearly a dozen shotgun shells in his pants pockets. The other three men were gone. Officers searched the area, and found a shotgun and a camouflage jacket. Saturday, police did not explain why they believe the man arrested Friday was responsible for Horton's death. The man has a criminal record that includes convictions for assault and theft. Last year, Seattle police found him in Flo Ware Park, a known hangout for a Central District gang known as the Deuce Eights.
dear prudence: Advice on manners and morals.
Get "Dear Prudence" delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to . (Questions may be edited.) Dear Prudie,
My future mother-in-law and I have a difficult relationship. She doesn't approve of me, and hasn't been positive about my relationship with her son since we first got together five years ago in high school. She's a medical aesthetician, and for the past two or three years, she's been hounding me every so often to let her laser off any unwanted body hair. These conversations generally take place during meals and involve her listing all the places she could zap off hair, while I politely say, "No, thank you," to each one. The idea of this woman, who already despises me, spending an afternoon zeroing in on my body hair is enough to nearly give me an anxiety attack.
Gottfried Helnwein is in L.A.'s dark grip
Here on this evocative, sketchy block, the Austrian-born artist fell in love with Los Angeles and decided to decamp his Irish castle (part-time anyway) to call L.A. home.
As much as what he physically keeps close by while he works -- the books, newspapers, CDs, rubber dolls and plastic figurines -- the city's essence itself feeds his dark, uneasy work, which tends toward hyper-real renderings of violence and the grotesque: bandaged, broken children, scenes of torture, pooling blood, grimacing visages. "Ireland is paradise," he says, "but almost too. For my work I need an urban environment."
Some might think that Los Angeles -- its unrelenting sun, its one-step-away-from-reality perch -- is an incongruous place for someone like Helnwein. What he creates, regardless the medium -- watercolor, oil, photography, performance art, sculpture -- is a thorny psychological excursion into our sublimated self, our obscured corners and dark humors.
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