“Oscar Wilde Cock-Cockery And Other Media Fictions - Anorak” plus 2 more |
- Oscar Wilde Cock-Cockery And Other Media Fictions - Anorak
- Sharktopus Splashes Onto SyFy - Gather.com
- Obama, Warren and The Imperial Presidency - Wall Street Journal
| Oscar Wilde Cock-Cockery And Other Media Fictions - Anorak Posted: 24 Sep 2010 01:49 PM PDT
I'll drop William Hague, 49, a line about it after this. (Btw, I do wish The Sun's Kelvin MacKenzie would desist in his weekly persecution of Chris Myers, 25, Mr Hague's former room-mate driver and £30k pa SpAd. In a just world he'd be sharing a room with George Michael) Anyway, it appears I've returned in the nick of time. For today some letters Oscar Wilde wrote to a sexy young male magazine editor in the century before last have been flogged at auction for £33,900 - or nearly £24k more than expected. What spiced them up was the claim that in them Oscar, then about 33, propositioned the Court & Society Review editor – one Alsager Vian, 22 (never heard of him: his ghost must be relishing the posthumous fame). Alas the text of the five missives scarcely lives up to the billing. All of Oscar's letters these days read like Stephen Fry on Twitter – even an illiterate chimney sweep could expect a 'dearest'. 'Will be at home tomorrow afternoon – so glad if you come down for tea,' writes Oscar in one letter – not quite up there with: 'Come over and I'll lick your scrote'. Oscar was passive, incidentally. Oh, didn't you know? Most compromising is Oscar's, 'Come and dine at Pagani's in Portland Street on Friday – 7.30. No dress – just ourselves and a flask of Italian wine – afterwards we will smoke cigarettes and Talk over the Journalistic article – could we go to your rooms, I am so far off, and clubs are difficult to Talk in.' The 'No dress' injunction is not an invitation to turn up nude but merely a sartorial guide; and the preference for Alsager's rooms nothing more than a desire not to be overheard by other possibly commision-hungry hacks. 'I think your number [edition] is excellent, but as usual had to go to S. James' Street to get a copy. Even Grosvenor Place does not get the C&S. Till Thursday night! This is all wrong, isn't it … ' The playful last line is not some coded reference to an illegal sexual proposition but plainly to the unavailability of the magazine. This distinct lack of any sexual content whatsoever has not dissuaded the likes of the Independent and other serious publications from repeating the seller's PR line. I particularly like the Indy's Sept 16 headline: 'For sale: letters from a love-sick Wilde to the object of his affection.' Purest Sylvie Krin. The media too readily interpolates cock-cockery in otherwise bromantic relationships, as the Hague/Myers hotel sleepovers demonstrate. Why, as I write, rumours abound of a roaring musky affair between a famous footballer and a famous male TV personality. And as ever, as the unlikely trustee of cock-cunting integrity, I find myself saying, 'I don't believe it!' Posted: 24th, September 2010 | In: Key Posts, Madame Arcati Comments (11) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Sharktopus Splashes Onto SyFy - Gather.com Posted: 25 Sep 2010 06:13 PM PDT Fans of cheesy horror and science fictions were treated to an all-new film on SyFy. Sharktopus premiered on SyFy tonight, and it tells the story of a man that creates a creature for the Navy that is half shark and half octopus. When he loses control of the computer chip in the creatures brain, it goes on a killing spree and takes pretty girls in bikinis on the beach. Only on SyFy!
The film has become one big joke since it was announced over the summer, but aren't most films made for the SyFy Channel jokes in one way or another? They are not meant to be taken seriously. They are meant to be humorous escapism, and they succeed in doing just that. Check out the Sharktopus trailer below. Did you tune in to watch the premiere on Syfy? Go here for the latest in entertainment news and gossip.
Photo Credit: IMDB
Please provide details below to help Gather review this content. If it is found to be inappropriate and in violation of the Gather Terms of Service, action will be taken.
