Subtrahend


Sunday, February 29, 2004

    Tarzan and the Bibliographer


    · Here is a semi-complete list, in more or less alphabetical notation, of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs which feature Tarzan. (I had no idea there were so many):
    Tarzan and the Ant Men
    Tarzan and the Castaways
    Tarzan and the City of Gold
    Tarzan and the Forbidden City
    Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
    Tarzan and the Golden Lion
    Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
    Tarzan and the Leopard Men
    Tarzan and the Lion Man
    Tarzan and the Lost Empire
    Tarzan and the Madman
    Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion
    Tarzan at the Earth's Core
    Tarzan in the land of the Giant Apes
    Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
    Tarzan of the Apes
    Tarzan's Jungle Tale
    Tarzan of the Apes
    Tarzan's Jungle Tales
    Tarzan's Quest
    Tarzan the Invincible
    Tarzan the Magnificent
    Tarzan the Terrible
    Tarzan the Untamed
    Tarzan Triumphant
    The Tarzan Twins


     — posted by P | at 1:32 AM | |

Friday, February 27, 2004

Monday, February 23, 2004

    Well, I'm not Sure About This At All


    · One of the things about being an individual soul in this world is the difficulty in knowing any other thing, or understanding the richness of this world. You can wander around in a shady grove carpeted with bright, looping grass, full of the noise of ten thousand tiny creatures, and still feel like the new boy at school. You can wonder, in a bar, where all these high altitude people come from—loud, correct, indefatigable, groomed and dressed; and where all the gamblers go after last call, buzzed, and wrapped in their greasy parkas. One of the things churches do is try to break down this isolation. I don't say they're terribly good at it, but they're the only people on the job.

    Of course I'm reluctant to disagree with one of the Greatest Living Canadians, Mr Colby Cosh, but he does say this thing:

    Every man, in truth, is his own little cosmos of philosophical notions, charitable activity and research interests. If a church or an unchurch deserves a tax exemption, why, then, don't you and I? If taking tax money from a church were to limit its power to work for good, how much more does the dent in your paycheque limit your personal power to change the world? Ah, but if we didn't tax personal income, the government wouldn't have enough revenue to pay for our hyperefficient health-care system, our mighty national defence, our superbly managed fisheries and our brilliant diplomatic corps. Forget I brought it up. (Feb. 16, 2004)
    And I think that might be wrong.

    When people declare their atheism, it's a bit like people who say they don't know anything about art. Fair enough. But they don't stop there. Atheists always then have to say something like, "But I know what I like", which just confuses the issue. They want to talk about God, but a true atheist would talk exactly as the person who honestly dismisses art, and leaves it at that, since for such a person any discussion about the merits of Watteau must be idle. Instead we are favoured with a rambling discourse on the foolishness of the various churches or their adherents. Nothing about St. Thomas Aquinas or Maimonides or any other scholar, mind you; just the the old soft targets.

    Anyway, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moslems, and everyone else all pay income tax; it's their churches that get the break, and the reason for that is that it's difficult for the state to justify taxing a church. It's difficult to say what the state does for any church. Citizens and businesses alike enjoy the benefits of highways, defence, infrastructure. Do any churches need those things? Don't they, in fact, thrive on neglect? Did the Penal Laws reduce the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland? I believe they had the opposite effect.

    To get back to the beginning, I think that every man's being his own little cosmos is the source of a great deal of unhappiness among people. When you talk to unhappy people, this is exactly the impression you get all the time. No man is an island, much less a cosmos, and if you would only read The Divine Comedy, or any of a bunch of books attentively you could not fail to see that. If you draw these things together, you might conclude that somewhere, somehow, a human connection is wanted. To share these things—a shady grove, thoughts about God, or life—is a great thing, and professional atheists are incapable of doing anything about that. They ought to refer to their masters, the Soviet Insitute of Atheism, for guidance.

    Finally, it doesn't make too much sense to argue against taxation by saying how weak our military is.The problem with our national defence is we don't spend enough on it. Not that we tax people too much.We don't have the equipment, the training, the upgrades. The problem isn't mismanagement. It's purely lack of money and lack of will. I honestly can't see how money is poorly spent, or that personnel are in the wrong. So I have to conclude that Mr Cosh is wrong about this


     — posted by P | at 6:44 PM | |

    More Politicians' Sites


    · Once again I can't stay away from politicans' websites. Given how little one can know about these people, it's informative to look at their own little web-creations. I like to imagine them in their offices in a quiet moment after lunch, maybe, tinkering with HTML, experimenting with different background colours, and wondering why the heck these darn tables don't look right, but no doubt they've all hired people to do that. Still, it's the next best thing to getting hold of their journaux intimes.

    • John Bryden, the Liberal MP who left the party in disgust a while back, has a no-nonsense MP's site: narrow, centered box with a) photo; b) facsimile autograph; and, c) hard-to-read menu sinister. I'm beginning to think this is the template for MPs who don't have any illusions about themselves. None of that "Paul's Thoughts", "Paul's Musings" stuff. Mr Bryden does have a video, which I can't be bothered to watch, but it's probably substantive in some way, not just him eating an ice cream and meeting the folks. He has the usual "Major Issues" and "News Stories" (about himself), but he also has three useful links—Parliament, the Liberal Party, and the Government of Canada. They seem obvious, but that's three more than are to be found at similar sites. As far as I can tell the site hasn't been updated in several months. Still, the "Major Issues" section is fairly meaty, and he has the texts of bills and "initiatives", which is good.

      I can't see the point of this feature, though. It's meant to be a newsletter, but when you finally find something to read, it turns out to be a .gif of some text or other. What's the point of that? Why not just type it up and fire it into one of the existing categories?

