Fresh air and "Hair"

On human population

2010-11-24T15:30:00.000-08:00

I don't know where to start, so I'll start smack at the conclusion: We need to lower the world population to 500,000 cunning promising individuals.

This idea is an old one of mine which no one has been able to diffuse successfully, and yet it is as unpopular as it is inevitably impossible. Let me start with saying that I, like most thinking class plebeians, both enjoy Earth and nature, and see its unhappy path toward extinction. I guess I do rather more than most vulgarian metropolitan ape-descended life-forms. I enjoy wood, leather, roast lamb, turtle soup, tiger skins, and ivory pianos. And I abominate the synthetic plastic age we live in.

And yet the common Green Man of today encourages us to drink less water and eat less food, to go places by bike and to turn down the air-conditioning, to avoid waste, turn off the tap, down the lights, talk less, drive less, breathe less, sleep less, and even hunt less or not hunt at all.

The solution my fellow Americans, is not to live squished and sparingly like a puritan. The solution is not to breathe less. It is to live fully, but to have less people living fully. The over-abundance of humanity has dirtied our beaches and polluted our rivers far more than we could possibly do if we were only less people. I don't see why any of us shouldn't be able to drive where we want and even drive seadoos along the beach and hunt for the big five if only there aren't enough of us doing it. We were never meant to have over populated and over-encumbered our planet with muggy cities and a gruesome atmosphere. A surplus of lions could eliminate the zebras not for any fault of their own, not through a wicked plan to exterminate them and destroy the ecosystem, but simply because there were too many of them unwittingly killing their food.

Like this, there are too many humans demanding food and petroleum and water and wood and land, and polluting our biosphere, and yet the unfathomable human solution is to simply be more sparing?

A pack of rabbits were brought to Australia some many years ago by a Brit who wanted to hunting. They were released, but as they had no natural predator, they increased exponentially. The hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of ravening rodents devoured farms of western Australia when the government decided to build a fence around those millions of square kilometres of land to protect the rest of their farm-land. But the rabbits escaped, and until today they are a national plague, although I believe some scientists found ways to diminish their numbers substantially.

These rabbits were also not wicked to their heart, nor corrupt to their soul. They had no Machiavellian plans of world-conquest nor were they even power-hungry and over-zealous success drived monomaniacs. They were rabbits. They were hungry, they caused radical harm in a national scale to the Australian ecosystem simply because they could grow and over-populate and therefore devour the land. The rabbits weren't guilty as individuals, but there was a very distinct and very simple problem.

People have criticised my clear and simple theory by stating in their quaint centralised perspective that humans are not animals therefore the comparison is irrelevant. The problem with being self-centred is that in itself is an animalistic trait. Thinking not philosophically, nor humanistically, but thinking for the benefit of us all, human reduction is an obvious evident and clear conclusion. If there were fewer monkeys, there would be more bananas for each one and none would go hungry. Yes we've reached the limit, we've passed it. And now we're offering solutions such as eat less bananas.

Now comes the impossible conclusion. Birth control would be the only logical way of reducing the population, and herein lies the problem. As humans as a whole will not have birth control, as it is instinct, as in animals my dear antagonists, to "be fruitful and multiply" as it is entirely inevitable that the mass of conglomerates called homo-sapiens will not reduce their population, just like the rabbits couldn't be talked into it, we will never see the day where each of us can live in free air and even wear furs and drink clean fresh water.

As we multiply, all of us suffer.

Douglas Adams

2010-10-18T18:53:00.001-07:00

CORRIEARKLET (n.)

The moment at which two people approaching from opposite ends of a long passageway, recognise each other and immediately pretend they haven't. This is to avoid the ghastly embarrassment of having to continue recognising each other the whole length of the corridor.

CORRIECRAVIE (n.)

To avert the horrors of corrievorrie (q.v.) corriecravie is usually employed. This is the cowardly but highly skilled process by which both protagonists continue to approach while keeping up the pretence that they haven't noticed each other - by staring furiously at their feet, grimacing into a notebook, or studying the walls closely as if in a mood of deep irritation.

CORRIEDOO (n.)

The crucial moment of false recognition in a long passageway encounter. Though both people are perfectly well aware that the other is approaching, they must eventually pretend sudden recognition. They now look up with a glassy smile, as if having spotted each other for the first time, (and are particularly delighted to have done so) shouting out 'Haaaaaallllloooo!' as if to say 'Good grief!! You!! Here!! Of all people! Will I never. Coo. Stab me vitals, etc.'

CORRIEMOILLIE (n.)

The dreadful sinking sensation in a long passageway encounter when both protagonists immediately realise they have plumped for the corriedoo (q.v.) much too early as they are still a good thirty yards apart. They were embarrassed by the pretence of corriecravie (q.v.) and decided to make use of the corriedoo because they felt silly. This was a mistake as corrievorrie (q.v.) will make them seem far sillier.

CORRIEVORRIE (n.)

Corridor etiquette demands that one a corriedoo (q.v.) has been declared, corrievorrie must be employed. Both protagonists must now embellish their approach with an embarrassing combination of waving, grinning, making idiot faces, doing pirate impressions, and waggling the head from side to side while holding the other person's eyes as the smile drips off their face, until with great relief, they pass each other.

CORRIEMUCHLOCH (n.)

Word describing the kind of person who can make a complete mess of a simple job like walking down a corridor.

