Not that I can recall. When I was younger and (I can but believe) prettier, I had to beat them off rather, but I was never at all tempted. Takes all sorts, and that one's not mine.
fireside chat with Iolo
- Thread starter arcturus88
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Not that I can recall. When I was younger and (I can but believe) prettier, I had to beat them off rather, but I was never at all tempted. Takes all sorts, and that one's not mine.
I've dwelled on this for some time now, and the thought always occurs - doesn't it seem silly that this predicament continues when there are so few profiteers and so many of us?
This is partially true. If you come up with a cure for cancer, for example, you will be falsely discredited by the FDA and the American Cancer Society - 2 organizations we had thought existed to promote cures, not suppress them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ1RDp4C19U
If you invent free energy devices, you will not be successful in the good ole USA. As long as it's not solving anything too big, like energy and cancer, you'll be successful in the good ole USA. Just stick with inventions like the "pet rock".
I don't know when you wrote this but in 2013 if you are a patriot who advocates freedom and the constitution, according to the DHS, you may be a terrorist. The DHS teaches their employees in training, that Thomas Jefferson was a terrorist. There are a lot of patriots here, so maybe that explains why
the US government is spying so much on its own citizens.
I think most americans are oblivious to an overabundance of bad things about the government - the tide seems to indicate that these bad things are going to get worse as a direct result of this obliviousness. I wish americans would snap out of it - is it the fluoride in the water? The complacency perplexes me. We're a bunch of frogs in hot water...
They are very powerfully organised and control governments as a matter of course. They also tend to control the media and set the agenda for public discussion, such as it is. This is another example of why I have always been a socialist, and why I never fell for Stalinism: I think real democracy is our only hope, and at the moment the profiteers can buy any election there is, by a whole host of methods, including - at a push - abolishing them instead.
Their control of the media is by far their most important key element of success. Hugely instrumental because their success depends largely on the gullibility of the people, which, sadly, is off the charts here in america. Since this is not the topic, maybe I will start a thread where we can discuss this most important issue. If I do, I look forward to your educated views on the matter. To get back on the topic, I was quite fascinated by your roots. What year was it when you wrote "vote liberal" on the wall?
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It was a long time back, but those of us who have had their phones illegally tapped by Thatcher's Vopos tend to get a bit itchy about giving out identifying information even of so general a sort, just as if they were still interested! I think it was the year when the Liberals got their lowest vote ever, and they certainly didn't feature in the Rhondda scene. Although I was never tempted by the Communist Party of Great Britain, here instead is a song the YCL used to sing about Harry Pollitt. I knew his son slightly once. Hope you like it:
Harry was a bolshie, and one of Lenin's lads
Until he was foully murdered by reactionary cads
(Chorus after each verse is a repeat: 'By reactionary cads, by reactionary cads
Until he was foully murdered by reactionary cads').
Then up spoke Harry's ghost, and he said, 'I will not die -
I'll go and do some Party work in the Land above the Sky.'
He floated up to Heaven, met St Peter at the Gate -
'An interview with Comrade God I would appreciate'.
They dressed him in a nightshirt, put a harp into his hand
and he played the Internationale in the Halleluiah Band.
They put him in the Choir, but the songs he did not like,
So he organised the angels and he brought 'em out on strike!
One day the Lord was walking in the garden very late,
When he found Harry chalking bolshie slogans on the gate.
They brought him up for trail before the Holy Ghost
For spreading disaffection among the heavenly host.
The verdict it was guilty, which pleased Harry very well -
He fluffed his nightshirt round his neck and floated down to Hell.
And three years later, Harry was doing well -
They'd made him People's Commissar for the whole of Soviet Hell.
The moral of my story takes but little time to tell:
If you want to be a communist, you're bound to go to Hell!
I put it in to suggest what my memory tells me - that ordinary CP members were far from being the po-faced apparatchiks we are taught to suppose.
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You have obviously led a worthwhile life, Iolo --- congratulations!
Latin is very nice, particularly Horace, but for truly awe inspiring literary merit, study a little ancient Greek. Even in translation, Pindar,Homer, Plato, the tragic dramatists, and many many others make life worth living.
Of 20th century British writers, W.B. Yeats and Dylan Thomas for poetry and Aldous Huxley for literary style have had the most influence on me. The closest person to Huxley we have here is Gore Vidal, and the comparison shows just how far your Precious Stone set in the silver sea towers above the American Slough of Despond.
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You have obviously led a worthwhile life, Iolo --- congratulations!
Latin is very nice, particularly Horace, but for truly awe inspiring literary merit, study a little ancient Greek. Even in translation, Pindar,Homer, Plato, the tragic dramatists, and many many others make life worth living.
Of 20th century British writers, W.B. Yeats and Dylan Thomas for poetry and Aldous Huxley for literary style have had the most influence on me. The closest person to Huxley we have here is Gore Vidal, and the comparison shows just how far your Precious Stone set in the silver sea towers above the American Slough of Despond.
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We are much at one, Numan. I did Greek for O Level and had a very good teacher I later worked with. In Latin, I like Catullus best, though he's heavy going. I think I've probably read everything Gore Vidal ever wrote, and he gives us all great hope for America. Agree about Yeats and Huxley (I'd prefer it if Dylan Thomas knew how to pronounce his own name). Love Donne and Marvell, the fashion of my youth, and can but admit that Eliot is very good indeed, whatever his politics. Was brought up on Larkin, who was inescapable as an influence around here.
How do I pass this on?
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With flying colours.
The selections of Donne and Marvell which I committed to memory in youth are still a solace to me in age --- a green thought in a green shade.
I have a grudge against Eliot for the stupid and silly things he wrote about PB Shelley (among other stupid things he wrote), but I must admit that the following is the best description of the difference between youth and age which I have come upon:
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment,
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
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