But Teach Me To Ball, And I Ball Forever....

      Somewhere on high, the spirit of Ted Knight is laughing his ass off.   This blog's favourite quote: "They just chew them and chew them and chew them."   Yikes.

Pretty Guy For A Fruit Fly

      This blog just ain't sayin' anything.  

      (Ladies, please control yourselves....)

Civic Pride

      As the poet Miriam Waddington once said, "scratch us and we bleed history."   We stagger on guard for thee.

Knickery-Dickery-Stock

      Those wacky Australians are giving new meaning to the term prêt-à-porter.

The Best Part Of Waking Up

      Is cat shit in your cup.

Not Waving But Drowning

      Once again, silence proves a virtue.  

      (Worse, the article as written is a mangled mess of contradictions, implicit biases, and dramatic focal shifts.   See how many you can spot-- and then do a shot of whisky for each one you find.   This blog's favourite is the galling use of the word "outclassing" in the fourth paragraph.)

"Um, That's A Real Tough Question To Answer."

      This blog thinks it might be wise to re-enact some key scenes from Jackass: The Movie with these maladjusted zygotes.   Key quote: "I think that a lot of people are judging us without knowing us at all...."

Hymns To The Bloody Silence

      I've had some pretty weighty matters on my mind lately, and the poor thing has surely not been up to the task.   I've found myself, though, thinking a lot about Ajax (otherwise known as Aîas), and particularly about that brief appearance he makes in Book XI of Homer's The Odyssey.   This is partially because of what's happening to a close friend of mine, who, like Ajax, seems to have been royally screwed-over by The Powers That Be (Angel fans, please, say nothing), but it's also because I've been stewing on the idea of expression, and Ajax's silence in the Vision of the Dead sequence has always been especially suggestive.   Memory, however, plays strange tricks, and one's never quite sure how things went exactly, so I dragged out a copy of Homer and started rereading the relevant passage, probably for the first time in a half-dozen years.  

Continue....

Here's the section in question:

Now other souls of mournful dead stood by,
each with his troubled questioning, but one
remained alone, apart: the son of Télamon,
Aîas, it was-- the great shade burning still
because I had won favor on the beachhead
in rivalry over Akhilleus' arms.
The Lady Thetis, mother of Akhilleus,
laid out for us the dead man's battle gear,
and Trojan children, with Athena,
named the Danaan fittest to own them. Would
god had I not borne the palm that day!
For earth took Aîas then to hold forever,
the handsomest and, in all feats of war,
noblest of the Danaans after Akhilleus.
Gently therefore I called across to him:

'Aîas, dear son or royal Télamon,
you would not then forget, even in death,
your fury with me over those accurst
calamitous arms?-- and so they were, a bane
sent by the gods upon the Argive host.
For when you died by your own hand we lost
a tower, formidable in war. All we Akhaians
mourn you forever, as we do Akhilleus;
and no one bears the blame but Zeus.
He fixed that doom for you because he frowned
on the whole expedition of the spearmen.
My lord, come nearer, listen to our story!
Conquer your indignation and your pride.'

But he gave no reply, and turned away,
following other ghosts toward Erebos.
Who knows if in that darkness he might still
have spoken, and I answered?

                                                                 But my heart
longed, after this, to see the dead elsewhere.

--- from the Robert Fitzgerald translation (1961)

This got me looking at other versions of this famous scene, and it's strange some of the differences in tenor from version to version.   Here's Albert Cook's very peculiar version from 1967:

So I said, but he answered me nothing and went with the other
Souls of the shades of the dead to Erebos.
And he would have spoken in anger, just as I to him,
But the spirit within my own breast desired
To see the souls of the other men who had died.

So where does Cook get the phrase "And he would have spoken in anger"? It's a strange thing, because in Cook's version, lines earlier, Odysseus claims that "I myself spoke out to him with soothing words" (emphasis added). That's awfully speculative, and makes Ajax seem like he simply didn't get a chance to speak first so he exits pouting stage right.   (And, one assumes, negates just about everything Longinus had to say about this episode.)   I think sometimes that it's a sign of one's maturity how well one appreciates and understands silence, figurative or otherwise.   Ajax's is a stony but obviously pained silence: he was screwed by the gods and he knew it, and all he could do was accept it.   Was there any way to respond? Not really.   All he can do is face the man that was favoured by fate and address him with the most fitting response available to him: silence, and then departure, there in fact being nothing that he could say that wouldn't sound like fury, or at the opposite end of the spectrum, self-pity.  

      I think it was Stevenson who once said that the cruellest lies are often told in silence-- but one has to add to that maxim that so too are the most penetrating truths.   One need only think of the devastating effect of Christ's silence to the Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, or, more fliply, of Chesterton's refusal to engage Shaw in debate because Chesterton knew that silence was the only thing a man like Shaw could never abide.   There's something very piercing about silence, whether in cruelty or in kindness or something in between, and it commands us to understand without parsing or dissembling or explaining.   Silence is itself a language, a disturbingly opaque language, as Beckett perhaps more than anyone understood so well.   Nihilo ex nihilo, omnia ex nihilo.   It's the language of the perverse and paradoxical echo: it means everything and it means nothing at the same time, something King Lear could never have grasped.   It also begs the question: is language always-already a gesture of alternate purpose-- a supplication, an amendation, an appeasement, a rage for order to which we are not innately given? I'm sure Derrida has an answer ready on that one somewhere.

      But I return to Ajax to note something very important-- the utter lack of explicit emotion, at least as manifest in Fitzgerald's translation and butchered by Cook.   We can only imagine what Ajax's response is, or, rather, "what he's feeling," if indeed he's feeling anything as a shade.   I wonder if Milton was right to give his Satan so much self-defense (Non serviam, et cetera), so much "me miserable" justification, even if the idea of silence would surely have been anathema to our grand poetic hectorer.   I wonder if he'd then have had to modify God's response, or would he have walked away as indifferently as Homer's Odysseus does?   It's obvious that Odysseus wants something from Ajax in that passage, and it's not just the desire to ease Ajax's troubled soul. It's just as surely not simply the desire to "make things better" in the plain sense of that idea.   No, he wants, and this may be an overly-modern association but I don't think so, forgiveness, forgiveness for having been favoured by the gods, forgiveness for his survival-- which makes me think Homer may have been hinting at something much larger than we normally think for this segment.   To beg forgiveness without receiving an answer-- there's no comfort in that, no resolution, no sense of conciliation.   Ajax's answer is both cruel and not: there's simply nothing to be said, and, perhaps, that there's no point in saying anything.   And perhaps, too, there's a yet crueller irony here: that maybe Ajax's silence is a language saying so much-- or maybe it is simply Nothing At All.   Nothing.   Humanity for all its imaginative capabilities cannot truly imagine nothingness, and silence is the closest approximation of it that we know.   No wonder it unsettles us so. Or maybe it kills us to imagine what might have happened if we'd been silent and waited for words to deal with us before we tried to deal with them.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

      Yes, this blog's been pretty delinquent lately, and it's not likely that's going to change any time soon.   Fact is, I'm having a difficult time giving much of a damn about it (or anything else, for that matter) right now, and I'm not feeling especially good-humoured of late.   So, in the name of decor, I'll keep to myself until I'm feeling a little more sanguine, or at least as close to sanguine as I ever get.

      In a bit of unrelated news, for the odd couple of you that know what I'm talking about:   the worst words possible are now being used-- "It's only a matter of time."  

     Greatness, rareness, muchness, my ass.

Good Grief

      Just in case any of you still give a damn, George Lucas is proving that he's dyslexic.   He's also proving that he can top even some of his worst character names of the past.  

