The Angry Exile: A personal message to Blogger.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday, 29 July 2010

A personal message to Blogger.

My blog looks just how I want it thanks, so please feel free to stop waving your new design thingy at me. But if you'd really like to help please give me an option of turning off the fucking autosave that sits there waiting for every alteration, even if it's just a full stop or a comma, and then saving the post. The reason this gets on my tits is that on more than one occasion I've lost large chunks of posts and because the fucking thing saves afterwards, immediately afterwards for Chris't fucking sake, I can't cmd+z to get it back again. And yes, this has just happened again.

So fucking sort it or the puppies will start to die.

12 comments:

The Filthy Engineer said...: I use windows live writer. It's a lot better to use than the blogger template. It allows you to preview and it is up to you when you save.; 29 July 2010 at 05:22
Dick Puddlecote said...: I like the autosavey thing. It's got me out of a few jams, I can tell you.; 29 July 2010 at 05:51
Indyanhat said...: Cap'n for once I have to disagree with you do the ones om the right first they remind me of the 3 main political parties (not much to choose between them) the one on the left looks aware and independant and should be saved!

There is an autosave feature on blogger??? Bastards never told me!; 29 July 2010 at 07:34
Bill Sticker said...: How could you kill anything so undeniably cute? A 16oz claw hammer between the eyes perchance?

Never had you tagged as a lover of Korean cuisine though.; 29 July 2010 at 12:43
Angry Exile said...: Filthy Engineer, I've never used Windows Live Writer but it doesn't sound like a Mac friendly solution unless I boot the bastard into Vista for any blogging. Even then I only run Windows on one machine. Maybe there's something similar for Apple. I'll have to have a look at some of the things I've never played with.

Dick, I might agree if it didn't do it for almost every single character you add or remove or if you could just adjust it to maybe every 30 secs or something. Personally I've had it switched off in Word, Excel etc for years ever since I accidentally deleted almost an entire report I'd spent hours on and through bad luck the bloody thing was autosaved a nanosecond afterwards before I could undo it. Blogger did virtually the same thing last night after cmd + Z for some reason removed three quarters of the whole post instead of just the last thing I'd typed. And then Blogger fucking saved it.

Capn Ranty & Indyanhat, I'll split the difference and do second from left first.

Bill, no 16oz claw hammer. 24 grams of size 7½ shot in the face at about 1,400 feet per second ought to do it. I wasn't actually planning to eat them but if you want to I'll send you a doggy bag, bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha.; 29 July 2010 at 14:10
Bill Sticker said...: 24 grams of size 7½ shot in the face at about 1,400 feet per second you say. Hmm. Shoot it with something like you describe and there won't be anything left worth cooking. Gosh you are heartless (Evil snigger).; 29 July 2010 at 14:43
Angry Exile said...: If I back off a bit to give the shot time to lose speed it might help. My theory is that at a certain range there should be a sweet spot where the shot string will kill, skin and butcher it all at the same time.; 29 July 2010 at 15:15
Indyanhat said...: Sounds fair to me AE, and the Cap'ns a reasonable man so wouldn't expect any arguments there either.
Surely you just bake em in clay at that age and the fluffy bits peel away when you tap and unwrap!; 29 July 2010 at 18:02
JuliaM said...: I haven't really noticed any problems with the autosave, but Blogger comments have been playing up for a few weeks now.; 29 July 2010 at 21:57
selsey.steve said...: A single .22 round at 6" from either ear, aimed straight through the skull is a much better way of preserving the edible parts of the carcass.
The one on the left looks the tastiest.; 5 August 2010 at 04:12
Angry Exile said...: Sorry, 12 bore is all I got so it's down to a choice of shot size, 24g or 28g cartridges and how fast they chuck the shot out of the noisy end. I really don't want to beat the fuckers to death with it because it's so hard to avoid getting bits of fur and blood in and on the action.

I don't know what it says about us all that the post in which I threaten to kill puppies is one of the most commented on. :-); 5 August 2010 at 08:50
Indyanhat said...: Chuckle!; 5 August 2010 at 09:04