looking around the world, pray tell

"The search for relevance continues" read one Comment under a story on the Guardian-UK site.


Listening to British comments -- or reading them -- is an exercise in Understatement Appreciation. 


If a citizen's been reading Comments on a site where two to four opinionists just start batting back and forth and get off the subject and lost in a forest of frantic insult -- like a dispute in a sandbox --


then the British style requires some gear-shifting in mental approach and interpretation, as observations such as "the search for relevance continues" replaces head-bouncing expressions of bombastic and often vulgar insult....




Further down:
----------------------- "Indeed, it is time to get rid of the Monarchy and elect our leaders."


And then, here's where that argument/discussion always goes, with the England - Ireland - Scotland - Wales readers:  "You'd have even more people constantly complaining about whoever got in.


Looking around the world, pray tell, which one of the morons who are presidents would you want in charge here?"


(...Like being a fish in a barrel...)


______________________





Contemplating the "extravagant and very satisfying" language of film noir, in that flashing hurtle of Big Sleep dialogue, two phrases sounded familiar to me because of Bob Dylan songs:


When Eddie Mars says, "...ask me who I was"
-- "Wondered why you didn't ask me who I was" -- goes to Dylan's "...and the man asked me who I was" -- the rhythm is reminiscent --


...As he saw me leap a hot dog stand
And a chariot that stood
Parked across from a building
Advertising brotherhood
I ran right through the front door
Like a hobo sailor does
But it was just a funeral parlor
And the man asked me who I was


[in "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream"]




And The Big Sleep's line,
"But I'll tell you something you missed -- somebody cleaned out Geiger's store today"
connects with "cleaned out the bank safe" -- the lines from Dylan's song, Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts:


Two doors down
The boys finally made it through the wall


And cleaned out the bank safe,
it's said they got off with quite a haul


In the darkness by the riverbed
they waited on the ground


For one more member who had business back in town


But they couldn't go no further
without the Jack of Hearts   





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