      (I notice that the site for Parliament is shakey and foot-dragging when loading. It's one of those sites that trembles every time an extra .gif or some other insignificant piece of junk decides to turn up. Also, it was obviously designed by someone who abhors, with righteous fury, the whole concept of "design". And, on the first page, why the exclamation mark in the heading "What's New!"? Maybe they mean "What Up?".)

    • Next: Friends of Eddie Coyle, or rather, Sheila Copps. "Support Our Sheila", it says. It's really just a brochure. There are four news stories about the Copps/Liberal Party "feud".
    • It's the Edwards Family Blog! More than a campaign blog, this is a whole crusade that you can join. That's right, you can sign up for your own spot. Elizabeth Edwards writes (January 20th), "I saw Coby from the blog -- which was a great thrill -- and when I met the next young woman and asked if she was on the blog, she looked a little crestfallen, then promised to get on. Hope she's here." No pressure, mind. But you have to ask yourself, if someone's not on the blog, what are they doing? Here's how she begins the entry: "There are a thousand stories in the past week. I know I can't tell them all," putting me in mind of a relative who used to write one letter, make a dozen photocopies, and then send a copy to each family member on her cc. list. They were always breathless and addressed to nobody in particular. Sometimes, if the occasion warranted it, there would be a scribbled personal note at the bottom—"Tmbllbug: Just blj mrok ttty. Hope flith mpptubil!!!" She also had bad handwriting. Other than that, this closely resembles a normal civilian's blog. There are quite a few links, including Eschaton, Daily Kos, and, interestingly, Democratic Underground.
    • John Kerry, as would be expected, has a well-designed, tidy blog attached to the main site, "John Kerry", which looks a bit like CNN.com. There is also a fully developed Spanish language site, which has stories deemed to be of interest to Spanish-speakers. On his service in Vietnam:
      La Marina me juntó en una embarcación con soldados valientes, ciudadanos de todas partes y de todas razas. En las líneas del frente nuestro carácter étnico, rango, región y religión carecían de importancia. Todos éramos de este país. Todos bajo la misma bandera y un mismo Dios.
      H'mmm. Is that really necessary? There is also a blog in Spanish, also with original content.

      Okay, there's lots of stuff best left to the highbrows who eat this sort of thing up—three bags of political tomfoolery, in my view. The exciting thing: downloads! Nine wallpapers, the "John Kerry Buddy Icon", some music, the "John Kerry Organizer Toolkit", labels, handouts, a veritable hoard of favours. Let's see if the lawn sign works:
      I'm afraid the site might be more exciting than the man himself.


     — posted by P | at 1:22 PM | |

Sunday, February 22, 2004

Saturday, February 21, 2004

    Future of Europe


    · If you look at Fistful of Euros you'll find a post by guest commentator Russell Arden Fox, who refers to his own interesting essay on the future of the EU and the future (or the nature) of nation status. His is a remarkably broad and detailed view which gives thorough attention to the history and definition of the nation state no less than to the specifics of Europe. He does focus on language toward the end, which is the thing that made me think of the big change that has come over the matter in the last 50 years or so, the massive spread of English. I suspect that the growth of English has been so great that few could quantify it. As an exported social phenomenon it must easily dwarf Islam or Christianity at the height of their expansion. I wouldn't want to overstate the importance of this, but a language is somewhat more than just a tool.

    When you now buy a package of wafers or something made in Europe, you'll find the nutritional information printed in microscopic characters in a dozen languages or so. Who needs that? Everyone knows that for any practical purpose the information could be printed more legibly in English alone. And anyway, the big Euro-documents don't seem to be available in Irish or Sard; how long, realistically, before Greek and Finnish join them? In short, the differences among Europeans may be less important than they appear.

    Not entirely unrelated: A really good Polish-English online dictionary which should be a model for others. It has a clickable key for characters with diacritics, a good vocabulary, and seems to deal well with near hits. There are quite a few unsatisfactory dictionaries out there.


     — posted by P | at 1:52 PM | |

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

    Conservatives and their Hobbies


    · Paul Wells dismisses Belinda Stronach and Tony Clement, endorsing Stephen Harper "as the only serious candidate for what has suddenly become a job worth having" here. He mentions Stronach's lack of moxie in her treatment of the recent Liberal scandal on her weblog. Naturally, I was surprised to discover that she maintains one, because who has time for that? I've always assumed it was an activity for people whose jobs are not too taxing, or not insistantly real.

    Anyway, here's a little catalogue of Conservative leadership hopefuls' web presence:

    • Belinda Stronach. (A drawback she shares with all semi-official websites in this country is the necessity of having a euro-style, empty introductory page to facilitate equally accessible English and French versions. Of course, that's a lot better than a single, fully bilingual page, which imposes a design problem). Here is the English version. It's pretty slick, lots of colour, graphic jobs. Here's her blog. The stylesheet's doing its thing. Her colours are carrot and celery, even the vertical scroll bar, which makes me think of juicers and blenders and healthy drinks. Maybe those will be the New Conservative Party's official colours someday. Here's an item: she spoke at a Rotary Club in Edmonton, and "... Canadians of all walks of life are eager to support my call to build a strong and united party." How many walks of life would you expect to find at the Rotary Club? Well, I suppose you need to know how many walks of life there are in Canada first. Fifty? Two thousand? Three? I don't know. They might all belong to the Rotary Club, I suppose.
    • Tony Clement has a trim site with just a link to the "version française". It's simple, compact and text-oriented. It's a campaign brochure with news clippings. You can learn quite a lot from it. No weblog, but also no irritating scrolling or flashing things. It's the sort of thing Robert Stanfield would have driven. Not exciting, exactly, but sensible.
    • Stephen Harper's site is has the interesting address "One Conservative Voice". A bit monomaniacal, if you think about it. But the site is big, sleek, and it has image-swapping and javascripts coming out its ears. At the top of the page there's Harper embracing a small child, and being embraced, or at least carressed, by Le Bonhomme de Carnaval! That's like an endorsement from Santa Claus. And there's more. It resembles amazon.com, or naxos.org. I don't see any prizes to win, but then again there are no annoying popups (at least not yet). The best feature is the soft-focus graphic at the top, in the style of the flip side of Canadian money: at the far right there's a lighthouse on the rocky coast, then the CN tower, then some mountains, some wheat, and finally—a totem pole! No industries, of course. I don't quite understand the motto underneath: "A home for all conservatives; a government for all Canadians". He means the Conservative Party, not his site. But conservativism is that broad that no single party can hope to encompass it and remain a viable party. That's not too much to admit, is it? I would dump the motto before people start making fun of it.

