Articles
Crisp and James on Revolutionary Politics
A couple of passages from my holiday reading (one from Quentin Crisp, another from Clive James on George Orwell) have struck me with enough force that I feel I should put them down for relative posterity. Both are to do with world politics, to some extent; both predate the current situation; and both are timeless.
Randomness
A scan from a long time ago
Before I show you the picture, some background.
It’s some time in mid-2000, maybe 2001, I can’t remember. I’d just walked up to the Student Union Building at Vic from the railway station. And I see these pink stickers on the wall, on a railing, on an electrical junction box.
The rhetoric is out of the blue; a demand to put a halt to genetic engineering and vivisection. I took offense, however, at the anonymity of the stickering — who was this person, or group, issuing commands? And what was the meaning of this imperious, warlike language?
“Smash” rhetoric is idiocy squared. Sure, the average person’s initial reaction to something they don’t like is to want to get rid of it, preferably permanently. But it’s also infantile. This is university, after all, where the movers, discoverers and leaders of tomorrow go to learn, and think, and research not only where we are, how we got this way, where we are, could, and should be going. That involves discussions — two-way conversation — and being open to criticism.
Also, who were they? The stickers, as you will see, didn’t say. An imperious order, out of the pink.
I spoke back — out came my Bic and a quick retort: “Smash the dimwits who think this sort of thing’s clever.”
Months go by. Schlepping up the slope again, backpack groaning with books, and now the pink is accompanied by green. The anarchists are trumpeting their shoddy utopian wares.
And I have been muzzled! The sticker-placer deliberately stuck a sticker over my remark!
Carefully, I removed both stickers. Equally carefully, I prised them apart. Alas! The anarchists’ hatred of dissent was transmitted to the adhesive, and only with much sundering of pigment did they come free. My writing, now interrupted, is still somewhat visible, however.
Only today did I get around to scanning these labels. And here they are.
Posted in Randomness (Non-Fiction,Rants) by R Cruickshank 21/06/08 05:42 PM tags: ha ha only serious, politics, rant, real life, silly
Randomness
Roughly 6 metres
“From where I’m standing,” my dad exclaimed in the living room, “to the bloody front door!”
I make that distance about six metres, maybe closer to five.
That’s how close he was to being another casualty of today’s mid-air collision.
And you know something? I missed it. I was mangling CCR’s Have You Ever Seen The Rain and didn’t even hear the bang from the collision, let alone when the chopper and/or the plane hit the ground.
Just thought you might like to know.
Posted in Randomness (News,Non-Fiction) by R Cruickshank 17/02/08 04:19 PM tags: links, livejournal, real life, zomg
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