Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 03/06/08

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

Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Merc in the Murk

Michael Bazeley, a former Mercury News staffer, has a perceptive comment on the state of the newspaper. Tomorrow is Black Friday, when another round of layoffs take place, and my friends there will be sitting by their phones waiting to hear whether they've been cut. Sad times.

So Many Thoughts, So Little Time

Tuesday's primary turned out to be the Groundhog Day primary: Obama saw his shadow, which means seven more weeks of campaigning.

McCain at the White House: Whatever was Bush on yesterday? Or has he gone bipolar? Tap-dancing for the reporters, interrupting McCain, generally acting loony. Or maybe he's just realized that he wants to be gone from the White House as much as we want him gone.

My one hope for McCain, and it's admittedly a weak one, is that he might rescue the Republican party from its current role as the Whatever It Is (i.e., taxes, regulation, an equitable energy policy, universal health care, a solution to global warming, gay rights, abortion, habeas corpus, an impartial judicial branch) We're Against It And If We Really Don't Like It (i.e., Iraq, Iran) We'll Go To War With It party. But as I say, I don't hold out much hope.

Update: Somebody else thought of that first joke, too.