Fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae

[MANICHAEAN]

“Fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae”.

Part 1:

He had started to talk to himself under the impression that he was having a personal conversation with his creator.

Opposite him two Financial Times, a Times and a Guardian nodded back at him with the rhythm of the train, their reader’s invisible behind the city prices section. To his left, old Fogarty was engrossed in the crossword puzzle and to his right, outside the window, Potters Bar station flashed past uncaringly.

“Women!” he expounded without realising.

Old Fogarty who was studying 4 down shook his head. “No," he said, "too many letters."

The train arrived at Kings Cross Station and the doors swung open in unison to decant their cargoes of commuters into the maelstrom of Platform 6. Heads down for the Seringeti herd, alpha males comprising the first wave to swamp the ticket collector. Further along, a few tourists gaping at the innate mysteries of a stall selling Cornish Pasties, the commuters swirling around their inconvenient static space.

He was still aggravated over last night’s “domestic” with the wife. What was the saying, "Marry in haste, repent at leisure?"

He remembered reading somewhere about how married couples are considered well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time!

“So that's what it's all about” he pondered. “It's just a matter of getting the timing right!”

By now he was through the main concourse and descending by escalator, the serpentine intestines of the London Tube - Zone 2 to be precise. The train for Fleet Street arrived and impelled with his former training as a front row prop he gravitated his bulk forward into the carriage and proceeded to hang lifeless and slack by one arm like some forlorn tranquilized chimp from an overhead strap.

“She was a curious psychological study, his wife” he thought, “So different”

For early in life he knew, she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the mysteries of a personality. Perhaps that was what initially attracted him.

Likewise he knew, a woman would like to know more about a man’s character, to find him interesting as it were, prior to being banged silly on the first feasible opportunity.And now she was now forty years of age, childless, and still with that inordinate passion for pleasure which is the secret of remaining young.

He on the other hand had had a methodical structure to his life; studies, flirtations, engagement, first job, marriage and career plan. Now he was a reporter for one of the national dailys. At one time he had had aspirations to be a writer, but like so many who were afraid to over-reach themselves the embers died.

“So what was left?”

It was author Norman Mailer who once said: "If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist."

“So there it was. He was one of those gentlemen of the press who these days are not exactly the world's most loved people.”He smiled inwardly when he remembered how once US President Lyndon Johnson was supposed to have remarked: "If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline would read: 'President Can't Swim'."

Being a reporter he had soon realized though was certainly not as glamorous as it tended to be portrayed in the movies. There was a lot of hanging around waiting for interviews that might never happen or for big shots who arrived hours late. He knew inwardly now that he would never make a good reporter, primarily because it was really hard work.

For a spell in the 1970s, he had been a stringer in Bangkok for one of the London newspapers. One day they had telephoned, demanding he intercept some English fellow who was flying to Bangkok to marry a Thai "princess". He tried to explain that the lady in question probably wasn't exactly a princess in the British sense of the word, but that did not work.

"Just get a few good quotes from him," said the foreign news editor in London.
So he had dutifully raced off to Chaing Mai Airport on what must have been the hottest, stickiest day of the year and a few hours later was sweating outside the arrivals lounge holding a large sign with the wretched fellow's name on it.

He had been there for ages and was just about to give up when this tough-looking gent strode up and barked: "That's me. What do you want?" As he looked to be in a foul mood I was tempted to say "Well, nothing really", but managed to blurt out: "I'm from the Daily ... and would like to ask you ..."
That's as far as I got. He glared at me and shouted "F--- off!" and stormed away.

Well, at least he had got a quote, but the editor in London had not been too impressed and refused to publish verbatim.

[Hawkman]

Very entertaining and I enjoyed the humour. I'm keen to learn how the smith forges his fortune :D

H

[AuntShecky]

Well, dear Manichean, my Latin is a bit rusty. Even so, I had an inkling about what the title quote meant, but I inserted the phrase into the "Google" machine for reinforcement (now that the info from the famous website is much more accurate than it was say, a half decade ago.) Turns out I was right (sorta.)

