Happy Birthday Queenie
"It was just a bust, but she was a pretty and intelligent-looking woman, with something of a Norstrilian look to her. She looked smart enough to know what to do if one of her sheep caught fire or if her own child came, blank and giggling, out of the traveling vans of the Garden of Death."
-Cordwainer Smith, "Nostrilia"
In less recent years I developed an anitpathy towards England (and the monarchy) that I have recently been revising.
The moment the ball began to roll was my understanding of how England's Empire was destroyed: they sacrificed it in a very real way to ensure that the genuine evil of the Nazi Germany was destroyed. To me, that counted for a lot: not so much forgiveness of past sins, but the fact that when it came down to it, the empire they had built was used for good seems to me to be ulimately redemptive.
Recently, too, I've been reading that the Queen has been instructing (or suggesting) to Tony Blair to try and get Bush to realise that global warming isn't a left-wing liberal conspiracy. Which means that my Head of State, the Queen, has the same position on global warming as I do.
Which is a nice change from the way my de-facto head of state, John Howard, thinks.
-Cordwainer Smith, "Nostrilia"
In less recent years I developed an anitpathy towards England (and the monarchy) that I have recently been revising.
The moment the ball began to roll was my understanding of how England's Empire was destroyed: they sacrificed it in a very real way to ensure that the genuine evil of the Nazi Germany was destroyed. To me, that counted for a lot: not so much forgiveness of past sins, but the fact that when it came down to it, the empire they had built was used for good seems to me to be ulimately redemptive.
Recently, too, I've been reading that the Queen has been instructing (or suggesting) to Tony Blair to try and get Bush to realise that global warming isn't a left-wing liberal conspiracy. Which means that my Head of State, the Queen, has the same position on global warming as I do.
Which is a nice change from the way my de-facto head of state, John Howard, thinks.