The Green Man by Kingsley Amis

The Green Man by Kingsley Amis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I know the feeling. Kingsley seems to be trying to resolve some (health) threat that has triggered fears of his impending death (26 years later) here. He has done this before, but within a ghost story, that is a different path altogether for Amis, and he pulls it off moderately well I must admit. A Stephen King best-seller it is not, and thank God Almighty for that.

Now dying is one thing, it must come to us all (and why we are not paralysed by this prospect is a mystery to Amis's character here) but the persistence of evil into the afterlife is another! All this washed down with a modest triple scotch and water.

There are many examples of the typical Amis-like crackling dry delivery, often at the most unexpected of times thereby guaranteeing a shock, in the mouth of the sex-obsessed, death-obsessed and misanthropic narrator, hotel manager Maurice Allington: a drunker but much more competent Basil Fawlty role. Amis often makes me burst out loud laughing with that wonderfully cynical line, carefully thought-out and poetically knife-pointed to a unimpeachable truth, in this book as much as any of the others I have read.

(My favorite quotation of all time is this, from Lucky Jim; "If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.")

Allington has to deal with a frisky mistress, a taken-for-granted (but still loved) newish wife, a dying to dead father, a drinking problem, hypochondria (that pain in the lower back is kidney cancer, perhaps, now that the brain cancer has cleared up), an mostly uncommunicative 13yo daughter, lost manuscripts, midnight grave robbing, an atheist parson, a shy cat, and all sorts of disconcerting spectral visitors in the woods nearby and in the hotel at night, at least one of whom has a rather nasty history...

He's trying what he thinks is his best in all aspects of life, but his unacknowledged selfishness doesn't help, and that fact he can't tell anyone about his search for the secret behind these ghosts as they'll only think it's the DT's. But his TV watching daughter seems not to disbelieve him...

Loved it.




View all my reviews

E@L

Orwell In Burma

When I was young and had no sense
In far-off Mandalay
I lost my heart to a Burmese girl
As lovely as the day.

Her skin was gold, her hair was jet,
Her teeth were ivory;
I said, "for twenty silver pieces,
Maiden, sleep with me".

She looked at me, so pure, so sad,
The loveliest thing alive,
And in her lisping, virgin voice,
Stood out for twenty-five.

George Orwell - Ironic Poem About Prostitution (before 1936)



E@L

War on Drugs (prices)

My Singapore Doctors love me, and I don't mean my customers it should have been obvious by now.


Here is the bill for a shade under four months of tablets for my painful feet (aka idiopathic peripheral neuropathy). S$3.60/tablet on average, seven tablets/day = $25 every day = ~$750 every month.

I could get a Fullers Pale Ale and squeeze of tit lime every day for that.


In Australia the bottom two (same medication - had to get some in from another store) on the list are A$1.00 each (S$1.30). I paid $440 for eight boxes of 56 last week - and I could have bought them cheaper if I had a few days up my sleeve for stocks to get in.

I can save about S$1,000 every four months. Almost worth a drug run to good old Geelong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It wouldn't be the first [first what? drug run, you idiots], says Officer Dribble of the Kardinia Park Drug Squad.


Max Rooke 2005


Max Rooke 2009

E@L

Nobu

Robert De Niro and Nobu Matsuhisa have one of their restaurants in Perth's Crown Casino, Nobu. (Not "De Niro", note.)

