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I’ve just finished re-reading “The Pied Piper” by Neville Shute. In retrospect, could the young French fisherman who took money from John Howard (sic!) to ferry him with his motley clutch of seven children from France to England in 1940 be described as a people smuggler, I wonder? “The scum of the earth?”
I first read this in the mid 1950s, but it was initially published in 1942, which says something about the efficiency of publishing in those days, to say nothing of Shute’s writing facility. After all the story, so authentically set in mid 1940 at the time of Hitler’s sudden invasion of France and the subsequent Dunkird evacuation has vivid descriptions of place and events, technical descriptions of military equipment, and even of the minutiae of fly fishing. As well it’s a rattling good yarn with great dialogue and believable characters. No word processors in those days, no spell check either, so proof reading, gallows, editing etc. would have required many hours of desk work before that story was printed, bound and ready for sale. And in war torn Britain too!
Thinking of Neville Shute reminds me that it was his “Town Like Alice” which gave me my first tantalising taste of what Australia might be like.
Am insaomniac at thew moment. Woke 4 am couldn’t get back to sleep. Not to worry. Read some more of Lt. John Barker’s 1774-1776 Diary, The British in Boston. Nearly finished it. Just a couple more notes to take. And just got the good news Fortescue’s The British Army during the American Revolution is on the way. No word from another US bookseller about biography of Brothers Howe I’m expecting. Some incredible e-mail exchanges typical of archetypal American capitalism last weekend while he was waiting for my bank to process the payment. “Money, money, money”, goes the bookseller. Why isn’t it here?” Had to explain to him the Oz banking system is probably nowhere as near efficient as that of Yankee capitalism and they can take more than 48 hours to process a transaction. [Sighs.]
Will probably fall asleep early watching TV tonight and wake early again. At least its summer.
Correction. Insomniac. Have just been watching the sun come up from my window while sitting at computer. Nice. Here I am, a month or so off the old age pension and I’m keeping the hours I used to keep when I was an adolescent. All I need now is a couple of wild parties where I drink lots of vodka and orange.
Once again I feel I am late to the party, but how is Spooner getting away with climate change scepticism through cartoons in The Age and SMH?
BBB
Is there a post of the way re Bolt’s efforts of the last couple of days re claiming to have proof of a world wide conspiracy of scientists to concoct human induced climate change evidence?
Today’s efforts:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_warmist_conspiracy_the_australian_link/
He’s getting picked up OS – I heard about it via a US based author’s tweet. Surprise surprise – its prominently splashed on the Fox News homepage. The Guardian has info re the history of the uploading of the emails:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails
Bernice @ 5,
Gawd! Well, I don’t care what that irresponsible idiot Bolt reckons. I know its getting hotter, and having just finished reading about Halifax, Novia Scotia in 1776, and am now going to turn my undivided attention to The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, D.D. Vol. 1, which, despite its incredibly small print will hopefully enlighjten me about life on Rhode Island from 1769-early 1776.Undoubtedly this will be a much more pleasant pursuit than ploughing through Boltist lies.
Bolt’s blog to which Bernice points to, plus the associated links reveal a fascinating emerging polemic. If indeed there was doctoring of data, then the rejoinder that it was obtained illegally via hackers “in Russia” is a rather weak argument in trying to deflect the veracity of such falsification if indeed there was any. I think it would have been better to address the substantive accusation in specific terms by Jones et. al. This deserves a thread, I reckon, because of the issues this alleged debacle could raise: is it okay to fiddle with the data to make the case stronger?; does the “tricking” up of the figures weaken the theory that there is anthropogenic or indeed any global warming?
I’ve just been checking back on an Andrew Bolt climate piece run by the Melbourne Herald Sun during the week. I hadn’t troubled to read Bolt having heard his climate views, but thought I’d take a look.
What I found didn’t surprise, but neither should it persuade anyone smart enough to fill out an election ballot. I commented to that effect, noting that his argument that the earth hadn’t warmed since 2001 would be like saying bushfire trends had stabilised if the next few years fail to produce another Black Saturday.
Well, I suppose I never expected the comment to be published given that it challenged Bolt’s views, but what I was surprised to see today was that the piece had drawn hardly any comments (just two as of just now) from readers ill-informed enough to support Bolt’s flimsy views. This despite publication of his piece both online and in a high circulation daily metropolitan newspaper.
I don’t think I’ll be going back again – no doubt the climate will contradict Bolt’s ignorance.
