| (no subject) |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|06:02 am] |
I recently got an e-mail which pissed me off royal. Michael Richards, apparently, was brought to court over racially insensitive statements. I am made to understand that he is generally apologetic about the whole thing, so this isn't a response to him. This is a response to any who wish to use his words to defend "white pride."
The e-mail goes on at length about how it is unfair that whites who wield abusive language are racist, and non-whites are not. The one that really bothered me, though, was that phrase, "just American."
No. Just... no. ( Read more... ) |
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| Just a Link... to AWESOME! |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|04:30 pm] |
Completely off-topic, Tycho of Penny Arcade recently linked to a bit of Philip K. Dick's writing. As it was finals week, I did not yet feel prepared to devote my life to reading it, but since classes ended I have been reading it in chunks. I thought I'd link to it as well.
"How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart in Two Days," at http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm
I think I'll try to avoid ranting about my own religion in this column. Suffice to say, I have more affection for the notion of free will* than do most Protestants or Gnostics.
* of some variety |
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| Innocent Until Proven Guilty, re: Appeals |
[Jun. 18th, 2009|12:08 pm] |
( Read more... ) The appeals process specifically is built on the premise that an error in executing this system could result in an erroneously guilty verdict which should, in fact, be overthrown.
I can understand likewise referring to convicts as guilty once, well, properly convicted. I cannot understand treating them so within the court. So imagine my dismay when I read this:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Convicted criminals do not have a constitutional right to obtain access to a state's biological evidence to conduct DNA testing when pursuing claims of innocence, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
The Reuters writer went on to say, "States opposed to the testing have said it would be costly and would result in unnecessary litigation in cases in which a defendant received a fair trial and there was overwhelming evidence supporting a guilty verdict."
If that's actually the rationale in use, I'm mortally offended. Of course it's unnecessary in cases in which a defendant received a fair trial. That's not what appeals are about. Appeals are when the trial omitted something important or was flawed in its execution.
As much as I've groused about Souter's decision in the matter of property rights, this is much worse. Frankly, for giving the dissenting vote in this case and for siding with our right to parody, I have to give Souter credit; I do not like that any property I buy is not actually mine, but I'd trade it for an undeniable right to contest wrongful conviction on the basis of hard evidence. It's an unalienable right, and this decision erodes our access to that right. |
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| Entropy |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|11:38 am] |
The first thing to get over is that new-job smell.
( Read more... ) Entropy sets in with any organization. Living creatures seek to retard entropy within themselves, so they consume resources and other organized structures, break them down to repair and maintain themselves, and move on looking for more; this level of organization furthers the entropy of less organized structures.( Read more... )
I hope somebody, somewhere, finds opportunity and learns to live with what s/he becomes without going mad. I hope that somewhere a rising tide lifts all boats, and I hope somewhere the desperate pathology of the upper class is not mistaken for a rising tide.
( Read more... )
Meanwhile, I slog on, my life in a doldrums as I wait for waitings for waitings to wait. The world around me falls apart, but the world elsewhere may be faring much better. If it is not... then it is not, and it is not my concern. It is too far away, the future and past too abstracted from my viewpoint. No, now I return to my classes, seeking solace in the passion of learning and another hour away from the greater concerns of my life. Perhaps, in waiting to see how this endeavour turns out, I shall see other opportunities. Perhaps this endeavour shall pan out well and I shall join the upper ranks of the lower class in relative security. |
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| Desire Comments |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|05:12 pm] |
This letter requests provisions for psychiatric care in government health assistance. Is this letter needful? How can it be improved? Here is where it stands at this time.
Open letter to Obama, Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Peter DeFazio:( Read more... )
In other matters, four police officers spent 8 minutes involving three vehicles (two cars, one unmarked SUV) in downtown Eugene conferring over two individuals. No arrests were made. Your tax dollars may work in some places, but when police are too afraid or praetorian to properly operate in your city, something's wrong. |
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| No Politics Today - Mookraker's Kryoptonite in Effect |
[Feb. 19th, 2009|08:04 pm] |
Yesterday morning, two hours before I would have woken to head for class, I heard a horrible slamming, bumping noise from the adjoining hallway. Our cat had a seizure. These tend to be noisy, violent affairs. Both roommates were awake, or were promptly woken themselves. Practice for when I have a kid, I suppose, the wife and I immediately evaluated who was better able to address the issue. We restrained the cat in the carrier, paid close and caring attention to her, and rubbed the rescue cream in her ears to calm her down. All seemed as well as it was going to get. I got dressed and headed to my sociology course.
