Tag Archives: Second World War

Great Books

Not Your Father’s Blue Carbuncle


    We’re dumbing down Sherlock Holmes. If the recent Robert Downey, Jr., efforts making “Sherlocking” more accessible for the earbud/self-absorbed set weren’t puerile enough, BBC TV has gone whole-hog to render Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective and his associate Dr. John Watson relevant for 21st century viewers.

    No need to wonder what Conan Doyle might’ve made of those revisions. He would’ve looked at them as if H.G. Wells had monkeyed with his template. On absinthe.

    The Downey reboots were jarring. Are jarring. Will be jarring. Holmes as imagined by Sax Rohmer. Or H. Rider Haggard. Ripping yarns instead of Victorian Age mysteries. Holmes mirrored his time. Downey’s Holmes distorts it. Continue reading Not Your Father’s Blue Carbuncle →

Agitprop/Propaganda, Observed

Before Hiroshima


    August 6th has become a date receiving outsized attention. Aesthetically that’s quite understandable. Hiroshima offers superior visuals to Pearl Harbor, a site whose tragedy lies beneath a placid surface.


    Pearl Harbor simply offers serene contemplation across Hawaiian waves. Hiroshima city fathers have done an artful job of propagandizing their preservations. Japanese ruins deflect guilt from the past. What incited 1941 America is mostly out of sight underwater and left to explanation. Continue reading Before Hiroshima →

Green Venom

Bad Biographies

(*Names changed to spare me yet trouble the wicked. This continues “Crazy Quilt.”)

　

    The family line descends through the father.

    *Blowhard, my boss and chief of *Mugwump, the family-held company for which I’ve toiled two dozen years, has rapidly deteriorated into decrepitude. A little under two years ago he was a sharp 80-year-old man. Today, enfeebled mentally and physically, he’s a ghostly figure peeking out from tired flesh.

    He’s lost muscle mass. His acuity wanes more than waxes. Despite the obvious infirmities, no family member has yet summoned the compassion to tell him “enough.” Instead of compelling their father to see reason and retire, Blowhard’s surviving daughters *Loca and *Fea, whose management has sapped their patrimony, still let him commute to the office, and defer to him although his mind is shakier than theirs.

    The Mugwumps are not a compassionate bunch. There’s plenty they aren’t and have never bothered being. The Turk needs to come around and collect all their playbooks. Continue reading Bad Biographies →