    Maybe I overlooked it, but none of these sites has links to its fellows.


     — posted by P | at 10:17 PM | |

Saturday, February 14, 2004

    · Everyone, I presume, has seen Kevin Drum on the George Bush military service business. His informant describes Gen. James destroying Bush's documents:

    Well, I'll carry through with that. I do not believe General James at the time felt he was doing any more than taking care of the boss. I do not believe that General Marty or anyone else at the Texas National Guard saw it as anything other — you have to understand the culture. If you understand that, in so many cases, especially when there is someone that is somewhat political in nature, and I think it proves itself throughout this whole case even down to a congressman's son in a unit, that when they want to promote somebody, they will oftentimes take full-time personnel and they'll go back and they'll make sure that that personnel file looks better than anyone else's when it goes forward for consideration before promotion boards.
    The whole story of George Bush's service isn't too interesting, and it happened a good while ago. But can anyone think cover-ups involving a lot of people that early in a political career are irrelevant?

    Arthur Silber has a moderate take on the story.


     — posted by P | at 8:25 AM | |

Friday, February 13, 2004

    Well, So Much for the Conservatives


    · Live on CBC Newsworld there was a dweebate between Harper and Tony Clement. Clement came off fairly well, just a bit embarrassed for material at times. But Harper couldn't help coming across as a self-important, shallow man, who, secure in his blow-dried chrysallis, doesn't have to take telling from anyone who knows something. He made a point of starting every remark with a condescending grace note: "Weeell ... you know..", like a scary prof trying to be nice to a dumb student. Unfortunately, this won't too well with a lot of voters, because even silly people are hard to intimidate.

    If he really wants to be PM, it would be a good idea for his team (or "équipe"—you know, he speaks good French) to think about getting some support in the Atlantic Provinces, because he is in favour of foreign wars and will therefore have to rely on Atlantic Canadians to go and fight in them. I think he might not know where they are though.

    Furthermore, he thinks bilingualism in the public service can be dispensed with at many levels. That's a terrible idea. A true conservative would think twice about dismantling anything so big, despite the cost and lack of practical value. If, on the other hand, your aim is to alienate French-speakers, then this is the best way to go about it.

    So that's Qu&#eacute;bec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland out of the picture. Harper's vision is that of reconciling powerful business of Ontario with the west. Everybody else can just sit around voting Liberal again.

    Harper would make a good mayor of some big city like Hamilton or Lethbridge. I notice he never faces the camera when addressing his vast unseen auddience, perhaps because his right eye is a good inch higher than his left eye. He's deeply asymmetrical.


     — posted by P | at 3:53 PM | |

Thursday, February 12, 2004

    Why Bush Will Win


    · H'm. Looking around my apartment I don't see any microscopes or time-travel equipment, but I feel sure Bush will win in the next US election. Why?

    • People are worried about terrorism, and Bush promises to do something about it.
    • The US is tied down in Iraq, and people want to see that perfected smoothly and brought to some conclusion by the man who started it.
    • Democrats haven't been able convincingly to explain that anything is wrong with the US economy. They warn and say "The end is nigh", but no one credits them.
    • When things start to go awry, tough talk about foreigners and their pernicious ways is good. Republicans do this, protecting the US consumer from cheap imports and job exports; Democrats have not done so.
    • In the US, despite what every foreigner thinks, there is an aristocracy associated with the well-being of America; Bush (and the Kennedys) can enjoy this; Kerry cannot.
    • The big complaint about Bush is that he is a mediocre man who can't even read a newspaper now and again, and needs to be shielded from any tough questioning because he's not really on top of any dossier. But that seems to be okay nowadays. Like George III, all he has to do is turn up at court from time to time. Nothing else really matters, as long as his ministers are doing their job.
    • Bush has more money and more influence. He won't lose.
    I don't think this is such a bad thing. It's just how things are.


     — posted by P | at 3:49 PM | |

    Still More Tough Talk


    · The Star vs. Daimnation! The complete piece is worthy of perusal. Damian Penny was accosted via e-mail and threatened with legal action for his close reading of a stupid article in the Toronto Star comparing Bush to Hitler, the idea being that Penny stole the content by reproducing it for his commentary.

    In fact, reproducing large portions of a text under criticism is the fairest thing to do: that way no one can complain of being quoted out of context, and the reader can judge of the accuracy of the critique without having to dig up the original. So Penny should say "I wasn't stealing your article, I was spitting on it."

    I also see, via the same Daimnation, that the good people at "The Corner" (I don't think you can buy drugs there, though) are taking this Kerry/girlfriend story seriously, calling it a "mess". I predict it will be naught but wind and smoke, like the revelation that he was once photographed in a public place a row or two behind Jane Fonda. They'll have to do better than this.