Mid-day, my classes are out, and I get in touch with wifey to clarify dinner plans. Special occasion and all. Turns out my cat had been having seizures all day and she would be at the vet. We made further plans, and I headed to work.
Left work, sat down at the restaurant for dinner. Waited for wife. Forty five minutes later, called wife from restaurant phone. She was at the emergency veterinary clinic; cat had two more seizures after her visit to our regular vet, and these apparently were bad. Was told to stay put and enjoy my dinner; she'd handle the rest. (I love her so. *smiles wistfully.*) Emergency vet bill bottoms out a credit source as well as cutting into our savings.
Rest of night uneventful. Next day, first day of my weekend. Pick up cat from emergency vet, where cat had been kept under observation overnight. Miscommunication over minor medication issue, but relatively uneventful until for about noon. Cat has seizure, falls off perch on cat tree. Same procedure as above. Seizure is blissfully short, only approximately a minute plus mild aftershocks. Business returns to normal.
Two hours later, cat has seizure, falls of perch on cat tree. Seizure still short, but I'm understandably concerned. Followed by three more over the course of the next hour, increasingly violent and lengthy. Wife returns home shortly after I make vet calls. Eventually am able to speak with our regular vet.
We're looking at some serious expense, as one would expect. We're forgoing a particular test because it's expensive, invasive, and its only real value would be to tell us whether we're looking at upping the dose for a long lifespan or a brief one. We're making minimums and such right now, but our primary expression of love (at least by volume, lately) is how much we spend on this cat.
Thankfully, she's a hell of a nice little kitty, but I don't think we could afford another visit to the emergency vet at all.
Eleven seizures over last two days. |
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| 13 Weeks Later |
[Feb. 13th, 2009|07:54 am] |
So much for that.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7887369.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7857466.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7857276.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7883136.stm
a) Even without stimulus packages, this apparently isn't the right time to reach out to the economically conservative.
b) Given the excesses of the last administration, some of these folks don't have souls left to sell.
c) What's it take to be a Republican anymore, anyway? Hanging on to slimmer votes in this unpopular couple of years, etc. Those elevated to high positions gained them during periods of feverish activity and hate-mongering, including pushing matters through with the "nuclear option." Y'all remember that buzz word, I'm sure, and fears that it would end the use of the filibuster. As far as I can discern, it's a matter of creating or honoring precedents which make filibuster useless. What with the election of Steele and the complete failure of Romney's "triple Guantanamo" politics or the "drill, baby, drill" bullshit, there's gotta be a mismatch between the new GOP folks and the existing upper echelon what lost to their own vices. (You remember those vices, right? Like little boys, meth, and oil payoffs? Ah, the party in power knows how to party.) However, until such time as the immediate stain of the Bush administration goes away, the country's fairly blue. New reds won't have much foothold to make their changes. I expect party backlash. Anyway, what I'm getting at: It just seems like the GOP folks completely refuse to cooperate with Obama on most anything! Not a single vote in the house regardless of the money they'd spend on war, religion, and tax cuts for those what don't need it (see d.) Ridiculous. Reminds me of Newt Gingrich's efforts to destroy Clinton in the '90s.
c2) For that matter, what's it take to be a congressman anymore? Seems all the news we hear is about the need for filibuster-proof majorities to get anything done. I'm sure it's not as bad as all that, really, and these are rather contentious issues which probably do bear discussion and compromise, but this does seem a bit ridiculous as it's presented in the media.
d) I suppose this is the single greatest difference between the two stimulus packages. Whatever misgivings I have about stimulus packages in general, there is at least a demand for oversight with this one. News agencies know how well gossip about the sales of private jets go over with the public, so we'll hear more about such excesses in the coming weeks, but remember that it's not just car companies and banks we should be watching.
Hopefully, in the next few years this shit will get outright surreal. Certainly, though, between abandoning his being picked for cabinet because he couldn't agree "100%," and the 100% (!) resistance in the House to this package, has got me feeling there's not a damn thing to be done to win over the existing GOP folks in power. Too idealistic, and hardly an ideal among 'em I can stand.
