All reactionaries are paper tigers, except when they are a combo from Pedro
Article in todays Washington Post Pastor Convicted for Bible Printing
the Chinese government have sentenced a man to three years in prison
for selling Bibles - tens of thousands of them; illegal profiteering
they say. Really more for printing them as he may have been just giving
them away. The Chinese authorities seem to grasped the wrong end of the
stick concerning what profits a man, but they seem to have figured out
who they want to arrest. I say that possibly it is true what Chairman
Mao says: All reactionaries are paper tigers. So this is what we will
see in the end.
My friend Robert has been leaving comments. He does this
to join the conversation and have his say. He at the same time is aware
that potentially he may be nominated to the Supreme Court at any
moment. After all he was an english major at Virgina Tech. This
is an existential position we nearly all find ourselves in now.
Therefore he chooses to leave an elliptical and coded paper trail.
Largely he speaks in chess games. This, because I don't play chess,
has left me baffled at times. I suspect it is a matter of knowing when
to play the kings indian, and when not to.
I can part the curtain a little, by trying to parse his last.
After reading the earlier comment from Mr. Hager who for some reason
wants me to help his client at Ipswitch understand real
experiences in technical blogging techniques. At times I find web
logging while intriguing (what I mean is fun) is almost too beholden to
technology if not to
technique to be useful as a medium for serious discourse. It is
embedded in flux and unstable. It may be appreciated more by historians
latter, rather than significant today.
Robert initially leverages a Monty Python skit riffing off of
Ipswich, signaling he has read the post and noted the comment.
Following this he deploys a line from the Minuteman Song Take our Test
from their album Project Mersh. This functions both as a critical
penultimate statement on this and as signifier that he believes that I
used a Minuteman song title Jesus and Tequila
to name that post. I'm sure that's just a coincidence, but it is true,
I'm satisfied (more so if I could make her daddy mad). Latter he emails
me a line from a Joel Achenbach column:
"The blog originated ... as a catch basin for mental detritus, for the
kind of stuff not good enough for print, but too good to waste on casual
conversation." (Joel Achenbach, /The Washington Post/, August 21, 2005)
I remember reading that article at the time. I believe it
hung around on blogdex for a while indicting that other web loggers
were writting about it. I didn't because I believe web logging is
simply a different catagory of thing for people who have editors and
paychecks in their writting lives.
All of this serves to underscore how much of a drag it will be
next month when Robert cuts out of McKeldin here, to take up his new
job cataloging books for GW Universities law library. No amount of
money can buy you conversation like this.
11:53:52 PM  ;;
|
