Friday, October 29, 2004

Random things

Those who wish to write quickly a piece about nothing that no one will read through even once, whether in a newspaper or a book, extol with much conviction the style of the spoken language, because they find it much more modern, direct, facile. They themselves do not know how to speak. Neither do their readers, the language actually spoken under modern conditions of life being socially reduced to its indirect representation through the suffrage of the media, and including around six or eight turns of phrase repeated at every moment and fewer than two hundred words, most of them neologisms, with the whole thing submitted to replacement by one third every six months. All this favours a certain rapid solidarity. On the contrary, I for my part am going to write without affectation or fatigue, as if it were the most natural and easiest thing in the world, the language that I have learned and, in most circumstances, spoken. It’s not up to me to change it. The Gypsies rightly contend that one is never compelled to speak the truth except in one’s own language; in the enemy’s language, the lie must reign

Guy Debord

A recent interview with John Berger on the American election.

A shrewd analogy:

'In the same way that very few people a few years ago could have predicted that Saddam Hussein would be overthrown in Iraq, his statues dragged down by jubilant braying mobs, who would ever have predicted the toppling of Cosmopolitan as Britain’s number one women’s monthly?' — Periodical Publishers’ Association conference. (Courtesy of Private Eye)


And 'the single most manipulative piece of Republican drivel I've ever seen' (truly emetic, & courtesy of here)