As I reread Edward Whittemore’s “Jerusalem Quartet” for the second time in two years, David Gates asks in his Newsweek piece, “Now, Read it Again”, why some books reward revisiting:
The simple answer is that they give me joy. They fill me with the voices of people I know, thousands of them—many times the number in that old Dickens print—the real and the imagined, the living and the dead. Heaven may be like this eventually, but why wait around when it’s right here, right now?
In a world growing progressively worse—a universal rather than a personal declaration; I quite enjoy my life despite their scabships best attempts to ruin it through their foolish and self-aggrandising behaviour—there’s something wonderfully reassuring about revisiting a beloved novel, finding comfort in well-trodden words, even if the words themselves simply reflect back the world in all its budding bleakness.
Methinks Bulwer-Lytton is the perfect outlet for Paul Krugman’s wretched writing when the old grey lady dies.
On that note, congratulations to David McKenzie, winner of this year’s grand prize in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’ east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.
I dedicate this week of purposeful non-recycling to Paul Krugman, the old grey lady’s fool-in-residence.
And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason—treason against the planet.
That’s perhaps the cheesiest, violin-swelling crap I’ve ever read. Were you really trying to make me laugh?
Well guess what, Paulie? Que será será, and there isn’t a bloody thing you or anyone else can do about it.
If you want to throw around the treason charge, the grand goodist king of fools, Al Gore, should be incarcerated for the rest of his natural life for treason against humanity. In fact, every politician should be locked up for life, the filthy criminals.
I don’t think you can comprehend how animated living flesh is until you’ve seen the life taken from it right before your eyes.
What a great shame The West is led by spineless politicians more interested in reelection than in supporting man’s inexorable desire for freedom.
From the Times, Babak Zamanian’s Western wish:
I know what it is like to be locked up by the regime we have in Iran. . . .
[In April 2007] I was held in solitary confinement for 40 days while agents from the Ministry of Intelligence tried to force me to confess on television that I was working for American interests. I was held in a windowless cell, interrogated every other day, beaten and locked up for 48 hours in a room with flashing lights and sirens. I went on hunger strike, lost 35lb and still have nightmares, but I did not give them the lie they wanted. . . .
Two days ago I slipped out briefly on to the streets and it was terrifying—riot police and security men everywhere. There was an atmosphere of terror.
But what do they do about it in the West? Some of the politicians behave as if nothing special has happened. One says the nuclear negotiation is the priority and another one politely asks the masters to deal better with the people. And some apologists pretend to speak on behalf of the people of Iran and ask the Western governments not to get involved in the condemnation of killings, calling it “interference”. . . .
I fear a huge bloodbath is on the way and the world better react now, as soon as possible, before it is too late. Experience has shown us that if you appease these demons they will become ever more outrageous but if you stand up to them firmly, they will draw back like cowards.
The West must show a reaction to the human rights abuses that are taking place here; otherwise the people of Iran will lose all faith in the claims of the West that they truly respect human rights.
Unfortunately, the true cowards are our Western “leaders” who stand before us daily on the TV and in the headlines and who arrogantly ignore our Western promise.
Just as Ahmadinejad and Khamenei do not represent the Iranian people, the vile scabships of the West do not represent me.
Spiked’s Rob Lyons on the UK government’s latest report on the possible effects of climate change, “Adapting to Climate Change”:
The first thing to note is that for Britain, the levels of absolute temperatures and rainfall patterns presented in the report are not a major problem. To put it in perspective, even if the worst-case scenarios occurred, the warmest part of Britain would still almost certainly be cooler than the French region of Provence is today, an area so disastrously blighted by its weather that middle-class English people spend all their time fantasising about owning a home there.
And for a brief shining moment, my beloved yet thoroughly screwed England (thanks to her nannying scabships) suddenly looked home-worthy again.
Imagine: Saturday afternoon’s at Anfield, watching the Reds while sipping pastis and nibbling on olives.
Argh!
Please, please please: Stop over-analysing every little thing.
Some things are just things. And, sorry Bill, is simply is.
Over-analysis’s neither clever nor intellectually stimulating. The propensity to over-analyse means a) you’re dreadfully self-absorbed; and b) you have too much free time on your hands.