Article copy
Let me show you how well I learned my Socialism—or rather my Old European Social-democratism—and how I can put it to good use when asserting what’s going on here: the pace is not slow, the progress is measured. ‘Kay?
Now apply that at the society level, and you’ll have yet another bit of a clue to understand why France has - at least - a 10% unemployment rate (in effect far more than that, if you can see through the fog of careful official figures tampering and deceptively clustered classification of people who make a living out of the plundering of those who work for a living - excluding of course, the crushing number of employees on the state’s payroll, who allegedly have a job), or how the sickos with flat tires on their heads can conceive their doomsday devices while laughing in the face of the EU3.
In this good old Social-_____ World (Fill the blanks. There’s a new one almost every day anyway), articulated language is the ideologue’s tool to conceal reality, or build an alternate one. And it’s only funny sometimes, I’m afraid.
So let’s switch to a more accurate update on the progress:
1. The feedback on my email announcing the Coming (back) of the Dissident Frogman was very good thank you very much. I must confess a bit of a concern when I pushed the ‘notify list’ button: would all these people who signed on the list remember me, or would they go “Hey Doode, why the <expletive fuckin’ suppressed, Man!> are you spamming me?”
Fortunately, most of the answers were positive so far, and this big huge virtual intercontinental hug filled me with such a warm feeling of sheer blissful - albeit a bit mushy around the edge - happiness that I think I’m gonna cry now.
Or at least I would, if I my answer to those who claim that men should embrace their feminine side wasn’t that mine is wearing a burka and has better stay put and quiet in her place, or else…
2. I’m not making statistics (and they wouldn’t be that representative anyway), but it seems like roughly half of the feedback came from English speaking readers and the other half from French speaking ones. That’s the first difference with last year, where the proportion was more ¾ - ¼ in favor of English readership. The other interesting point is that, beside the couple of insults and other “you’d better stop writing that stuff, or else…”, the French feedback is vastly positive too.
Hmm… Here’s wondering if, after the failure of the state to crush the Jihadis Junior League skirmishing and probing in most French towns late last year, the position I defend might be more appealing and relevant to some than it was when they were still suffering from the See No Evil Syndrome (Yep, that excludes the self-deluded - and/or purposely deceptive - head of the French political secret police, Pascal Mailhos, for whom the hordes chanting “Allah Ackbar” in the French streets while burning cars, ambushing cops, attacking churches and non Muslim shops, stopping and stoning women drivers - Let’s not wonder why women drivers specifically—had nothing (nu-ffin’!) to do with Islam, and even less so with the Islamists. Nuffin’, I tell you.)
That would be a good thing, but then again I’m talking, in statistician terms, of a “very small sample of the population” here (no, I don’t have hundreds of thousands of readers. I suspect there are some among you who did not told their Mom and Dad about the dissident frogman. So much for the big huge intercontinental hug, you bunch of hypocrites you), and it could be just the fact that, due to the aforementioned rate of unemployment, the French have more time to email this humble blogger. Just speculating of course.
3. As far as design goes, the changes will be limited - it will actually look pretty much like it is now, with a few additions. My main goal is to change the software, import the previous content and get blogging ASAP (albeit in a slightly measured, and dare I say, reflective fashion. All right, all right: a bit slowly at first, maybe)
4. I intent to do a bit or ‘retro-blogging’ once the new system is up, if you’ll indulge me. I’ve read so many - mostly leftists induced, but not exclusively - nonsense on the French riots or the EU constitution vote, that I would like to utter a word or two about it. And of course, there is Jacques The Self-Destructing going M.A.D.
5. Last, but definitely not least, a team of Intrepid Italians contacted me with a proposition: they offered to become the core of a Translation Taskforce in order to disseminate the dissident frogman’s gleeful subversion among their fellow citizens. You can imagine that I heartily accepted that offer, and once we’ve discussed the practical details, there shall be an Italian version of my posts. How cool is that?
That explains why the little progress bar for ‘Coding’ is still at 80%: while I’ve made progress on coding (albeit in a measured… Oh, ok) I estimate that the (slight) amount of extra coding this new version will require puts us back at the same point overall.
Good. All in all, a reasonably measured progress, I would say.
UPDATE:
Just a tiny point of detail:
A Samizdata reader is commenting and signing “Frogman” over there. From what I’ve seen, this person tends to be rather ‘conflictual’ with other commentators, including people (Hello Chicago Boys!) for whom I have much respect and warm feelings - none of them mushy around the edge at all.
As I imagine the confusion could lead to some damaging consequences (as far as warm feelings and reciprocal respect are concerned), I wish to precise here that I have not commented on Samizdata for quite a long time now, and when I used to, I signed differently.
That ‘Frogman’ is just ‘a’ Frogman, and not ‘the dissident frogman’. Thanks for your attention.
Comments
Comments thread