bLOGOS/HA HA: Diogenes still looking...

David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

31 October 2013

Diogenes still looking...

Those children of Australia who were suckled at the breast of Pap Murdoch will en masse this evening unnaturally bother the old diggers and retiree drover types of their die-verse neighborhoods.

Today is Halloween, we are told.

And even as the elders tut-tut such foreign culture imports and call for stiffer Sovereign Borders, they too are readying their clobber, cobber, with clip-on black ties and displays of gold mined for their own hallowed eve celebration of the dead.

News Corpse execute-ive chairman Rupert Murdoch will, as the sun sets, reward them with a trick-or-treat maLOGOS/HA HA at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Sydney.

We are delighted to announce that our tenth anniversary Lowy Lecture will be delivered by Rupert Murdoch, AC. One of the ambitions of the Lowy Institute is to amplify Australian voices on the world stage, and no Australian businessman has had more success on that world stage than Rupert Murdoch.

Mr Murdoch is Executive Chairman of News Corp, the largest news and information services provider in the English speaking world and Chairman and CEO of 21st Century Fox, the world's premier portfolio of cable, broadcast, film, pay TV and satellite assets.

Since taking control of News in 1954, when the company’s key asset was the number-two daily newspaper in Adelaide, Mr Murdoch oversaw its expansion into one of the world’s biggest media companies, before its separation in July 2013.

The lecture will be black tie and will delivered at a dinner at Sydney Town Hall, 483 George Street, Sydney on Thursday, 31 October 2013 at 7.00 pm.

Lowy Institute for International Policy

We're not going. We'll be having a few media f(r)iends around for drinks and attempted sobriety. For reasons that Groucho Marx would understand, we don't call ourselves the The Diogenes Club - nonetheless, our toast this evening will be, as usual: "To Diogenes".

This relates to an old framed page that hangs in the bLOGOS/HA HA office. Be the light you seek, that sort of thing, a reminder. Page 308, taken from a U.S. journal, Harper's Weekly, 15 April 1876.

The page carries an illustration by the "Father of the American Cartoon", Thomas Nast.

But before we get to our own print by Nast, here's another by him (Harper's Weekly, 6 June 1874, p.480 ) in which, tongue in cheek, he asks the pardon of certain Republicans who feel themselves wounded by his sketches.

As can be seen by the Republican Platform spelled out behind the Speaker's Chair, this could just as well be about the Supply-blocking antics of the Republicans in the US Senate earlier this month. The caption on the illustration:

“PEEVISH SCHOOL-BOYS, WORTHLESS OF SUCH HONOR.” “Apollos, pardon my great Profaneness; oh, pardon me, that I descend so low!”

click image to enlarge

Our page by Nast depicts Diogenes in rags, still with his staff and lantern, now come to Washington, and STILL LOOKING for an honest man.

click image to enlarge collection: bLOGOS/HA HA

Vain and self-(ap)pointing, the press barons gather to receive him, each in the delusion he will see in them the virtue he seeks. Their mastheads suggest otherwise: The New York Hoax, The Washington Hatchet; the Daily Rumour, The Chicago Daily Pernicious Gossip Times, The Daily Canard, The New York Tribulation - The (Mis)Leading Paper in America, The Daily Slander, The Daily Busy Body, The Innuendo...