(no subject)

There are very few sadder things than to lose a friend. My post on Monday caused a breach with a person that I care for greatly, and that unfortunately looks very much like being permanent. It hurts, and I spend my time wondering whether there is anything that I could have done differently, but I doubt it.

A meme confiscated from ThreeOranges

A book you own that no one on your friends list does:
I do have a lot of unusual stuff, because of my research. I would be surprised, for instance, if even Kenna Hijja had the anonymous Origo gentis Romanorum or the whole Mahabharata in the Ganguli-Roy English translation, or a Lithuanian language course. The one I am really proud of, however, is Leopold Schwarzschild's World in Trance (1943), a condensation of twenty years of polemic by a heroic (and well-informed) liberal German journalist who fought German militarism and authoritarianism even before Hitler was heard of, became one of the most active, implacable and truthful enemies of the regime, and ended up outliving it. It is a wonderful read, and a testament to a forgotten but truly great man.

A CD you own that no one on your friends list does:
If I can include the rest of my music collection, I would be quite surprised if anyone (except perhaps Straussmonster) owns Gossec's Grande Messe des Morts. It is a vigorous and attractive piece of music, dated 1770, which however seems somehow to just lack that little difference that makes genius.

A DVD/VHS tape you own that no one on your friends list does:
Does anyone else own Leni Riefenstahls' Sieg des Willens?

A place you've been that no one on your friends list has been:
I would be surprised if anyone had visited Lavinium, modern Pratica di Mare, the ancient holy city of the Latins whose foundation is the climax of Virgil's Aeneid. It is a tiny, secluded Italian village, due south of Rome and off the main roads, and Virgil is not a current favourite author, so tourists never get to hear of it. The village is minuscule, neglected, and pretty in a messy, work-tired way, and there are some very important archaeological digs.

Prophetic BtVS

I don't suppose they've waited for me to mention this, but...

I always knew that the Buffy writers knew nothing whatever about the past. What I did not however know that they were prophetic about the future. In one of the last episodes of Season Five, they had Anya (Joss Whedon's brilliant rethinking of the dumb blonde stereotype) spout caricatural Republican drivel from a very stupid version of the Wall Street Journal - the kind of thing one imagines George W. Bush speaking when he does not have his advisers telling him what to say via wire - and then concluding (years before the invasion of Iraq and the break with Paris): "You know what else is UnAmerican? French people."

All that was missing was "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

deleted post

I decided to delete this post due to a substantial error of fact. While I do not mind swapping insults with some people, I would rather not do so in defence of a mistake.

Strange times...

It is a time to be agreeing with your enemies. Pat Buchanan, former Nixon speechwriter, hardline nay-sayer during Watergate, obstinate right-winger: Pat Buchanan publishes, in the British weekly The Spectator (the tribal organ of unrepentant stone-age Tories) an article ripping the foreign and domestic policy of the Bush administration to shreds. I read it, and I cannot find a single word to disagree with. Not a single word.(http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story36.htm)

The Daily Mail, the most detestable and hypocritical of tabloids, whose record for lies is second only to that of Rupert Murdoch's The Sun, and whose Tory tribalism makes The Spectator seem fair and open-minded, comes out with a front-cover editorial blasting Tony Blair's brilliant new idea of relaxing the gambling laws till every town in Britain is full of gambling palaces, raising the mighty shadows of the founders of Labour, the men who believed in self-improvement, respectability, and personal and civic virtue, in terms that almost remind me of what I myself had to say about "this age of thieves"; and again, I find myself agreeing with every word (almost). It is true that it is rich, billionaire-rich, for the Daily Jail of all papers to be praising men it persecuted when they were alive, men against whom it fabricated the Zinoviev letter and countless other smears, men against whom it invoked the rise of a British Fascist party; but even the dirty latter-day successors of a foul tradition can tell the truth, if the opposition is foul enough. It is almost natural.

meme nicked from Kikei (hello, Kiks!)

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