Oh, how I cringe with indignation every time I hear some outrageously (and inexplicably) successful celeb crow, "I make my own luck!" Yeah, right. As if being born into a wealthy family or having good connections didn't matter. The statement makes absolutely no sense when you factor in people who are poor and/or disabled through no fault of their own. Thus, whenever some self-important blowhard attributes his or her status to fortune of his or her own making, my long-suffering spouse often says, "I make my own bad luck." (Reminds me of a similar quip my late sister once said when told that her identity was vulnerable to theft. " "Oh, so somebody wants to steal my identity, huh? Well, more power to him. Hope he has better luck with it than I had!")

As for Part 1 of your piece, I didn't catch any flaws, except for a couple of tiny spelling glitches: "Serengeti" and "Dailies" (unless "Dailys" as is the acceptable plural in the U.K.) Other than that, this piece is chockablock with wit and wisdom, with its punch lines doubling as epigrams, as well as the funny anecdote about LBJ and the press.

The quote from Norman Mailer was good, and reminded me of another funny line. It comes from the former football player, "Broadway" Joe Namath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Namath), who was already famous from his college career and whose star rose when his NFL team, The New York Jets, won the championship back before it was called the "Super Bowl" with its famous Roman Numerals. Anyway, when reporters asked Joe what he had majored in @ The University of Alabama, Joe replied, "First I was going to major in basket weaving. But that was too hard. So I switched to journalism." I don't know if Joe had the ability to make his own luck, but he sure as hell could throw a mean forward pass.

Looking forward to future installments of this work, which promises to be an insider's look at Fleet Street, or --to continue with the sports metaphor -- a little "inside baseball" on the newspaper trade.

Can't wait to see how the classy Latinate title ties in.

[MANICHAEAN]

Part 2.

The editor he met with today was a taciturn Scot of no fixed disposition, who rumour had it, could not help but be prey to fissiparous tendencies. I was in his office overlooking Fleet Street and the noise of the traffic below was still discernable through the heavy plate windows.

His hair the colour of the inside of a sardine can, ever so faintly touched with gray. His clothes fitted him as though they had a soul of their own, not just an enduring past. But beautifully tailored shoulders failed to divert attention from rather too much stomach. He had the soft lilt in his voice of the Highlands; almost husky, the voice of a fat man, but though of adequate girth he was not fat.

“I’m sending you to interview broken hearted Hugh Hefner & his ex, laddie. How do you feel about that?”

I paused, only too aware of the current breaking news of how Hefner, 85, and Crystal Harris 25-year-old Playmate had been due to tie the knot in front of more than 300 guests at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on Saturday. Yesterday apparently, he had taken to Twitter to write, “The wedding is off. Crystal has had a change of heart.”

Of course, the newspapers were only just warming up to the story and already there were headlines, “Hugh Hefner single again,” accompanied by elaborations such as, “Hugh Hefner, the Playboy founder consoles himself with twin centrefolds of January’s edition!”

I said quickly that I was ready to take the assignment for I knew better from past experience than to start getting into this type of discussion with the boss. But he refused to be quelled.

“Do you know what Lord Beaverbrook said about British newspapers laddie?” He had this irritating habit of addressing all male staff as such, irrespective of age.

“No, can’t say I do.” I replied with what I hoped was enamelled self-assurance.

“It is the duty of newspapers to advocate a policy of optimism in the broadest sense and to declare almost daily their belief in the future of England,” he informed me.

“What,” I thought, “Is he babbling on about and what the hell has that got to do with the temporary emotional denouement of Hef?”

If anything, sexual shame which was what everyone else was looking at, was, to the Bunny potentate, a concept something like existentialism, very worthy but hard to grasp.

There was another side to Hefner I was aware of though, behind all the self publicity. He had championed sexual freedom and civil rights, published stories challenging McCarthyism and the Vietnam War, and backed gay causes and the legalization of marijuana. He had had either incredible luck or beneath it all was very clever, for originally with a cover featuring a calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe, Hefner had put together the first issue of Playboy on the kitchen table in his Chicago apartment in 1953 at a cost of $600. It sold 51,000 copies – enough to finance a second issue – and led to a multimillion dollar international corporation.

Today though, for this editor in front of him, that would have been a subsidiary spoor.

“The news of the split was first reported by TMZ,” he said.

“The news on the street was that there had been a nasty argument on the phone over the weekend and Harris moved out of the Playboy mansion. She was raised in San Diego by British parents you know, and first met Hefner at a Halloween party in 2008. She moved into the mansion after a few weeks and became Playboy's Playmate of the Month in December 2009. Destined to be on the cover of the magazine's forthcoming July issue apparently before all this blew up.”

