fugio

When worlds collide

2004-11-20T01:05:00.000-05:00

"Pupils were left in tears after a teacher told them that an asteroid was about to hit Earth and kill them all."

Keith Hogan, head teacher at St Matthew's RC High School in Moston, Manchester, said he regretted any distress caused to the 230 pupils.

The head of year behind the assembly "stunt" later moved to reassure them.

He had told the year nine students that the asteroid was on a "collision course".

It is also believed that the students were told that they should go home and say "final farewells" to their families.

The teacher then admitted the story was a stunt aimed at underlining the theme of the assembly - "living each day to the full".

Heh.

Heh heh.

Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh!

Or am I too cruel?

Get the humanoid!

2004-11-19T01:12:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Last alerts us to the nifty Killer List of Video Games (arcade games, that is). It's fascinating, and hauls up distant memories of a misspent youth. Here's a sample bit of trivia about a little game called Donkey Kong:

The early cabinets also had a trick that could be done with a drinking straw to give unlimited gameplay. A straw inserted in the middle outside section of the upper hinge would turn sideways inside the machine and be positioned just above the credit switch. By jiggling the straw up and down, you could get up to 99 credits in seconds.

Why couldn't I have known about this back in '81?

SteynOnHiatus

2004-11-18T20:34:00.000-05:00

I hate to say this, but I've lost a few molecules of respect for my favorite columnist, Anglo-Canado-New Hampshirite Mark Steyn:

For personal and family reasons, this website will be on hiatus for a while.

etc.

It makes his vow to quit his job, on condition of a Kerry victory, look somewhat snakey. If he suspected all along that he'd need to take a break, then the wager is emptied of its value.

I'm carping, I know. I miss Mark, and want him back. (sniff)

They must be members of the Green Party

2004-11-18T20:20:00.000-05:00

Lynn Hirschberg relates an amusing anecdote in the New York Times (via Arts & Letters Daily):

The day before "Shrek 2" was set to have its premiere at Cannes, DreamWorks's representatives placed large plastic bags full of green Shrek ears along the Croisette, the bustling beachfront walkway that dominates the action in Cannes. Even before the festival began, it was feared that protesting French workers would shut it down over a labor dispute. On this day, a group of hundreds gathered outside the Carlton Hotel to denounce the war in Iraq. They were chanting in French for about 45 minutes, until the police broke up the demonstration. Then, as the protesters dissipated into the throng on the Croisette, I watched them, one by one, put on the free Shrek ears. They were attracted, it seemed, by the ears' goofiness and sheer recognizability. Immediately, the crowd, once filled with political fervor, was transformed into a sea of cartoon characters.

Lefto-French protestors into cartoon characters? If you ask me, that's not much of a transmogrification.

Hirschberg sees this (and other things) as an indictment of current Hollywood philistinism, and so it is. But the rest of the planet is encouraging cinematic tripe.

Britain, Ireland, Canada: be forewarned

2004-11-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

Hollywood celebs aren't the only folks who want to leave America under the hated Bush regime. The BBC has found a few normal citizens (or nearly so) with the urge to flee:

Brian Boyko, 25, postgrad journalism student:

"I think it'll probably start with gay people and Muslim Americans, those likely to be the scapegoats. Something is rotten here. I'm just smelling it earlier than some other people. Even though I voted for the other guy, I'm still going to have my nationality associated with the death and destruction the next four years will bring, and I'd rather not. So I'm looking to reject this society and find another one."

First they came for the gays, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn't gay. Then they came for the Muslims, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Muslim. Then they came for the journalism students....

Yeah, you're smelling it all right, Boyko. (If you look at his pic, you'll be certain this is the first time that Boyko is the one doing the "rejecting".)

Ian Mitroff, 66, USC professor:

"I'm in an immense quandary about what to do. Another pointless war would make me go or if gay bashing and bashing of liberals gets so serious that tolerance is broken down, you would feel in fear of your safety. I love my country and am proud to be an American, but I don't think I have ever been as down about this country as I am now."

At 66, Mitroff has lived through: Japanese interment camps, Joe McCarthy, the Vietnam War, Watergate. Topping them all are the current anti-gay/liberal pogroms, which, if you look out your window right now, you'll see going on in the streets.

Peggy Bowen, 57, lawyer:

"Freud stayed in Vienna until Hitler had completely taken over the country, but I don't want to be wrong about when it's time to leave. My fear is that I won't know when to get out."

Oh, yes. And then they came for the lawyers.

Hm. America without our J-students, without our lefty profs, without our high-priced attorneys...?

(insincerely) Wait. Come back. Please don't go.

Oh, well. I tried.

Nothing to see here!

2004-11-08T01:14:00.000-05:00

This must have been the coolest thing to happen in Denmark so far this millennium: a fire in a fireworks factory. Just look at the picture!

I have nothing to add

2004-11-08T01:05:00.000-05:00

Blimpish has up his best post ever:

Morality, Left and Right

Do you share my problem?

2004-11-07T23:38:00.000-05:00

It's because Allahpundit has been so long since updating his blog, and because I check it most every day, that I cannot get the phrase "hot-dogging pony boy" out of my head.

Hot-dogging pony boy!

Hot-dogging pony boy!

Hot-dogging pony boy!

Hot-dogging pony boy!

No, ho

2004-11-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

At lunch today I overheard, from the girl couple in the booth behind, about the moral imperative and general goodness of assassinating President Bush.

Northampton, Mass., what a charming town!

Smiley's people

2004-11-07T22:19:00.000-05:00

Making its way -- or as I should probably say, having made its way (I'm late on the uptake, I know) -- through the webvine is Jane Smiley's hyperventilating piece in Slate, on why Americans voted for George W. Bush (for me, found in The Corner). Answer: "ignorance and bloodlust". Of course! (smacks forehead.)

Anyway, in the opening paragraph is a possible clue to the etiology of Smiley's perfervid loony-leftism:

I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.)

Most readers, I think, will seize on that ironical final sentence -- how can someone who characterizes 50+% of her fellow countrymen as ignorant complain about feelings of superiority in others? -- and move on to the next contradiction.

For me, the demeaning references to the author's family recalled John Lukacs' statement that every American Communist he had ever met had been deeply hurt sometime in his life. Loony-leftism is not the same as Communism, I know, but note this: in her most famous work, A Thousand Acres, the character of the overbearing father is discovered to have perpetrated incest (tip: Dymphna, commenting in Belmont). I'm not saying that Acres is strictly autobiographical in that sense, but it could be that the author's hostility to her family pushed her to that plotline.

In my lmited experience, thought, the opposite is more frequent: despite the constant bruiting of "rebellion", "subversion", "nonconformity", etc., most simply pick it up pur et dur from their mom and dad.

Happy happy, joy joy

2004-11-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

I've been spending lots of recent time with the new DVD release of Ren and Stimpy. It had been years, and I'd only half remembered the dramaturgical dyad of fat cat and scrawny dog. I had wondered, had they lost any of their bloom? Nope. They remain as crazily hilarious as ever. I wouldn't recommend a marathon session (it could be harmful, I feel, to one's sanity), but even when they're not making you laugh out loud, the show is still weirdly riveting.

And, contrary to certain rumors, you don't have to be "high" to watch this cartoon.

Outside of everything else, it's nice to see an animated cartoon -- especially, an animated television cartoon, that takes care to produce high-quality artwork. The backgrounds especially are admirable, in a way unseen since Warner Brothers in the 1940's (acclaim for this going mostly to Bill Wray).

In summation: It's better than bad -- it's good!

Arrrgh!

2004-11-04T22:17:00.000-05:00

Readers will note that I usually update this blog (new Verse of the Month, Site of the Month, etc.) at the top of the month, but I'm currently experiencing some kinda Blogger infarction. I will keep trying....

Battle cry of freedom

2004-11-04T20:34:00.000-05:00

Looking at the national election map you can see that this country is more divided, geographically, than at any other time since the Civil War.

Not predicting anything dire here, just pointing that out.

(For me, the best thing about this election result is that Mark Steyn will stay in the columnist biz.)

Republican style

2004-11-04T20:04:00.000-05:00

John Derbyshire in The Corner:

What a beautiful place Faneuil (sp?) Hall is, in that austere American republican style -- a style I suddenly realise I like very much.

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm aware, in fact, of a sort of emotional aftershock kicking in -- ignited, somehow, by contemplating that beautiful hall while Edwards was speaking. It's all-embracing and all-forgiving. What a country this is! What a country! What a people! For a moment here, I'll confess it freely, I even like John Kerry.

This is as good an advertisement as any for going back to the old humanist values in architecture. I wonder, would Derb's reaction have been the opposite if the speech been in front of City Hall (a.k.a. "The Bunker")? (To Kerry-Edwards, I mean, not to the esthetics of the place).

The Joy of Sox

2004-10-28T22:56:00.000-04:00

I watched Game Four in two bars.

In the first bar, just before the starting pitch a patron sat down opposite to me. He looked up at the television and said to no one in particular, "Johny Damon hits a home run to lead off the game for the Red Sox!" One second later, Johnny Damon hit a home run to lead off the game for the Red Sox.

It was that kind of Series.

Jay Nordlinger has a recurring thought:

What a pity that some people had to spend their entire lives under Russia's Communist regime. Evgeny Mravinsky, for example — the great conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic — was born in 1903 and died in 1988. He had his whole, long career under those brutes, not a day before, not a day after.

My father, a lifelong Sox fan, met a similar fate. He was born seven years too late, and he died seven years too soon. He had never seen the Red Sox victorious at the end of the season.

Myself, I absorbed the '67 Series in utero, the '75 is memories of memories, and '86? Best left forgotten.

Anyway, I basically wanted to explain my sparse blogging. I've been watching way too much TV and drinking way too much in bars. Thanks to all, especially to Sox bloggers Irish Elk, full of lore and nifty images, and the Llama Butchers for their perfect analogy re Boston vs. New York.

May the force be with you!

Dixie echoed April through October nights?

