This is recently found footage, believed to be an explanation of how the Markle woman got within unzipping distance of the ginger one:
Additional recently found footage is believed to show how, after meeting the ginger one, the Markle woman explained how she had ‘fallen in love’. This is what true love looks like. This is NOT two venomous snakes engaging in a mutually beneficial (and cynical) mating ritual. This is The Ickle Mermaid…
Giles Fraser, an apparently God-fearing person, has written a piece for the website Unherd about ‘sneering scientists’. He writes as follows about what he thinks about the attitude of scientists, mentioning the
‘…tradition well-established by another former Professor of the Public Understand of Science, Richard Dawkins. He famously denounced God as “a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, genocidal, phillicidal, pestilential, meglomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully”. This too from the person paid to promote the public understanding of science: “Science is interesting and if you don’t agree you can fuck off.” ‘
The problem with that last quote is that Dawkins was actually quoting a former editor of New Scientist magazine. To get the Dawkins quote simply watch Dawkins say the words:
Fraser is deliberately misrepresenting Dawkins as a foul-mouthed, thuggish bully, and hoping his readers don’t spot it. I was looking about the Unherd website for something new written by Douglas Murray and saw it.
Smearing enemies is unfortunately common. But Giles Fraser must believe that God is aware of his smearing the great man, and either approves of the dishonesty or disapproves of it. He cannot think God is unaware. Why wasn’t he worried about punishment for his dishonesty?
This is the picture at the head of Giles Fraser’s Twitter account:
Very often the shop window is prettier than the stockroom.
What is a ‘step-grandfather’? A ‘step-grandfather’ is another way of saying ‘somebody else’s grandfather.’
It turns out that, in reality, Hancock’s ‘step-grandfather’ was really his step-father’s ex-wife’s second husband. One could conclude ‘nothing to see here’ because ‘all politicians lie’. They do – but hang on.
A politician who lies when the truth would have done just fine is likely to be a pathological liar.
Hilary Clinton lied about being named for Edmund Hillary: his conquest of Everest being news around the world inspired her mother to name her after him. When Hilary was caught she did the decent thing blamed her mother for lying to her.
Bill and Hilary Clinton are the only politicians who make me think David Icke might be onto something.
Common sense suggests a politician shouldn’t lie about something which is so easily checkable. That’s why the lying is pathological – they don’t think, they just lie automatically.
Retrpspective Review:
‘Pomegranate Seed’ (1931) – by Edith Wharton
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasped no more –
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door…
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
A short ghost-story might not be the medium through which a serious writer chooses to work. This might be due to the ghost-story being somewhat too popular for the ‘critic’ and ‘serious’ reader, but it remains a way in which serious themes can be discussed, and with a writer of skill – be it Wharton’s great friend, Henry James, M.R. James, or Wharton herself – the medium can be used to great and interesting effect, or even a downright scary one.
Wharton published fifteen ghost-stories and therefore the ghost-story represents a medium she only touched on as a writer. What I will explain is that Wharton can sometimes trick the reader into thinking a story is one thing, when it is quite another; and she might have used the ghost story to act as cover for a tale of infidelity which could well be the creepiest thing she wrote. Continue reading
Retrospective review:
‘Natives: race and class in the ruins of empire’ (2019) – by Akala
Virtue! a fig! ‘tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus..
– Othello
You labelled me – I’ll label you!
So I dub thee “unforgiven”
– Metallica
1
There is a particular scene in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather where the Don instructs his son, Michael, telling him:
“There are men in this world,” he said, “who go about demanding to be killed. You must have noticed them. They quarrel in gambling games, they jump out of their automobiles in a rage if someone so much as scratches their fender, they humiliate and bully people whose capabilities they do not know…”
The Don continues, explaining to Michael how he made a loyal weapon out of the brutal baby-burner Luca Brasi. An interesting thing about that passage, aside from its obvious truth about the stupidity of many, is that Puzo cannot use the expression ‘road rage’ because – in the early 1970s when the novel came on the scene – the expression hadn’t been invented. However the behaviour which later became known as ‘road rage’ was and is a real phenomenon of human behaviour.