Feeding It Back

      I'm not sure what's worse about this story: the substance of it, or the horribly cavalier sentence near the close of the article, "Having killed the guy that way...."   Well, ah, ahem, yeah....

      This blog's also a little bothered by the clause "Olga was so longing to get the feedback."   Oh, is that what the kids are calling it these days? "The feedback"? I'll have to remember that.

Night's Template

      As some of you may have noticed, procrastination this morning has led me to dicker with the template again, partially fixing some functions in other browsers (hello Mozilla and Firefox) while trying to keep things balanced with Internet Deplorer.   Those of you looking at this blog in a browser other than Explorer are seeing things a little askew, with some backgrounding being more pronounced than it's supposed to be.   At this point, I can't be bothered to do the grunt-work and figure out what the smurfing hell is going on.   Those of you seeing this in IE should be seeing what I intended, a much more foggy, slightly more ethereal look that comes from the current choice of banner quote and the image of Sir Alec in the right hand corner.   There are also a bunch other minor little changes, mostly to colours and fonts and such.   Hopefully it's a little easier to read.   Those of you using Mozilla and other such browsers should no longer be seeing the background image repeating over and over and over again.

      Whatever, he says, shrugging it all off.   Hopefully it looks at least a little better.   Yeah, I know, I know, making things (other than language) isn't exactly my strong suit.   But, as the impotent man said to his increasingly impatient wife, "Hey, at least I'm trying here...."   

      Post-Script:   Okay, I figured out how to make things work in Mozilla -- but it seems I can only get things to work properly in one form or another.   If I fix one format, the other screws up.   Oy.   Fact is, the Mozilla way is much more flexible and much less annoying.   Unfortunately, since most people that are reading this site are IE users, I guess I'm better off sticking with the rotten, awkward Microsoft way of doing things.   How imprisoning.   Those of you reading this in Mozilla will see the word "Post-Script" above highlighted; the rest won't.   That's because IE sucks and doesn't want to make my life nice and easy.   Either that, or I'm just a computer idiot.   Er, don't answer that.   We all know the answer already....

Diminished Capacity

      Just a brief note of apology to those wondering about the dearth of discussion this week.   The Not-So-Good Doctor has been preoccupied with matters far too silly (and, in many way, aggravting) to keep this blog up-to-date.   I assure you, sooner or later I'll get through all this silliness and return to the real silly stuff-- you know, like inappropriate candy-dishes, filthy limericks, and articles about exceptionally-painful injuries.   Until then, feel free to check out Christie's assortment of internet goodies, most of which are totally irrelevant to people like me using dial-up connections.   Or you can turn to the old stand-by for your news & information.   Cheers & best.

      Post-Script: This blog's always on the alert, however, for Truly Significant Breaking News. Why? Because knowing's half the battle.

Our HATs In The Ring....

      Since it seems pretty unlikely that anyone else is going to dare posit answers for the dreaded Heaven Admissions Test (HAT), you can now read Doctor J's answers, along with RK's Answers in a single page form. (It's easier than reading them in the comments form.) I won't say anything about my own postulations, but RK's are a hoot-and-a-half. You can read them simply by clicking (I'm getting to it....) on this (here it comes....) absolutely adorable little link right here.

      (BTW, you can see God's warning about the exam and the unanswered questions by clicking here and here, respectively.)

Rake's Progress, or The Rape Of The Doc

Received this in an email from RK that I must admit I very much liked: Thought of you when I saw Christina Ricci on a magazine cover. De gustibus, and all that. Oddly enough, when I see Christina Ricci on a magazine cover, I think of me, too.

      Actually, this blog is tickled, er, pink that it should be associated with physically-impressive nymphets. (This blog thinks there has to be some sort of karmic goodwill to it.) So, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this association. Not a thing. Unlike posting this link, which is just so very, very wrong on so many levels, and will cause this blog to be ashamed of itself for almost a second. Do NOT click on the previous link if you are: (a) easily offended; (b) slightly (or more) prudish; (c) at work; or (d) trying to maintain some ridiculous illusion that the Not-So-Good Doctor would never, ever, ever put such a thing on his blog.

      RK, in another nudge in a kind of running discussion of matters of taste, suggested that I read (well, reread) John Donne's elegy "The Autumnall." It's a beautiful poem, but I guess the simple fact is that Donne's "The Dreame" (also known as "Picture" in one MS copy) probably more fitting for this silly, silly chap. In the former poem, though, Donne says, rather eloquently but in a manner now sure to enrage feminists:

Young Beauties force our love, and that's a Rape ;
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape.

Ah, 'tis true-- and the Not-At-All-Good Doctor isn't quite ready yet to be consenting.

      Yes, a dirty, rotten, shamelessly-lecherous mind is a terrible thing to waste.

      (Have I offended everyone now? Let me know if I haven't.)

Maddening

It looks like shit-box Blogger is screwing up again. I typed out one entry, sent it through the API, and it never registered. Idiot that I am, I re-entered it, sent it through, and it too never registered. Then, doing a simple test to figure out what the heck was going on, I sent through another-- which overrode a previous entry on the world's smallest cat.

To say that I'm mighty P-O'd right now would be an understatement. Aaaargh! And frankly, I'm too frustrated to bother trying to redo any of it all. Phukety-phuk-phuk-phuk....

Post-Script: Okay, I was able to restore one post, "He's An Itty-Bitty Kitty."

On your marks, get set: Awwwwwww.....

The Gay Divorcee

      Gee, I wonder if the fundamentalists will get their knickers in a knot about this, eh?

The Hot New Tech

      Sometimes, Luddism is a wonderful thing.

Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device, trade-named - BOOK.

BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use, even a child can operate it.

Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere - even sitting in an armchair by the fire - yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM disc.

Here's how it works:

BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. The pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence.

Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufacturers to use both sides of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs. Experts are divided on the prospects for further increases in information density; for now, BOOKS with more information simply use more pages. Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet.

BOOK may be taken up at any time and used merely by opening it.

BOOK never crashes or requires rebooting, though, like other devices, it can become damaged if coffee is spilled on it and it becomes unusable if dropped too many times on a hard surface. The "browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Many come with an "index" feature, which pin-points the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.

An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session - even if the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus, a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers. Conversely, numerous BOOK markers can be used in a single BOOK if the user wants to store numerous views at once. The number is limited only by the number of pages in the BOOK. You can also make personal notes next to BOOK text entries with optional programming tools, Portable Erasable Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Styli (PENCILS).

Portable, durable, and affordable, BOOK is being hailed as a precursor of a new entertainment wave. BOOK's appeal seems so certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the platform and investors are reportedly flocking to invest. Look for a flood of new titles soon.

(An oldie but a goodie.)

HAT: 2004 Edition

      Yes, it's finally here, the new edition of the Heaven Admissions Test, and God's evidently in a smiting mood. If you dare, just click here to read it.

HAT: The Heaven Admissions Test:

2004 Edition

You must answer at least TEN of the following questions.

Read this examination paper in its entirety before answering. You are reminded that you have three hours to complete this examination, and that this is your only opportunity to sit this examination, so answer carefully and accurately. Good luck.

1. Stephen Hawking once said: "I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." Assume this is true. Now explain to your creations, in terms as uplifting to them as possible, why you have to destroy them.

2. Defend mooning as a legitimate form of social criticism. How might it be used ontologically?

3. "There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after," says the Preacher (Ecclesiastes 1:11). Assess the implications of this fact in relation to the traditional notions of confession, repentance, and forgiveness, and explain how those implications effect each of the following:

(a) the works of Marcel Proust;
(b) the existence of purgatory;
(c) the idea of love;
(d) that thing you did with the rugby squad, the guinea pig and the cocoa-butter cream;
and (e) your prospects for the successful completion of this examination.