    But this bullying of everybody seems to be going all over the place. Even Colin Powell, normally unflapable, said, in response to Sherrod Brown's question about President Bush's military records:

    "I won't dignify your comments about the president because you don't know what you're talking about," Powell said. "Let's not go there. You want to have a political fight on this matter which is very controversial and is being dealt with by the White House, fine. But let's not go there here."
    Let's not go there? He repeated the phrase several times. I thought the expression "don't go there" was a sort of girl thing, but I could be wrong. I was expecting Brown to ask why he couldn't go there, and then Powell would say "Cause I'll tell your boyfriend you're a slut!" I can't really see anything more compelling than that, and it could make the US administration look like the Titanic crew after the ice got them.

    And how would Reagan have responded? Everyone used to act as if he was a bolvan, but he would have come through. He would have dismissed the whole thing with a chuckle and won everyone over. "There you go again", he would have said, "bringing up old history", etc. The man knew how to talk at least.

    I think we'll see more of this before the US elections are over. I predict Bush will win and, in a related item, our own Martin will take home a soggy victory, but I could be wrong, because I don't consult my horoscope often enough. And I haven't looked at entrails since I was a boy. So what could I know?


     — posted by P | at 3:00 PM | |

Saturday, February 07, 2004

    Tough Talk


    · Juan Cole makes quite a few serious allegations. Among them:

    Last summer, former ambassador Joseph Wilson went public about his 2002 report refuting the allegation that Saddam tried to buy Niger uranium. Someone in the Bush administration attempted to punish him by identifying his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative involved in trying to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The information was given to the press, but only one reporter, CNN commentator Robert Novak, was sleazy enough to publish it. (Outraged readers should please email CNN demanding that they fire Novak for having wilfully damaged US national security). Novak did not commit a crime. But whatever Bush administration official leaked the information to him did.

    That's pretty straight talk. The whole story seems a bit fuzzy, but I should like to know how CIA personnel get to be outed in this way. It seems very dangerous and thoughtless.


     — posted by P | at 10:35 AM | |

Friday, February 06, 2004

    A Short History of the Man Downstairs


    If at any time we meet, I am always confused and he is always clear. Sometimes he asks me questions, which just throw me entirely:

    "Lot of rain, eh?"

    He moved in suddenly, into the rooms downstairs that had the bay window and the extra room. One minute boxes and a worried trunk stood at the door. A little later he was ensconced. I heard him taking guests into his new place, his key trying the lock inexpertly at first. "Come on in. Yeah. Come in." And from inside, after the squeal and slam of the door, a silence broken by triumphant cries.

    The weeks of brooding inactivity on his part are amazing. The noise of his tiny lathe on the weekends makes me pause in the hallway as the front door closes behind me. The sudden disturbances - the coup d’etat down there at three a.m., the Sunday morning revivalist meeting - are only half as interesting, to me, as the subtle exchanges I sometimes catch at the end of a busy day:

    "Hrm hrm wombat."

    "WHAT?"

    "Hrm-hrm-wombat!"

    "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

    "Hrm Hrm: Wombat!!"

    The week-long sojourn of a loud, active dog makes an impression. Yet how much more impressive is the sporadic presence of another dog, one who does nothing in the nighttime.

    As to his origins, I imagine him to have started out as a pile of dust in an abandoned room, becoming over the lonely years a middle-aged man whose hair does not grow. His rancid ponytail is always the same, his jaw a grey peach. A woman comes to walk his dog, covering her face as she leaves the building, deferring to the dog's judgement as they stand at the corner. Which way do we cross? The dog knows.

    Once I caught him napping. A rainy evening, and I was coming home from some café. There in the lock I saw he had forgotten his keys, as people do when they have been shopping. At first I thought of leaving the matter there, but I turned back and knocked on his door. Humming and padding towards the door. A pause. He opened it. We stood face to face, and he looked up inquisitively. That face, the experimental grin. He was an ex-prison guard, a locksmith, an animal trainer, something.

    "You've left your key in the lock," I said, pointing to them, no more than three inches from his face. I could have seen into his room, but I resolutely looked at the keys hanging there, willing him to do likewise.
    "Ah," he said, giving up on me and glancing at the keys. "So I have."

    I nodded, and he looked at me again in speculation, and again I managed not to look into his room. And there I left him, a chilled vessel with nothing in it.


     — posted by P | at 12:11 PM | |

    For the General Reader


    · This week is going to be unlike any other week. This week the Supreme Leader will step down and allow someone else to run the country for a while.

    Some other changes, in summary: school will be closed conferences symposia consortia marriages crap games meetings reviews of policy will be postponed the marquee will change no deliveries the proud will be humbled and an end to the thousand wars of old.

    This week will no doubt be widely publicized, although the role of the media is still unclear.

    This week the Supreme Leader's speech writer will go missing (writing a real speech). The Supreme Leader will be embarrassed, unable to say anything. He will wave his hands at the podium in an impotent mime of triumph. But as he opens and closes his mouth like a fish, something will come over him: a strange flush will charge his features, and after a moment's indecision, pure song will burst from his lips.

    "The Supreme Leader was very moving", people will say, "He put aside his text untouched and began speaking sincerely, beautifully, he quoted voluminously from the poets, highlighting an observation of his own with a reference—a most learned one—which, in effect, affirmed his modesty, 'See how a great sage has said the same thing, only much more successfully than I'. And soon he even began to recite a poem of his own composition. Who suspected that this statesman was also the author of a body of work, had struggled over draft after draft?"

    Pure song will burst from his lips. What will that song be like? A prelude in minor fifths? Something cosy with a beat? Anyway, this eloquence of his, this music we are longing to hear, even this will be as planned and as prepared for as that gaping silence. We now seem able to piece together a picture of the events of next week as a well thought-out process. All this is to anticipate, of course, but...

