AdamSmith

For sure we know all the folks we love hanging out with the most are going to end up in Hell!

I see Gotti's point: that "icon" is not the same as "role model" or "hero to the community." Rather "icon" here partakes of at least something of its original religious-symbol sense -- or at least the modern "public imago" version of it. Both have their valid functions in the public imagination, seems to me.

I meant to say: James Elroy Flecker!? (Interrobang, were we permitted such here.) In fulfillment of one of your more dire PhD requirements, I hope. I confess never to have heard of him until your post. But then I did not even know Cranford until it was on TV. After StuCotts (sore missed here) made some remark on Gaskell, that sent me to tear through the book, loving it. Sort of like a Middlemarch except built by a lame, one-armed carpenter, with no architect in attendance. About all I can claim comparable to your Flecker is to have plowed through most of Eliza Cook and Felicia Hemans. I forget why, unless it was first finding them in The Stuffed Owl. I did forego Martin Farquhar Tupper. Speaking of, I do think I have one parody anthology yet in me: Waiting around in Penn Station for Amtrak, one frequently hears, on the PA announcing the local-line stops, "Elizabeth Linden Rahway," which it strikes me must have been the name of a 19th-century poetess laureate of New Jersey.

P.S. ...

Especially other people's babies.

M’Introduire Dans Ton Histoire M’introduire dans ton histoire C’est en héros effarouché S’il a du talon nu touché Quelque gazon de territoire À des glaciers attentatoire Je ne sais le naïf péché Que tu n’auras pas empêché De rire très haut sa victoire Dis si je ne suis pas joyeux Tonnerre et rubis aux moyeux De voir en l’air que ce feu troue Avec des royaumes épars Comme mourir pourpre la roue Du seul vespéral de mes chars. -- Mallarmé ...If you have to ask, you probably don't want to know.

LOL Maybe there is a chance for us after all. I go to bed by 9 o'clock these days.

Well, but you are really describing Buddhism, not Christianity. Which is fine, probably better, in fact.

Apart from not being a jerk, why can't all these rich celebs HIRE A DRIVER? I would have one on 24-hour call. A good-looking and pliant one, preferably.

It would never work then. I love to flip!

Well, if we're going to include men...

One who, if not, ought to be: the inimitable Édith Piaf. "La Vie en rose" ... what more to say? Here a late film of her doing her marvelous "Padam Padam"... The 2007 biographical film La Vie en rose is well worth looking up.

Then you reject a fundamental teaching of both the Old and New Testaments. Both the Prophets and Jesus himself say very directly, over and over again, that people can act either because of the influence of God on their minds and hearts, or the influence of Satan. Our free will to choose one or the other, and the ever-present possibility that we will choose Satan instead of God, is the core teaching of Genesis, and most all that follows.

I'm with lookin...

Seems I recall hints somewhere in the historical record that Leonardo's tastes ran to early-teenage putti. Doubt that would raise the viewership (as it were) among enough of the demographic to be worth risking accurate portrayal. I would watch!

Agree I didn't get Moulin Rouge. My ex made me sit through it and got aggravated when I dozed off that same 20 minutes into it. This Gatsby looks like it has possibilities.

So the Ides of April. As with Rome's Ides of March, doth this portend our transition from the U.S. Republic to the U.S. Empire? Or worse -- ref. recent threads on Constitution, Shredding of?