No booking, you turn up, no problem - you sit at the sushi bar! Irrashaimase!

~~~~~~~~~

There is a thin slice of beetroot amongst the sashimi! WTF, beetroot is everywhere. It's like wasabi and arugola and thick balsamic. Later, you see two chefs working, one reaches across to the other one's plate-in-progress and places a thin slice of beetrot on the pile of grated/julienned white radish. Next to the wasabi and the arugola.

You eat a sashimi tuna taco and a sashimi lobster taco. Of course you do, it's a fusion restaurant, you're paying enormously for this level of weird.


Beer (nice, never heard of it, some white ale), that sweet whiskey cocktail (12yo Yamizaki, green ginger wine, maple syrup), chilled sake: there was now a diffuse glow, an aura of saturated radiance, about anyone who is standing under bright lights. The four sushi chefs, in their white netted caps, glowing like aliens as they peeled leaf after leaf from the coriander stems for the salad, or stacked the maki rolls just so...

Is the waitress Filipina? Or Malaysian? Or Australian? Certainly a beginner - she was being told off trained about the way she described the menu to you. Hamachi with jalapeños? Mm-mm, sounded good to you.

Chef's choice of sashimi. Chef is a boring fuck. Some tuna with ginger and chives is as outrageously adventurous/expensive as you get. And beetroot.

Next. Sliced octopus and mushrooms in a citrus sauce baked in a small paella pan. Too citrusy for you. Nice tentacles though, shame about the face.

You have to go to the toilet and find it around two corners, a large open room, built for one, tough lock, but you get it eventually. The wall behind the cistern is made up of lots of small (max is maybe 4cm across), clear perspex circles, what would you call them, tablets (as in pills), various sizes, set into the gray plaster-like support material. Three ceiling spots shine down. It looks like there are disks of gray material behind, or is it IN, each of the perspex disks at the back, slightly overlapping each other, but no: it was an optical illusion; these shapes were merely the genuine colour of the solid wall behind the disk, while the shadow from the lights has managed to keep clear an arc across the top part of the rear of the disk, one for each of the down-lights. You take one hand from your cock and use it (your hand) to block the light from one of the down-lights and one of layers of posterior/interior disks has gone, this confirms your brilliant insight. It was very cool, very weird and very hard to describe, obviously. You wish you had taken a picture, but you are reluctant to take your phone/camera out in a toilet again, not after that last incident with the Masonic guy and his young piglet...

Pork belly, cubed to chopstick-able proportions with, what is that?, chopped jalapeños again? Still a little bit left on the plate, plus at most a smear of the delicious sauce, just one cube of the pork belly, but the sake mug was empty. Do you order another small carafe and look like a drunk or finish the rather dry pork with a dry mouth? Ah, mineral water. OK, you'll just look at the sake menu again. Hey, why not another whiskey cocktail? Because, is why.

And so you do look at the sake menu again and suddenly everything you've ever known about sake goes flying and you admit to yourself that, while it wasn't all that much, at least it was something, but now you may as well know nothing as what you are looking at makes no sense: ginjo, daiginjo, junmai? they don't help. It's only the regions that they show and you know nothing about that. Nothing.

The small things are in your mind:

- The Ethiopian taxi driver's story of oppression.

- The security guard who walked you all the way over from the casino to the restaurant, was he trying to pick you up?

- The chef placing a dab of (miso?) sauce on a tiny square of coriander leaf on a sliver of jalapeño on a thin slice of hamachi and it caught, and the coriander fell off and the slice of yellowtail was stained with the dripping sauce, and fuck it, that's what happens and he puts it all back together again. And then the pepper shaker is blocked and nothing comes out and he can't decorate the plate, so he goes looking for a toothpick; seriously, this happens.

- The fact you awkwardly pulled out two $5 notes from your wallet as you went to tip the waitress, but she saw you as you pushed one back in.

- The bill, no, that wasn't such a small thing.

OK, just one more whiskey syrup cocktail for the road... Oishi! Campai! Whatever!

E@L

Nothing To See Here

(at Newton Station, Singapore.)
~~~~~~~~~~

Just don't feel like writing at the moment, even though I have oodles of spare time. Hard to explain. Hard to understand. Jet lag? Homesickness, as in, am I sick of being home?

~~~~~~~~~~

Lots of amusing, horrifying and uber-boring incident in this three week Tour of Duty around Australia and New Zealand (and Australia and New Zealand again), although lots of fleeting witticisms were lost to documentation (memory of an axolotl) and lots of things observed were lost to wry comment as the brain is just so clogged and I can't seem to find the oomph to start writing anything... (Have been reading about Leibnitz's question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and my brain has melted.)

And today, (tonight/what day is it?), after this double jump from Auckland to Melbourne, then on to Perth, where I am now, I find that, while I have the computer open in front of me and it's relatively early (Perth time), I am too completely shagged out to share anything of interest and amusement with you... at... this... time... OK maybe this photo from Tasmania last weekend.

~~~~~~~~~~


Bay Of fires, Tasmania
Lichen on the rocks makes them bright orange.
E@L

Virgin Member

OK, this one IS a FWP.

Flying Virgin to NZ, economy class. Bummer enough, right? Virgin is not Star Alliance but has an agreement with Singapore Airlines for club lounge access. I check-in at the priority counter and the lady says that there is no Virgin lounge in International in Melbourne, but I am welcome to use the Air New Zealand lounge or of course the Singapore lounge. Huh, go with what you know, right? I find that the Singapore lounge is under renovation and the sign directs me to the United lounge. Steely looks from both the SIA person and the United person.

"Virgin is not Star Alliance."

"But the SIA lounge is closed, the sign directed me here."

"Yes, but Virgin is not part... "

" But Virgin has reciprocal lounge access with SIA."

Disbelief. Dubiety.

"Virgin is not... "

" I can get into the Virgin lounge (at Perth which doesn't have a SIA lounge.) when I am flying Singapore."

The SIA guy calls his boss. He goes red. He is under-trained.

"I am still sorry sir, but because this is a United lounge and Virgin is not part of Star Alliance, the reciprocal agreement cannot be applied."

Smug look from United person.

Go to New Zealand lounge.

"I am sorry sir, I but Virgin is not part of Star Alliance." (There is a sign outside the ANZ lounge welcoming Virgin customers.) "Your SIA membership doesn't cover the ANZ agreement with Virgin."

"Oh fuck, just let me in...!"

He did.

E@L.

(Vindicated: my ticket was sold as an Air New Zealand flight.)

In Which E@L Resists Anything But Temptation.

After having explained to friends at the excellent bistro in the Builders Arms Hotel in Gertrude St (not the attached restaurant Moon Under Water unfortunately - no time to make an advance booking) that the most rewarding thing for him about the long-term (2 years) successful weight loss behaviour E@L has been exhibiting, is the sense of being in control, of feeling like you are in control of your life and your body. Oh yeah. Total control. Have another glass of Yarra Valley Pinot, E@L, and talk to us about taking command.

However, indeed, he says, "No thanks, no more wine."

No? Done, thanks. Desert? Nope. No more room. Not me. (Wise man.)