I wonder, though, who will win or lose the Primaries in the next years. There's one PAC (The National Republican Trust PAC, noted by CNN) who intends to spend money against any Republican Senator in the Primaries who voted for the stimulus package. Is this because they're afraid of who will stay on, or because they don't like where their party is going since the 2006 bruising? Of the candidates who tried for President, McCain was the most moderate, and he won; his rallies became increasingly uncomfortable even for him. Steele, likewise, is claimed to have been the most moderate of the candidates in his selection of potential GOP party heads.
Perhaps Arlen Specter won't have any trouble with is reelection bid at all. Perhaps that money this PAC blusters about spending against him will be for naught.
Anyway, so much for reaching out. I'm guessing more has to change, and I suspect more will change than we can anticipate. By the time the opportunity is there, the winds will most likely shift again, or years of another majority will create ideological entrenchment (on both sides?) and another set of fascinating vices by those in power.
Meanwhile, it's just nice to see DeFazio and Wyden still around. |
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| Representation |
[Nov. 8th, 2008|05:46 pm] |
Been thinking about this off and on for several years. It's more poignant from the point of view of political survey, but a common enough undercurrent. Small government folks lack representation, and there's no solution in sight.
( Read more... )
I've said it before, and now I'll say it here. The Democratic party should reach out to the faction of moderation in the Republican coalition. It would hurt the balance of powers, but at this point, the best way to get things done may be to work within the DNC. If the DNC's more stable coalition holds out in future elections, it could in fact remain the only practical way to get anything done. (See Mexico and Japan for examples of single-party rule, its problems, and how to work with it.)
At the very least, I don't think I like where the Republican party is headed, and sadly none of the third parties are quite in a position to take enough of their votes away. The only non-major-party candidates to win of late are a closet Republican and an ex-Republican, each in the Senate, and these folks didn't run under a third-party label. Are we gonna be stuck with one-party rule, or are we going to see a successful resurgence of neoconservative and religious insanity in the next four years?
Has the DNC reached a point of diminishing returns for its growing support, after which their progress could be limited against an ever-increasingly obstinate failure to compromise among the GOP's stressed out factions? That wouldn't result in a balance of powers; it would just be business as usual. |
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| Hard-won; the Long Slog is Over |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|09:42 pm] |
Judging from the reaction of the GOP folks McCain addressed, I'll have to be wary of bringing up this political win with others. I feel a bit less ecstatic and excited about it (a friend in an IRC channel said he heard voices outside chanting "Yes We Did!") given that I'm skeptical of anybody who seeks power. I supported Obama on rhetoric; I was concerned for his election as a repudiation of Rove- and Gingrich-style politics. I feel this goal has been met, and I'm very pleased with that.
That said, McCain spoke highly of Obama and was repeatedly booed for doing so. Not terribly pleasant folks lately, and very unhappy. I know they're... everywhere, really, quite available for comment, and will undoubtedly be sensitive about this.
Now we have at least four years* to find out what we've purchased. If he lives up to his hype, the increased Democrat majority should be reined in by his much-lauded pragmatism.
( Read more... )
This election made several statements. It shall be mulled over for decades to come, and repeatedly digested in the next few weeks. I will certainly say:
It's nice to see history being made and not having to be pissed off about it.
* Assuming no assassinations. When successful, it's my impression these usually have significant political backing. I doubt that will be the case here.
** Uppity? Who the hell says uppity? |
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| My Problem With Patriotism |
[Oct. 24th, 2008|03:30 am] |
Sometimes, when I'm lying away at night, I think too much.
I think, sometimes, about the people who voted for Bush in 2004. It was an awful lot of people. When I think about that, I think about Total Information Awareness, illegal search and seizure, and years of unlawful imprisonment including multiple resultant deaths behind bars. I think about the stifling of the press, and I think of "a heckuva job."
I think, sometimes, about the people who, in the 1990s, said of the Middle East as a whole that we should "glass" it. This was treated sometimes as a reasonable and pragmatic solution to a variety of problems.
I think of hearing in the 1990s about ethanol, an alcohol "alternative fuel" supported by the oil industry because its energy output was less than the energy input of oil needed to produce it.
