Friday 27 June 2008

Bit Depressing


















Well, it is if one is in UKIP and was hoping that somebody might have objected to the shenanigans over the notaConstitution - the lack of a UK referendum and the way the Treaty got shoehorned through Parliament.

Also a bit depressing if one is anti-BNP, or hoped for a better turnout than 50.32%, down -17.58% from 2005.

Conservative 19, 796 +3.46%
Lib Dem 9, 680 +1.84%
Green 1, 321 +0.54%
BNP 1, 243 +3.58%
Labour 1, 066 -11.68%
UKIP 843 -0.07%
I never got much further than this when I started on it 30 years ago - David Harvey's lectures on Capital

Introduction
Chapters 1 and 2

and more I hope to come: I really want to know what happens in the end.

Drinky Crow

Drinky Crow is right as always.

Monday 23 June 2008

Birds and Beasts

Wile away an idle hour with the Medieval Bestiary.

Here is a Medieval Bloke slinging a stone at a Cinnamologus, an Arabian bird which nests in cinnamon trees. Won't do him any good, you are supposed to use lead-tipped arrows.

Thursday 19 June 2008

GB















25: And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
26: This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
27: TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
28: PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.


And so...

30: In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.

(Daniel 5)

We can only live in hope.

Sunday 15 June 2008

The Tragic Muse


















Buffalo Billy
Had a ten-foot willy

And he showed it to the girl next door.

She thought it was a snake
And she hit it with a rake

And now it's only two foot four.

As Aristotle said in his Poetics, "Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its katharsis of such emotions. . . . Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Melody." (Trans S. H. Butcher)

Animal Magic

Ionescu started it all in 1959 with "Rhinocéros": the square of a small town, the town and a house in the small town become infested with rhinocerontes, indeed with a crash of the creatures.

The elephants in the room have become familiar to all of us through the extraordinary repetitive endeavours of the dead-tree media and the blogeurs nouveaux alike, both as a source of cliché and - potentially - of 4 umbrella stands, 1 fly whisk and 2 novelty mead horns per animal.

But like the herd of peccary under my bed, the won't stay still long enough for a moderate shot like myself to draw a bead on them.

The pigs live on the fungi that grow out of my bedsheets, which saves me having to launder the linen more than once a year, so we have a symbiotic relationship of sorts. Shaking the pig poo out of my socks (2) and underpants (1, incidentally an example of the Plural Singular, like falling over "a" sheep in the kitchen when you are going for that third bottle of Stolichnaia Krepkaia from the freezer compartment) every morning is a small but bearable overhead.

Not sure what the elephants contribute, apart from eating everything in the fridge while they're waiting for the Elephant Jokes to start, and snuffling away in anticipation like a pack of children who have plotted a Wizard Wheeze.

But now, according to one Jonathan Clark in his review of Tony Claydon's "Europe and the Making of England 1660-1760" (TLS 13 June 2008), "Further: the gorilla in the corner of the room for Claydon's scenario is the American Revolution".

Drats. So that's what happened to the bamboo plant. Or was that the panda in the alcove / deposition of the last Qing Emperor?

Friday 13 June 2008

No to Lisbon

And a huge cheer for the Irish, apparently the last Free State in Europe.





Update
: according to Times Online 1,614,866 Irish voters cast their votes in the referendum, out of just over 3,000,000 registered voters.

Guido has counted the number of people in the rest of Europe who have a vote on the notaConstitution - all of 9,225.

Thursday 12 June 2008

Vote

Dick-measuring contest, anyone?

Mr Brown has slapped his on the slab, and has turned out to have almost a 3% advantage in penis size.

Before the bacon-slicer of the House of Lords gets to work.

Or something.

Does any of this mean anything, anymore?

Update: 315-306 saves Mr Brown's "face". Who would have thought there were 315 rat finks in the Commons?

Sunday 8 June 2008