Don't Get me Started

Don’t get me started on football

A sport knee-deep in cliche

But for players and owners

No good comes of this game

Don’t get me started on football

Don’t get me started on cricket

Lords won’t sell me a ticket

Panamas, mid-offs and maidens

Finance on a sticky wicket

Don’t get me started on cricket

Don’t get me started on Cheltenham

A throwback to “gentlemen”

and “lads”

Celtic tigers turned to kittens

As ever, a high count of cads

Don’t get me started on Cheltenham

Don’t get me started on MPs

Surprise is, anyone’s surprised:

So many of them try to squeeze -

truth for a private wheeze.

Don’t get me started on MPs

Copyright David O'Rourke 2009

Big Disappointment

I have tried to keep politics out of this blog, but I find that I am unable to resist commenting on this matter. It is reported today that Tony Blair is likely to be appointed President of Europe. Blair is a war criminal. He lied to his parliament about weapons of mass destruction and other aspects of the illegal war on the people of Iraq. The proposal must be rejected at all costs and Blair must be arraigned to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for war crimes, including that of aggression. Shame on Sarcozy of France and Merkel of Germany for supporting such an outrageous proposal. It compounds the sick-joke of Blair's appointment as "tripartite negotiator" for peace in the Middle East. Where is the George Orwell for the 21st Century?

Accepted

I've been accepted into Birkbeck College's MA Creative Writing Programme. As that great contemporary philosopher Frederick Flintstone would say. YABBADABBADOO!!! Perhaps it's as well I don't quote Groucho Marx on a similar theme.

Short stories

I've been reading short fiction this weekend: an excellent collection from the alumni of Birkbeck College, University of London, The Mechanic's Institute's Review no 5 (No. 6 will be published later this week) and a short story, "Land of the Living" by Sam Shepard in the current issue of The New Yorker with a peach of an ending. The MIR includes contributions from guest authors Ali Smith, Toby Litt - a lecturer on the Birkbeck MA CW programme - and Sarah Salway.

Creationist

Priests get up to strange things these days - but attending a top creative writing programme and then receiving the blessing from the Great One tops it all.

Don't Go There

Don't even go there,
She said.
Why?

Don't go there.
Where?
I replied,

Don't

go

there;

Do you hear what
I'm saying to you?

Don't go there.
Huh?
Don't GO there.

But I'm only...
You're not list'ning to me,
She said

Tipperary,
I said.
Don't go there.
It's a...
long way,
I said.
DO NOT...
GO...
THERE...

So I didn't
Go there.

Copyright David O'Rourke 2007

John Updike

I'm half-way through the 'Rabbit' Quartet. John Updike certainly wrote beautifully. It can be quite raw; and certainly his protagonist Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom is a difficult character to stomach at times. Rabbit displays deeply sexist and racist tendancies. Attitudes that would be regarded as politically incorrect nowadays - including his unwavering support for the Vietnam War. The sex is raw. Yet the humanity and honesty of the narrative is transcendant. I wonder how black readers view his depiction of the character "Skeeter", a Vietnam vet who has distinctly 'Black Panther' and messianic leanings and appears to supply the eighteen year-old feral preppy, Jill with chemicals that hastens her downfall. As the author says in the Afterword '...the trip to the moon is the central metaphor. "Trip" in the Sixties parlance meant an inner journey of some strangeness.' Far out!

I spent the summer of 1970 working as a student in the United States (near Woodstock in Upstate New York). The zeitgeist depicted in 'Rabbit Redux' and Philip Roth's 'American Pastoral' has a familiar if dream-like resonance.