2004-10-21T21:39:00.000-04:00

Jonah Goldberg:

The BoSox curse is old but it's not weird. It's a comfortable bit of lore which adds drama to life. If it disappears the magic and mystery of life will be a teeny bit diminished. Except of course for Red Sox fans, who will be whistling dixie out of every orifice for a year.

Nonsense. We'll be whistling Tessie out of every orifice.

Dispatches from the People's Republic of Masspirgistan

2004-10-21T01:47:00.000-04:00

There's some grievous news from Amherst. Are you sitting down? Good.

For years, the University of Massachusetts had its own polling station, but redistricting (as mandated by the census) took it out. Now, according to our local NPR affiliate, students will be forced on a ten minute journey in order to vote. And that's by bus or car! To vote among, like, normal people!

MASSPIRG, our statewide student agitation gang, finds this way unacceptable. A PIRGer was saying that many UMass students are just not familiar enough with the local topography. At least Bilbo Baggins had that map to help him get to the Lonely Mountain, you know?

The governor, by a special dispensation, could re-install the voting facility on campus. But mean Mister Romney has so far refused. Is there no end to the injustice? If you're at all familiar with MASSPIRG, you know there is never any end to the injustice.

Sic semper tyrannis, like nine flabby grapes

2004-10-21T01:42:00.000-04:00

Boston 10
New York 3

Congratulations and adulations to the Red Sox, this country's most numinous sports team ("the faith" and all). Boston, you are the only, only, only.

Who's umami?

2004-10-18T02:08:00.000-04:00

Dear reader, do you find ketchup fascinating? No? Neither did I, until I perused Malcolm Gladwell's article about the stuff. Really one of the most interesting things I've read for weeks (and this is to praise Gladwell, not to denigrate my reading habits).

(via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Make that one down....

2004-10-18T01:37:00.000-04:00

Boston 6
New York 4

In 12 innings.

Esruc!

Zero down, four to go

2004-10-17T18:46:00.000-04:00

More and more I've been seeing heterodox-colored ball caps worn by Red Sox fans. On the distaff side, pink has been a favorite for a few years. For men, a strange green Sox cap has been proliferating. Jarring at first, it does grow on one.

I therefore propose (especially if the Sox perish in this pennant series) that the team caps and uniforms be switched from red-and-blue to red-and-green. Esthetically, I'd prefer hunter instead of emerald as a complement for Sox scarlet (as deep a green, say, as their current blue). In my most postmodern moments I think that red should be removed altogether (yes, that even their socks should be a differrent color!) but they should remain the "Red Sox"! A stroke of genius, no? No? Well, I'll be sober in the morning.

Anyway, this change would:

1) Add distinction. Most major league baseball teams sport red, blue, or red-and-blue. Green, on the other hand, is worn only by the A's and the Devil Rays.

2) Reverse the Curse (of course).

Quotable

2004-10-15T22:42:00.000-04:00

Omar Bader al-Dafa, ambassador from Qatar, speaks. Miguel Centellas listens, and blogs:

My favorite part of the evening, however, were these little quotes he threw out w/in the answer to his last questions. My favorite's the first one:

"You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate."

"It's better to have a wise enemy, than a foolish friend."

Such wonderfully succinct explanations of diplomacy & realpolitik.

2004-10-15T22:26:00.000-04:00

The more I think about it, the more I admire Mark Steyn's wager-ultimatum with readers of the Irish Times:

As the ne plus ultra of unbalanced right-wing thinkers, it’s not for me to suggest how the US debate might be balanced in these pages. I have only one theory on column-writing, which is this: at a certain basic level, a columnist has to be right more often than not, otherwise the reader (I use the singular advisedly) is just wasting his time. If I were Robert Fisk, the famed foreign correspondent with decades of experience in the Muslim world, I’d be ashamed to leave the house. Sample Fisk headlines on the Afghan war: “Bush Is Walking Into A Trap”, “It Could Become More Costly Than Vietnam”. Sample insight on the Iraq war: when the Yanks announced they’d taken Baghdad International Airport, Fisky insisted they hadn’t and suggested they’d seized an abandoned RAF airfield from the Fifties by mistake. It’s this kind of unique expertise that has made him so admired around the world, not least in Ireland.

By contrast, readers of this column may have gained the impression that George W Bush will win the Presidential election on November 2nd. If he doesn’t, I shall trouble readers of this newspaper no further. It would be ridiculous to continue passing myself off as an incisive analyst of US affairs after I’ve been exposed as a deluded fool who completely misread the entire situation. In the bright new dawn of the Kerry Administration, you’d deserve better. If that’s not an incentive for Irish citizens to smuggle a few illegal campaign contributions the Senator’s way, I don’t know what is.

No Steyn reader will doubt the sincerity of his promise. Mark is the real deal.

Miscellanies

2004-10-05T23:25:00.000-04:00

Final scores:

Boston 9, Anaheim 3
Minnesota 2, New York 0

Heh.

Now don't get me wrong. I want the Yankees to win. Just so the Sox can beat them in the ninth inning, in the seventh game, at Yankee Stadium.

Esruc!

*****************************

Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if there was a "giantass.com".

There is.

*****************************

It's nigh upon peak foliage color here in central Mass. If you're curious and in the vicinity, I don't know of a better town for leaf-looking-at than Harvard. Especially the village of Still River, which is as New England-atumny-picturesque as you can imagine.

Now we know--Springfield is in Minnesota

2004-10-04T09:17:00.000-04:00

Lileks today; some back-and-forth with his daughter (Natalie starts):

“Um – um - His ears were made out of flowers and his hair was made out of spaghetti and meatballs and sauce. Isn’t that a good joke?”

“Needs editing.”

“What’s edading?”

It’s when someone takes a few words away to make what you’re saying sound better.”

“But I don’t want my words taken away.”

“I understand, honey. But sometimes it works better if you use fewer words.”

(Pause)

“In the Princess and the Pauper Barbie movie Princess Anelise’s cat said ‘I got dirt on my bum.’”

If you didn't think immediately of Ralph Wiggum, you haven't been watching enough Simpsons.

Esruc

2004-10-02T01:06:00.000-04:00

Three days premature, I know, but: American League Championship Series = Boston vs. Anaheim + New York vs. Minnesota. The wind is just out of the Athletics' sails. And, to a lesser extent, the Twins'.

Also, I know I'm way slow on the uptake, but I just realized they're called the Angels 'cause they're from Los Angeles (or the vicinity thereof). It took me over thirty years to figure this out. I wonder, is there any team name I don't quite understand, even now? (I worked out the Baltimore Ravens within a few months -- if you don't get the reason, just ask.)

As an aside, is anyone else old enough to remember the Oakland nine as the A's only? You didn't know what that letter stood for, and when you found out, it sounded faintly comical.

Double aside: according to my father (who was old enough to remember) the Boston Braves were similarly abbreviated: the Boston B's. Which, of course, was back when nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say....

The lost language of Sheepartee

2004-09-26T17:40:00.000-04:00

Continuing in the vein of some recent posts, here is an excerpt from Sir Maurice Baring's The Puppet Show of Memory:

We, of course, shared the night nursery, and we soon invented games together, some of which were distracting, not to say maddening, to grown-up people. One was an imaginary language in which even the word "Yes" was a trisyllable, namely: "Sheepartee," and the word for "No" was even longer and more complicated, namely: "Quiliquinino." We used to talk this language, which was called "Sheepartee," and which consisted of unmitigated gibberish, for hours in the nursery, till Hilly, Grace, and Annie could bear it no longer, and Everard came up one evening and told us the language must stop or we should be whipped.

I might have thought anyone named "Everard" too refined to threaten corporal punishment, but there you go.

(Final two cents: As titles go, The Puppet Show of Memory is superb for an autobiography, no? Or should I say, quiliquinino?)

You are the only, only, only

2004-09-25T23:51:00.000-04:00

Every Sox fan (Red, at least) has heard "Tessie", as recorded by the Dropkick Murphys. If you're keen on hearing the century-old original, here 'tis.

(Courtesy of Irish Elk.)

Oh, and final score tonight: Red Sox 12, Yankees 5.

A slice of Oxford life

2004-09-25T21:34:00.000-04:00

People would come in through the window, and syphons would sometimes be hurled across the room; but nobody was ever wounded. The ham would be slapped, and butter thrown to the ceiling, where it stuck. Piles of chairs would be placed in a pinnacle, one on the top of the other, over Arthur Stanley, and someone would climb to the top of this airy Babel and drop ink down on him through the seats of the chairs. Songs were sung; port was drunk and thrown about the room. Indeed we had a special brand of port, which was called throwing port, for the purpose. And then again the evenings would finish in long talks, the endless serious talks of youth, ranging over every topic form Transubstantiation to Toggers, and from the last row with the Junior Dean to Predestination and Free-will. We were all discovering things for each other and opening for each other unguessed-of doors.

--Sir Maurice Baring, The Puppet Show of Memory (1922).

Anecdote of the day

2004-09-23T22:31:00.000-04:00

Two boys chanced in a vacant hour to stray into the kitchen of a public house. They found a large blazing fire, and a box containing, as appeared by the inscription, a Welch fairy, but no living creature besides. The boys, eager to view the dwarf, but by no means willing, or perhaps able, to pay for the sight, began to consult how they should contrive to get her out. Had they possessed the strength and agility of Phœdrus' eagle, they would probaby have taken his method of opening inclosures. But they had no wings. The lock too being on the inside, they could not force the door; what could they do? They hit on a stratagem, which might have done honor to Polyænus. By joint efforts of strength, they moved the box so very near the fire, that the dwarf, from the increased heat, was obliged to open the door, and favor them, gratis, with her wished-for presence.

--from Percy's Anecdotes, or, to use the full title, The Percy Anecdotes, revised edition, to which is added a valuable collection of American Anecdotes [New York: J. & J. Harper, 1832]

Not for the nottle: a dictionary of Berkshire gabble

2004-09-23T21:45:00.000-04:00

Here, continuing, is Oscar Chrisman on The Secret-Language of Children (see yesterday's post -- "A Berkshire gabble primer" -- for part one):

The following, from the letters, is also about the "Berkshire gabble":
Our words did not make up a language, being mostly comprised of adjectives to express our "feelings which did n't seem to be already expressed in English." I should say we were from ten to fourteen years old when we were most interested in building up our collection of words. Every new friend I met, I introduced to them....