Three Oil Depictions of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

2010-03-26T15:22:00.000-07:00

The painter's job is to capture and immortalise a moment on canvas. It is to express a sentiment or thought, and it is to pass it on so the onlooker can empathise and partake of the joy and sorrow of the painting.
The writer's job is vastly similar in that he passes on an idea and combination of feelings, and the greatest writers are the ones who most successfully transmit these intended thoughts into the reader's mind. It is in these two forms of art – writing and painting – that we now combine, contrast, and compare the efficacy of an artist's conception of a scene from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Three oil paintings will be scrutinised on how successfully the artists portray the events and ideas contained within the play: an 1852 Millais, an 1842 Maclise, and an 1839 Delacroix.
OPHELIA – JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS

(Millais)

This scene of Ophelia dying described by Gertrude depicts the “glassy stream” and the “fantastic garlands” in intimidating, impeccable beauty (4.7.184-185). Millais sets the mood in deep green, which contrasts with Ophelia's pale snow-white face and delicate hands, which describes innocence and young beauty. Her open and limp hands, grasping nothing, shows tacitly how she is forsaken and destitute, she is slowly drowning and her calm face bespeaks acceptance not resistance. Just as in life, she is not a controller of her fate. The flowers by her side not only compliment the fair Ophelia and recapture her mournful state in the palace, they also lay by her as a show of how delicate and helpless she is, how incapable she is to care for herself, and how ephemeral her life truly was. I can offer nothing but positive recommendations for this magnum opus.
THE PLAY – DANIEL MACLISE

(Maclise)

Act III Scene ii. Hamlet sets up the play The Mousetrap to trap the rat Claudius. Hamlet has his back turned to the play. His eyes rivet entirely on the King and with such intensity and focus that all else fades into the background. His posture, lying on the floor, and hand under chin like that of Rodin's statue Le Penseur, also shows him to be in deep concentration and oblivious to his surroundings.
King Claudius also does not look at the play; with one hand on forehead, the other clasping his knee, and head bent forward, he shows remorse, guilt, and shame. This painting shows the two principal characters in defining clarity enacting their single overpowering emotions.
YORRICK – EUGÈNE FERDINAND VICTOR DELACROIX

(Delacroix)

Act V Scene I. Hamlet looks at Yorick's skull and philosophies on the end of every human life. He is dressed in black which shows his despondency toward his father's death. The sky is overcast and grisaille. The colours of the painting are in earth, black, and red: there are no lively colours in the picture. There is no summer or youth or happiness in the colours, joy and innocence fall into the forgotten memories of the past. The skull is at the centre of the picture and Hamlet towers above the others. This picture is almost entirely monochrome with a touch of blood red added into the soft lifeless mixture, which adds suggestive imagery of death and war and blood into the macabre colours of darkness.
Altogether it's a fine colour combination, but not dramatic enough on the imagery, background, or facial expressions. Too much emphasis is given to the gravedigger which would be focused on Hamlet if he were the one holding Yorick's skull, as he does in the soliloquy. In summary, this painting comes short of its fullest potential, since its fullest potential demands an immortalised scene from an immortal play.

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Works Cited
Millais, John Everett. Ophelia. 1852. Tate Britain. London. Millais Ophelia. Web. 9 March 2010.
Maclise, Daniel. The Play Scene in 'Hamlet'. 1842. Tate Britain. London. Tate Online. Web. 9 March 2010.
Delacroix, Eugène Ferdinand Victor. Hamlet und Horatio auf dem Friedhof. 1839. Musée du Louvre. Paris. Eugene Delacroix. Web. 9 March 2010.

The Insanity of Hamlet

2010-03-06T05:13:00.000-08:00

The unfortunate protagonist Hamlet in William Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name not only holds conversation with the ghost of his murdered father and King of Denmark, who commands him to kill the new king his uncle, but he is impelled to conceal his knowledge, fears, disgust, confusion, and rage to arouse no deadly suspicion. To this effect, he lets his closest and only friend Horatio know that he will disguise himself affecting an “antic disposition” (1.5.173). Herein lies an everlasting doubt of the play: was Hamlet truly mad or did he merely play his role beautifully? Is Hamlet sane or not? Did the ghost Father “deprive [his] sovereignty of reason and draw [him] into madness” (1.4.76-77)? This study is divided into the study of two questions: first “What is insanity” then “Is Hamlet insane during act III?”

WHAT IS INSANITY?

The definition of insanity is not only different in medical, law, and layman terms, it has also evolved throughout the ages so that what contemporary society calls insane is not the same as what the English world in Shakespeare's era referred to it as. The word 'insane' comes from Latin in meaning not and sanus meaning sound (Encyclopædia Britannica 1910). Since 'insanity' is an insipid bland cover-all word, in the scientific world it is now obsolete, having been replaced by the different specific symptoms of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, sociopathy, and Maniac-depression, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc. In US law the term is the “condition of mental disorder or mental defect that relieves a person of criminal responsibility for his conduct “ (Encyclopædia Britannica 2008). This legal insanity is specifically for individuals incapable of mentally realising the illegality of their actions. In contemporary layman terms insanity means a manner of conduct exceptionally different to that of accepted society, encompassing all abnormal mental conditions of the individual. And in Shakespeare's time, this banal word was very similar to modern layman terms, including dangerous unexpected unpredictable behaviour potentially causing harm to one's self or others, incoherent muttering, and loss of reality according to how the rest of society perceives it to be (Encyclopædia Britannica 1910). All these ambiguous definitions lead us with no small doubt as to the generalisation and overly simple blandness of the question “Is Hamlet insane?”

IS HAMLET INSANE DURING ACT III?