    Perhaps someone will be a trifle bored. This is not to condone indifference, but it could happen. Despite the assembled weaponry of the journalists and the best intentions of everyone who has had a hand in planning the whole thing (many of them working behind the scenes until now). Despite the sacrifices, the many hours given so freely by people who have plenty of work to do, despite the pledges, the countless drives to and from the auditorium provided by parents and teachers. Despite the banquet, furnished at no extra cost. Yes. Someone might be bored. Someone who thinks he knows it all. The Supreme Leader will wander along to his destiny, probably a motorcade, and that Someone might have gone home early and be looking out his window just as the column of official sedans skims past. And Someone might stick his tongue out at the Supreme Leader, who will look up and see this horrible display. He will anticipate one more smiling face among the thousands, and see instead a mask of fury and hatred, directed at him, his policies and his children. A thoughtless condemnation of everything good. So perhaps this week itself may have to be postponed.


     — posted by P | at 11:49 AM | |

    About Ann Coulter


    · Once again, World O' Crap says it much better than I could:

    And speaking of stupid, Ann Coulter, who got lots of attention lack week for calling John Kerry a gigolo, does it a bunch more times this week.  She's like a kid who learned a new dirty word, and says it over and over, in an effort to get attention.  But then she gets back to her favorite trope: the Democrats (liberals) are all America-hating traitors.



    While there is indisputably nothing cooler than having fought for your country, John Kerry's status as a Vietnam veteran is unlikely to change a single vote. Military guys will support Bush, and liberals don't admire bravery. The only reason Democrats will tolerate someone who fought on the same side as the United States is to fuel their rage against Bush. 


    There is "indisputably nothing cooler" than wartime military service???  I'd say that such service is a lot of things (brave, heroic, life-altering, deadly, etc.), but "cool" wouldn't be one of them. 


    While Ann is looking quite gaunt, haggard, and plague-ridden lately (and that's nothing to what her heart and brain must look like), I'd image that there is SOMETHING she's fit to do in Iraq.  Maybe cleaning latrines or looking for land mines.  Why doesn't the "woman" sign up, and gain some coolness?



     — posted by P | at 11:25 AM | |

Thursday, February 05, 2004

    I Can't Think of a Clever Pun Part II


    · A true mensch sent me a nice e-mail telling me to buck up, etc. Well said. It's amazing that complete strangers sort of care for a chap when they detect an emotional valley. Go raibh maith agat aris a chara. Ta tu im bhlogrol agus im chraoi. It's up to me to be cheerified.

    Well, Lileks got all cranky about Patrick Stewart's views on space exploration. Read part of the thing. Then make some tea and watch a video, which is what any normal person does. Stewart thinks it's very expensive, and therefore he must hate America and Bug or Cockroach or whatever Lileks's child is called. (If he were Canadian he would say, plainly, "my daughter". I have a daughter, too, and I always refer to her, in my astoundingly smug Canuckistan manner, as "my daughter", which is not very exciting or cute.)

    Anyway, Patrick Stewart is a very good actor. He was in a Beckett play recently in New York. Very good at what he does. James Lileks has favoured us with his Dubious Recipes. Oh, that's not fair. This is:

    Great job, Pat! Nice of you to wad up all the goodwill you've accumulated and flush it down the toilet. ... And this from an Englishman! If he'd been around when first the Brits put out to sea he?d be a wet blanket on the whole idea of boats.
    Yes, I've unfairly selected bits from the whole rant, but it is a hysterical rant. "When first the Brits put out to sea", what's that mean? If he means the English, they're a sea-faring folk who would not live in Britain now unless...well, nobody knows when they "put out to sea". In their "boats". I presume he means sailing and exploring in ocean-going vessels. The thing with that is you should have a good idea of where you're going and how you plan on getting back. Currently there is no way to do that with Mars. Then the earlier bit: What goodwill? Does Lileks think English actors come to America to generate goodwill??!!!! He may actually think that, in his midwest fastness. He may well think that Eddie Izzard comes to America not to make money but to appease the Yanks. That's right. Our Queen has sent these minions over to get good deals from the U.S.

    If he had thought about it for a second, Lileks might have guessed that Stewart meant "Presume not God to scan". There are a whole lot of things to think about here on Earth, and I think Elizabethan voyagers might have agreed.


     — posted by P | at 4:01 PM | |

    I Can't Think of a Clever Pun


    · I suspect everyone goes through a period in their teens when they decide, having witnessed their nutjob parents' going on at each other, that marriage is a bit of a business, probably a failing one. But my parents were always pleased when any of us announced we were to be married, as, I suppose, everyone raises a cheer when a ship pulls out of the harbour. Some famous rabbi said that people are sad at a funeral and happy at a birth, when it should be the other way around: at a man's death he has come home safely, while at birth the future is uncertain and dangerous. I think he used the image of the ship leaving or returning to its harbour.

    The famous French singer Georges Trenet has this to say about intelligence conceptions of Iraq's putative WMDs. Clausewitz wrote that military intelligence tends to be wrong, so I don't think people ought to waste time and money on some kind of inquisition. Intelligence can be a lot of things: what's in the papers, who said what, what kind of traffic is observed on which highway. The important thing is evaluation. Is it true? Is it important? And that's where outsiders can get into the game. Think back to the KAL 007 incident, upon which both Schultz and Reagan claimed that the Soviet pilots and their controllers knew for a fact that they had a civilian aircraft in their space, and shot it down anyway. Yet this was not so. They were forced to make a ghastly mistake. People may like to argue about this, but I can't find any convincing alternative explanation.


     — posted by P | at 2:49 PM | |

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

    More about Libération


    · A Libération journalist in Washington has a weblog about the U.S. election: "La Course à la Maison blanche". Some interesting items: John Kerry has French cousins that he used to play with as a child, and speaks French. One of the cousins, Brice Lalonde, was himself a French presidential candidat. Both Kerry and Dean say they would make Clinton their special envoy to the Middle East. I must have missed that in the deluge of stuff.