Darren
You should “go back” and read the oroginal thread from 8:15 last night. 369 commente.
Try and explain the quoted emails.
They at least hint at, as Bolt wrote, “conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims”
Looks like the whole AGW theory is looking pretty fragile.
Hilarious!Two mentions in the MSM yesterday of 1 in 1000yr and 1 in 3000yr events and this AM from the England floods [called tropical] ” This 1 in a 1000 year flood is as great as any in living memory” ??
Relief though from mindfucks when a Stevie Wonder clip of Superstitious came up on rage. Back to the future.
Got Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics on the go. They’ve been republished recently in a handsome ‘The Complete Cosmicomics’ edition which I was lucky enough to get for my birthday. They’re even better – indeed, much better – than when I first read them in uni.
Now I’m wondering how Calvino would write all this stuff about global warming into the Cosmicomic world.
Climate change – Qfwfq opined – oh yes, that’s old news. But millions of years ago, we didn’t call it global warming. It was just the weather. And how changeable it was! You’d wake up one morning and it would be the Jurassic era, and you would have to open all the windows and the doors up or your house would become overheated, and you would have to flap your towel in the face of the occasional Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops to stop them coming in and eating out of your bread bin. Another morning, you’d get out of bed and find yourself in the middle of an ice-age, glaciers glaciating in your rose garden at the front. Back then, I only had the job of an articled clerk…
Neil, allow me to introduce you to…daggett.
I’m sure you two will have lots to talk about.
What’s with the fixation here on Andrew Bolt? He must really get your goat:-) ( A good thing IMHO)
Anyway, here is a summary of what has been found so far in the hacked emails.
Should be a fun couple of days if they turn out to be genuine.
Wheeeeeeeee! Run along and have fun drooling over those emails with your buddies, Peter. Send us a postcard of the happy circle.
As for me, I’m off to enjoy a nice afternoon browsing the shops with the wife. Toodles!
I’ve put up a separate post on the great CRU hacking scandal, so could you please move discussion there?
It’s based on an informative RealClimate post on the issue. For reasons stated there I’ll add some more links later.
@12 Plenty of DAGs to GET here Merc. The mixture of late Spring feed and unprecedented 40 degree heat and blowies ensure a very smelly crutching. Oh for the denialists world of air-conditioned La La land.
The emails emerge two weeks before Copenhagen; and in local political terms, as the Coalition party room prepares its troops for some mass act of insanity re the ETS.
The Guardian piece offers some of the necessary rejoinders but what this farrago will yet again demonstrate is how poorly most people understand the processes of scientific research and data; the increasing reliance upon twilight zone reasoning to support politically motivated opposition to the findings of scientific research and analysis and the complete inadequacy of a media response who lacking enough nouce as to how scientific epistemology functions, insist on presenting ‘balanced’ reportage where the very suspect muddled workings of a climate skeptic are given an airing in the name of objectivity.
Pollytics indicated earlier this week that Bolt & his fellow travellers had little impact but upon their faithful; which would be fine if that did not also include many in our political elites, desperate to have anything on hand to help in their intellectually and ethically corrupt support of our suicidal carbon-based economies.
Paul Ehrlich was interveiwed by Adams on LNL earlier this week – in answer to the question ‘how have you withstood the barrage of criticism about your work?’ he pointed out that he has been repeatedly awarded the highest scientific awards by his peers and received enormous support from within the field. He simply isn’t interested in the opinion of idiots. Our problem is, the idiots are making the decisions and seem quite unfazed by the reality that they neither have the most basic knowledge that is required to begin to analyse what is being presented to them, and are more than content to wallow in their wilful ignorance.
@Neil I just checked again and still only two are showing up for me. I even tried a different browser. The fact of anthropogenic global warming looks fragile only if you discount the scientific consensus, Neil. If you want to do that, I can’t help you. Suffice to say that you’d be hard-pressed to find any reputable scientific institution, or even government, that now denies AGW. As Al Gore notes, the number of deniers is pretty small and they are disproportionately vocal, funded as they are by the polluter lobby with a vested interest in digging up all our fossil fuels and sending their carbon into the atmosphere.
Can I say again, it would be handy if further comment on the hacking incident moved to the dedicated thread
@Neil Turns out you were referring to a different story. Follow the link in my comment to see the one I was referring to.
Sorry, Brian, I wasn’t actually writing on the hacking incident, but will have a look now.
