i hope he has a small bucket.
and i hope, to avoid confusion, it doesn’t already have any shit in it. if boris’ good ideas were controlled drugs (go with me here; there will be a point)(not necessarily an interesting one, but hey…) and he was arrested, he would be found not guilty because the quantity has to be discernible. and that’s without a electron microscope, before you ask.
that 7.5K i pissed away on this year’s law course has been money well spent. no? what will i do now? i know – spend another 13 on next year’s course.
woo (ntm hoo)
i know i owe the world a longer post. maybe mugabe feels he owes zimbabwe a few more years of enlightened liberalism. peter tatchell certainly owes him a big slap.
there's a place for us 
is it really you?
i do wish you the best with your pursuit of law.
given that us beastly yanks have decided that international law is for the weak, and that national law is for the wealthy 2%, i’m not sure what you’ll be doing, but i wish you well.
my own efforts as a scribbler proceed predictably, i.e., slowly.
ehj2
SW. Barrister.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
or LOL
Champagne all round at the Kremlin, I think
Happy Pagan Easter
TD
tall doc – i too am laughing so hard it hurts. at least i think it’s laughter.
still, it was that or mep and you’d have to be a special kind of masochist to do that. i could take the suffering and stupidity of my fellow man, but travelling so far to experience it all….
still i wish all those who must do it well.
being a barrister may not be curing cancer, but they tell me some nice people do it …
may the teutonic goddess smile upon you and i hope nobody spills your blood to fertilise the crops.
love to you and yours, tall one.
ehj the one and only- it really is me. who else would lurk around here spouting inanity?
it’s lovely to have you over. pull up a beer and open a chair my esteemed friend. pat my virtual dog if you will. there’s creme de menthe for afters…
tell me of your life. (unless you are an april fool comment left by ehj3, the prankster!)
…That’s “AN” electron microscope.
Dear SW,
I have the same challenges in the virtual world that I have in the real world, only they seem to be amplified. In the “real” world, a month seems no more than a couple of days. So in my virtual “in here” world, time compresses such that I suspect I never really left the party you started here only moments or days or months ago.
Wandering your vast manicured lawns with an empty beer, I espied (a kind of weirdly wonderful but patently obscure word my editor would never allow me to use) a light out on your dock. This happy discovery led to my entering your enchanted boat house, which I found stocked with deep leather chairs, comfy reading lamps, a small library of exquisite selection, and cases of cold beer and pampered wine.
If memory serves, I began with a rereading of Beowulf. Followed by the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. And then Gilgamesh. I’ll freely admit I was only able to skim the mathematically precise works of Spinoza, being a bit too inebriated to follow along with lines of reason I vaguely remember (or vainly imagine) I once understood quite well.
I slept a few times. Admired the lazy sun on the water a few times. Was there an occasional misting of snow? Some ice at the edges of the windows? A wonderful dog brought me stolen biscuits and often kept me company. And I read.
Mostly the world went away for awhile, and I didn’t have to think constantly about the depredations occurring under the banners of freedom and patriotism.
The real world isn’t that real to me any more (and certainly not comprehensible in any “real” way), or the virtual world is almost as real and the two have become blurred for me, or something along those lines. Because what I think I really did do for the past months was immerse myself in a rereading of everything I hold dear, which is mostly mythology, poetry, and the old romances (King Arthur, Tristan and Iseult, The Odyssey, etc.). I have a cherished collection devoted to the Grail cycles from which I can hardly escape.
While you’ve been reading law, I’ve been rereading all of Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, Robert A. Johnson. Some Buddhism for grounding. Zen poetry for flight.
I meditate daily but poorly, keep a dream log, walk along a river frequently, and write a couple of sentences whenever I can towards a work that will be my part in holding up the world.
Thanks always for the offer of warmth, a cold beer, and the company of your dogs (virtual or not). These things, in both the real and virtual worlds, are as durable as diamonds and gold.
/ehj2
fidel – well welcome back …
actually that’s electron microscope as spelled with a silent initial ‘d’. just so we’re clear. much like edant and the silent ‘p’. (as in bath)
ehj – blimey; i must inspect the grounds again. had no idea there even was a boathouse. someone else must have left the spinoza, but i did wonder where my copy of gilgamesh had gone.
bliss to read… if i find the boathouse, i’ll come for a chat. if it was ever mine, i give it to you.
