Day: May 11, 2011

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Cheap (No, Really Cheap) Reads

A recent article on ebook sales led me to look up the 99¢ Amazon-priced “Donovan Creed” books self-published by John Locke. Compared to the $8-10 pricing for ebook editions with similar themes by “name” authors, the one I am now reading is probably priced appropriately. *heh* But then there are the absolutely hilarious things the author gets away with, like this:

I spent the next two hours running the perimeter of the Sensory Resources complex, which is far and away the most beautiful running course I’ve ever seen. I’d describe it in detail if I had the time, but I don’t.

I’m still laughing at that one. Most authors, having made the fist statement (“…most beautiful running course…”) would have felt compelled to actually describe the course. Not this guy. “Hey! I’m only charging 99¢ for the book. I’m not going to go to all the trouble to actually describe the thing! If readers want that kind of thing, let ’em read a book written by someone who gives a damn.”

The book’s just filled with that kind of backhanded, implied snark. Hilarious.

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The Way The Zero is “Leading…

..from behind,” (well, he and his co-conspirators in the current attempts to utterly destroy not just the U.S. but Western Civilization*) Shelley’s mordant observation about the hubris of egotistic “leaders” of (once) great civilizations may seem optimistic a century from now:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Hmmm, “Obamandias”?

*“Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide.” — James Burnham