This…

This is genius.

I can’t wait for the Beverly Hillbillies theme starring Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Why isn’t Gavin “Somebody”?

And why am I not one of his minions?

Er, entourage.

Gavin. You need to move west.

No, farther. No, REALLY west.

Tell ya what. Stop when your hat floats, then come back a ways…

mikey

Solzhenitsyn: Yes. I would often think: Whatever the outcome is going to be, let it be. And then things would turn out all right. It looks like some good came out of it.

I can live in peace with that…

mikey

Gavin, you are very strange.

This, however, is a good thing.

Solzhenitsyn is a comico-tragically misunderstood guy. Because of his anti-communist works, he gets seen as a defender of modern liberal nation states, when that really doesn’t seem to be the case. Near as I can tell, he is a throwback to the weird, mystic, romantic nineteenth century Russian nationalist phenomenon. He called Daniel Ellsberg a traitor for working to stop the Vietnam war, and thinks the radical secularism of our Constitution makes us all morally flabby.

If you really want to understand what he’s on about, I think you need to get drunk on good potato vodka and read Ivan Kereevsky while walking around in your underwear in a good stiff New England winter.

But I don’t recommend anyone should actually do that.

Donald Graham. Donald Graham. Donald Graham.

His paper is full of pie.

Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson.

He never told a Lie…

I umm, was against the iraq invasion from the start, as opposed to that Weltanschung dude, do I get a prize for patting myself on the back?

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.

–Oh, you know…

Solzhenitsyn: I have grown used to the fact that, throughout the world, public repentance is the most unacceptable option for the modern politician.

Now which modern politician/preznit does that bring to mind?

Nom Nom Nom.

Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn, men have named you
Youre so like the lady with the mystic smile
Is it only cause youre lonely they have blamed you?
For that mona lisa strangeness in your smile?

Sue me.

edub, I hate to keep a guy waitin’…

Come and listen to my story ’bout a man named Jean
A poor communist, lived a life without elan
Until one day, teachin’ down at the Lycée
He hooked up with the gal who would write She Came to Stay.

Roman à clef, that is. Olga and Wanda Kosakiewicz.

Well, the next thing you know, Jean-Paul’s a celebré
His kinfolks said, “Jean, pen Le Saint Genet!”
They said “Your girl is workin’ on the patriarchy’s cairn!”
So they loaded up their brains and they did Le Temps Moderne.

André Gorz. Claude Lanzmann. Take your shoes off.

Have I mentioned that you smart, educated fuckers piss me off?

Well, don’t think I’m not gonna play just ’cause I don’t get the joke.

Bastards…

mikey

Leonard Pierce FTW.

It also works to Alouette!

Solzhenitsyn, Sasha Solzhenitsyn,
Solzhenitsyn, he’s a grumpy guy.
He will poke you in the eye,
(He will poke you in the eye).
In the eye
(in the eye).
O-o-o-o-o-h…
Solzhenitsyn, Sasha Solzhenitsyn,
Solzhenitsyn, he’s a grumpy guy.

If you really want to understand what he’s on about, I think you need to get drunk on good potato vodka

As long as you toast Mendeleev.

cheers

Has Michael Gambon played Solzhenitsyn yet?

Michael Gambon is Solzhenitsyn.

Now sit right back and you’ll hear a tale
A tale of a Czarist dude
Who wrote Ivan Denisovich
And found the US crude.

He pissed off the Politburo men
He wrote ’bout the Gulag camps
He left Moskva for the Vermont woods
And bitched ’bout modern tramps.

The Soviets had a fire sale,
The USSR called quits.
Aleksandr Issayevich
Gave the Yeltsin the shits.

Now Solzhenitsyn’s Moscow’s boy.
Putin thinks he’s swell;
America’s nice for visiting
But give me my Mucovite hell!

okay, “Muscovite”…

Phew! If I thought you was making fun of this Solzhenitsyn guy, I’d book you for a felony.

Solzehene…

Solchini…

Sozloenh…

SHULTZ IN EDEN!!

Gesundheit!