“Anyway, laddie, get Stateside and you’re booked to interview both, separately of course. Oh, and she left, taking his favourite ***** apparently. You might like to follow that angle. Will make good headlines!”

I left the office, the interview over.

“Canny bugger,” I thought, the Scotch dialogue rubbing off on me.

“He throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. He knows that as the world grows smaller, so the minds of men grow smaller, more compact, and more empty. These are now the machine-minders of literature.”

POSTSCRIPT: ***** is a female canine. A poodle I believe in this instance.

[Steven Hunley]

This is so darned entertaining! I suspect that the writer has talent, as the topic is so, well how can I put it? Topical! I mean, how many re-writes or revisions were possible in such a short time? Not many, this item is still steaming hot from the presses!
Good stuff.

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks Steve. I sometimes think they should have a thread on Lit Net titled;

"HOLD THE PRESSES, STORY BREAKING!"

This would fit in well with the fact that we have writers here ranging from New Zealand & Australia when the sun rises, to your part of the west coast when it sets.

I will follow up with Hef & Crystal if I get time during the week.

But who knows. A new story might break and our intrepid reporter will be diverted.

Watch this space. News breaks first on Lit Net Forum!

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 3:

On the way over on the plane I read up on the subject matter. Hefner had proposed to Harris on Christmas Eve, and he had announced it on Twitter at the time. Since then he had been planning the nuptials in between serving as hands-on editor of Playboy and entertaining family and friends at movie screenings and backgammon games.

Hefner was divorced from his second wife, Kimberley Conrad, in 2010 after a lengthy separation. His first marriage to Mildred Williams ended in divorce in 1959. He had two children from each marriage. It would have been Hefner's third marriage, despite having written an article on the 8th June entitled “Monogamy is possible!”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crystal Harris was very beautiful. Her eyes were cornflower blue, and she had the sort of skin an old rake like Hefner dreams of. She looked wonderfully beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large blue forget-me-not eyes, and her heavy coils of golden hair. Such gold as is woven into sunbeams or hidden in strange amber; and they gave to her face something of the frame of a saint, with not a little of the fascination of a sinner.

She smiled and fitted a cigarette into a jade-green holder that matched her jade-green lounging pyjamas. Then she reached out her beautifully shaped hand and pushed the button of a bell that was set into the top of a low teakwood table at her side. A silent, white-coated Filipino butler drifted into the room and mixed more highballs.

She said peacefully: "Hef, as I told you once, was a pretty nice guy a few years ago, when he was trying to get pictures of me. But he changed, and our relationship changed along with it."

“Did you go with him for money?” I asked, with all that it implied.

She said nastily, without raising her head: "That's ridiculous."

"Why is it ridiculous?" I asked, looking mildly surprised and rather annoyed.

A light danced contemptuously in her blue eyes. I gave her a hard look.

Crystal looked at me angrily. Then she looked away, almost appeared to forget me. She held up her hand, the one with the cigarette, looked at it, posing. It was a beautiful hand, without a ring. Beautiful hands are as rare as cherry blossoms in bloom, in a city where pretty faces are as common as botox injections.

Crystal turned up her pyjama collar, as if a cold breeze had entered the room. She nodded slightly, sketched a brief sarcastic smile with her delicate lips, and then rose and left the room. She went with her head up and proud, her face a little tense and wary, like a queen in jeopardy. Not fearless, but disdaining to show fear. It was nicely done.

I reflected on what she had told me so far. How at her initial meeting with Hef, he had seemed like a dry body in a suit which had been too big for him. A chiseled face and fixed grin, he had approached her with shyness. Her description and what followed, reminded me of Napoleon’s letter to Selim the Turk at Osterode, on the 3rd April 1807. It had been a case of;

“Confide to me all thy wants; I am sufficiently powerful, and sufficiently interested in thy prosperity, both from friendship and policy, to have nothing to refuse thee.”

But that, she said had changed as she came within his private, strange web. In his flow of words he had seemed to have held her head under the water. Mad, but he had a way of making you obey him. And how at night in his bed he had made her pay. A thin hairless dog in the barren mist of a landscape of male dominance.

It was then that I had perceived that she was basically a better-class whore, and that whilst like other Playmates, they were pampered in public during the day, I guessed that later--when the slap-and-tickle began--the slap might leave welts and the tickle gouge the flesh. But for the public image, a sadist at heart at night can be an, exemplary West Coast gentleman by day.