I think of Kenneth Starr and Janet Reno trying to pick out every insignificant detail of sexual affairs, and a Congress willing to impeach a President because his strange sexual kinks gave them the political edge they needed to deal a blow to the other party; and I think of a current Democratic Congress which doesn't dare speak out, doesn't dare make waves, and which when it tries to do so stalls because of the narrow, easily blocked majority it holds in the Senate. I think to myself, if the majority becomes irrefutable, things will get done... and the things which get done will not be the things I admire. I think about the Oregon Citizen's Alliance, about hate, and about murder in the name of religion. I think about the increased popularity of the KKK related to the nomination of Barack Obama. I think about the fact that anybody seeking government office wants power, and anybody who wants power probably shouldn't get it. I think about the fact that, nevertheless, we must choose the lesser of two evils because it's the only game in town.
I think about President Bush signing orders to remove active infantry from Iraq years ago, replacing them with National Guard, and I remember thinking at the time that it was about the worst thing one could do. It would reduce morale, it would make the battle drag on longer, and the lower morale would increase the likelihood of My Lai style events.
I think about how American policy trends toward aggression and consumption, and how this is championed as the patriotic thing to do. This has been explained to me as a response to cognitive dissonance; to do something which makes less sense and makes one uncomfortable means that one is committed. I also think about Abu Ghraib Prison and the culture which brought about fresh American tortures there. I think about people simply following orders.
I think about the battles between the Sunni and the Shiite factions, the IRA and the song "There Were Roses," and the horrors being committed by the Janjaweed forces of Darfur. I think about the human conscience being malleable, and about the way our resources as a species will be spread thinner and thinner with time. I think about Japan and Germany shortly before World War II, both choked by economic despair and closely related civil unrest, and the actions those countries were willing to take out of desperation, fear, and hate. I think about the fact that these things will happen more and more as the common resources we build our infrastructure upon grow more precious.
I then think about the Treaty of Versailles and the Boxer Rebellion, of the opium wars, and of the subjugation of entire nations for tea. I think about newspeak, doublethink, duckspeak, and crimethink.
Most of all, when I feel I am at my most reasoned, I remember that other people sometimes believe against all evidence that there is a higher power which guides their actions, and I shudder. I remember that some people believe the conscience is related to an innate human ability to perceive right from wrong, and I shudder.
The most important trait the majority of people lack is the ability to entertain the possibility that they are wrong. This trait, above all others which come to mind, is that which defines the best of us. I think about this and I sometimes cry a little. |
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| 2-Post Special! |
[Oct. 22nd, 2008|02:39 am] |
The spoiled island lay around me, despite having slowly moved under my feet. I had walked away, but now I could see only the desolate and shell-strewn beach, and other islands insufficiently better, and the solitude of the sea itself was no comfort at all. I tried to make camp, choosing what I thought was a high rock to keep me high above the tides and to give me a vantage point upon that which I sought to escape.( Read more... )The fruit where I stand, not far at all from where I began, is sweeter but more tart; the company seems good, but I realize now it's the same people I tried to leave behind. That they look different to me now means that I never went anywhere. I realize also that the miscalculation is more mine than I had wished to believe, for while the faces are different, the people are the same.
The journey was as much delusion as it was fact, and the storms are worse than I feared. I hold to my small, low rock, knowing it for what it is: no shelter at all, and no more vantage than my unaided eye. Knowing this, I do not sleep well among my new, old bedfellows, but grow distrustful once again. And yet, if I will not leave the island, they are the best I can find.
Edit, and to paraphrase Vasquez: It's my mind and my body. I should go willingly. However, we're always a slave to something. |
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| re: "We're winning." |
[Oct. 22nd, 2008|01:52 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | adversarial, back pain, conflict, defect, democrat, long post, love, monsters, moveon.org, nietzsche, perspective, poetry, politics, senate | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  concerned | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely", Aimee Mann's "One" | ] |
As far as I can tell from my e-mail, I'm a member of MoveOn.org. I've never donated; I've been asked to sign various petitions, and from time to time I've done so when I felt the petitions were worthy. I'm very picky. (See previous posts.)
With that in mind, I recently got an e-mail linking me to a video post from one Eli. In that video, he used a phrase which bothered me. He said, "we're winning."
