Stickybuffalo.com

The Blighty blog pointed me to an excellent item in The Guardian by a John Harris; nothing at all mind-blowing (to you or me) but on-point all the same. All worth a read, but this is probably the bon mot highlight:

The world arguably needs a new Marx, but it keeps creating Malcolm Gladwells, pirouhetting around their flipcharts and ignoring the real problems.

Basically. Anywho, let’s see what else I can find among my collection of ascii scraps to piece together another quotes post.

Ah, here we go; speaking of bon mots and The Economist, here’s a recently-acquired gem: “Other factors allow Canada to be more inviting [toward immigrants]. The country has little reason to worry about illegal immigration. Like the United States, it shares a long southern border with a country suffering from high levels of crime, unemployment and income inequality. But there aren’t millions of Americans yearning to get into Canada.” -E.G.

And here’s one which makes a nice complement to Harris’ article, from nearly a hundred years ago when Teddy Roosevelt said (when a Republican ex-president could say, for that matter) “Americans have fought one war to win their independence and another to preserve the Union. Now they face a new war, between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess.” (As quoted in Go Down Together.)

From another book I’ve reviewed here, The Beautiful Cigar Girl, we have this summation of the realities of life as a creative professional, by Edgar Poe. “I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others (receiving for myself a miserable pittance) but have been forced to model all my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves.” Maybe it isn’t always that bad, but sadly, it isn’t far off the mark.

Environment quote, from Kevin Drum: “Maybe the oceans will die. Sorry about that, kids, but fixing it would have cost 2% of GDP and we decided you’d rather have that than have an ocean. You can thank us later.” Nothing to add to that.

One still tries to have dreams, though. Mine is similar to the life described by author Lindsey Davis: “I sometimes hear from the people in the office where I was a [fellow peon], and they are wonderfully envious of my present life, just as I hoped bitterly that they would one day be…” Maybe not quite as bitter. (You don’t believe me of course.)

This one makes me laugh. “Newer cemeteries are often too symmetrical, like they’re being controlled by a particularly tight undead homeowners association.”

Finally, let’s not have a quote post without getting Warren Ellis in here too. Ellis on a failing computer: “My current machine, the Little Black Book, had been making wheezing sounds through much of 2010, and just before New Year it started making the clear sign that it’s praying for death to deliver it from more beatings.”

And, a good note on which to wind up, Ellis on preparing for another day: “Alive, in considerable pain, off to the pub for Red Bull, which the adverts tell me will give me wings. I’ll settle for a pulse.”

Quite a few books to cover this month, including a few which I completed during the last bit of December when the Christmas-to-New-Year’s stretch finally left me some time to sit and read.

Blake, Peter Ackroyd. I can say with some confidence that this is a well-written biography; it’s more difficult to evaluate its subject. Even describing William Blake, and why he might be considered significant, is a challenge. I became aware of Blake through my extensive and probably somewhat idiosyncratic exposure to British culture and history… Blake seems a particular favorite of a few British comic creators I like. I really have no idea how well the man is known or regarded in more mainstream circles, though.

Personally, I find the label of “genius,” applied by some, goes a bit too far. Einstein was a genius. I’d call Hayao Miyazaki and Alan Moore geniuses. I can’t quite see Blake as a genius, though. Perhaps it’s just because his work doesn’t greatly appeal to me; his art is interesting but seems kind of limited, and his poetry does little for me at all (to be fair, so does most poetry). I would unhesitatingly call Blake a visionary, but I suppose I just don’t find that much to admire in his visions.

In many ways, Blake’s thoughts and ideas are very foreign to me, even allowing for his living in the 18th century. Blake was original and inventive, constructing a remarkable mythology of his own, parallel to traditional Christian beliefs and values of his time. But unlike, say, the mythology of Tolkein, Blake’s was not really meant to entertain (nor does it, so far as I’ve noticed); honestly I’m not fully sure what it was meant for. If Blake was a “prophet,” I see little to commend his prophecies; superstitious mumbo jumbo is still superstitious mumbo jumbo, whether it’s official doctrine or the invention of a creative and earnest lone crackpot.

And yet, the story of Blake was not only interesting, but thought-provoking on a personal level. (more…)

“What has he been smoking,” you probably ask yourself not-infrequently while reading these sanitarium-wall scribblings. Actually, I don’t smoke; never have. Anything, ever. I inhaled plenty of secondhand tobacco smoke during the first twenty years of my life, but then, since the turn of the century you almost have to go looking for secondhand smoke. Honestly…

I’m just this way.

You’ll have to settle for answers to “what has he been reading” these past couple months, then. It’s a fairly short list, honestly; between being busy with stuff and getting on a bit of a streak of mediocre books for a while, progress slowed down a ways, at least compared with the reading rampage which was August.

The Book of the Spider, Paul Hillyard. Mixed bag. There wasn’t much of a narrative, here; it was really more a collection of very diverse bits of information about spiders. Some really cool. Some, like the sections on the history of the study of arachnids, not so much. The two most memorable tidbits: 1) little teeny spiders can spin out web lines long enough for the wind to catch and lift them up for remarkable parasailing voyages, and 2) there are “social spider” species in which the normally solitary predators rub their many shoulders peacefully. Which should freak me out because one of the things I like about spiders is that unlike insects, one spider is generally not a sign of an infestation, but still, pretty neat.

Nemesis, Lindsey Davis. I think this is the first BCBR review of Davis’ “Falco series” of mystery novels about a Roman-empire-era P.I. I really like them; in a crowded field they’re fun, funny and always page-turners. This one was no exception, and also included one remarkably somber and rather touching scene which I won’t soon forget. I’m not sure Davis has any idea where she’s taking the series, and in this one she had an almost-ridiculous number of plates spinning at one point, but so far so good.

A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill. Excuse me while I fetch some strong tea. There we go. Better, and appropriate. (more…)