Think I’d just like to lounge and get bleary-eyed listening to the chat, catching a reference or two, quickly associating a movie or a song, knowing there’s a place, a charmed life, the love of which ehj couldn’t possibly come closer to conveying, and which indeed saves my world and threatens to inspire greater effort to read, and to think, still kicking back, with some food and my hand on the remote, taking in the packaged goods of all the sacred texts puts me in the game and makes me happy I’m here,, bleary-eyed and listening to the moon lap up against the pylons under the boathouse floor.
… and the clean smell of the sea, and the sounds of the shore birds, and the fog that sometimes comes in and holds everything as close and safe as a lover’s arms.
Hi, Infidel. You poet, you.
I love the way you tucked this elegant phrase into the end of your marvelous prose, “and listening to the moon lap up against the pylons under the boathouse floor.”
As easily and deftly as we would click the necks of our beer bottles together in salutation, you’ve evoked the infinity of the whole Other world, and remind me of our friend Takiguchi’s line, “Poetry is bottled wine, Haiku is bottled poetry.”
I suspect you already know that in Zen poetry, the moon represents clear mind, pure enlightenment. You don’t need to read anything to know you’re there, and, as R.H. Blyth pointed out, most people ask questions as a way of avoiding acknowledging they already know the answers.
It’s been raining softly for days here and the cherry blossoms are covered with bees and every breath of wind brings me the scent of a new thing growing. Perhaps we can have a nip of a really old Irish whisky for breakfast, in small snifters. Isn’t it wonderful that the word whisky means water of life?
To you and all of SW’s friends.
/ehj2
does everyone but me know about this blasted boathouse then?
tho i must say having you two back in tandem does make the beer taste oh so good. and if it’s lager you will have noticed it is served almost frozen; ale a few degrees warmer but still colder than one is supposed (and we brits are known to) serve it.
a deuchars ipa for my father and a belhaven 80′ for me. scotch ales are best for those from the north. and scotch whisky is similarly good for us – irish is definitely permitted too – a touch of powers gold label or paddy if we are having blends and bushmills if single. tho as this was never and isn’t now my boathouse i will defer to ehj our host as to what we serve and how we drink it. (just a touch of water for me, but to grow up is to know that tastes differ and are not wrong for differing from your own).
while i would not improve on this company, i’m sure ehj would not mind our inviting guests and coming up with a playlist for one of those ipod machines….
i also wonder what other books are here that, like the spinoza, i had no idea about.
Dear SW,
I’ve googled your beer recommendations (Deuchars Ipa and Belhaven 80′) and feel our little gathering would be well served by a cask of each. I defer to your superior knowledge on the whiskeys. In fact, I think we should conjure a twenty-foot bar in your boathouse and line them all up (the whiskeys) and try each one properly. Just to be fair and remove any chance of bias.
My first real beer, something more than a watery American mass-produced factory beer, was Harp. I spent time in a remote location with a fellow who drank nothing else, but that in significant quantities. I still have a tremendous fondness for it, and imagine that it has something like honey and smoke and wildflowers in it.
While Kentucky is noted for some fine bourbons, and I’ve tried most of them, they’ve never captured my favor. I’ll admit to most enjoying a scotch that works well with a splash of Drambuie. In fact, if it’s being flung slowly into the stars that I really need, it’s Drambuie and scotch in a large snifter with a single brick of ice for me.
/ehj2
that was bonnie prince charlie’s dram i believe
Hmmm. Wikipedia enlightens me as to the meaning of “dram” … is … “scotch whisky” …
~~~
The fluid dram is defined as 1⁄8 of a fluid ounce, which means it is exactly equal to
• 3.696 691 195 312 5 mL in the United States and
• 3.551 632 812 500 0 mL in the Commonwealth and Ireland.
In the United Kingdom, a teaspoon was formerly defined as 1 fluid dram.
Dram is also used informally to mean a small amount of liquid, especially Scotch whisky.
wikipedia is, as ever, full of shite.
jock o’ hazeldean would never have stood for that.
and your lists of measurements persuades me you have perhaps been drinking with fidel in the boathouse.
drinking with fidel in the boathouse….
is that some sort of euphemism?
