Saturday, August 7, 2010

Assortment (and open thread)

I’ll be offline for a couple of days (takin’ a trip to see my father, Old Paco), so feel free to talk among yourselves.

Here’s an assortment to get you started.

Theodore Dalrymple contemplates book thieves (now, I’m a pretty honest fellow myself; however, if you happen to leave a first edition of Build My Gallows High lyin’ around somewhere, you might want to make sure you have it chained down).

Apostasy and schism among the unbelievers.

At least one Muslim thinks that pitching a high rise stick in the eye is a bad idea. On the same subject, Moonbattery has some interesting architectural suggestions.

ICE employees issue a vote of no confidence in their leadership.

Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd demonstrate that, actually, breaking up is a whole lot easier than patching things up.

If Bill Buckley had used the kind of illustrations in his political essays that the Classic Liberal does, we’d be looking back fondly on the two-term Goldwater administration.

18 comments:

bruce said...

'Bibliomania, the obsession to possess books, was first recognised as a disease by doctors at the end of the Eighteenth Century, and many learned tomes - themselves now the object of bibliomanes’ desires - have been written on it.'

- Is that one of those breaks in the Matrix?

TimT said...

I remember being told about obsessive map collectors, who look through 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th century volumes in libraries and quickly cut out the precious maps, which are later either circulated on the black market or simply kept for personal use. Apparently a number of people do it - it's not just a bizarre eccentricity confined to one person. I regarded that story then - and still do - with little less than horror: that precious artefacts could be vandalised to satisfy one's own selfish desires seems almost impossibly wrong.

And... there's a lot of it going about. A few months ago I was at the Camberwell Markets (a weekly charity market in Melbourne) and happened across one antique-dealer selling what appeared to be old copies of Punch or the Ladies Home Journal. On closer inspection I saw that what the dealer had done was... cut out individual pages from those journals in order to sell them at something like $1 a page. I ended up ranting about him for weeks. Grrrr!

Robert of Ottawa said...

Darn it, Paco, after those beautiful women, I forgot what I wanted to sayh!

cac said...

I have to say Paco that I'm a little suspicious. I can join the dots and it seems to me that the combination of:
1) absence of several days with a flimsy excuse
2) your inexplicable interest in Australian politics
3) the current Australian election looking like the West Wing on crack

strongly suggests that the Plotting for Australian Conservatives Optimisation are down under doing their usual good work against the left (one hint though - tone down the fiasco within the Labor Party - I think people might be starting to suspect)

TimT said...

Perfidious American Conservatives Overseas!

Yojimbo said...

Since this is an open thread I thought I would update the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" file.

We are swamped with McCain campaign adds here. The one I like features a bunch of diaffected Hayworth voters issuing forth. The last guy says"John McCain, the TRUE CONSERVATIVE." Right after this the voice over guy comes on and states"character matters" I just find it funny that they have the temerity to juxtaopes those two concepts.

Yojimbo said...

Disaffected and juxtapose even. Ranting has its price, a thousand sorrows for the mistakes.

bruce said...

So McCain is still running as a Senator? Here in Aus after a loss like that anyone except Rottweiler Rudd would get out of politics I think. Rudd is bent on world domination like Stewie in Family Guy, but more psychopathic, so he'd bring down the system before giving up (that would serve his purpose even more too) - but he's unusual.

JeffS said...

Paco is out of town? Did he leave the booze unlocked?

bruce said...

Just remembered how 20 years ago and a week (2nd Aug 1990) began Operation Desert Storm.

The way that turned out changed my worldview. I remember it all like it was yesterday, the daily Scuds, Israelis in gas masks, live telecast of tightly targeted attack on Saddam's Baghdad, the earthy brilliance of Stormin' Norman. Now forgotten it seems.

Anonymous said...

Booby trapped, JeffS, count on it. Library too.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Paco - AND Old Paco, since he wouldn't necessarily lie about such things - is off with Rush at an undisclosed location, plotting the Right Wing Take-Back of the Nation.

Lord Rove filling in there, and an open thread here...sounds suspicious to me.

Anonymous said...

JeffS, you were asking about the booze. If we find Wron we're sure to find...oops, sorry, forgot. What are the odds that anything is left? Paco only left Saturday....Hmmm. Low odds.

Deborah Leigh

bruce said...

As a complulsive bloghog, I got one last comment:

It's 'greed' to amass or horde wealth. So must be the same for pathological bibliomania.

Hording books led to libraries. Hording treasure led to museums. Hording wealth led to banks.

'Greed' is good (for society!).

Yojimbo said...

Greed as a cultural imperative, I like it. Barbarians at the gates-a global force for good. I give it an 85, it has a nice beat and it's easy to dance to.

Merilyn said...

Come to think of it JeffS is wronwright out of town to? Where is the Tardis?

JeffS said...

I don't know, Merilyn. Maybe Wron is replenishing the Sumerian mead supply.

Yojimbo said...

Have you checked in on Paco's Spicy Tacos? He has his own table after all.

I heard he was polishing the Tardis with a fresh batch of Manatee oil.