We went so far as to make a dictionary, which, I think, must contain over two hundred words. I am afraid I can explain most of the definitions to our words in anything but a lucid manner; but, as I have found our dictionary, I can at least give you the best ones, which, however, were not the ones, always, which we used the most.

I will begin alphabetically:

ANKERDUDDLE, adj. Weird and spectral and romantic feeling of a big, solitary house by moonlight.

BOGEWATSUS, adj. Fluttering, though determined, feeling before a high jump or dive (as in bathing).

BOZZOISH, adj. A person lacking individuality in his looks.

BUTTOR, adj. Peaceful summer Sunday morning feeling out of doors, with the hum of bees and the fluttering of butterflies.

CLONUX, adj. Grown up for one's age.

CREAMY, adj. Desire to squeeze a little fat cat or baby.

DINX, adj. Vulgar and "showy off."

DOVEY, adj. When one seems to resemble one's name.

This last seems very hard to explain, as many of them are -- especially in good English.

EVO, adj. Instinctive feeling that some one whom you do not see is in the room with you.

FAXSY, adj., is one of our best and most used words, and explained in our dictionary as "stuffy-parlorish," which means a close little country parlor, its water-lilies under glass domes, its dried pampas-grass in tall vases at each end of the mantelpiece, its shell and sea-weed designs, its parlor organ, etc.

FOMO, adj. Nervousness about squeaking slate pencils, etc.

GOATY, adj. The kind of person who uses long words to express very ordinary emotions.

HALALA, adj. Exultant feeling, wild and inspiring, from the influence of being out in a wind-storm by the sea, etc.

HAMALET, adj. The indulgent cheeriness of mothers.

HAWPLOW, adj. Sinking feeling, as in a marsh.

HEELY, adj. Feeling of some one close behind you in the dark.

KUAWBEE, adj. Feeling, with one's eyes shut, as if running into something.

LULLISH, adj. Feeling, in going up or down stairs, that there is one more step (thinking there is, and taking it).

MONIA, adj. Presentiment that something is about to happen.

MOUSY, adj. Applied to your unfortunate companion who is not wanted, is in the way, and is staying in the hope of getting something by it.

MUNCHY, adj. Up-to-date in every way -- dress, speech, manners, and ideas; that is, up-to-date in a worldly way rather than intellectually.

NOTTLE, adj. The kind of practical children who play dolls and "horse," etc., as a matter of course.

OPPLE, adj. Crackly and glimmering, as sheets of bright tin or copper.

OWLY, adj. Feeling one has when one has found anything.

PALDY, adj. Feeling of the world being like a theater.

PATBOORAY, proper n., was the name of a club about six of us had for anti-slang-using.

PILTIS, adj. Feeling when one has made something all alone, or bought something with one's own money.

PUSSY, adj. A child capable of making up funny faces.

QUONO, adj. Feeling of delicious sense of perfect rest -- drowsy and luxurious.

REWISH, adj. Feeling numberless eyes on you as you are about to recite something, etc.

SABBA, adj. Individual house smell.

SPAILY, adj. Old-fashioned and awkward -- I may almost say directly the reverse of "munchy."

STOWISH (or STOISH), adj., is one of our best, but one I really cannot possibly explain. Out of a large number of persons or things, there is always one that is stowish -- and, considering all points, is the one least conspicuous. We used to differ as to what was stowish. It is a word which is wholly comparative, wholly relative. One thing alone can never be stowish; i.e., from the alphabet, d, k, n, and t are considered most universally among us as most stowish. Thursday was the most "stowish" day in the week and April and November of the months. This is very vague, but the best I can do.

THUKS. An unexplainable sensation about an old blue pump.

VANIDIES, n. The "sillies."

WILLISH, adj. When a thing smells as something tastes (or taste reminding one of smell).

ZONCE, n. Terrible hatred.

ZUMMY, adj. A closely knit, neatly built, short-haired dog.

These are a small per cent. of all our words, and ill explained, and, as you see, for the most part very childish and foolish. I think, however, we derived more enjoyment out of them than the children whom I describe above in the definition of "nottle."

And there you go.

A Berkshire gabble primer (in which describing a feeling of semi-transparency of vastness is easier than you might think)

2004-09-22T23:49:00.000-04:00

In my library are a few leather-bound copies of the old Century Magazine. From the May 1898 issue is "The Secret-Language of Childhood", by Oscar Chrisman. He has recorded this interesting specimen, presumably from our own fair Commonwealth:

One of the most remarkable things which I obtained in my collections is the "Berkshire gabble," both spoken and written, furnished by two young ladies eighteen years of age. What is given here is taken from a graduating essay of one of the young ladies, and from very full letters written by the other.

This is from the graduating essay:

I know two little girls who hit upon a device which to others, who could not understand it, sounded like an unintelligible cry for expression; but to them, besides giving all the relief afforded by a cry, it was the embodiment of their inmost life. They made up words or names for any appearance, quality, or feeling they could not express by means of the English language. Most of the words were made up by a purely mechanical process. For instance, one day when these two girls and one other were together, they decided to make a word for "the feeling you have in the dark when you are sure you are going to bump into something." One shouted, "I choose the first syllable"; another, "I choose second"; ans the remaining child had to take the last one. Each thought to herself a syllable, and when all were ready they fitted them together in the order chosen; the result was ku-or-bie -- kuorbie.

If the word sounded to them like the sensation, they left it as it was; if it did not, they changed it. A word so changed was one to describe the class of city girls who, when they go to the country in the summer, sit on the piazza, dressed up in fine clothes, doing fancy work; who can't climb, won't run, and are afraid of cows. The word at first was raggadishy, but finally became rishdagy. They approved of the latter because in order to pronounce it they had to turn up their noses in reality, which mentally they always did at such people.

Another word of some picturesqueness is dolify, which means young men who wear very stiff collars, newly laundered duck trousers, and walk as though afraid of creasing them or soiling their shoes.

Trando. The thing which first suggested it was a gate on a hilltop, sharply outlined against the sky. Beyond it they could see nothing except the blue heavens, stretching on, on, forever. But because there was a path to the gate, and gates always lead somewhere, there must be something beyond. What that something was no one could tell without seeing it. To the imagination it contained as many possibilities as the future. This feeling of semi-transparency of vastness they called trando.

There was one thing that troubled one of these children very much: Where did utterly lost things go, such as the water which vanishes from a mud-puddle, or the cloth which gradually disappears from the elbows of dresses? There must be some place apart from the earth for such things; so she made up a name for it -- Bomattle. The idea of the place gradually grew. She realized that some of the thinngs which went there came back, as the water came back to the puddle in the form of rain. It came to embrace larger things as the child grew, and she has never outgrown it.

When one struck a match there was light; when the match was blown upon there was no longer light. Where did the light come from and go to, and where did the darkness it chased away go to and return from? That place must also be Bomattle.

There is a glossary for other terms, such as spaily, thuks, and faxsy ("one of our best and most used words"). I'll give that to you tomorrow.

If you don't like it, you can go straight to Bomattle.

To the shores of Tripoli

2004-09-21T01:26:00.000-04:00

Has anyone else noticed that Armavirumque, weblog of The New Criterion, has a link to Moammar Qadaffi's site? I wonder if the Colonel will reciprocate? For the curious, here is the English-language version. The definitive solutions are here, for the Middle East problem, the Kashmiri problem, the Korean problem, the "ring around the collar" problem, etc. It involves, apparently, wearing pillbox hats and pointing a lot.

The Decline and Fall of the Near East

2004-09-20T23:34:00.000-04:00

Did you hear that the our national strategy is to dismember Iraq and attack Iran? If the answer is no, you haven't read the latest prediction from "Spengler".

I don't know that I should believe that bold theory, but I much respect the author. His previous column is the most succinct and convincing I've read on why George Bush will re-win in November:

Fewer than one in six Americans owns a passport, and those are found disproportionately on the US coasts, colored Democratic blue on the electoral maps. The elite enjoys the frisson of cultural difference and will travel thousands of miles to patronize quaint foreign cultures. By contrast, provincials from the inland states (colored Republican red on the electoral maps) take their holidays in Las Vegas or Disney World. For them the gambling-casino replicas of the Eiffel Tower or the Venetian canals are just like the real thing but without the inconvenience of strange tongues and customs.

I thought of this watching John Kerry's speech last night. America, Kerry said, was less safe today than it used to be: "Ask anyone who travels."

Spooky action at a distance

2004-09-20T23:03:00.000-04:00

More inexplicabula from The International Cyclopedia, copyrighted in 1885, when they had the ability to cut steel bars via telekinesis or something:

FUSING (or FUSION) DISK: an apparatus invented by Jacob Reese, of Pittsburg, Penn., in 1881, consisting essentially of a circular revolving saw, made of soft iron, 42 inches in diameter and 1/5 of an inch thick, which when set in motion with pulleys and belts in the manner of an ordinary circular saw severs a steel bar without touching it. The revolving disk turns with a velocity of 2,300 revolutions, equal to a tangential velocity of 25,250 ft. a minute. A round bar of steel is placed in front of the disk and caused to revolve in the contrary direction with a speed of 200 revolutions a minute. When the bar is brought quite close to the revolving disk, a small drop of molten metal is thrown downward in all directions in a stream of sparks, and the bar is cut in two: the molten drops when first flying off are not hot, though they soon become heated. Although the structure of the aparatus is simple, the principle of its action is puzzling, and the explanations that have hitherto been given are satisfactory only to their propounders.

You might think the 'net knows all, but once again our favorite search engine has ben googleplexed. There are hits on Reese, a big wheel in the steel biz, but no report on his magical disk.

