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

`

`

Faint Heart Never Fucked the Pig

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

`

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.

`

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!

`

Commonplace book - Kipling, AOTF

Arithmetic on the Frontier

A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe--
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villainous saltpetre!"
And after--ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station--
A canter down some dark defile--
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares--shoot straight who can--
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.

The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap--alas! as we are dear.

`

Job

I've spent my life in working hours doing a consistent, capable, thoughtful first draft and passing it to bosses with the literacy of Barbary apes so that they can rip out bits, daub shit on other parts to indicate 'put in something else there', and in general degrade my work to the frankly embarassing. It doesn't pay badly, but it is humiliating.

`

Bill

OK, this is just a placeholder until I check it out. The CIA seems to have killed my uncle.

`