Looks interesting, all things given. One might almost wish to see this made into a musical comedy -- "Springtime for..." j/k Lady Thatcher's authorised biography sparks excitement and scepticismAuthor Charles Moore had access to thousands of private papers, but some question whether he is too ardent a fan Mark Brown, arts correspondent The Guardian, Friday 19 April 2013 16.22 EDT The former Telegraph editor Charles Moore, whose Thatcher biography Not For Turning – the first of two volumes – is out on Tuesday. Photograph: Ian West/PA The opening extracts of the long-awaited definitive authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher focus on previously unknown youthful suitors, and details of her childhood. The two-volume biography by Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, is being serialised in that newspaper and – judging by the initial selections – will contain personal as well as political revelations. It also contains accounts of Thatcher's sister and how at school she almost killed some classmates in a scientific experiment that went wrong. The biography was conceived 16 years ago with some crucial conditions: it was to be published after the former prime minister's death, she would never read it and, importantly, the people who contributed their thoughts and memories knew that. She would never know what they said. Moore had full access to thousands of pages of Thatcher's private and government papers, early access to documents held back under the 30-year rule and extensive interviews with the woman herself. Not For Turning, the first of two volumes, will be published on Tuesday. "There's a lot of excitement," said Jon Howells of Waterstones. "People are expecting it to be pretty definitive." The 800-page book takes readers through her early years and into her first term as prime minister, ending at the October 1982 Downing Street dinner celebrating victory in the Falklands. The way the book was produced is unprecedented. Thatcher approached Moore in 1997 offering access to herself and her papers, and ruled that it should not be published in her lifetime. In 1998, it was bought for Penguin – for a reported £750,000 – by its then managing director, Andrew Rosenheim, and from then it has incubated, the first volume written and ready to be published once she died. Stuart Proffitt, a publishing director at the Penguin imprint Allen Lane, said he and his team have not worked on anything else in the last eight days. It went to the printers on Wednesday night, hours after her funeral, and will be available to buy on Tuesday – St George's Day. But will there be many revelations? Most certainly, said Proffitt. "I edited the two volumes of her autobiography and worked closely with her on those in the early 1990s," he said. "There is a huge amount that is new – the book now makes all other portraits of her look rather two-dimensional. "Quite apart from the material that is new, it is an exceptional book: simply as a piece of biographical art, I think it is in the very front rank of political biographies of the past 50 years – a very impressive piece of work." One big question, which cannot be answered until it has been read, is whether Moore, an ardent Thatcher supporter, was ever the right man to write objectively. Can someone so steeped in Tory politics be sufficiently detached? Certainly Moore, known in Private Eye as Lord Snooty, is as archetypal as they come. In his Who's Who entry he lists hunting as his sole recreation and once entertainingly wrote about the things he has never done: "I have never eaten a product of McDonald's, drunk Coca-Cola, seen The Sound of Music, watched EastEnders or Coronation Street, worn a T-shirt (as an adult), or been to Disneyanything. I have never bought myself any equipment for playing music, or any musical record, CD or tape, never set a video, or attended a professional football, rugby or cricket match, never had a gin and tonic, sewn on a button, lain on a sunbed, carved a joint or changed a wheel." After Eton and Cambridge, where his friends included Oliver Letwin and the Condé Nast president Nicholas Coleridge, Moore joined the Daily Telegraph aged 22 as political correspondent in the very year Thatcher came to power. Within two years he was writing leaders and in 1984, still in his 20s, he became editor of the Spectator. Moore returned to newspapers in 1990, editing the Sunday Telegraph from 1992 to 1995 and the Daily Telegraph for eight years until 2003, where he was highly regarded and well liked. Can he be objective? Even Ken Clarke sounded mildly dubious when both men were on BBC1's Question Time last week. The politician was commenting on how so many of the things being said on the Thatcher years were interpretive, at which point Moore interjected to say we would soon get "history" in the form of his book. "The editor of the Daily Telegraph says his biography is going to be history," said Clarke. "We shall see." Proffitt hinted that some people might be surprised: "He clearly admires her, but doesn't restrain himself from criticising her when he thinks it's the right thing to do, and the book is remarkably balanced in that respect." Whatever the reaction the book seems certain to sell well. Priced at £30 – but also available for less, for example £19.20 on Amazon – the book has the second highest biography order from Waterstones this year (after Julian Barnes). Howells said the Thatcher effect had been felt on the day of her death when sales of her memoirs immediately went up 300% and by the weekend it was in the region of 800%. "There is a big market. Political biographies can be tough and we all know horror stories about political biographies that have underachieved but with someone like Thatcher there has got to be massive interest." Although the publishers use the American version, authorized not authorised – house style they say – the book will not be published in the US until May. Volume two, called Herself Alone, is still being completed. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/19/lady-thatcher-authorised-biography-excitement

