I love the internet, but it does tend to show me thinbgs which I then feel I need to buy. Point in case, this excellent T-shirt design from Diesel Sweeties:

I shall be wearing that with pride when I got to review live shows in future!

The day: Friday; the subject: plants; the location: a blog. Yup. It’s Friday Plant Blogging time.

That’s the crassula ovata (or ‘Jade Tree’) that I got last summer; it’s grown considerably since I repotted it a few months back, and shows no sign of slowing down. The other week, I passed a Chinese restaurant that had one in the window … let’s just say they can get pretty damn large.

Slightly less impressive is my poinsettia:

Hmmmph. No red leaves. It seems to have settled down a bit now - I only realised after I’d bought it that it was an unrooted cutting - and is now growing in height, but at the expense of leaves (the lower of which are shedding at the same rate that new ones appear). It too may need repotting sooner rather than later … and seeing as the swiss-cheese plant in my front room has its pot propped with books to prevent it from toppling over, I guess I’d better get some compost fairly soon. Who says houseplants aren’t rock and roll, huh?

***

It’s been a moderately busy week, marred by the ongoing presence of this damned post-viral syndrome / exhaustion / malaise / whatever-it-is. I thought I’d go see a doctor about it, and rang up to enquire about appointments. Basically, if I’m about to keel over from blood loss or something, I can call at certain times during the day for an emergency appointment on the same day; otherwise, I can book a ‘regular’ appointment, with a waiting time of about ten to twelve days … so I decided to just forget it and hope that a weekend of rest will help shake it off. Makes you proud to pay your taxes, so it does.

Other than that, it’s been a week devoid of interesting things to tell you, really. The only major hoo-hah was John C. Wright’s misinterpretation of my literary elitism post, and my rant in reply - which was made to look very childish by Mr. Wright’s apology. Congratulations, me - I just proved the old (very un-PC and probably NSFW) aphorism about arguing on the internet.

I’ve not even received any reading material through the post, which feels like the first week in months. Probably a good thing, though, as it gives me a chance to attack the backlog.

From the world of self-employment comes a potential red-letter day, however, in that it appears I may have been literally sitting on a potential mass of copywriting work at the Museum. I’m having a meeting next week about it, so wish me luck - some steady paid commissions would be a good thing to get right now.

Next week also sees me trekking up to London to interview an obscure but incredibly influential Swiss indutrial rock band called The Young Gods, which I’m really looking forward to. They’re a great band, and I have some good questions lined up to ask them. If you’ve not heard of them, and you have any interest in avant-garde music using sampled guitars, go give them a listen. Industrial is almost a misnomer for them, really, they’re a unique outfit - and they still sound as way ahead of the pack as they did when they first formed over two decades ago. Provided the recording is listenable, I’ll be posting the interview in audio format here some time in the future.

***

Well, that’s about your lot, I’m afraid. Possibly the least exciting FPB ever - which in a format this fundamentally dull to start with is an achievement in itself. So I shall bid you all a good weekend, and faff around with a few things before going to fetch The Obligatory Spicy Indian Dish That Must Be Consumed On The Fifth Day Of The Week. Take care, folks.

[Edit 10/05/07 - Mr. Wright has been good enough to apologise in reply to my response on his LJ, which makes the following look astonishingly childish and petulant with hindsight. I leave it here as a lesson for myself, and consider this matter closed.]

 ***

Oh dear. It looks like my rapidly written little rant from yesterday has upset John C. Wright:

“I cannot join Mr. Raven in the idea that it is mean or wrong-headed to have standards, or that it is somehow cruel to have high standards. I can admire things I cannot appreciate.”

Whoa!

As I mentioned in my comment left in reply, I never said that. Or at least I never meant to; I know I wrote that piece rather quickly (and not in the best of tempers), but a few re-readings fails to show me the point where I said that it was wrong to have standards. I did (and still do) say that projecting your personal standards onto others is an act of elitism, and (as was the entire point of my original post) that elitism very effectively puts people off reading classic literature.

But it appears the problem is that I have entirely misunderstood the nature of elitism. Let’s allow Mr. Wright to explain:

“The sixth reason is that it takes humility to be an elitist, whereas being a populist is the soul of arrogance. An elitist, someone who likes great books because they are great, not because he likes them, is as humble as a mountaineer standing before a titanic, mysterious, unclimbed peak. To climb that mountain is work, at least at first, we all agree. But once you have achieved the summit, and all the world is under your heel, how far you can see! What things those content with lower perspectives will not view! The humility of a mountaineer is this: he does not think of himself as he climbs, he thinks of the rock under this fingers and toes. He did not make the mountain, he is not the one who piled it up. That is the work of former years, previous generations, so to speak.

The populist, on the other hand, looks in the mirror, and seeing only his own little self dressed in his own little circles’ little fashion, preens and says he is as large as the mountain. Who can actually prove he is taller than me? (says the populist) “By my measuring rod I have invented for myself this day, I say I am taller! My taste is just as good as his. He likes the Venus de Milo, and I like Charlie’s Angels It’s the same. He reads HAMLET, I read GREEN EGGS AND HAM. To each his own!” “

Hmmm. Well, that’s me set straight. I regularly use the phrase “to each their own”, never knowing that I was actually being sweepingly arrogant to others by doing so - evidently I should have been ramming my own opinions down their throats as gospel. I wondered why my career as a reviewer and critic was moving so slowly …

Luckily, most of Mr. Wright’s supporters have had the humility to lambaste me in the privacy of his Livejournal; how shameful it would have been to be bearded in my populist’s den by such bold mountain climbers, here, in front of all those who know my populism and shelter beneath it in shame at their own lack of humility!

The one bit I still don’t get is why he called his post ‘The Judgement of Paris’. I mean, how can one be judged by a city?