    A great poet: Gerald Nerval. I think he's rather underrated now, and it's surprising that no one takes him up. You could make a movie based on his works. Get Gerald Depardieu to play him.

    From an interview with Dick Wolfe, producer of Law & Order, by Kitteridge at Apocrypha

    Q: As I understand, NBC was very instrumental in the removal of Richard Brooks.
    A: Richard Brooks and Dann Florek. Warren [Littlefield, then NBC President] called me up at the end of the third season and he said, "I'm giving you a cancellation notice a year early." And I said, "I know people don't like the show, but that's a little extreme." He said no, "Unless you put women in the show, the show is cancelled for next year." And I said, "I can't just add women, I have to get rid of characters." And he said, "Yep, you do." That was the worst phone call -- it was horrible. And I think Dann, if you talk to him, I certainly remember the phone call, I said, "Dann, I'm going to tell you something you are not going to believe. You have been unbelievable, you've shown up on time every day, every episode, you've known your lines, you've never bumped into the furniture, you've got a great demeanor, you're fired." And he went, "What?" And I said, "No, that's it."
    I just have to think that it was harsh on two very good actors. The thing is, though, I don't care for these shows that have my ignorant, aggressive grade 3 teacher telling cops what to do and intimidating suspects. I didn't care for her


     — posted by P | at 2:57 PM | |

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The Subbasement


Bibliography


  Old Books
... without the dust

 

 


· Ors, Eugenio d', 1882-1954. Oceanografia del tedio; Historias de las esparragueras. Madrid: Calpe, 1921.

Eugenio d'Ors was born in Barcelona in 1881, studied law and philosophy, became an art critic and essayist, and gradually developed his own peculiar ideas, exemplified in this delightful, short work, which he wrote in Spanish (rather than Catalan) around 1919. The Spanish Civil War caught him in Paris, where he remained for the duration. Though not an activist, he would have been unwelcome at home because of his Catalan sympathies.

The author, or a character referred to throughout as "Autor", opens his story by explaining that his doctor had instructed him, for the sake of his health, to do absolutely nothing. He's not even alowed to think about anything. "Ni un movimiento, ni un pensamiento!", the doctor says. He therefore spends all his time in a lawn chair looking at clouds, wondering about scents that waft past, in short, doing nothing. And yet everything, in a way. It's a wonderful story about inaction, just the sort of thing for someone who spends a lot of time looking at weblogs.

· Tabori, Paul. The Natural Science of Stupidity. Philadelphia: Chilton Co., 1959.

The author, who was born in 1908, discusses stupidity. He explains how the Yap people of the Pilau Islands use stone disks, some of them the size of millstones, as currency. The largest stones are more like real estate: you could buy one, and your wealth would be ensured. Then he goes on about King Solomon's mines, which he connects with this passage in Kings I, 9.

He has a lot to say about popular beliefs, crazes, and things. It's a shame he wrote long before conspiracy theories really came into their own.


   
  

  Georges Duhamel
Select Bibliography

 

 


Duhamel, Georges, Le desert de Bièvres. Paris: Mercure de France, 1930.

—, Biographie de mes fantômes, 1901-1906. Paris: P. Hartmann, 1944.

—, Chroniques des Pasquier. Paris: Mercure de France, 1933-

—, Essai sur le roman. Paris: M. Lesage, 1925.

—, Fables de mon jardin, suivi de Mon royaume. Paris: Mercure de France, 1961.

—, Israël, clef de l'Orient. Paris: Mercure de France, 1957.

—, Les plaisirs et les jeux, mémoires du cuib et du tioup. Paris: Mercure de France, 1946.

—, Récits des temps de guerre. Paris: Mercure de France, 1949.

—, Souvenirs de la vie du paradis. Paris: Mercure de France, 1906.


   
  

Annals of Public Neurosis


  Peace Tricks
April 2002

 

 


"The month-long standoff at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound looked to be nearing its conclusion as U.S. and British security experts arrived in the region to implement a U.S.-brokered plan."
—CNN, April 29, 2002.

The current talks between the U.S. and everyone else seem to be even more impenetrable than usual, probably because it's difficult to imagine what they might possibly have to talk about. Surely they have exhausted every topic, scoured every useless path many times over, checked and re-checked even the most unpromising approaches? In which case these talks most closely resemble a kind of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, enacted in the curious privacy of public life. We've no idea what they're saying, or what they really want, but we get daily, even hourly reports of this activity of theirs. We don't get the details, or even the gist, of what was discussed, but we are assured that some talking is going on, and that there will be more talking later.

Patients who show signs of obsessive-compulsive behaviour typically find themselves incapable of getting important things done—or even of confronting their most pressing problems. They therefore busy themselves with something they can do effectively, often to the exclusion of all else. Tidying up the bus shelter, making absolutely sure they take x number of steps before opening the front door, and so on. Obviously, the significance of the activities performed can vary: some things are a fairly useful by-product of otherwise misdirected energies; others are of rather doubtful value, at least to the secular world. So it is with political discussions and "U.S.-brokered" peace plans. Some do produce unusual fruit, though not always the expected one, while others have a more magical quality, as if the participants were involved in some sort of Hermetic, alchemical work designed to bring about peace by causing it to be acted out in a symbolic drama.


   
  

Almost a Complete Thought


 

 

 


· Watching a movie. Wait! Is the guy screwing up my correct view of things? Or was my view untenable to begin with? Certainly he can point to his successful career as proof of some rectitude. But maybe he's so clever, so cunning, that he succeeds in the teeth of madness. A prosaic blend of fantasy and reality!


· I was watching some crime show. The crime has already been committed. Snazzy men and women arrive at the crime scene and take swabs, wear rubber gloves, pose in their outfits. Wait, is this a fashion show? Meanwhile ... let's look at this corpse really closely. Dear me. Ugh, can we stop looking at that for a bit? It's a pretty horrible crime. And so messy!