[jajdude]

More good stuff from the MAN. My favorite was "The Writer", but must confess haven't read all your stories.

Had to look up "fissiparous" which I found, even though it gets underlined in red here by "Firefox" indicating misspelling or a non-word. Don't think I've ever seen that word before.

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks jajude for your kind comments.

I'm especially glad that you liked "The Writer," as that one stretched me, but I was pleased with the final result.

If you are still relatively young and your eyesight is not failing, try "A Murder In Accra" or "Redemption Song!"

Fissiparous. Tending to break up into parts / divisive. It rolls round the tongue well, like a good red wine.

Take care.

M.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 4.

My interview with Crystal abruptly over, I was yet to meet Lothario himself at the Playboy mansion the next day, and so I repaired back to the hotel to start formulating the piece I was to write. As temporary accommodation went, I was in no mood to complain, having on some assignments been accommodated in hotels so awful that they could have, to all extents and purposes, been subordinate sections of the Ark.

Perhaps I should also explain at this stage, that being a journalist for the type of newspaper that I represented back in England had its plus’s & its minuses. To start with, if it is the definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain, then I was not professionally expected to be classed or burdened accordingly in that category. And anyway, as a writer of sorts I had never been able to take myself with that enormous earnestness which is one of the trying characteristics of the craft. Likewise I was not exactly subject to the anaemic subtleties of the litterateurs. These tended to regard journalism as sub-literary on no better grounds than it did not habitually get itself jammed up with subordinate clauses, tricky punctuation and hypothetical subjunctives.

The material, was of course, always open to interpretation. Shakespeare himself had had all the prejudices of his age. He had accepted the world as it was with its absurd moralities, its conventions and institutions and social classes. In my own case, where I was not constrained by the whims of the editor, my approach would always be to approach in a vein similar to Russian literature whose very keynotes were ones of simplicity, naturalness and veraciousness. I was of course biased in that I admired that essentially Russian trait that the lowly are on a plane of equality with the so-called upper classes.

On the domestic front, when Dickens had written with his profound pity and understanding of the poor, there had been yet a bit; of remoteness, perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment of them. He showed their sufferings to the rest of the world with a "Behold how the other half lives!"

The Russian writers of the poor had approached from within, as one of them, with no eye to theatrical effect upon the well-to-do. It was not horror for horror's sake, not a literary “tour de force”, as in Poe, but horror for a high purpose, for purification through suffering.


But here I was at the conception of a story, based not in Tsarist Russia or olde London, but the peculiar opulence of Holmby Hill in Los Angeles, California, an American enclave, where conditions and values had evolved far beyond the imaginations of those writers of the past.

Back then, one was expected to obey the social convention that while discreet adultery was permissible, affairs with unmarried girls from the upper classes were not. But then, we had to a large degree since transcended class also. Present culture judged happiness, success and divisions with monetary yardsticks. A lot of the old values had been swamped and many carriers of communication, played blatantly to the lowest common denominator.

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” Arthur Miller had written.

The caveat now was; “But it don’t sell like the seedier side!”

And so I was obliged to decide. Was I in this case, dealing with a theatrical whore of the first quality, blind to virtue and destitute of moral sense? I could almost see its parallell in those ads on cards in newsagents shop windows back home, or the back pages of the local rag under the classified section;

“Lady with a hope for the future, expresses the hope of meeting a generous professional gentleman.”

Had Crystal been initially like a woman on a blind date in a bar I wondered?

She waits. Perhaps he has been held up. Or maybe he is already there and they haven’t recognised each other. The sign they had agreed on wasn’t clear enough. Just a newspaper, but several men in the bar have the same newspaper. The woman tries to size them up discreetly, without looking desperate. She starts thinking that perhaps she doesn’t make the grade, that the man had already spotted her but decided that she wasn’t what he was looking for.

Or was it simply a case of cold feet on the part of Crystal Harris, a fame seeking strategy or a genuine re-evaluation of a relationship? According to Harris, although Hefner was on the receiving end of the breakup, it was not his initial idea to even get married. “He was just doing this wedding for me, he thought that’s what I wanted,” she said. “We’re both relieved!”

I imagine her parents concurred. You don’t get a son-in-law like that out of a packet of Weetabix.


