William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

-- "The World Is Too Much with Us" by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Yeah, but we have the Interet!

close to a perfect night

The cats were so good overnight, but then they go stir-crazy at around six-thirty. Just another thirty minutes and it would have been close to a perfect night. So close!

Pics

ONTD

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Dowding Petraeus

Another major sex scandal has been roiling around Washington D.C., this one involving the military brass. Aside from skimming the reports for steamy passages, such stories usually leave me yawning. Men like to dip and soak their dicks in hot, wet chicks, and powerful men have more opportunities to do that, and so they do - news at fucking eleven. I will use Maureen Dowd's column to get something down for my blog.

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Lo (1,1) This Tangle of Thorns

After covering John Ray, Jr.’s foreword and being assured that this salacious and scandalous novel is chock full of socially redeeming value, we return to chapter one. We already covered the first half with Humbert’s fond reminiscence of little Dolly standing four feet ten in one sock, the Lo-Lee-Ta who he held so fondly in his arms and in his bed. It is a brief chapter, as many of them are, and concludes with this.

_ _ _

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

-- “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov

_ _ _

A murderer? I imagine it is fair to say that the pure first-time reader goes into the novel expecting that Humbert is in trouble for a sex crime, but murder? Accordingly, one point of suspense is: who was murdered? How? What happened? Did he kill the little girl, too?? One will have to read on. Nabokov has obviously served much on our plate.

In the very beginning, we can also see the braced, defensive tone of Humbert. He has excuses (a tragic childhood love), and he tries to obscure the age difference with his oblique, convoluted formula, whipping up a fog of rhetoric. Then, there is that fantastic religious allusion, making himself out to be the tortured Christ, this pedophile and child raper. In this opening, he is in his mind wholly in the role of one pleading his defense before a jury in a court of law, but this will change and Humbert will grow, as the narrative becomes less a legal defense and more a doleful, wretched confession of a lost soul. But that is a long way off and Nabokov has only just begun to play his magisterial violin.

MIdeast-Israel Update

GAZA — The Israeli military carried out multiple airstrikes in Gaza on Wednesday and blew up a car carrying the commander of the Hamas military wing, making him the most senior official of the group to be killed by the Israelis since their invasion of Gaza four years ago. Hamas announced that Israel would “pay a high price” for the attack, which also deeply angered Egypt’s new government.

The death of the commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, 52, who was on Israel’s most-wanted list of Palestinian militants, was confirmed by Hamas officials. The Israeli military said it had ordered the airstrikes as part of a response to days of rocket fire launched from Gaza into Israeli territory.

-- FARES AKRAM and ISABEL KERSHNER at The New York Times

What makes this a new chapter is that we can no longer rely on a quiescent Egypt. The situation is that much more volatile, with Iran close to getting a nuclear bomb and Syria up in arms.

"The Phantom of the Opera" (1911)

Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera (1925, dir. Rupert Julian) (via)

“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be ‘some one,’ like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost…”

-- Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera (1911)

my walks

A bit too cold and dark these days for my walks, and I have the leavings of two loaves of bread for the ducks. I think I am going to have to throw them away. Even if it warms up by tomorrow afternoon, I am behind on the grocery list and cannot afford to lose the three hours.

"Hah, and how did you get behind on your grocery list? Did you take a long, extended nap?"

Heh, I guess I did do that, but I had also practically promised Sina that I would get up a "Lolita" post by today, and so I was pretty intense on getting that done this morning, and it took up the whole morning.

"Wow, I hope you got double-pay for that, or at least some extra vacation time."

You know me, babe, I do it for the love.

Bitter Romney and His Sour Illusions

A recent word from Mitt Romney on his defeat. I had heard that he gave a very gracious concession speech on election night, but I suppose it should not be surprising this his true thoughts rest elsewhere. He apparently buys into the 'Makers' vs. 'Takers' line, so that his 47% comment was not just an abberation nor a line served up to a particular audience. It is his worldview. A true American plutocrat. The nation and the world is very fortunate in his defeat.

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