Two trivial but entertaining items:
1) Ian Frazier’s NYRB review (archived) of Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science by Alicia Puglionesi, an account of the American Society for Psychical Research, includes this piquant bit:
The society also set up such Borgesian-sounding entities as the Committee on Phantasms and Presentiments, the Census of Hallucinations, and the Committee on Thought Transference.
Unfortunately, the archives of the ASPR turn out to be incredibly boring: “As the hours went by, Puglionesi found herself confronting a tedium requiring a ‘devotion to something beyond the self, something so vast that it can only be glimpsed through the labor of many human lifetimes.’”
2) Our old friend Conrad sent me this Guardian link with the comment that he “felt this was one for you”; after discussing the phenomenon of the apparently near-universal opinion in the UK that “Keir Starmer’s a wanker” (commonly sung at sporting events to the tune of the riff of the White Stripes’ 2003 “Seven Nation Army,” with which I was completely unfamiliar even though not only did it receive “widespread critical acclaim” but it is “arguably… the world’s most popular sports anthem” — I have to agree that the riff is catchy as hell), Jonathan Liew provides a semantic analysis that makes it Hattic material:
Let’s start with the word choice, which feels subtly telling in this case. If Boris Johnson was, as the darts crowd sang in late 2021 at the height of the Partygate scandal, a “cunt”, then somehow calling Starmer a “wanker” is altogether more piteously dismissive – insinuating not just degeneracy but a kind of bashful cowardice. The first word imputes a straightforward roguishness, perhaps even a grudging regard; the wanker, by contrast, is essentially beneath contempt.
Thanks, Conrad!
What would be the technical term for Farage, then?
“As the hours went by, Puglionesi found herself confronting a tedium requiring a ‘devotion to something beyond the self, something so vast that it can only be glimpsed through the labor of many human lifetimes.’”
Medium tedium!
What would be the technical term for Farage, then?
Quisling.
@de
If NF is Quisling, who do you see as his Führer? Also, I think the comparison may be unfair to Q. If Q had died in, say 1930, he might have been remembered for his successful humanitarian efforts.
I would love to hear what Crown would have said.
I was hoping for a charming colloquialism, along the wanker/cunt line.
I would love to hear what Crown would have said.
You and me both.
@lh
Note also in my post –may be contrasting with might have been, avoiding one of your sore points…
Bless you for that.