Britannia rules the waves

2004-09-19T23:20:00.000-04:00

From The International Cyclopedia (1885):

FORMING'S ISLAND is a speck on the bosom of the Pacific, lying a little to the n. of the Sandwich group, or Hawaiian archipelago, in lat. 30° 49' n., and long. 159° 20' west. It is one of the most recent additions to the British empire, having been formally occupied, mainly on account of its excellent harbor, towards the close of 1860.

Forming's Island! Take out your map and look at it. At the position described above there is nothing. Only, "water, water, everywhere". Even Google doesn't know any "Forming's Island". What gives?

Miscellanies

2004-09-19T21:54:00.000-04:00

Upon re-viewing The Matrix last night, I noticed that the red pill and the blue pill look suspiciously like DayQuil and NyQuil. Maybe that's why Neo was supposed to take the red pill. If the script called for him to swallow the blue, he would have been too drowsy to continue filming.

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If you had told me back in '84 that in twenty years' time they'd be playing Metallica on National Public Radio, I'd have replied, "Yeah, right," in a sarcastic manner. Which is how we expressed disbelief at the time. But last night, "Call of Ktulu" was NPR bumper music for the BBC World Service.

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What is the one book that you must read before you die? For me, the doubtless answer is Don Quixote. I suppose I'm going to die soon, because D.Q. is the newest addition to my library. It's not the much-bruited new translation from Edith Grossman, but an 1885 "Morley's Universal Library" edition, translated by Charles Jarvis and purchased for $6.95 from Bearly Read Books on Route 9 in West Brookfield, Mass. (Bearly is perhaps the best used book store in Worcester County, but their new digs are hideous.) The pages are uncut, so I'll have to retrieve the pearl-handled knife I reserve for that purpose.

My answer used to be Paradise Lost. I never did read Milton's epic; I just stopped wanting to. I think El Ingenioso Hidalgo will prove immune to that strategy, however. I'd better get cracking on my will.

The truth is out there

2004-09-11T10:39:00.000-04:00

Imagine, if you will, that somewhere out in the western deserts, the government was involved in the pursuit of a flying saucer. A couple helicopters were sent out, there was an incident or accident, and the saucer came crashing down to Earth.

And some civilians have videotaped the event.

If you are the government official in charge, what do you do? How do you put the kibosh on the whole ying-flay aucer-say business?

If I had to think off the top of my head, I'd say that the "saucer" was a space capsule that we sent out to -- oh, I don't know --- gather particles from the sun? And the helicopters, they were just some Hollywood stunt pilots meaning to snag the capsule with a big hook and bring it back to safety.

Crazy, am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew
your mind? All I know for sure is, no one I've spoken with has ever heard of "Project Genesis" before a couple days ago.

Down and out in the Commonwealth

2004-08-19T08:47:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry for the sparse (i.e., nonexistent) posting. This blog will remain on hiatus until about September 5.

Thanks, all, for stopping by.

Urbanities

2004-08-05T16:41:00.000-04:00

The funny pages, it is generally agreed, have not been the same since Calvin and Hobbes trekked off into the wilderness.

Here, for your amusement and delectation, is an estimable replacement: "The City" by cartoon genius John Backderf. It is absolutely, heart-breakingly brilliant. Go and view it, dear blog-reader, and then come back for the rest of this post.

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Ah ha ha ha! August Fools, suckers! "The City" isn't brilliant; it stinks! John Backderf isn't a genius; he's a moron! And you clicked on that link hoping for a ray of sunshine in your otherwise gray lives. Well, I hope you learned a valuable lesson:

Never trust fugio.

Briefly noted

2004-08-04T17:47:00.000-04:00

Ben Kepple has a new installment of "Your Search Engine Queries Answered!", always good for a chuckle.

In other news, The Hatemonger's Quarterly has been kind enough to include this humble blog in their links list. Thanks, crack young staff!

Hate by water and hate by land
Hate by heart and hate of the hand
etc.

As the Germans say.

Stick your head in gravy, Spain. Then, wrap it up in bubble gum and send it to the navy

2004-08-04T09:09:00.000-04:00

Gibraltar has been a British thorn in Spain's side for centuries. Iberia weeps:

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is in Gibraltar attending events marking 300 years of British rule there - despite protests from the Spanish government.

Mr Hoon's visit has been criticised by Spanish MPs as an "offensive action".

Madrid accused Britain of clinging to its imperial past to the detriment of good relations with its EU partner.

Note that Spain has sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, two towns on the coast of Africa. There's no plan to return them to Morocco, since they are "integral parts of the Spanish state" and not merely colonies. You see the difference?

Gibraltar's chief minister Peter Caruana accused the Spanish of being obsessed by Gibraltar and said they had no right to interfere.

He said: "How we choose to celebrate our very close links with Britain and our British sovereignty is a matter for us."

Mr Caruana also criticised the US for withdrawing the naval frigate USS McFaul from the ceremonies in response to pressure from Madrid.

"Pressure from Madrid"? Oh yes, of course -- they could remove their troops from Iraq, couldn't they?

I have an idea. Instead of withdrawing our frigate, we should tell Zapatero to "frig it". Is that offensive? Good.

That '60s Show

2004-08-04T08:54:00.000-04:00

A convention for a sitting president is typically way boring. Llamabutcher Steve says, not this time. Not with these "activists" present:

This is going to be fabulous---they aren't going to be able to stop themselves, it's going to be broadcast live (THIS is the sort of stuff that the nets will carry) and it's going to reverb right into support for the President. There is no way that this street theater is going to be explained or spun away. There on full display will be the Marxist wing of the party, in all its self-indulgent, anti-personal hygiene glory.

I hope so. We could use a little more pizazz in this campaign.

Everybody, chant!

Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! The NLF is sure to win!

Etc.

Quote of the day

2004-08-03T14:19:00.000-04:00

He may not enjoy eating at Wendy's, but his faux lunch order captures the essence of his crowd-working style: chilli and Frosty. If I were the Wendy's marketing director, I'd make it the John Kerry Special from now through election day.

Good Lord, that Mark Steyn is a genius, isn't he?

Zut alors!

2004-07-31T08:26:00.000-04:00

A French paper of note has a daring supposition (via the BBC):

"No one denies that there are probably some real terrorists linked to al-Qaeda among the 600 prisoners at Guantanamo. But these suspicions hardly justify the judicial and physical treatment meted out to them since their arrest," Le Monde newspaper said in its leader Tuesday.

"Probably"? "Some"? Thanks for your support, guys.

Continuing:

"History shows that countries that choose to fight against terrorism or oppression by non-democratic means never succeed," it said.

Inasmuch as that makes any sense (how can fighting be distinguished as democratic or not?) it's sophomorically bien-pensant and way ahistorical. I thought the French were supposed to be, you know, nuanced and realistic.

Def comedy

2004-07-30T13:39:00.000-04:00

Matt Labash is at the DNC and -- ah ha ha ha!

Spying organizer Russell Simmons pinned against a soda machine in the cramped hallway, I ask him if he isn't being a tad naive about his stated goals. "Keep your vision on something that's high. Do your best, then go to sleep," he says defensively. "I don't eat animals, but I wear leather shoes. You know, I do my best. The elimination of poverty--that's what we want." And I want Penelope Cruz to give me nightly backrubs while she tells me in English and Spanish why I am a godlike man, but I don't put that in my promotional literature and pretend that it's going to happen.

From the Weekly Standard.

Quote of the day

2004-07-30T13:21:00.000-04:00

It is true that things could be worse; it is also true that they probably will be very soon.

David Hart, ever optimistic.

In First Things

2004-07-29T18:29:00.000-04:00

Stephen Barr has an excellent short article on Richard Dawkins, scientist, philosophical materialist, and inventor of the dreadful "meme":

We are therefore promised that [A Devil's Chaplain]...will show us Dawkins’ “gentler, more contemplative side, which may surprise many readers,” his “warm, personal side,” and his “sympathetic side.” (These promises are made by the book’s dust jacket, its publicist, and Science News, respectively)....

Whether all of this humanizes Dawkins is not for me to say; it is doubtless a speciesist concern in any case. Of more concern is the quality of his thinking, which is far from impressive.

Read the whole thing if you have the smallest interest. I will leave one final quotation for your musement, either a- or be-:

Dawkins goes so far as to say that the prospect of intentional human-and-chimp interbreeding, though he doubts its feasibility, is “a pleasing thought.”

Late July

2004-07-29T17:41:00.000-04:00

In the organic section of my local grocery is a cracker called Late July. The box is attractive, featuring a Victorian-era beach scene and old-fashioned typography. What I love is that perfect name.

Late July.

I'm a great fan of summer. The piney perfume of night, the ease of stepping outdoors sans coat and hat, the freedom from schoolroom drudgery....I haven't been to school in years and now work a full twelve months, but that small savor of liberty remains.

Late July, says cracker-mistress Nicole Dawes, is a "carefree time when vacation is in full bloom."

But it's not carefree, not quite; not to me. In Late August summer is about to end. That's one thing. But in Late July it's about to about to end. There's that subtle twist.

Think of the alternatives. "Early June"? Too vernal. "Mid July"? Nice, but missing that slight sense of urgency. "Early August"? Now that's just bad.

And in three short days, that's what the calendar will show.

Late July can be bittersweet.

I haven't tried the cracker.

Wretched Eckhardt and the darkness of Hades

2004-07-29T12:29:00.000-04:00

For those interested in such things, here is one more practical joke as witnessed by Edmund Yates, resulting in apparent trauma for the victim.

Yates lived in Dusseldorf as a teenager and frequented a local tavern:

We had all been sitting one evening--singing, shouting, chaffing, according to our wont--when the president of the night noticed that one of the company had fallen into a deep and drunken sleep, his head reclining on his arms, which were crossed upon the table. He immediately proposed this as a favorable opportunity for trying the strength of mind on which Eckhardt, the sleeper, so much prided himself. He told us to go on with our different occupations. Some were to talk, some to play dominoes, some billiards; others were to be drinking together. Meanwhile, he would extinguish the lamps; but we were all to continue our amusements as though the room were still lighted, and, if called upon, to declare that such was the case. He then turned out the lamps, and, by a sharp kick, awakened the drunken man. The clamor, the smoke, the shouting, in which this wretched being had closed his eyes, all greeted him on his arrival; one thing alone, the light, was absent; and he commenced to attack us for having left him in the dark.

