Back to it

All the frantic rushing around to reach 500 posts is now out of the way, and many thanks to Don Cake for his contributions. If he's willing, I would love to collaborate more with him on future spewings. Let's hope so. Maybe a joint writing project, who knows?

So it's back to the grind now, trotting out glib generalisations as I wend my merry-ish way through this thing called life.

Apart from the lingering melancholy over the Euros drawing to a conclusion, and the depressing inevitability of England's poor play (I'm glad that many I've spoken to agree with me that Roy was a victim of player power in not bringing Rooney off) I am of course dumbfounded on an almost daily basis by the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the Coalition. Having just today finished the monumental Under the Dome by Stephen King, I can't help but draw comparisons between the insanity visited on a small town by a cataclysmic event over which the inhabitants have no control as described in the book, and the terrifying, slow, disorderly disintegration of the current world order caused by the financial crisis.

In short, and without wishing to issue any spoilers, the people in the town of Chester's Mill, Maine, in King's book become trapped under an impenetrable glass dome (King says that he had not seen the Simpsons Movie when he wrote the book, and I have no reason to doubt him. In any case, there are significant differences in both plot and tone) and the town slowly descends into anarchy and madness. King has said that the book is a commentary, or wide-ranging metaphor, for the mass hysteria in the US and around the world engendered by the 9-11 bombings, but it can be quite easily extended in my view to encompass the entire world as we now know it. The main difference really is that - even though a psychotic leader - Big Jim Rennie in Under the Dome is at least a leader. Which is more than can be said for the current bunch of losers.

What I like about King (and many decry him as too populist - a view with which I disagree. I don't tell those who sneer at me reading his books that I have also read parts of Finnegan's Wake) is that he stands up for the underdog. He doesn't like bullies, and they usually get what's coming to them, even if they do cause quite a bit of mayhem on the way. And of course, he has recently stood up against the Neocon loons by asking to be appropriately taxed. Amusingly, UTD has been described - due to its sheer size - as a quarter of a Proust, and I think that is how all books should now be measured. Lord of The Rings? Half a Proust. The Prophet? A sixty-fourth of a Proust. I love it.