Reaction

[Henry Fielding]

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words,
whether there be any news in it or not.

Amnesty wouldn’t agree, but I am a tortured individual. (True story: my sister-in-law used to be high up at Amnesty International. She’s also quite unpleasant. A half hour in her company is like being waterboarded, but without that refreshed feeling you get afterwards.) I worry a lot.

I worry about being unfair. I worry about offending those who don’t deserve it. I worry about appearing condescending when mere snobbishness is called for. I don't particularly worry about people not getting a joke. I worry that my quixotic stand against likes will get me banned from purgatory, where they’re mandatory. I worry about what Mark Twain said (with a little help from his friends), but have also been known to savour ambiguity. I worry about looking sad by talking to myself so often. Look sad to whom, logic will compel one of my alter egos to ask, not unkindly.

My latest worry is that it might seem as if I’m ignoring replies to the FNRttC poll. The truth is I’m tired of seeing my own name, and am grateful to have somebody else’s out there. Langster & friends want to take a lower profile, too, having been employed to fill the gaps. Henry, chosen because of my fondness for the quotes that top and tail this post, is likewise a temp.

Thank you Adam, and garlands of praise to Greg (the grumpy one; we may have that in common at times) for your words. Cheers to anyone else who contributes.

When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough,
I've done my duty, and I've done no more.

[Adam]

Well, I could give you a thumbs up for that, but I won't.  But only because I like you.

[Wilson]

The eminently quotable

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, whose name puts me in mind of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (it must be the de - thanks Sopranos), said “Every man has within himself the entire human condition.” Montaigne is the patron saint of personal essayists. 

NACF and its forerunner have been, in part, a voyage of self-discovery. One of those discoveries is that I am not always as zen as I’d like to be, and the writing cure doesn’t always work the way I keep telling myself it should.

My preference would be to skim along, above all petty concerns. Being only human, I fall to earth. Hence these posts, and this open letter:

Dear FNRttC Powers-That-Be,

Could you add a courtesy link here to acknowledge the source, por favor?

Yours truly,


photo credit

[Disraeli]

Never complain and never explain.

Yet another motto I half aspire to but have made no serious attempts to adopt. It's attributed to the 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG [Knight of the Order of the Garter], PC [Privy Council], FR [Fellowship of the Ring], twice prime minister, not particularly convincingly rendered by a zombie generator thus:



It looks like temps are here to stay. (Yay! says the temp agency, free to recruit from all of history.) As for fresh bodies to fill the new boards, I’ll have to settle for serendipity.



The gruelling registration process now features an IQ test. This is only meant to weed out zombies, who are not known to possess any; even little old NACF attracts mindless spamming hordes. Well, the strays.

Mercy

I've been killing time with Z Nation. My favourite scene so far:

[close]

Google or Qwant (it's possible the public's appetite for search engines as verbs has been sated) or tap your own brain for the answers.---- ....- .----

In other news, we finally got our lock:



because if there's anything worse than coming back to your site and finding it's been nicked, it's wearing the badge of shame.

Wait, there's another one on the way, Google? I may have to start Qwanting after all.