~ Bathroom Magazines
Hacker who reported Chelsea Manning to FBI dead at 37
*Cirque du Soleil aerialist Yann Arnaud dies after falling during Volta performance
This topic has bothered me for years. So now, in a moment of inspiration instigated by Wait But Why¹ and drinking a glass or two of bourbon, I want to hash it out. It is something I call the Deathbed Fallacy
Greeting cards and cliché more generally bear witness to the fact that the most banal and the most meaningful regularly coincide, and that something always remains beyond the reach of words. Cliché is a place where life and language resist one another.By recognising the radical imperfection of language, cliché can help ameliorate the damage it does. The continual return of these stock phrases reminds us that, though language can say ‘I love you’ or ‘Our deepest sympathies’ – which ties the love and grief we feel with all those who have ever, and will ever, love and grieve – it can never completely capture this grief or this love. After which, the universality of our love, our grief, begins to feel less like an act of violent conceptuality and more like an act of community, transposing us into a commune with all the living and the dead.Greeting cards serve as a reminder that it is often with the clichéd and the ordinary that the fabric of language starts to unravel, and the pulse of life – that which will always remain beyond words – begins to bubble up from beneath.
Here is more, by Daniel Fraser. Do you prefer that take, or a single tweet on the topic by Robin Hanson?
Elizabeth Macarthur, a Life at the Edge of the World, by Michelle Scott Tucker #BookReview
South Australia election: Liberals win, Xenophon and SA-Best fail
Labor's win in the Batman by-election is massive for leader Bill Shorten. A last flickering hope for Malcolm Turnbull just went out. First, Shorten's rivals had suggested a Greens win - predicted by many pundits - would show Labor needed a more popular leader. Albo, anyone? So any leadership instability is put to bed for a ...
“When I turned 21, my expectations were reduced to zero,” he said. “It was important that I came to appreciate what I did have. . . . It’s also important not to become angry, no matter how difficult life is, because you can lose all hope if you can’t laugh at yourself and at life in general.”
… Tribute.
Waiting for the Second Coming
by Jim Doss
Wild Poetry Forum
The cattle are lowing
but there’s no baby in the manger. Christmas day
dawns cold and bright without a star to follow
or Wise Men who come trudging over the whitened
hills. All I see are the swaying backsides of Guernseys,
tails flicking flies out of habit. They waddle
like old ladies answering the call of church bells
weary from lugging oversized purses
filled with life’s necessary nothings.
They stare in wide-eyed astonishment
that I’ve left the warmth of the house, presents
unopened under the tree as the others snore
Francisco Goya. Saturn Devouring his Son 1819. Oil on Canvas. Wikimedia Commons.
snugly in their beds. The sucking sound
of my rubber boots in the mud draws them
closer. I lead them one by one into the stalls,
smear antiseptic on the udders, attach
the metal fingers. Liquid rushes through tubing
as the gentle massage begins and the collection tank
fills. I listen to the whir of the vacuum motor,
unthinkingly replace one cow with another.
If there’s a Messiah born on this day,
surely he would be here, nestled dryly
in the loft, adored by his teenage parents,
who fled their own Caesars and Herods,
I want to rise from this damp straw
that smells of dung, urine and sour milk
to behold the radiance of his face,
the peaceful reassurance that miracles await.
But I’m afraid all I’d find is two scared children
holding a screaming baby, the bloody
afterbirth matted in the hay, a beat-up
Volkswagen hidden behind a clump of evergreens,
and their eyes begging the blessing of my silence.
As the last udder is emptied, a halo
of light descends from the loft window
to circle my thorn-crowned head, and it is finished.
There’s a Ted Kooser quality to this poem, which is high praise, in my book. The voice feels entirely authentic and confident. I believe the sucking sound of the speaker’s boots in the muck. I believe he/she knows her/his way around a milking barn. As always, for me, I need the poet to ground me in a place, give me a chance to look around, or else I am not able to listen to any grander ideas the poem might present. And this poet does so, beautifully. It’s the “oversized purses,” early in the poem that allow me to accept the “thorn-crowned head” at the end. --C. Wade Bentley
but there’s no baby in the manger. Christmas day
dawns cold and bright without a star to follow
or Wise Men who come trudging over the whitened
tails flicking flies out of habit. They waddle
like old ladies answering the call of church bells
weary from lugging oversized purses
They stare in wide-eyed astonishment
that I’ve left the warmth of the house, presents
unopened under the tree as the others snore
of my rubber boots in the mud draws them
closer. I lead them one by one into the stalls,
smear antiseptic on the udders, attach
as the gentle massage begins and the collection tank
fills. I listen to the whir of the vacuum motor,
unthinkingly replace one cow with another.
surely he would be here, nestled dryly
in the loft, adored by his teenage parents,
who fled their own Caesars and Herods,
that smells of dung, urine and sour milk
to behold the radiance of his face,
the peaceful reassurance that miracles await.
holding a screaming baby, the bloody
afterbirth matted in the hay, a beat-up
Volkswagen hidden behind a clump of evergreens,
As the last udder is emptied, a halo
of light descends from the loft window
to circle my thorn-crowned head, and it is finished.
