Daily Office:
Tuesday
Morning
¶ Sore Bear: You can cluck and tsk all you like, but Russia’s invasion of Georgia is driven by very high-octane belligerence, distilled from humiliated pride. Ideology not only has nothing to do with the case on the Russian side, but is empty rhetoric in the mouths of Westerners who preach that duly elected democracies are blah blah blah. The foolish expansion of NATO has finally met with Vladimir Putin’s freeze-dried resistance.
Noon
¶ Lunch: Nom de Plume asked me if I was free for lunch, and Migs asked what I’d be having. Here’s an idea!
Night
¶ Nada: Hey, it’s August. Nothing is going on — niente. That’s why God (in the person of E L Kersten, PhD) invented Despair.com, which, as my friend George wrote to tell me, has changed its Web site a lot since the last time we visited.
Oremus…
Morning, cont’d
§ Sore. And not a peep out of you unless you’ve read James H Billington‘s The Icon and the Axe — and there you are! This classic study of Russian history is out of print! Way to go, Merka!
Noon, cont’d
§ Lunch. Beans in a sandwich. Hmph. A Euro thing, I suppose. At the Park Hyatt in Paris five years ago, I was served, as a club sandwich, something with fava beans and sprouts in it. Quite curious.
Night, cont’d
§ Nada. Come to think of it, a reference to Despair.com is all that Ed Park’s Personal Days is missing. I swallowed the book whole on Sunday, and almost got round to writing it up today. Instead, I wrote up a lot of other stuff. I was still writing when Kathleen called to say that she’d definitely be home at 8:30. 8:30! And when did she walk in? 8:28! Hey, it’s August!
Not only is Russia totally uninteretsed in the impotent West (oh, Mr. Putin, you bad boy but we love your oil), but anyone who thought that the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, in fact the whole Olympics, were anything else than a grand ‘Fuck You’ to the West did not see the show as I did….I am an old bastard and doubt I will see the end of the West’s power but it is coming.
On another note, anyone coming to London who has not seen the Churchill Museum, which is now part of the War Rooms, is missing an extraordinary exhibit….it complemented perfectly my trip to Normandy last Fall.