You people.

I swan.

(First prize to Leonard. So far.)

I was the first journalist to interview Solzhenitsyn in Abu Ghraib. I righteously resisted when told to break his hands. Read about it here-
http://www.nationalreview.com/smitht/smith200405140913.asp

Update: my left wing detractors are once again claiming, in their colorful colliquial way, that I am, “A lying sack of shit”. They claim Solzhenitsyn was never in the US Navy and never incarcerated in Abu Ghraib.

But I have the emails from Barry to prove it.

“W Thomas Smith Jr is not a ‘lying sack of shitl,” U.S. Marine Maj. Barry Piehole Jr., spokesman for Multi-National Force West at Camp Fallujah, tells National Review Online. “And he absolutely had hot monkey sex with Toni Basil.”

It also works to Alouette!

Not to mention “Frère Jacques”…

Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn
Who are you?
Who are you?
“I wrote The First Circle
Never laughed at Urkel
Irk the Jews
Irk the Jews

Holy crap, I thought that was an animatronic robot like that eerie PK Dick from a while back.

“I will never forget, “writes Max Baer Jr. to NRO, “The first time i met W Thomas Smith Jr. I happened into Irene’s trailer to find him banging both Irene and Buddy while Nancy sat on his face. That’s something because both Nancy and Buddy were well known Hollywodd lesbians.”

“Solzhenitsyn?!? Solzhenitsyn?!? A pipe fitter from KENT!!”

Always go with Alexi Sayle, whenever possible.

Jillian’s right. Alexander S is no sort of democrat (or republican, for that matter.) He’s tiresomely fixated on all of the hoariest chestnuts about the Great Russian Soul, etc. and dismisses everything going back to the Enlightenment. (That isn’t hyperbole. He seriously considers that the point where humanity went off the tracks.) He’s also more than a little bit of an Anti-Semite, which is typical of that cast of mind.

Of course, he gets the official New Republic pass on that.

Because he followed roughly the same political arc (revolutionary to reactionary) that Dostoyevsky did, and they’re both broody, hirsute Russkies who write novels that can double as doorstops, many ‘wingers over the years have tried to glom AS on to Teddy D’s greatness by proxy. If you’ve read both men, you know how vain an effort that is. (Gore Vidal once compared Solzhenitzyn’s prose style to that of an artillery manual, which covers it nicely.)

Not to mention “Frère Jacques”…

That’s it, shutdown the internetswebstubes. Mister Leonard Pierce has left the building, unless a Hallelujah chorus can be snarked. Then we must shut down the planet.

“Never laughed at Urkel” and “Pen Le Saint Genet” are neck and neck right now.

I am the first journalist to have had simultaneous hot monkey lovin’ with Gore Vidal and Jaleel White.

i hope one of you can make it work to “rebel, rebel” cuz I need to get Alouette on replay OUT OF MY HEAD RIGHT NOW. THANK YOU!

i hope one of you can make it work to “rebel, rebel” cuz I need to get Alouette on replay OUT OF MY HEAD RIGHT NOW. THANK YOU!

Contrary to what the MSM might tell you, I wrote “Michelle”.

Sing along with me-

Michelle, ma belle.
These are words that go together well,
My Michelle.

Michelle, ma belle.
Sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble,
Très bien ensemble.

I love you, I love you, I love you.
That’s all I want to say.
Until I find a way
I will say the only words I know that
You’ll understand.

Statistics Canada released Census data on immigration today. This caught my eye

More than 8,000 Americans immigrated to B.C. between 2001 and 2006, a number that has doubled since 2001, surpassing immigration from Iran, Hong Kong, or Pakistan.

Charles Meadow, president of the Victoria chapter of Democrats Abroad, was surprised to hear of the big jump in immigrants from the U.S.

He believes most move to Canada for work or because it’s just a nice place to live. He also suspects the big increase has a lot to do with people who don’t like the politics of the Bush administration.

“Many of these people are coming because they are quite disaffected by what’s happening in the United States. I feel disaffected myself,” Meadow said.