Note: Amnesiacs are precluded from answering this question.

4. Justify J. Lo. Be warned that mentioning any of her songs, films, lovers or body parts will result in immediate disqualification.

5. Summarize the scope of human history in one word. No adjectives or profanities, please.

6. Exactly how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many Charlie's Angels? Remember to show your work for possible partial-credit.

7. Hypothetical situation: the Last Man on Earth is a Jehovah's Witness, sitting alone in a small room. Suddenly, he hears a knock at the door. (Take a moment to savour the irony.) Does he or does he not answer the door? Determine and describe the consequences of his decision.

8. Discuss and comment on the importance of cunnilingus to human evolution.

9. Translate.

10. Explain God's purpose(s) in creating each of the following:

(a) tickling;
(b) the Chia Pet;
(c) Richard Nixon;
(d) the opossum;
(e) the uvula.

11. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud" (Corinthians 13:4). Identify the substance that Paul was smoking when he wrote those words and explain the social, historical, and economic implications of Paul having bogarted that joint.

12. Is cruciverbalism a heresy? Why or why not?

13. Can God make an error so great that even he cannot repair it? Explain.

14. Evaluate your own success in living in accordance with God's policy on gettin' jiggy with it.

15. Design a course for an upper-level seminar on trust. What readings would you assign? Could you expect your students to do them?

16. Have an epiphany. Right. Now.

17. Write a complete, grammatically-correct sentence that is also a perfect palindrome. Stay away from a man, a plan, a canal and Panama.

18. Perform a precise and meaningful exegesis of the following lyric:

I don't want anybody else
When I think about you
I touch myself
I don't want anybody else
Oh no, oh no, oh no....

19. Name your five favourite sins, cardinal and/or venal. Describe how your indulgence of these favourites now has you screwed but good.

20. Describe your greatest regret in life. How would you change things if you could, and what do you suspect would be the consequences?

21. Regret.

22. Chart as precisely and as mathematically as you can the structure of the firmament, and then situate yourself within the desire evinced by that structure.

23. Name the one thing you believe above all others, and explain why this belief is utterly and inescapably wrong.

24. Describe the smell you detect coming now from the charnel-houses in the form of a cywydd llosgyrnog.

25. Have faith. Articulate it in one word, and then the Welsh equivalent.

26. Recreate creation using only a cinder block, an ounce-and-a-half of baking soda and two garden hoes.

27. Name every single Bad Thing that you have done in life. Itemize them in a descending scale of priority. Postulate remedies for the top five.

28. Write one thing that will make God smile.

29. Write one thing that will make God laugh.

30. Sing the song buried deepest in your heart without using words. Sing who and what you were before the world was made. If you can, try not to cry.

THE END
Submit your examination paper to the attending procters. Feel free to prostrate yourself before them accordingly, but be assured this will do no good.

Breed The Geeks

      Paul Wells is finally back with a substantial entry on his blog, an entry with which I am in complete agreement, although I'd suggest that such changes not simply be limited to the science fields.   For all the talk about the lack of "international-growth-industries" in which Canada could take a leading role, there are so many which scream out in the obviousness: science and technology; international justice; peace-keeping, arbitration and negotiation; environmental development and treatment; advanced education; these are just a few, and they're all comparatively low-cost and not dependent on huge populations.   A little pie-in-the-sky?   Perhaps.   But, then again, so was landing on the moon.   If all else fails, perhaps we can become The Doughtnut Exporter To The World.  

      And, why, by the way, has Canada never had a Science Minister? Sheesh.... (And the first person that makes a Star Trek reference will suffer severe and vociferous bludgeoning with the nearest blunt instrument, probably Leonard Nimoy's left eyebrow.)

Diplomatic Impunity

      In North America, we call this "circling the wagons."   Key quote: "Reformist President Mohammad Khatami has said he believes the intelligence agent is innocent and has called on the judiciary to identify 'the real guilty person.'"   I wonder if Prime Minister Martin will actually do anything about this.   Yeah, I know....   *sigh*  

"Unacceptable Comments"

      As if the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe (and, in fact, North America, but the North American media is pretending it's a strictly Euro-thang) wasn't worrying enough, suddenly we have Ariel Sharon, always a voice of wisdom, telling French Jews to flee to Israel.   Oh, yes, Mr Sharon, because Israel is so much safer.   And, perhaps more importantly, because running away from the problem is better than addressing it.   The implication to Mr. Sharon's warning is pretty insidious, too: that only in Israel can Jews be safe, an assertion that indirectly fortifies the notion that there is only one place for Jews, that everywhere is inevitably going to be hostile to Jews.   This is dangerously defeatist, to say nothing of isolationist, logic.   No one should be subjected to the sort of sickening, racist attacks that have been proping everywhere lately, but the more leaders of Mr. Sharon's stature issue such statements, the more they work against the very ideas of pluralism and cultural respect.   It also gives these terrorizing bastards a kind of victory-- the driving of people from where they live, a terrorist principle against which Israel has fought for so long, and to which Mr. Sharon's comments are so surprisingly accepting.

Angry Dad To The Rescue

      From today's NYTimes comes this article (may require free registration) on censorial silliness in the States right now.   The only good news in sight regarding this ridiculousness can be found in the article's last paragraph:  

At least one show is tackling the decency debate head-on. "The Simpsons," television's longest-running comedy, will offer its take on the controversy next season on Fox. In an episode to be broadcast after the Super Bowl, Homer finds himself in charge of the game's half-time show. Writers won't say exactly what kind of havoc Homer will wreak, but surely there will be something to offend — and amuse — everyone.

Blessèd, blessèd be....

Queasy, Queasy Like Sunday Morning

      Oh, Sunday afternoons tend to lead to discomforting reading, and, not being a chap for church, my dosage today came from a larkish flipping through Jaroslav Pelikan's horribly-edited The World Treasury of Modern Religious Thought.   Flipping, flipping, flipping, I stumbled on this excerpt from a piece by Kierkegaard:

The fact of love abiding, or, perhaps more correctly, the question of whether it really abides in this or that case, or whether it ceases: is something which occupies the thoughts of men in such manifold ways, is so frequently the subject of their conversation, and very frequently the prinicipal content of all their poets' works.   It is regarded as praiseworthy that love abides, but as unworthy that it does not last, that it ceases, that it changes.   Only the first is love; the other seems, because of the change, not to be love-- and consequently not to have been love.   The facts are these, one cannot cease to be loving; if one is in truth loving, one remains so; if one ceases to be loving, then one was not loving.   Ceasing to love has therefore, in relation to love, a retroactive power.   Moreover, I can never weary of saying this and of demonstrating it: wherever there is love, there is something infinitely profound.   For instance, a man may have had money, and when he no longer has it, it still remains entirely true that he had had money.   But when one ceases to be loving, he has never been loving.   What is still so gentle as love, and what so strict, so jealous for itself, so chastening as love!

      --- Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

Excuse me a moment.      I can't even be bothered to parse through the antinomic problems of this sort of thing.   Let's just say that I'm now feeling an uncontrollable desire to listen to Tina Turner-- and to have my stomach pumped.

Now That's A Massive Hole....

Sitting at the heart of a distant galaxy, the black hole appears to be about 12.7 billion years old, which means it formed just one billion years after the universe began and is one of the oldest supermassive black holes ever known.

The black hole, researchers said, is big enough to hold 1,000 of our own Solar Systems and weighs about as much as all the stars in the Milky Way.

I ain't gonna say it....

      But 12.7 billion years old?   Unfathomable.   This is the sort of thing that makes one think Babylon 5 was closer to science than any Trek crap, with presences (or would they be absences?) so ancient that they simply cannot be contained within a scientific ken.   We should call this guy Lorien.

