понедельник, декабря 31, 2007

max

'what ever happened to max?'
'he got lost somewhere down by the tracks'
'he got hungry and swallowed some tacks!'
'no you silly weirdos and hacks,
he did none of these things, as a matter of facts,
no rather he didnt do any at all - he didnt pay all his tax!
and in this country regulations are not at all lax,
so hes sitting in dungeons, learning to relax
with someone named carlos rubbing his back's (itchy places)'
'well thats just ridiculous, hes clearly simply forgotten who you are.'

четверг, декабря 20, 2007


HAMILTON, Sir ROBERT GEORGE CROOKSHANK (1836-1895), civil servant and governor, was born on 30 August 1836 at Bressay, Shetland, Scotland, son of Rev. Zachary Macaulay Hamilton and his first wife Anne Irvine, née Crookshank. Educated at the Grammar School and at the University and King's College, Aberdeen (M.A., 1857; LL.D., 1885), he entered the War Office and was sent to the Crimea as a commissariat clerk. He returned in 1857 and worked in the Office of Works, and in 1861 became accountant to the Board of Education, then a rapidly expanding complex. In 1868 he published his Book-keeping, which ran to at least seven editions by 1899. In 1869 Hamilton was appointed to the yet more difficult post of accountant to the Board of Trade, where he reorganized the Board's financial department. In 1872 he became assistant secretary to Playfair's civil service inquiry commission, and in 1874 its secretary. In 1878 as accountant-general of the navy he simplified the naval estimates making them intelligible to the public. In 1879 he served on Carnarvon's commission on colonial defences, and in May 1882 he became permanent secretary to the Admiralty. After the Phoenix Park murders he was lent to the Irish administration and was permanently appointed under-secretary with a C.B. in April 1883. On 12 January 1884 he was made K.C.B. While in Ireland he became convinced of the advisability of Home Rule, and had some share in influencing both Earl Spencer and W. E. Gladstone. These sympathies probably caused his removal from the under-secretaryship in November 1886.


Hamilton was compensated by appointment as governor of Tasmania and took up his duties early in 1887. Unlike other governors he had no constitutional crises to face, though the Van Diemen's Land Bank failed in August 1891 and had to be wound up. The only ministries in his governorship were led by P. O. Fysh from March 1887 to August 1892 and Henry Dobson from August 1892 to 1894; he insisted on calling them prime ministers instead of premiers. He promoted public works, especially railways, and encouraged the investment of British capital in the colony. He also encouraged Federation: he presided over the meeting of the Federal Council of Australia at Hobart in 1887 and opened its second and third sessions in 1888 and 1889. He also opened the sixth Trades Union Congress in Hobart in 1889. The greatest contribution he and his second wife made was to the colony's cultural life. Soon after arrival he organized extensive celebrations for the Queen's jubilee, which included three balls, an address with 22,500 signatures and masses of jubilee cake handed to all and sundry. He was president of the Royal Society of Tasmania and actively supported the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. He helped to found the University of Tasmania and several technical schools, and opened many museums and art galleries. His wife formed a Literary Society at Government House.


In 1893 Hamilton returned to England and the civil service. He was appointed to the royal commission, inquiring into the working of the Constitution of Dominica and in 1894, on Morley's nomination, served on the commission on the financial relations between England and Ireland. In November he became chairman of the Board of Customs. He died at South Kensington on 22 April 1895 and was buried at Richmond, Surrey.


On 18 August 1863 he had married Caroline Jane Ball, daughter of Frederick Augustus Geary, of Putney, Surrey; she died in 1875, leaving three sons and one daughter. On 4 July 1877 he married Teresa Felicia, second daughter of Major Henry Reynolds (d. 19 July 1859) and his wife Ann, née Cox; they had two sons and one daughter.

понедельник, декабря 17, 2007

come here

Come slither over here to yer uncle gargrisha

And let me finger yer crystalline ribs.

Gargrisha’s got wishes for odors and kisses

And the sweet sweated arse of a kid.


A greasy little curl for a sneaky little girl –

Who’s been wriggling through scrubland and mud?

A sneaky little girl with a grotty little curl -

Dragged home on her gut to our hut.


Gargrisha’s got plans for his own naughty hands:

He’ll make them do nasty hurty things.

Like hoisting and joisting and all the while moisting:

Gargrisha sweats too when he sings.


I’ll sing you a fable while yer strapped to the table

And play you a tune on a tool.

With an armslength of cable, gargrisha’s well able

To croon about punishes and rules.

среда, декабря 12, 2007

From the Confessions of st. Augustine

3.1.1
To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears
a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love,
and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought
what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a
way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food,
Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but
was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because
filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For this
cause my soul was sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast itself
forth, desiring to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense. Yet
if these had not a soul, they would not be objects of love. To love
then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained
to enjoy the person I loved, I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship
with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with
the hell of lustfulness; and thus foul and unseemly, I would fain,
through exceeding vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell headlong then
into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared. My God, my Mercy, with
how much gall didst Thou out of Thy great goodness besprinkle for
me that sweetness? For I was both beloved, and secretly arrived at
the bond of enjoying; and was with joy fettered with sorrow-bringing
bonds, that I might be scourged with the iron burning rods of jealousy,
and suspicions, and fears, and angers, and quarrels.

