The Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal): December 2018

December 31, 2018

Good Times

The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 31, 1991. That would be twenty-seven-years-less Soviet Union so far. Good times.

December 30, 2018

Happy New Year Yourself

Exiting Chief of Staff John Kelly propelled out of office by a firm pat on his own back.

December 29, 2018

Media Trouble. Please Stand By

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who ~~own one~~ are capable of distributing one.

December 27, 2018

Lengthy, expansive critique of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers' latest offering, including bonus heated remarks in the comment section about everything Coen posted at Lawyers, Guns And Money.

December 08, 2018

Annals Of The Preposterous

Post Toasties Contest, 1955

Hold My Scarf

Probably not going to catch on as a widely adopted warcry. Shows panache, though.

December 04, 2018

Hammer Time

December 01, 2018

George Bush (June 12, 1924-November 30, 2018)

Enacting the ADA was the most profoundly consequential piece of social legislation signed into law by a Republican president in modern times. George Bush, the one recently dead, did that. Thank you for that on your way to hell, you mannerly fellow.

For some years now I've travelled bumptiously about the internet commenting on other people's blogs under the pseudonym "peter ramus," pointedly and I regret to say at times heatedly disclosing the general shape my own intricately devised misapprehension of current events in contradistinction to the remarkable torrent of misapprehensions made known daily on that medium by everyone else.

Nominally I associate myself as much as possible with the views of those who seem to know what they're talking about, but often enough I find myself obliged, like so many others, to go on about things I'm not in the least qualified to address simply because it is my way when the opportunity presents itself. I find this shortcoming as personally irritating as it is to those I've favored it with over the years, an as yet irrepressible feature of my discourse. Thus the admittedly defensive assumption of the nom de blog, "peter ramus."

"peter ramus" isn't to be confused with Peter Ramus, another fellow entirely, who lived and died a long time ago around the sad times leading up to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, an event which saw his own undoing in the chaotic days that followed.

He was a zeolot, Peter Ramus was. He had a particular bone to pick with Aristotle over the stuff and substance of rhetoric, which led him to propose revolutionary changes in the subject and manner of teaching which prevailed in higher education in those times. A quaestio was convened, a solemn gathering of all the branches of civil society, to see what was to be done about him. The King sent a man, and the Church sent a man, and of course the University of Paris couldn't help but send one, too. Unsurprisingly, they found overwhelmingly in favor of Aristotle and against Peter Ramus. In addition, it pleased the members of the assembled body to pronounce Peter Ramus personally disagreeable and notably ugly to boot. Strictly as an aside.

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The ideas expressed here, and the words used to express them here, are the ideas and words of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), which is to say "peter ramus," which is to say, me. Naturally, given their ultimate source, the ideas are half-formed at times, provisional always, and subject on mature reflection to substantial revision and, often enough, to outright repudiation by the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), by "peter ramus," and by me.

The words themselves, however, in the precise carnival train order in which they appear, and such original images which may from time to time be displayed here, excepting of course for those attributed materials the provenance of which, as duly noted, originate elsewhere, are owned by and are the property of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," or me, and are subject to the terms of Creative Commons License 2.5 , by which license (in the unlikely event that such words and original images appearing here are taken up and displayed elsewhere) clear attribution must be attached to those words or images indicating their ownership, to wit: the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," but not me.