Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.So much for freedom of speech.
Five Ways To Kill A ManSo it goes.
There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.
Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.
In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.
These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.
Chicken FajitasLooking at that list, I've got to wonder how well we're integrating. I mean, it's not very British, is it? Though to be fair, the Big Fella is also very fond of roast lamb and Toad in the Hole.
Kofta Bhuna
Jerk Chicken
Felafel
Chicken Korma
I think it's a shame the series won't be examining the roots of British anti-Americanism. But still, it's a start.The US is perceived by many as an international bully, a modern day imperial power. At this critical moment in history, Washington correspondent Justin Webb challenges that idea.
He argues anti-Americanism is often a cover for hatreds with little justification in fact. His three part series takes him to Cairo, Caracas and Washington but it begins where anti-Americanism began - in Paris.
According to Norm:
"Sometimes a person can scan the news and feel the world is only to be approached obliquely, if at all."
Sometimes?
I see him walking on like Mr Bridger from the Italian Job, doing
that funny little Queen Mother wave: “Too kind, too fearfully kind. You’re mocking me with kindness. Please, please, no more. Madam,” he would say, "you are Deirdre. Deirdre – how charming. Now I see you in the light, I realise you couldn’t be anything other than a Deirdre – a name you have utterly, utterly made your own. I forbid anyone else ever to be called Deirdre.
“Now, Deirdre - Dear, dear Deirdre – promise me, whatever pitiful little nest egg you take away from this farrago, you won’t do a thing with your hair. You will promise me, Deirdre, won’t you? You will leave it just the way it is. It’s so blissfully, blissfully you.“Now, Deirdre, which numbered box do you wish to broach? Sixteen? The common little man with the appalling necktie? You think he’s hiding a fortune, Deirdre? He’s certainly ugly enough. I have always found wealth to be nature’s consolation for Medusan hideosity. Well, common little man, reveal the contents of your cartouche. Oh, Deirdre, the wretched little man has purloined your dreams. If that’s the damnable banker again, tell him I’m entertaining and unavailable. The impertinence of tradesmen.”
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