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Louise Brooks, Again
Nov. 6th, 2012 08:00 am
Love is a publicity stunt, and making love - after the first curious raptures - is only another petulant way to pass the time waiting for the studio to call.
-- Louise Brooks
Nov. 6th, 2012
Love is a publicity stunt, and making love - after the first curious raptures - is only another petulant way to pass the time waiting for the studio to call.
-- Louise Brooks
Spammers can be so cruel. From my inbox drops this little love letter:
Hey This is hard for me because I have never done anything like this.. but I have a huge crush on you. I have never been able to tell you for reasons which you would quickly identify as obvious if you knew who this was. I'm really attracted to you and I think you would be wanting to get with *Read FULL Card Here*
Then an url is given that seems to lead to a dating website, not that I am going to click on it to make sure, being too malware-adverse, though it might at least be a legitimate dating site and sexy to read, maybe including a hot little pic of a hot little lass.
I suppose we all get some of this in our e-lives, but I think this is the bet one yet. Sadly, despite not being born on the Internet last night and being familiar with Nigerian cons and such as this, my head does start spinning for a few minutes, drunk on the possibilities that this could somehow be real. (After all, there have been a few real flirtations.) It is cruel. However, if this is really you Ms. MeInterrupted, I think you're neat too!
Hey This is hard for me because I have never done anything like this.. but I have a huge crush on you. I have never been able to tell you for reasons which you would quickly identify as obvious if you knew who this was. I'm really attracted to you and I think you would be wanting to get with *Read FULL Card Here*
Then an url is given that seems to lead to a dating website, not that I am going to click on it to make sure, being too malware-adverse, though it might at least be a legitimate dating site and sexy to read, maybe including a hot little pic of a hot little lass.
I suppose we all get some of this in our e-lives, but I think this is the bet one yet. Sadly, despite not being born on the Internet last night and being familiar with Nigerian cons and such as this, my head does start spinning for a few minutes, drunk on the possibilities that this could somehow be real. (After all, there have been a few real flirtations.) It is cruel. However, if this is really you Ms. MeInterrupted, I think you're neat too!
pruning tree branches
Nov. 6th, 2012 01:16 pmPop has spent a good couple of hours pruning tree branches, and is still going. It looks like he got a long cutter for it. I am surprised that he did not move to get me to do it. Maybe he sees this as the alpha-male job, determining the shape and look of the trees, taking more control of our setting - that's his job. I'm glad to be spared something. I will have enough to do collecting the cuttings for our brush pick-up. I guess it is a good sign that he can even consider making such efforts in his seventies. He cannot have much more of this left in him. Let's just hope he doesn't get a stroke doing this.
1984 (2,9) Socialism
Nov. 6th, 2012 05:57 pmGoldstein relates how the long-revered egalitarian underpinnings of socialist ideology were being undermined in the twentieth century, and was being transformed into the narrow quest for absolute power, thus becoming a bastardized idea of socialism, and by the middle of the twentieth century, the final revolution was taking shape.
_ _ _
The middle, so long as it was struggling for power, had always made use of such terms as freedom, justice, and fraternity. Now, however, the concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not yet in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown. The new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand. Socialism, a theory which appeared in the early nineteenth century and was the last link in a chain of thought stretching back to the slave rebellions of antiquity, was still deeply infected by the Utopianism of past ages. But in each variant of socialism that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty and equality was more and more openly abandoned. The new movements which appeared in the middle years of the century, Ingsoc in Oceania, Neo-Bolshevism in Eurasia, Death-worship, as it is commonly called, in Eastasia, had the conscious air of perpetuating unfreedom and inequality. These new movements, of course, grew out of the old ones and tended to keep their names and pay lip-service to their ideology. But the purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and freeze history at a chosen moment. The familiar pendulum swing was to happen once more, and then stop. As usual, the High were to be turned out by the Middle, who would then become the High; but this time, by conscious strategy, the High would be able to maintain their position permanently.
-- “1984” by George Orwell
_ _ _
Let it be noted that this bastardization of socialist thought is central to Orwell’s perspective. He, himself, was a socialist, but the reason why he wrote so harshly of leftist politics and government, as manifested in “1984” and “Animal Farm”, is because he decried what he took to be a perversion of true socialist ideology. In part, he hoped to cure socialism from the totalitarian strains in which it became entangled.
_ _ _
The middle, so long as it was struggling for power, had always made use of such terms as freedom, justice, and fraternity. Now, however, the concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not yet in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown. The new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand. Socialism, a theory which appeared in the early nineteenth century and was the last link in a chain of thought stretching back to the slave rebellions of antiquity, was still deeply infected by the Utopianism of past ages. But in each variant of socialism that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty and equality was more and more openly abandoned. The new movements which appeared in the middle years of the century, Ingsoc in Oceania, Neo-Bolshevism in Eurasia, Death-worship, as it is commonly called, in Eastasia, had the conscious air of perpetuating unfreedom and inequality. These new movements, of course, grew out of the old ones and tended to keep their names and pay lip-service to their ideology. But the purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and freeze history at a chosen moment. The familiar pendulum swing was to happen once more, and then stop. As usual, the High were to be turned out by the Middle, who would then become the High; but this time, by conscious strategy, the High would be able to maintain their position permanently.
-- “1984” by George Orwell
_ _ _
Let it be noted that this bastardization of socialist thought is central to Orwell’s perspective. He, himself, was a socialist, but the reason why he wrote so harshly of leftist politics and government, as manifested in “1984” and “Animal Farm”, is because he decried what he took to be a perversion of true socialist ideology. In part, he hoped to cure socialism from the totalitarian strains in which it became entangled.