"Look, Lt. I've been examining some filth and discovered who the 'perp' is."

"Good. Let us now set our jaws grimly."


· I read somewhere that when you are watching TV, your brain is less active than when you are asleep. I find this bizarre, because I often dream that I'm watching TV.


· Most movies are much better with the sound off, so you can make up your own, more entertaining dialogue. Also, it starts to get intriguing. You end up wondering what's going to happen next, because all sorts of inexplicable things keep happening.


   
  

Stories


  A Story
Subtitle

 

 


It's too bad. If I could think of a story offhand, I would write it in this space; that's what you would be reading. Instead, there is only this inconsequential, self-regarding excuse for not being able to come up with anything.

Of course, I think the reader is doing very well so far. Remarkably well. I thing the reader comes out of this whole thing smelling like a rose. He has done his job. No, the reader is above reproach. His record is unblemished. Some readers even go that extra step and look for coded messages in the few paragraphs made available to them. That shows resourcefulness, valour — I think.


   
  

  Reveille
A Miniature Fascist Dictator

 

 


There was a miniature Fascist dictator in the departure lounge of the airport, Ted noticed. About four feet high, eighty pounds, sallow complexion, neatly trimmed black moustache, wearing a khaki uniform of some kind.

Was he planning a small Putsch? A Measure? What pint-sized dreams of conquest did he have? "Our National party is stronger - we are in no way diminished," he may have imagined himself saying. "Now, if I say to you that our Party's goal is nothing less than to revendicate that which we have lost, that which is historically our due; to reclaim our patrimony ..." Is that what was going on in his head? Was he on his way somewhere, or coming from somewhere? Going into exile, or returning from it? Escaping? Seeking?

Ted decided to follow him until he could come up with some further course of action. But the man wasn't really doing anything. Just wandering around with a container of coffee, keeping an eye on the brown satchel and shopping bags he had left on one of the naugahyde-and-aluminium benches. He paused in front of the windows that looked onto the airfield. His nostrils flared at the sight of massed passenger aircraft. Then he sauntered over to the other side of the lounge and studied some posters. Ted pretended to inspect a model lobster trap in a display case nearby.

They toured the lounge in stages and, even before the small man glanced back at him, Ted was already lost in thought beneath an departure-and-arrivals screen. "Am I supposed to do something?" he wondered. "Is there some history going on here, somewhere?" But how would one know?

Ted then discreetly followed him back to the coffee bar. Apparently he wanted another coffee. There were several customers before them, and in the time it took for them to be served, Ted was almost able to identify the small man's scent: Lancôme for Men? His choice of coffee, too, was unusual, a decaffeinated Ethiopian flavour. He went back to his original bench. Ted loitered just behind him, undecided. Unprepared. Shall I say something? What's he doing?

Looking at his ticket again.

Sipping his coffee, sucking a great deal of air between pursed lips just over the steaming surface of the coffee. Too hot.

Consulting the contents of his satchel once again, just to verify that he had everything he would need for his trip. Ted, peering over his shoulder, caught sight of a volume of Pablo Neruda, Jane Eyre, and a stuffed toy rabbit.

Putting his coffee down, digging with both hands in one of the shopping bags, the one that had some sort of environmentalist logo on it. Nous recyclons!

Recovering a pair of sunglasses. Putting them on! Expensive ones!

"Excuse me - okay if I sit down?"

"Eh? Oh, please. Yes, yes - you are quite welcome."

Ted sat down wearily. "I've been travelling all day, I hope you don't mind."

The other nodded rapidly. "It is very tiresome, all this travelling," he said. "I myself have been up since very early, making connecting flights. And still my day is not over."

Ted seized the thing roundly. "What sort of business are you in, if it's no harm to ask?"

"I am a consultant. Specialising in pharmaceutical trade." The little dictator removed his sunglasses and began to polish them on his handkerchief.

Well, at least he wasn't a jack-booted thug!

"I am not used to talking to fewer than five thousand people at a time", he continued, "for fear of being misunderstood. However, I shall make a beginning.

"It is horrifying to think of the consequences of chance. One man begins a great career as an officer in the European Theatre; another, no less gifted, has his head blown off as soon as he steps out of the landing craft. Why does that happen? Who is to blame? Who will account for it?"

Here the little man swigged his coffee. Ted noted that his hair, seemingly dark brown, was really an artificial boot-brown colour. Ted formed a reply: "Well, I suppose it would depend how you look - "

But the other man was not to be denied: "It is no accident that the corporate hegemony of a small group of - "

Ted sprang into action. More on that next week.


   
  

  Fun at Home
A Pious Memory

 

 


When Chris heard God had invited Himself to the party, he thought it was all over. There was probably no getting around it, though. "What they do on tv", said Bill, "is invite a Catholic priest, a Rabbi, and a minister as well. To sort of get their collective spin on it."

"But this isn't a tv show", said Chris, "it's a party. A little get-together for a bunch of friends, some of whom are leaving in a couple weeks. And anyway, that approach always comes off as a tired, unfunny joke, predictable, you know...I don't know why everyone acts as if tv meant something."

"Yeah. I had this dream I was watching tv last night. But then I realised dreams are kind of like tv, only not as good. We'd better go to the liquor store."

"Just let me get my coat."

God phoned around 8:00 to say He would be along soon. "Want me to bring anything?" he asked.

"Just yourself, man," said Chris. People always brought too much junk. There was always a surplus of snack-food bags and dip the next day.

"Okay", said God. "After all, I am That Am, you know."

People started turning up a little later:

"Sheila!" said Chris, greeting one of his guests, "So you managed to find the address."

"Yeah - sorry I'm late, but - "

"No problem. So, are you excited about your new job?"