In act III Hamlet longs for an end of life's “sea of troubles” (3.1.60), he distrusts even the fair Ophelia, and goes immediately into the Machiavellian planning of the play “The Mouse-trap” set up to catch the rat Claudius to expose his true colours. His advice on acting is enlightening and his planning is both mentally sound and cunningly effective. He delivers a most moving and eloquent speech of appreciation to his only friend Horatio right before entering the theatre with his Uncle and Mother and other lords, wherein he plays the babbling fool once more while keeping a strict eye on Claudius. In a moment of raffish over-exuberance he openly rejoices at the still-alive King's public disgrace and proof of guilt. He plays up his friend/spies for what little they're worth, proving once again his intellectual superiority and proceeds to his mother's room. Halfway here he bumps into Claudius praying and coldly contemplates the advantages of killing him, and decides to let him live awhile longer in order to completely exact his revenge. He then argues with his mother, kills Polonius spying behind an arras, and rebukes his mother for her acceptance and embrace of this most wretched substitution counterfeit of a King who sits on the throne.

The strongest argument in favour of Hamlet's insanity is when he murders Polonius without a second thought and shows no remorse for it besides a passing acknowledgement, and how this is directly in opposition to his over-contemplative nature seen throughout the play, and how this sporadic personality is certainly the result of an over-troubled, abnormal, mad mind, out of control, dangerous, and unpredictable because of the immense pressure it was put under. The argument defending Hamlet's sanity has many instances of proof, but let us first agree on what insanity is.

According to modern law, Hamlet is not insane, as even he holds himself completely responsible for his actions. He contemplates the killing of Claudius very thoroughly and holds back from killing him in prayer just to not let him get in to Catholic Heaven. He plots and he is cunning, and most importantly, he is fully aware of his actions and of their repercussions, making him legally sane.

In modern medical science the word insane is not used, and although his mind was abysmally troubled and partially depressive, he had sense left in him. He was very much in control of his body and actions, but no clear answer can be given to such an unclear question. It is sufficient to say he had no strong debilitating mental illness which deprived him of his reasoning or that dictated his actions and speech. Whenever he desired to act respectful, sane, and dignified, he had complete control and no one questioned his mental capacity and responsibility for his actions.

Finally, in Shakespeare's time, using the simple idea of insane, being generally anyone considered mentally unstable to such an extreme as to potentially cause harm to himself or others for no reason, or to lose reality with the surrounding world, Hamlet proved neither insane nor mentally challenged, but exceedingly proficient in communication and control of his actions.

Works Cited

“Insanity.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 11th ed. 1910. Web. Internet Archive. 6 Mar. 2010

“Insanity.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Deluxe Edition. 2008. DVD.

Hamlet versus Amleth

2010-02-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

Keneth Branagh's Hamlet: To be or not to be

The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare was a story very similar to Saxo Grammaticus's history of Amleth in his Gesta Danorum, or Deeds of the Danes. Saxo's history was written four hundred years before the play, which was written four hundred years before present day (Encyclopædia Britannica). It is interesting to contrast the history in both works. I will attempt to show these differences, first focusing on the general plot, then concluding with a general perspective on their peresonality differences.

1948 Hamlet: That is the question...

Let me differentiate distinctly the Hamlets by calling each protagonist by the name given him from his author. Shakespeare's is called Hamlet is and Saxo's is called Amleth. Both had a trying time surviving and keeping their insanity disguise intact. Both were born in Denmark although Amleth was not the King of Denmark's son, as was Hamlet, but rather the governor of Jutes's son, directly below the King(Grammaticus). This makes regicide inapplicable in the older story but fraternicide and incest still burn strong. Amleth's father's assassination was openly known whereas neither Hamlet nor mother knew of their family's murder until being told by ghost or son (1.5.25-41; 3.4.29-31). Both protagonists feigned madness to escape the uncle's ax and both were quite cunning. A desirable young lady was
released on them to see their reactions and deem the cause or validity of madness, but both escaped this attack with their “antic disposition” disguise unscathed(1.5.173). At a subsequent private conference with their mother, both spied out an eavesdropper/spy for the uncle and promptly killed him and disposed of the body. Hamlet stabbed him through an arras he hid behind (3.4.25), while Amleth struck a sword through the haystack wherein he hid (Grammaticus). As for the disposing of the bodies, Amleth was a little more practical in chopping up the body, boiling it, and feeding it to the pigs (Grammaticus), as opposed to dragging it to the lobby (4.3.35-37). After which they rebuke their respective mother with sharp words of unreserved truth. Their insanity disguise is now uncovered by their uncle.

Keneth Branagh's Hamlet: "Dead for a ducat!"

The alarmed uncle realises his own life is in danger and both uncle and nephew become more active in their ploys to get rid of each other. He promptly sends his nephew and step-son to England to have the English King kill him, but in the dark of night he changes the letter to read that the two bodyguards sent with him by his uncle should die(Grammaticus; 4.3.60-67; 5.2.26-59). Besides this, Amleth also implored the King in his uncle's name to marry him to his daughter, which was likewise successful. So Amleth and Hamlet return to Denmark with one ultimate mission which forebodes them throughout the entire story: that of killing their uncle. Hamlet kills his uncle with the poisoned sword meant for himself, and Amleth kills his with the sword hanging by the bed of his uncle (5.2.323-324; Grammaticus). Not only this, but he also kills all the noble men in his uncle's palace (Grammaticus). Hamlet, though, has tougher luck, and is killed by the eaves-dropper's son soon after his mother dies by drinking the poisoned wine also intended for Hamlet set up by the uncle (5.2.310-323). Amleth, on the contrary, survives to be declared governor of Jute and to marry a second wife (Grammaticus).

