Macaronic McCarthy

Or a fragmentary synopsis of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West derived from some of the English and Spanish words I had to look up:

bistre; chine; tang; jornada; jacal; pritchel; frizzen; bungstarter; vadose; vernier sight; lobo; sotol; tapadero; felloe; duledge; monocline; kerf; rebozo; almagre; carreta; escopeta; legbail; pauldron; ocotillo; squail; weskit; sutler; garrafa; quena; bedight; Anareta; campesino; malabarista; azotea; pyrolatrous; ossature; cresset; querent; parfleche; madstone; buskin; apishamore; tlaco; surbate; quirt; mare imbrium; lanneret; cantle; aguardiente; clackdish; ambuscado; cuartel; calculus; huarache; vidette; duff; malpais; mochila; acequias; kiva; stob; spancel; hogan.

Don't Try This At Home

When untrained amateurs try to do it, we call it "pulling a face." But when executed by professionals, it's simply...acting, dear boy.

Bloggers and Journos

Apparently, the Irish Times's house seer John Waters believes the Intertube and bloggers are contributing factors in the Decline of West. Perhaps that explains why www.johnwaters.ie (featuring a fetching pic of Mr Waters in full-bearded "Iron John" mode) will forever be "coming soon".

But pace Waters's opinion of the emptiness of bloggers' "discourse," can I argue that the very "bittiness" of the medium can, sometimes, be its saving grace? For example, if a blogger wishes to tip his hat to some work of art that took his fancy, a simple link to a site or an embedded YouTube vid is sometimes sufficient to spread the word. Extended meditations can be reserved for when the blogger feels something unique (or least unique in her eyes) is bubbling up in the ole brain-pan.

In contrast, "professional" journalists are obliged to produce a simulacrum of engaged criticism even when the subject at hand might not quite reach the lofty benchmarks set by the writer's inflated prose. Take, for example, the work of Heath Ledger. It's a sad case: the shockingly young death of a talented person who appeared in one superlative picture. Most bloggers who noted the death offered a YouTube clip or a few words in praise for certain performances. And perhaps that's all that can really be said at this point. The very fact that the man died so young (28)--and will not now have the chance to build a major body of work--means that lengthy eulogies coming from anyone other than those who knew him well sound as jarring as an Oscar speech at a graveside.

Take, for example, Joe Queenan's gushing paean that appeared in today's Guardian. Queenan is usually a reliably entertaining hack, with a finely tuned bullshit detector. But tasked with producing a 1700-word obit piece, Queenan swamps Ledger's reputation with comments that seem plain wrong at best, and distasteful at worst:

Viz:

"[M]iddle-aged people do not instinctively resent young actors in the way they resent young musicians or young athletes. It is a natural human instinct to want gifted young people to succeed, because talent should be rewarded. But there is even more of a desire to see the young and the gifted succeed if they are charismatic and fabulous-looking, which movie stars usually are and athletes and musicians often are not." Er, really?

"When an actor dies young, it is almost as if one's own child had passed away." I bloody well think not.

"When an actor dies young, there is more cultural fallout than when a musician checks out early." Kurt Cobain, anyone?

Referring to not winning an Academy Award for Best Actor: "Ledger will now be remembered as the victim of an epic miscarriage of justice." Stick that in your pipe, Gitmo detainees!

So would a simple link to a YouTube clip, perhaps posted by a wet-eyed teenager, not have made the same point a bit less embarrassingly?

The Voice of his Generation

No, not Heath Ledger. Rather "Doug Krantz, 27, a New York University student and Iraq war veteran," who turned up outside the actor's Manhattan home upon hearing of his death.

His reason?

"I have a sick fascination with morbid stuff."

Decoupled from Reality

As plunging stock markets expose the fallacies of the widely flogged "decoupling theory" (Google returns almost 65,000 hits for the query "decoupling + United States + economy"), it seems hard to disagree with the arguments of President George W. Bush (as channeled by The Onion):

While speaking to a group of White House reporters, President Bush fended off questions about the weak state of the dollar, the expected long-term deficit caused by Social Security and Medicare payments, and a faltering housing market by assuring reporters that the U.S. economy's ability to have such a widespread negative impact on the world only further proves it is "easily the best."

"Our recent credit crisis alone has been enough to depress share prices in Japan, Rome, China, and Brazil," a smirking Bush said during a press conference Thursday.

The $100 Million Round of Golf

RTE's website coverage of today's turmoil in the world's financial markets kicks off with the following, interest-deflating headline: "US economy already in recession - consultant."

Alas, the subheading "Oh no it isn't! - another consultant" is nowhere to be seen.

On a tangential note, Louis XVI famously wrote "rien" ("nothing") as a journal entry for July 14, 1789. Somebody who could ignore the fall of Bastille is obviously a model for the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, Stanley O'Neal. As Michael Lewis entertainingly relates in Bloomberg.com:

"In the six weeks between Aug. 12 and Sept. 30, as Merrill Lynch's losses mounted, its CEO didn't merely manage to play 20 rounds of golf, on four different courses. He played them beautifully, with a consistency that defied the pain he must have been feeling. Indeed, a glance at the scores explains why the Merrill Lynch board agreed to pay him $48 million in 2006: The man has ice water in his veins. From the end of July to early October, when the firm Stan O'Neal ran was losing money at a rate of more than $100 million a day, his handicap wavered only slightly -- in fact dropped, to 9.1 from 10.2."

Like Louis, Stan was eventually deposed. Unlike Louis, he walked away from his position with a $161.2 million "compensation" package.

Pat on the Head from the NYT

"Entrepreneurship Takes Off in Ireland" is the title of an upbeat New York Times' article on the go-get-'em business moxie that is supposedly rampant in the "new" Ireland.

The piece kicks off with a bold--some begrudging inhabitants of the "old" Ireland might prefer the word "ridiculous"--assertion:

"Ireland is now alive with enthusiasm for entrepreneurs, who seemingly rank just below rock stars in popularity."

That's why Denis O'Brien "left" the country, you know. It wasn't to avoid paying a huge wodge of tax or to flee the hellhounds of the tribunal. It was to escape those damn paparazzi and teenagers who used to hang about all day outside his mansion.