The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Jonathan Edelstein:

I don't speak Spanish, and for a long time I thought that "El Caudillo" meant "The Little Tail" ... I really should have known that Franco could never be that humorous about himself.

No, his sense of humor wasn't nearly as good as Caligula's.

#29

That remark was just wishful thinking. The neocons really want Franco back in the worst way, and I mean that in all possible readings.

Franco never held the title of "president," though, and his Spain wasn't a republic. If Reagan had really wanted to hark back to the days, he would have toasted el jefe de estado.

By Stuyvesant his sword was banned
Who would expel his nation;
Upon the wall he made his stand:
Conscription, liberation.

Hmmm. One Bush to rule them all, one Bush to bind them, one Bush to bomb them all and leave the dust behind them?

Any bets on how long until the first Katrina 419-style emails?

I haven't seen Katrina 419s yet, but the fake-charity appeals started coming two or three days after the storm hit.

At any rate, 419s have been diversifying for years, and they usually follow political crises fairly closely. I got a Yukos 419 this morning, for instance.

TexAnne:

g and Jonathan: Heck! I beg your pardon.

Not mine. You got there before me; I was the third one to do Shelley, so I need to beg your pardon.

Jonathan Edelstein, 12.48: Shelley, Ozymandias, again :-).

Oh, hell, I missed your earlier effort. Hopefully this will make up for it:

***

Do you remember a Ploy,
Mariam?
Do you remember a Ploy?
And the spamming and the scamming
And the evidence damning
That the stash of cash that you did flash
Was a chimera meant to ensnare?
And the barks of the marks that you kept in the dark
(While for their wealth you went on to harry 'em?)
Do you remember the Bait,
Mariam?
Do you remember the Bait?
And the barks of the marks that you kept in the dark
Who never got a penny
And you weren't giving any
And they wouldn't find out 'til too late?
And the ching! kaching!
And ding
Of the till as they wired and mired
In your mails defrauding,
Lauding,
Gauding,
Luring and marauding,
Sucking 'em in with a sham
Flim and flam,
As you raked it all in at your lair!
Do you remember a Scam?
Mariam?
Do you remember a Scam?

Never more,
Mariam,
Never more.
Other dead strongmen's lore
Has put you in the bottom drawer.
These days
Scam-mailers pick Taylor or some other trailer
To sign
To make sure the marks' money strays,
These days;
But the fraud
Will never stop coursing abroad.

I met a widow in a tropic land
Who said, "Three million U.S. dollars (cash),
Yours for the asking if you lend a hand
And help me to expatriate my stash.
Long is the story. Once I was a queen;
A nation's wealth was at my consort's call,
But then the folk desir'd a change of scene,
And I into this durance vile did fall."
And so I helped her. How could I not be moved?
Look on her fall from might, and not despair?
Alas! I should have taken greater care.
My credit and my faith she did betray;
My savings, coffers, trust accounts are bare,
And faithless laughter sounds from far away.

One more suggestion: If you can find a copy of James H. Schmitz' Witches of Karres, pick it up. It's whimsical, which usually isn't my speed, but it's rich, intelligent and imaginative whimsy and a hell of a good story.

And a warning: If you read the Dune series and like it, resist all temptation to buy any of the god-awful prequels by Brian Herbert. They're so bad they'll actually spoil the original series for you retroactively. If you want some intelligent Dune backstory, hunt up a copy of the Dune Encyclopedia; it may not be "canon," but it captures the depth and baroqueness of Frank Herbert's universe.

I'll add another vote for Bujold's Vorkosigan books, which have the most compelling moral vision of any SF I've ever read, and for Le Guin's Earthsea series. Frank Herbert and George R.R. Martin too, but only their short stories.

A few that nobody has mentioned yet: Samuel Delany's Dhalgren (which I've read six times), Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and nearly anything by Avram Davidson.

