Thursday, July 31, 2008

D'accord

Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue.

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Counterstatement :)

First thrilling story:

[Tucker Bounds, a] spokesman for Republican presidential candidate John McCain blasted Barack Obama for cancelling plans to visit wounded US soldiers while in Berlin, adding that the Democrat prioritized "throngs of fawning Germans."
Continue here.

Second thrilling:
A German politician has called on US presidential candidate John McCain to take back disparaging remarks made about Germans by his campaign after Barak Obama visited Berlin last week.
Alexander Graf Lambsdorff wrote that he, and the German public, was surprised and dismayed by the comments, according to the newspaper.

Full article here.


Well, being part of the German public I do herewith declare: Mr Lambsdorff does not speak for me. I am neither surprised, nor dismayed.

Mr. Bounds may have missed the bounds of diplomacy, a tiny bit. So what? A subaltern babbler is truthfully babbling what his would-be-president babbled. It's his job, isn't it?

Does anyone know how often this poor soul is being called a stupid mothertucker?
Human beings sometimes are cruel, and do not care about 'No jokes about names'.

It's interesting to see, however, that Mr. Bounds - and thus Mr McCain - some might say: the disabled doter who'd like to succeed the current criminal cretin - obviously would have prefered a demonstration of 'Anti-U.S.Aism'.

Very interesting, indeed. The German public should remember this, in case Mr. McCain once were to visit Germany.

Oh, did I say that Mr. Tucker Bounds did tell nothing but the truth? I watched the faces of Walter Steinmeier, Klaus Wowereit et. al.
Absolutely euphorized, one could say. Or, near an orgasm.
Mr. Bounds prefered other words.

Thus, to end with Robert Frost:
Go on talking,
but don't take
his style away.
It's his face,
may be no good,
but anyway - his face.


P.S.
Spake Tetrapilotomos: I'd not be surprised if once in Berlin Mr. Bounds would love collecting wet thongs of euphorized German (wo)men.

That's politics.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Verses on a cat


A cat in distress,
Nothing more, nor less;
Good folks, I must faithfully tell ye,
As I am a sinner,
It waits for some dinner
To stuff out its own little belly.

You would not easily guess
All the modes of distress
Which torture the tenants of earth;
And the various evils,
Which like so many devils,
Attend the poor souls from their birth.

Some a living require,
And others desire
An old fellow out of the way;
And which is the best
I leave to be guessed,
For I cannot pretend to say.

One wants society,
Another variety,
Others a tranquil life;
Some want food,
Others, as good,
Only want a wife.

But this poor little cat
Only wanted a rat,
To stuff out its own little maw;
And it were as good
SOME people had such food,
To make them HOLD THEIR JAW!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Whodunnit?

Praised be my laziness. It has its advantages. :) When Sunday I happened to read the first news of the bomb attack in Istanbul I intended to write a post but didn't as I was pretty sure that one of the many Turkish 'opinion-tellers' soon would get close to what I am thinking, and thus save me lots of time*.
And, voilà:
It did not take much time for Turkish officials, and even less time for the Turkish media, to put the blame of Sunday evening's deadly blasts on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, terrorist gang. The explosions in Istanbul killed at least 17 people -- five of them children -- and wounded scores of others. Although Istanbul Governor Muammer Güler stressed that investigations were ongoing, he also said the blasts appeared to have been the work of the PKK. It also did not take much for the PKK gang to issue a denial. The pro-PKK Kurdish news agency, Fırat, quoted Zübeyir Aydar, one of the senior chieftains of the gang, as saying that the PKK “has nothing to do with this event … this cannot be linked to the PKK.”

Irrespective of who might actually be behind the deadly Sunday evening attacks, I am confident that sooner or later one of those creative prosecutors – who have successfully demonstrated their rather superb skill in literature with the 2,455-page “Ergenekon indictment” masterpiece – will find a way of incorporating this tragedy among the heinous crimes they believe a cocktail of hardcore leftists, Maoists, Kemalists, patriots, nationalists, ultra-nationalists and fascists have committed with the aim and intention of disrupting public peace and order, creating conditions for a military takeover, or provoking a national outburst and thus getting rid of the elected government of the country.
Full article here.


* Saturday evening I had asked a friend in Turkey to translate a sequence in a Hurriyet article about the 'Ergenekon affair'. She did, after following introducing words which now do again let me chuckle:

You don't mean all 2455 pages but only this article hm? :)
Believe me these silly plays are not worth your giving time.







Monday, July 28, 2008

Well, at least sometimes ...

Is maith an sgathan súil charad.

The eye of a friend is a good looking-glass.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Thanks for the lecture, Mr. Pausch

Life.
Since it is not granted to us to live long,
let us transmit to posterity
some memorial that we have at least lived.
Plinius the Younger, Letters
Yesterday while we were celebrating the 84th birthday of my mother(-in-law), Professor Randy Pausch died.

There's much I could write; even wish to write, but why when (almost) everything can be put into six words?

Thanks for the lecture, Mr. Pausch.