Hang on, is that Amaro with caramelized orange for a disgestif? Well, seeing as how he skipped the wine...

Willpower. Apart from that Amaro of course, E@L is a tower of self-control and strength and psychological power held in check. He can hold his own against a sea of troubles.

~~~~~~~~~~

But let's take advantage of getting home early, E@L, it's only 9:30. Read that China Miéville on your Kindle (Embassytown). Relax. A take-away latte from Pellegrinis maybe while you read it? Sure, it's just around the corner. Maybe have a look in the window at The PaperBack, three steps across the lane, just, you know, old habits...

~~~~~~~~~~



E@L is in the lane, lit red by Pellegrinis' cursive neon, looking at his latest latent purchase - The Examined Life, How We Lose And Find Ourselves, Stephen Grosz - when a voice tries to pull him away...



"Mate. Ma-ate. Ya got some coins? A few bucks? The refuge wants $15; I need a more coins ya know. Anything would help, thanks cobber."

E@L shrugs. Resolve, steely, see it in action. He pulls out the few coins from his right pocket, in which he rarely puts money. "There ya go, mate. All I got."

That's all he is going to give the pest. Doesn't even have a drugged baby unconsious on his lap, we mean, hey, get serious here! It was 60c. Hmm. These days, when some extra steamed veg with your grilled fish at the hospital cafeteria is $4, when that shot of Amaro and its caramelized orange is $15. Yes, 60c is not a fuck lot of money, is it?

He's hardly registered their weight in his hand. "Ya got some other coins? Seriously I don't need much. Just bit more would rooly rooly help."

E@L sighs, takes a moment, then digs deep, deep, into his other pocket. Pulls up some golden-colour discs of unequal size, genuinely all he has in coins. "Here ya go. No, hang on, that one's a Singapore dollar. Won't help you much."

"Oh, cool, give us a look. Singapore? Amazing." He nods, genuinely interested, passes it back. Then, ever the professional, asks, "Do you have any notes instead, notes would be brilliant: for two nights they want ...(indistinct)... for a room. A bed, you know. It's getting cold, eh?"

"I only have $50s, mate, I'm sorry." Now, E@L wouldn't advise saying that to a person on the street anywhere else but this part of Melbourne city. Might as well say, "Pull a knife, rob me." But this guy is a beggar, not a thief. He's there almost every time E@L walks in the upper reaches of Bourke St in the evening: he's just this homeless guy, bit of a drug problem sure, maybe not his fault, maybe he's an ex-CEO who took a hit in the GFC. E@L has never felt threatened by people asking for money...

"It's OK," he says to E@L brightly. "$50's are OK. I can give you change in $20s."

... pause...

You are telling E@L you have change for a $50?

~~~~~~~~~~

E@L enters the book-store, glancing on the New Non-Fiction shelves. Can't see the book he wanted to browse through, looks across to the counter and he hears the customer there talking to the saleswoman. He looks away, then back over his shoulder and sees a tall man, maybe late twenties, early thirties, a bald patch taking over some scalp under the fair hair at the crown. He is wearing fair trousers and a has a red scarf over a fawn-colored jacket. What a fucking dork. E@L sees the bookshop lady. She is also of that age. A little bit of white throat showing down to the second button of her white shirt, then her knitted cardy. Curly hair, a bit unruly, small eyes with almost a tired squint, smiling. It's almost time to close. Long day dealing with pseudo-intellectual dip-shits.

"Well", he was saying, "you're a woman, you must've really enjoyed A Room Of One's Own! It's very good, yeah? It would be very good, I mean, you know, having somewhere to do that, you know write, or... have a room."

E@L is stunned. What are we allowed to say in the world today?

He can hear hear her laugh, though. "Yes, what is it? Five hundred pounds a year and a room of one's own. Would be very handy."

"Yes, we could all do with that!" he says. Then, E@L could gather somehow, he awkwardly pays for his Mrs Woolf purchases and closes the door just behind E@L's back. (It's a small bookshop.)

E@L steps across and asks her about his book.

"I've got the Lost part down pat, but need to brush up on the being Found."

"Yes, we are all a little lost," she says, smiling. "But not this book." And she pulls a copy from a pile of unsorted paperbacks on the floor by her counter.

"Excuse me," he says, "but I couldn't help overhearing just then. Did that guy really say 'You are a woman, you must understand sexual stereotyping?' or were my ears not taking that in properly?"

She laughs again. Eyes not so small really, they're just emeralds crouching in laugh-lines, dimples (God E@L loves dimples), smiling with not too much gum, all nice teeth, curly hair, the flouncy type. Maybe E@L sees something of what made the other guy make a fool of himself for...

... See that willpower in action as E@L resists falling in love.

~~~~~~~~~~~

E@L negotiates the gauntlet of hipsters (one has an oversize paperback copy of Chomsky On Anarchy in his hand) and moves down the aisle towards the back of Pellegrinis, to where the cakes are. Just to have a look. Old habits.

"What's that one?" he asks, just out of interest. E@L can only see the outside of it, thick, fruit on top.

"Almond cake. Apricot on top." Pause. "You want whipped cream?"

See his resolve, firm as a whipped cream, see his character come to the fore... No. Neither did E@L.

E@L sighs. Some charity, a book, and a cake with cream to go with that latte.

