Miss Bibliophile

A newcomer at PolitiCartoons. She seems young, fresh out of college, Miss Bibliophile. She just started a journal. I kind of pretend it’s ten years ago, and I comment at her journal, stopping short of asking her to ‘friend’ me, kind of hoping that she might take that step on her own, but she doesn’t seem particularly anxious to do so. It’s probably my age, or maybe it’s a combination of my age and the fact that one of my Saturday Night porn posts is near the top of my journal.

~ ~ ~

Miss Bibliophile’s first blurt

So far, I'm truly excited about keeping an online journal. As a kid, I always enjoyed keeping a diary. I remember having a small purple diary with a fairy on the front cover, and it came with a lock and key. Writing down my thoughts, whether as a journal entry or as a poem, has always been a bit magical. It's a moment when I feel most in touch with who I am and what I want in life. While this journal is much more public, and I feel a bit intimidated by that, I'm also intrigued by the idea of sharing my thoughts with countless others.

Monk

Well, on LiveJournal, countless others is not quite as many as it used to be, but welcome aboard.

Miss Bibliophile

Yeah, I've been told that a lot of people have abandoned the site. Oh well. It's still fun. And thanks!

The Natural World

Oryx

( Read more... )

1984 (3,2) Thou Art

If Winston is simply going to be wiped out of all human memory, why spend so much time and trouble on him? O’Brien recapitulates the philosophy behind the Ministry of Love.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

“Did I not tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the past. We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him.

“It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.

“The command of the old despotisms was ‘Thou shalt not.’ The command of the totalitarians was ‘Thou shalt.’ Our command is ‘Thou art.’ No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean. Even those three miserable traitors in whose innocence you once believed - Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford - in the end we broke them down. I took part in their interrogation myself. I saw them gradually worn down, whimpering, groveling, weeping - and in the end it was not with pain or fear, only with penitence. By the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they could die while their minds were still clean.”

-- “1984” by George Orwell

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I suppose they want the last memory of the people about the dissenter to be an educative one, confirming more conclusively the rightness of Big Brother.

Diet

Growing hungry and hungrier at ten in the evening, I realized that this could be a consequence of not having any cokes or sweets with my dinner. All I had tonight, for instance, was a chicken pot pie and my cup of ice water. Of course, I am hungry!

Since I cannot eat fruits and nuts every night, I made a little burger tonight. I don't suppose it's a lot better than cookies and a soda healthwise, but I am thinking that the key difference is that I will not be throwing up in the middle of the night.