The former dictator Idi Amin has died in a Saudi Arabian hospital.
Here is a man who killed up to 400,000 people, plunged Uganda into chaos, and “disgusted the entire civilized world.”
And yet, I chuckle when I hear his name because of this song.
The former dictator Idi Amin has died in a Saudi Arabian hospital.
Here is a man who killed up to 400,000 people, plunged Uganda into chaos, and “disgusted the entire civilized world.”
And yet, I chuckle when I hear his name because of this song.
There’s a very short teaser on the BBC website for the new series of Doctor Who. Teaser is the operative word here.
As I sit here in the hotel looking out the window, I am struck by how this city has a sort of civic pride that I am not used to. In downtown Phoenix, there is a definite identity system at work, with coordinated [more...]
It was an addition to help ensure safety, but the addition of cameras to the Shuttle made today’s launch so much more interesting and enlightening — watching live pictures from the orbiter instead of just a [more...]
how i reacted to the song: oh, man, i need to be writing & singing political satire! brilliant!
Very nice. In an indirect way, it also reminded me of the Thomas Meehan short story, “Yma Dream,” in which the narrator recalls a nightmare: hosting a party where the sequentially arriving guests are such celebrities as Yma Sumac, Ava Gardner, Abba Eban, Oona O’Neill, Ida Lupino, Eva Gabor, etc. ad naus. — with the host obliged to introduce them all to each other, producing such lines as “‘Oona, Yma; Oona, Ava; Oona, Abba.'” (Or this: “‘Am I late?’ asks the actress Uta Hagen gaily as she comes tripping into the room. ‘No, no!’ I say, gallantly taking her arm and steering her at once toward the punch bowl and away from the others.”)
Christine Baranski did a screamingly funny reading of the story on public radio’s “Selected Shorts” some years back. Outside of the New Yorker (where the piece first appeared), the only place I’ve found it in print is _Fierce Pajamas_, a recent (and wickedly funny) anthology of New Yorker humor writing from Thurber and Perelman to the present day. (Also worth the price is David Owen’s post-dot-bomb item “What Happened to My Money?,” which puts the tech wreck in theological terms: “God has taken your money to live with Him in Heaven…. You loved your money very much, and you did not want God to take it away.”)
But I digress.