But now I was obliged to apply myself to my profession. With unrivalled felicity of diction and swift delineation, to trenchantly portray through amiable epithets the break-up of a formal intended bond between two personages in the celebrity circles of the US of A.

“To love and to hold, and to cherish, until death us do part.”

As I looked around the hotel room, it was basic and functional and foreign and my computer was on the desk awaiting the first lines.

At the crux of these spirited effusions would be Hefner who I would meet tomorrow.

Just the chief mourner at his own protracted funeral, a public pageant of the fading hopes of old age, or was there something more? Suffice perchance, that the morrow would tell.

[MANICHAEAN]

FINAL CHAPTER:

He came himself to the front door to meet me, eyes as dead as stale oysters, the perpetual tight grin with thin lips that appeared curled in petulant disdain. The dressing robe, I was expecting. It was all part of the act as far as I was concerned.

We went to his study. Not a sign of crumpet anywhere.

“I suppose you want to ask me about Crystal?” he said.

“No, I don’t give a fish’s tit for Crystal,” I responded abruptly, “Nor the latest appendage you’ve moved on to. I want to know what makes you tick, where the non-physical passion lies.”

He looked slyly sideways and seemed to lean forward with a concentration, alien to his normal public demeanour.

Of course the tabloids had been full of the latest developments of his love life. How he was said to have moved on days after his break up with Crystal to be with blonde beauty Anna Sophia Berglund.

“Shera” (as she was now known), is both our November 2011 Playmate & my new girlfriend,” Hefner had posted on Twitter.

All good copy, but not what I was after.

“Have you heard of Appius Claudius Caecus?” he asked softly, letting the mask slip.

“Sure,” I responded as if this was a flavour of the month public figure, regularly interviewed on Oprah. “Was he not the Roman senator who coined the phrase “fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae” meaning “Each man is the architect of his own fate?”

“That’s right,” Hefner replied. “Do you think that is a right interpretation, in your own opinion?”

“It depends on the way you approach it,” I said. “You could possibly broaden it out and translate it as “You can’t cheat an honest man.”

“Depends what you mean by honesty. To yourself or to the public?” he mused.

He was animated, and I felt disconcerted digging into an, as yet, little known side of the man. Normally, this media mogul fed us banal nonsense through “trusted sources” such as how both Anna and Hugh had called each other "babe" and how both of them were even seen kissing and cuddling during a movie night at the Playboy Mansion.

Here he was now digressing on Caecus "The Blind,” a Roman politician and dictator 337 years before the birth of Christ!

The Indian butler entered & mixed drinks for us both.

Hefner stirred the ice cube with his little finger and continued.


“Yes. He was a Censor in fact originally and had not previously been Consul. He sought support from the lower classes, allowing sons of freed slaves to serve in the Senate, and extended voting privileges to men in the rural tribes who did not own land. He had gone blind according to Livy apparently because of a curse, and he gave a famous speech against Cineas, an envoy of Pyrrhus of Epirus, declaring that Rome would never surrender. This is the first recorded political speech in Latin you know, and is the source of the saying "every man is the architect of his own fortune."

I viewed the individual in front of me.

Hugh Hefner, whose contributions to historical debate to date had been limited to his personal history on how "If you're in good health, age is just a number. I'm consistent; when I was 20 I was dating 20-year-old girls and now I'm 85 I'm still dating them. We have lots in common!”

I’d asked for it and I was getting it. This was a whole new side.

It occurred to me that I had unfairly judged him. It was a bit like the U.S. government approaching the problem of illegal drug smuggling, by attacking the producers.

When a person complains that the $25 Rolex watch he purchased from a street vendor in New York is worthless, we chase the seller (ditto for $10 Prada shoes and on-line Viagra tablets). The 800-pound gorilla that we are ignoring is the customer and his responsibility for the situation.

Here we were sneering at an 85 year old man with a number of live-in nubile young lovers, when in fact the fault lay more with us.

One who buys or judges something they purport to find offensive either is obtuse or has larceny in his heart. Mind you, I did, for the moment, refrain from addressing two dictums of W.C. Fields: “Never give a sucker an even break” and “Never smarten up a chump.”

I was on this occasion allowing the milk of human kindness to flow!

By the time I had left the Playboy Mansion later that day, I had not glanced one bit of cleavage, not one thong, not one firm pair of rounded gluteus maximus.

