Animals
Another reason to adopt a dog:
Challenge to Creativity
An African-English crossbreed wants to see movies based on Austen and Bronte novels featuring Black actors?
Maybe as extras who were not described, but when the novels linger over descriptions of Jane Eyre's fair hair and grey eyes, they don't make it easy for Black actresses to play Jane Eyre. But why should all the good stories feature White characters? In the 1990s a team of good comedy writers remade a lot of classic British novels, beginning with Emma, into a hilarious series about American high school kids. They intentionally discarded a lot but kept the general plot of each classic they mutilated. Why can't this Ms Flint adapt the general plots of Austen, Bronte, Thackeray, and other classic novels to stories about contemporary Londoners in the full rainbow of skin colors? The actress who looks most like Jane Eyre always was Jodie Foster, nobody else has ever been quite as good a match, but why can't there be a contemporary story about a low-paid teaching assistant who looks like Gabrielle Ryan, who rejects a rich divorcee, goes off to find herself, then comes back to her man as soon as he's properly widowed? Why not write it as well as Charlotte Bronte wrote her best known novel, with insights into special education, the hazards of better paid jobs, the functional polygamy of "blended families," and more? Why worry about spoiling the story by "bringing the focus away from then...back to now" when you can have the focus on "now" in the first place? Shakespeare was not above remaking older stories to suit the new stage technology of his day, so why should today's writers and critics be?
Photo of Gabrielle Ryan from IMDB.
Economy
Headlines are full of this administration's vindictive attacks on people in past administrations. Fauci deserves lawsuits and, if Obama had anything to do with the murderous attack Gabbard survived, he may belong in prison, but this is not what we elected this administration to do. Focus on task, Trump.
Ganked from Messy Mimi.
Now, this is more like it. I don't know when or whether it happened, but this kind of thing is a small step toward restoring The Economy and reviving the badly damaged, if not completely "broken," spirit of the community.
Etiquette
The rhymes in English are mine; the original proverb was an ancient Roman tradition:
Some critics are like lions:
they boldly face the King
and roar whene'er His Majesty
has done a foolish thing;
And some are like a mangy dog
that barks to scare a child
but fawns on men or women
with manners meek and mild;
And some are like a loathly worm
that dares not raise its head
to any thing that lives and moves,
but only bites the dead.
Ozzy Osbourne was deliberately controversial all his life. He was a contrarian. His best known band's name and most of its best known songs were deliberate bids for attention, made by annoying his Seventh-Day Adventist family. People had sixty years to bash his public life and work, and Ozzy probably liked the attention when they did.
But, not saying anything about his politics while the man was alive, but waiting to pick quarrels with them until he was dead?
Not even to mention that the political statement in question happened to be a matter of loyalty to his wife?
Well, rest in peace, Ozzy...I never was a fan. I remember Black Sabbath records as unwelcome background noise from a painful season. But the worms? May all the nastiness they spew blow right back onto them.
The week when someone dies is the time to remember the good things about the person, and mourn with the bereaved family, if you can. If you can't, it's the time to be quiet.
Politics, Philosophy of
Thoughts to ponder...I'm not sure that history provides enough facts to support a conclusion.
Substack
First poem launched. If enough people subscribe to the Substack (the first 50 subscriptions are free) Bad Poetry will continue to appear regularly, both here and there.
Lots of interesting things but I really like the story about the hot dog police!
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