You have successfully submitted a report for this post. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Obama, Warren and The Imperial Presidency - Wall Street Journal Posted: 22 Sep 2010 12:26 PM PDT By BRUCE ACKERMANPresident Obama's appointment of Elizabeth Warren late last week is another milestone down the path toward an imperial presidency. During America's first 150 years, Ms. Warren's appointment as a special adviser to the White House would have been unthinkable. Today, it's par for the course. Only in 1939 did Franklin Roosevelt win the right to appoint six "special assistants." To gain congressional approval, he pledged that his assistants would act strictly as advisers. Thus they did not require Senate confirmation. Since Roosevelt's initiative, presidents of both parties have consistently expanded the size and power of the White House establishment. There are now more than 500 super-loyalists intervening in the affairs of Cabinet departments. But until now, presidents have maintained the legal fiction that they were merely advisers without decision-making powers. No longer. As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained, Ms. Warren has been appointed "to lead" a team of "about 30 or 40 people at the Department of Treasury working" in "standing up" the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This burst of candor punctures the legal fiction that has exempted White House appointees from the Constitution's requirement of "advice and consent" from the Senate. Since Ms. Warren will be a key executive in Treasury, earning the salary of an undersecretary, shouldn't she be treated as an undersecretary and be required to run the gauntlet of Senate approval? To deflect this question, the president's lawyers have cobbled together yet another legal fiction. The trick is to give her a second appointment. In addition to serving as President Obama's special assistant, she will also serve as a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. This allows her to pretend she is Mr. Geithner's humble consultant when she and her staff come up with an action plan for the new agency. This legalistic gambit serves as a fig leaf for a very different reality: Mr. Geithner will never reject any of Ms. Warren's "advice." The simple truth is that the Treasury secretary is being transformed into a rubber stamp for a White House staffer. In his great book on 19th-century British government, "The English Constitution," Walter Bagehot emphasized the importance of distinguishing the "efficient" from the "dignified" aspects of the constitution. Britain's "dignified" constitution then focused on the Queen, diverting attention from the "efficient" power wielded by the Cabinet. A similar but opposite transformation is happening in today's America. The dignified Constitution emphasizes Senate confirmation of cabinet officers, but effective power is increasingly exercised by presidential assistants. Despite Mr. Obama's campaign against the excesses of the Bush White House, he is now making his own contribution to the ongoing construction of an imperial presidency. Maybe so, say the president's defenders, but the Senate has only itself to blame. John Kennedy had to wait two months for the Senate to confirm his initial round of nominees. It took six months for Ronald Reagan, and nine for George W. Bush, and even longer for Mr. Obama. Given the Senate's increasing intransigence, the president has no choice but to engage in legal fictions that will allow him to govern effectively. Although Republicans are condemning Mr. Obama for creating another White House czar, they will change their tune if their party regains control of the presidency and confronts a Democratic roadblock in the Senate. Americans can break through this impasse if both sides negotiate a "grand bargain." Here is the deal: The Senate should change its rules to require an up-or-down vote on all executive branch appointments within 60 days. In exchange, the president should sign legislation to require Senate approval of all senior White House appointments. By reaching this agreement, the president regains the powers to govern effectively and the Senate regains its authority to approve all major appointments—regardless of their location in the executive branch. This grand bargain requires both sides to give up the petty privileges of the existing system. Senators will lose their power to hold up nominations to blackmail the administration into approving their pet projects. Presidents will lose their ability to appoint super-loyalists who can't convince 51 senators that they merit powerful White House positions. But the rest of us will profit greatly from the reinvigoration of the founding principle of checks-and-balances for a new century. Mr. Ackerman is a professor at Yale and the author of "The Decline and Fall of the American Republic," forthcoming from Harvard University Press. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
The film is being made by Robert Corman, and it is starring Eric Roberts. Yes, the brother of actress Julia Roberts. He plays the man behind the man-made creature. Eric Roberts said the most challenging part of his role in the film was the following: according to | You are subscribed to email updates from fictions - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar