johnny9fingers: (Default)
Yesterday I posted a bit of satire written by a remarkably prescient lady in Massachusetts.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/17/donald-trump-greenland-purchase-denmark

Which was written as a response from a tweet from Trump about considering it, in the way he does.

(Now the Graun appears to have pulled this piece of satire and purged it from its site. What goes on here? [edit] And now it's back. Weird, eh?)

Today we get this:

www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/18/trump-considering-buying-greenland

It is now evident that some sort of satire/reality accelerator loop has been imposed on us. If this is one giant simulacrum the folk running it have some issues they need to sort out; it's a bit of a shame they have to use us to do so though. Oh to be a mouse in a different maze, hey?
johnny9fingers: (Default)
That everyone should see it:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/17/donald-trump-greenland-purchase-denmark

It is good old-fashioned satire of an undemanding sort from one of our American cousins based in Massachusetts. And pitched exquisitely... using that particular er, um, bluntness employed by its subject. The details make it beautiful.
johnny9fingers: (Default)
Christoper Booker has died:

www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jul/04/christopher-booker-obituary

The original Private Eye editor. He ended up becoming an irresponsible controversialist, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. After decades of complaining about the EEC/EU in his last published column in the Torygraph he issued a kind of apologia:

Even those few of us who have been trying to explain the unrecognised realities of our situation since long before the referendum could not have predicted quite what a catastrophic mess we would end up with … By ripping us out of the incredibly complex system that had so tightly integrated our economy with the rest of the EU we were putting at risk not just a large part of our currently frictionless export trade with the EU itself which provides an eighth of our national income, we were also risking much of our trade with other countries across the world.”

Actually, some of us, younger and supposedly less wise, predicted exactly this catastrophic mess.

johnny9fingers: (Default)
This debate I've been having about language has got me thinking.
It started from a piece of Hyperbole I'd written, attempting to address what I took to be an irritant.
Hyperbole has a place in classical satire, but my young debater may have a point.
If some writing of mine looks laboured, then it fails the test of its purpose. Context is all, I suppose, and there's no point playing to the bandstand, especially with something as light-hearted as a tease.

The Romans thought Satire was their own invention, with no precursors (though the only ones they would have accepted would have been Greek). The Celts had a tradition of Satire and were around at the same time as the Romans. I often wonder if their concepts of satire happended independently, or if one influenced the other. One problem being a lack of written Gaelic from before CE 6th Century. The other being that Satire was the only thing the Romans didn't appropriate from the Greeks, and of which they were justly proud.
I suppose that we all suit our style according to context: 'twould be inappropriate to address a funeral in jocular terms (but not always); Best man stories about sleeping with the Bride (or Groom) are, in general, in poor taste; P T Barnum like hyperbole doesn't suit...well this is the problem - hyperbole suits the times (O Tempora, O Mores). In fact, monosyllabic hyperbole (if that's not oxymoronic) seems right in tune with present culture. Say it simple and say it loud. With added Emphasis and the magniloquence of jargon. Which is essentially my debater's point, it's just a pity he chose me upon whom to make it plain.
The Greeks had a word for emphasis through understatement: I think it is meiosis or litotes? but my memory of the little Greek I learnt has faded beyond recall.
I think adudeabides is probably allright, actually. But I'll still hold him to explain himself - mainly because I am an old and curmudgeonly and spiteful old Hector.

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