Rule Britannia

      Contacting Mr Beckham...

What The Thunderbox Said

      England: always giving new meaning to the term "self-sufficiency."   Key quote: "With free admission it would be a great way for visitors to give something back to the museum...."   In the words of the immortal Bette Davis, "what a dump!"

I'm Talking About Shopping Here

      Men.   Shopping.   Right, Dave.   Yakety-yak, don't talk back.

That Friday Taste

      Not much to be happening in the way of blogging today.   Last night I wound up partaking of a couple of bottles of Ontario wine which, as you may have surmised from the collision of the words "Ontario" and "wine," I was still tasting well into this morning.   Then much frustration with this blog-: after some renovations last night, all done in Mozilla, I had to redo everything because it all looked rather nauseating in Internet Deplorer.   And now I am supposed (key word there, supposed) to be barrelled over by the Musketeers to a stag-and-doe for an old family-friend.   We shall see.   Alas, yet another wedding on the horizon.... There are far too many of them in the happening.   Mehhhhh-wiiiij.   I'm almost starting to wonder if The Big Man is trying to tell this curmudgeon to make much of time.   Then again, if The Big Man were indeed trying to send such a message I fear I'd have to refuse him (three times, before the cock's crow?).   Ah, I should probably ready myself.   Hopefully there'll be some decent lagers on tap that I won't still be tasting tomorrow morning.   In the meantime, check out Stephen Hawking's anticipated revision of his thinking on black holes.   How appropriate.....

A Fury Of Accord

      My cup runneth over this evening: The Atlantic has a suprisingly on-point and very, very funny article by-- and please bear with me as I get past my own shock in saying this-- P.J. O'Rourke.   Colour this blog agog.  

Maher, Maher, Maher!!!!

      Dear Lord, I think I'm having a heart palpitation: The Onion actually has a moderately amusing piece this week!   Oh my.   I'm simply a-flutter!   Best bit: "After ejaculation, however, he introduced the topic of John Kerry's election platform."

      (BTW, note the image on the first page:   is it just me ot does that poor young woman seem to be about a week-and-a-half away from being able to sweep the floor when she walks?   I've seen drive-in screens that were shorter....)

UN-Believable

      I guess this means we've won the Nickel Medal.   Or would that be Wood?   Norway, once again, is the gold standard, but this blog's sure that placement may have something to do with more, er, pressing matters.   Regardless, all together Hosers: "We're Number 4! We're Number 4! We're Number 4!"  

      Maybe it's time for some people to trade up.      Key quote: "'He called me the voice of reason,' he said, chuckling. 'No one has ever called me that in the 20 years I've been in politics.'"

Queer As Milk

      "Not that there's anything wrong with that...."  

      (This blog suspects said image was either 'shopped, or it's from Canada where this image wouldn't quite be so surprising.   I'll leave my international friends to wonder what I mean by that.   )

Kinda Blue

We were already looking at a chocolate shortage.   Now comes news that berries will be in significantly shorter supply.   The gasp you just heard was Christie realizing that her budget's going to triple until this crisis subsides.       Speaking of which: this looks scrumptious, though some of you might prefer other items on the page.       And here, ladies & gents: even further proof, as if we needed any, that there's a website for everything these days.

Good Golly Miss Molly

      Further proof: the United States is going absolutely bonkers.   Either that, or it's unfathomably bored.  

      (Aside: the more stunning thing is that people can still abide watching that horrible show.   How it lasted all those decades is the third most-pressing riddle of the 20th century, behind only how Hitler could be elected in Germany and how they manage to get the Jimmy Hoffa into the Caramilk bar.)

Always Thinking Of Others

      Key quote from this article:  "After the shotgun had discharged he placed it in a rubbish bin and crawled back to his home."   Nice to see that some people clean up after themselves.   Despite, of course, leaving a trail like a slug.

All That Jazeera

While the CRTC approved the Arabic network, it turned down an application to offer Italy's RAI International as a digital specialty service through cable or satellite.

More than 100,000 Italian-Canadians signed petitions favouring the RAI application to broadcast 24 hours a day in Canada.

Well, go figure.... Actually, the very principle of supporting freedom of speech suggests allowing the carriage of Al-Jazeera, the dismissal of the RAI application just seems like nonsense.   Oh, the blessèd CRTC and its wisdom....

Bombed? Us?

      As Johnny Carson used to say, "I did not know that...."

Frankenheimer's Monster

      A-ha!   Now what's happening in the United States makes perfect sense!   Ladies and gentlemen, we now have our mission:  find Angela Lansbury.

      (Okay, the Frankenheimer film isn't exactly a verbatim translation of Richard Condon's book-- the new film with Denzel Washington claims, though, that it will be closer-- but do you honestly think any of this cadre would read the book rather than see the film?   I thought not.   Besides, the original film is a classic.)

Shades of Gray

      Paging Ralph Klein.   (And the Republicans can't blame Gray Davis this time.)

Check Your Brains At The Door

      This article will appeal to a certain number of you out there, ahem, you know, the ones that share their names with circus freaks with a penchant for chicken crania.   Alas, the sad part is this: I've actually seen all these movies....

Dumbing Down

      You know what?   I'm just going to report this story as is.   You may all lift yourselves off the floor now.

"That's What Our Children Deserve"

      Ladies and gentlemen, some shots are just too easy.  

You Know You're A Self-Victimizing Hyperbolist When....

      "It was so sudden like a terrorist attack."   A terrorist attack.   This blog suspects quoted woman would describe a wafting fart as a Dachau horror.  

Behold, He Makes All Things New

      Uh-oh: be afraid: email this morning from The Magnificent One:

Hey, J, the 2004 Edition is just going through revision right now and should be ready soon.   I'm letting Loki stall the damned thing in committee while I fidget around with a few other matters.   Luci says I'm being too generous this time around, but, well, we'll see.   I'd give you a more concrete date, but, hey, you know me-- and what's the point of letting people know when it's gonna happen?   Sometimes I wonder why I don't just change the pedagogy and end off with a final project-- you know, creating life, or a reconstruction of the spheres or some such thing-- but I get lazy in the end and think this at least leaves me with less of a mess to clean up at the end. Besides, I hate fucking dioramas. (Pardon my Sumerian.) Hate em, hate em, hate em. The other good thing about the tried-and-true method: I don't have to make comments. That bloody Job nearly sent me right off presentations completely. Anyway, I'll send it soon. Gotta line up the proctors, prepare the charnel houses, the whole drill, first. Let everyone know it's coming. Put the fear of Me into them. LOL. 1 r taht 1 r.

Yah? Way.... It's time to sizzle some nizzle-- fo' shizzle.   :-)

el Docco G

P.S.   Loved the candy-dish.   Used to have one just like it.   Called her "Eve," but then Isis saw it and, well, you can guess the rest....   

Oh crap.... See the previous edition here. And some previous answers.   Yikes.

"Let's Make Litter Out Of These Literati!"

      From The Spectator comes this article (see below) about the nefarious spectre of "public intellectuals," a term that's earned the suspicion it inevitably elicits.   When I think of "intellectuals" I'm torn between two reactions, and the more common of which is scorn because all-too-often such types are progenitors of fanciful ideas that seem more than a mile removed from practicality and relevance.   Some figures of this type: the leaders of the Yale School of criticism, the would-be Stephen Greenblatts (and Greenblatt himself), the American Neo-cons that think they have things all-figured out, economists of almost all stripes, professors insisting on the importance of recognizing our "cultural subjectivities" and our "identity constructions," and so on and so forth.   Occasionally, however, there are intellectuals whom I respect and/or admire, but I'd chomp at the bit if it came to describing them with the "I-word."   I guess that for me it comes down to this, that "intellectualism" has become for me something akin to what the word "liberal" has in the U.S., a term of which to be very wary (rhymes with Kerry!) because of its proximity to fetishism.   At least in theory, such associations shouldn't be there, but history has fixed them there.   It reminds me of the current scorn among "the intellectual community" for "practical criticism," as if practicality were a bad thing.   One of the great curses of the "I-community" is the tendency to approach matters with indifference and arrogance-- all the while insisting on general deference to its wisdom.   Oy vey.   Or, put another way, it's what happens when Springfield is run by Comic Book Guy and Doctor Hibbert and company.   Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm talking about....  

