Rounding upward
- . The entertainingly grumpy Bill Bryson, author of Notes from a Small Island, still one of the best-selling books in England, is up in arms over the state of rural England. He's incensed about "fly tipping." Seems there's an absolute epidemic of it; 340,000 incidents last year in Sheffield alone, and only one prosecution.
book/daddy confesses: He had to look it up. "Fly tipping" means dumping trash illegally -- doing it "on the fly." What book/daddy was imagining involved sneaking up on the sleeping critter, furtively taking hold of one of its tiny legs and carefully turning it over on its back. That way, when the fly awakens, it tries to fly "up" into the floor. Buzzing hilarity ensues.
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Samuel Beckett wanted to let the chaos in -- even as a lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin. No wonder he didn't stay in academe: "Beckett believed himself to be a poor lecturer; he felt, as he put it, that he could not teach others what he did not know himself. But his students saw things differently. Rachel Burrows, who considered that she had benefited a great deal from his lectures, wished to correct Beckett's disparaging self-image, so she donated her little notebook to her former university."
- "What was later described as the most ill-natured interview ever broadcast can be heard for the first time since 1953." The bilious Evelyn Waugh quizzed on the BBC show, "Frankly Speaking," by three aggressive questioners:
"Asked what failings in others he could most readily excuse Waugh replies quickly: "Drunkenness." Any others? "Em [long pause] ... anger. Lust. Dishonouring their father and mother. Coveting their neighbour's ox, ass, wife. Killing. I think there's almost nothing I can't excuse except perhaps worshipping graven images. That seems to be idiotic."
- In case someone hasn't already e-mailed you the link to it, the Village Voice printed an Official Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere, complete with portraits by cartoonist Tom Tomorrow. One may certainly object to the names left off the list. And one can question evaluations based on a ratio of 'stupid" to "evil." (Is Michelle Malkin really that much more "stupid" than she's "evil"?). But Roy Edroso's guide is often spot-on. And funny.
Pity he had to read all that stuff, though.
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