A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

It Isn't Over Till the Lady in the Yellow Pantsuit Sings

Yeah, I kinda wish Hillary would drop out gracefully, but mainly because I'm getting bored with this endless string of primaries. Certainly not because I think it's going to do any great damage to the Democrats once they finally settle on Obama (which given the numbers looks like a foregone conclusion). As usual, Kevin Drum has a lot of good, sensible things to say about the matter of a drawn-out, contentious struggle for the nomination. I'm certain we'll get nothing so sensible from my namesake about it.