Awesome willpower, E@L.

~~~~~~~~~~~

E@L is in that hotel room of his, alone. The meal was excellent. His friends are good, talking about getting married in New Zealand. The Mieville book is good. The Grosz book is good. The cake and cream were good. Awesome latte of course.

He can't resist, and puts Bjork on the iPod...



... and smiles to himself.

E@L

Partayyyy!!! ZZzzzzzz...

The 15th year of being an expatriate hit E@L yesterday - yes April Fools Day, everybody laugh. But who is the joke on? E@L booked the pool-side BBQ area and called up 6 or 7 hundred of his most intimate friends of whom 6 or 7 turned up.

But now it's 4am and the departing guests seem to have left most of the worst parts of the evening on his dining room table.

E@L looks at BBQ cold cuts and the soggy salads and the plastic cups of - OMG what is that? These trays of snags and elaborately marinated chicken wings and spiced steaks; long anticipated soon forgotten points of Epicurean delicate essen, cooked to perfection under supremely challenging conditions in extreme situations (E@L has no hairs left on the back of his left hand). There were missing ingredients and lost sauces, but it all went down well enough one guesses. Nobody complained of not having enough chicken wings, hey! But there are the foggy times; the usual did I put my tongue into what, whom, when?...

More crucially, it's the odd "did-I-really-open-that?" bottles of vintage red, half drunk and even less appreciated, lying on their side.

What a fucking mess. Gin. Sprite. Tahini. Ugh.

Sigh.

The Aussie Rules football replay is finally finished and E@L staggers up to looks around. How to sort out this fuck train-wreck? Without his fall-back position - Call The Mouse! - he reaches for Bruce's Rules for Tidying Up Efficiently, viz:...

"If, within the next 24hrs, you are not going to drink it, eat it, or fuck it, throw it out."


~~~~~~~~~

Chin chin!

E@L

Moral Philosophy

"Look at the creep with the tattoos. What is he, Russian Mafia?"

"Probably."

"She's going to go with him if I don't make a move. Get your hands of her tits you arsehole."

"Don't tell me, tell him! Make your move for Christ's sake. I want to finish this beer and go back and see if Plan B is still there."

"The chubby Burmese? You like her?"

"She has a cute face."

"Whatever. I'm getting to know too much about you. Here she comes. Shut the fuck up now."

"Just pay the bar-fine, she has to go with you."

"You think I should? She's gorgeous. But, you know, will I respect myself in the morning?"

"I won't respect you if you don't take her, isn't that enough? Pay the bar-fine! Rescue her from the evil Russian white slaver. It's the moral thing to do."

"Hmm. I can feel a categorical imperative rising in my trousers."

"Do your duty, Superman. To deny your will to power is to deny yourself."

"Thanks Nietzche."

"Go you stupid Kant. Take the woman home!"

~~~~~~


E@L

Smell's Like...

Bangkok seems particularly noisome today.

Not just the usual gulley-trap-mephitic clouds steaming out at Soi Zero to whack you in the olfactories, but it's all up and down Sukhomvit. It's like the whole town has been cooking, it has a kitchen closeness. But there's something almost sulphurous baking in the unclean oven of the city. It's the bubbling traffic fumes and roiling dust, the sweating asphalt, the baking concrete, the balls-scratching listless soi-dogs, the stale breath of air turning on itself under the hot tarps of the footpath-market stalls, the farts and belches and bromhidrotic sandals of the sexpats in the Nana bars, the glistening people up close in the crowded Skytrain.

34° feels like 42°, says my weather app. Smells like 150°. Smells like...

Bangkok.

~~~~~~~~~~~


Some old photos.
E@L

I Am Epicurus - Fulda

E@L's friend The Bludger was having trouble with his Internet connection (his flat-mate had done something). The solution was at hand with the typical geek response to such issues: Turn everything OFF, wait for the electrons to sort themselves out and turn it all ON again. This, unsurprisingly to an experienced geek like The Bludger, worked perfectly and connectivity was restored.

Now E@L is in an hotel room in Penang.


(He was by the pool this afternoon. It'll do.)
He wants to watch the next few episodes of House Of Lies (soft corn-porn, Don Cheadle back in Boogie Nights, but definitely without the insecurity) so he took the DV > HDMI adapter and connected one end of the HMDI cable here and the other to the input of the room's TV. He expected the TV to take that digital video signals now streaming down the copper wires at the speed of electricity, to read its encoded Descartian matrix and to paste it, pixel by pixel across the LCD panel to show pretty much the same thing as the laptop was displaying, or an extended desktop to the right of it. The laptop recognized the TV (according to the Graphics page) but there was still nothing on the TV screen.


He was not as much of a geek, but still he tried The Bludger's methodology. E@L turned everything OFF and then ON. But this time, because it was E@L and not The Bludger, such an otherwise reliable maneouver failed. Nothing seemed to help him: plugging, replugging, shaking, fiddling (with the HDMI cable! You people!). He even started to play the video on the laptop and then sneak it across to the extended screen, which should be the TV. Maybe, he thought it will burst from nothingness into wonderful existence. Of course not.

Now listen: the SOUND of House of Lies ("ooh, aah! oh baby!") was coming from the TV, but no matter what he did, the TV would not display the video image.

