June 2012
77 posts
FljótavÃk
Sigur Rós
Fljótavík // Sigur Rós
Do you smoke?
Socially.
Why Orwell Hated the Cliche →
npr.org
For what would have been George Orwell’s 99th birthday, here are reflections on his relationship to writing and language from Lawrence Wright:
Orwell’s proposition is that modern English, especially written English, is so corrupted by bad habits that it has become impossible to think clearly. The main enemy, he believed, was insincerity, which hides behind the long words and empty phrases that stand between what is said and what is really meant.
A scrupulous writer, Orwell notes, will ask himself: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What fresh image will make it clearer? Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? The alternative is simply “throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you — concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.”…
…Orwell optimistically sets forward six simple rules to improve the state of the English language: guidelines that anyone, not just professional writers, can follow.
But I’m not going to tell you what they are. You’ll have to re-read [Politics and the English Language (PDF)] yourself. I’m only going to speak about Rule No. 1, which is never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.
For me, that’s the hardest rule and no doubt the reason that it’s No. 1. Cliches, like cockroaches in the cupboard, quickly infest a careless mind. I constantly struggle with the prefabricated phrases that substitute for simple, clear prose…
…”Political language,” Orwell reminds us, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits.”
“History’s route lies across the sorrow and misery of individuals. There is a series of explanatory connections between these two facts, but no justifactory meaning.”
—Max Horkheimer
Imperialist Doublethink →
crookedtimber.org
A rather remarkable editorial on the Assange-Ecuador story from the Washington Post today:
There is one potential check on Mr. Correa’s ambitions. The U.S. “empire” he professes to despise happens to grant Ecuador (which uses the dollar as its currency) special trade preferences that allow it to export many goods duty-free. A full third of Ecuadoran foreign sales ($10 billion in 2011) go to the United States, supporting some 400,000 jobs in a country of 14 million people. Those preferences come up for renewal by Congress early next year. If Mr. Correa seeks to appoint himself America’s chief Latin American enemy and Julian Assange’s protector between now and then, it’s not hard to imagine the outcome.
So on the one hand, the Washington Post believes that the notion that the US has an ‘empire’ is self-evidently ridiculous. On the other hand, it suggests that if Ecuador is impertinent enough to host an individual whom the US doesn’t like (but would have a hard time pressing charges against), it should and will express its displeasure by crippling Ecuador’s economy and threatening the livelihood of 400,000 of its citizens. These few sentences are rather useful, despite themselves, in talking to the nature of the American imperium, the doublethink that maintains it, and the usefulness of providing/withholding market access as a means of imperial coercion.
“As my mother might say, in Yiddish: On Monday one third of the nation was ill housed, ill clothed and ill fed. And on Thursday, there were ten million people in the military making more than most had been able to earn before and two million civilian employees, and tanks, airplanes, ships, aircraft carriers, and hundreds of thousands of jeeps and trucks and other vehicles pouring out of the factories almost too rapidly to count. Suddenly there was enough for everything. Does all the credit belong to Hitler? Capitalism, my father probably would answer with a smile of resignation, as though for this humane socialist all of the evils of inequality could be clarified in that sinful single word. “For war, there is always enough. It’s peace that’s too expensive”
—Joseph Heller “Closing Time” (via nixonplumbingco)
Travel Is Dangerous
Mogwai
Mogwai - Travel is Dangerous (from Mr. Beast)
Mogwai are a band from Glasgow formed in 1995. They compose lengthy, mostly instrumental guitar-based pieces in the style of post-rock, usually focused around the elaboration of a single theme, and are known traditionally for their quiet/loud dynamic, defined bass riffs, and an eminent ambient sound, sometimes dark and sometimes grand. Although frequently referred to as post-rock, the band have revealed in interviews that they despise this categorization, insisting that their sound bears little resemblance to pioneers of the genre, such as Tortoise. Mogwai are named after the creatures from the film Gremlins (the word itself is Cantonese for ‘little-monster’).
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (via sunrec)
“This is so true that we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don’t want to improve ourselves or be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue. We lack the energy of evil as well as the energy of good. Do you know Dante? Really? The devil you say! Then you know that Dante accepts the idea of neutral angels in the quarrel between God and Satan. And he puts them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell. We are in the vestibule, cher ami.”
—Albert Camus, The Fall (via sunrec)
Do you top or bottom? ;)
Let’s face it darling, if you’re asking me anonymously on Tumblr, it’s not ever going to matter to you.
Post exam analysis 4/4
So, apologies for not having written this sooner, but I haven’t really spent much of my new-found freedom on Tumblr. Philosophy was alright. I completely buggered up the short question on Nietzsche’s three stages of morality; but I’m reasonably confident that I managed to say something good about his religious views. In any case, I don’t suppose it matters too much — I’ve now forgotten everything about him and his philosophy.
Now to remember what I did before feeling guilty about examinations. I feel like Tumblr’s lost a lot of its attraction now that I can use it without feeling too guilty about the exam I should be revising for. Though I suppose that means I might actually write about all the stuff that’s happening. You know, like I used to when you all decided to follow this blog.
I’m definitely quite weirded out by the fact that college is over — it’s quite daunting now thinking about the next stage of my life. Admittedly, the trepidation isn’t helped by the fact that people always ask me how I feel about Oxford. Which leads nicely to the fact that despite the fact that logically I ought to be pretty assured that I met the offer of AA, I’m still not over that kind of nagging doubt.
Well, here’s to a summer of drinking and doubting.
“I get sick of listening to straight people complain about, “Well, hey, we don’t have a heterosexual-pride day, why do you need a gay-pride day?” I remember when I was a kid I’d always ask my mom: “Why don’t we have a Kid’s Day? We have a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day, but why don’t we have a Kid’s Day?” My mom would always say, “Every day is Kid’s Day.” To all those heterosexuals that bitch about gay pride, I say the same thing: Every day is heterosexual-pride day! Can’t you people enjoy your banquet and not piss on those of us enjoying our crumbs over here in the corner?”
—Rob Nash (via queerbois)
Post exam analysis 3/4
Finished with English Literature today. The pile of notes that I keep meaning to recycle grows and grows — I’m actually quite staggered by how much I’ve written over the course of the year. English went alright, I think, but sadly I don’t think I got to use any of my favourite quotes from the Duchess of Malfi. I mean really, what’s an exam script without reference to an ‘abortive hedgehog’, the boiling of illegitimate children and being ‘shot to death with pearls’?
Tomorrow’s my final exam, on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. I’ve finally mastered the art of spelling his name without checking the spine of the book, so I suppose you could call that prepared. It’s slightly hard to believe that college is coming to an end, I’m in that weird place of realising how much has happened, and feeling like it’s completely flown by. But yeah, all being well, tomorrow’s the last exam that I’ll get to wear casual clothes to — it’s all sub fusc from here on out. Or so I [sort of] hope.
On that Oxford-y note, I had a suitably depressing conversation with a predictably downbeat careers adviser.
“Hi Euan, how’re the exams going?”
“They’re all roughly on track I think. At any rate, last one tomorrow morning.”
“Oh good. Well, if on results day, they don’t go to plan, then come down here, and I’ll call Oxford for you. Sometimes they just want to hear from someo— you know?”
“Oh, OK, thanks. Well, I’m hoping it won’t come to that…”
Anyway, hello to my fair few new followers; I promise I’m normally a bit more interesting than this. So hold tight for some kind of possible return to form.
xx