---

Read "Excuse Me, Officer...."; the final paragraph alone is worth the long read.

EXCUSE ME, OFFICER, COULD YOU DIRECT ME TO THE NEAREST PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL?
By Frank Johnson

Prospect magazine has cleverly won itself some publicity with a list in its July issue of 'the top 100 British public intellectuals'. It being alphabetical, Tariq Ali's name, I was pleased to see, was at its head.

As a Tory, I am an opponent of American neoconservatism. British Toryism should always oppose internationalist ideologies, of which American neoconservatism is the latest. Mr Ali, as a Marxist, is also an internationalist. But for whatever reason, he was more right about the biggest subject of the late 20th century - the Soviet Union - than the neoconservatives were. The latter said it was a mighty and frightening power. The 1960s New Left, out of which Mr Ali emerged, said it was a ramshackle polity whose might and power people like the neoconservatives exaggerated for their own purposes. By the late 1980s - not a long time after the 1960s by the standards of history - the Soviet Union collapsed without firing a shot westwards. The New Left was more right than the New Right. More Old Tories thought like Mr Ali than cared to admit it. They included, if Mr Ali will forgive the expression, Enoch Powell. But most kept quiet. Mr Ali, then, deserves his place.

So, doubtless, does the last name on the 100, James Wood, the literary critic. A few Rightish names creep in: Noel Malcolm, Roger Scruton, David Green of the free-market think tank Civitas, and, rather daringly, Melanie Phillips. There is also David Starkey, the Macaulay of our day, for we may be sure that Macaulay in our day, as well as writing books, would also have been a television historian.

Another name is that of 'Julian Le Grand, social policy theorist'. Some us are intellectually self-confident enough to admit that we have never heard of him. It sounds like an invented name. Julian Le Grand could be a social policy theorist in a television thriller, found dead in the Sorbonne library. Did he kill himself because a rival academic had discovered that he had falsified his degree in social policy theory and that, in any case, his name was not Julian Le Grand, but Julian Le Petit? But of course it turns out to be more complicated than that.

Another explanation for this name's inclusion occurs: Prospect made the name up to expose its more pretentious contributors and readers; luring them into exclaiming to one another that Julian Le Grand was 'the only social policy theorist one read these days; the rest being so dumbed down'. But we do not associate Prospect with practical jokes.

An especially welcome name on the list is that of Lord Skidelsky: the historian Robert Skidelsky. Welcome not just because of his books, but because of a story I heard about him only the other day which I hope is true, and which, if it is, reflects vast credit on him. My informant said that Lord Skidelsky bet David Dimbleby a case of champagne that in his interview with ex-President Clinton, he would not ask Mr Clinton about the oral sex. But Mr Dimbleby did, and it was Lord Skidelsky who sent the case of champagne. For once, a public intellectual has justified himself.

But what exactly is a public intellectual? Is it the same principle as a public convenience? Excuse me, officer, I've been caught short conceptually. Could you direct me to the nearest public intellectual? Intellectuals can be touchy about whether they are spoken to with enough deference. Perhaps public intellectuals wear a sign: 'Kindly adjust your address before leaving.' The Guardian seems to subscribe to the public convenience analogy. Annoyed at so few women being on Prospect's list, it apparently published a list of female public intellectuals. It would help if male and female public intellectuals could each wear those little signs, so vital to public conveniences, indicating respectively gents and ladies.

The term 'public intellectual' comes from the United States. Or at least it was in American publications that I first saw it used. A public intellectual seems to be an intellectual who earns a living by making his or her opinions public, or is an intellectual of whom a public of a reasonable size has heard. Not just the public as a whole, as in the case of Dr Starkey, but the many small publics which would have heard of, say, Julian Le Grand. Believers in the importance of intellectuals would put it higher. Public intellectuals, they might say, are intellectuals who are especially wise, and to whom we should listen or in whom we should believe.

That raises problems. For some of us, reading and listening to them is one of life's pleasures. But should we act on their advice? We may be sure that some of the compilers of Prospect's list, being intellectuals themselves, believe that we should go further than reading and listening to them: we should somehow give them political power. The world would be better governed if intellectuals, rather than people like President Bush, governed it. Thus Gordon Brown is on Prospect's list.

But Mr Brown's success as Chancellor is the result of something he did, at the outset, which the more intellectual economists opposed. That was handing over monetary policy to the Bank of England - something which the pronouncements of Keynes, the economist of the past who today would most likely be described as a public intellectual, suggest that he would have opposed. Handing monetary policy to the Bank was a cause of non-intellectual businessmen and unfashionable right-wing economists.

Likewise, Mr Bush blundered into Iraq not because he was non-intellectual but because intellectuals influenced him. That is, the neoconservatives. However much left-liberal intellectuals disapprove of them, the neoconservatives are typical intellectuals. Their magazine, Commentary, irrespective of whether one agrees with it, is one of the most intellectually distinguished magazines in the language. Lenin and Trotsky were intellectuals. To them is owed the 20th century's most disastrous political invention. Previously, radicals assumed that it would be enough to capture the state, and rule through it. Lenin and Trotsky proved that a better instrument was the omnipotent party. First Mussolini, then more terribly Hitler, copied them.

But perhaps our intelligentsia will only abandon its excessive regard for intellectuals once it is convinced that intellectuals can also be right-wing. Plenty have been. The term bien pensants - now used only about left-liberals - was invented to describe the royalist and absolutist intellectuals of Third Republic France, such as Charles Maurras. But, as already mentioned, the neoconservatives tend to be intellectuals. So there is some hope that 'intellectual' may eventually become a bad word even among Prospect's writers and readers. A remark attributed to Stanley Baldwin should be the last word: 'The intelligent are to the intelligentsia what a gentleman is to a gent.'

(c)2001 The Spectator.co.uk        Close this

~~I Didn't Sleep At All Last Night~~ (Doot-ditty-doot)

      You know that feeling you get when, say, you're reading an article about how a seventy-four year-old woman mated with a giraffe on camera to call attention to the plight of tsetse flies?   You know, that feeling that causes your mouth to fall ajar and your stomach to wrench as its contents become as consistent as six-year-old sour-cream?   Well, in case you don't....

      I don't even want to imagine what this means....

Screw The Future

      Jeff Simpson's column in today's Globe should be a wake-up call for a lot of my compatriots.   Should be, but likely won't be.   Sad truth is that a lot of us have been talking about this problem for years (I know I've been talking about this since HIGH SCHOOL, and somewhere there are ancient-editorials to prove it), and sounding apparently like Chicken Little.   Key quote:

In the past 20 years, Americans have increased public assistance to colleges and universities by 30 per cent in real terms, whereas public moneys in Canada have fallen by 20 per cent, after inflation.

You wonder why class sizes are growing, the undergraduate experience is weakening, and tuition fees are rising.

No, Jeff, some of us don't wonder.   This is the price we're paying for myopia.   Maybe The Soylent-Green Party is a thing whose time has come.  

