Never in my life would I think I would be tired of words. I am tired of the words of King Arthur that span six centuries. There are only so many ways of telling the story of the quest for the Sangrail before I begin to grow weary and weep like the pansy Lancelot did when Arthur and Guinivere died. Contemporary literature is getting a little too contemporary and surreal. It is almost like looking at deathly dark clouds against a bright blue sky. You know it is coming, it is just a matter of time. Read some Ngugi or Allende if you don't believe me. The cursor mocks me in more ways than some of you will ever understand when i sit down to work on my creative project or attempt to explicate this quote from Book A and link it to Book B while at the same time keeping the main idea of my paragraph coherent with the thesis of my paper making sure i don't wander, which i tend to do, thus resulting in a C which makes me feel like less of a human being. Beat me, publicly humiliate me, just please don't tell me I am a mediocre writer. But then that is the reason I get the C isn't it? So i won't be a mediocre writer and do better next time. Thanks for the encouragement, but I still feel like shit when I see that horrible letter.
I am also very grateful of these reading experiences. I would have never read Devil on the Cross, The House of the Spirits, The Winter King, Fire Next Time, or Ceremony otherwise, and that would have been misfortunate. I would have never worked on my "Shakespeare" story either and I am very proud of how that is turning out (perhaps I will post it one day when i have gotten a little more out of it). I have gotten very positive feedback from very well educaded people on that story and that is the best feeling in the world. Having someone who has a PHD from Columbia tell you they really enjoy your story and that she read part of it over the phone to her movie critic husband who lives in New York and he thought it was good as well is the best damned feeling in the world. They do not make a drug that can replace that feeling in any lab, be it Eli Lilly or a trailer in Saucier.
Well, now you must excuse me, I have only 3 more books left to read before the semester is over......
"Heroes and villains: George W Bush and Berti Vogts
Stewart Kirkpatrick
skirkpatrick at scotsman dot com
NB: we know that there are far more worthy heroes than those listed here - doctors, nurses, aid workers, Franck Sauzee, etc. Similarly, murderers, rapists and dictators are indisputably far greater villains. This column does not deal with them. It is designed to honour those who have caused surprise by their actions.
Hero: Dubya
You've got to hand it to George Walker Bush. Everyone in the world thought he was a moronic, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, mindless puppet doing the bidding of his super-rich, neo-con, oil-soaked paymasters while paying lip service to the concerns of the great unwashed.
Instead it turns out he's a political genius.
The American economy is going down the toilet. It has a budget deficit ($4 trillion over the next 10 years) that would make Kim Jong Il blush. Worryingly, China and Hong Kong have accumulated $177 billion of US debt, giving the world's biggest dictatorship a great deal of economic power over the world's richest democracy.
Vast amounts have been squandered on enormous tax cuts that disproportionately favour the super-wealthy (the bottom 60% of US society got a mere 14.7% of Bush's $1.6 trillion giveaway, while the richest 1% got half of it). Meanwhile unemployment has rocketed. And for George, healthcare is just another word that begins with "h", like "Iran". In short, the ordinary American is getting royally shafted by the Bush administration.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius.
How'd he do it? Well, he made them scared. Not in the way he makes us scared - by having his finger on the nuclear trigger while looking very dim and slightly deranged - but by raising mythical bogeymen to terrify middle America.
After the horrific attacks on the US on 11 September, 2001, the Bush administration should have dedicated all its resources to hunting down Osama bin Laden and his little helpers. Instead, after taking out the Taliban in Afghanistan (a good move spoiled slightly by the chaotic mess that country is currently in), Dubya decided to focus on Iraq: a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Despite all the lies about weapons of mass destruction, al-Qaeda training camps and uranium from Nigeria, Saddam Hussein was as great a threat to the US as my mum. (Note to any neo-cons who might be reading: this means that the Iraqi leader was not a threat at all. It does not mean you should carpet-bomb my mum's house or have her deposed in a right-wing coup.)
Careful use of terror alerts have kept swing voters good and jumpy so that they chose the "tough" George Dubya Bush over the "sane" John Kerry. This despite the fact that the Iraq adventure has made America more of a terrorist target than it was before and that American (and British) servicemen are dying there at a frightening rate.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius.
As a result we're in for an exciting four years of unfettered neo-con crusading. Especially if you live in or near a member of the axis of evil: Iran, North Korea, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, the Pitcairn Islands, France, San Francisco...
On the brighter side, US domestic policy's going to be dictated by extreme fundamentalists so the colonials might as well tear up that precious consitution of theirs and replace it with the Book of Leviticus.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius. Truly, we "misunderestimated" him."
My foray into my contemporary literature class has taught me this: if you are well-educated, well-read, and speak your mind without a second thought of what people think, then you are a communist. No questions asked, no qualms about it, you are a big, pinko, commie bastard and the world would be a better place without you stirring up all this trouble. This country is being taken over by corporations. We are waging a war against a country just for the oil and don't you let anyone tell you we are trying to free those people, because we aren't. We are imperialist bastards who are setting up a puppet government. The Iraqi leaders are only window treatments placed there to give the illusion that they are running the government when they in fact are not. All the money we get is stained with the blood of their people and our soldiers. We harvest thier blood and sweat and eat their flesh and grow fatter from it. President Bush says he will unite the country and reach out to the democrats. I don't think that needs to happen. I think the country needs to be divided, otherwise he will take us apart bit by bit until there is nothing left and we are all detained for thinking gay marriage is okay, or for thinking that medical insurance needs an overhaul, or for simply not agreeing with our government. Freedom of speech and assembly are probably the two most important rights we have and they are being stifled. "Free Speech Zones"? Where ever you talk is a free speech zone. We need to start a revolution. I was very sad that only 17% of people ages 18-25 went out and voted. Fuck you guys. I am a part of that generation and we are the largest age group aside from the baby boomers and the baby boomers have fucked things up for us. We are the last chance. We can take over and better ourselves for it. My dad told me the other day that my generation better do something because his completely fucked it up. To the people wanting to go to Canada: don't. Stay here and fight the good fight. If you leave, they win. Start a revolution. Start small, speak your mind, get an obscene bumper sticker, wear an obscene shirt, fight censorship, write your congressperson, get informed (Fox News is not news) and be an American and not apathetic. We have been apathetic for too long and need to rise up or be trampled.