There’s a reason they call them Mounties.
Apparently, if you use the Blue Yonder UK search, my blog scores very highly when you are searching for the term, “Viggo Mortensen Got a Girlfriend.”
I’m sorry to have to dissappoint you, but I have no comment at this time.
We’re just good friends.
Very much in the spirit of yesterday’s advice column, we present Geoffrey Chaucer’s Friendster Blog, including the fabulous Aske Chaucere section.
Q: My betrothed, a most wicked man, betrayed me near as bad as Tereus
did Procne. His woman of choice commited, though, that villainy which women do best, and tempted him away. Presently it is not legal, where I live, to have either of them killed for this treachery — what shall I do to avenge the wrong they both have done to me, and to my virtue? Their joy at my grief does pain me so.
Cor Fracta Est
A: Ma Cher Coeur Brisee
Thoughe y love a goode revenge tragedie as much as the nexte guye, y muste counsel yow to a bettre path. Yow sholde maken pece and kepe faithe, not wyth thyne betrothede nor wyth this womanlie Diomede, but rathir with yowrselfe. For vengence aperteneth and longeth al oonly to juges. Remembre yow that pacience is a greet vertu of perfeccioun, and remembre that ther are tymes ordained unto al thynges by the first moevere — of the ookes, and of the hard stones, and of man and womman seen we also, in youthe as well as age, alle shal be dumped , a kyng as shall a page – som dumped on dates, som dumped by telephone, some dumped in compaignie, som dumped allone – ther helpeth noght, al goth that ilke weye.
And thus, take two pintes of hagen dasz dulce de leche, a ful seson of buffie the vampyre slayre, and calle me in the morninge.
Le Vostre G
This is something I read at the Shebeen Club’s long-ago Hemingway’s Birthday Party. James Sherrett was kind enough to be one of our readers that night, with an excerpt from his very Hemingwayesque novel Up in Ontario.
Our other reader was Lucan Charchuk, who has now read twice, as well as presenting some of his artwork.
When Lori Dunn and I began the Shebeen Club, we hoped that within a year we’d be using it to present living Canadian authors, instead of dead foreign celebrities. This was the first event at which we managed to do both, and almost a year ahead of schedule! There were challenges to be overcome, of course. Our event occurred during a bicycle race whose track completely encircled and cut off the pub, but our public was not to be thwarted, and we had a relatively full house. The readings went very well. Despite the dangerous concentration of so much masculinity in one room, violence was averted and a sense of calm, if really testosterone-fuelled calm, reigned.
This is the speech that a very ill Hemingway had the US Ambassador read as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature on Hemingway’s behalf. It tells you something about the courage of the two men above that they had the fortitude to read their own work after hearing this. Hemingway is, as always, honest to the point of acute pain. He sets the bar very high; may we all attain that height, if only for a moment.
Hemingway’s Nobel Acceptance Speech
Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.
No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.
It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.
I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.
Special-Interest Agony Column from The Independent.
For those of you who haven’t been following the cash-for-ermine scandal (and those Limeys do need help figuring out catchy names for scandals, don’t they?) I would expect you can pick it up as you go along. As, indeed, Mr. Blair seems to have done ever since he was elected.
Miles Kington:
Noblesse Oblige
– just don’t tell Jack Dromey
Q. My name is Edward Carr-Bootle. I recently lent a large sum of money to the Labour Party on the understanding that my wife, Lavinia, should become Lady Lavinia. I have now been told that this is not possible, and that I must accept a title as well. I don’t want a title. It’s only her that wants a title. I refuse to accept a title as a matter of principle, being a man of the people, even if I am married to an ambitious, upwardly mobile woman who is desperate to enter society at any level. I don’t mind what she gets up to, but I am anxious to retain my roots. Can we not be known as Mr and Lady Lavinia Carr-Bootle?
A. No.
Q. I recently acquired a title (Lord L’Oréal) in return for a loan to the Labour Party of £500,000. They have recently repaid the loan and now say that they want the title back. It was never made clear to me that the title was only a loan as well. Do I really have to give the title back? I have come to enjoy the little perks that go with possessing a title, such as running up huge bills, getting tables in restaurants and hobnobbing with Melvyn Bragg. I would be distressed to go back to the old humdrum days as a plain Mister. Is there no way I can keep the title?
A. No.
Q. My name is Frank Chattle and through no fault of my own I have become a millionaire in the London Olympics Futures business. (Briefly, this involved buying up huge swathes of property in the areas where they would be likely to put the swimming pools and cycle tracks if they got the Games for London, so that I could then sell out at a huge profit. This I have now done, but there is a lot of risk involved in this. For instance, I know a bloke who did the same thing in Paris, gambling on the fact that France would get the Games, and he is now lumbered with a lot of run-down property, I can tell you, hence the recent riots, whereas I am sitting pretty.) Where was I? Oh, yes – anyway, I feel a bit guilty about making such an enormous profit out of the London bid, so I have donated a million quid to the Labour party, and now they are trying to insist that I take a title for my pains. Well, blimey, I don’t want a title! I don’t want to be Lord Velodrome or whatever. For one thing, it might alert the tax people to my little schemes. For another, I like being plain Frank Chattle. Is there any way I can avoid being titled?
A. No.
Q. My father, Lord Wansdyke, recently died, and being his eldest son I inherited the title and became Lord Wansdyke. Three days after I took on the title, I received a bill from the Parliamentary Labour Party for £1m. At first I thought it was for death duties, but I now think that they assume I bought the title. Doesn’t the Labour Party know there are still other ways of acquiring a title apart from a cash purchase?
A. No.
Q. Every time you get a scandal these days, it turns out that somebody involved is married to someone in the government. David Mills, who is said to have taken money from Berlusconi, was married to Tessa Jowell. Jack Dromey, the man who blew the whistle on the titles-for-loans scam, is married to Harriet Harman. So, was Berlusconi after an English peerage, then? Alternatively, wouldn’t it be easier to make him Lord Dromey and shut him up?
A. No.
Q. I can’t help noticing that you advice service is remarkably monosyllabic and unhelpful. Why aren’t you giving people a proper advice service? Incidentally, I enclose a cheque for £250,000 to help cover your expenses in this venture.
A. Now you’re talking! Under separate cover I am enclosing a small unwanted knighthood, and also a signed copy of my best-selling booklet: “How To Turn Your Title Into Hard Cash And Go Straight To the Top Of The Queue“.
raincoaster 