Andree Seu riffs on a verse in Ecclesiastes, “All things are full of weariness.” She quotes C.S. Lewis’ explanation on why he doesn’t read newspapers: “Why does anyone? They’re nearly all lies, and one has to wade thru’ such reams of verbiage and ‘write up’ to find out even what they’re saying.”
Do you think that’s accurate for today’s newspapers or other news outlets?
Blockbuster is trying to remaking itself into an major entertainment center. Today it offered to buy Circuit City at about twice its stock value. Blockbuster’s Chief Executive and Chairman Jim Keyes said the new company would be “the most convenient source for media entertainment.”
Tags: Blockbuster, Circuit City, movies, electronics
The mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is talking about the funding needed to renovate the downtown library. Private funding works well, and taxes could help if the people support it. The library system needs more money as is without any remodeling plans. Three branches, including the one closest to me, close one more day of week due to limited funds.
Naturally, I like the idea of a great looking downtown library and more of revived branch libraries, but I hope this can be accomplished through private funds. Even special purpose taxes tend to remain after their stated goal is completed. I wonder what a fund-drive would raise or if their is any grant money out there for this. I also think the horse should be before the cart in that a great book collection should precede a great library building.
Tags: books, library, Chattanooga, taxes
Pop-song writer Jean-Loup Dabadie, 69, has been admitted into “The Académie Française, France’s oldest and grandest cultural institution,” according to this TimesOnline aricle.
“For four centuries only literary stars and distinguished elders of the Establishment have been elevated to the status of ‘immortal,'” which is what the chosen are called. Allow this pop culture dude in is supposed to be keeping up with modern life. Keeping up with anything may be a problem for the Immortals.
“Seven members have died in two years and the surviving immortals, whose average age is 79, have rejected a string of literary contenders as unworthy. Six of the numbered chairs remain empty and there are not enough volunteers to attend the Thursday meetings to edit the dictionary. Work on the latest one began in 1935 and they have reached the letter R. The Second World War is blamed for the slow pace.”
Perhaps the surviving immortals should take a gander–or the French equivalent–at Bryan Appleyard’s book on living forever. It might read better than the dictionary project.
Tags: culture, pop culture, France
Terry Teachout reviews a couple strong plays, the first of which is a Soviet-styled Macbeth. “Mr. Goole’s staging is a prosy, purposefully unmagical updating of Shakespeare’s tragedy in which the action is transplanted from ancient Scotland to the Soviet Union in the darkest days of the Great Terror,” he writes, and Patrick Stewart as Macbeth delivers his role with lines which “still make you feel as though they’d just been written.”
An international prize given to “an imprisoned or persecuted writer in jeopardy because of health or other reasons” has been awarded to Yang Tongyan, a Chinese writer in jail on anti-government charges. I did not find excerpts of what he wrote, but the panel behind the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award says he is a champion of free speech and democracy in China. Apparently Yang is serving a 12-year prison term for speaking his mind too freely.
SLEEP sleep old Sun, thou canst not have repast
As yet, the wound thou took’st on friday last;
Sleepe then, and rest; The world may beare thy stay,
A better Sun rose before thee to day
Man, I’m wasted.
Let me rephrase that.
I’m very, very tired, and have been all day. I drank three cups of tea today, which is two more than my usual consumption.
You know how I said yesterday that events had all the earmarks of giving me one of those nights where I don’t get to bed at all?
Sometimes I scare myself. Turned out I was pretty close.
The flight arrival, originally scheduled for 7:30 p.m., got moved back to 8:30 p.m. A while later I checked the airline website again, and now the plane was expected around 11:00.
And then it was midnight.
Then 1:00.
I finally set out for the airport, at midnight. I figured I’d leave about the same time the plane took off from Chicago, since it takes me about as long to get to the airport on a dirty night as it takes to fly here from the city of big shoulders.
And the weather was dirty. Snow mixed with rain. Slushy highways. I drove around 35 or 40 mph all the way.
When I got there, I found that arrival had been moved back again, to 2:00 a.m.
At that point the regression mercifully ceased. I sat by the baggage claim and read a Dean Koontz (The Funhouse—early work, not his best) until Moloch and Mrs. Moloch showed up, and then I drove them back to my place. By that time they’d been thrown off their circadian rhythms so drastically that they figured they might as well just drive home. The weather had lifted, and the roads were supposed to get better the further south you went.
So I got to sleep at about 3:00 a.m.
For all I know, I have my fingers on the wrong keys and am typing pure gibberish.
P.J. O’Rourke discusses the new deadly sins and lists some of his own:
Opinion. It’s the reverse of fact. Listen to NPR or AM Talk Radio if you don’t believe me, or, better yet, read the opinion page of the New York Times. (I’m talking about you, Paul Krugman.) Some people have facts, these can be proven. Some people have theories, these can be disproven. But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it. The 11th Commandment is, “Thou shalt not blog.”
Now the question is how can I be forgiven? (via World on the Web)
Ann Althouse asks what movies you have walked out on. I rarely see movies in a theater, so I don’t have much opportunity to walk out, but my wife and I did eject a Doris Day DVD a while back. Caprice is a spy comedy, and I had read about its complicated plot, so I was open to subtleties and a bit of confusion. Still the light but constant sexual humor (mild compared to what’s available today) was not enjoyable.