I wish all the liberals in this Country would immigrate to Canada, then America would be Strong, Patriotic and Moral once again.

It might surpise you to know that i was the first journalist to emmigrate to Candada, Didn’t like it much, apperently your health care system sucks.

I spoke with some Canucks Wednesday evening as they returned from routine hanging about waiting for medical treatment and other duties, and prepared to move into their cardboard boxes under highway overpasses — just behind my leftist friends — for what may prove to be one of the most important interviews of my incredibly important career interviewing important stuff. All say they’d rather live in the newly Democratic Iraq than the socialist Canada.

I wish all the liberals in this Country would immigrate to Canada, then America would be Strong, Patriotic and Moral once again.

as a canuckistanian i can only say “me too!”

It might surpise you to know that i was the first journalist to emmigrate to Candada, Didn’t like it much, apperently your health care system sucks.

apperently, like a lot of other neocons who back a private health care system that serves the few and not the many, you’ve never availed yourself of our health care system. i dare say, if it was as bad as you claim, those 8,000 would have moved back to the united states of dumbasses.

I always liked that “Hakuna Matata” scans precisely with “Vagina Dentata.”

Lesley said…apperently, like a lot of other neocons who back a private health care system that serves the few and not the many, you’ve never availed yourself of our health care system. i dare say, if it was as bad as you claim, those 8,000 would have moved back to the united states of dumbasses.

You me and Paul Wolfowitz once made a hot monkey love sandwich, yes?

unless a Hallelujah chorus can be snarked
That certainly has possibilities.
I’m just worried now about Andrew Lloyd Webber reading this thread and becoming inspired. Imagine it: “Solzhenitsyn: The Musical”. Could we ever forgive ourselves?
Now I need a drink to wash the flavour out of my mind.

I was the original Rum Tum Tigger.
Jest sayin’

They arrested me and the gulag was my jail
And called my pappy to hear me wail
And he said, “Son, you’re gonna’ drive me to drinkin’
If you don’t stop drivin’ that Solzhenitsyn

I’m just worried now about Andrew Lloyd Webber reading this thread and becoming inspired. Imagine it: “Solzhenitsyn: The Musical”. Could we ever forgive ourselves?

Springtime for Solzhenitsyn has a nice ring.

and now if you don’t mind….i’m going to watch the Victoria’s Secret Solzhenitsyn Show…

It might interest you to know that not only was i the first journalist to appear nearly naked in a Victoria’s Secret catalog, I also set up the first Malaysian child labour sweatshop.

Solzhenitsyn, tell me what’s wrong
You’re enchained by your own sorrow
In your eyes there is no hope for tomorrow

Springtime for Solzhenitsyn has a nice ring.

‘Sol On Ice’? Actually that sounds too much like Eldridge Cleaver’s skating extravaganza — and whatever happened to him, anyway?

Eldridge Cleaver’s skating extravaganza — and whatever happened to him, anyway?

“I would really rather you don’t use my good name on your liberal commie-fag blog” ,
writes Eldridge Cleaver, who currently lives in my basement alongside Grizabella the Glamour Cat and Lucy Lui and does my laundry.

Tho I am not the me who has been speaking as me here previously, I am actually Ann Althouse.

I have never told anyone this before, but Glenn Reynolds is my love child. I never meant for it to happen, pretty sure that kissinger bastard drugged me.

Insidentaly, I am the first journalist to have carried Kissingers love cjild to fruition.

I would like to go on record here as saying that W Thomas Smith Jr is a major good fuck, his penis is a monster, rips me to my soul, leaves me wet and crying sad lonely tears into my pillow.

Update; Kissinger wasn’t bad either, altho he wants the backdoor.

Jeer at me all you want World bank fags, I never slept with a canadian.

W Thomas Smith Jr tho… dreamy. What an ispiration he is.

Speaking of skating extravaganzas, “Solon Ice” belongs about two threads ago.

Incidentally, Solzhenitsyn has the most perfectly Russian physiognomy I’ve ever seen.

If I looked like him, I’d probably be a tsarist, too.

