pica pica
READ ALL ABOUT IT
The Speculist is a charming human being who specialises in getting us all ready for the future, hover cars and dinner-in-a-pill and everything. But he has harpooned the attention of the speckly, irridescent bird by virtue of publishing
an online novel called 'Stillness'. It's a cracking e-read, and gives the bird encouragement with his own soon-come project to publish a novel on the web, aided and abetted by
boatgirl. It's not so much vanity publishing as a suspicion that UK literary agents and publishers alike are looking for novels so formulaic that anything which doesn't fit the template is given a polite rejection. Or, alternatively, my own novel may be the biggest crock of shit ever committed to the page. Either way, you will soon get to pronounce sentence, you lucky devil! Aa-aaaaar!
DOWN IN FRANCE [SUBTLE FRANK ZAPPA REFERENCE]
The magpie has links to France. My father lives there and the bird has flapped across the Channel more or less annually for the last seventeen years. However, a combination of a falling-out with said sire and a generalised disgust with recent French behaviour has compelled the pernickety bird to view our Gallic cousins with a somewhat jaundiced eye of late. Add to that the general arrogance of the French as individuals (in my experience), their casual anti-Americanism and their pathetic wailing when a healthy slice of their compatriots voted for Le Pen – that's democracy, mes amis – and Franco-magpie relations could be said to have hit an all-time low. Boycotting all French goods since their disgraceful stance on the war in Iraq, the bird finally says 'Non!' Now, the following article, although it is from the big, bustling
Frontpage Magazine, the cawing bird makes no apology for lifting the link – plus the pull-quote – wholesale from Aussie blogger
Whacking Day. The feature concerns the scandal of France's recent heatwave deaths.
Read the whole thing, but the key point to which the magpie wishes to draw your attention occurs at the very end.
"As the numbers of heat deaths climb, a final figure of close to 20,000 is being seen as not unrealistic – in other words, a humanitarian disaster. Meanwhile, the death toll in Guantanamo Bay, which the French are in the habit of condemning with dainty disgust as barbaric, sweltering, fetid and inhuman, remains remarkably stable: None."
Ecrasez l'infame, indeed.
DETOXING WITH WILLIAM BLAKE
Although there is the usual vivid cornucopia of infotainment available on the world wide wibbly wobbly web®, the magpie will instead expound on a subject dear to his heart; the fascinating subject of myself. I will do this with the aid of William Blake, poet, mystic and engraver. Over the last week, I have gone through something of a detoxification: no alcohol, sensible diet, early nights, a bare minimum of fags, green tea at all possible opportunities and 2 litres of water a day. How do I feel? Extraordinarily chipper. While a state of intoxication has its naturally attendant
sense of well-being, there is also the terrible price to be paid in the form of
the hangover. Too much of this sort of behaviour results, as inevitably as the turning of the tides or phases of the moon, in
illness as the immune system becomes compromised and the body increasingly fatigued. A week off the grog, however, and the monochrome flapper feels as fit as a butcher's dog, full of piss and vinegar, and generally eager to
get things done. So; a self-congratulatory caw, and the magpie will hop back onto the garden wall of the internet tomorrow. See you both then.
PARTY!
Well, September 11 is coming around again, and folk will be marking it in their different ways, confirming once again that the world really is, in the words of Blue Mink, a great big onion. Some people who will definitely not in any way be celebrating the defining moment of the late 20th century are Islamist funsters
al muhajiroun, despite their planned Islamic conference. The gabbling bird strongly believes that we here in the West ought really to be ashamed of ourselves, imputing that, simply because the symposium has a title which we choose, wilfully, to misinterpret, the event in some way voices approval of the attack on the twin towers. That conference name again? Why, it's 'Magnificent 19'. Allahu akhbar.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO
The magpie works, naturally, not being in receipt of a private income. But today he is sad. I went to university for a long time, you see, and earned a BA, MA and PhD in the totally non-vocational subject of philosophy. I knew that this subject would never get me a job and, further to that, the amount of time I had spent out of the full employment market would be a serious disadvantage. However, I managed to fall into journalism – not the proper sort, the production editing sort – and make a reasonable crust. But the fools, the fools. Every day is a desperate attempt to reinvent the wheel wearing boxing gloves and armed only with a teaspoon. And to think that, when I was at school, I wanted to be a
speedway rider. Ah, the dreams of youth, the six of cups…
AFROBLOGGING
After being grilled by the ever-inquisitive
boatgirl concerning the state of African politics, the magpie was minded to look out two great weblogs,
Africapundit and
Mostly Africa. They both strike the black-and-white bird as balanced, in that they don't blame every shortcoming of the dark continent on colonialism.
WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN
Tarek Heggy is an Egyptian writer whose abode the magpie happened to flap over today, and
this is an excellent essay on the Arabic language, specifically its lack of a direct equivalent for the Western word/concept of 'compromise'. Heggy calls compromise the 'strongest product of Western civilisation', and thoroughly deserves your attention. Incidentally, the monochrome bird refuses to apologise for flagging up
boatgirl's brand-new blog a full five times yesterday. This is a reflection on the bird's esteem for the site, and in no way reflects his inability to use what is supposed to be idiot-proof software…
