My own self

Just listen to the fatuity of this man - this sheep, rather. Here were his words: 'Brutus, whose name I mention with all respect, called out Cicero's name while he was holding the bloodstained dagger: from which you must understand that Cicero was an accomplice.' So, just because you suspect that I suspected something you call me a criminal, yet the man who brandished a dripping dagger is mentioned by you 'with all respect'! Very well, use this imbecile language if you must; and your actions and options are even more brainless. In the end, Consul, you will have to make up your mind! You must pronounce your final judgement on the cause of the Brutuses, Cassius, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, Gaius Trebonius, and the rest. Sleep off you hangover - breathe it out. Perhaps a torch might be administered, to sting you out of your snoring over this far from unimportant matter. Will you never understand that you must decide which description to apply to the men who did that deed: are they murderers or are they the restorers of national freedom?

Concentrate, please - just for a little. Try to make your brain work for a moment as if you were sober. I confess I am their friend - you prefer to call me their associate. And yet even I refuse to see any compromise solution. If these men are not liberators of the Roman people and saviours of the state, then even I assert that they are worse than assassins, worse than murderers. Indeed, on the assumption that the murder of one's own father is less horrible than to kill the father of one's country, even parricides are better than they are.

Well, then, you wise and thoughtful man, what to you say to this: if they are parricides, why, in the Senate and Assembly, do you refer to them with respect? You will also have to explain why you yourself proposed Marucs Brutus's exemption from the laws when he remained outside the city for more than ten days [in spite of being a city-praetor]; why, at the Games of Apollo, he received such a complimentary reception; and why he and Cassius were given provincial commands, and supernumerary questors and legates were assigned to them for the purpose. This was all your doing! So evidently you do not regard them as murderers. It follows - since no compromise is possible - that you must regard them as liberators. What is the matter? I am not embarrassing you, am I? For I doubt if you are quite competent to grasp the sort of dilemma in which this places you. Anyway, what my conclusion amounts to is this: by not regarding Brutus and the rest as criminals, you have automatically proclaimed that they deserve the most glorious rewards.

So I must re-design my speech. I shall write to these men and say that, if anyone asks whether your charge against me is true, they must offer no denials. For, if I was their accomplice and they conceal the fact, I am afraid this may discredit them; whereas if I was invited to join them and refused, this will reflect the gravest discredit on me. For heaven will bear witness that Rome - that any nation throughout the whole world - has never seen a greater act than theirs! There has never been an achievement more glorious - more greatly deserving of renown for all eternity. So if you pen me in a Trojan horse of complicity with the chief partners in that deed, I do not protest. Thank you, I say - whatever your motives. For where so outstanding an action is concerned, I account the unpopularity, which you hope to unload upon me, as nothing beside the glory.

You have driven these men away and expelled them, you boast. Yet they are blessed beyond measure. There is no place in the world too deserted and too barbarous to welcome them and delight in their presence. All people on earth, however uncivilized, are capable of understanding that life could offer no more outstanding happiness than a sight of these men. Writers will continue, for generation after generation throughout time everlasting, to immortalize the glory of their achievement.

Enrol me among such heroes, I beg of you! Though I am afraid that one thing may not be to your liking. If I had been among their number I should have freed our country not only from the autocrat but from the autocracy. For if, as you assert, I had been the author of the work, believe me, I should not have been satisfied to finish only one act. I should have completed the play!

- Marcus Tullius Cicero,
The Second Philippic Against Mark Antony,
translated by Michael Grant for Penguin Books.

Or, hopefully, anyway. I'm not handing out guarantees.

Is this post late, you say? Is this not in keeping with the fine standard I set last year? And what about the Prime Minister Speech Review? Didn't do that one this year, either. Nor did I do the review of the King's Speech which I wanted to do to make up for last year.

Fear not, gentle reader.


Oh, and fear not, violent readers, I hadn't forgotten you, either, I'm just favorizing my gentle one.


Anyway, fear not.


'Cause I've got me some explanations.

I was at my grandfather's this New Year's Eve and Day. So, no internet. Zap. Zilch. Nil. Nada. Splonge. Bupkiss. Bippers. I might have made up some of those words. No net, though. Net-depravement is big around those parts.

He lives in a valley so secluded you had to transport your cars there by boat 'til 1989 'cause there were no roads.

Anywho.

