15 Comments

Tropic of Capricorn.

Compare and contrast. Go...

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It's rather hard to chart the logic of the carousel without getting on one oneself, I think. Your essay left me a bit dizzy but I enjoyed all of the animals. I think I know where I am.

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Cheers, Carl.

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In my youth our version of your White Lightning was Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill. White lightning over here is what they call moonshine.

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I tried real moonshine once, well, the legal version. It was horrendous! I loved absinthe, though. I see why the Green Fairy laid waste to half of the Paris art scene back in the day.

I was hoping to splice a West Ham reference into today's piece. Alas, VAR ruined my plans.

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We would just mix Everclear with Kool-Aid but whatever. You were just a little more high class than us Chicago kids.

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Chicago. David Mamet! You're of good stock, Jennifer.

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Thanks, but I’m not there anymore. Love the people. Love my past, but Chicago is a shell of itself. I’m not being hyperbolic. Six generations gone. The “city that works” always did so despite its governance. Now that grift has taken over its unrecognizable and not coming back.

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The Clever People ruin everything they touch. Look at Paris...

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Yes. I have a 10-year-old daughter, one of 3, who has this totally romantic vision of Paris. My husband, who has visited there many times over the past decade knows what it has become. He says maybe we will go to south of France and that will be OK for her to visit but Paris will never be the same. I have never been and he says I will never really know what Paris was. And again I don’t think he’s being hyperbolic. I think that there has been some real changes there that are not going to be easily undone.

I lived in Seattle in the US for a few years 10 years ago and it is unrecognizable to me now. Something big is happening.

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The question is how long this all lasts.

By the looks of it, the Clever People's pet victims are deserting them, hence the daily psychodrama. Time will tell.

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At the risk of sounding like one of those sad middle aged fan girls, I must say I enjoy your posts enough to say, read part of it, take a break to jump in the pool we are at for holiday this Mother’s Day weekend, then return to read the rest. Just because I hate to get to the end of your insightfully truthful prose that I’m a little sad when it’s over and I want to stave that off as long as possible.

This Yank doesn’t know much of England, but my husband spent many years in both London and Marlow as an expat before we married and participated enthusiastically in the bar scene there. I imagine you saddled up at one of these bars, drink dangerously close to your laptop, (because you are such a maverick you!) luxuriously spewing irreverent insight to the masses. While I normally wouldn’t give advice contrary to care and concern for basic health, I do implore you...

Drink more.

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"social colonialism, extracting emotional and social profit from those they lavish with their compassion." thanks, i really needed this...

since the Elon freakout (unless it was the Rogan freakout, sorry hard to keep track) i keep reading these articles by various corporate journalists and other hall monitors who say more or less "[doing what I disagree with/disobeying the current thing] will harm the marginalized" in a writing style that reminds me of a ransom note.

who knew that the corporate class was the offical spokestheys of all "marginalized communities"?? do they really believe this? does anybody? it seems that self-flattering delusions are the last things still being manufactured in America.

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Indeed. Notice how they say 'democracy is at stake!'. They mean 'oligarchy'.

A kooky but interesting theory says history runs in seasons. We are in the Crisis Era. Perhaps this nonsense is about done. It's been a crisis since I was about 12.

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Thank you, Jennifer. I must be doing something right.

Writers used to drink and say what they actually thought, not what the pseuds approved of. See the king of British irreverence, Jeffrey Bernard. They don't make 'em like that anymore. He even had a play named after him.

As for Oxford Sour, it'll a lot more regular—even weekly—from now.

Cheers! 🍷

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