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May 25, 2017
GenY
Millenials are the New Nadir in Human Garbage. Make The Irish look classy-smart-responsible. GenYs shouldn't have kids, jobs and especially pets.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2017
Manchester
Knew it all along. Welsh guys on a Cardiff to Manchester road trip.
Seriously. Where will it end, Campers? How's that Yank Open Borders instinct right now?
The West is at War.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2017
Proust: On Travel.
The world is a book. Those who do not travel read only a page.
--Marcel Proust, 1871–1922, French novelist, critic.
Life's short. Get up. Go somewhere different. Meet someone different.
--What About Clients/Paris? 2007
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Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2017
Now what? In the Matter of Donald John Trump.
And because everyone asks me..
1. No one sane & savvy I know thinks DJT will be impeached.
2. The upshot? Far more people in all camps think he's an asshole. That's it.
3. Also: No one sane & savvy thinks he's dumb. Everyone thinks he's a scrapper. He won't step down unless he's bored. That won't happen.
4. The only long-term narrative against Trump I can see is that he's nuts. Bonkers. Not enough--we've had a few Wild Man presidents. E.g. Teddy R was way crazy. "He's crazy" won't remove him from office but will hurt him if it sticks. Like in 2020.
5. Mueller is a class act and honest--much better human than Ken Starr (or Comey)--and in any event will drive this away from impeachment because it's bad for the country.
6. The country will more than ever continue to divide into 2 overall camps. Hair on fire Dems vs. fed-up hold their noses GOP folks. People will even talk more about civil war. Which also won't happen.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2017
It's Tuesday, May 16, 2017...
And many of us have been out of pocket.
What horrible outrageous scumbag deed has POTUS No. 45 done in the last 24 hours?
Get up and go to work?
Posted by JD Hull at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2017
Now when I was a young boy....
Posted by JD Hull at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2017
Anthony Burgess v. William Buckley, Firing Line, 1972
As a complement to our 2015 post on Anthony Burgess, watch two lovers of language dance, parry, weave and bob through this Firing Line interview.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:48 AM | Comments (0)
Yardbirds1965: Rave Up.
Going back down
To Kansas, too.
Bring back a little girl,
Just like you.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2017
'Stuck in the Swamp'
That is the title of the cover article for this week's print edition of the right-leaning, increasingly respected Washington Examiner. A feature on slow hiring for key jobs in the Trump administration.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2017
Working Well: Samuel Johnson on John Dryden.
The effects of a vigorous genius working upon large materials.
--Samuel Johnson, commenting on the life work of John Dryden (1631-1700), English poet, critic and playwright.
From The Indian Emperour
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2017
Why Donald John Trump Freaks Out Half the Nation.
This morning I should be working solely on a project--interesting only to me and 5 other people on the legal earth--subtitled "Promissory Estoppel against the Government" but it may also have finally dawned on me why, in large part, so many people dislike Donald Trump and so many love him. And why that schism will continue. And why few issues will be argued on the merits or dispassionately for the next 4 years.
Donald Trump is the archetype of the roguish, reckless & in-your-face American Alpha Male who many of us--especially America's vast and varied population of moderate white liberals on the coasts and in big cities--thought we had killed off over the last 40 years. That archetype, or "those guys," were always with us in corporations, in an assortment of working class cultures, in rural areas and well virtually hiding just about everywhere but were quieter, drowned out or at least out of style for years. But they were always part of the larger and long-term culture of planet Earth. We heard their voices in the braggadocio masculinity of Beowulf, Homer, Mike Fink, Casey Jones and Davy Crockett. "This is who I am. This is who I conquered. What I did. You should know about me. There have been few men like me." These guys--and their instincts to dominate and strut around--have been around a long time.
About half of us were happy about the recent change in role models; about half missed the old school male.
Many of us raised our children to NOT be a Donald Trump; as new age parents, we raised kids to not only to respect women and all minorities but to affect an attitude at all times of inclusiveness, sensitivity and collaboration even with that conflicted with our own instincts about how selfish, warlike and unreasonable humans really are and have been for thousands of years. We Boomers asked ourselves and other generations to morally "evolve"--and evolve too quickly. You want an example? Here's one. "Empathy" in recent years has a desirable trait. The problem with that is that empathy has never been a "male trait" and we shouldn't act as if men and boys come by it that naturally. Because we don't. We are not as empathetic as women by nature. (Feel free to report me to NPR, Oberlin College and the Junior League.)
Donald Trump is in many respects merely, well (gulp), Male. No. He's no dinosaur. He's not a throwback. People who hate him and need to minimize or revile anything he does are missing something. Donald John Trump is merely an outsized and perhaps exaggerated example of what men and especially American men have been like for generations. We don't have to like it. But we do need to realize we never killed these Alpha Men off. There are lots more men like him than many thought. In recent years, they haven't been trendy; they've held back a lot.
These men--and of course many women as well--do have obvious strengths that many thought were outdated, e.g. combativeness, independence, decisiveness. Arguably, we could use those kinds of traits right now.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2017
May Day: Man's Eternal Spring Blowout.
May Day is a bit unique among the many old pagan holidays. For 2,200 years, at least in Europe, it's had a long and colorful run on its own, albeit in different forms. But unlike other pagan celebrations, May Day in Europe was never Christianized or abandoned as Christianity spread throughout Europe. It somehow managed to survive and flourish on its own. The first May Day holiday we know much about began in republican Rome about 250 BC. It was a one-day spring festival in honor of the goddess Flora, a fertility deity. Eventually the holiday grew to six days of special events and serious reveling, on April 28-May 3. Known as the Floralia in Roman religion for nearly 600 years, Rome's May Day was a "peoples" or plebeian holiday that took place at the Temple of Flora. (If you've been to Rome even once, you likely looked over the ground where the temple once stood. It's on the edge of the Aventine, a few hundred yards southwest of the Circus Maximus and Palatine Hill.) The Floralia featured drinking, mock gladiator games, animal sacrifices, "the pelting of the crowd" with vegetables (the first food fights?), dancing, nakedness, prostitutes (sex workers were specifically included and often featured), dancing naked prostitutes, theatre, colorful costumes and drinking. Below, one of the the greatest painters of the 1700s gives us a baroque take on the festival and its raw, fun and feral spirit.
"The Empire of Flora", 1744, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770). The scene is supposedly based on Ovid's description of The Floralia.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:06 AM | Comments (0)