Woven and stratified delite

One of the things I love about the English language is how adaptable it is. Despite the stern prescriptions of high school English teachers, its punctuation, spelling, and syntax can be stretched and spun to convey a broad array of moods and meanings. English also absorbs foreign words (ie, foreign concepts) freely. In this post, I’ll present for your reading pleasure a few samples.

Menace
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs. The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night.
-20th-century horror novel (from The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft)

Saga
“In the begynnyng of Arthure, aftir he was chosyn Kynge by adventure and by grace—for the moste party of the barowns knew nat he was Uther Pendragon son but as Merlyon made hit openly knowyn, but yet many kyngis and lordis hylde hym grete werre for that cause—
But well Arthur overcom hem all. The moste party dayes of hys lyff he was ruled by the counceile of Merlyon; so hit felle on a tyme Kyng Arthur seyde unto Merlion, “My barownes woll let me have no reste but nedis I must take a wyff—and I wolde none take but by thy counceile and advice.”
-start of a 16th-century tale (from Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory)

Dogfaces
“I tol’im iffie tried to fuck me over, I was gonna kick ‘is fuckin’ ass, iddnot right?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Soey kep’on fuckin’ me over and I kicked ‘is fuckin’ ass in fo’im, iddnot right?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“An so now they tellin’ me they gon’ th’ow my fuckin’ ass inna fuckin’ stoc-kade! You know what? They some kind fuckin’ me over!”
“Fuckin’ A well tol’, Bubba.”
-World War II “army creole” (from Wartime by Paul Fussell)

Piety
“O Untouchable, and forever blessed, singular and incomparable virgin Mary Mother of God, most grateful temple of God, the sacristy of the Holy Ghost, the gate of the kingdom of heaven, by whom next unto God the whole world liveth, incline O Mother of Mercy the ears of thy pity unto my unworthy supplications, and be pitiful to me a most wretched sinner, and be unto me a merciful helper in all things.”
-medieval prayer (from The Book of Hours, 1559 edition)

Description
Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal, more completely than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported. For this reason the actual process by which coal is extracted is well worth watching, if you get the chance and are willing to take the trouble.

When you go down a coal-mine it is important to try and get to the coal face when the 'fillers' are at work. This is not easy, because when the mine is working visitors are a nuisance and are not encouraged, but if you go at any other time, it is possible to come away with a totally wrong impression. On a Sunday, for instance, a mine seems almost peaceful. The time to go there is when the machines are roaring and the air is black with coal dust, and when you can actually see what the miners have to do. At those times the place is like hell, or at any rate like my own mental picture of hell. Most of the things one imagines in hell are if there--heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space. Everything except the fire, for there is no fire down there except the feeble beams of Davy lamps and electric torches which scarcely penetrate the clouds of coal dust.
-20th-century journalism (from The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell)

Rant
Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?
No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.
-21st-century anonymous website (from "Fuck the South" by Annotated Rant)

Emotion
i go to this window

just as day dissolves
when it is twilight(and
looking up in fear

i see the new moon
thinner than a hair)

making me feel
how myself has been coarse and dull
compared with you, silently who are
and cling
to my mind always

But now she sharpens and becomes crisper
until i smile with knowing
-and all about
herself

the sprouting largest final air

plunges
inward with hurled
downward thousands of enormous dreams
-20th-century poem (“i go to this window” by e. e. cummings)

Correspondence

-20th-century letter (from The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien)

Decadence
“I'm Catherine, Myrtle's sister.”
“Oh.”
“People say we look like twins, but I don't think so.”
“I'm Nick. Won't you sit down? I told that boy about the ice.”
“These servants! You really have to keep after them all the time. You live down on Long Island, too?”
“Yes, in West Egg.”
“Really? I was down at a party in West Egg about a month ago, at a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?”
“I live next door to him. He's German.
“Really?”
“Really. The cousin or nephew or something of Kaiser Wilhelm. That's where all his money comes from.”
“I'm scared of him.”
“Why?”
“I'd hate him to get anything on me.”
“Oh.”
-20th-century aristocrats (from The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald)

Uptight
"You know, I don't think I could take a mellow evening because I - I don't respond well to mellow. You know what I mean? I have a tendency to - if I get too mellow, I - I ripen and then rot, you know."
-20th-century Woody Allen (from Annie Hall)

350 or bust

Today was the “international day of climate action” organized by the 350.org coalition. It was a united signal to world leaders that urgent action is needed in the Copenhagen summit starting Dec 7. My particular group brought homemade noise-makers to Place des Spectacles (in Montreal) and made 350 seconds of cacophony aimed straight at Stephen Harper.