He did not mean MoveOn.org, or if he did, he seemed largely to mean those MoveOn.org is supporting, and in the context this meant one thing and one alone: the DNC. Democrats. Warning: Long post is loooong.
( Read more... )
Of course, the funny thing is that mentioning this organization may get me blog replies. |
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| Lost in Time, and Lost in Space, and Meaning |
[Oct. 14th, 2008|12:49 am] |
It's a very pretty night out. The moon is remarkably full, high in a sky with few clouds. A single jet leaves a contrail, but it's thin and pale in the deep cerulean surrounding our parallel world.
It doesn't really matter what the candidates have to say about the economy. Whoever ends up in office will have much to deal with.( Read more... )
Like any other species on this planet, we'll eventually go extinct, and there'll be a lovely full moon in a deep, blackish cerulean sky.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Virgins,_to_Make_Much_of_Time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandius
* Afghanistan, sillies.
** Hussein ibn Ali is revered as a martyr who fought tyranny. - Wikipedia
*** Hyperbole. |
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| McCain's Handlers |
[Aug. 21st, 2008|01:57 pm] |
"But in their new role as bloggers, the paper's editors seem to have all the intelligence and reason of the average Daily Kos diarist sitting at home in his mother's basement and ranting into the ether between games of dungeons and dragons."
17 days later: "It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others."
Michael Goldfarb, from the McCain campaign website.
People who give a rip what I say may recall that the reason I hoped Obama would win was rhetoric. It's not that I trust or distrust either candidate. I'm too cynical for that, really.
It's that whoever writes for Obama isn't just trying to spread nameless, boring hope everywhere like some kind of public display of affection. His handlers have shown a capacity for reason. The man has even gone on stage and said things what should be unpopular with the crowd he speaks with, and yet by virtue of presentation, has managed to parley that into a reputation for frank, blunt honesty.
Whether or not this is true, it's not politics as usual. I'm sure folks out there have noticed it happens less now that he's on the campaign trail for president proper, but if he wins, this could be meaningful as an alternative to Rove-style politics. Even his victory in the primary was a victory for rational politics, even as it showed (fortunately or unfortunately) the power of celebrity and the ability of Americans to create new celebrities in an instant.
I like his words. In all seriousness.
The assumption here is twofold, and I'm not the only one who's noticed.
First assumption: that there aren't bloody many roleplaying gamers who vote Republican or Libertarian. That's patently ridiculous.
Second assumption: that linking Barack Obama with D&D will win over the Christian Right, and that this will outweigh potential backlash or harm for picking on "nerds."
So he has Ralph Reed on his side. So after years of being looked at askance by conservative Christians he's now changing shades to try to pick up these votes*.
World of Warcraft has 10 million subscribers. Even granted that many of these aren't American, it's a bad idea to piss them off.
I sincerely hope this effort on the part of McCain's handlers have cost him most of the WoW and military gamer crowd. Such games are rather popular in the military, and while the military may have a fairly large demographic of liberals, its primarily a dependable source of conservative votes. This doesn't strike me as a wise decision, and I do hope it backfires. Badly. It wouldn't spell an end to this shit, but it would be a good start.
* More than partially by avoiding the tough questions. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 6th, 2008|12:03 pm] |
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Robert Anson Heinlein, 1939, "Life-Line", published in Astounding.
Referring, of course, to the life insurance industry in the setting when it was challenged by Pinero's chronovitameter.
An interesting line, yes? One can't help but think there have been a number of industries in the real world, postdating this publication (and I assume, by the cynical nature of the statement, predating also), guilty of such an effort.
Shikataganai; such is the way of the world. |
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| Bitterness, and Update on Cat |
[May. 7th, 2008|11:01 am] |
Barack Obama said partisan voters are most likely bitter. He said he wants to move past that.
As much of a hullabaloo as has been made of this, accusations of elitism seem silly here, at least to me. Yes, I'm bitter. Anybody who reads the header on my rantings knows this. In fact, I feel he forgot a category of bitterness in his infamous statement.
Over the last few weeks, I've shared a politics course with a neoconservative and a staunch, gun-toting Republican. I'm more fond of the gun-toting moderate, myself, so disagreement between the parties described and myself was probably inevitable. However, since I am myself a supporter of gun rights in theory, I thought the latter might be worth having a chat with away from his neoconservative, autocratic companion. How those two get along I'll never know. I suspect mutual bitterness. (If you hadn't guessed, I'm being silly.)