"What the deuce are you at," he asked, "to be sitting here in the darkness of Hades?"

"Ah, bah!" said the president. "Sleep off thy drunken fits, Franz, and leave us alone. Come, Kraus, there's a cannon!" and a sharp stroke on the billiard-balls rang through the room.

"Bravo!" shouted another of the conspirators. "Point, quinte et quatorze! The game's mine!" and the cards, thrown exultingly into the air, fell with a crash upon the table.

"Stop!" cried the wretched Eckhardt, "one moment, stop! Why have you thus darkened the room?"

"Thou art drunk!" roared another. "'Tis thou art dark, and not the room. The room is as light as day! Here, Schimmel-Hase, thou hast not the double-six? Then I am out!" and he rattled the dominoes as he spoke.

"What!" shrieked the victim, in a yell of agony never to be forgotten, "say you the room is lighted, and you are all playing, while I cannot see you? O Almighty God, I am struck blind!"

He fell down in a heap across the table, and it was weeks before he fully recovered.

Victorian practical jokes and the birth of feminism

2004-07-28T08:49:00.000-04:00

Fifty Years of London Life; Memoirs of a Man of the World (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1885) is the autobiography of Edmund Yates. Yates was an English man of letters probably best known for a literary row with W. M. Thackeray; he was kicked out of the Garrick Club as a result. Frankly, the book is rather boring, but there are gems. Here is my favorite part, from Yates' salad days:

My great chum in those days was a man about ten years older than myself, whom, for distinction's sake, I will call Pitt, and who was the most audacious practical joker I have ever met. He had the most charming manners and the most perfect sang-froid; nothing ever upset his balance, and he could perpetrate the most daring hoax without altering a muscle of his face. Two of his exploits I remember well. At the corner of one of the streets running from the Strand to the river, near St. Mary's Church, was a well-known Italian warehouse. One day, as Pitt and I were walking westward after office-hours, we saw hanging at the shop-door a bundle of bananas, with an inscription, "The last bananas we shall receive this season." Pitt stopped and read the placard. "That is very curious," he said, "and must be inquired into!" I followed him up the shop, a long, low addition to the original house, until we reached the counter at the far end, where two or three shopmen were busy serving customers. "Could I speak to Mr. -----?" asked Pitt, mentioning the name he had read on the shop-door, and speaking with the greatest earnestness. "He's in, sir, but he's having his tea; but if you particularly want him, I'll call him." "Thank you, I do want a word with him." The proprietor came out of his parlor, wiping his mouth, and, rounding the counter, was immediately laid hold of by Pitt, who took him by the elbow and led him, astonished, to the door. Arrived there, Pitt pointed to the bananas. "Are these positively the very last bananas that you will receive this season?" "Yes," said the man, "they are. What of it?" "Is there no probability, then, of your having another batch?" "No--not that I know of. What of it?" said the man, with a dawning suspicion of being hoaxed, but still impressed by Pitt's excellent manner. "What of it? Well, I think it a most interesting circumstance! Deeply obliged to you. Good-morning!" And he took off his hat with an air, and left the man, purple and speechless, on his own threshold.

Another of his practical jokes was even more audacious. Middle-aged readers will possibly remember that the original shop for Holloway's patent medicines was at the extremity of the Strand, a few doors west of Temple Bar. It was a long shop, with a narrow counter running the length of it, at which sat a number of men, occupied in rolling the pills, spreading the ointment, etc. Pitt had often told me he felt curiously attracted to that shop; and one day, as we were passing, he said, "Can you keep grave for five minutes?" I told him I thought I could, little guessing to what test my gravity was to be subjected. "Then come along!" And the next minute he sprang from my side into the shop, where, in the open space before the counter, he began leaping about and throwing up his legs with an agility which, in those præ-Vokes days, was unknown. The shopmen stared in wonder, and one of them was advancing, when Pitt bounded in front of him and asked, "You don't know me? you don't recognize me?" The shopman, evidently taking him for a lunatic, was muttering something about not having the pleasure, when Pitt, pointing to the others, asked, "Do none of those recognize me?" A general chorus of "No!" "I don't wonder at it!" said Pitt. "When I was last in this shop, I was carried in on the cabman's back--couldn't walk a step--bad legs of forty years' standing! But now, thanks to your invaluable pills and ointment--look here! and here!" Once more he bounded and danced up and down the shop, and then we ran for our lives.

In his later years, Yates toured America on the lecture circuit, and met feminists:

Mrs. L.D. Blake, who was quite a pretty little woman, raised a storm of applause by declaring that "To-morrow the waves of success would rise still higher from Pennsylvania and Ohio, until in November next around the shores of this Republic would swell the high tide of victory;" and Mrs. Susan B. Anthony, a veteran resembling Phiz's portrait of Sally Brass, caused immense amusement by her description of an interview with Mr. Greeley, in the course of which she went down on her knees to him, without producing any effect.

On her knees to old Horace....Who would have guessed that Susan B. was the Nina Burleigh of her day?

Headline of the day

2004-07-27T14:21:00.000-04:00

Large lady gang plunder SA shops

From the BBC:

Groups of large women have been terrifying shop staff in South Africa's coastal town of Durban.

Said a police spokeman,

"The rather large women generally come in groups... and can be quite intimidating."

One last item...

2004-07-24T14:32:00.000-04:00

For all who have been waiting, the Charlock's Shade has returned.

And I'm out for the weekend, having fun -- you do, too!

And Australia calls him ugly

2004-07-24T14:19:00.000-04:00

Michael Moore's contentious film Fahrenheit 9/11 has opened in Poland, with some film critics likening it to totalitarian propaganda.

That's from the BBC. Here's more:

Gazeta Wyborcza reviewer Jacek Szczerba called the film a "foul pamphlet".

He said it was too biased to be called a documentary and was similar to Nazi propaganda director Leni Riefenstahl.

"Michael Moore will not convince Poles with his film," the Rzeczpospolita newspaper said in its review.

"People are very sensitive to aggressive propaganda, especially when it pretends to be an objective documentary or a work of art."

There is, alas, some pro-Moorish sentiment as well:

"The film contained some propaganda, but there was also a lot of truth in it," Pole Elzbieta Karwinska, 58, said after seeing the film.

So don't throw away your Big Book of Polish Jokes just yet.

Happy Birthday!

2004-07-24T13:35:00.000-04:00

To Stephen Baldwin, who has a drinks recipe up.

I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way

2004-07-24T10:49:00.000-04:00

Cartoonist Ben Sargent has the most bizarrely inexplicable rendering yet of President Bush (via Irish Elk, who compares to nineteenth-century caricatures of blacks and Irishmen).

Bush is shown as a kind of a cross between Skeletor and Curious George. I've seen only seen worse in Steve Bell, who is a genius and thoroughly revolting.

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Postscript:

There is a Curious George movie slated for release next year, starring Will Ferrell as the Man in the Yellow Hat. C.G. is one of my favorite childhood characters, but I'm not sure if this is good news. See, for example The Grinch or The Cat in the Hat.

Found in "Audhumla to Brazen"

2004-07-24T08:24:00.000-04:00

You don't find encyclopedia entries like this anymore:

BETJUANS, or BECHUANAS, the name of an extensive nation of Southern Africa, occupying the country between 23° and 29° e. long., and extending from 28° s. lat. northward beyond the tropic of Capricorn. The B. are generally of a peaceful, indeed cowardly, disposition, and are divided into many tribes under the government of chiefs, who exercise a hand of patriarchal authority over them.

Cowardly, huh? Very un-PC.

That's from the 1890 edition of Century Cyclopedia, which, for those interested in 'pedia lore, is just Chambers' Cyclopedia with additional entries for American readers.

The article on BETJUANS ends thus:

One peculiarity of the B. is their inability to build their houses square. Bechuanaland became a British protectorate in 1885.

Bechuanaland is now Botswana, and considered one of the more successful African states. I wonder, though -- did they ever master the squaring of houses? Or do they take pride in being postmodernist avant la lettre -- the Frank Gehry of nations?

The bout to knock the other guy out

2004-07-23T13:20:00.000-04:00

Remember the 2000 presidential election, wherein Al Gore got more of the popular vote, but Bush won the presidency? You do?

But the popular vote is irrelevant, and the claim itself is specious. We don't choose the President using the national popular vote; we choose the President via votes in the electoral college. Both the Bush and Gore campaigns tailored their campaign strategies towards prevailing in the electoral college. If our Constitutional system selected the President based on popular vote, both campaigns would have been run entirely differently, and there's no way to know who would have won.

My God -- that's true! I've never heard of, or even thought of that. It's a pleasant surprise, at this late date, to find a new way of looking at the issue.

It's from Steven den Beste at USS Clueless, who is pretty fervently optimistic about the odds of a second Bush presidency:

As a presidential candidate, Kerry is deeply vulnerable. The Republicans are carefully preparing the groundwork for a full-scale assault on his greatest weaknesses. Once they open up active hostilities, it's actually going to end up being very much like the other Bush masterstrokes, where everything changes permanently and no one can again look at the fundamental issues the same way.

I can't claim to share den Beste's certainty, but it's really very well put. I think the above quoted paragraph is key. It's said that the more people know about Kerry, they less they like him. Den Beste is looking for a grand "Bush masterstroke" to put the kibosh on Kerry in September. ("Bush Masterstroke", by the way, would be a great name for a marital aid.)

And I am pretty confident that when they do really get serious, the consequences for the Kerry campaign will be catastrophic. After the November election, a lot of people are going to wonder why it was that anyone ever thought that Kerry had a substantial chance of winning.

Read the whole thing, my friends, and mark your calendars to test the soothsaying powers of Mr. den Beste. As of today, Kerry has a slight within-the-margin-of-error polls lead.

