Nick Lewis: The Blog

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, chapter 12:

It was amusing to look round the filthy little scullery and think that only a double door was between us and the dining-room. There sat the customers in all their splendour—spotless table-cloths, bowls of flowers, mirrors and gilt cornices and painted cherubim; and here, just a few feet away, we in our disgusting filth. For it really was disgusting filth. There was no time to sweep the floor till evening, and we slithered about in a compound of soapy water, lettuce-leaves, torn paper and trampled food. A dozen waiters with their coats off, showing their sweaty armpits, sat at the table mixing salads and sticking their thumbs into the cream pots. The room had a dirty, mixed smell of food and sweat. Everywhere in the cupboards, behind the piles of crockery, were squalid stores of food that the waiters had stolen. There were only two sinks, and no washing basin, and it was nothing unusual for a waiter to wash his face in the water in which clean crockery was rinsing. But the customers saw nothing of this. There were a coco-nut mat and a mirror outside the dining-room door, and the waiters used to preen themselves up and go in looking the picture of cleanliness.

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first" - Mark Twain

I woke up and found out that a lot of people care about me, and that I am anything but alone. I'm eating :-) and you can't imagine how much that changes my mood. I'm working on a way to show my appreciatation to some of you. I couldn't believe it, I woke up this morning and found out that all of my short-term crises had been taken care of. Words just fail sometimes; the sudden generosity and concern has moved me in ways that I have difficulty getting across. So, instead of a simple "thank you", I'm working on something which feels like a more "real" way to show my apprecation.

TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb.

Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

(Via Wirearchy)

Note: Got this from a friend, I had to post it.

Dear President Bush:Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from you and I too now support a Constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said "in the eyes of God marriage is based between a man a woman." I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it is an abomination. End of debate.

The five recommendations of Reporters Without Borders about freedom of expression on the Internet:

1. Any law about the flow of information online must be anchored in freedom of expression as defined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
2. Internet users alone must decide what material they can and wish to access online. Automatic filtering of online content, by governments or private firms, is unacceptable.

"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope they are organized along the lines of the Mafia." - Kurt Vonnegut 

Sorry folks, the image that defined our times was fake. Though, I suppose it's poetic that such an image would turn out to be a sham. I suppose, deep down, we all knew it was too good to be true, but believing it was too much fun. Props to the discussion at JWZ for clearing this up.

John Emerson at Social Design Notes has put together an introductory guide to the techniques and tools of internet activism. [link]

(Link found by Harry)

Okay, this might sound a little weird, but I swear I felt something very warm, bright, and loving after I read these words...

"I used to think these all-American Christians never read the Gospel, that they simply chose not to be authentic disciples of the nonviolent Jesus. Now, alas, I think they have indeed chosen discipleship, but not to the hero of the Gospels, Jesus. Instead, through their actions, they have become disciples of the devout, religious, all-powerful, murderous Pharisees who killed him.

The first thing we Christians have to do in this time is not to become good Pharisees. Instead, we have to try all over again to follow the dangerous, nonviolent, troublemaking Jesus. I believe war, weapons, corporate greed and systemic injustice are an abomination in the sight of God. They are the definition of mortal sin. They mock God and threaten to destroy God’s gift of creation. If you want to seek the living God, you have to pit your entire life against war, weapons, greed and injustice--and their perpetrators. It is as simple as that."  - John Dear, Pharisee Nation