In our conversation, which apparently was more heated for him than I, I evidenced my rather bad habit of pointing out exceptions. He took this as cherry-picking arguments, or at least professed to, and stormed away shouting while I tried to assert that it didn't mean anything. I thought this a rather poor ending to what had seemed an otherwise healthy political diversion. I sought him the next day and apologized for nitpicking, saying I was wrong to disrupt his points. In response, he said that if I didn't want to listen to what he had to say, then he wasn't going to talk to me anymore! Surely the response of somebody who missed my point. I was willing to bet, in fact, that he didn't want a discussion in the first place. Regardless, berating somebody for the behavior s/he is apologizing for as though it was your idea in the first place is bad form.
This was weeks ago. The matter had been on my backburner for a few weeks, and petty though it was, I felt compelled to bring up his rudeness. Petty, I know. What was gratifying was to find out, by his own immediate and loud objections, that it had been on his mind for that duration as well. Perhaps it wasn't as petty as I thought. Or perhaps we're both very petty people.
After a brief argument, I used a curse word regarding his behavior. Not even himself, but his behavior. This isn't conducive to a rational argument, but it is arguably a step up from direct insult. Would that direct insult were even on his mind! His immediate response was to threaten me with bodily harm!
As is sometimes the case, I assumed this might not be bluster. He clearly was waiting for a response, so I told him I didn't care. He salvaged some pride by being egged on by his friends, but no row commenced and I walked away feeling the better man for having resorted at worst to merely addressing his behavior, whereas he had taken this as an opportunity to try to intimidate me with violence.
What I find interesting about this is that I now truly wish that man would run for political office. His method of rhetoric is so uncontrolled and irrational that his ability to make himself his own political opponent would be a boon to his opposition. That this matters one whit to me tells me that Obama is essentially right, but missed a category. Partisan politics. My distaste with my opposition has made me a touch more blind to the flaws of my bedfellows.
Finally, the cat. When last I spoke here, we had taken her in for testing after she had a seizure. Something in her brain apparently wasn't impressed by wishes for her wellness, for she has been having seizures even while on a relatively high dose of medication. We are in what is probably the midst of a last round of tests to determine what might be the cause, idiopathic epilepsy being unlikely in cats and especially unlikely given the body of symptoms. More updates on my cat as my politics continue to descend into madness. Or perhaps as I find more synonyms. |
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| Cats, my only weakness! NOOOO! |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|12:45 am] |
As much as I try to restrict this journal to my political babblings, one can see within this same page how successful I've been in that regard. To reinforce this impression that I drift terribly off message...
Our cat recently had... an episode, I guess. ( Do tell. )
Let it be known with certainty that I'm willing to go off message for cats. I can be kicked out of my home twice, my favorite cafe can close, and I can quit caffeine for a month and get horrible headaches. Doesn't matter, it doesn't belong here. Somehow, though, I'm willing to go off message for cats.
And poetry. Don't forget poetry.
*sighs* I always did have a love-hate relationship with blogs.
Addendum: Now if I could just put away sad dreams this morning about a cat I had to say goodbye to on Samhein, maybe I could get past this. Chessie, I love you... Good night. |
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| re: Dulce Et Decorum Est |
[Feb. 4th, 2008|11:41 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | poetry | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  Brooding | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Cake - Pretty Pink Ribbon | ] |
It's been a few years since I thought about poetry.
That's strange. My adolescence was spent reading Ray Bradbury, whose stories themselves are sometimes written in blank verse. I've read Sylvia Plath, I have a full Shakespeare collection, and my mother is an ardent fan of Ogden Nash. Yet somehow, in recent years, I've neglected poetry terribly.
Earlier today, a player in the MMO I frequent said he was giving up edged weapons and asked everybody to compose rhymes. I'm rather proud of the one I created (I won't post it here), but it prompted a brief conversation about poetry, particularly Shakespearean. Thus came to mind my favorite poem.
This is why my personal epithet here is Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Dulce Et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owens
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of five-nines that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Unrelated footnote: I seem to have picked up a few new readers. Gwyd, Centrip, I'm going to give an unusual shoutout. Good to see you guys, you found me. |
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