No probs, Darren, and Bernice I understand you’d want to finish what was started here.
In truth the Climate clippings thread was supposed to be an open thread on climate change, but it probably attracted more attention on this thread, so again, no sweat.
For the last week or so, I have been pondering the pronouncement by Nick Minchin on Four Corners, which makes me smile incredulously every time I reread it:
For the extreme left it provides the opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialise the western world. You know the collapse of communism was a disaster for the left, and the, and really they embraced environmentalism as their new religion.
(I also checked myself carefully for horns and a tail before I went out to do de-industrial tomato gardening this morning.) Now here is the puzzle. Nick Minchin could not have got to where he is without some kind of brain power, so why the appalling ignorance… in public? Or put it this way. If you had Dr Frankenstein’s lab and a handy corpse, how would you go about creating a Nick Minchin?
No need to be so puzzled Chookie. As amazing as it might seem, Nick Minchin is right. He’s not referring to the entire political left, he’s referring to the extreme left.
I think he’s actually referring to William Blake, who just as it all started up wrote about “dark Satanic mills.” Anybody else think Blake was right?
Brumby govt FAIL on public transport in outer Melbourne: http://www.theage.com.au/national/car-use-driven-by-lack-of-trains-buses-20091120-iqyq.html
Never could find any trains in Melbourne – that was in the early 70s.
Trains used to be ok before privatisation Paul. Now they’re a complete joke! Trams still go ok, to be honest, but buses are only fine until you get out of the inner suburbs.
The real problem is transport policy makers cant seem to get their thick heads around one core reality: the ONLY way you can improve car traffic flow now is to improve and expaqnd public transport.
Building new roads and bypasses just doesnt do it anymore – it only buys 18 months before youve got a new gridlock. There was a study recently that showed with pop growht, all the vaunted new road projects had FAILED to decrease travel time at all. The VIC gotvt just dismissed it as if it were self-evidently false – when any Nelburnian knows its true fro day-today experience.
Car and coal lobbies rule this country – and we’ll always be 2nd rate until we break them.
Of State Borders, Wars and Refugees:
Refugee debate at Left Focus
In our latest post at Left Focus Lev Lafayette ( a founder of ‘Labor for Refugees’) considers the history of refugees with a critique ranging from Europe to Africa, and Australia and beyond. His is a passionate plea for the rights of refugees – as against to nationalist populism and opportunism. Well worth a read.
See: http://www.facebook.com/l/e7f48;leftfocus.blogspot.com/2009/11/of-state-borders-wars-and-refugees.html
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this quote is the appalling ignoirance of someone who identifies the extreme left with deindustrialisation. Doesn’t he know that Marxism started from just the opposite position — a celebration of the prospects of workinglcass power based on rapid industrialisation sweeping away the idiocy of rural life.
I wouldn’t call Stalin or Mao extreme leftists, but Minchin certainly would, and I can just picture him trotting up to Stalin after Dizzy with Success or Mao in the 1950 and putting to either that he had always wanted to deindustrialise.
When one looks at the USSR, or China, there’s no hint that any environmental consideration was allowed to stand in the way of industrialisation, leave aside that there was an impulse to do this. For years it was the claim of the environmental movement that we were at best naive technological cornucopians if not downright as bad as the capitalists on urban society.
The sheer depth of Minchin’s apparent ignorance or deceipt is breathtaking.
An interesting but controvertial articl in the Washington Post about the Twilight phenomenon:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/18/AR2009111804145.html
Fran, things change. Early-to-mid 20th century communists/extreme leftists were largely in favour of industrialisation. 19th century communists, not so much so – hence the large arts and crafts movement associated with politically active people like William Morris, who advocated a return to a medieval lifestyle. Nowadays there is a large group of the extreme left associated with the green movement. Minchin’s comments are neither ignorant nor deceptive.
Yes you are right TimT, Minchin is 100% correct. The extreme left, having control of the levers of power as it does is organising a world government through the pretext of global warming.
I’d really like to introduce you to dagget, ’cause I think that you’d have a lot in common.
Oh and since you will apparently type for food, I’ll give you a stale bread roll, with a faint patina of mould for your latest effort – and that’s being generous.
Morris was a socialist, not a communist, Tim T. In fact, I think he might even have been a Christian socialist. Like Chavez, except he was English.
Hadn’t realised William Morris was an “extreme leftist”, TimT! And I feel (I’m not a historian) that his mediaevalism was more aesthetic than political — he certainly wasn’t advocating feudalism.