Mel Gibson's Hamlet: after killing the fool Polonius

Thus concludes the story of Hamlet together with how Amleth took his revenge. It is important to note how wildly and listlessly sporadic Hamlet is in his planning and reckoning, as opposed to the careful meticulous planning Amleth had done for his revenge which all took over a year to carry out, and he did, entirely successfully. One key example of Amleth's planning was before going to England, “Amleth, on departing, gave secret orders to his mother to hang the hall with woven knots, and to perform pretended obsequies for him a year thence; promising that he would then return.”(Grammaticus) which was when he exacted his revenge, the woven knots to help him bind the nobles to the floor and burn down the building (Grammaticus). Hamlet was a tragedy, but Amleth was more of an adventurous and historically based story since the protagonist does not die here. Amleth, in short, is one step closer to history, whereas Hamlet is one step closer to poetry.

2000 Ethan Hawke's Hamlet: With Horatio killing King Claudius

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Works Cited

Encyclopædia Britannica. 11th ed. “Hamlet.” Cambridge: University Press, 1910. Print. Internet Archive

Grammaticus, Saxo. The Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus. Trans. Oliver Elton. Book 3. New York: Norroena Society, 1905. Print. Project Gutenberg.

2010-02-13T18:49:00.000-08:00

2009-12-17T17:14:00.000-08:00

its not bad

Time Machines and Deduction

2009-10-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

I believe, and don't ask me why, that sometime in the future, the day will come when I look in the past of what I am today, and think "What an insolent fool I was. What an ignorant lout!" I have an uncanny premonition, that there may be a time, when I wish I could go on a time machine back to current present time (then to be known as 'the past') and give myself a punch for my indolence.
Since I am convinced, through careful deduction, that this day is inevitable, and that the time machine will not be invented, I have left one alternative. For future satisfaction, I must punch myself in the face right now.
There.
Now in the future, I'll reward myself with a brandy for having taught myself a lesson in the past.
Have a good day.
E

Visit at Mummy's

2009-07-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Et in Arcadia ego

2009-05-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

O for the days when the birds would sing and the lasses would dance and the men would drink.
Dionysus the God of Wine would laugh and some would frolic.
The pastoral remniscent feasts of yore, they were called Arcadia.
The true scholar knows these days don't exist.
Hobbits don't have seven meals a day smoke pipes in the afternoon and sing rathar than work.
Utopians don't surplus in wine and have ebullient mornings in fair canoes flirting and fishing.
Arcadians don't frolic.
There is no Lost-bloody-Horizon with Shangri-bloody-La, is there?
But the true scholar (they forget to mention) is a Philistine. The true scholar is a modernist, a proponent of the industrial age, the glory of man, the rise, surplus and destruction of Mother Nature. A revolutionary economist.
Men have been trying their hardest to destroy this planet, and (hats off) progress is happenning. All around us there are exploitations, assassinations and extinctions of Mother Nature.
Now Gaia is a powerful godess who follows the law of survival of the fittest, and so are we.
But aesthetically speaking, the Globe was a lot better off without our help.
This is the age of asphalt. I call us the Plastic Generation. Plastic in every sense which means artificial.

You'll find me by the cottage.
-Emerset Farquharson

Futility

2009-05-09T16:40:00.000-07:00

Many times in our inevitably ethereal lives we unbeknowest waste our days with anger.
In the perpetual french wars of 1800 the English got the upper hand. Yet before in our barbaricy, those grand Arcadian days of remniscence, in their internecine struggles the latins took control of them.
The World Wars happened in Europe, and thus statuses changed from USA being Europe's "haughty offspring" to the Old World being Washington's "summer villa".
The easiest way to eliminate two enemies is provide them both with the means to do it themselves.
The top dogs as we all know, and as Nicolas Cage concluded, are not the fighters but "The weapons sellers shall inherit the earth, the others are too busy killing eachother off."
The world continues turning and who wins is not the angriest but the wizest.

Sacre Blú!

2009-04-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

I know, watch out for the sharks, but I DO plan to do this.
Similar rules for the game. Unfortunately we can't have drinks. But I think the view will make up. If possible, Jubyz should be in the gang, although I doubt she'll wear a dress.
I'd like to make a Guinness croquet record in the Carribean. There's warm water AND rum. This is only as expensive as a dinner out but you'll only get world famous (if you play your cards right) heck, there will come a day when this will be an olympic sport.
I can't think of a way to play underwater polo.

An old idea

2009-04-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to do this (I'll do it in a year or two)(It's terrible how we always say that though): take from six to a dozen spry buddies, get a piano, and have the craziest guinness book tea party. Naturally, the five minute tete-à-tete Should have some background music, and I was wondering of either hiring a band with amplifiers (and a battery) all equipped with parachutes, or a piano. I thought a piano was more preposterous... and more classic.
So of course we'd all have parachutes (and we'd get in the Guinness, extra bonus) and we'd all have tea.

The problem is how to drink the tea. Spirits were suggested.
Of coarse I am very preoccupied with the piano, but I think it's all worth it, and it would only need a bit of repairing when we land. It would command a large parachute, but it would also be a veteran piano. (old and cheap)
I still cant think of exactly how we're going to get in Guinness because of this, any ideas?

