Steve's internet access problems are still preventing him from posting. He e-mailed to ask if I could put this up for him.
Steve is a fan of the books, print journalism, and on-line work of John Derbyshire. Derb is also a fan of Steve's. I read his great review of Eagle Dreams long before I met Steve and it was my first notification that he had a new book out.
One of Derb's regular on-line features is a monthly diary. A passage from his June Diary , out earlier this week, resonated for Steve:
"I am more and more at odds with the world. It isn’t just a matter of disagreement about principles or taste. There are ever-expanding zones of early-21st-century life that I just don’t get. I suppose someone looking from the outside would say that this is just the effect of advancing age working on an innately contrary and antisocial personality.
Possibly that’s right. It doesn’t feel like that, though. What does it feel like? It feels like being John the Savage in Brave New World, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mork in Mork and Mindy, or any of the other literary misfits somehow gone astray in spacetime.
Oh well. At least — like Mork and John the Savage, but unlike poor Winston Smith — I’m allowed to roam free. God bless America! And, er, nanu-nanu."
Wingshooter and Russophile Steve didn't mention it in his e-mail, but I'm sure he enjoyed Derb's delight, expressed elsewhere in the June Diary, at his first experiences shooting skeet and firing a Mosin-Nagant and an AK-47.
3 comments:
Looked up the June Diary but got no further that the first entry re Blair's delightful handover to Brown, when it looked to me as if he behaved like a spoilt two-year old having his teddy taken away (and should have been treated accordingly.)
Derbyshire needs to examine a little more critically before I can accept this poodle loving bilge.
Now here's a set of photos that should fascinate you fellows.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=466429&in_page_id=1770
One does not experience joy firing a mosin-nagant. At best, one escapes with their eyebrows and shoulder intact.
-R.A.W.
Post a Comment