Commonplace book

To find his sexual drives had ceased
To Sophocles was no disaster:
He said he felt like one released
From service with a cruel master.

I envy him - I miss the lash
At which I used to snort and snivel
Oh that its unremitting slash
Was still what makes me drone and snivel.

Kingsley Amis


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Signature?

"Yours is the harder course, I can see. On the other hand, mine is happening to me."
Larkin, 17/12/58

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Use as signature?

"I am a corpse eaten out with envy, impotence, failure, envy, boredom, sloth, snobbery, envy, incompetence, inefficiency, laziness, lechery, envy, fear, baldness, bad circulation, bitterness, bittiness, envy, sycophancy, deceit, nostalgia, et cetera."
Larkin's letters, 16/1/1958

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Faint Heart Never Fucked the Pig

That's all, really. From Larkin's letters, though he attributes it elsewhere.

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Millerised

Watched Sin City on a chinese dvd the other day - owing to a hardware glitch, in French, but having read the comics I got the drift. It's among the purest Frank Miller versions, bringing in the inevitable tropes -
* hero taking unbelievable passion-of-christ punishment voluntarily, unflinchingly, without losing the ability to rise from the near-dead and slay everybody with
* irresistable, unalterable, incalculable, force that is righteous because
* it's saving a brave little girl from having those bare labia crually forced apart by a bad man who has nothing whatsoever in common with the hero who wouldn't in a million years even think of doing such a horrible thing to the poor brave frightened child clinging to her saviour and offering him anything he wants, anything, for being so brave and true and straight and hard and unbending and strong and forceful and long and again and again...

Daredevil, Batman, Sin City - the only FM I can't remember the paedophile subtheme from is Batman Year one. Hard boiled? Difficult to say.

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Conferences

Conference

To the tune of Sondheim’s “Comedy Tonight”

Something pathetic, something frenetic
Something for everyone: a Conference today
Something that’s boring, someone who’s scoring,
Something for everyone: a Conference today

Nothing with football, nothing with putters
Bring on the heros, liars and nutters
Old situations, new complications
Everything portentous and so gray -
Burnout tomorrow, Conference today.

Something convulsive, something repulsive
Something for everyone: a Conference today
Something to ponder, something from Rhonda,
Something for everyone: a Conference today

The weather is bleak, the AV’s antique,
The coffee was brewed in the previous week.
Joe Caddy and Denis, grumbles and menace,
Everywhere confusion and delay --
Step to the lectern, Conference today.

Someone exhorting, someone who’s rorting,
Someone for everything: a Conference today
Someone’s ungrateful, someone who’s hateful,
Someone for everything: a Conference today

Nothing from Latham, nothing from Doyle;
The opposition has gone off the boil.
Nothing too heated, much is repeated,
Your funding depends on what you say -
Start the projector, Conference today.

Promises and prayers, folk in wheelchairs,
Movers and shakers, flimflam and fakers,
Hypocrisy, plutocracy, philanthropy, misanthropy,
Errors, terrors, horses, courses,
Fliers, liars, subdued fires -

No silver bullet, no magic wand;
Very small frogs in a pretty small pond;
Goodness and badness, manifest madness
It’ll all be all right on the day -
Newsletters tomorrow, Conference today!

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