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Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
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| If you happen, by some remote chance, to be an American listening to this, I think it would be kinder to you if you should have someone turn the radio off for you now, or at least stick their fingers in your ears and go "La la laaaa la la laaa la laa la la... " for the next few minutes, because, you see, I'm ...I'm about to demonstrate conclusively how you (you, who pride your selves on your virility, and on the the stern pioneer manliness of even your womenfolk, let alone your menfolk) are really a bunch of gentle, mild-mannered, timid whimps!
| | Read More... | | The Classical, and indeed the pre-Classical, Greeks were a fascinating lot: all those delicious snacks made out of octopus giblets; and all those complexes; and all that philosophy and art; and all those Gods and Heroes; and of course all those wonderful, lovable monsters without whom none of the above would be anything but a pretty boring load of old cobblers. I'm sure you know them all (or at least the famous ones, the ones you find in every edition of Who's Who, What's What and What the Hel Is That?!)...
| | Read More... | | I suppose that patriotism is not inherently evil, though it does share with religion that unsettling tendency to become what one might call an 'unregulated amplifier' or even in one's more nervous moments a 'wild intensifier'. And I should, therefore before plunging into the raging torrents of my subject this week, paddle my in some quieter waters (if waters they surprise us and turn out to be; and if paddle, against all expectation, we chance to have) for some practice in not tipping over: so take, as an example of what I mean, a brief look at a less provocative area of wildly unregulated intense amplification, and look at the sort of person (or if we must get technical, fan) who spends, I dunnow, years learning to speak Klingon so that they can dress up in funny imaginary costumes and go to StarTrek conventions where they can then not be understood by others who have mastered Romulan or Reman or whatever it is. From the outside all we can do is to look on with compassion and ask "Why?"
| | Read More... | | One of the most endearing, enduring and traditional aspects of Modern Science is that it is hedged about with great Principles of Conservation: the Conservation of Momentum, the Conservation of Spin, the Conservation of Energy (which so recently made its successful take-over bid for that oldie but goldie the Conservation of Matter) and so on and so forth, and now, today, we can finally announce an amazing breakthrough.
| | Read More... | | Big (...not to be confused with little Amanda-at-work, though sometimes it does happen: or rather sometimes it did happen before she left us thus simplifying our at-work nomenclature, and potentially simplifying the beginning of this essay, though ultimately, as I'm sure you can see by now, her departure was unsuccessful in that last endeavour) ...anyway, big Mandy-at-work has this thing about badgers1 ---though actually, considering the sort of thing this thing is, that really ought to be "Thing" with a capital "TH". She surrounds herself with them, pictures and toys and cartoons in her office (and, of course, the one she drew on the whiteboard in mine), various computer screen names and signatures she adopts, and I believe she even sleeps with one, though taking into account everything that I have ever read or heard about badgers, I sincerely hope that that one is merely a stuffed one.
| | Read More... | | Monica-at-the-Coffee-Haus and I were talking about the possibility that any of her young children might one day, and when they finally grow up, support her.
Well... after we stopped laughing and picked ourselves up off the floor we of course agreed on the obvious conclusion that on the offspring front it's always the case that as they get bigger things just get worse. This certainty came in part because I'd earlier mentioned that only that morning I'd had to give Elise $100 to get shoes and pants so she could go to work, and she's not even directly one of mine, merely being number two son Ead's enamorata. Not that, as an aside, I'm unpleased that one component of that apparent Aristophanaean1 aboriginal double-being has finally got a job, and it is indeed wond'rous news that Elise is finally working at the Angelika (which is the closest Dallas comes to an Art movie house) though I think that at first she will only be cleaning up after the audience between showings (American cinema audiences being notoriously profligate when it comes to their libations to the Gods of the silver screen of popcorn and the various food wrappings and dead icecreams). This welcome development was only slightly tarnished by the fact that the revelation of this inter-screeningish cleaning has shattered one of my most deeply and sincerely held misapprehensions: you see I always thought that they just left the interior of the cinema alone until the audiences completely filled it up with rubbish and then they built a new one. I thought it was good for the economy! ...or something.
| | Read More... | | I suppose this could be considered a Science Fiction story (though, really, I would like you to remember that everything depends on your point of view), but anyway whatever this is; imagine the following terrible scene:
Fifteen or sixteen thousand square miles (an area, say---just for example, resembling Maryland and Delaware and Washington DC combined--not that I would suggest for one moment that it WAS actually Maryland and Delaware and Washington DC combined): those places reduced to a fused, lifeless, flat plane, scattered with the crushed remains of what might be small furry animals, or might indeed be something far worse; nothing can grow there, not even a blade of grass; above it the very air itself is damaged, blighted, troubled; and what about the inhabitants?---hundreds of thousands dead, many millions more hurt, possibly dying too. And who knows what hulking shapes lumber or hurtle their bulks through this nightmare plain, sometimes blaring their sudden, shocking cries or, as the light dims, glaring lights of a blinding intensity into the gloom.
| | Read More... | | I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what happens to the nicer sort of animal once Mankind gets some new bee in his bonnet, you know the sort thing: the grand ideas Mankind gets every so often, like going on long sea voyages or inventing guns, and Oh! the dreadful results, and Oh! that we seem so powerless to stop it, and Oh! it makes us so sad: in fact I’m certain that, for example, at the time of the demise of the Dodo we all got decently dejected, and I'm sure too that we all paused to ponder the passing of the Passenger Pigeon, but so far as I know, no one gave a hoot over one of the worst of man’s destructions of wildlife---the tragic de-speciation that occurred in Ireland in the later 5th century. One would have expected Greenpeace to march or something, or to have at least organized a rescue mission, especially since the species loss was intentionally, almost spitefully caused, but absolutely nothing seems to have happened. In fact no one seems to have even blown the whistle on this dreadful, wanton act of cruelty until the chronicler Jocelyn of Furness1 reported it in the 12th century, nearly 700 years after the events! Now I think that this is disgusting and even though it is difficult at this late date to piece together the details of this disreputable episode, I would not be serving the higher interests of investigative reportage or the consciences of my listeners if I didn't try, so here goes.
| | Read More... | | One of the very few advantages of not speaking Spanish down here in Texas (or not reading Spanish, for that matter) is that whenever I see one of those dire warning signs that one finds in eating places everywhere, you know the ones that say in large letters of a frightening block-capital-red "CHOKING AHOGO"; instead of the sight bilingually terrifying me into chewing each mouthful thirty-two times before spitting it out and running away, it always makes me think, rather, of that wonderful phenomenon of... Was it in the seventies? The eighties? Anyway that phenomenon of... Disco a-Gogo, but then that starts me wondering further, what's the real connection? Is this perhaps a new, possibly fatal, dance manoeuvre devised by Fred Astaire and Ginger Heimlich? Or is it something even more sinister?
| | Read More... | | Oh! Goody! I just checked the mail (and I suppose I need to clarify that by telling you that I mean real snail-mail, you know with actual packages and funny square jeep-thingies and fear of dogs and everything) and I finally (after absolute days of waiting, remember this was snail-mail), finally got my copy of sorry everybody which, in a strange example post modernism, is actually a book based on a website based on the notion that all the people who thought that the recent-ish election had a really, really bad outcome might like to post pictures of themselves (and occasionally of their pets) holding up signs that expressed this opinion and apologized to the entire rest of the world for that outcome---Hey, what do you expect ME to order online, after all I am both a complete computer nerd AND the sort of left-wing bleeding-not-just-heart-but-nearly-every-other-major-organ-too liberal who could make Al Franken look like Rush Limbaugh at fifty paces without even starting to break a sweat.
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