The buds swell imperceptibly
without hurry or confusion
as if the short spring day
were an eternity.
——————————
Henry David Thoreau
maybe a euphemism … maybe just a synonym for contentment.
I blogrolled you – now write some more… 😉
Andrew,
We’ve tried encouraging SW to scribble with greater frequency (he’s my main source of unintelligible British jargon), but in the last year he’s managed nine posts (and that was before he decided to join the power structure and read even more unintelligible stuff about law), so our expectations are necessarily low.
Basically, Infidel and SparkleMatrix try to carry him.
I showed up because he launched this gig with a party, and it seemed a place (given the title of the blog) that wouldn’t throw me out, even if I did little more than enjoy the scenery and drink the beer.
Sign me,
Just Another Beastly Yank,
/ehj2
ehj is the american who speaks true (knew there was one somewhere). if you peruse the past gems here you will see the bulk of the work was always done by others. i have exams starting 3 may, am currently doing olpas (applying to 12 entirely random sets of barristers for a one-year training slot starting sept 2009 – lord help us) and trying a dozen or so other chambers. having just persuaded my noble seat of learning to offer me a place on next year’s course i now have to beg an inn of court to interview me late for a scholarship so i can actually feed my two voracious children without selling a kidney while doing the bar vocational course (or ‘waste of everyone’s time’ as it seems to be known) at a cost of c13K.
so yeah give me a coupla days and i’ll write you a bastard novel, mr demanding.
you know you’ve arrived here when i start to offer you gratuitous abuse by the way, andrew…
i think it’s time for an ehj guest post! whaddya reckon?
Dear SW,
You mean like … contribute something of value for sleeping in your boathouse for a year and eating your food and drinking your beer?
SW, that’s just not the American way.
If you insist, though, I can napalm the buildings and spread around a lot of depleated uranium.
Please don’t throw flowers, though. Just seeing you appreciate your newly won freedom is enough thanks.
/ehj2
guest haiku…
guest lecture on why we should be grateful you intervened to support our democratic right to watch the last embers of the boathouse smoulder as you drink the whisky…
guest waterboarding…
*sighs* you are really so much nicer than your government
Dear SW,
I’m struggling to find and stay on a razor’s edge here. The fact is this happened on my watch (so I don’t feel so nice). It’s been incredibly painful to be part of the trainwreck of my generation. The richer this country became, the worse it became. Or the older I became, the worse it became. Or the wiser I became, the worse it became.
I was and remain the liberal black sheep of my family. It’s obvious I could have done more, and perhaps if I’d done enough I’d be part of that 1% of the population my country deems it “necessary” to lock up.
But I’m also leery of any kind of certainty or obsessiveness — even my own. So I couldn’t have done much more without crossing a different ethical line. I did get myself thrown out of a number of meetings at the state dept, and I’ll aways take a small comfort in that. I stayed in as long as I could, finding some truth in the notion that if all the “good” people leave (even if on principle), there’s no one to hold back the tide of madness. I imagine you’re entering law for pretty much the same reason.
Sadly, it doesn’t help to weep much, or to drink much. And I don’t know what good the pain is. I sometimes ponder the fate of our friend Oedipus, who finally learned enough he just wanted to be blind.
So these days I meditate and read and write and walk in the woods, grasping at straws of ideas blowing in Infidel’s magical moonlight that collects on the piers of the boathouse.
/ehj2
SW: Thank you for leading me here. It is lovely, the water sparkles and I think I may just remove my shoes…or maybe my dress..
it’s pre-lapsarian – you are free to wear what you will.
check out the boathouse; with an imagination like yours, i think it will have some very nice things inside….
The lady Robinson takes off her dress and reveals her body.
She has arms, first which end in hands; the envy of all that lives.
Human hands that feel and grasp, and convey what only communication can. Hands which feel and touch and tell, if only their bearer will.
I will that what I touch can be conveyed and in her nakedness only a women knows.
As a man I seek her acceptance of my touch. As me, I only seek her acknowledgement that what she feels and what she, in her nakedness exudes, is desire on my unbridled feelings of want. I always want the lady robinson naked, but… I know another and she would be pretty pissed about that.
Robinson
Another = Rosa