Bob's blog - the realm of threalm

If only I knew some I'm tempted to say I wholeheartedly agree with this alluring new heuristic, from Sathnan Sangera of the Times , except I don't know any celebrities, so how would I know? It would probably be truer for me to say that I adhere to the smugly self satisfying belief that people who believe in the importance of celebrity are intellectually impoverished fashion victims. If I knew any celebrities who thought their celebrity was important to our relationship other than as an irritant, then I would find it hard to be their mate. And for the very reason that Mr Sangera speculates: they would be over sensitive to having the piss taken out of them for having feet of clay. But what of his other suggested life lessons: Never brush your teeth if you're dressed in black. Don't trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle. Always put the shower curtain inside the bath . Only the last one of these holds water for me. I obviously don't get out much, because I al...

Stephen Potter redux ALDaily pointed me recently to a type of article I haven't seen for yonks: a self-mocking parody on the latest fads in pseudo intellectual one-upmanship. And here was me prematurely grieving at the apparent passing of this eternal game. David Brooks in the New York Times writes : " Dear Dr. Kierkegaard, A ll my life I’ ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened? Existential in Exeter Dear Existential, It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental. You have failed to keep pace with the curre...

08.08.08 The world will shortly simultaneously sit down to watch the same circus act together and feel the inner glow of connectedness. I can hardly wait. What am I to do between now and 10 pm here when the global telecast is scheduled to kick off? I already feel a breathless anticipation for my pointless despair at the intergalactic disconnection between the hyperbole of the commentary and what the ceremony will actually be communicating. At least with the Eurovision Song Contest or America's Next SuperModel or the World Darts Tournament there is some refuge in unintended irony and self parody that permiates the execrable excess or frivolity of these events. Not the Olympics. We are exhorted to take this mush completely seriously and are hushed if we demur. Ughh ! I will watch some of it though. Initially mainly to see if any of the teams or athletes are brave and clever enough to outsmart statist officialdom and make an effective protest against China's repression. And l...

Solzhenitsyn's passing James Lileks struck a chord with me when I first read his blog 4 or so years ago. Along with his narrative skills, I think it is the way his startlingly familiar suburban world is conveyed with such unapologetic dignity and humanity, that makes him read so true. He is such a contrast to the over intellectualised strivings of most of us baby boomers towards urban sophistication and academic hauteur. You feel refreshed and uplifted at his ease in aptly capturing significance in minor insights gleaned from the ordinariness of his days. Alexander Solzhenitsyn died yesterday. The extraordinariness of this once ordinary maths teacher, lies in his survival through an ordeal of suffering at the hands of implacable oppressive cruelty that might otherwise have defied words, were it not for his great courage and literary genius. A greater contrast with the glossy material mid-western prosperity of Lilek's existence and Solzhenitsyn's tortured spiritual an...