An experiment

2004-07-22T13:38:00.000-04:00

I stuffed a humungous wad of paper in my pants and walked around all morning like that.

What's that you say? No, no...what makes you think this has anything to do with Sandy Berger?

Letters from Clio

2004-07-22T08:51:00.000-04:00

From the 1890 edition of the Century Cyclopedia, here is Dandolo Brancaleone, the Rudy Giuliani of his day:

BRANCALEONE, DANDOLO, d. 1258; a Ghibelline senator of Bologna, famous for restoring order in a lawless period. He executed leading men of the most powerful families, and destroyed the strongholds of disturbers of the peace, checked the power of the church and the nobles, and with the strong hand suppressed public robbery. Yet he was deposed and arrested, and was in danger of execution; but he held hostages of the great families and was restored to power. His death was greatly lamented, and it was reported that "his head, inclosed in a costly vase, was deposited in a lofty column of marble".

Sigh. I'd like to end up with my head in a vase in a column, but it ain't gonna happen.

Anyway, except for a bit mention in French, there is no finding him via Google. It's too bad; I like Brancaleone. He should be the subject of a grand opera, or maybe a first-person-shooter-type video game.

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Update (7/22):

I should have searched with "Senator Brancaleone". Here is a reference from no less a historian than Gibbon:

It was thus, about the middle of the thirteenth century, that the Romans called from Bologna the senator Brancaleone, whose fame and merit have been rescued from oblivion by the pen of an English historian. A just anxiety for his reputation, a clear foresight of the difficulties of the task, had engaged him to refuse the honor of their choice: the statutes of Rome were suspended, and his office prolonged to the term of three years. By the guilty and licentious he was accused as cruel; by the clergy he was suspected as partial; but the friends of peace and order applauded the firm and upright magistrate by whom those blessings were restored. No criminals were so powerful as to brave, so obscure as to elude, the justice of the senator. By his sentence two nobles of the Annibaldi family were executed on a gibbet; and he inexorably demolished, in the city and neighborhood, one hundred and forty towers, the strong shelters of rapine and mischief. The bishop, as a simple bishop, was compelled to reside in his diocese; and the standard of Brancaleone was displayed in the field with terror and effect. His services were repaid by the ingratitude of a people unworthy of the happiness which they enjoyed. By the public robbers, whom he had provoked for their sake, the Romans were excited to depose and imprison their benefactor; nor would his life have been spared, if Bologna had not possessed a pledge for his safety. Before his departure, the prudent senator had required the exchange of thirty hostages of the noblest families of Rome: on the news of his danger, and at the prayer of his wife, they were more strictly guarded; and Bologna, in the cause of honor, sustained the thunders of a papal interdict. This generous resistance allowed the Romans to compare the present with the past; and Brancaleone was conducted from the prison to the Capitol amidst the acclamations of a repentant people. The remainder of his government was firm and fortunate; and as soon as envy was appeased by death, his head, enclosed in a precious vase, was deposited on a lofty column of marble.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is in my library; I really should get around to reading it.

Live from the Upper Coasts

2004-07-21T10:18:00.000-04:00

Do you live in "Big River", "Sagebrush", or "Southern Comfort"?

Robert Sullivan has penetrated the red-blue divide with this ten-region map of the U.S. (via Irish Elk).

I'm a sucker for stuff like this, even though my rational self tells me that 90% of it is either bleeding obvious or thorough crapulence. So far as I know, it all started with Jean Gottman, who has made yours truly a native of BosWash. Pity me not, dear reader. It could be worse. I could be living in "ChiPitts", or "SanSan".

Those place names! Why does nouvelle geographie seem to demand a tin ear?

Once in a while there is profundity:

I Live north of New Haven in the middle of the Great Suburb (a global feature, like the Amazon or Sahara) that covers the northeast and plays a big role in setting the nation's cultural mood.

The Great Suburb! That's David Gelernter, and so true.

Not the Mongolian Liberation Army

2004-07-20T14:36:00.000-04:00

Gideon Lewis-Kraus sits in on a conclave of the Modern Language Asscoiation (via Arts & Letters Daily).

The beleaguered L-K has to put up with

the requisite "Oh, another MLA-vilifying piece?" with each new person I meet.

And the thing is, he didn't want to write an MLA-vilifying piece. But, oh! he had to.

Some choice fun quotes:

The first speaker is Professor Simon P. Joyce of the College of William and Mary, whose paper is about Joe Millionaire and the German social theorist Theodor Adorno.

I sit next to an evidently eminent Lacanian scholar who makes a lot of masturbation jokes and seems to look right through me.

I talk to a man who won't tell me his name and won't tell me why. He tells me I can refer to him in my article as "Elvis," but only his creepiness is worth noting.

I have to admit that, much as I want to resist the urge to sneer, I sneer. It's extraordinarily hard not to. I hurry along the hallway, duck through the atrium, and arrive at the queer theory panel, sneer intact and confident, sneer ready to metastasize, sneer plotting a coup to take over control of my face for the remaining two days.

Quote of the day

2004-07-20T13:59:00.000-04:00

Do you know what's the greatest error in the study of human things? 'Cause I do. Now.

There is no greater error in the study of human things than to believe that the search for what is essential must lead us to what is hidden.

Roger Scruton said it (via Roger Kimball in this sterling interview on National Review Online).

Death from Above but I guess we're stuck

2004-07-20T11:52:00.000-04:00

More air scare, this from Tequila Mockingbird (via Michelle Malkin):

from almost the moment they sit down, they are huddled together, talking. it is the one in the center seat -- the one directly in front of me -- the one who i can't really see -- the one whose eyes seemed coldest, whose eyes locked on mine -- he is the one who scares me.

If it weren't for blogdom, these stories would be squashed into oblivion by newspapers and TV. When will America get serious?

On the way to Springfield

2004-07-20T08:11:00.000-04:00

I was on a toll road this morning. When I approached the entry booth, I reached at the automatic dispenser.

"Yoink!" I said, pulling my ticket.

"I wonder how many people say 'yoink'?" said my passenger.

And you know? I wonder the same thing myself.

What, me worry?

2004-07-17T12:37:00.000-04:00

I am opening mail.

Here is an evelope with no return address. Inside are two folded papers, letter-size. I unfold the first. The slogan "Don't Worry It's Hopi" appears under a large blue swastika.

Gaaaa!

The second page is an advertisement for
this ranch, "on Hopi land". It is written, "Here at the Sacred White Buffalo Ranch, one can see True American icons".

I remain, somehow, un-reassured.

Hijack hijinks

2004-07-16T08:46:00.000-04:00

This article is the scariest thing I've read since October:

The take-off was uneventful. But once we were in the air and the seatbelt sign was turned off, the unusual activity began. The man in the yellow T-shirt got out of his seat and went to the lavatory at the front of coach -- taking his full McDonald's bag with him. When he came out of the lavatory he still had the McDonald's bag, but it was now almost empty. He walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, still holding the bag. When he passed two of the men sitting mid-cabin, he gave a thumbs-up sign. When he returned to his seat, he no longer had the McDonald's bag.

Via The Corner.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update (7/22):

Clinton Taylor says mystery solved: it's only Syrian lounge act Nour Mehana, et alia.

Wright of response

2004-07-15T09:35:00.000-04:00

The good folks at The New Criterion are chronicling the "battle royale of the poetry world". You will recall the six-book review from the notoriously hard-to-please William Logan in the June issue of that magazine. Logan received an angry response from one of the reviewed, Franz Wright:

I assure you it is distinctly possible that I will not be able to resist giving you the crippling beating you so clearly masochistically desire. I do not wish to kill you or hurt you, and so I beg you to get away from me, without delay, if you realize we are in the same room somewhere.

Well. In the latest battle report, James Panero has gleanings from the web, including this blogpost from Aimee Nezhukumatathil, who had received a vituperative email from Wright "complete with swear words". Note that Ms. Nezhukumatathil had actually supported Wright against Logan.

This post merited not one but two hostile replies from Franz Wright to yours truly (arguably incomplete, since without swear words), with much more justice than the abovementioned correspondence. F. W. objected first to my "threadbare cliché" about the unthreateningness of poets (and it's true -- it is a threadbare cliché) and second to my snide remark on his physical appearance (also a legitimate complaint -- I'm no oil painting myself).

My excuse for the former is the extemporaneous nature of blogging -- the trite, hackneyed, and yes, cliché will slip in, and I apologize to all poets and poetesses who may have been offended. For the latter, well, my post was a response to the jaw-dropping brutalism of Wright's letter. Really, death threats are way beyond the pale, and the transgressor of that boundary should anticipate some good old-fashioned ad hominem counterblastery (even from a mild-mannered blogger such as myself) in defense of a free press.

Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Salvador

2004-07-15T07:27:00.000-04:00

Clive Thompson notes that classic video game characters are infiltrating high art (via ArtsJournal).

Artists love these old games because they’re like mythological stories—and incredibly weird ones. Fat little plumbers trying to rescue princesses? Little yellow pie-shaped mouths running around mazes, pursued by ghosts? It’s like a fever dream, a bunch of Dalí paintings brought to life.

Vita brevis, ars Ponga.

Misspent puke

2004-07-14T13:44:00.000-04:00

The Misspent One aims to reduce his site traffic:

Whoever came to my site through Google by searching for "puke pregnant sex" leave now and never come back.

Of course, now his blog will be more of a hit with "puke pregnant sex" searchers than ever before.

Also, come to think of it, so will mine.

Le jour de gloire est arrivé

2004-07-14T13:03:00.000-04:00

Happy Bastille Day, mes amis!

Lots of Francophobic sentiments in the blogosphere. Here's Recta Ratio (via Irish Elk):

And then, there is French "culture". I'm not talking about Fragonard, or David, or even Renoir or Manet. I'm talking about that ethos so compelling to Bohemian lefties the world over. That "culture" consists of nothing but sitting in cafes on the left bank, sipping coffee that is too strong, talking about nothing (like a never ending episode of Seinfeld but with the air of a philosophe), praising the truly reprehensible Picasso and Sartre and Camus and partaking of decadence combined with communism and nihilism, and cultivating a nasty self-important attitude and morals lower than the average alley cat while wearing black.