Lennon's Tomb

      Oh, great, just what this blog needed, another round of Beatlemania.   According to CNN this morning, if the material is authenticated, the collection could be worth around a million dollars.

"You Can Leave Them Slightly Parted Like I've Done...."

      "Everything is colored, I guess the way they should be."   Er, uh, yeah....

      (There are, in fact, about seventeen directions in which this blog could go from here, but all of them are shamelessly filthy.   Make that eighteen.)

Remembering A Staple

      Words of wisdom for readers, critics, Hell, all of us, including especially those sickening partisans on all sides that think debate is all about shouting down their opponents in every public forum they can find; following a discussion various visual arts, C. S. Lewis reminds us:

We must not let loose our own subjectivity upon the pictures and make them its vehicles.   We must begin by laying aside as completely as we can all our own preconceptions, interests, and associations.   We must make room for Botticelli's Mars and Venus, or Cimbaue's Crucifixion, by emptying out our own.   After the negative effort, the positive.   We must use our eyes.   We must look, and go on looking till we have certainly seen exactly what is there.   We sit down before the picture in order for the picture to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it.   The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender.   Look.   Listen.   Receive.   Get yourself out of the way.   (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)

from An Experiment In Criticism  (1961)

It's a simple principle, not difficult at all (although, depending on the context, one might substitute ears for eyes, and so forth).   The ridiculously irrational state of affairs in just about all "responsive" circles has become astonishingly intolerant.   When reading, when debating, when participating in any form of discourse, get yourself out of the way as completely as you can.   For those needing an even more pithy way of summarizing this principle: Give things a chance.   That doesn't mean merely shouting at others, or letting your opponent say his or her bit before returning to your own imperious stump.   Look.   Listen.   Dare to receive.   Be patient.   Engage.  

      Let us face facts: there is very little genuine debate right now, at least in larger discursive circles, including the current American election, a cacophonous farce of democracy.   (Don't worry: the Canadian election was one, too.)   Why?   Because most people are talking rather than listening, imposing and superimposing themselves rather than hearing alternate ways of thinking.   It never ceases amaze me the current penchant for demagoguery and the culture of polarization that has resulted from it-- on both sides of the political, intellectual, sociological (and so on and so forth) spectra.   It destroys more than it creates, and it undermines more than it understands.  

"Anyway, You're Still Fat."

      Perhaps this blog could be a sports columnist after all.   This blog knows quite a few people in Toronto who'll be chuckling at this: "I'd like to add that it's not just me.   Nobody likes you.   It's just a matter of degree—of how much we hate you.   Personally, I measure my hate in terms of how severely I want you to be injured."  

Jersey Girl

Moo.

That'll Get 'Em Tolkien....

      Er, I guess you can call him "Jock Profuso."  

      (WARNING: Clicking on the preceding link may provide more information than you ever wanted to know.   I assure you, it's more than I wanted to know.   And to my younger readers, perhaps unsure about the reference made above, see here.)

"Sweetly, Dirtier, Dirtier"

      Odd that I missed this: just prior to the auctioning of Joyce's letter to Nora, The Guardian did a nice little piece on the publication of the private materials (letters, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, et cetera) and the salivating prurience of some editors and academics who seem to think all such material their cultural entitlements.   After all, does it really help our understanding of Ulysses knowing that Joyce at least once referred to Nora as his "dirty little fuckbird" that liked "being fucked arseways?"   No, not at all, or, rather, nothing more than any reading of Ulysses itself would provide.   Similarly, the academics-- mostly of devoutly feminist stripe-- that still curse the soul of Ted Hughes for burning some of Sylvia Plath's private writings may, for all we know, be fundamentally misunderstanding Hughes and what he did; after all, there's much in Plath's poetry, and in Hughes' remarkably good Birthday Letters, to suggest that such supposedly-exculpatory material might lead to further misunderstandings of Plath and her writing.   I've always been of the belief that there is a fundamental difference between what a writer publishes and what he doesn't-- especially in this days and age in which publication is a much more "determined" thing (as opposed, say, to the various "floating" manuscripts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and such).   Every author, I think, is entitled to basic human privacy, to a life that is not their writing, even if "writing" is involved in that other part of one's life.   It seems discretion is an increasingly uncommon thing, a fact I can only lament.   I understand entirely why so many writers would want to insist on having their private materials destroyed.   I wouldn't want anyone poking and prodding through my life, either.   Would you?  

One Way, To Dullness, 'Tis Inclined

      Some of you may derive some enjoyment from these "epic parodies", though I can't say there's much that isn't little more than hackneyed, laborious indignance masquerading, not at all convincingly, as humour.   Somewhere in The Great Beyond, John Dryden is rolling his eyes and thinking that he may indeed have been too hard on poor Shadwell.

      (Query: is it even possible anymore for American to produce a satirist of Pope's or Dryden's, or even Mark Twain's, ability anymore?   Magic Eight-Ball reads "All signs point to NO." *shrug*  )

Mandarin Laundries and PR PR

      It seems to be the subject of the week, the frustration among the swivel servants in Ottawa, warranting columns of foreboding from both The Globe and The Toronto Star.   This blog pauses to think what Nigel Hawthorne would say about this.

      In a related matter, Jeff Simpson at the Globe has come out in (albeit mild) encouragement of looking at new systems of proportional representation to deal with the evermore-prominent disjunction between the way Canadians vote and the governments they end up electing.   This blog can't help but think the French system has a bit of wisdom to it-- a second round in which voters know what they're dealing with and which compels finally a "one-or-the-other" decision-- but Jeff's right; it's impossible enough to get my compatriots out to vote to begin with.   The Australian system is more problematic but more "over-and-done-with" and may find some support.   This blog's primary question, though, is why it's taken this long to get debate seriously going on this, especially after the Free Trade eleciton in 1988.   Although opinion on that has now moreorless turned (even Liberals and New Democrats no longer talk of ditching the agreement), it was a bizarre result of parliamentary democracy that what effectively became a referendum on an issue could wrench a "yes" win from a 40-odd percent of the vote.  Ah, Canadians, always so quick to action....

      (This concludes the CanConPol portion of this blog for the day.   You may now proceed to matters more trivial, certainly, but eminently more enjoyable.)

Turfin' The Debt

Well, I guess it's proof positive that sometimes Draconianism works.       But it's just what the world needs now-- another smug cowboy claiming that his mission's been accomplished.

Betta Down Where It's Wetta....

This blog wants to be a lobster.   This blog also has it on impeccable authority that it goes very well with butter.           Key quote: "And they come one after another."       Note: all crab-cracks (cracked-crab bits included) and references to this blog as "Doctor Claw" will result in punishments so severe that PETA will end up protesting your treatment.

Oh, God, Doctor J, Not Another Wallace Stevens Pun!!

      "I placed a jar-head in Tennessee...."    (You can read the Stevens here. *sigh*   "It did not give of bird or bush....")  

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Going The Dissedance

      RK, this one's for you-- not the subject matter, but the comparisons which should have you chuckling one minute and wincing another-- from The Chronicle, but copied below in case the remove it soon.   Oy vey.

      As the song goes, don't it [the article] just make ya wanna cry, wanna lay down and die?   If I beat anyone the way this young woman beats this metaphor, I'd be imprisoned for life with absolutely no possibility of parole.   Or langue for that matter.  

Read "Sent To The Chopping Block"

Sent To The Chopping Block

In my corner of academe, English Renaissance drama, New Historicists dominated the 1980s and '90s. Their research often involved speculating about who might symbolize Elizabeth I in any given play, preferably by Shakespeare. Was it Portia in The Merchant of Venice? In Hamlet, was it Gertrude? Or Hamlet himself?

But all of those guesses were wrong. As it turns out, my dissertation director is Queen Elizabeth. And I've been sent to the chopping block.