A Wagner Story

2009-04-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

Call me ignorant, but I had no clue as to the who's and how's of dear contriversial Wagner untill the evening.
I took it upon me to study all about him and download his great works. I am downloading them as I write.
I knew he was a contriversial character, rumoured to have been Hitler's inspiration for the bloodshed of The War. Frankly I thought it all posh, until I read the Encyclopaedia.
He was a contriversial character, Nietzsche was part of his inner elite circle, he was an inspiration for both Hitler and Charles Darwin.
Like the greats, he lived and died for his music. It's a pity, how they can be so bloody poor, and once they're dead then they become masters and gods and the like. I once told Sean that that was the principal reason why I was not aiming at literature being my primary career. I told him I would only be famous, if ever, once I'm dead. He promised to kill me swiftly!
He had an unstable relationship life, but that is not soley monopolized by artists these days.
He was sporadic, and that is a trademark of genious. Also wonderously, madness is a trademark of immortality. Perhaps I have a chance?
I've got to tell you this one story though, that I've just learned today (don't berate me):

His longest peice, indeed, considered arguably the greatest opera created—the 15-hour four-part opera, which took 26 years to complete, called The Ring of the Nibelung is about a god who renounces all love to possess a ring which gives power to rule the world. He is betrayed and a bloody war breaks out.
In the last scene of the first peice the ring of power is taken from him, so he places a curse on it: “Whosoever holds the ring, by the ring they shall be enslaved.”

Sound familiar? I say it's astonishing. Had Tolkien and Wagner been having tea together?

A day in the life of Vin

2009-04-19T17:28:00.000-07:00

Ive just read Vincent's blog, again. It takes about two seconds. It's really quite amusing, and I'm a fan. A fan of his bloody lazyness, but more one of his happiness to share the world (for two seconds) with everyone.
http://www.mcdmad.blogspot.com/
Ive never seen a shorter blog.
It has three posts. The first one, I wont spoil, but has TWO WORDS in it. he has more comments than the total ammount of words he wrote.
If you should read this, I suggest Vincent to continue your blog. I've signed up.

Now to be pompous, there IS on blog with fewer posts. Lizzy. Dear Lizzy has had vulgar nicknames which I do not care to repeat, but besides her space-case conclusion on life, she is one dandy friend. You may disagree with her post, but I'm flattered. again, I wont spoil it, but there is only ONE BLOODY POST. (I didnt count the words, as there's more than two.)
http://lizconnolly.blogspot.com/

One Story

2009-04-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

I do have to tell you one story.
The day I found the shire was a peculiarly quiet afternoon (isnt it always)
I was minding my own buisness as all bloody gentlemen should, and it seemed Mother Nature, the god Gaia, was in deep slumber.
It was a day for tea. A day of reminescence. A day I remember perpetually, untill the present.
I recall the flight of the leaves and the song of the trees. I recall the grumblings of the caves and the langour of Zeuss the god of the sky. They seemed particularly articulate, and I was in Arcadia.

A chap called Benji happened to visit as if the entire world revolved around nothing more than a good quiet smacking philosophy which is impossible to describe unless you meet him.
He enlightened me until we both fell silent atop a derilict tractor within the lazyness of perfection. What the ancient trees taught us then, was that being in the shire is the answer. That Arcadian nature is life. That tea and biscuits and lazy conversations that overlap entire afternoons are the answer.
Good luck, fellow hobbit.

Ode to the Britannica

2009-04-19T07:57:00.000-07:00

Thy pompous dusty air
Is intellect you share
(unfortunately rare)
For which I've come to care.

Impeccably you show
Explanations you forego
(imperiously, you know)
How life is like Bordeaux.

Eternally I see
How things are meant to be
(like history and tea)
In gratitude to thee

One day when I forget
When last we've ever met,
Well then I shall regret
My sacred sillouette.

(The sillouette here is of coarse reffering to the Brtannica.)

Oxford

2009-04-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

I must admit, it's a nuance scary to even mention such a place. To hold on the claim of desiring to go there, as a bloody student, is asking to be Hercules.
Unfortunately, that is what I ask. I should be happy enough with playing croquet I know. Perhaps I've taken a penchant for something too grandiose. I do recall one day mentioning reminescently "I wouldn't mind too much being a very famous writer." This is just a tenor of the pompousness inside. I could tell you of everything I wish for, but I dislike being arrogant most of the time.
You see I also plan on being a sculpterer but thats when I grow up.
After Oxford, where I'll major on computer technology, piano, oil-painting, literature, greek, classic architecture, and history, and minoring on botany home brewing theatre and polo, I think I would like to grow my own grapes, to make my own wine. Of coarse I would make my own glass-bottles and the like.
I would have become a sedantarian because grand pianos are difficult to carry, and my only concern is where to settle, where to create my shire: Canada or the UK?
I dont aspire to write plays, I'll only make books, both novels and philosophy. And I forgot all about cooking. I enjoy making bread, and theres nothing like your own spaghetti. Mama mia!
As I write with my quill, my ink is drying and candle is quite done. I believe I have a long horse-ride ahead of me tomorrow, as the horseless carriage is being used by Mummy.
I once wanted to also be a conductor. maybe that'll be extracurricular?
As a final word: always have ice cream. It's exceptionally scrumptious.

christmas vacation

2009-01-21T16:59:00.001-08:00

danny and simon

me and lee. i miss her. and benji! doesn't benji have a knack for looking like that? it suits him!

ah, the indifinable benji again. i believe its quite easy to define me, hand over the wine!

The Young Fogey: an elegy

2008-12-17T05:42:00.000-08:00

Harry Mount

They’re playing rap music in the jewellery department at Christie’s South Kensington. In T.M. Lewin, the Jermyn Street shirtmakers, you can dip into a fridge by the cufflinks counter and have a frozen mini-Mars while you are leafing through the chocolate corduroy jackets.

