Wednesday Moby-Dick Blogging
The news of this terrible looking adaptation got me to look up a passage that seems relevant to the current bailout follies:
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING PAID,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
It’s funny because it’s true.
19 Responses to “Wednesday Moby-Dick Blogging”
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September 24th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Melville’s (or at least Ishmael) got it wrong. It’s the love of money, not the money itself, that’s always been the problem.
But, yeah, I get your point. I’m feeling very much like a passenger on the ship these days.
September 24th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Just as long as they cast Chris Rock as Pip …
September 24th, 2008 at 8:51 am
also funny:
the wages that he and his shipmates were making at the time.
for a whole year’s voyage at sea, with crippling labor and a decent chance of disfigurement and death, they got the equivalent of maybe $5,000 cash at payout.
you can’t do it, my friends; you just can’t do it.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Some people go down to the sea in ships to escape Dan Kervick’s bursting dam.
As I’ve noted before, the rivers are the only viable evacuation route out of the big Eastern Seaboard cities.
Rum drinks and chichitas just a few weeks down the Inland Waterway, roaming bands of hungary cannibals if you say in place.
Mother Cuba’s calling , Matthew. Check out Belle Haven Marina just south of the Wilson Bridge. Every rat needs an escape route.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am
The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.
I don’t know about this — there’s an awful lot of people out there that really seem to love to shop.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Hmmm. Now I think of it, Inland Waterway has lots of ambush spots.
New News, Matthew. You need to pick up real sailing — the blue water kind. Although Belle Haven will give you a start on the fundamentals.
You need to take Maryland School of Sailing’s courses in Rock Hall Maryland –including their sail to Bermuda. Only place between Boston and Ft Lauderdale to learn. The Chesapeake Bay yuppies are chickenshit — close harbor coastal sailing only. If you stick with that, the cannibals will raft out to your boat and cut your throat before you know it.
Rock Hall also has a bunch of Island Packets, in case you need to do a wee bit of pirating.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Correction: A wee bit of “Commandeering”.
September 24th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
‘I’m feeling very much like a passenger on the ship these days.’
And we’re all fast fish.
September 24th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
“[D]oubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this: ‘Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States ‘Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael ‘BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN’
September 24th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
The Chesapeake Bay yuppies are chickenshit — close harbor coastal sailing only. If you stick with that, the cannibals will raft out to your boat and cut your throat before you know it.
Well, but you forget:
For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself — the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
September 24th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Ha ha ha. Rea, that sounds like Barney Frank negotiating this bailout with Mitch McConnell after one drink too many.
When it comes to understanding seamanship and politics , I’m afraid Ol’ One Eye has the advantage of us:
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/boat_analogies.php#comment-1100061
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