3.2.2
Stage-plays also carried me away, full of images of my miseries,
and of fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man desires to be made sad,
beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would no
means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them,
this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness?
for a man is the more affected with these actions, the less free he
is from such affections. Howsoever, when he suffers in his own person,
it uses to be styled misery: when he compassionates others, then it
is mercy. But what sort of compassion is this for feigned and scenical
passions? for the auditor is not called on to relieve, but only to
grieve: and he applauds the actor of these fictions the more, the
more he grieves. And if the calamities of those persons (whether of
old times, or mere fiction) be so acted, that the spectator is not
moved to tears, he goes away disgusted and criticising; but if he
be moved to passion, he stays intent, and weeps for joy.

3.2.3
Are griefs then too loved? Verily all desire joy. Or whereas
no man likes to be miserable, is he yet pleased to be merciful? which
because it cannot be without passion, for this reason alone are passions
loved? This also springs from that vein of friendship. But whither
goes that vein? whither flows it? wherefore runs it into that torrent
of pitch bubbling forth those monstrous tides of foul lustfulness,
into which it is wilfully changed and transformed, being of its own
will precipitated and corrupted from its heavenly clearness? Shall
compassion then be put away? by no means. Be griefs then sometimes
loved. But beware of uncleanness, O my soul, under the guardianship
of my God, the God of our fathers, who is to be praised and exalted
above all for ever, beware of uncleanness. For I have not now ceased
to pity; but then in the theatres I rejoiced with lovers when they
wickedly enjoyed one another, although this was imaginary only in
the play. And when they lost one another, as if very compassionate,
I sorrowed with them, yet had my delight in both. But now I much more
pity him that rejoiceth in his wickedness, than him who is thought
to suffer hardship, by missing some pernicious pleasure, and the loss
of some miserable felicity. This certainly is the truer mercy, but
in it grief delights not. For though he that grieves for the miserable,
be commended for his office of charity; yet had he, who is genuinely
compassionate, rather there were nothing for him to grieve for. For
if good will be ill willed (which can never be), then may he, who
truly and sincerely commiserates, wish there might be some miserable,
that he might commiserate. Some sorrow may then be allowed, none loved.
For thus dost Thou, O Lord God, who lovest souls far more purely than
we, and hast more incorruptibly pity on them, yet are wounded with
no sorrowfulness. And who is sufficient for these things?

3.2.4
But I, miserable, then loved to grieve, and sought out what to
grieve at, when in another's and that feigned and personated misery,
that acting best pleased me, and attracted me the most vehemently,
which drew tears from me. What marvel that an unhappy sheep, straying
from Thy flock, and impatient of Thy keeping, I became infected with
a foul disease? And hence the love of griefs; not such as should sink
deep into me; for I loved not to suffer, what I loved to look on;
but such as upon hearing their fictions should lightly scratch the
surface; upon which, as on envenomed nails, followed inflamed swelling,
impostumes, and a putrefied sore. My life being such, was it life,
O my God?

3.3.5
And Thy faithful mercy hovered over me afar. Upon how grievous
iniquities consumed I myself, pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity, that
having forsaken Thee, it might bring me to the treacherous abyss,
and the beguiling service of devils, to whom I sacrificed my evil
actions, and in all these things Thou didst scourge me! I dared even,
while Thy solemnities were celebrated within the walls of Thy Church,
to desire, and to compass a business deserving death for its fruits,
for which Thou scourgedst me with grievous punishments, though nothing
to my fault, O Thou my exceeding mercy, my God, my refuge from those
terrible destroyers, among whom I wandered with a stiff neck, withdrawing
further from Thee, loving mine own ways, and not Thine; loving a vagrant
liberty.

3.3.6
Those studies also, which were accounted commendable, had a view
to excelling in the courts of litigation; the more bepraised, the
craftier. Such is men's blindness, glorying even in their blindness.
And now I was chief in the rhetoric school, whereat I joyed proudly,
and I swelled with arrogancy, though (Lord, Thou knowest) far quieter
and altogether removed from the subvertings of those "Subverters"
(for this ill-omened and devilish name was the very badge of gallantry)
among whom I lived, with a shameless shame that I was not even as
they. With them I lived, and was sometimes delighted with their friendship,
whose doings I ever did abhor -i.e., their "subvertings," wherewith
they wantonly persecuted the modesty of strangers, which they disturbed
by a gratuitous jeering, feeding thereon their malicious birth. Nothing
can be liker the very actions of devils than these. What then could
they be more truly called than "Subverters"? themselves subverted
and altogether perverted first, the deceiving spirits secretly deriding
and seducing them, wherein themselves delight to jeer at and deceive
others.

3.4.7
Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine, learned I
books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a damnable
and vainglorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the ordinary course
of study, I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, whose speech almost
all admire, not so his heart. This book of his contains an exhortation
to philosophy, and is called "Hortensius." But this book altered my
affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself O Lord; and made me have
other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless
to me; and I longed with an incredibly burning desire for an immortality
of wisdom, and began now to arise, that I might return to Thee. For
not to sharpen my tongue (which thing I seemed to be purchasing with
my mother's allowances, in that my nineteenth year, my father being
dead two years before), not to sharpen my tongue did I employ that
book; nor did it infuse into me its style, but its matter.

суббота, декабря 01, 2007