22nd of June, 2004 POST·MERIDIEM 02:21
In the course of reading a big stack of material that I bought a few weeks
ago, I came across a potted biography of Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania
Quaker who, as well as being the first US citizen in Afghanistan, managed to
get himself the title of Prince of Ghor, apparently a remote region in that
country. Rudyard Kipling based his “Man who would be King” on this Yankee,
and there’s a recent book came out describing what he did. Think I’ll buy
it, when I get paid next.
The US embassy in New Delhi has a summary of his life online, at
http://usembassy.state.gov/posts/in1/wwwhsp_0403.html . Have a look, if
you’re into anachronism and improbable travel stories.
16th of June, 2004 ANTE·MERIDIEM 10:14
Nice quotation:
“New College, Oxford, is of rather late foundations, hence the name. It was
founded around the late 14th century. It has, like other colleges, a great
dining hall with big oak beams across the top, yes? These might be two feet
square, forty-five feet long.
A century ago, so I am told, some busy entomologist, went up into the roof
of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams and found that
they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met
in some dismay, because where would they get beams of that calibre nowadays?
One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might
be on College lands some oak. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land
scattered across the country. So they called in the College Forester, who of
course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him
about oaks.
And he pulled his forelock and said, ”Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d
be askin’.“
Upon further enquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a
grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dinning hall when
they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This
plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for five hundred
years. ’Your don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.’
A nice story. That’s the way to run a culture.”
— from http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/2004/june/howwebsites .
15th of June, 2004 ANTE·MERIDIEM 10:04
Studio Canal made a version of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974, with
Albert Finney as the inescapable ’ercule. Watched it last night, and I was
dead impressed; Finney seems to be hamming it up mightily, and enjoying it,
while avoiding the stuff that didn’t work for Peter Ustinov (disrespect for
the role, conviction that “he’s better than this”—yeah, he was, but that
does kill a role) and David Suchet (general enchantment with the British
Army, though that will have been the writers more than him).
14th of June, 2004 ANTE·MERIDIEM 09:09
In some aspects of my life I feel lately like every social skill I’ve ever
had has drained out of me, that I’ve been talking for the last fifteen
minutes in a high-pitched voice on ideas and theses about which my
interlocutors have no reason to know or care. Not so good.
Does anyone have any horror stories or endorsements of MBNA’s credit card
service? They seem to have the best interest rates in the country, and I’m
in the process of applying for one to replace my BoI Visa card. I won’t
write you out the story of my issues with the latter, because it’s a
beautiful day and I feel like tuning out feelings of hatred at faceless
corporations and the world in general.