But who is left to mourn these things? In the old days, the Young Fogey, the character invented by Alan Watkins on these pages in 1984, would have been in the vanguard of the protesters, shrieking and whinnying away about the desecration of his haunts. He is silent ...because he is no more.

Twenty years after his creation, the Young Fogey has pedalled off into the sunset on his sit-up-and-beg butcher’s bike, broad-brim fedora firmly on head, wicker basket strapped to the handlebars by leather and brass ties.

He hasn’t actually died. The two archetypes of the Young Fogey mentioned by Mr Watkins – the journalist and novelist A.N. Wilson, and Dr John Casey, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge – were only in their thirties at the time, and so are now in their fifties and in rude health. But there is no one following in their footsteps and they have abandoned the whimsical attitudes that once defined them.

The grown-up Young Fogey – now, typically, in a position of power, as are Mr Wilson and Dr Casey – will live in some style, but he’ll no longer be interested in style. You might not even notice him in a crowd. Goodbye, braces with old-fashioned fasteners and trouser waistbands strapped perilously close to the nipple line. Farewell, frockcoats cut for long-dead Victorians. No more the endless pairs of black brogues. Hello, suit of modern cut. Hello, moccasins. Hello, loafers.

The term ‘fogey’ dates from the 18th century, and is related to the slang word ‘fogram’, of unknown origin, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. ‘Old fogey’ was used of old-fashioned people for several hundred years before the Young Fogey came along. Alan Watkins acknowledges that ‘the phrase had first been used by Dornford Yates in 1928’. He also specifically acknowledges that he borrowed the phrase from the literary journalist and Proust translator Terence Kilmartin, ‘who had used it of John Casey’.

But it is Mr Watkins who put flesh – and tweed – on the skeleton. As he wrote in his Spectator piece, the Young Fogey ‘is libertarian but not liberal. He is conservative but has no time for Mrs Margaret Thatcher and considers Mr Neil Kinnock the most personally attractive of the present party leaders. He is a scholar of Evelyn Waugh. He tends to be coolly religious, either RC or C of E. He dislikes modern architecture. He makes a great fuss about the old Prayer Book, grammar, syntax and punctuation. He laments the difficulty of purchasing good bread, Cheddar cheese, kippers and sausages.... He enjoys walking and travelling by train. He thinks the Times is not what it was and prefers the Daily Telegraph.’

There was a significant sartorial element to the Young Fogey. Dr Casey remembers the architectural historian Gavin Stamp matriculating at Cambridge in 1968, at the height of the Paris Revolution, wearing ‘tall collars, very wide lapels and double-breasted waistcoats’. And that fed in turn into Dr Stamp’s architectural interests and the emphasis on High Victoriana – the books on Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, George Gilbert Scott junior and the late Gothic Revival.

But it wasn’t just clothes that defined the movement. ‘Roger Scruton had a strong architectural Young Fogey reaction,’ says Dr Casey, ‘but he never followed the sartorial line.’

The Young Fogeys were also concerned with gentle and gentlemanly attitudes. ‘I thought that was more striking than their way of dressing – a genuine idea of gentlemanliness,’ Dr Casey continues. ‘Oliver Letwin wasn’t a Young Fogey when it came to clothes. But at Cambridge he had that gentlemanly air that he still has; that I think goes down very well.’

For a while, the Young Fogey ruled. ‘Everyone went mad,’ recalls Alan Watkins. ‘The fierce Veronica Wadley [now the editor of the London Evening Standard], even then a power in middle-market journalism, declared that for the moment she was interested only in articles about Young Fogeys. I was asked to write a book about them, to be called The Official Young Fogey Handbook.’

Mr Watkins declined, but the Telegraph journalist Suzanne Lowry did end up writing a book on the subject. And for a while after, the Young Fogey had his time in the sun (always the English sun; foreign holidays were not for him). There were buttressing forces at work. The 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited reverberated in slowly declining waves for more than a decade. When I was at Oxford in the early Nineties, it was still working its effects through a regular crop of about 30 undergraduates a year, who had been 10-year-olds when it was first shown and had been knocked sideways by it, much as other 10-year-olds were overwhelmed by catching the Sex Pistols in 1977 or would be overwhelmed by Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which came out the year after Brideshead.

Seersucker jackets, plovers’ eggs, wind-up gramophones on purple velvet cushions in punts – these were the toys of some of my contemporaries as late as 1993.

‘I had a four-piece light-green tweed suit – without trousers – made when I was at Oxford,’ says Richard De Moravia, 34, now a media lawyer. ‘With a flat cap, jacket, waistcoat and a cloak lined in bright gold. The tailor wanted to make it a five-piece by making me some tweed spats. I thought that was too much.’

Daniel Hannan, at Oxford at the same time and now MEP for South-East England, marvels at some of the lengths the Young Fogeys went to. ‘One particularly recherchÈ affectation was to use old constituency names; so instead of saying Mid-Staffs or South-East Staffs, they’d say ìLichfield, Rugely and Stoneî or ìTamworthî. A similar thing today, which I admit I’m rather in favour of, is consciously to convert all prices into the pre-euro currencies when travelling in Europe. But I think it’s all in decline now. Fish need water to swim in. To sustain a few people with silver-topped canes and monocles, you need a critical mass in cords and shiny brogues.’

There’s hardly a teddy bear or a bottle of Madeira between the undergraduates at Oxford now. When I returned there at the end of last term, on a boiling hot summer’s day, there wasn’t a single boater to be seen.