Not all expressions minted to describe human behaviour describe something new. Sometimes the expression is new while the behaviour it describes is old. ‘Binge-drinking’ is an example. ‘Binge-drinking’ means ‘getting drunk’ – a behaviour almost as old as the human race, and is a sub-set of ‘anti-social behaviour’. But if one gives an old problem a new name, then – as if by magic – there is a new ‘problem’ for mouthpieces of ‘authority’ to complain about, while demanding new legal powers from the government of the day. Continue reading
Retrospective Review:
Joker, (2019) director Todd Phillips
I was in my mid-teens when I realised the Joker character was a murderous maniac. Until then I had only the Batman television series to go on. There were two Batman-comic stories which stood out when I was a mid-teen. The first, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke, is always cited as a ‘classic’ work or a ‘seminal’ work by reviewers. It is certainly a disturbing work. The Joker, wanting to turn Commissioner Gordon mad, calls at the home of Gordon’s daughter, Barbara. As she opens the door she is shot in the stomach: the bullet severs her spine leaving her paralysed. Joker then strips her naked and takes photographs of her. He uses huge blow-ups of these pictures as part of a depraved ‘ghost-train’ ride he forces Gordon to experience. The second story is A Death in the Family: an odd story (Batman and Robin go to Ethiopia) collected as a graphic novel, in which Joker uses a crowbar to convince Robin’s face and skull into a new shape. This was so obviously not ‘kids’ stuff’ that the television series seemed to hardly feature the same characters.
Jack Nicholson’s turn as Joker in Batman pitches the character exactly halfway between Cesare Romero’s television version and Alan Moore’s sadistic lunatic. Tim Burton’s movie contains the kind of ‘dark humour’ that would be used by Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs (Mr Blonde talking into a severed ear) and Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (Lestat dancing about with a corpse.) Although we never see Nicholson’s Joker do anything properly sadistic on-screen we do know that he does something unpleasant to Jerry Hall’s face. This is at least a nod to the character’s real personality. Continue reading
Under all the mattresses of Mr Murray’s logic, reason, research and dry wit there is a pea of pessimism lurking. It’s difficult, after reading both works, to have any hope for the future of our culture. One cannot slot-in a new foundation once the house is built. The house is in the way. The house has to fall before a new foundation can be inserted. That’s bad enough in itself. But once our culture has fallen what could the new foundation be?
Yesterday, a film adaptation of the novel ‘It’ was released. The reviews have been favourable and it looks like the picture will be a success. What follows is my critique of the novel. There are one or two problems with the book.
It was published in September 1986. Many fan-polls and blogs still cite the book as either his best or the fans’ favourite. Sometimes fans confuse a writer’s best work with their favourite work from that writer. Defining a writer’s “best” work is trickier than it sounds. It is probably not King’s best work, but it’s one which has its popularity secured by a collection of characters the reader easily sympathises with. The depth to which King thinks his characters into existence is remarkable. Continue reading
My mother told the A and E receptionist ‘He’s sustained a bad a cut.’ I leant in to the window and corrected her. ‘Actually, I’ve been stabbed,’ I said. It’s possible I sounded irritated, but I was speaking the truth. My sister had stabbed me in the upper left arm with a long, white-handled kitchen-knife. I had a small towel wrapped around the wound to soak up the blood. Continue reading
In the opening scene in Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino gave us what was something of a novelty at the time. His characters were talking. That’s not the same as having characters exchange dialogue to further the plot. His characters talked to each other. From the speech about the subtext to Madonna’s Like a Virgin to the bullshitting about tipping, the easy, realistic dialogue made us another character at the table: we were listening to ordinary folks talk, and because we’re ordinary folks, an invisible wall was removed and we were sat having breakfast, too.
The dialogue is one of the immediately recognisable things in a Tarantino picture. The exception to this rule, the Tarantino movie which isn’t rammed with Tarantino dialogue, is Inglorious Basterds, but that movie still has two scenes which are two of the best scenes he’s written
So what are six of the best scenes in Tarantino’s writing?
The Bulletin 