A Home At The End of the World (JM)

Humanity, in all of its forms, never ceases to amaze me. Just when I think they're going to zig, they zag like nobody's business. Paulville is an organization dedicated to creating gated communities of Ron Paul supporters where, if you join them, you can be "free to live your life the way you want and not be forced to do or pay for other people's life styles you may not agree with." I am not sure there are appropriate words in the English language to allow me to comment on this. I think I will invent a new word, "gastrogasmitronic", which means that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when something so absurdly funny exists that you don't really believe it exists, and that makes it all the more amusing. This is gastrogasmitronic in its implications. In fact, it gets even better:

These communities are not for the faint at heard they will start as undeveloped land in non city locals, as this is the way to secure large tracts of land needed for these efforts.

I want y'all to parse out the implications of this please. This is a collection of people, moving to a desolate wasteland, with no intention of paying taxes, whose most basic ethos is opposition to any form of collective action. This is going to go well, maybe even super well. I am really pretty unclear how this is much different than Waco. In fact, doesn't Ron Paul resemble Marshall Applewhite from Heaven's Gate, just a little.

Anyway, I really hope we get frequent updates from the community where people spend their time fighting over whose tract of land the aqueduct gets built on. I will tell you this much, if somehow I destroy my career and personal life in one fell swoop (this would not be an impossible feat for me) I am going to move on a setup shop in Paulville. Remember my motto folks: Liberte, Liberte, Fraternite (unless it gets in the way of my liberte).

100 Greatest Novels of All Time (JM)

So when AOTG was originally conceived it intended to discuss way more than just politics. It is the unique nature of this crazy political season that has led to these pages being nearly dominated by matters political. Anyway, that has translated in to my spending far too much time reading nothing but non-fiction recently (including a really excellent biography of Robert Moses).

My intention is to get back to fiction and hopefully have some good discussion about books here at AOTG. I have chosen to work my way through The Modern Library's 100 Best English Language Novel list. There was very little that led to choosing this particular list, other than the board that chose it is comprised of authors and intellectuals I very much respect, also the books I have read on the list are all quite good. So the plan is to read, from the bottom up, all the books I have yet to read or have not read in some substantial amount of time. This will culminate with finally giving another shot at Ulysses, a book that, despite my overwhelming confidence in my personal intelligence, I have never been able to read and enjoy.

I hope to have some good discussions about literature on here or at the very least take some shots at Henry James... uppity bastard (I actually kind of really like Henry James, but still, he'll get what's coming to him). Feel free to let me know if there are any lists y'all prefer to The Modern Library list. Also I would just point out how expressly hilarious the "Reader's Top 100 List" is. I mean seriously four of the top ten books are by Ayn Rand, three by L. Ron Hubbard and one by George Orwell... creepy... Well I suppose before supporting Ron Paul internet crazies had to be doing something with themselves.