5. schlimiel

It's usually transliterated "schlemiel," although one could argue (rightly) that one phonetic transliteration from a language that doesn't use the Roman alphabet is as good as any other.

In any event, "absquatulate," "retromingent," "sesquipedalian" and "effulgent" should top the list.

JvP: I think you need a "Doom, Doom, Doomlay doom!" in the Vachel Lindsay.

Oh, hell, I'm late to the party. Here's mine, although it might be a little too close to the original:

Then the ancient Bombadillo
Made this answer to the grey-cloak:
"Know I well the source of elfkind,
Know the origin of mankind;
I can tell how souls are fashioned.
Varda is the first of mothers,
Eldar are the oldest brothers,
And the Khazad second brothers,
And the youngest brothers, Edain;
Eru is the first creator.
Eru, maker of the heavens,
Cut apart the air and water,
Ere were born the lamps of Arda.

A few thoughts on the alleged Israel-Abu Ghraib connection:

I'd be very wary of drawing conclusions from mere similarity of techniques, for two reasons. First, Israeli interrogation techniques have been very widely publicized in the context of news articles, human rights reports and court challenges, so it's possible to learn those techniques without meeting any Israelis. Second, and more to the point, most of the "Israeli" techniques in question weren't really invented by Israel. The unfortunate fact is that humanity has thousands of years' experience in developing torture techniques, and the same themes have been repeated by many, many governments and non-state actors. Many of the techniques listed above - e.g., beatings, sleep deprivation, verbal threats and humiliation, shackling in uncomfortable positions, similated sexual abuse, solitary confinement - are Torture 101 and are practiced by nearly every country that uses torture. I don't for a minute intend to give Israel a pass on its use of torture, but stamping these techniques "made in Israel" strikes me as disingenuous.

There may in fact turn out to be an Israeli vector, either through indirect copying of techniques or through use of Israeli-trained contractors to conduct interrogations. There are also likely to be many other, more important vectors - South African mercs, British soldiers with Northern Ireland experience, Central Americans, CIA, School of the Americas. The moral fiasco that is Abu Ghraib didn't come from one place, and I'm dismayed (although not surprised) that many are rushing to attribute it to one country.

A solider needs to know the Geneva Convention for his or her own safety - it is a core part of basic training in the UK, as I imagine it is in the USA - so the denials of responsibility sound childish and naive.

Actually, to the best of my recollection from boot camp, the Geneva Convention is not a part of basic training in the United States. From what I understand, it is part of the training kit for combat and MP specialties, but its delivery in boot camp depends on the individual instructor. Hopefully, better law-of-war training will be one of the reforms that follows from this atrocity.

The nominations are all well deserved.

Kiryat Joel has its own problems, as a theocratic township, but I’ve not heard any allegations of systematic child abuse anything like what’s being reported about Short Creek. It would probably be at least polite not to suggest that people are handing out teenage girls like party favors, and driving unwanted boys away without at least some supporting evidence

Sorry, I was being unclear. I didn't mean to suggest that child abuse was common in Kiryas Joel, only that the methods of social control there (including enforced isolation and resource monopolies) were similar to those used in the FLDS communities.

Why am I getting echoes of Kiryas Joel? (See letter of Samuel Rabinove; see also here.)

The demarcation for "present", in BP is 1950.

Are we living After the Present, then? Gives a whole new meaning to the term "postmodern..."

As for the dictionary, maybe it could be the basis of a Modern Sumerian revival, much as occurred with Hebrew. Modern Sumerian, the unifying tongue of a glorious reborn Iraq, would need a word for "chocolate," not to mention "television," "internet" and "information minister."

CD, would an Anne Frank's Diary story be fanfic or simply historical fiction? The essence of fanfic (at least as I understand it) is borrowing someone else's world; Anne Frank, unfortunately, lived in our own. Diaries have been used as source material in plenty of historical fiction, and I'm not sure that Anne Frank having a published diary is sufficient to turn derivative works into fanfic.

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