How do I stir up the Cambridge Philosophy budget scoffers?

Lola:-

The ones you think are about to take over (fat chance) and spoil all the fun.

I like my local stiffioes.All I ever sought from ladies was eagerness.I don't believe in seduction.

The educated,intellectual Englishman's idea of the perfect woman is a nymphomaniac who owns a pub.Looks are not that important providing there are no unfortunate conditions.

I showed up here,to repeat,because I was bored at work due to a seasonal dip in activity.Now I am almost addicted but only because of you.If you go I would be much less interested.I hardly know how to work this thing.As soon as anything goes wrong I step to one side and my minions fix it.They roll their eyes a bit but that's nothing is it?

So, you're the boss?

Only in an easy-going lighthearted way.

Nothing really matters much
It's doom alone that counts.

I don't pull rank.

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.


Are you sure you don't pull rank?

Lola:-

Pulling rank means using seniority to make things go the way you want irrespective of sense.I don't do that.I listen and if they make sense I bow.I get the impression that Mr Bush does roughly the same.

Lola:-

Beauty does walk a razor's edge.Salammbo is a case in point.It teeters on the edge of sublimity and ridiculousness.Flaubert looks like a high-wire performer who specialises in amusing by forever looking like he's about to fall off.

I know what pulling rank means, thank you very much. And your impression of Mr. Bush and his management style is 180 degrees wrong. As far as I can tell, Bush is a puppet and he says what he's told to say just like all the other political operatives for the Republican party. He can't pull rank because he's not the boss. Further, if he were, he would pull rank, there's nothing open about his mind.

That said, how are you this morning, Spendius? I'm looking forward to a Salammbo thread. However, I'm fairly ignorant when it comes to literary analysis. I'm sure you and Francis and maybe georgeob (if he wants) and maaaaaaybe the MG and Setanta, if he's interested will be able to teach me what I don't know. Will it be a closed thread? I don't know if we can still do that, but I think we can.

Lola:-

Great really all things considered.And you?

Well-you know more about American politics than I do I suppose so I'll take your word for it.That's magnanimity eh?

I'm not in favour of a "closed thread" if it means what it sounds like it means.

There's no about to about it. They have taken over. They now have the courts in their pockets. So they have the media, the courts, the Congress and the White House, they're working on the schools, Public Broadcasting, state legislatures and governors, school boards, the Republican Party, and on and on. And the spoiling of the fun has only just begun. It can get a lot worse.

I agree about the openness of the thread. But you guys have to promise not to fight and I will too. The last thread about a classic work (King Lear) I participated in ended up in a big brawl. And yes, you don't pull rank, I can see that. Thank you.

Lola:-

Yes but we hold all the aces.

OK, but you still have to promise to be reasonably polite. Some of us are high strung and shouldn't be provoked. Remember you don't pull rank. .

Lola:-

I would say,from a disinterested point of view,that I am quite polite compared with a number of others.

I hadn't realised that you were highly strung.I will use a softer plectrum.

In general I don't think being highly strung is a good thing.Mainly for health reasons.A careful reading of Salammbo ought to provide a reader with a cure.In the situations described a high degree of nervous tension is quite justified but in the situations most of us are in-well.Or,at least,the situations I think most of us are in.There would be no excuse for me being highly strung.It's a bed of roses here.I have to bet to even feel a glimmer.

Lola:-

On the "separation" thread Setty has just called Foxy a "liar".

Now that is impolite.It also demonstrates Setty's limited word store."Economical with the truth" is bad enough as, Mr Armstrong discovered, but I wouldn't even stoop to that.

I pull rank all the time.

A wonderful line I learned in school - from a Jesuit to who had just given me three nights in JUG (detention = Justice Under God) for talking in class who, after hearing my impassioned appeal after class that I had not actually spoken and that the punishment was therefore unjust, said to me "O'Brien, you didn't get justice, you got the law. The law is, at best, a reasonable approximation of justice."

"How can you say that,?" I asked plaintively. Then the punch line -- "O'Brien, I have just a little bit of authority in the world, and that only in the classroom. You will learn, as you get more experience, that there's no point in having a little bit of authority unless you are prepared occasionally to use it arbitrarily." At once I understood and sulked off to JUG. (The JUG assignment that night was to memorize Service's "Shooting of Dan McGrew" - I remember it still.)

Variations of this line came in handily in the Navy - particularly useful with unruly Lieutenants.

george......you are a naughty too.

I wasn't referring to myself.

Sorry I disappeared this morning. I got busy on a post to the separation of church and state thread (which is now history.........closed, too bad) and when I got it ready, I couldn't post it since it had been closed.

I'm travelling tomorrow and will probably be very busy until Sunday afternoon. So Monday will be the first time I'm back.

See you later. Tootle loo

George:-

He should have doubled your punishment for arguing.A strict lady would have.

Bron Waugh told a story about the headmaster at Eton (he went to Downside) who made his wife and children get under a tarpaulin on the front lawn and he beat the bumps with a stick.He said it was to teach them that there is no justice in this world.

I think he welcomed the opportunity to deliver the 'arbitrary use of authority' line - He walked away laughing. Irony was one of their principal rhetorical tools.

Was the Eton headmaster copying the "Wee Cooper o'Fyfe" in the old Scottish song?

George:-

Don't know.Bron told the story.