http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly We have worked hard to improve the standards of the Internet. Now it must be destroyed. Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:06:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Most of my reviews are really about how much I know; or, if I don't know anything, how unusually refined my emotional responses are. It is like shouting out the answers in class, the motive of information-sharing much less anterior than that of plain and simply showing off. But there ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/10/22/bringing-out-the-dead/ Now that we're all floating around the nub of things in a prevailing mood of postmodern detachment, I wonder how bad things have to get before we acknowledge that they are not simply an ironic pastiche of 'bad' but actually, in and of themselves, terrible. When can we safely admit ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/10/08/masked-and-anonymous/ Half the fun of TV evangelism is in trying to accurately gauge how sincere the pastors actually are. Did they start out as conmen and crooks, only to find (as all great liars -and actors- do) that they had started to believe their own overblown self-sermonizing? Or were they true ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/09/10/gods-angry-man/ In rivers, the falling, glockenspiel rain Is music that comes from nowhere, like Songs your heart sings to itself on days Where the drum of the streets grows loud; And I could drown in the world as if My joy were as warm as the honeyed bee That buzzes at night with fireflies On the other side ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/08/13/today-tomorrow-next-week/ "Those are all cricketers!" -Monty Python's Flying Circus In the grand old days, football management sims were just glorified spreadsheets, rows of numbers about how good your players were giving way to a screenshot of a football pitch on which would occasionally flash such bulletins as "HARTLEP'L 1 CREWE A 0" ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/08/12/cricket/ Something about that milk, it was like A puddle of breath on the floor; And the sound of the scattering shards had hardly Died on the earth before A life less perfect parted itself Into a smaller doll; And if it had been tragedy The flaw would come before the fall; Some things are broken once, and they Are broken ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/08/10/mind-the-milk-jug-brady/ Song for clattering guitar and sirens! The jangling slap of d-string bent on wood, And clumsy, comic, tinkling irons With wit that's set on better yet than Byron's And whistles bustling through environs Of much-pertaining, unintended Good; Yea, life has been a crazy coloured map That's dotted through the fringes of disaster, Like paths were leading, lap on ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/08/07/song-for-john/ Well, you can have your cartoon Nazis, Roman, goose-stepping out from the frames of The Great Dictator to bash old Jews into the gutter with frying pans; I guess you're entitled to them. Who'd blame you? And if the weird disconnect between your monstrous Germans and your honest Poles sometimes makes ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/08/06/the-pianist/ The danger of having a nice job in a nice place is that nice former colleagues, now cut adrift in the social limbo of retirement, keep coming back to talk to you; and the danger of being a nice person is that the sting of conscience is only salved by ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/07/25/death/ The cells are scheduled every day To empty out; like empty men We wait. Next day, I wait again, And so might they. From curtained closets calls distinct Clash in closet air: distant cries And whimpers, duelling miseries, Beeps succinct. These are my friends: the rattled retch Of hueless mucus, gargled blood, The distant dentures' dream of cud, The smacking letch, The ... http://www.dissimulate.org/accordingly/2008/07/20/visiting-hours/