Nick Milne is pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Ottawa. In his spare time he writes gory musicals and walks around cities.
His old blog may be found here, his Facebook profile here, and e-mails may be directed to this address.
Samuel Johnson on Blogging
"To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practises on others: in conversation we naturally diffuse our thoughts, and in writing we contract them; method is the excellence of writing, and unconstraint the grace of conversation."
It’s actually hard to say what happened, but he sure feels like he’s a victim and now he’s suing to redress the damages:
They may not have realized it, but the folks who snapped up as much as $4-million worth of limited-edition prints by artist Takashi Murakami two years ago at the special Louis Vuitton boutique inside his exhibition at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art apparently were getting nicely mounted handbags — minus the snaps and straps.
At least one buyer, Clint Arthur, is steamed enough to have sued Louis Vuitton for fraud. “Louis Vuitton . . . knew that neither [Arthur] nor anyone else would pay $6,000″ if it was clear they were getting factory leftovers from handbag production[."]
Man, just stop buying art that could secretly be a handbag, or which could be mistaken for a handbag even when it wasn’t one. Just stop doing that in the first place. Problem solved.
When you’re dealing with Caravaggio, you’re not in any danger of suddenly discovering that what you thought was the Crucifixion of St. Andrew is actually a handbag. When you’re dealing with Bernini, you don’t have to worry that the Ecstasy of St. Theresa is actually just a small white square on a wall, or an empty pedestal, or some garbage a janitor swept into a corner and which was mistakenly roped off as an installation.
I like writing – I like it a great deal, in fact – but I don’t like doing it at exhausting length in a stuffy academic manner about subjects for which I care little. But I have to do that a lot for the next few days, so it’s just going to be more lame silence here.
Well, that’s just grousing, and not really fair. The subjects under consideration aren’t actually all that bad, and under other circumstances I’d be happy to work on them. It’s just that there are many things I’d rather be doing instead. I’d rather be blogging, or writing my groundbreaking article about Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, or finishing my blank verse monologue about Longinus at the crucifixion, or fleshing out episodes in my long-winded novel, or any number of other things.
It also transpires that I’ve got six weeks to read something like 3000 pages worth of material by and about Samuel Johnson, and then I’ll have to write about all that, too. It would be fair to say that this will be completely awesome, though, so I’m not too worried about it.
This morning I was greeted by a headline that the porn star, Marilyn Chambers (56), was found dead on Easter Sunday. Her obituary was written as if she had actually accomplished something.
That’s about what I had intended to say, too, if I said anything at all, though I’ll grant that even Dr. Beckwith’s appraisal is more polite than the “aging prostitute found dead” that would probably have appeared here.
Nevertheless, though her life was an appalling farrago of wickedness and stupidity, the grief felt at her passing by her friends and family is real. Christ died for her as much as He did for anyone. Pray for her repose; like the rest of it, she is surely in need of it.
I’m actually busy after taking a four-day weekend. Who would have thought? Oh well. I’ll get back to work on this eventually, but for the time being marking and term papers take precedent.
In the meantime I’ll pass along the good news from all-around raconteur and friend-of-this-blog: his daughter was born without complications and in the full bloom of health on April 7th. Both mother and child are resting comfortably. She already has a glorious mane of hair, which is curious for an infant, and her name… well, you’ll just have to click through to find out her name. It’s a miracle all its own.
[This is a pre-scheduled post; I am not making it in real time and will not be checking it until Monday]
More music. The first, in the grand tradition of stealing something more or less pagan and turning it to better purpose:
The second should need no introduction, and is fantastic inded (though I regret the audio is a bit low, and in mono, so do turn it up; the clip of it I had hoped to post has been deleted for terms of use violation [whatever]):
As with all things good, both clips start out slow and somber before erupting into the sort of glorious expression for which this very day is the template.
Happy Easter, everyone. Our Lord has conquered death and thrust its head beneath the waves.
[This post has been auto-scheduled; I'm not posting it in real time and won't be checking it for comments or anything until Monday]
Today is Good Friday. Rather than go on about something so grand and horrifying, and about which I am in no sense qualified to comment, I’ll just offer up one of my very favourite pieces of music:
It’s the first “Lacrimosa” from Zbigniew Preisner’s Requiem for my Friend. The Requiem itself is pretty good (though a trifle odd in parts), but the “Lacrimosa” ranks as one of the most heartbreaking ever composed. It’s short and to the point, unmarred by pretense or attempts at fanciness, and carries within it a more or less perfect progression from despair to furious resolve.
Lame as it is to say this, I’ll not be posting anything until after Easter. There are more important things to do, and today’s the day on which they start to crop up.
My automotive interlocutors will have to sit tight until then, unfortunately. See you Monday.
To the lamented and troubling losses of Cardinal Dulles, Fr. Neuhaus and Msgr. William Smith we may now add the passing of Fr. Stanley Jaki, OSB, the justly celebrated physicist and theologian. He died yesterday in Madrid following a heart attack.