What I had learned though was that Appius Claudius Caecus had been used in Cicero's “Pro Caelio” as a stern and disapproving ancestor to Clodia and that Cicero had assumed the voice of Caecus in a scathing prosopopoeia, where Caecus had been incensed at Clodia for associating with Caelius, a member of the middle equestrian class instead of the upper patrician class.

As I pulled out through the front gates, I reflected on the unexpected turn of events, and endeavoured to suppress a smile at the prospect of saying back in Fleet Street, “Now take that & bank it, my dear Hibernian editor!”

[thebagman]

I don't understand why you get so much praise on these forums. What's it about? I think it's crap.

[hillwalker]

I don't understand why you get so much praise on these forums. What's it about? I think it's crap.

Nothing like constructive criticism - and these few words of wisdom are nothing like constructive criticism.

We might look forward to reading your own short stories or poems on here - though if your response is anything to go by it's going to be a wasted effort.

Your opinion might have had merit if you were able to demonstrate why you consider it 'crap' - but I'm guessing you don't even know yourself why you dislike it so much. Except that it is beyond your limited ability to appreciate the written word.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear Bagman
It's so refreshing to have someone come straight out and say its "crap." No waivering, no politeness. Its "crap." Not that I will be crying into my pillow tonight, but thank you for your honesty. There is no such thing as a negative virtue with regard to self-expression.
Best regards
M.

H
Do I detect storm clouds gathering over the Scottish Highlands?
Take care.
M.

[V.Jayalakshmi]

I have grown up reading books,newspapers,and less of cinemas and T.V.'s.But the present generation is growing up with the visual media and I find their English vocabulory not so great.Texting and computer slams ( Pardon me) is growing in usage.I wonder if they happen to read some of the great writers like Hardy, Maugham, Dickens will they follow the stream of thoughts ?

I am in no way belittling the present generations achievements .But change is inevitable,is it not?

[thebagman]

It's pulp fiction buddy. You've got style and nothing more. Some people might like your "work" but reading it feels like sifting through pages of a scrapbook with pictures drawn in by some kid in crayon.

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear Bagman
I'm really overwhelmed that you are my "buddy." You really do have a way with words and thank you for your kind comments on my having "style." Actually. I can relate to the scrapbook comment that you make. I take totally different characters & perspectives in my pulp fiction and endeavour to merge/analyse them.
Might I be forward enough to ask what you read yourself?
Best regards
M.

[thebagman]

Just trying to get a rise out of you Manny, sorry. I'm more of a dvd, mpeg kind of guy so just forget what I say and keep writing.

[MANICHAEAN]

Oh com'on! I was just beginning to think I'd struck gold with a character like you.

It reminded me of a Texan I'd worked with in Saudi who would come out with statements like, "Shakespeare was a faggot." Then later he would be embarassed when I'd come across him reading "Macbeth" to establish whether there was anything worth reading in the Bard and whether he had been over the top.

I'd even got to the stage where, upon finishing the last pulp fiction, I was looking in your persona for inspiration in pastures new.

If it does not touch upon your sensibilities too much, have you any objection to my writing "The Bemused Bagman of Bankok?" Who knows, it might turn out well!

Best regards bud
M.

[hillwalker]

Do I detect storm clouds gathering over the Scottish Highlands?
M.

No M, just an annoying little midge threatening to sting us all with its wit. But I think you managed to squash it in time.

Didn't someone once say 'Crap is in the eye of the beholder?'

H :-)

[Jassy Melson]

When someone says something they read is crap, it doesn't need an explanation. Most everyone knows what they mean--except someone who wants to be ultra-picky.

[Bluehound]

Hmm, in the normal run of things I would agree - when I say Glee is crap everyone knows that I mean it's crap and I won't be watcing it.
But here we are sharing our work and our opinions on each others work.
It is fine to say somethings crap but it would be polite, and expected, for you to say why it's crap.

[Jassy Melson]

But what if you're not poilite and what if it shouldn't be expected for you to say why it's crap?

[hillwalker]

But what if you're not poilite and what if it shouldn't be expected for you to say why it's crap?

Surely you are expected to substantiate your criticism on a site like this - otherwise constructive criticism becomes little more than name calling.

If you're not polite go and pollute some other forum.

H

[Jassy Melson]

I'm not polite., and I'm not going to go anywhere