Look in vain round St James’s these days for the etiolated 30-year-old making his way from London Library to Georgian terrace home in Islington, sniffing the evening air for incense seeping under the doorway of All Saints, Margaret Street: ‘Decidedly north German in effect – strong whiff of the Marienkirche at L¸beck, don’t you think? Or maybe Freiburg im Breisgau.’

He’s gone for good.

John Casey, the original target of Mr Watkins and Mr Kilmartin (‘I didn’t mind. I thought it was amusing’), agrees. ‘There are a few undergraduate Young Fogeys left at Cambridge, but any organised body of sentiment attached to the ceremony of life has gone.’

The Young Fogey had looked as though he’d last much longer than a decade. He was certainly robustly built to withstand the buffeting of the years, with his thick, thornproof tweed jacket, matched with a waistcoat – pronounced ‘westkit’ – the bushy mutton-chop whiskers lovingly cropped at Trumper’s, doused in pomade and bordered by baby-pink skin shaved with badger-hair brushes, shaving soap and cut-throat razors.

Why has he gone? It’s not that Britain is no longer fogeyish or that the institutions the YF took to – the National Trust, Latin Masses, the Georgian Society – have disappeared; they’re flourishing. Gentlemen’s clubs are as difficult to get into as they have ever been. ‘The waiting list for the Garrick is eight years’ long,’ says a spokesman for the club. If you walk down Pall Mall, you’ll see a huge glossy poster that spans the full fa’ade of the RAC Club showing its Turkish baths in all their newly refurbished beauty. Croquet is as popular as it has ever been since its heyday just before the first world war. The Daily Telegraph does a brisk trade in boxed DVD sets of Brideshead Revisited and The Forsyte Saga. And more children now attend public school than ever before.

That very success killed off the Young Fogey. Like the SDP wilting after its great triumph – forcing the modernisation of the Labour party – there’s nothing left for the Young Fogey to fight for. ‘It was a rebel movement,’ says Dr Casey, one that developed in reaction to the naked materialism, the blurring of class boundaries and the boxy, square-shouldered, belted suit of the early Eighties.

‘It was a reaction to bohemianism, too,’ says Craig Brown, the satirist. ‘People are much more work-based now. Then there were many more people being bohemians, and the Young Fogeys took against them. I noticed the other day when I was dropping my daughter off at Marlborough, the children all seemed conventional. They all looked the same and were thinking about what jobs they were going to do.’

The in-yer-face, ‘I love 1830’ Young Fogey spirit – as vigorous in its way as the Club 18-30 spirits of the Faliraki partygoers – had to disappear once everybody came round to its way of thinking: to buying Regency rectories, coating them with National Trust paint combinations and taking holidays in Landmark Trust follies.

‘I joined the Travellers’ Club at a very young age as a sort of rebellious gesture,’ says Craig Brown. ‘And I suddenly got worried that I’d got to the stage where I had become the real thing, so I gave up my membership. It was the same sort of thing with A.N. Wilson – no one could ever call him conventional.’

The Young Fogey was as cut off and contrary as the Millwall fan. The hooligan’s cry – ‘Nobody likes us, we don’t care’ – might just as well have applied to the Edwardian-suited architectural historian of 1984. When the public started to love him – and even imitate him – he had to shuffle out of his Huntsman suit and head for Armani, perhaps mournfully fishing a frozen mini-Mars out of the T.M. Lewin fridge on his way over.

Sailing!

2008-11-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

Let's take a swim!

So we sailed onto the sun!

The trophy I didn't get!
Woohoo! (gotta run!)

peaches

2008-08-31T17:40:00.000-07:00

There's a song about tomatoes. oh no, peaches.
Let's go fishing...?
oh:
We're goin' to the country, we're gonna eat a lotta peaches
Peaches cooooome in a box!
Hey I'm going to SP. yeah! woohoo!
I will tackle my friends!!

Cream Cheese

2008-08-24T10:47:00.001-07:00

You know there are some babes who are bloody fast—for example she's cream bored and dieing for jelly or food fights, but all she can say is
AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
heh, well, we ottta translate that, and its difficult to translate unless you know what youre doing!
If a girlfriend throws icecream down your back, it's not cuz she's mad atcha she's just bored, and hearing you scream will make her laugh!
awful stuff! but true!
If somebody says "good day" they're your enemy nowdays, but if somebody throws mud at ya they're your friends!
I gotta eat!

2008-08-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Long ago, when the world was flat, when we all were from Greece, the Olympic athletes would compete naked. There was only running and wrestling and boxing and discus throwing and javalin launching.
The overall winner of all these competitions would get one crown of olive leaves. This would be his pride!
In the battle of Thermopilae, the best warriors were competing in the Olympics, and so weren't counted as the imortal three-hundred. But they all had higher values and priorities than themselves which immortalized their honour.
They would prefer to die competing than not compete, which reminds me of the Classic Japanese. They are the only other race I know of with this radical discipline.
This love of giving your all, even to the death is what I saw in Croatia in his 2006 battle against Brazil. My brother and I saw the game here in Brazil, and we felt the fighting spirit of the underdog, who dies fighting, and raged and raved and craved it, that's when we rooted for Croatia. The overdogs Brazil massacering, yet they played on. And then a fan painted in red and white broke through the stadium and ran onto the grass, and there praised the goalie for what he knew to be his last game in the Cup, his game against Brazil.
I have nothing against Brazil, but I do have something against the overdogs who do not even kill with grace manners ettiquete and compassion.
And when the losers show that grace and manners which the overpwer drunk killers lack, I choose the losing side. I'm not for winning nor losing, I'm for style.
That is what the Greeks and the Japanese tried to teach us—the priority.
Sean (A Japanese friend) and Mikey (A Greek friend) and I regularly throw javalins at eachother. transformed from brooms and rakes!

