This means something, right?
Category Archives: diversions
Cuttlefish
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns … instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
– George Orwell, whose birthday is today.
I use the quote above to shoehorn my thoughts onto blog topic, but my favorite quote from Orwell is this passage from 1984:
To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone — to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!
I sit here tonight look at those words again, amazed at how much Truth there is in them, and wondering if we have finally come to live in that age of doublethink.
Slavery is freedom. The climate is not changing. Guns keep us safe. Rich people create jobs. War is Peace. Immigration is hurting the economy. Iraq is Obama’s fault. Ignorance is strength.
I’ve been watching World War Z. It’s interesting to see what that silly zombie fad looks like with a big budget. …It is a metaphor of American politics, right?
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” So for us, a zombie apocalypse is more likely than attaining government or, by, or for the people.
Holy Mole!
Now here’s something you don’t see every day. It’s a mole, about 6 inches long, sitting in a pink plastic tub, crunchy-munchin’ on a leaf.
He’s been very diligently circumscribing a path of destruction around Mom & Dad’s front yard the past few days. Today, Dad spotted where he was digging, dug open his tunnel from above, and pulled him out.
We relocated him in the orchards, outside of town. He’ll find better eating out there, anyway.
Pretty cute, but you don’t want him making a salad bar out of your lawn.
lettin this deal go down
I have a rhetorical question: who in the wide wide world of sports is sitting out there watching the professional poker tour on the Travel Channel? Whose life is sure to be so long, and his nights so deeply steeped in oblivion, that he’s willingly watching some self-absorbed asshats doing nothing but playing cards?
And what in the wide world of travel does poker have to do with the Travel Channel anyway?
There is a reason why people don’t watch chess on TV, and there’s a reason why people do watch poker on TV. And I submit the difference is precisely the difference between people who like chess and those who like poker. And if you find that observation offensive, then Bingo! … No! For Pete’s sake don’t start showing bingo on TV too.
Metaphor 
