POETRY CORNER
My being turns to smoke in the mad
strife
My being turns to smoke in the mad
strife
Of passions which have whirled me in their wake.
How miserably blind I was to take
This human span for almost-endless life.
What countless suns the boastful fancy forges
To gild this false existence as it flows,
But now my slave-like nature undergoes
The blasting havoc of a life of orgies.
Pleasures, my tyrant cronies, in
confusion,
Hurling you to the gulf of disillusion,
My thirsty soul no longer can be pent.
Before my light fails, grant, my God! that I,
(One moment saving what in years I spent),
Who knew not how to live, learn how to die!
—Roy Campbell
(Translation of Meu
ser evaporei na luta insana by Manuel
Bocage)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.18 p.m., September 15,
2004►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Hate oppression, but fear
the oppressed.
—V.S.
Naipaul
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.47 a.m., September 14,
2004►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
There is so much about this
presidency that we don’t know and may never learn.
Some of the most important questions are not even being
asked. How did they do it? How did eight or nine
neoconservatives who believed that a war in Iraq was the
answer to international terrorism get their way? How did
they redirect the government and rearrange long-standing
American priorities and policies with so much ease? How
did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press,
mislead the Congress and dominate the military? Is our
democracy that fragile?
—Seymour
Hersh
Kevin
Michael Grace, 9.04 a.m., September 13,
2004►
POETRY CORNER
Why did I dream of you last night?
Why did I dream of you last night?
Now morning is pushing back hair with grey light
Memories strike home, like slaps in the face;
Raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog
beyond the window.
So many things I had thought forgotten
Return to my mind with stranger pain:
—Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
Who left the house so many years ago.
—Philip Larkin
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.12 p.m., September 11,
2004►
FUN WITH DVD CAPTURE:
PATHS OF GLORY: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN DERBYSHIRE
"General Derbyshire, do you sincerely believe
there is 'nothing
particularly contemptible' about Bush
putting his re-election before the lives of American
soldiers?"
[Silence.]
"I apologize for not being entirely honest with
you. I apologize for not revealing my true feelings. I
apologize, sir, for not telling you sooner that you're a
degenerate Englishman."
"Colonel, you're a disappointment to me. You've
spoiled the keenness of your mind by wallowing in
sentimentality. You are an idealist, and I pity you as I
would the village idiot. We're fighting a war, a war the
Republicans have got to win. The Fallujah siege was just
six months before the election, so a few Marines had to
die in vain. Aside from the inescapable fact that
politics is the art of the possible, there's the
question of the troops's morale. These deaths will be a
perfect tonic for the entire division. There are few
things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating
than watching someone else die. Wherein have we done
wrong?"
"Because you don't know the answer to that
question, I pity you."
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.34 a.m., September 9,
2004►
GRATITUDE
Many thanks to all those that contributed to The
Ambler Preservation Fund. Enough was collected to keep
my household going for another couple of weeks, which is
about as best as could be hoped for. There will be no
further piteous appeals for some time, but anyone who
has a mind to can still donate via the PayPal button.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.47 p.m., September 8,
2004►
AN
URGENT PAYPAL APPEAL [DAY 10 OF 10]
I have been asked why The Ambler is moribund.
As goes KMG, so goes The Ambler. Updating this
site has of late been literally impossible. When I say
"literally," I mean I
haven't been able to afford Internet access.
I have written a number of freelance pieces but have
been paid for almost none. When the cheques will arrive
is anyone's guess. I am penniless, and the cupboards are
bare. When I say "penniless," I mean I
have $3.06 to my name; and when I say
"the cupboards are bare," I mean they are
pretty much empty of anything that can be eaten. The
patience of my long-suffering landlord is pretty much
exhausted, and my less-than-long-suffering utility
companies want money right now—or else.
As goes KMG, so goes The Ambler. I
need your help. I need you to click on the PayPal
donation button at the top right of this page. Please
send whatever you can. What do I offer in
return (besides gratitude)? A renewed dedication to this
site and to you, its readers. Looking back at what I've
written here over the last 21 months, I am pleased by
how much of it holds up. I was right about George W.
Bush and his lunatic
adventure in Iraq. I was right about the treachery
of Stephen Harper and his
"Conservative" Party. And I was right about Mark
Harding and what his conviction means:
the imminent proscription of orthodox Christianity in
Canada. How many others, particularly on the
"Right," can say the same?
So why am I poor, while pisseurs de copie like
David Frum and Mark Steyn are rich? It occurs to me I've
been going about this all wrong. Whatever possessed me
to believe that media organs dedicated to the
propagation of falsehood would throw money my way? Time
for me to stop kicking against the pricks. Eliminate the
middleman. Hunter Thompson put it best: "When the
going gets weird, the weird turn pro." But, hey, my
needs are modest: no personal ads, no bottled
testosterone, no "P'Town" pad. I'm not in the Andrew
Sullivan class...
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.17 a.m., August 28,
2004►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
"A lot of talk goes on
about ideas. I heard a popular singer at an arts
festival giving vent to his ideas about ideas. What was
wanted, he said, were ideas, not just skill with words.
Now, I challenge you to express any idea adequately
without skill with words. Words are ideas. That great
Gospel according to St. John opens: 'In the beginning
was the word.'"
—Muriel Spark, The
Finishing School
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.41 p.m., August 30, 2004►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
What is the
real issue in the wind power controversy? It is not just
a question of preserving beautiful landscapes. It is a
choice between a country fit for human beings to live in
and a country wholly devoted to material progress, where
what is still coyly described as "the
countryside" will be absorbed by industrial
developments.
What are
improved methods of generating electrical power—always
supposing that wind farms are among them, which seems
doubtful—for, apart for our comfort and convenience?
They are for
the manufacture of more and more superfluous gadgets and
more and more superfluous methods of communication and
moronic entertainment in order that our present demented
kind of life may grow indefinitely. In standing against
this horror, Prince
Charles is defying a power huge,
monstrous and even diabolical: the power once known as
Mammon.
—Peter
Simple
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.57 a.m., August 20,
2004►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Iraq never attacked us.
Iraq had nothing. It was obvious. The trouble we'd get
into during occupation was obvious. The lasting,
negative world reaction was obvious. A cost of hundreds
of billions of dollars was obvious. The notion that we
could make Iraq into a democracy was ridiculous. The
idea that democracy would be contagious in the Middle
East was obviously stupid—didn't work with Lebanon,
did it? The idea that a representative Arab democracy
would be friendly to the U.S., and, for Christ's sake,
Israel, was obviously stupid.
It is not easy to calmly
explain just how stupid this all is. If there was any
justice, our entire governing establishment would commit
seppuku.
As far as I can tell, nobody in the
Administration or Congress thought about this war as
seriously as I did when when buying a swamp cooler.
—Gregory
Cochran
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.54 p.m., August 16,
2004►