Sigh. Why?

~~~~~~~~~~

Why do electronic/gadgety things screw up? Obviously people other than E@L have this problem. I recall someone, was it Benny Profane in V, having all sorts of issues with inanimate objects, which E@L does as well; dropped screws rolling into the most inaccessible places, toast and the butter-side, etc... ("...inanimate objects and he could not live in peace." Thomas Pynchon. V. (Kindle Locations 517-518). HarperCollins)

Why must semi-sentient things like electronic gadgets, computers, modems, TVs, etc..., things that are designed to behave according to the long established laws of physics, things the rely on the atomic forces like electricity and magnetism, why do they work perfectly well one minute and then go berserk the next? Why do attached parts not talk to other from the word Go? This is a deep and fundamental problem that has bedevilled those of us who get hit all the time by these vagaries of electrons and the unreliability of atoms in general. As I explained in my reply to his FB whinge:

Postventative maintenance, like turning a recalcitrant something OFF and then ON, may sometimes reset the local atomic structure of the universe in the vicinity of the electronic device(s) that is(are) not behaving according to Maxwell's suggestions or Faraday's guidelines, but Murphy's Law instead. There is nothing you can do beforehand, no PREventative attention that will ensure your laptop will talk to the projector. But you know the chances of it NOT talking to the projector correlate inversely to the product of the importance of the presentation, the importance of and the number of people in the audience.

Ah Jesus, why don't things work properly all the time? The wires are connected, the silicon chips are constructed correctly, the coal is being burned to heat the water to pressurized steam to drive the turbines to spin the magnets to induct the electrical potential to get it to the plug, which is turned ON at the outlet, and everything is fucking in its place... yet all is not right with the piece of shit gadget. The TV is blank. The Internet cannot be reached.

Jesus, electrons go in straight lines right? Just fucking GO, you negatively charged arseholes!

WHY?

~~~~~~~~~~~

The answer lies in the ancient Greek philosophy of Epicureanism. Yep, it's a Greek thing. Like defaulting on loans, buggering young lads, moving to Melbourne and cooking fish'a da chips. (Fish and chip shop were operated by chubby, surly Greek men with three day old five o'clock shadows and hairy fingers in Melbourne. The also ran the produce markets - great trouble ensued... Look it up.)

OK E@L, describe in simple sentences what you know of Epicureanism.

Let me tell about Epicureanism...

~~~~~~~~~~~

E@L purchased an intriguing book a while ago, and in his usual manner, set it aside. He only started reading it seriously after he listened to a recent podcast on Epicureanism on In Our Time with the awesomely well-read Melvyn Bragg last week.


Poggio Bracciolini was a particularly neat writer. Sr Mary Briga at St Margaret's would have given him heaven knows how many Holy Cards and gold stars - E@L recalls getting "the cuts" for something like getting more India ink on his shirt than on the page, that or being in a fight. He and a few other scribes practically invented readable script in transcribed books, something like modern italics. For this skill, and his sins (he had 14 children with his mistress), Poggio became enmeshed in the shifting gears of political/religious machinations which eventually saw him swing through the cogs to rise to a top job as a personal secretary (man it use to pay to be a neat writer) to Pope John XXIII . Now this is a classic case of "Choice of Pope - FAIL." See (as it were) The Great Schism which is where... oh, look it up.

The Swerve tells of how our medieval manuscript hunter (said Poggio) discovered a particularly precious text, serendipitously, while looking through the lonely, wind-swept, hilltop (setting the scene here) monasteries of medieval Europe, searching in their libraries for precious texts, proactively.

As the Renaissance just getting under-way, rich people, in particular because they had money and therefore time, and who considered themselves Humanists, became fascinated with the ancient world of Greece and Rome (well, many did, but not all could afford to do anything about it). Those ruins and jewels that the workers kept finding as they dug up the fields, those carved pillars and decorated and inscribed walls they had previously used for integration into their own buildings, such as retaining walls, and second-hand marble floors..., these were now Works Of Art, and Precious Treasures to be, you know, treasured.

Not only these statues and jewels, also the writings of the old philosophers, dramatists, critics, grammarians, historians, and accountants were fascinating to them. These texts offered a personal glimpse of a world not hidebound (as it were - leather-bound, like books, ha ha) by the strict Stoic/Platonic/weird/Religious ethos that had prevailed since the Dark Ages had commenced almost a thousand years before.


The Dark Ages offered only suffering in this world - self-flagellation was encouraged - and, after death, either even more heinous punishment or the faint hope of the glory sitting next to God. Just sitting. Boring! These rich people were not all that keen on the pain and suffering part, thank you very much, and were happy to hear of culture were you could relax, check out the amazing art, take a load off, chill and not suffer for eternity. While they followed the high-church in external demonstrations of faith, going to church, etc..., the Humanists were as close to modern atheists as you could get in those times. The fires of the hell did not worry them so much as the fires of their impending auto-da-fe. (See Nolan: Giordano Bruno The,) The confusion in the church - three popes for heaven's sake - didn't help.

Poggio must had been moderately well off himself after his escape from Pope John XXIII's ill-fated entourage in Constance (where he was deposed) and he was now free to get around Europe on the hunt for those forgotten manuscripts in the libraries of those monasteries. For most itinerant scholars and teachers at that time, wages were shite and they were continually on the look out for "patrons" to offer the ready, people we nowadays call Venture Capitalists. Poggio also had the advantage of being able offer those much-desired and ergo expensive texts to his rich Humanist, text-hungry patrons.

When he pulled a certain dusty codex (an early type book, more likely to have previously been copied and survived than a scroll) from its shelf, he saw that he had in his hands a long poem, written by a name he would have recognized. Then his heart must have skipped. Here was a jewel, he quickly realized. Not exactly Aristotle on Laughter (c.f The Name Of The Rose), but the complete (almost) and intact manuscript of a long poem which detailed the philosophy of Epicurus, and the author was Titus Lucretius Carus (Lucretius to you, folks) and the book called De Rerum Natura.


On. The. Nature. Of. Things.

E@L has had the recent translation (above) of De Rerum Natrua already in his library for a year or three. He had read up to halfway through Book II, until somehow he became distract... Oh look, every second woman in this hotel (Holiday Inn resort in Penang) is completely covered by their black or near black burkahs. How ridiculous in this heat!

That (the book, not the burkah) is the reason he grabbed The Swerve (not a really brilliant title, is it?) when he saw it in Singapore's awesome Kinokuniya (Khino-khun-ya) bookstore.