Yeah, I hate that too. But I am far from full-throttle on I-hate-Francery. Maybe in my youth I read too much Belloc (who called France "the perfect country"). A Catholic blogger like Recta should understand.

Anyway, I am one of those who wish for Franco-American rapprochement (excuse my French), but, admittedly, mainly in the sense of them becoming more like us). France has fought on our side in Wars both Revolutionary and World; let's hope She will ally with us against Islamofascism. I'm afraid, however, it will wait for France's own version of 9/11.

On a final note, an antidote to antiFrance -- here is Rob Long:

"There are two ways to make scrambled eggs: the wrong way, and the French way."

Further congratulations are in order

2004-07-13T15:32:00.000-04:00

Terry Teachout is set to announce his engagement to Our Girl in Chicago tomorrow.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Update 7/15:

Well, I was wrong about that. Terry merely wanted to acknowledge his anniversary in blogdom. Still, congratulations are in order. I've been reading "About Last Night" since day one. It is indispensable.

Today's Top Ten

2004-07-13T10:33:00.000-04:00

The top ten hyphenated words found in Matt Labash's Weekly Standard article, The Bon Jovi Advantage:

10. polls-wise
9. too-smooth-by-half
8. hair-mussing
7. Breck-girl
6. half-windsored
5. Babs-style
4. trapezius-squeezing
3. Sambora-less
2. jojoba-enriched
1. huggy/chest-bump

Headline of the day

2004-07-13T08:07:00.000-04:00

Turning the tables on Nigeria's e-mail conmen

"I tried to turn it round by saying I worked for a church and we couldn't do any business with people who are not of our faith."

Mike sent a response in the name of Father Hector Barnett of the Church of the Painted Breast.

Heh.

Heh heh.

Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh!

Cultural Concurrence pays off

2004-07-09T16:54:00.000-04:00

Big news from Terry Teachout:

The White House announced this afternoon that President Bush will be nominating me to serve on the National Council on the Arts.

Congratulations, TT!

The Uses of Polarity

2004-07-09T14:36:00.000-04:00

Current blog-talk is abundant and dire on the subject of social and political division. Jonah Goldberg takes a dissenting view:

There's also a very good side to all of this polarization. Critics of identity politics — and I am most certainly one of them — tend to focus almost exclusively on the separations, divides, clashes and chasms such politics create between groups. Blacks vs. whites, rich vs. poor, South vs. North, Springfieldians vs. Shelbyvillians, and so on. What they rarely look at is the unity such "identitarian" movements create.

According to Jonah, this is "transtolerance", a word I had hitherto assumed referred to me dressing up in women's clothing and people celebrating the diversity. Go figure.

TCCI (Not the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce & Industry)

2004-07-09T13:34:00.001-04:00

I think I was one of the first to take the Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index, but am one of the last to comment. And -- this is how lazy I am -- I'm not even going to comment myself, but will just pass on Gnostical Turpitude's take instead (which is the best I've read so far). G.T. asks:

I can't help but wonder: am I really that much more ignorant than other takers of the quiz, or am I just less willing to make a snap judgment based on my vague impressions?

Dollars to doughnuts it's the latter for most -- it certainly was for me! (I snapped left and right and ended up with 58%.)

Quote of the day

2004-07-09T13:34:00.000-04:00

For over a year now, we have witnessed a level of invective not seen since the summer of 1864 — much of it the result of a dying 60's generation's last gasps of lost self-importance.

--Victor Davis Hanson.

But does it come with free frogurt?

2004-07-09T11:33:00.000-04:00

The blogosphere is abuzz with this report on a Demo-Celeb fundraiser In New York (first via A Small Victory, who has, by the way, a new site design).

Included was Whoopi Goldberg, who, waving a bottle of wine....

Waving a bottle of wine, she fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia, and boasted that she'd refused to let Team Kerry clear her material.

"I Xeroxed my behind and I folded it up in an envelope and I sent it back with a big kiss mark on because we're Democrats - we're not afraid to laugh," she said.

Now, it's unfortunate (unfortunate for Whoopi, but hilarious for the rest of us) that this comes on the heels of the DVD release of the Fourth Season, because it puts us all in mind of the Halloween bit "Clown without Pity", in which Homer has brought an evil Krusty doll to Springfield's Bottomless Pit:

Homer: "Goodbye, dolly!" (drops bag with doll in bottomless pit)

Italian Mobster: "Arrivederci, Vito!" (drops bag with body into pit)

Man: "I was a fool to think anyone would want nude photos of Whoopi Goldberg." (drops box of photos in pit; the box pops back out into his hands) "What the--?"

I remember once watching, dumbstruck, a stand-up performance of Whoopi's. I did not crack a smile for the entire routine, but the audience was guffawing. What were they, I thought, stoned? Now I know. They were Democrats.

Well, maybe they were both.

---------------------------------------------------

Update: Hindrocket learns that they have a tape, but are not releasing. A big question is:

whether a large number of Americans will be repelled by the excesses of the Left. Kerry's backtrack, along with his refusal to let the public see the tape of his event, suggests that he is afraid they might be.

These things, however, are like the One Ring. They have a way of making themselves found.

----------------------------------------------------

Further update: Ace of Spades has the best Whoopi commentary:

Now we're informed that the Whoopster made a clever play on the name "Bush," apparently making some sort of heretofore undiscovered connection between that name and slang for the female pundendum. Good one. Seriously.

I've got an eight-year-old nephew, Whoopie, if you need a new writer. He's the fucking nuts when it comes to pee-pee, poo-poo, and butt jokes.

Throw in Dick Cheney and Colin Powell and you've got yourself 50 minutes of solid material you can take on the road.

The two-L, he's a beast

2004-07-08T17:39:00.000-04:00

The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat
With an indolent expression and an undulating throat
Like an unsuccessful literary man.

--Hilaire Belloc

With thanks to Robert the Llama Butcher for a mention of this humble blog today.

I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate

2004-07-08T14:46:00.000-04:00

Yay! The 2 Blowhards are back from vacation:

[W]hat do most magazines look like nowadays? A bunch of jazzed-up, poppy boxes.

Same deal with much of current architecture:

By the way, does the Time-Warner Center remind you, as it does me, of Darth Vader's mask?
...
If Darth Vader was a bad guy...then why have these styles since been embraced as glamorous? This gleaming-black-multifaceted-cubic style-thing arrived in our midst as something loathed and undesirable. Why do people now seem to yearn for what they'd previously been appalled by?

Maybe there's a kind and gentle Anakin underneath the black battle armor?

Hopelessly retardataire

2004-07-08T14:08:00.000-04:00

If those heralding the “death of theory” really want to be taken seriously, please inform us, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” of where this “theory” is hiding out, and we would happily kill it.

Headline of the day

2004-07-07T17:50:00.000-04:00

Australia on angry kangaroo alert

[I]n a recent letter to the Canberra Times, dog owner Christine Canham said her pet had been drowned by a kangaroo in a city park.

The dogs had been swimming when a large kangaroo appeared on the bank and entered the water, she said.

The kangaroo "held her under the water with its back legs and drowned her as we watched helpless," Ms Canham wrote.

Lookit

2004-07-07T12:02:00.000-04:00

fahrenheit fact: the truth about michael moore's "fahrenheit 9/11"

It's a blog.

Via Miguel Centellas.

Stars through the perilous

2004-07-07T10:57:00.000-04:00

Essential to the poem's purpose is the address to the second person as well as the ambiguity of the subject. To whom is the command "say" addressed? And to what does the speaker refer? The hearer from whom the poet demands response has watched through an anxious vigil until the dawn, seeking a glimpse of something infinitely precious. Its name, its substantive, is withheld, while the poet describes it only by the actions that make it known.

Can you guess the poem? It's none other than our national anthem, commented upon by Spengler in today's A-Times.

The fearful vigil through the nocturnal bombardment, the fleeting view of the national colors, the moment of truth in the gathering light of dawn - these are a metaphor for the national condition. Key addresses the second "Say!" to all generations of Americans: Are you still brave enough to be free?

Doubleplusungood

2004-07-07T09:29:00.000-04:00

Not being keen on certain religious beliefs may soon be a criminal offense on the other side of the pond:

Last month, the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia think tank warned that persistent and untackled Islamophobia in the UK could lead to "time-bombs" of backlash and bitterness.

Have I been mis-reading the U.K. news these past few years? Is it really non-Muslims fomenting the intolerance, and not the other way around (mostly)? And anyway, does it really help one's argument to mention "bombs" in the same sentence as "Muslims"?

Mr. Bean, as is to be expected, is on the right side of the issue:

Comedians such as Rowan Atkinson raised fears the law change could have outlawed jokes about religion.

The Blackadder star suggested Monty Python's Life of Brian would not have been made if the law had been in force.

That's right, Britain! You don't need to follow the Home Secretary! You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!

Britain: Yes! We're all individuals!

Etc.

Separated at birth

2004-07-06T16:05:00.000-04:00

Roast Beef:

Man I was kicking it on the curb just now putting out a butt after lunch and in the entire dry street and empty gutters there was this one ball of hair like the size of a baseball. Like a dust bunny, you know, all with thick dust altocumulus and tiny fragments of paper and stuff in it (think of an electron could). I guess it fell out of a car? Anyhow I just sat lookin' at it for a while thinking about all the heads the hair probably came off of, and then thinking about my own hair and how it's pretty sad that when a hair falls off you it just goes out of your life, even though it's got your code and everything all locked up in it and it was a part of you that you didn't say goodbye to.

StephenEsque:

The hours are dripping by at a bafflingly prolonged and protracted rate this morning; like subway trains, the next one always seems to be delayed without explanation. What is going on with the time? So slow. It is normally already next Thursday by now.
And so, from beneath drooping eyelids, I observe a cone-shaped collection of dust roll across my living room floor like a lethargic, ineffective tornado; a curling cluster of things past that has been self-constructed from particles of ancient skin and hair; it travels in slow-motion time through parallelograms of too, too bright sunlight cast by an irregular arrangement of window shading.