My adviser -- let's call him Brad Torey -- sports a Palm Pilot and tenure rather than a scepter and divine right, and, sadly, geometric-print rayon shirts instead of ermine robes. But his rule bears a startling resemblance to Elizabeth's court, where the monarch -- flirtatious, unobtainable, and more than a little vain -- demanded that courtiers woo her and be wooed. To do business with the queen was to offer undying love and to hope for tokens of affection in exchange -- a dance, perhaps, or maybe a shipbuilding contract.

Brad's dominion over his students is similarly romantic. I got chocolate from England; my fellow doctoral student, Jane, got candy from Scotland. He sends cards, sometimes with endearments -- "honey," "sweetheart," "darling." He meets us in casually chic restaurants and bars.

When he presented me with a copy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary and gave Jane an old television set, we giggled, trying to figure out what that meant.

Somehow, sex always rears its ugly, lovely head in the Torey court: office-hours conversations about how Monica Lewinsky might have gotten exactly what she wanted, about student-professor affairs. (I couldn't help noting, perhaps paranoiacally, that during my comprehensive exams Brad used the word "arousing" no less than five times. At no point were we talking about sex.)

Our monarch is frank about his history with other women: the mother who preferred his brother, the devout high-school girlfriend, the woman who turned him down for a date with a ludicrous excuse (she was busy for lunch that year), the nurse, the schoolteacher, the bruising divorce, and finally, the dissertation student who married him a few years ago. She had to give up her teaching career, of course. Brad, our Virgin King, does not wear a wedding ring.

Elizabeth was frequently accused of miserliness; her first earl of Essex, along with two of her chief knights, Hatton and Walsingham, died as broke as any grad students. Brad himself doesn't much like handing out money to his ladies in waiting.

We've taught his classes and edited his manuscripts, yet received no compensation in return. When he was in England, Jane drove without complaint to his large, sparkling house, taking care of cats and plants -- unpaid, as usual.

But I don't really think Elizabeth was just stingy, and I don't think Brad is either. His reluctance to put things on a financial footing, rather, shows a desire for his subjects' absolute fealty. By agreeing to do these things for him gratis, even as we take out more and more student loans, we are forced to admit our need and desire to please him.

Brad, though, sees it differently: The graduate students he advises are his friends, he says. We're all partners with him in a joint venture, right? Yes, Brad. If you say so, Brad. You're the boss.

At any rate, Brad asks for his students' love, and he gets it. We felt the knife when he had surgery one semester, winced along with him when his fittingly Tudor gout flared up. We listen sympathetically, trying not to let our reactions give anything away, when he wonders aloud whether he's too old for his students to find him attractive. (As Elizabeth aged, needing reassurance, she demanded more and more wooing from her courtiers, to less and less effect.)

But I wish Brad would spend a bit less time in the English Renaissance with Elizabeth and a bit more in the Italian Renaissance with Machiavelli, who wrote that it was better to be feared than to be loved. Because whatever Brad thinks, it's fear, not love, that he wants.

It took a few years for me to feel the treacherous shoals of the intimacy Brad had offered, to see the bearded jaw tighten in anger, to hear that California-tinged voice drop and get a little husky with rage. The queen's young favorites inevitably presumed too much intimacy; so did I.

Last semester, after waiting three years for Brad to read a chapter draft (my departmental stipend had expired in the meantime), I asked for more feedback in a tone that wasn't exactly courtly. And I implied -- in public -- that one of Brad's suggestions for my dissertation might not work.

Those were fatal errors.

Today I can no longer call Brad my director at all. He resigned from my committee with a curt note, and though he had approved my dissertation prospectus and passed me for my comps, he refused to sign the paperwork that would get me into doctoral candidacy and didn't bother telling me.

The queen had her critics maimed and executed; I merely got dumped. But man, even without having my entrails drawn out of my still-living body and fed to waiting dogs, I sure do feel eviscerated.

The department hasn't quite kicked me out. I've found a new dissertation director, recently tenured. Brad seems to know everyone and to head every important committee, though, and I'm not too optimistic about my career.

As for his other courtiers, Jane and our friend Laura keep soldiering along in Brad's service. His wife, Mary, still lives with him. Doris didn't try for an academic job after her decade or so in the graduate program; instead, she works alongside Mary in an office on campus. Alice got the kind of plum tenure-track position we were all supposed to try for, but things haven't gone so well for her. Unable to produce a dissertation that Brad would sign until years after she was hired, her tenure case looks bad. Like Queen Elizabeth, Brad will leave no heirs to the throne.

Meanwhile, I'm still sans doctorate. I've left Brad's kingdom for adjunct work in a rural state adjoining the one where I grew up. I'd call it "exile," but that sounds a little grand.

Actually this small Southern town isn't so bad. From here, I correspond occasionally with my undergraduate adviser, a man of many kindnesses. And sometimes I take walks in the oldest local cemetery. In the spring rains, the cemetery looks suitably romantic, with the artificial flowers blown across the gray-green grass. Some of the names on the gravestones seem to come from a period only a few generations after the earl of Essex's head must have thudded on his queen's scaffold. But I can't quite make out the dates on the weathered granite. They could be 17th century, or 21st.

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

---

Ana Forbes is the pseudonym of an adjunct instructor of English at a university in the South.

This Blog Is About To Be Thoroughly Ashamed Of Itself

*sigh*   Yeah, yeah, here it comes, I know you're just waitin' for it....


      I guess *sigh* she's movin' on up...

                           *pause*       *I know, I know, it's just so crass, so fantastically wrong*

                                                                       ...to a deluxe apartment in the sky-hy....

(This blog now feels so, so, dirty.    )

"This Man Is About To Die."

      (Ah.... The Meaning of Life....   )

      Reading this post over at Christie's site today (and, surely, opening myself up for no end of assassination attempts), I got to thinking about all those beautiful actresses now as culturally-forgotten as the poems of Alfred Noyes.   We build our female icons for a moment, and we discard them so quickly, though usually after a series of head-scratching career-missteps.   I was thinking about Gabrielle Anwar and how stunning she used to be-- so much so that her one scene in Scent of a Woman remains the only thing people remember about that flick other than Pacino's overripe "hoo-yahs."   I think of Olivia Hussey, still for all intents-and-purposes every teenage boy's image of Juliet.   I think, hell, even of Sharon Stone, once everyone's hot topic.   Remember when Winona Ryder wasn't a laughing stock?   They've all faded into one form of obscurity or another, more a novelty of a role or two in culture's memory despite eventually being relegated to work at the Mr. Submarine's of the film industry.   Then there are the ones Doc J didn't especially have a thing for but who had their moments.   Mira Sorvino? Kim Basinger? Brooke Shields? All of them now footnotes now.   All still alive, all of them working, none of them culturally relevant.   Sad, isn't it?   Admittedly, some just simply didn't age particularly well, and some didn't have a great deal of talent.   This happens, all of this happens.   But looking back, say, at some of the pictures of, say, Ms. Anwar or Ms. Hussey, I'm struck by how beautiful they still look by today's ever-shifting standards of beauty, and I wonder why they didn't make it bigger.   Ms. Anwar can't be 35 yet.   Ms. Hussey could have passed for 30 well into her mid-40s.   Or what about Kimberley Williams, known to everybody as Steve Martin's daughter in Father of the Bride? Now stuck humiliating herself on a weekly basis on-- gasp-- According to Jim.   Her predecessor in the same role was Elizabeth Taylor, a laughing-stock for decades but undeniably a star for the ages.  

