Jim > Recent Status Updates

Jesus's act bombed in Peoria. He no sooner stepped off the bus from Chicago than he was given the keys to the city. He stuck these up the mayor's major attribute. Then things got worse. What kind of Socialist crap is that about the rich and hellfire, the camel and the eye of the needle?

Coupled to this, most of the food required refrigeration, a requirement we had not met by shoving it all into the old fish hold....Most of the especially ripe provisions had to be given to seamen's missions in our various ports of call, which must have proved a boon to any involuntary euthanasia programs they might have been running.

Next time you watch the BBC weather forecast, check out the top left corner of the map, and in particular the tight vortex of isobars that invariably blots out Iceland. It's astonishingly windy there.... No one in Iceland owns an umbrella. Open one up there and you'll be the hapless participant in a demonstration of why Mary Poppins never visited Reykjavik.

A more likely explanation is that [David] Oddson was addicted to power, could not cope with its withdrawal, and moved into a highly political job. Nowhere else in Europe is monetary policy so emphatically in the hands of its political machine: the Icelandic central bank has three governors, at least two of whom are political appointees.

Dostoevsky 'compares Petersburg to the young, rather naughty son of an old-fashioned country gentleman who is himself quite content to vegetate in his comfortable, patriarchal existence.'

Samuel Johnson, writing of eighteenth-century debtors' prison, warned against piling the guilt on the debtor: "The truth is, that the creditor always shares the act and often more than shares the guilt, of improper trust..... There is no reason why one should punish the other for a contract in which both concurred."

[The ghost of} Thorolf now began walking around the valley so widely that he devastated all the farms. It got so bad that his ghost killed some men and some fled. And all those people who died were then seen in Thorolf's company. People were now complaining a lot about this menace.

He named this mountain Helgafell and believed that he and all his family on the headland would go there when they died.... He considered the ground there so sacred that he would not allow it to be defiled in any way, either by blood spilt in rage, or by anybody doing their elf-frighteners there--there was a skerry named Dritsker (Shit-Skerry) for that purpose.

Push a fisherman into the water and count the circles that expand around the place he fell, you will learn the age of the river. Or the age of the fisherman, opinions differ on this point....

I felt my life's blood run / down both my sides. / I must bear this wound-flood bravely, / Goddess decked in gold, / these are the dreams / that trouble my sleep, / I am an outlaw to most men; / only arrow-storms await me.

Do not be the first to kill, / nor provoke into fight / the gods who delight in battle.

No one knows better than you that a worse fate could not befall the inhabitants of that island [Iceland] than to remain the milch cows of the Danish king and the other usurers to whom he's given shares of the country, the governor and the monopolists.

The moonlight shone in my little room. I made all the promises a man can make. I had seas to sail.

Housed [in the pigsty] were the animals that alone of all creatures lived in comfort and decency in Iceland, not least since the king's specially appointed representative had tyrannically banned two-footed creatures from eating maggots and grubs. Farmers were sometimes graciously allowed to take a look at these wondrous creatures through the grating....

My lord has read in reputable books, primo, that in Iceland there are more specters, monsters, and devils than there are men; secundo, that Icelanders bury shark meat in the dungheaps by their cowsheds, and afterwards eat it; tertio, that starving Icelanders remove their shoes and cut pieces of them into their mouths like pancakes....

What did these people expect? A race of Socratics? The ancient Greeks had killed Socrates themselves, hadn't they? Why should the modern Greeks be any better, or any worse? Or better or worse than other men? Everyone was new: every man, every woman, came innocent into this world.

Byron wanted them to be like classical Greeks, full of the Platonic virtues; and they aren't. Nobody is. They're a good people, but they're like children. A Greek can laugh, cry, forget, and want to kill his best friend all in the space of an afternoon!

Yet this part of the province, not far from the capital, was regarded as one of the inhabited and cultivated portions of Iceland. What then must the other parts be like, if they were more deserted than this desert?

Adolf, the only thing that could justify your continuing existence on the planet would be if you started breathing carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen.

'What do you think about your neighbors from before the volcano went up, Valgerdur and dadi, who lived next door to you?' she asked. 'They were nicknamed Dadi Horseshow and Horseshoe Two. Could they have been connected with the bodies in any way?' Markus looked at her flatly. 'Definitely,' he said. 'If the men died of boredom.'

He was going to go down to the National Hospital, meet the examiner, and have a look at Alda's body. He stood up. He had to admit it wasn't just because of his job that he wanted to go there: the examiner had mentioned that the woman had been rather significantly enhanced—a word Stefan couldn't understand until he got a better explanation for it. Stefan's wife was always complaining that she wanted to get breast enha

Byron's financial contribution to the Greeks was thus very great, and amazingly open-handed. All the same, though, there was something reckless about it, as of a man who gave no thought for the morrow because he felt he would not reach a tomorrow, and that all he had should be thrown into one last magnificent venture.

[T]he Sultan, with his own troops stretched, insubordinate or immobilized, turned increasingly to the use of mercenaries, but this brought its own problems. Whereas regular troops could be kept in the field for some time on reduced pay or no pay at all, mercenaries generally had to be paid promptly and in full or they left.

In the name of the Holy and Invisible Trinity: the Greek nation, under the fearful domination of the Ottomans, unable to bear the heavy and unexampled yoke of tyranny and having with great sacrifices thrown it off, declares today, through its lawful representatives gathered in National Assembly, before God and man, its political existence and independence.

Ali Pasha 'is 60 years old, very fat and not tall, but with a fine face, light blue eyes & a white beard, his manner is very kind & at the same time he possesses that dignity which I find universal among the Turks. -- He has the appearance of any thing but his real character, for he is a remorseless tyrant, guilty of the most horrible cruelties....

What is the point, asked the patriarch, of the young learning about 'numbers, and algebra, and cubes and cube roots ... and atoms and vacuums and whirlpools ... and optical and acoustical matters and a myriad of the same kind and other monstrous things ... if as a consequence they are ... ignorant of the things of religion?

Egil was a man who caught the eye. He had a wide forehead, bushy eyebrows and a nose, not long, but impressively large. A great broad beard grew on a chin as massive as his jaws; his neck was stout and his shoulders heavy, far heavier than those of other men. When he grew angry, there was a hard, cruel look on his face.

No, I'm not going to fire.... I am satisfied. I have seen your alarm, your confusion; I forced you to shoot at me and that is enough.... Here he turned to go, but stopping in the doorway, he glanced at the picture through which my bullet had passed, shot at it almost without aiming, and then vanished. [One bullet hole was right next to the other]

I made Berthe repeat the picturesque names as though she were fulfilling Gentilian's role of butler: the Solignacs of Triste Etang, the Vauduns of Anse Verte, the Tharonnes of Morne Zombi, the Vertprés of Battaka and Bombardopolis, the Chaumes of Carbet du Roi, the Cussacs of Ajoupa, the Rivrys of Allégresse, the O'Rourkes of Bouillante, the Kerascoet-Plougastels of Caye Fendus....