And I also had a feeling that the Arts and Crafts movement was more on the liberal and Fabian end of the spectrum, not particularly extremist… if it was extremist, it did remarkably well out of the bourgeoisie! (Failing dismally to picture Gertrude Jekyll and Sir Edwin Lutyens waving red flags.)
Just reading The West Australian, and here is one of the best quotes of 2009. Apparently there is a person called Carrie Prejean, who was a runner-up Miss USA, but lost that title for saying that if God didn’t like gays why should she? The Miss USA contest is demanding she pay back the money they lent her for breast enlargement surgery.
Carrie then announced that she wanted to be a church minister. Unfortunately, weeks later a sex tape she made when she was 17 turned up. Then more tapes.
“In Christianity Today magazine, Carrie discussed the contradiction between her deep faith and deeper cleavage: ‘I think God is totally cool with it’, she said. ‘I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shouldn’t get breast implants’.
Date for your diaries:
“Animals Australia to expose Factory Farming of Pigs in Australia on national TV”
View on Sixty Minutes – Date: Sunday 22 November @ 6.30pm
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/1310480
Just looking at the NSW bushfire website to see if there are any fire maps and noticed the following
If you are interested in the activities in a particular fire complex in this case Hawkesbury you go to this page http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_more_info.cfm?CON_ID=8920&CAT_ID=684
At the bottom of this page ROAD CLOSURES directs you to the RTA home page http://163.189.7.150/trafficreports/index.html which displays live Sydney traffic cameras. I can’t see any ROAD CLOSURES tab, link
If emergency services are going to rely on technology to inform the citzenry then make sure the technology works. I am a great believer in fire sirens.
George Bernard Shaw forcefully reminds us that ‘Morris, when he had to define himself politically, called himself a Communist … He knew that the essential term, etymologically, historically, and artistically, was Communist; and it was the only word he was comfortable with’ (William Morris: Artist Writer Socialist, vol 2, p.ix).
Indeed TimT, Morris stood on street corners selling the ‘Commonwealth’ the journal of the Socialist League formed in 1884. However communism is no more a monolith of all marching to the same beating drum than christianity. Morris would leave SL in 1890, renaming the Hammersmith branch the Hammersmith Socialist Society. By 1893 he co-authored with Bernard Shaw & Sidney Webb, the Manifesto of English Socialists. The terminology used by people to describe themselves has always been a movable feast, particularly prior to the Third International which occurred well after Morris’s death.
Ignoring the means for the moment, Morris’s end is best exemplified in News from Nowhere, his utopian novel of 1890-91. Engels was moved to remark in 1886:
“Fortunately the Socialist League is dormant for the time being. Our good Bax and Morris, craving to do something (if only they knew what?), are restrained only by the fact that there is absolutely nothing to do. Moreover they have far more truck with the anarchists than is desirable….”
A point of view, the novel would have done little to revise. Nor is it true to baldly state that Morris & the Arts & Crafts movement were the one and same – the movement had more than its fair share of arguments, disputes and splitters, all claiming the one true position. Morris was no Luddite; he DID not reject industrial production methods; he recognised that mechanisation removed much of the physical drudgery from work processes and attempted to incorporate it into the various workshops he was ran or was involved with in order to free up the creativity of the craftspeople involved. What he opposed was the rise and triumph of production which reduced the worker to an robotic slave, entrapped in Victorian England’s appalling urban slums.
Bernice@17: “[Erhlich] simply isn’t interested in the opinion of idiots. Our problem is, the idiots are making the decisions and seem quite unfazed by the reality that they neither have the most basic knowledge that is required to begin to analyse what is being presented to them, and are more than content to wallow in their wilful ignorance.”
Bill Clinton was once apparently told by his campaign manager to keep only one thought in mind: “Its the economy, stupid”.
These days it should be “Its the stupid, stupid”. If we don’t deal with all this hopeless stupidity, dragging us back into the mud, we might as well give up now.
News from Nowhere does contain some comment about the means ( ie a workers revolution) towards an end; indeed, the beautiful first half is rather spoiled by the historical/didactic/economic second half which discusses how the revolution took place which resulted in Morris’s imagined utopia.
Amazing. Insiders has had to apologize for a ‘baseless’ lie Piers Akermann told on the programme sabout the GG.
Wonder if this somewhat embarrassing mistruth by a member of the incredibly stupid far right will give the ABC pause for reflection about giving such Morlocks air-time? Seriously doubt it.
