POETRY
CORNER (THE AMBLER 5TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
On
The Spirit of Getting-On-Ed-Ness
["The
Sailor: 'She whom we rail at in this song is that Spirit
of getting-on-ed-ness and making out our life at the
expense of our fellow men and of our own souls.'"]
Thou
ugly, lowering, treacherous Quean
I think thou art the Devil!
To pull them down the rich and mean,
And bring them to one level.
Of all my friends
That found their ends
By only following thee,
How many I tell
Already in Hell,
So shall it not be with me!
I
knew three fellows were in your thrall,
Got more than they could carry,
The first might drink no wine at all,
And the second he would not marry;
The third in seeking golden earth
Was drownded in the sea,
Which taught him what your wage is worth,
So it shall not be with me!
There
was Peter Bell of North Chappel,
Was over hard and sparing,
He spent no penny of all his many,
And died of over caring;
He saved above two underd pound
But his widow spent it free,
And turned the town nigh upside down,
So it shall not be with me!
Then
mannikins bang the table round,
For the younger son o' the Squire,
Who never was blest of penny or pound,
But got his heart's desire.
Oh, the creditor's curse
Might follow his hearse,
For all it mattered to he!
From worshipping Mammon,
So it shall not be with me!
And
Absalom,
That was a King's son,
Was hangéd on a tree,
When he the Kingdom would have won,
So it shall not be with me!
—Hilaire
Belloc
Kevin
Michael Grace,
10.04 pm, 4 November 2007►
PENSÉE
Actors can cry on cue, but
they cannot blush on cue. This proves that embarrassment
is the most honest emotion.
Kevin
Michael Grace,
8.27 pm, 4 November 2007►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Modern
art's almost total preoccupation with subjectivism has led
to anarchy and sterility in the arts. The notion that
reality exists only in the artist's mind and that the
thing which simpler souls had for so long believed to be
reality is only an illusion, was initially an invigorating
force, but it eventually led to a lot of highly original,
very personal and extremely uninteresting work. In Cocteau's
film Orpheé,
the poet asks what he should do. "Astonish me,"
he is told. Very little of modern art does that—certainly
not in the sense that a great work of art can make you
wonder how its creation was accomplished by a mere mortal.
—Stanley
Kubrick
2001: Consider me
astonished
Kevin
Michael Grace,
8.22 pm, 4 November 2007►
HANG
TOGETHER OR HANG SEPARATELY
Brian
Mulroney's influence on Stephen Harper has been enormous.
—Bob
Plamondon
How
was that when it was revealed
four years ago that former Conservative
prime minister Brian
Mulroney had accepted $300,000 in
cash from Karlheinz
Schreiber, the immediate reaction from the
Canadian government was not this?
1.
Our investigation is back on.
2. Our apology is rescinded.
3. We want our $2.1
million back.
Now
we have learned that Mulroney waited
some time before declaring his
"consulting fee" to the taxman. This new
information did not stop current Conservative Prime
Minister Stephen Harper from rejecting, with
his usual sneer, the Liberal call for a
public inquiry. Harper went on to openly blackmail the
Official Opposition, asking how they would like inquiries
into the business affairs of Jean Chrétien and Paul
Martin.
Perhaps
someone should explain to Mr Harper that the Government of
Canada is not an administrative convenience maintained for
the benefit of the Conservative and Liberal parties. Oh,
I'm sorry, have I given the game away?
The
more inquiries the merrier, I say. How about we start with
a long-dead Liberal? The late historian James
Barros said this to me about the Herbert
Norman cover-up:
"The footsteps lead right back to Lester Pearson's dacha."
Elizabeth
Bentley and Ralph
de Toledano also believed he was a Soviet
agent.
Pearson: Worst 'Mike' Ever
Pierre
Trudeau is usually fingered as the man who
wrecked Canada. But Pearson
surely deserves equal billing, and for this he is beloved
by the great and the good of this benighted country.
Barros, for his pains, was officially execrated as
"bizarre," "obsessive" and, worst of
all, "American." And in an admirable display of
bipartisanship, Herbert Norman was defended in the House
of Commons by no less than former Conservative prime
minister Joe Clark (then Minister of External Affairs).
In
response to his critics, Barros said to me, "I was
trained by Germans, and they believe in empirical
evidence." Now, if the Germans ever believed in
anything, it must be bad, but that doesn't change the fact
Brian Mulroney took $300,000 from Karlheinz Schreiber and
then testified under
oath "I had never had any dealings
with him." Come back, Stevie
Cameron, all is forgiven.
Kevin
Michael Grace,
11.57 pm, 3 November 2007►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Imagine
Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove riding the bomb and
thumping the Bible at the same time. That’s the
Rapturist movement.
—Sidney
O Smith III, commenting
on "Yes, Jews Are Smarter, But We're
Undergoing An IQ Drop By The Minute," Mondoweiss,
30 October 2007
Kevin
Michael Grace,
11.36 pm, 3 November 2007►
