Well that's good. Fantastic. That gives us 20 minutes to save the world and I've got a post office. And it's shut!

Quotable Notes

Tim Blair has a wonderful collection of quotes up, reviewing the best and worst of 2003.

Not to be missed.

Now excuse my while I go and wrap your present.

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Slight Problem

I can't read my own blog at work. Not until Miss OpenBSD and Miss Linux scroll off the page, anyway.

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The Politburo Diktat

Blog of the Day is The Politburo Diktat headed by the Commissar (of course), for services to cartography.

And general staggering brilliance.

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Blogfonte

Since I'm in the middle of Busy Busy Week (albeit the quietest, smoothest Busy Busy Week to date, were it not for the fact that our supplier has not, um, supplied), my brain is fried and I am unable to think of anything to post. [So what's new? — Ed. Quiet, you.]

Which means that it's time for Blog of the Day, that regular feature at Ambient Irony where someone else gets to do all the work.

Today, it's one of my regular - or at least semi-regular - readers and commenters, so this time I'm going in knowing that he has me blogrolled (under "Folk's I'm Reading", which is about the highest compliment one can give a blog). It's Mitch H., folks, of Blogfonte, and he's not happy:

It left me in a very sulfurous, torch-waving mood of irritation...

Either he's been in for a root-canal, or he's been dealing with idiotarians:

...irritation at academic historians. I'll try and get into more detail later; suffice it currently to say that I may not believe in Truth, but I hate lies. Such as the one's we've been told, and are still being told, about the mythical innocence of the Rosenburgs, Alger Hiss, and all the rotten rest of the CPUSA.

Maybe you should just have gone for the root canal, Mitch.

As are the majority of right-thinking people (me, for example; Steven den Beste; Nowhere's Jeff Lawson) Mitch is an anime fan; he also reads U.S.S. Clueless. So I'm particularly glad to see him taking up a point that bothered me in one of SDB's recent anime posts:

It would be a period of a couple of years around the time of the Berlin Olympics, and it could also be seen in about the way these series' see 1925 Japan. No one does that for 1936 Germany, because they understand how monstrous it really was.

This belief, that mid-20s Japan was the same chaotic, oppressive hell that the late 20s and early 30s were, is a misunderstanding of the period. It isn't true. The early and mid 20s represented a "bubble economy" between the end of World War I and the social/political collapse into full-bore militarism of the late 20s. This brief period - the second half of the Taisho era in which both Steel Angel Kurumi and Sakura Wars are set - was the closest Japan ever got to European-style bourgeois prosperity. The Japanese of the period were still uniform-addled, regimented, prone to let paramilitary organizations take the place of private society, and poor by European standards - but it still was a sort of calm before the Showa storm.

Indeed, we have a propensity to glamourise the past, particularly any era that seems a bit colourful to us now, and the twenties certainly were that. I was watching Bottle Fairy the other day, and one of the little fairies was dressed up as a gangster complete with machine gun (they have these odd little shared daydream sequences), with another of the fairies as a flapper girl swooning at his (well, her, really, but I'm trying not to confuse you) coolness. The twenties are long enough ago that hardly anyone can remember them now, so we get to use the soft-focus and the peach-coloured filter. Mitch takes the historical analysis further, and I'll let you wander over there and read it rather than stealing quoting the whole essay here.

He's been home for Thanksgiving, too, and reminds us:

Ah, family. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mitch H. and Blogfonte He does the in-depth analysis, so that I you don't have to.

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Captain's Quarters

It's Busy Busy Week for me again, on top of a Busy Busy Month. And that's on top of the Great Disk Drive Debacle. So although Busy Busy Week runs rather smoother today than when I took the job on back in March, I'm still running the Red Queen's Race.

Which is completely irrelevant to my choice for today's Blog of the Day, but is a handy-dandy excuse for my current poor blogging standards. Um, and if either of the people waiting for new Mu.Nu blogs are reading this, um, sorry, I haven't forgotten you, it's just that my homework ate the dog.*

In any case, today's Blog of the Day is Captain's Quarters, who reports in on a fascinating interview with Gollum:

The New Zealand Herald manages to scoop the rest of the world media in its exclusive interview with the ever-reclusive, ever-controversial Gollum:

The first thing you notice when meeting Gollum in the flesh (so to speak) is how much shorter he is in real life than he even appears on screen. Hobbits must tower over him. We're talking Kylie Minogue short. I reach down, we shake hands. The second thing you notice about Gollum is the smell of fish.

And on The Patriette's snow aversion:

I just have to say that as someone looking into their programs and currently living in Texas, THAT PHOTO DOES NOT MAKE ME WANT TO ATTEND THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA! It makes every person who's told me that I am insane for wanting to move north because it gets so cold up there seem correct.

Kelly, don't worry about this picture. It's designed to keep out all of the riff-raff from the Paradise that is the Upper Midwest. Just because you can drive pick-ups across our lakes in the wintertime does not mean that Minnesota is unfit for human habitation. I moved from Southern California to live here six years ago, and I've only lost two fingers since then. No, just kidding! Fortunately for my vocabulary, I still have all of my fingers.

He also reported on the map of the Blogosphere last Friday, just to show me up.

And in an illustration of impeccable taste, he's blogrolled Jennifer's History Stuff. So I'll forgive him his minor slip in also listing, well, me.

(Yes, another one. "Looks like Blog of the Day material", I says. "Pick a few items to quote", I says. "Now check to see if he's blogrolled any Munuvi - woops."

Blogrolling Ambient Irony is not a surefire way to make Blog of the Day. The only thing that can do that is large sums of cash. And trust me, it ain't worth it.)

* As the genetic engineering student said to his parents.

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