"Yes, it's - "

"Dirk!" said Chris, greeting another guest, "Glad you could make it, are you excited about the new job?"

"Well - it's kind of not what I'm looking for, but it's in the right area. And I didn't want to have to move to - "

"And your girlfriend? Is she ...?"

"In Norway." And he began to look as if he would like to scowl, but instead turned to the consuming business of installing some cans of beer in the fridge. Other people skulked around the kitchen. A party had erupted.

A little later Chris noticed God levelling a tequila shot and saying, "I'm gonna have a wicked case of the guilts tomorrow."

God put cucumber slices over his eyes and said, "Look at Me. I am become weird."

Around 2:00 am God hooked up His guitar and started playing "Stairway to Heaven" really loud. Most of the people who had fallen asleep woke up and staggered back to the party. He played pretty well. Then He segued into "Born to be Wild", which He played rather better. The sheer noise was an audial colossus, making the dishes tremble even in the kitchen.

"Get Him out of here, the man's an animal," said Bill.

Chris looked at God from the door into the kitchen. "Oh, I don't know. I don't think he's going to do anything too serious."

"No, I mean the noise. The neighbours'll be like - "

"Any problem?" asked God. He was coming to get some more wine. Since He was no longer playing the guitar there didn't seem to by any need to admonish Him.

A little later something happened. But was that before or after the police dropped by? And later still, God was found lying in the driveway. They carried Him into a bedroom.

Is He ok?

Did He hurt himself?

In the morning they opened the bedroom door to find He had gone.

"Now what do we do?" asked Chris.


   
  

  At the —
History of Painting

 

 


I am confronted with a roomful of wild canvases, one every three feet or so. I should like to be able to make something of them, of each one, I am eager to look and see. I so want this to be a happy occasion, matching the success of my haircut, clean shirt, and the perfectly-lit, high- ceilinged gallery in which I find myself. The first work is a smear of toothpaste on a background of tar. Okay, I'll come back to it. The next one is a painting of a doll with severe injuries. I would rather not look at that for too long. Next: a smear of something on an untreated canvas. This is interesting. What is that stuff? Has it been melted on? Next: a big smear on a big canvas. It is faintly s-shaped, like a meandering river of industrial waste through an indifferent wilderness. I suspect that polysaccharides have contributed to the very exciting texture. But once again we are confronted with the work.

A man behind me starts explaining the historical phonology of Tibetan, making it all a bit clearer by citing some examples from Proto-Tibeto-Burman, and a few moments later I am smoking a cigarette outside somewhere.


   
  

  Fifty Toyes
A Story for Children

 

 


Before B. retired to his room for the rest of his life, people kept coming up to him and complaining, "I've run out of ideas. I don't know what to think about any more," and he would reply, "How can I help? Why would you think I could help? I haven't had a thought in years. I have stared into space, chatted with people I supposedly know, watched tv, read weekly news magazines. I've watched grown men play with each other as a form of entertainment. I haven't really had to think. Moreover, I am retiring now because of a general lack of benevolence. Also, I can't find my umbrella, which makes my going out a non-starter, kind of. I may set fire to a bundle of words and pour a can of emotions over them later, so - drop in whenever. I would enjoy the company. You know." All this to forestall the observation that he was, himself, lazy and indifferent, or was merely hiding from something. Of course he had books and a tv, so what harm could there be in not going anywhere? However, reasonable people can no longer hope to get very far by argumentation that appeals to reason, since they are probably arguing with unreasonable people, as statistics can be made to show. And as he thought this, it occurred to him: compiling statistics was one of the innumerable things he could do now, in the freedom of his room.


   
  

  Anne of Green Gables
A Part of Our Heritage

 

 


Anne of Green Gables. Anne of Green Gables. Anne of Green Gables. Do people never tire of that? Anne of Green Gables. Based on the novel Anne of Green Gables. I assume there was such a person, once: Anne of Green Gables. I sort of wondered about her after I had heard the name for, oh, the ten thousandth time. I read somewhere that "Anne of Green Gables is a trademark and a Canadian official mark of the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority Inc." So you see? If you were thinking of calling your novel Anne of Green Gables, don't. You understand why that would be wrong, don't you? People would accuse you of trying to "cash in", so to speak, and that would tend to cast a mercenary shadow over the spirit of Anne of Green Gables. The argument of the novel Anne of Green Gables is as follows: some people want to adopt a boy who can help out on the farm; they are disappointed when they get a girl instead. This girl is Anne Shirley, later to be known as Anne of Green Gables and, later still, as a trademark and a Canadian official mark of the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority Inc. She has red hair and freckles, she is irrepressible, and she proves to be just as good as any boy, in fact much, much better. This bodes well for the whole community. That's the whole plot. Probably quicker to identify it by its children's literature motif number.

The book could have been called Anne of Green Gables Makes Her Bones, but that makes for rather a long title. It could have been more interesting, though: Anne would be the village drunk, stealing other women's menfolk, dealing drugs, and coming home in the morning to threaten her foster parents with the .22 and demand money. Eventually she gets an important job in the government through some people she used to party with. But this is not what happens in Anne of Green Gables. Nowhere do you hear of her being an alcoholic, or having her neglected children taken into charge, or her endless squabbles with social services, or her many appearances in court accompanied by a different leering car thief each time. None of that appears in the novel Anne of Green Gables, or in any of the other canonical Anne books. Why is that?


   
  
· Here you'll find rather more irrelevant mini essays, roughly categorized somehow. I wish I could be more clear.

· Bibliographical Notes
— Old Books
— Duhamel Bibliography
· Annals of Public Neurosis
— Peace Tricks
· Almost a Complete Thought
· Stories
— Reveille
— Fun at Home
— A Story
— At the —
— A Story for Children
— Anne of Green Gables
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