“The years don’t so much arrive, they gatecrash, they breeze through the door and leave their devastation, all the empty crockery, the broken veins, sunken eyepools, aching gums, but who is he to complain, he’s had plenty of years to get used to it, he was hardly a handsome Harry in the first place, and anyway he got the girl.” – Peter Mendelssohn, retired judge.
“Even after all this time, it’s hard to grasp exactly what happened. I try to write it as it occurred, but I find myself changing the names to protect the guilty. I wonder if [that experience] left me forever off-kilter in some way, tilted from the vertical and condemned to see life skewed.”–from “Sorry to Disturb,” set in Saudi Arabia, where the author herself spent four years.
CHINA’S HUAWEI GAMBIT: Beijing spies with a 5G virus?
TOEING THE COMMUNIST PARTY LINE IS NOT A GOOD LOOK: Respected scientific journal issues apology for associating coronavirus with China over racism fears.
“The SpaceKnow data suggest a continued slowing in China’s economy, despite official data saying otherwise,” says Jeremy Fand, SpaceKnow’s chief executive.Pollution data from SpaceKnow, collected via satellite by measuring things like methane and ozone over China, also suggest that activity remains depressed compared with previrus levels. That index, last updated on March 30, is unchanged from the end of February…Regardless of why China’s activity remains lower than officially reported—whether it’s the virus, frozen demand, or a combination of factors—the point is that the country hasn’t yet begun to rebound.
Here is the full story by Lisa Beilfuss. Given this data, as I have been arguing, we should not expect a V-shaped U.S. recovery.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Progress! WuFlu Gets Dogs an Upgrade From Menu to Pet in China.“The Week Four WuFlu Wind-Down finds us all heading into an online Easter weekend that is going to require a little adjustment. And when I say ‘adjustment,’ I mean’“alcohol.’ Well, that’s what I’ve been using for adjustment, anyway.”
YEAH. I ALSO THOUGHT OF AGATHA CHRISTIE IMMEDIATELY: The mysterious case of the people who ate fish tank cleaner.
TRAGEDY: Why the World Overlooked Canadian Whiskey
“People have got to stop their navel-gazing bullshit and write real stories. What the hell is wrong with fiction? The idea that it’s truer and more real to write about yourself is nothing but the unreflective extension of individualism and the childish self-centeredness of our stunted generation. We’ve let ourselves be stunted. There’s no will, no rebellion, or idealism in us. No solidarity. And now, apparently, we feel the need to spew our self-absorbed, narcissistic self-pity over literature as well. It’s enough to make you vomit.”
The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach and John Philip Sousa, between Sophocles and Shakespeare, between a bicycle and a horse, though explicable by historical moment, necessity, and destiny, is before all a difference of imagination.