~~~~~~~~~~

Epicureanism started with the philosophy of Democritus, and it was 200 years later, that along came Epicurus himself to refine and popularise the core of Democritus. is ideas came down to us through many short quotations in other writers, critics and supporters (the great orator Cicero was one of the top critics) and in fragments from the damaged scrolls found under the ash of Herculaneum post the great eructation, sorry, eruption of Vesuvius. But mostly, certainly most elegantly, from that poem of Lucretius.

What are Epicureanism's main features? Glad you asked. E@L will endeavour to explain what he sort of gets. (There may be other things, and these things may be better catalogued and explained elsewhere, such as in The Swerve, in the podcast, in Wikipedia.)

a: Increase pleasure and decrease pain. (Not to excess though, that's Hedonism or Sybaritism. Unhealthy, unnecessary.) How hard can that concept be to grasp?


b: There is nothing after death, nothing to fear of damnation in the after-life. Chill.


c: There are no gods (are least there may as well not be, as they are obviously non-interventionist). Relax.


d: We are not the centre of the universe, which is infinitely large and it stands to reason, there must be many worlds like the Earth in it. It's not your fault the world was created. There is no pressure. You don't matter. Take a load off.



e: Nothing cannot come from nothing. Everything must have been somewhere else previously. Like Expats and beer.


f: If there is a god that ever did anything, it was Venus. She set the whole reproduction thing going and made it so damn nice to fuck. So lets fuck! (The end of Book IV** - you'll wet yourself laughing. Or get an erection.)


The opposite of all this was Stoicism advocated by the dour, proto-Calvinist, Zeno. Then Plato and Socrates. The world is ordered and pre-ordained; there are other, supernatural, things we cannot understand; death is something terrible; we are tossed on the sea of fate. Take it on the chin and try to be virtuous against the odds. Life is shit, deal. Sex is a duty, not a recreational pastime. Religion in a nutshell, right? But the key item in Epicureanism is...

g: The atomic theory. Indivisible small parts of the universe form which all things are constructed. A concept that goes back at least to Democritus. We are all made of the same things. Seed of things. Everywhere there are atoms, or if not, the void. Because if there was no void, atoms would not have anywhere to go, right?


Previously, they thought everything was made of a mixture the four "elements"

Democritus said fuck that patent bullshit. It's atoms!
Key point 1: As literally everything is made of atoms, the soul too must be made of atoms. And as things cannot be created or destroyed, atoms must move from one manifestation to another - today a person, tomorrow a tree - same atoms. As Joni Mitchell would say a millennium or two later, "We are starsdust, we are golden." When we die, the atoms of our souls dissipate. Puuufffff. No afterlife. No ghosts. No Heaven, no Hell. (Complete annihilation, yay!) Priests are full of it. It is safe to ignore their rantings and ravings.

Key point 2: This means that a wafer bread remains a wafer bread unless there is physical change, such as digestion, or toasting and a slathering of Vegemite. Bread cannot be The Body of Christ because the atoms haven't changed. It's still bread. Uh-oh. Catholicism is not going to like that.

Aside: There has a been a recent discovery of some court documents that appear to say that the real, suppressed, reason for Galileo's trial was actually his advocation of atomism (ergo, the above mentioned impossibility of trans-substantiation) and not only, perhaps not even principally, the heliocentric solar system of Copernicus. Lucretius also speaks about the uniform speed of falling objects, independent of their weight. Was Galileo an Epicurean*? Hello!!

But atoms you see, move. Makes sense: we move, everything is in motion. However. Democritus's atom concept had a flaw. Democritus said the atoms travel in straight lines. This meant that in a billiard ball scheme of the universe, those straight lines could be traced back to a first cause, and all the world stemmed from that. This implies that everything was preordained, predestined, from that first billiard ball bump. Didn't the Stoics and ensuing predestinators love this! They saw it, correctly, as a contradiction.