A Nun Pleads One Last Time For Katy Perry Not To Buy An Abandoned Convent, And Then Dies
"'Katy Perry, please stop,' [Sister Catherine Rose Holzman] said on Fox 11 in Los Angeles. Please stop trying to buy the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary’s convent, even though the nuns had gone to court to block the sale. 'It’s not doing anyone any good,' Holzman said, then walked into a courtroom, collapsed and died." … Read More
We’re Living Through A ‘Retail Apocalypse,’ But This Guy Is Studying Independent Bookstores Anyway
How did independent bookstores bounce back against Amazon – and what could other retail industries learn? This is exactly what a professor of organizational ethnography set out to study in 2009, long
Do authors have any rights with their deathbed wishes for literary executors? Somtimes. “Slavish obedience is one route for an executor, defiance for the sake of literature another. When several parties are involved, each jealously possessive of the author, things get trickier.”
*via Marginal Revolution Series:
What exactly does that title mean? It means they are your suggestions, and I kind of/sort of trust some of you, and I didn’t want to throw in all of my opinions. At the very least, I know a lot of these to be good, but I am reporting these recommendations from a distance. These are pulled from the comments section on my earlier post on the best book to read about each country, with my recommendations. So here are your contributions for Europe:
Roy Foster on Ireland.James Hawes has just published what has been reviewed as an excellent short history of Germany. His previous book on Anglo-German relations before WW1 felt like a fresh and convincing re-interpretation of what is very well-trodden ground in political/diplomatic history.Jonathan Steinberg’s “Why Switzerland”For Poland, yes, Norman Davies’ God’s Playground is the best book in English.Poland: A History by Zamoyski is concise, but probably too concise for someone not already somewhat familiar with Polish history.For Scandinavia – The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia by Michael Booth.One of the best books for understanding any nation, ignoring much of the history and most of the politics, is ‘Watching the English’ by Kate Fox.Is it possible the best book for “getting” France is the Larousse Gastronomique? Because I already have that one also.Czech Republic – “Gottland” by Mariusz Szczygiel. A description of the Czechs by a Pole. Will give you a lot of insight into the Czech character. I suppose a lot of Czechs will tell you The Good Soldier Swejk is the best book about Czechs, but that is self-serving.Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed by Mary Heimann is also very good.On Bulgaria: “Border” by Kapka KassabovaThe Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation” by Mark Kurlansky Simon Schama’s A History Of BritainOn Romania: “Along the Enchanted Way: A Story of Love and Life in Romania” by William Blacker or perhaps Robert D. Kaplan’s “In Europe’s Shadow”. I also liked Kaplan’s portrait of Oman in “Monsoon”.My choice would be Iberia by Michener.The Bible in Spain by George Borrow. Very old, very good.Patrick Leigh Fermor on Greece, Crete – Mani…etc.Netherlands: The Low Sky: Understanding the Dutch by Han van der Horst (De lage hemel in the original)Netherlands, fun read, although a bit dated now (written 20 years ago?): The Undutchables by Colin White and Laurie BouckeThere are two good and readable historical books on Amsterdam (and, by extension, The Netherlands)—one by Russell Shorto and the other by Geert Mak. Both are available in English. A bit more highbrow than the other books mentioned.On Spanish recent history I enjoyed Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett. Specifically on Barcelona I’d recommend Robert Hughes’ Barcelona. Inside into Catalan physcho.On Scandinavia: The almost nearly perfect people by Michael BoothOn Eastern Europe – Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.On the history of Russia you can’t beat ‘Internal Colonisation’ by Alexander Etkind.And on English – wonderful AA Gill, RIP, ‘Angry Island: Hunting the English’Spain – John Crow – Spain the Root and the Flower, Italy – Dark heart of Italy by Tobias Jones. Not sure these are the best, but they give an interesting psychological insight for the occasional travellerRussia – big country so 3 books, not histories – War and Peace (Tolstoy), Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman), Everything is possible (Pomerantsev)…