Bienvenidos ...

Welcome to the Kingdom of the Wicked, a journal I'm starting to talk with anyone who's interested about news from around the world, politics, movies, music, and (at least occasionally) my own personal soap opera. Stay tuned ...

variations on a meme

elements stolen from rubylou by way of hippybngstockng

My username is ____ because _____.
My journal is called _____ because _____.
My subtitle is ____ because _____.

My LJ username is “saavedra” because I always liked Miguel de Cervantes’s mother’s name.

My journal is called "Kingdom of the Wicked” because--you guessed it!--of our current national state of misrule. It’s also an allusion to the late Anthony Burgess’ novel of the same name about 1st century Rome ... (But if the election goes another way, this fall, I might shift to a different Burgess title, “Nothing Like the Sun,” in honor of the weather where I live ...)

My subtitle is "res publica conquassata!” because that’s what Cicero said as his country was about to undergo a Ceasarian section.

Insiders' View #1

U.N. weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei have each recently provided revealing "insiders'" accounts of prewar decisionmaking in Baghdad, Paris, London, & Washington:

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Insider's View #2

Perhaps the most scathing "insiders'" accounts of the Bush Administration's prewar thinking and behavior have come from former U.S. officials such as Joe Wilson, Paul O'Neil, & Richard Clarke:

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

NYT Reviewer Elvis Mitchell calls "Eternal Sunshine" an "angular and intelligent romantic comedy," whose "mournful, paranoid quality" reminds him of Philip K. Dick novels & the R.E.M. song "South Central Rain," among other things.

The story does use a vaguely Dickian premise about the technological manipulation of memory and identity. But "Sunshine's" paranoia is less about that creepy old Dickian determinism than about the fragility of relationships.

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