I have my copy in hand (and by means, I was referring to Morris’s actions which would seem as much part of any definition one would wish to impose upon his political complexion); the second half is no more didactic than the first. In the first half, Morris works tirelessly at convincing the reader that the future where William Guest finds himself is indeed a utopia and not some bucolic dystopia of rope sandals and scratchy shirts. But the governmental structures that Morris imagines post the revolution and civil war are closer to Kropotkin than Mr Marx or Mr Engels.
“The sheer depth of Minchin’s apparent ignorance or deceipt is breathtaking.”
I would go with “deceipt”, Fran. He knows quite well what he is doing. As election season draws near the customary ’smear the Greens’ campaign begins. It will be played out by Liberal, Labor, Family First and exclusive brethren will be itching to join the fearfest.
There are more ex-commies in the ranks of the neo-cons, who Nick still looks upon so fondly, than than in the green camp. But ultimately, who gives a toss, apart from this opportunistic git, what political games were being played out so long ago. They have no relevance to how best we might save what’s left of the planet, now.
The bloke is just playing out a worn out variant of ‘reds under the beds’ and it’s tiresome that TimT gives this absurd conspiratorial garbage any credence.
I found it increasingly a struggle as the book progressed Bernice, I read it about a year ago and my impression now is that Morris was more intent on establishing the characters, the immediate circumstances, and their reactions in the first part – indeed, I was quite overwhelmed by the almost fairytale way in which Morris places his stranger in the strange land; it’s a near perfect realisation of that sense of Romantic/Victorian longing for a better world held by many artists from the 19th century onwards. It’s the detailed discussions that occur later in the book regarding the history leading up and following the revolution that I was referring to as being didactic. Maybe it doesn’t strictly follow a first half/second half pattern. I don’t have my copy at hand but these are the impressions I get a year after having first read it.
Since it’s sunday and I’m in crazy mode I thought I might try something a little out of the park…
Tim T @32 said:
Not largely Tim, but entirely. Opposition to industrail society within the countries of the west was entirely confined to handfuls of reacxtionaries in the T H Huxley vein plus the occasional liberal. Let’s not forget that this and the period before it is the only period Minchin can have been referring to when he said:
For the extreme Left it provides the opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do, to sort of deindustrialise the Western world. You know the collapse of communism was a disaster for the Left …
What they (i.e. extreme leftists) have always wanted to do must describe the historic development period of the “extreme left” which arguably begins in 1844 and goes until now. Marxism started from thje idea that industrialisation was a necessary condition for socialism/communism, which would appear when burdened by the fetters imposed by the relations of production, the working class sought to transcend these and the wage labout system precisely in order to develop the forces of production that capitalism relations of production inhibited.
Firstly, Minchin is not referring to Morris. One doubts he has even heard of Morris, but Morris was no mediaevalist. Certainly, he saw the mechanisation of production dehumanizing, but he put the matter thus, at one point:
Morris was very much from the humanist school of leftist thought, but his argumentation was entirely based on what he took to be the starting points established by Marx and Engels. You refer to his self-description as a communist but that occurs in a passage called Socialism and Anarchism which puts the matter in terms of the end goal or equality and enlightenment. Developing this idea he continues:
Here and there, Morris’s ideas are a bit woolly, but you will look in vain for a plea to deindustrialise.
This is wrong on a number of counts. Firstly the extreme left can only dream of being called “large” by anyone in the mainstream. If there are 1000 people in this country who would qualify as extreme leftists, I’d be very much surprised, because over the years, I’ve rubbed shoulders with most of them, at least at the level of organisation, and indeed, I’d count myself under that rubric. None of them has ever suggested deindustrialisation or secretly wished for it, as far as I can tell. Those oriented towards the environmental movement to have a broader agenda than traditional “green” issues, but at no point do they argue for dismantling urban society or its industrial underpinnings. This suggestion is pure fantasy, or an attempt to poison the well. Anyone wanting that would disqualify him or herself from being a leftist since the starting point for leftism, its sine qua non is the triumph of modernity. Celebrating modernity and being critical of its usages are not mututally exclusive.
It’s at least one of these.