Russian physiognomy? Bah. If I had hair like him, I’d enter myself in a dog show and claim to be a partially-bald Shih Tzu.

Look at his face. If that’s not Russian, I don’t know what is.

True. He is in the middle of saying something soulful and lugubrious
Thanks to Lesley, I can’t sleep, on account of humming “Springtime for Solzhenitsyn” to the tune of ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’. So this is my revenge:

Sol, Sol, Zhenitsyn,
Lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone
Sol, Sol, Zhenitsyn,
Russia’s greatest love machine
It was a shame how he carried on

Solzhenitsyn? Solzhenitsyn? A former pipe fitter-welder from HARROGATE!

The fact is, if left lib whiners hate it hear so much, they should move somewhere else where socialism supposedly works, like Canada, Cuba or Europe. They will find out soon that is a fantasy and be back begging to be let back in. I say never.

Hey, what’s the matter, man? We’re gonna come around at 12 with some Puerto Rican girls who like Solzhenitsyn.

I have a new blog. Aren’t I so wonderful?

Wow. Just when they said you were fading, you’re back and more Althousey than ever. Do you have any stories about unsatisfactory treks to Barnes and Noble for us?

The things I do for you people…

Solzhenitsyn!
Solzhenitsyn!
Solzhenitsyn!
Solzhenitsyn!
Sol-zhen-it-syn!

Solzhenitsyn!
Solzhenitsyn!
Solzhenitsyn!
Solzhenitsyn!
Sol-zhen-it-syn!

(Apologies for my ignorance of Latin cognates ruining the jokes.)

I’ve been whistling the “Andy Griffith” theme song to myself since last night. [sigh] I miss Barney. Gavin rules, as you kids say.

Shalom, gentlemen.

Oh, I just had to!

It might surprise you to know that not only did i invent Latin but i also was the first person to christen a baby ‘Gavin’. Unfortunaty, Latin turned up dead and the baby grew up to be
John Oates

Q: Do you like Solzhenitsyn?

A: I don’t know, I’ve never solzhenitsed.

A ella le gusta A. Solzhenitsyn
Dame más Solzhenitsyn
Cómo le encanta A. Solzhenitsyn
Dame más Solzhenitsyn
A ella le gusta A. Solzhenitsyn
Dame más Solzhenitsyn
Cómo le encanta A. Solzhenitsyn
Dame más Solzhenitsyn

Holy shit, Solzhenitsyn’s still alive? He outlived Mailer? Guess the gulag has nothing on Brooklyn Heights.

Have I mentioned that you smart, educated fuckers piss me off?

I totally understand. A quick wit is a joy to behold, but I get so jealous.

Michael Gambon is Solzhenitsyn.

So… Solzhenitsyn is Dumbledore?

Those bastards tortured Dumbledore?!?

‘Sol On Ice’? Actually that sounds too much like Eldridge Cleaver’s skating extravaganza — and whatever happened to him, anyway?

Eldridge is back, back in the penitentiary.
Eldridge is back, back in the penitentiary… with Timothy
If I was Eldridge, I woulda stayed in Gay Paree.
Wine, women, and song!

Loudon Wainwright III, California Prison Blues, 1976

(For the sake of accuracy, I should mention that in fact Eldridge is not back in the penitentiary, but is instead currently pushing up the daisies.)

There once was a man, Solzhenitsyn,
Never dines out, only eats in.
Wingnuts should read Gulag
but prefer to shout “You Fag!”
and so history repeats itself again.

OK Mr Leonard Pierce, if you’re so bloody clever, how about something from Carmina Burana?

Dobry den’, cheloveki.

At least one point for Kathleen, if only for a poem that us monolingual, nonliterary types can chuckle to.

I remember reading Solzhenitsyn as a teenage. even when nobody was making me do it. I think I did it because I had some youthful romantic notion that it was ‘important’ (yeah, I was insufferable at that age, so sue me). From what little I recall (it’s been awhile, OK?), Gore Vidal’s critique of the prose style covers it nicely.

AND NOW HE DID