I’m very pleased to learn about 350.org. It is the most inclusive, focused, and well-organized anti-climate-change group thus far. National initiatives haven’t worked so far, and I hope this kind of internationalist approach will be more effective.

Alas, my government is actively sabotaging efforts to reach a workable, effective agreement to limit climate change. First, by taking no action to satisfy our Kyoto protocol obligations—Canada is already 34% above our 2012 CO2-emission targets. Second, by obstructing efforts to expand and improve Kyoto—our negotiators are calling for an entirely new framework, which would take several years to negotiate.

We should not only blame the Conservative Party or their voters for this shortsightedness. No one should be surprised that a party built on Alberta’s petrodollars is opposed to restrictions on fossil fuels; and there will always be fearful and ignorant voters who support an impossible return to “the good old days” (although I am disturbed that they are so numerous at this critical junction). No, the other half of the Canadian establishment is equally responsible. The Liberals were in power for the first decade of our Kyoto obligations, and they took no significant action. Even now, after yet another year of shrinking glaciers, spreading pests and diseases, droughts, wildfires, freak weather, and rising sea levels, Liberal inaction is blocking the way forward. After all, the Conservatives are a minority in Parliament, and by uniting with the environment-friendly NDP and BQ, the Liberals could implement controls on emissions. A case in point is Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, an NDP private member’s bill currently in its third reading in the House of Commons. It would set emission targets for 2020 and 2050 (25% and 80% below 1990 levels) and give regulators the power to punish polluters. This version of the Act was introduced in February, and there has been a push to pass it before the Copenhagen summit to give Canadian negotiators a strong negotiating position. However, last week the Liberals delayed the reading by another 30 days, which likely means it won’t be passed in time for Copenhagen. Ignatieff is just as bad as Harper (of which more later).

Fingers crossed for Copenhagen…

"Nobel prize winner Barack Obama..."

I'm sure everyone knows by now that Obama won the Nobel peace prize. The rationale is that unlike his predecessors, he is talking about disarmament, multilateralism, and global peace, and as a US president that has a strong impact. Many believe that the Nobel committee also hopes to encourage Obama to take a more peaceful path. I strongly disagree with both premises.

First, talking peace is standard practice for world leaders. It's called diplomacy. That is especially true for the US, which needs to keep a steady stream of propaganda to distract from the fact that they produce 70% of the world's weaponry and frequently violate international law. Dubya dropped that pretense of benevolence, but Obama's return to "presidential protocol" is not a reason to give him a Nobel prize. Thousands around the world have worked their whole lives for peace, risking imprisonment, torture, and death. What risk has Obama taken?

Second, it is significant that the first public response to Obama's prize was not approval or thoughtful consideration but incredulity. If I were Obama, I would feel humiliated not heartened by this prize. Everyone knows that at best, Obama's legacy will be to leave less broken bodies in Baghdad and Bagram than John McCain would have. It is a cruel joke to praise him for spreading peace when peace is an impossible goal for him. In the 21st century, a US president is first and foremost a commander-in-chief: more than half of US government expenditures are for war, and "national security" occupies most of a president's time. Obama can save lives by passively resisting the war machine nominally under his command, through budget cuts or procedural obstruction, but he has no prospect to dismantle it.

Personally, I still doubt his peaceful motives--he increased the basic Pentagon budget by 4%, approved every "emergency" funding request, approved the continued use of Predator drones, and is now considering sending 40 000 more soldiers to Afghanistan/Pakistan with a corresponding increase in drones, mercenaries, and permanent bases. True, he hasn't yet invaded Iran, as John McCain would have--in some ways a cautious commander-in-chief is better than a hasty one--but that is a difference in management style and shouldn't been confounded with a commitment to peace.

During his election campaign, Obama was often compared to JFK. That comparison may be more apt then the commentators intended. Despite Kennedy's public (and in my opinion, private) commitment to a more peaceful world, his foreshortened term saw the start of the Secret War in Cambodia and the creation of the first US-trained death squads in South America. Even with this kind of public encouragement, does anyone think Obama will achieve more than JFK?