(This vid doesn't talk so much about atomism or predestination, but it's funny.)
The initial theory of Democritus implies (he didn't use this example) that if you plug an HDMI cable into a computer, the video image will appear on the TV that the other end is plugged into; that the modem will connect you to the Web; that the projector will present the powerful points of your stunning PowerPoint presentation.

But this is not the way of the world, obviously. So Epicurus said to the Stoics - "You didn't let Democritus finish!" It can't be that way, because, look around you, it just isn't. Things are different, even things that are almost the same.

Atoms, you see, do not travel in straight lines, for if they moved in straight lines, they would not bump together and if they did not bump together they would no be able to clump together and create complex structures like chocolate souffle, or the smell of crushed ants, or people. There is this random thing, patently because the world is essentially random (E@L deserves to be rich, but he is not, only moderately well-off) and because things, while many are alike, are different (scaly fish, herds of cattle, pack of wild beasts).

Philosophical Implication: We can choose to do this; we can choose to do that. The Stoics were wrong, as were the religions of the Dark Ages. There is no predestination. We can strive towards Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness! (Thomas Jackson was a self-proclaimed Epicurian - "... As you say of yourself, I TOO AM AN EPICUREAN. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us."


This random movement, let's call it a swerve or a wiggle accounts for these variations in form. Sometimes atoms swerve, just a little bit, for no apparent reason. (Negative and positive charges on the atomic particles hadn't quite been discovered at this time. Weak force, strong force, gravity force, mesons, yousons, Hogg's Bisons, etc... still to come. Still.) That's why things exist. That's why we cannot predicate what will happen next, that's why we may as well make do what we can to enjoy life, because we are here briefly, and just one time. (How's that for a rationalisation!)


The Swerve (sorta) in Thompson's and Rutherford's atomic models.
This is what Lucretius says about Epicirus's swerve:

Lightning crosses the skies from the rain clouds and its bolts
constantly strike downwards from their heights to the earth below.
And yet it cannot be altogether that simple, for atoms
as they are carried down from the void by their own weight
do not proceed in an absolutely unswerving line
but apparently must wiggle, swerving sometimes from their course
and changing their direction - for if they fell like raindrops
through the emptiness of space there would be no collisions,
no blows that they could exchange with one another, and therefore
no occasion for nature to produce more complex structures.
~~~~~~~~~

But this swerve of the atoms falling in the void, these slight variations in direction, not only do they disprove the existence of god and demonstrate the vast superiority of reason over superstition, they also stop the image from E@L's laptop getting to his TV.

They stop The Bludger's modems from letting him get to his favorite pron websites (and maybe his TV - I am not a perticularly interested where he plugs his HDMI).

Blame The Swerve. Blame...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

In associated news, at the Pub Quiz last week, a question came up about European war history and most/all of the people in the crowd were stumped. But we had within our motley crew a war-game fanatic, Big-T, a guy who likes to paint little soldiers and tanks and guns and re-fight this battle or that war-campaign. He is therefore something of an expert on the historical aspects blowing people up for fun and, more important, mostly, profit.

The question the quiz-master posed was something to do with the most likely site of a Russian tank invasion against NATO during the Cold War.

Anyone?

Not even a heartbeat from Big-T - "The Fulda Gap".

E@L has, naturlich, studied plenty of the various lumps and bumps (and gaps) of the human body in his past career of a person who stands next to a doctor during embarrassing examinations, though in the utmost of a professional manner, and he has only ever fantasized about the Fulda Gap. This particularly endearing anatomical quirk, which I believes is near the saxafragia-mitosa gland... then E@L realized his error! No E@L, it's not the ... It's...

Big-T was talking (softly, so the other teams wouldn't hear) of a geographical feature on the Rhone, a gap (duh!) which would be the where the Russian tanks would come... oh, look it up.


Fulda.

~~~~~~~~~~

Back to Lucretius...

Meanwhile, E@L's continued to read The Swerve, and followed with fascination as our good (and ugly) Poggio traveled through Europe in search of new (as in old, lost, forgotten) texts, unremembered, uncopied but as yet undiscarded , until he pulled a certain dusty codex (a book) from its shelf and saw the name of the author of a long poem he would have at most vaguely recognized it, Lucretius.

Guess what part of Germany Poggio was in?

He was in the Monastery of...


Fulda.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Swear to Epicurus - E@L had never heard of the place in his entire life, and now he had learned TWO new important facts about Fulda in the space of three days.***

Monday; never heard of it. Tuesday; pub quiz. Wednesday; The Swerve. Thursday; E@L is fucking expert!

E@L


* Galileo might have developed his proof of the uniform pull of gravity from Lucretius. Without friction, heavy objects fall just as fast as light objects - which is described by Lucretius beautifully in Book II - "Now if anyone supposes that heavier elements fall faster than lighter ones through the void ... he departs from logical thinking." Not counting resistance from things like water and air, he continues. I paraphrase.


** Get this, in David Slavitt's modern translation:

The erotic gymnastics of hookers are of no use here [in getting your wife pregnant]
for the whore's purpose is in giving the most pleasure while running
the least risk of getting herself knocked up. Blow jobs
and taking it up the ass are good for the working girls
in the brothels. Either way, they don't have to worry much
about the bother of having a child, and they drive men
crazy in ways our wives don't need to know about.
(Could have been written by Bruce.)


*** It was mentioned in the podcast, but that went over E@L's head.

Weight - The Carrying Thereof

~~~~~~~~~~~~

2006

I started a blog with a Singaporean buddy, PC (Paul), back in 2006 which was intended, well let me quote...


"This is intended to be a chronicle of gut-busting proportions.

Two generously proportioned Singapore based guys share their fun and frustration, ha ha, as they attempt to deny themselves one more helping of Chili Crab and enter the previously forbidden realms of puchasing off-the-shelf clothes,
ha fucking ha..."


I had already dropped a lot of Kgs to get to my best weight in many many years, in order to not look quite so morbidly obese for my high-school's 20th anniversary back in Geelong. For some unfortunate reason, my belly seems to be annoyingly non-participatory when it comes to getting it off. If and when I do lose weight, it preferentially comes of my legs and my arse. I have a dreadful fear of turning into a toffee apple - a fat bellied, shiny old perv with skinny legs and a skanky arse.

At the reunion, one of the guys, now taller and moderately trim, whom we considered in school to be a nerd and a chubby non-sportsman (but in retrospect was probably normal) said to me:

"E@L you've got so... fat!"

"Yes, thanks," I replied. "I have lost a lot recently. Thanks for noticing." Cunt.


9 February 2006


4 April 2006


9 May 2006
Well that didn't work out too well, did it?

~~~~~~~~~~~

2007

Start again?


4 April 2007

8 April 2007

11 April 2007
And...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

2008

This year mysteriously left blank.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

2009

Hmmmm. Tut tut, E@L.


14 December 2009 -

~~~~~~~~~~~~

2010


10 April 2010
~~~~~~~~~~~

2011


2 January 2011
Holy mother of shit! 10 days post Christmas and look at this! (I was above 130Kgs when I returned form Geelong, so 2kgs came off in just a few days/ No doubt that last shit helped a lot.)


5 February 2011


13 February 2011
~~~~~~~~~~~

2012

I had a horrible time skiing in Nagano, where the powder was waist deep in late January of this year (2012 I mean). Certainly I couldn't walk up in ski-gear to the lift and had to take the shuttle-bus for just one stop. I was exhausted after two runs and my muscles kept locking up in the most dangerous of situations... After day three when the weather set-in, that was it for the rest of the week, even when the sun came out. I was in the coffee-shop all day. I could only just make the slight walk up the hill to the onsen in the evening.

I decided that skiing next year (maybe Austria in 2013) was going to be different. 2012 was going to be the year of turning it around.


12 March 2012


21 April 2012
Was working hard at it: gym, swimming, smaller meals, greatly reduced alcohol* (let's not get silly), just chipping away. But not entirely comfortable in the chest department. GORD? Or the atrocious genes (terrible, don't ask about my family's cardiac history) making their sub-endothelial presence felt??


22 Jun 2012 -Woohoo! Broke the 115 barrier!
Not just walking, I was now doing 2min bursts of jogging on the treadmill interspersed with my incline and pace modulated walking, and I could easily jog for the bus now, or dash across the flashing-green-turns-red pedestrian crossing without getting short of breath, but there was that occasional and transient pinpoint of retrosternal annoyance...

So, I was a bit worried becasue I had a trip to Europe with Izzy et al coming up, and sought out a cardiologist (had to go third choice, everyone else was on leave) he sent me for a PET scan and stress test. Result? ... ALL CLEAR!

10 days later? I climb that high San Gimignano tower in the heat, feel that pinpoint grow, become like an enlarging spring winding up tighter and tighter. Heart attack, oops, I mean Angina Episode.


11 September 2012
Yep my strict regimen isn't all that strict and isn't all that effective. In fact I am concerned that too quick or too drastic a change in lifestyle will not be sustainable and will set me yo-yoing again, as the numbers above reveal.

~~~~~~~~~~~

2013


13 Mar 2013
Slowly. Essentially I have been on a moderately strict low-carb (in particular very low sugar and fruit juice - i.e. minimal fructose), low alcohol, protein rich, fibre-rich, normal/high fat Atkins-style Diet: low GI essentially. Note the minimal recidivism over the last 12 months. On this variation (recommended by another cardiologist, one of our clients), and on Lipitor and BP medication, last time I saw said cardiologist, he was concerned that my cholesterol was TOO low and that my blood pressure was TOO low. I just need to lose more weight, he said.

And today, I was accidentally dragged out to what turned out to be pre-St Patrick's Day drinks and, under protest, knocked back, as I said against every good intention, two delicious pints of creamy, chilled Guinness. I had started with soda water, but at $8 a pop (ha! Singapore!) my back-hairs bristled. I was not happy with my lack of resistance, though I fought off the puerile goading of my health-harmful friends ("Have another drink, ya big giiiiiiiirrrrl!" Because girls don't drink, do they, Evil K?) and, for a variety of other reasons as well, decided to head home.

I will wait until next week to weigh myself again and I see the cardiologist in a fortnight. Two Guinness, how pathetic am I? (You can read that two ways I think?)

~~~~~~~~~~~

Weight?

You've got to carry it a long time, trust me.


2:45 - 3:17
E@L

* Don't suppose any cares but my lower gastro-intestinal system seem to have developed something of an intolerance for alcohol as it passes through, red wine in particular.