Such a sensitive conscience, Steven Spielberg

He took a retainer to be an artistic adviser to the People's Republic of China (notorious squasher of minorities, torturer of dissenters, and exporter of transplant organs taken from the living body of condemned people) for the Olympics, which the PRC means as its great showcase to the world. (Cf. Berlin Olympics, 1936; Moscow Olympics, 1980.) Then he decides to resign his advisorship, because he cannot stomach China's role in Darfur, which is minor at best.

The Gospel is always right and pithy: "Ye blind guides, who strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel!"

Gawd, I wish I'd been there

http://deathboy.livejournal.com/1082404.html

"No,there's no end; the end is death and madness!"

According to an Italian newspaper, American and Iraqi forces have identified an Iraqi doctor, head of a hospital for mental illness, as the man who supplied the terrorists with two Down's Syndrome victims who were then sent into the crowd at a pet market in Baghdad a week or so ago. Apparently this man gained his job because his predecessor, whose deputy he used to be, had refused to allow the terrorists to use his patients as human bombs, and had been murdered in consequence.

And there are those who say we ought to negotiate with these creatures.

For the few long-enduring souls who can remember the early days of this blog...

I just found out that I have been satirized - in the most elegant, witty and downright hilarious manner imaginable. I cannot commend the author, mina_de_malfois, enough. The only problem is that it will only be fully understood and enjoyed by those who have been reading me for years. Nevertheless, if you want a good old-fashioned belly laugh, have a try: http://mina-de-malfois.livejournal.com/9383.html. As for me, by the third paragraph of a certain character's outpourings, I was laughing out loud with tears running down my face.

fads

For some reason, I've just developped a fad for George Harrison's I've got my mind set on you. Well, of course it's one heck of a good song. But does it happen to you too, to suddenly awaken to the beauty of this or that work of art and, for a week or two, to keep playing it/ reading it/ looking at it more often than anything else?