Stephen and Beef, each musing on hair-dust aggregates in an idle moment.

Leaves of Grass, my ass

2004-07-06T13:11:00.000-04:00

It occured to me today that visiting a Blogspot site is a lot like starting a lawnmower. It often (if not usually) refuses to start the first time you try it. You need to keep pulling the starter (or clicking "Refresh") over and over. You have no clue when it will work, but suddenly and for no apparent reason, it does.

The Sodom and Gomorrah of the East Indies

2004-07-06T10:30:00.000-04:00

The BBC reports on the wild side of life in Singapore:

It [the chewing gum ban] is still in force and you can go to jail for importing it illegally.

But if you are determined to chew, you can now register and get medicinal gum at a pharmacy.

You can also, I hear, make rope from it.

Hey, Chochachos!

2004-07-06T08:34:00.001-04:00

Tonight I thought of an idea! I put two socks on my arms and pulled them all the way up to my shoulders, and then I put on my cowboy hat (I wanted to wear a police hat but I don't have one), and I ran around the house! People did not understand at first that I was on the H.U.G. S.Q.U.A.D. and that my mission was To Give Hugs Where Hugs Are Needed Most.

The Achewood characters (and creator) have new blogs up! They're all on Blogspot, just like you and me:

Ray, Roast Beef, Pat, Téodor, Phillippe (quoted above), Mr. Bear, Lyle, Molly, and Chris.

Emptiness is that what Baby God's Eye is fighting for

2004-07-03T11:49:00.000-04:00

Speaking of literary mysteries (see this post), Scientific American has an article purporting to debunk the famed Voynich Manuscript (via Arts & Letters Daily).

According to author Gordon Rugg, V-Script can be written using a simple 16th-century software code (or something like that). Rugg proves a dab hand at Voynichese himself, producing a page chock-a-block with crypt-o-script and a pretty plant faster than you can say, "Qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy". Admittedly, Mr. Rugg had some help from his daughter Caitlin.

Debunked? Or totally bunk? Me report, you decide.

----------------------------------

P.S. -- "Baby God's Eye" would be an awesome name for a band, or a blog.

So that happened

2004-07-03T10:54:00.000-04:00

Doughty A. Chrenkoff demonstrates true blogging spirit. He smashed his auto and apologizes to his readership for the anticipated light posting regimen.

Con-stair Lo-vair and the clever pundit

2004-07-03T08:48:00.000-04:00

Here is a small mystery.

In my reading hours I am currently with the autobiographical Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life by William Henry Hudson (1918).

The author thus describes a visitor known as "the Hermit":

He was perpetually on the move, visiting in turn every house within a radius of forty or fifty miles; and once about every seven or eight weeks he called on us to receive a few articles of food -- enough for the day's consumption. Money he always refused with gestures of intense disgust, and he would also decline cooked meat and broken bread. When hard biscuits were given him, he would carefully examine them, and if one was found chipped or cracked he would return it, pointing out the defect, and ask for a sound one in return.

So far, he's just eccentric, right? It gets stranger:

He wore a pair of gigantic shoes, about a foot broad at the toes, made out of thick cow- hide with the hair on; and on his head was a tall rimless cow-hide hat shaped like an inverted flower-pot. His bodily covering was, however, the most extraordinary: the outer garment, if garment it can be called, resembled a very large mattress in size and shape, with the ticking made of innumerable pieces of raw hide sewn together. It was about a foot in thickness and stuffed with sticks, stones, hard lumps of clay, rams' horns, bleached bones, and other hard heavy objects; it was fastened round him with straps of hide, and reached nearly to the ground. The figure he made in this covering was most horribly uncouth and grotesque, and his periodical visits used to throw us into a great state of excitement. And as if this awful burden with which he had saddled himself -- enough to have crushed down any two ordinary men -- was not sufficient, he had weighted the heavy stick used to support his steps with a great ball at the end, also with a large circular bell- shaped object surrounding the middle. On arriving at the house, where the dogs would become frantic with terror and rage at sight of him, he would stand resting himself for eight or ten minutes; then in a strange language, which might have been Hebrew or Sanscrit, for there was no person learned enough in the country to understand it, he would make a long speech or prayer in a clear ringing voice, intoning his words in a monotonous sing-song. His speech done, he would beg, in broken Spanish, for the usual charity; and, after receiving it, he would commence another address, possibly invoking blessings of all kinds on the donor, and lasting an unconscionable time. Then, bidding a ceremonious farewell, he would take his departure.

"Broken Spanish", as the author grew up in Argentina. Anyway, here is the mystery part:

From the sound of certain oft-recurring expressions in his recitations we children called him "Con-stair Lo-vair"; perhaps some clever pundit will be able to tell me what these words mean -- the only fragment saved of the hermit's mysterious language.

I wonder if that mystery has ever been solved? Google was no help -- a search only asked, "Did you mean: con-stair lover"? No. No, I did not.

Often a question like this, in an old book, arises. An Edwardian writer like Hudson, of course, had no option but to ask friends and acquaintances, and, finding no answer, throw up his hands. But to-day we live in the Internet Age! Someone -- and I mean a person more ambitious than myself -- should create a website for such literary mysteries, alphabetized by author and governed by a wise moderator, wherein questions and (potential) answers are submitted for consideration.

Until that day, will any reader out there explain "Con-stair Lo-vair"?

Ad astra per asperissima

2004-07-02T16:27:00.000-04:00

WaPo reports that Laurie Anderson is NASA's new artist-in residence (via Arts Journal).

The idea of an avant-garde electronic fiddler hanging out with rocket geeks at NASA's research centers may seem like an odd collaboration. The researchers' reaction to their visitor was mixed.

Good Lord, I hope it was worse than just "mixed". I had long though that one of the top perquisities of it no longer being the '80s is, no more Laurie Anderson.

Here's an example of the ideas she'll bring to bear on the exploration of space:

Her logic continues, breathlessly. "Here are these rovers up on Mars. You have robots up there looking for life, for water. Rovers are being trained to think like geologists, pick up a rock and crush it. One of the problems the JPL scientists are having is where the rock is and where the rover thinks the rock is. What is consciousness?"

What, indeed? Well, that's "logic" for you.

You know, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum does not, as far as I know, support a resident astrophysicist.

There is one thing I like. The Post says that:

[Anderson] lives with her paramour, Lou Reed.

Paramour? Paramour?! Well, la-di-da, Mr. Nineteenth-Century Dandy! Following the WaPo stylebook, from now on I'll be introducing houseguests to my beloved "paramour". Since he's actually a small brown chihuahua, this may cause some confusion. Still, I do like that word.

TT on MB

2004-07-02T16:09:00.000-04:00

Marlon Brando has died -- I know, "So has Queen Anne," you're thinking. I just wanted to point out Terry Teachout's insight about acting and creativity:

In an art form like jazz, where composition and performance are fused indissolubly, the difference between creator and interpreter is radically ambiguous. In acting, it isn’t: Shakespeare would be Shakespeare if John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier had never been born. In fact (and I’m smiling as I say this, though I’m more than halfway serious), it may be that actors have more in common with critics than with playwrights. They serve as intermediaries between the creative artist and his audience, helping to narrow the gap across which the divine spark of comprehension must fly.

I'm finding the comparison irresistible. I wonder if anyone's made that equation before Terry?

Fair Harvard

2004-07-02T15:46:00.000-04:00

Postmodernism meets the Gulag when James Howard Kunstler revisits our fair Commonwealth for July's Eyesore of the Month.

Welcome to the new student housing complex at Harvard's Business School, designed by cutting edgers Rudolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti. Notice the attempt to make this despotic corporate box sporty and playful with the arbitrary placement of windows.

Hey, Rudolfo! Sing "Fair Harvard"!

(singing) "Fair Harvard, dear guide of our--" (throws wadded-up paper) "--glmph!"

My vexillogical two cents

2004-07-02T10:37:00.000-04:00

Iraq is reclaiming its Saddamite flag (via Robert the Llama Butcher).

Admittedly, the new-blue transitional flag was no great shakes from a design standpoint. However, I cannot wholeheartedly (pace Llama) embrace the return of this, which, egregiously enough, sports Hussein's penmanship.

That's the main issue. A secondary problem is the sameness of Arab flags -- from the Polisario Front to Kuwait they are scarcely distinguishable. My suggestion (if anyone will listen) is to keep the Arab colors of green, white, black, and red; but think up a novel design. For a simpler alternative, just use a historical flag, such as that of the old Republic, or my favorite Iraqi banner, the kingdom flag, in use from '24 to '58. Or a variant thereof.

At the very least, S.H.'s writing ("God is Great") should be replaced by someone -- anyone -- else's.

Fulgurous lucubrations

2004-07-02T08:45:00.000-04:00

In the small hours of the night we were visited by a severe and unrelenting thunderstorm. I usually enjoy such welkin-clamor, but this was scarily different, very much "present" and not at all softened by the moist air. It felt like something from the Archaean Era, or, at the other end of sublunary time, like a sign of the Apocalypse.

Headline of the day

2004-07-01T09:36:00.000-04:00

Council is to paint dog poo pink

(via Dr. Curmudgeon.)

The Incredible Shrinking Typeface

2004-06-30T14:31:00.000-04:00

Stephen Baldwin sends this note, demonstrating the hazards of blogging in a poorly ventilated room:

I may be getting old - but not that old and my eyesight is still pretty good
- but anyway, I reckon the font on your blog is getting smaller and smaller!

Beware, Stephen. Shrinking typeface is a symptom of "stage one" only. Upon further viewing, the letters will seem to "dance", then emit a high-pitched whistle, and then all the Roman characters will be replaced by the Cherokee alphabet. At that point you will lose consciousness. When you awaken (about three days later), you will continue to experience headaches and nausea for up to ten days, and you'll find that all your hair has turned white.