Never heard of her before, but sounds irresistable... Is Amanda McKittrick Ros the worst novelist in history? There's a very strong case for the fruity prose of the 19th-century author who dreamed up Lord Raspberry and Lily Lentil Who can fail better? ... rubber stamp. Photograph: Andrew Paterson / Alamy Posted by Alison Flood Friday 19 April 2013 06.41 EDT guardian.co.uk I've played Ex Libris – well, our own free version – with my family every Christmas for years. I hate it, because I feel I should be good at it, and still never win. My everlasting thanks, then, to GalleyCat , for pointing me towards the discovery of a new literary competition with which – if I practise regularly – I'm planning to wipe the floor with them come December. Please forgive my ignorance, but I hadn't heard of Amanda McKittrick Ros until yesterday, and I feel I've missed out on years of fun. Apparently the worst novelist ever – and a quick glance at her work shows she can lay a lot more claim to the title than poor old Edward Bulwer-Lytton – the late 19-century writer was an obsession of Lewis, Tolkien and their fellow Inklings, according to Mark O'Connell's history of the worst things ever, Epic Fail. They would – and here is my plan – hold "sporadic Ros reading competitions, in which the winner was the member who could read from one of her novels for the longest without breaking into laughter". I haven't had a chance to read all of Irene Iddesleigh, or Delina Delaney – but believe me, I soon plan to rectify that. O'Connell provides some winning examples: "Eyes are 'globes of glare.' When their owners are unhappy, these globes are 'stuffed with sorrow'. Trousers are not trousers; they are 'the southern necessary'," he writes, before highlighting this extraordinary sentence from Delina Delaney: "She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness." (That is, Delina did some work as a seamstress so she wouldn't have to live off her father.)" It gets better. O'Connell tells us that "most of the characters in her last novel, Helen Huddleson, were named after fruits and vegetables (from aristocrats like Lord Raspberry and Sir Christopher Currant right down the social scale to Madam Pear and Lily Lentil the servant girl)". Here's the opener to Irene Iddesleigh – my mind is boggled: "Sympathise with me, indeed! Ah, no! Cast your sympathy on the chill waves of troubled waters; fling it on the oases of futurity; dash it against the rock of gossip; or, better still, allow it to remain within the false and faithless bosom of buried scorn," Ros writes. "Such were a few remarks of Irene as she paced the beach of limited freedom, alone and unprotected. Sympathy can wound the breast of trodden patience,— it hath no rival to insure the feelings we possess, save that of sorrow." Here's the first lovers' glance between Delina Delaney and Lord Gifford : "Could a king, a prince, a duke – nay, even one of those ubiquitous invisibles who, we are led to believe, accompanies us when thinking, speaking, or acting – could even this sinless atom refrain from tainting its spotless gear with the wish of a human heart, as those grey eyes looked in bashful tenderness into the glittering jet revolvers that reflected their sparkling lustre from nave to circumference, casting a deepened brightness over the whole features of an innocent girl, and expressing, in invisible silence, the thoughts, nay, even the wish, of a fleshy triangle whose base had been bitten by order of the Bodiless Thinker." Fleshy triangle indeed. I think I am falling headlong into a new obsession. Ros also loathed all her critics, calling them variously "bastard donkey-headed mites" and "clay crabs of corruption", asked her publisher if she should take a stab at the Nobel (thank you again Mark O'Connell for this gem: "What think you of this prize?" she asked. "Do you think I should make a 'dart' for it?"), and wrote fantastically awful poetry. Here's her "Verses on Visiting Westminster Abbey" : "Holy Moses! Take a look! / Flesh decayed in every nook! / Some rare bits of brain lie here, / Mortal loads of beef and beer." Anyway, it's clearly going to take some practice if I'm to win the Inkling game this Christmas, so I'm off to get reading. Join me, if you will, and share your favourite Ros nuggets below. Or do tell, if you think there's a better contender for worst ever novelist – but I will take some convincing. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2013/apr/19/worst-novelist-in-history

EXPAT, we extend our listening in sympathy and hope, our advice where we feel qualified, and above all maybe our gratitude that you -- and, by your reminder here, all of us -- feel among one another the sense of caring community that make these possible. You have done us as much a service as we could hope to do you. My deepest best wishes for whatever may lie ahead for you and your father.

And not to forget A Night to Remember, 15 April 1912, when RMS Titanic met her end. From tragic to absurd, occurs tax evaders don't much love April 15 either.