The Big Takeover

It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far.

I just read this. Recommended for those of you who consider understanding business talk a quest akin to learning Arabic or Mandarin. Or those curious as to how it is we find ourselves having the dreams of our youth interrupted for two years because the global economy is having a Britney Spears-type breakdown, getting out of cabs without underwear and shaving its head, etc.

Now, as always with a good piece of writing, I have stalked the author and fallen in love. Hmmm Russia! Insulting the religion of my birth! A freelance writer. Oh, living on the edge. So dangerous, so mysterious.

Back to this though. You should read it. It’s a modern-day Machievillian tale and it’s a good read.

Orwell, the original blogger

I have loved George Orwell since my mother handed me a musty-smelling copy of “Animal Farm”, at age 10, and I read what I then thought was a farmyard fairytale about mean pigs.

“1984″ was responsible for a good portion of my nightmares during the year I turned 14, and my general approach to politics from then on.

It wasn’t until my early 20s I discovered, via a former love, Orwell’s “As I Please” opinion pieces originally published in the Tribune newspaper in the early 1940s. The flame fizzled with the boyfriend but George and I were still ooooooon.

Just this year, things got a little stalker-ish. I chanced upon a copy of a biography of Orwell’s — and I began to worry about the delight I gained from reading Orwell’s — who in real life always went by his real name, Eric Arthur Blair — personal diaries in the book. His journals are full of daily entries like “two eggs” (describing the number his chickens had laid for the day, and further evidence that exciting writers often have boring, placid lives). I thought I was the only sad nerd who’d dig this kind of stuff- until I found this — Eric’s diaries, now in blog form.