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
Doctors and their Advice
· Doctors are often not good at the human thing, and neither are lawyers. You would think it would not be so, yet many of them seem to have cut the "How to Talk to Human Beings" classes. Years ago I was taking a small child for a walk, and some old age pensioner drew near and said: "Is that your baby?Yes? Better look after heror else be shot!" I had the impression he was a doctor because he seemed to be cultivating the manner of the lovable, irascible GP, and no other explanation was possible. Or maybe he was just an old maniac, I don't know. Either way, I considered breaking his face for him. Since then I've had similar, indirect, experiences with doctors of various kinds. A psychologist who didn't know that mothers sometimes despise their daughters. A GP who prescribed what I can only call snake oil to heal cancer. And recently a GP who treats her patients as if they were already floating in a jereboam of formaldehyde.
Having said that, I now come to the business of "Dr Suarez", half of the team at Protocols of the Yuppies of Zion. Here's their minibio:
He's a Democrat, she's a Republican.
He's from LA, she's from New York.
He's a Mets fan, she's a Yankees fan.
He loves Hollywood, she loves Broadway.
He's Doctor Suarez, she's Asparagirl.
And this is their blog.
It's almost like the premise ditty to an old sitcom. For example, the old patty Duke Show: "When cousins! Are two of a kind!" Anything could happen, given this incredible diversity. Let the wackiness ensue. Here's a bit:
Um, yas. There's always a bit of a downside to wars. I think the idea that wars principally save lives deserves some examination, at least in the sense that they claim a lot of lives, and people are usually unsatisfied with the results.
From Saudi Arabia where women cannot drive a car or walk outside without an accompanying male relative, to Egypt where the percentage of women whose clitoris and labia have been hacked off approaches 90%, to the West Bank where a woman's greatest possible achievement--and source of income--is that her child has blown himself up in a pizza shop, women across the Arab world are having their souls crushed by the societies they lived in. If we can liberate these women and reduce the pathological misogyny in these cultures by modernizing and, yes, Westernizing them, is that not to the benefit of these women, and for humanity as a whole? The women of Afghanistan have seen this--lived this!--within recent memory, and the women of Japan more distantly, both times expressly due to war waged by Americans. War can save womens' lives--or vastly improve them.
I don't know how deeply Japanese women are grateful fo the war. Maybe they liked it, I've no idea.
Well, maybe I shouldn't have written the above. I only mean that wars are unpredictable and often don't accomplish what they're meant to.
posted by P | at 2:07 PM | |
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 fromloud, 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 thingsa shady grove, thoughts about God, or lifeis 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 | |
- 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 linksParliament, 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 upthree 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.
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.
posted by P | at 1:22 PM | |
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Back for Another Try
· Ralph Nader trying to make himself useful:"After careful thought and my desire to retire our supremely elected president," Nader said on NBC, in a reference to the Supreme Court decision that settled the 2000 presidential race, "I've decided to run as an independent candidate for president."
I wonder if he and Ross Perot hang out together. They seem to think alike. What they ought to do is team up and form a party. Only think of the synergy of these two. Insane, ranting businessman, cranky environmentalist. A little something for no one.
Movies
· Keanu Reeves has been in a lot of crummy movies but is, himself, a good actor within certain limits. Devil's Advocate was fine until the end, when it turned into a piece of screaming idiocy. Two drawbacks: the annoying, unhappy wife familiar from every other movie about sticky situations ("Honey, I hate it here, let's leave") and the non-story involving Satan. I don't think it's possible to write an interesting story with Satan actually in it. Rosemary's Baby was interesting until the end, which looked like a boring joke.
Aside from that, Reeves could be an actor with the magnificent qualities of James Stewart. Like Stewart, Reeves can't do Shakespeare or Marlowe, but just imagine him in a movie like Rear Window. The average dude in extraordinary circumstances.
posted by P | at 12:45 PM | |
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Iraq Weblog
· Something new: The Dreyfuss Report, by Bob Dreyfuss, at Tom Paine. I'm not sure how this link will work, since the report is part of a "parent" entity. His links are: TalkLeft, Talking Points Memo, Kausfiles, Altercation, Cursor, etc., so he seems somewhat unconservative. (via Maxspeak).
posted by P | at 4:02 PM | |
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 | |
More Things for Governments to Do
· In the Spectator (painless registration now required) a punchy article about government concerns with obesity, the next bad behaviour after tobacconism:
The other complaint one hears, almost as a mantra, is that we take insufficient exercise — particularly our children. They lie in front of their computer screens or DVDs, belching and farting as they consume their endless supply of fizzy drinks and family-size bags of prawn-cocktail crisps. And yet it is here, ironically, that society maybe should shoulder a little of the blame. Children always lay in front of the television when allowed so to do; there is nothing particularly new in this. But it is much more difficult for them, these days, to venture out on to the mean and dangerous streets without — so the parents have been led to believe — being accosted by the vast legions of raincoat-bedecked kiddie-fiddlers at large in our town centres with their bags of sherbet lemons and whispered promises of puppies. We have been led into a ridiculous state of paranoia about paedophiles and a concomitant suffocating overprotectiveness towards our children. The age at which kids are allowed out to play by themselves has risen from five years (1970s) to almost nine years (1997). The children want to play outside — but apparently we won’t let them.
I'm not sure that the writer succeeds in making the connection, but it's a talking point.
A nice phrase: "self-righteous medical clergy".
Less to Worry About, Maybe:
· "Trace amounts" usually means just that.
WASHINGTONInvestigators seeking the source of the ricin detected two weeks ago in a Senate office building have raised the possibility that the positive test that forced the evacuation of lawmakers and staff members may have been caused by paper byproducts, not the deadly poison, NBC News has learned.TV viewers will recall the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine tests positive for opium because she has been eating poppyseed rolls. (via Unqualified Offerings)
posted by P | at 11:56 AM | |
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
- 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 finallya 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.
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:
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 Queacute;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
- 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.
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?
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 referencea most learned onewhich, 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.
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.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
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."
posted by P | at 2:57 PM | |