All about pictures

2008-08-17T13:08:00.001-07:00

A photograph must have action. We must be laughing and eating and looking welly merry and most importantly, we must have good babes arm in arm in each photograph. I will most certainly put new photos in my albums with this new perspective. We must either have a beer and board, beer and parachute pack, beer and fishing rod, or beer and babe in every bloody shot, then we'll really tell stories in pictures.
Very very good philosophies! Hand me a beer!

Splat Flat

2008-05-25T22:28:00.000-07:00

When Jubys visited us, we climbed our rugged hill, and rested on a rusty obscure remnant. Without a doubt we were the kings of the world, yet nothing could compare. You see, Benji jumped on the bloody swing, right when a car of about five friends arrived, and the timing was so perfect, that Jubys and I saw he would smack right into the car swing and all. I closed my eyes! Smack he went!
Ouch!
The rest of the night he limped, but we drank to his health, and Jubys got to see a good story!
Things happen all the time!
(Good times, Juliana and Ben!)

Créu

2008-03-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

We are partying in Jonny Gabe Laura and Sharons place.
So after dancing and mixing shots of various peculiar stuff, Gabe put on "créu" man was it a success!
Tomorrow we'll drink my beer to get over the hangover.

an ace at Jonny's place

2008-03-16T06:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend was chaotical and couldn't be more amuzing and great.
The going away party was postponed but i was on my way here already. we decided to party anyways, the lights and music was streaming! so it was bloody retarded, we all laughed our heads off, then we played coinage, listening to jazz and house.
Jonny got this Italian Liquer that's suposed to be lemon, but it's totaly cheese. but it's NICE cheese!
hey, and Jonny plays jazz!

2006-03-16T07:51:00.000-08:00

Things are changing. but not my laziness. today I woke up 8 oclock. I usually wake up on time, but today was diffrent. I rushed to devotions and everybody could tell I just got up.
that was pretty funny. but I had a really cool dream. it was about making a movie in our home, and the background song was "oh yeah" I think thats what its called. Im not one for remmebering names of stuff but I could sing it to you. it goes "tuu tii du dit" or somthing like taht and then the guy in the background says "yeah yeah, yeah yeah ye yeah" the song played in Will Smiths movie "Hitch"
anyway. I went to devotions and all. we had chocolate cake for bfast.
and for school I was doing math. I need to go now see ya
—emer

2006-02-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

Im in the middle of my faith trip, and I only have enought moiney to be online for like 4 more miutes. so Ill be fast.
Day 1. we got condoms at a stoplight, they were passing them out for free! cuz carnival and all.
Day 2. we make lemonade. Paul's way. he taught us last time how to make real lamonade. how to cut the lamons and all that. so itas nice and yummy asnd all.
Day 3. Dina finds a cocaroach in the room. then it sneaks away in a crack, but shes way too scared to sleep. Celeste too. we all go to sleep but thewyu keep their light on. then at 2 in the moprning they find it. trhey tyry to wake us up but only I wake up. it already hid again so they ask to trade beds. I do. so I get 2 beds to pick from and they go sleep on the livingroom floor.
Day 4: internet cafe. pretty fun cuz\ Im dieng to talk with somebody. I gotta go but I hope faithfull Cannelle comments.
—emer

2005-12-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

The Other day
I know I didn't write in for a long time. but there's this one story that i just need to tell.
The other day I was working out, and so I got to dinner late. Dinner was spaghetti—my favourite. bur the thing is, it WAS spaghetti. all that was left was a bunch of noodles. that was all. well I got mad so I decided, I'm still gonna eat, this is not going to stop me. well I got a serving bowl about the size of a plate and the depth of 4. I stuffed it with spaghetti, and the fun just begun. I cut up some bananas, sliced them put'em on top cuz that was the first thing that was in front of me on the counter. Then I put the rest of the greenpeppers. I put cinnamin, pepper, then opened the fridge, and found salad dressing. Well that looked good (actually it didn't) so I put it in. people around in the kitchen could'nt believe, but neither could I. so now people were saying "put hot sauce", put ketchup, put ( what is that black sauce that the japanese always put in their food? ) put cucumber put sugar put brewers yeast. Yeah man. I mixed it around, and around and around. then came the big should-I-eat-it question.
that didn't take long cuz I got a fork-full and stuffed it down my throat. well they say that food tastes yummier when you're hungry. Well I ate this food, and it tasted yummy. different but yummy. I said "mmm!" lol. well I said it tasted kinda Oriental. So Mike took a bite, then he took more. And Sean took a bite. well he said it tasted kinda cool too. there was no aftertaste which is good. but I sure made a lot of the stuff. I didtn manage to finish it off. I went to the home meeting and Mike made some toast and fried aggs and gave'm to me, cuz I was kinda hungry still.

2005-10-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

All right. I cant stay on for long cvuz I wanna have fun. Im kinda hungry.
Well its a lazy day. one of those dayts where u cant really tell whether its the morning or afternoon.
This is my forst blog, so Ill take a moment to say hello to the world: HELLO WORLD!
hahahaha
yeah well, last night after most ppl went to bed, me and some gorls here roasted peanunts and boled sugar and ate it. we were talking about how the BAM is gonna b. we sure have crazy ideas. there was something Lizzy said that was so friigin funny. I just cant remember ir right now. but I rememebr laughing. hahahaha
yeah well, Time changeds. its daylight savings time or somthiong like that.
c ya 'round
—emer