      I'm trying not think of Keat's Grecian Urn, but it's inescapable.   I don't want to slide into the drudgerous thinking of "beauty fades," even if it does.   In the end, though, we don't cherish beauty as much as we think we do.   We talk about it excitedly, then glibly, for a time, then we moreorless forget it, maybe to rediscover it again, almost surely only briefly.   We forget.   I wish I knew why we do that, beyond the obvious reasons of moving forward in time and being surrounded by new people and new things and such.   It's sad how much beauty one forgets, of which the physical visions named above are just communal images, denominative, impersonal ones, really.   I wonder if there's a comfort in allowing ourselves to believe life is just as grey and banal as it seems when we make our commutes and sit through our meetings and watch our television and read our newspapers.   Sometimes I think we wean ourselves from beauty rather than keeping it in our memories, we learn not to think so much about it, not to remember too well the details and the charms, else we'd be forever beholden to it, forever bound to something that something that we have seen and known and moved on from; that is, something we situate firmly in the past tense.   Humanity needs its greyness, I think.   It's so much easier that way.  

      Whether easier is better is another matter entirely.  

Tossed Salad And Scrambled Eggs....

      They're callin' again....   Thank you.   Doctor J has left the building.

Hard Times

      You had to know Amsterdam was going to be involved in this somehow....

The Democratic Age

      As most of you know, the Dubsters have been suggesting that John Edwards is too young and too inexperienced to be Vice-President (and possibly President) of the United States.   John Edwards was born 10 June 1953, making him 51.   Now that is on the young-ish side, at least historically, though it says nothing of his abilities or qualifications.   George W. Bush, however, was born on 6 July 1946, making him (just-turned) 58.   When he was running for the Presidency in 2000, he would thus have been 54.   I guess, however, those three years made all the difference and conferred upon Mr. Bush the wisdom, intelligence and experience to be President.  

      For the record, check out the official White House biography of President Bush. Notice that the article does not mention that the President was elected, or by how much.

Five By Five

      For RK, a page full of limericks, most of them not particularly impressive, but a few familiar ones and two worth quoting here:

There once was an old man of Esser, Whose knowledge grew lesser and lesser,       It at last grew so small       He knew nothing at all And now he's a college professor.

The limerick's callous and crude, Its morals distressingly lewd;       It's not worth the reading       By persons of breeding - It's designed for us vulgar and rude.

This site, however, is much more complete, and generally the quality of the limericks much better.   Consider:

Two guys at a condom convention
Attracted a lot of attention.
      "Who's dong is the bigger?"
      They argued with vigour;
But still it's a bone of contention.

That should be "whose," but.... And:

"If only you'd show me", I said,
"Just a smidgeon of interest in bed.
      Just a smile? Just a sigh?
      Just a touch on my thigh?
Just a ... Shit, I forgot you were dead."

And then there's this one that may take a second to register:

f vwels n my keybard I've fur;
I've cunted 'em lking fr mre.
      I thught that there ught
      T be mre f that srt
S the must've drpped t the flr.

Enjoy.   And remember, they're limericks.   Don't expect any of the good ones to be clean.  

Unchain My Heart

      Forget about Bush/Kerry: Cheney/Edwards is where the fun is, even if there's much whispering of late that Mr. Cheney may not be long for this ticket.   This blog's favourite question, unsurprisingly, is for the Dickhead: "If anything happened to you while serving a second term, would George Bush be fit to be president?"  

      By the way, one has to wonder why this story isn't getting more prominent play in the U.S. media.   *evil, shifty glare*   If you're wondering about the source of the story, check out the relevant FAQ which is good for a chuckle or two.   The authors are self-professed old-timers that "long for the days when men were men, sheep were nervous and Playboy Playmates really did look like the girl next door."   This blog concurs with points one and three.  

Easy Come, Easy Go

      For those of you that were just dying to know: "she didn't even put her panties on...."

      (This blog is NOT sex-obsessed. This blog is NOT sex-obsessed. This flog is NOT sex-obsessed. This snog is NOT....)

The Beautiful Waist Of The Hourglass!

      This blog ain't sayin' nuthin'.   Mmmmm..... Jennifer Connolly.....

      (This blog apologizes for its uncontrollable drool.   It has had an incurable crush on Jennifer Connolly, the real one, since it saw her in The Hot Spot, oh-too-many years ago.   Any of you that dare to do the math on that will be viciously beaten with a Windex bottle and/or the bones of Burgess Meredith, whichever is nearest at hand.   Harrumph.)

Did You See That Ass?

      This blog really shouldn't make light of this.   It really, really shouldn't.   But "should" only counts in horseshoes, hand-grenades and oral sex, anyway....  

The Prose At The End Of The Sun

      It's Sunday morning-- and despite having been a typically rotten sot as usual on Saturday night, I'm up unnecessarily early.   I am, however, enjoying my solitude, drinking mud-flavoured coffee as Van Morrison's A Night In San Francisco cascades in the background.   For those that don't know Van or the album, ANiSF is a double-CD of the Man live in SF over a decade ago.   All in all, it's a pretty damned good outing, an album that ages surprisingly well, in part because it's all about instruments; like James Brown, Van lets his musicians take entended soli, including one for an oboe (played by Kate St. John), developing and forming musical grooves as they seem most appropriate.   One of the marvels of the album is the astonishingly hale Teena Lyle, mistress of many instruments but at one point doing all the heavy musical lifting herself, flailing furiously away on what I think are conga drums as she leads the band through a chorus, her voice as ripe and full amidst that fury as just about any woman's this side of Madame Franklin's.   The premise of the album is one of fecundity: songs grow into other songs, the transitions often seamless, the scopes often massive, with Bobby Bland's I'll Take Care Of You turning into a fifteen-minute piece that finally ends up in a stormin' It's A Man's, Man's, Man's, Man's World, and an encore of Gloria taking an early detour through Johnny Kydd and the Pirates' Shakin' All Over.   Another fifteen-minute piece starts with Ray Charles' Lonely Avenue and wends through (among others) Be-Bop-A-Lula and Roy Orbison's Down The Line.   But perhaps the strongest moment, the moment most appropriate to Sunday morning and the things we tend to think we should be doing on a Sunday morning, comes early in the first disc, just as The Man is making his way through a sinewy, magisterial version of Vanlose Stairway, a song supposedly about meeting a lover in a Dutch metro station.   It's a wonderful song to begin with, but Morrison utterly remakes it.   Just over midway through the tune, Morrison bridges toward another:

You got railway carriage-charm, you got railway carriage-charm....

Ray Charles said it this way:
Did ya ever wake up in the mornin'
Just about the break of day
Reach over feel your pilla'
Where your baby used to lay,
Do all your cryin'
Like you never cried before,
You even
CrYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY so hard,
you give your blues to the neighbour next door.

And it's that elongated "Y" sound that makes all the difference: he holds it for the perfect time and with the perfect timbre, and he nails it.   There's a tough catharsis to it, a rigorous strength that denies cheap sentimentality, and it lances through musical convention even as it demonstrates a kind of showy virtuousity.   It's a note given enough muscularity and force that one almost forgets that it's a human voice making the sound, Morrison's tenor almost purely saxophonic, and it's pulled off with such apparent ease that one almost forgets that assaying to reach such a note in concert could turn so easily into embarrassing failure.   It's a moment few other musicians could pull off-- and only Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra leap to mind as ones who've been able to do it successfully.   And it's brilliant, fucking brilliant.   It sings of despair without for a second seeming timorous or reluctant, and it prepares us for the supplication of language to music that follows.   It's a dizzying moment, the sort of thing that reminds guys like me why we listen to music in the first place: it makes one forget the sad prose at the end of the sun.   This is what the human voice can do, and it almost seems like nothing at all.   It's a steeling lesson for a Sunday morning.