Ireland (a football minnow) won’t be going to the world cup after being knocked out by France (a football millionaire) courtesy of a double handball by Thierry Henry setting up his pass to the goal scorer. It was a particularly loathsome piece of cheating, reminiscent of Diego Maradona’s infamous ‘hand-of-God’ goal in 1986 that ensured the Argentine would forever be remembered as a cheat rather than a supremely talented footballer. Yet after initial outrage, there has been a steadily increasing flow of support and excuses for the cheat.
Excuse 1: the handball was inadvertent. WRONG! The first might just possibly have been accidental although given his famed quickness of thought and reflex that seems unlikely. But there’s no possible excuse for the second touch which was a careful guide onto his foot to set up the assist. And of course he had ample opportunity to have set things right by letting the referee know at the time. Instead he led the celebrations.
Excuse 2: it was the referee’s fault for not picking up the handball. WRONG! Are we about to start blaming police for the crimes they fail to prevent.
Excuse 3: he admitted what he had done and had subsequently declared that a replay would be a fair result. WRONG! Ireland needed him to admit what he had done when it could have made a difference. He gets no credit for confessing when the game has been completed. Neither does he get credit for his declaration that a replay would be fair since he waited until FIFA had made a statement that the game would not be replayed.
Excuse 4: it was really the Irish team’s fault for not scoring from previous chances in the game. WRONG! How can not being good enough to overcome a highly skilled opponent that cheats possibly put you in the wrong?
Excuse 5: all of us would have done the same in the circumstances. WRONG! I really object to this comment now being touted by a procession of professional football players. I’ve played plenty of sport and deliberate cheating is the exception, not the rule. And if cheating is such a natural and instinctive reaction, when are we going to do something about retrieving poor Diego’s sullied reputation.
Excuse 6: Thierry Henry is not a cheat – he has always been a fair and honest footballer. WRONG! He cheated in a big way, on a big occasion, with devastating consequences for his opponent. He could have stopped cheating after the first (possibly) inadvertent touch, but chose instead to again use his hand to set up the assist. He could have stopped cheating after the goal by informing the referee. He could have publicly argued for a replay straight after the match but chose to wait until FIFA had said there would be no replay. He could have taken full responsibility for his actions but chose to blame the referee. He’s a cheat of the most loathsome kind. Nothing he’s done before, or does in the future, can ever change that.
My hope is that football still has enough self respect to call out it’s cheats and shame them – not make excuses for them.
The Twilight series is too good not to share:
Indeed.
You’d be thinking I was quoting the the myoginist vamp idiot boyfriend of the stupidest female character in fictional living memory, but I’m not. This is the moronic Bella’s best friend, Jacob the dog. Which gets me thinking. If Stephanie Meyers had really understood Wuthering Heights, the book which influenced her most in the writing of Twilight and its twisted spawn, she would have known that these poor excuses for Heathcliffe, Cathy and, um, in this instance Cathy’s best friend, the dog Jake, – had to die in order for balance to be restored. But not so. Ms Meyers had a few more squillion to squeeze out of the teen market I suppose. And so a series has been written. There is even a fifth book freely available on her site which is a rewrite of the first book from the vamp’s perspective. As if Bella’s wasn’t bad enough.
The curious thing is, the fact that this a sexual assault passed off as romantic comedy aside, and the fact that the whole series is really bad writing aside, and the fact that Meyer is peddling Mormon nonsense in this series aside, and the fact that it’s teenagers that are reading this aside, – all that aside -it just makes me howl with laughter every time I read more than two paras. This stuff is so bad it’s kind of very funny. Though I do imagine a rewrite where Buffy comes along and stakes em all, even the dog, every time I do.
“Eclipse” is the book. Don’t be all rushing out and getting it. Pace yourselves, there is plenty more where this came from – and remember next time you are getting sexually assaulted by your best friend, even if his mouth is soft despite the anger (eh?) pretend you are a statue and it will all stop. Alright then.
Jenny
I’m nothing like a soccer afficionado but …
1. How can it be possible that Thierry Henri was left unmarked to make the hand-assisted pass to the goal scorer without a single one of the six Irish players in the box noticing the foul? What was the goalie doing during this?
2. How come the goalscorer was unmaked at such close range?
The Irish have nobody to blame for this than themselves. If they’d been awake, they’d have prevented Thierry offloading and the scorer receiving AND claimed the penalty.
Of course, there should be a third umpire able to red-flag the goal in such/similar circumstances (eg offside, foul in the box)
That said, it’s only a soccer game. It’s not as if anything important about the world changed as a result.
So that’s the Twilight series? Is pretty bloody awful. But I’ll still get out the DVD.