Known as a leading thinker in areas at the boundary of theology and science, Jaki was awarded the Templeton Prize in 1987. He was cited for delineating “the importance of differences as well as similarities between science and religion, adding significant, balanced enlightenment to the field.”
He had traveled to Spain from Rome where he had lectured last week on his latest book at the Renaissance-era Casina (Garden House) of Pope Pius IV, headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, of which he was an honorary member since 1990. He was 84 years old.
My exposure to his work is mostly limited to some essays on religion and science and his excellent book, Chesterton: Seer of Science (1986), but I have heard from many that his work in all fields was wholly commendable.
Eric Scheske, to whom I don’t link nearly enough (that will change), has posted a substantial list of twenty essential works of non-fiction to assist in the formation of the robust Catholic intellect. He figures it as “The Top 20 Books I Want My Children to Read Before They’re 25 (or At Least 30),” but the formation of etc. is the practical result and the books could be profitably read by anyone.
Some highlights include:
2. A.D. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life. This is one of [Fr. James] Schall’s favorites. It teaches people, Schall writes in his The Life of the Mind (also recommended), “how to maintain their intellectual curiosity in a practical, effective manner throughout their lives.” Sertillanges teaches people how to read, write, and discipline their time and souls. Heady stuff.
[. . .]
13. Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being. These are the collected letters of Flannery O’Connor. They will give insight into writing, religion, and how to live.
[. . .]
15. Josef Pieper, Leisure, The Basis of Culture. This is a difficult book. It must be read slowly and carefully, but its message is indispensable: “Don’t be busy all the time. Take time to do nothing.” Pieper explains the reasons only as a first-rate philosopher can. Also highly recommended: A Guide to Thomas Aquinas, The Silence of St. Thomas, and the Pieper Anthology.
I like making lists myself, and will probably post more of them.
Yesterday I posted a hypothetical situation and asked for input. Only one brave reader was willing to take a somewhat firm position upon it (Thanks, Brian), with the rest apparently holding out on me until the full horror of the thing should be revealed. Now it shall be.
To recap:
Let’s say that some very clever men invent a machine. It will revolutionise the economy on all levels, from the personal to the national, allowing for the creation of enormous amounts of wealth and prosperity. Goods will become easier to acquire because of this machine, and the amount of work people can do in a given day, and how and where they can do it, will be significantly expanded. It will make life easier and more convenient for countless millions of people. It will have all sorts of cultural and commercial and aesthetic implications, and will, in addition to all of its financial benefits, be a source of great fun and interest to many. It will even help save lives, in some cases.
To do all of this, the machine requires that one person – man, woman, or child, it doesn’t especially matter which – be chosen at random and fed into its gears alive to be mangled and crushed. The machine runs on blood shed in agony, and nobody has yet discovered any way for it to work without it.
Is it worth it?
The fact is that this is not a hypothetical situation. We have this machine right now, here and everywhere. You probably have one yourself. As Godesalc rightly divined, the machine in question is the automobile.
The circumstances are the same, but it’s not one person slain in agony per year, but rather about 40,000 in North America alone (good news: the numbers were down a bit last year). They are not all chosen at random, certainly; a good deal of these deaths are the result of impaired driving or general incompetence (and a few even of malice), but actual drivers-as-responsible-agents account for only half of the fatalities on record. The other half is comprised of passengers, pedestrians and other unwitting bystanders. I have seen this unacceptable holocaust rationalized away on the strength of these deaths being “accidents,” and even at that being events about which all parties involved knew the risks going in. This may be so for the drivers, but it is not necessarily the case for passengers and is certainly not the case for pedestrians. I also have cause to question how “accidental” it all really is when the rate of death somehow contrives to remain steady year after year. It is certainly the case that no specific accident is necessarily predictable, but the accidents in aggregate are. We do this thing, every year, in the full and apparently satisfied knowledge that 40,000 people will die terrible deaths as a consequence of it.
There have been nearly half a million deaths due to automobiles in the last ten years in North America alone, and countless millions of injuries. Worldwide the number is much higher: roughly a million deaths per year. The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined measure up to only a fifth of this, and have the virtue of only having happened once. Cars account for 2% of all recorded fatalities - more than all cancers (not combined) other than that of the lungs. Cars are the leading cause of death among young people in Canada (one in five of all such fatalities). And it keeps going like this, too. At least the World Wars eventually ended.
But this is all okay! They’re useful for making money and they look awesome and driving is fun. And ambulances and firetrucks? What have you got against ambulances and firetrucks, Nick? Do you want people to die? Murderer!
Well, no, I don’t want people to die. That’s why I’m opposed to automobiles in principle. While admitting of the lives saved by ambulances and firetrucks, it is nevertheless the case that those benefits come at a pretty steep price – one, perhaps, that it is not worth paying. There are other non-lethal consequences of automobile culture that I plan to ennumerate later in a sort of manifesto, but for the moment I will simply say that inevitable and violent deaths are not all nullifiable as “accidents” simply because some of them happen accidentally, and the pointless death of even one innocent for our pleasure, convenience, and enrichment is a price too steep to be paid.