No net, no immediate ability to Report On My Thoughts and such. Also, I've been busy. Busybusybusy. As in the kind of state where you're, you guessed it, busy. (Good guess, by the way, were you peeking ahead?) I've had other stuff on my mind. Plus, this whole (non-)blog-thing isn't as new and fancy and interesting now as it was a year ago. Then again that's life. ("That's liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife! That's what all the people saaaaay." That commercial has killed my taste in music)

The Prime Minister's Speech, that one I would have done a post on. Had I fracking watched it. I just caught the last five minutes. Probably a blessing in disguise, it's not like they ever say anything new. I caught the King's Speech, though, naturally, I'd be a poor sod of a monarchist if I didn't catch the one time throughout a year the King actually speaks directly to the people. But it's been so long since, now, I can't remember enough of it to comment properly. It was the same old same old with the thematic twist of the year, as usual, but I liked it. It dealt a lot with xenophobia and common decency and that kind of thing. Very humane. Sappy, but that's the point, I guess. Kudos to Harald and his speechwriter(s?).

Just for the record, though, I caught the national anthem after both speeches, and the King's song before his speech, and I rose and stood through all three. I might be a closet nationalist. I might just like the song. Or I might just think it's plain cool to revere something which is purely symbolic.

So, the year. Interesting thing, the year. It's a natural cycle. It's not man-made, like the second or the hour or the century or the millenia. There actually would be such a thing as a year even if we hadn't made up a name for it.

Sorry, I digress. I meant "the PAST year", not years in general, and by believing that was obvious, I seem to have misled myself, 'cause apparently, it wasn't. I need to stop taking everything I write literally.

So, the past year. Well, it's past. And it was a very good one. For me, anyway. They hung Saddam, though. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can do. I mean, he's even in the South Park-movie. He's like Cæsar; you just can't picture the guy die. Sure, he's a swine, but even so. He's like an icon. Doesn't ring right, his being dead. Like you kind of can't really believe it. It's scary, that, realizing how frail human life is even when you're the world's possibly best known genocidal maniac. If HE can die, everybody can die. He didn't lose his cool, though. Kudos to him. I'm generally opposed to execution as a form of penalty - I figure that nobody can really know what it entails without having died themselves first - and I kind of think imprisonment for life is the worse sentence anyway. Apparently, though, the Iraqi government was clear on this being to spare the people of him, not to punish him, so, that's a moot point. I just can't quite wrap my mind around his being gone. Even though the world is probably a slightly better place for it.

Other people I have never known, met or really wanted to meet have died this past year, too. The only ones of them to make an impression on me, though, were a couple of actors and the like. Right now I can only remember Sverre Holm and Peter Boyle. Thanks, guys. You've made me laugh.

So, that's the morbid section of this post. Me, I'm good. Good year. Better than good. No major bad occurancies in my immediate family, me included. Good health. Good life, rather good economy. Good getting-my-civic-service-postponed-indefinetely. Good studying. I'm regretting I didn't take an additional course in spring, 'cause one of the two I did take turned out to be far less work than I could have ever dreamed, but still. I re-took an exam in March, and improved my only post-high school grade below B, a D, to a B. One of my prouder moments, that. I had two more exams in June, one in an interesting subject where I got really lucky with the questions on the exam, and one in a dreadfully boring subject where I wrote my bachelor's assignment and somehow did extremely well without having read more than 10% of the curriculum. Summer was nice, but uneventful, maybe. Other than making my webcomic. Of which I'm rather proud, to tell the truth. Otherwise, this summer, I took a short trip with my family like we usually do in summers, and beyond that, I mainly just worked. I'm starting to tire of working where I work in vacations and weekends where I'm home. I'm starting to grow more comfortable there, yes, with the people there and the assigments there and so on, but I'm tiring of it. It's so dreadfully boring. Anyway, on to the autumn, where I took three *very* interesting courses, making for my academically most interesting term since spring 2005, and the two I've learned the results of yet turned out really well, too. January 17th will prove whether or not the third one followed suit. I have hopes. ("He's got HIIIIGH hopes. He's got. HIIIIGH hopes. He's got high apple pie in the sky hopes!" I love Goofy) If it does, it'll be pure awesomity. Personally, too, it's been a great year. I'm very lucky, I have a very easy life and no major worries, never really did have. I hope it'll last a long while yet. I've grown more social, too. This spring, I kind of regressed, I didn't share courses with anyone I know and I didn't really make much contact with the ones I knew outside my courses from before. Right before summer, though, it changed, and I made an effort to keep it up the first few weeks this fall, and voilà, it held. Suddenly, I find myself socializing almost one day or so every week. It's crazy. Nice people, too. Not a lot of people, but very nice people. Obviously. I'm way too picky to keep up seeing people I don't think are very nice. And I incresingly realize, I know a lot of very nice people online, too. You know who you are, but thank you for making my year that much better for having chatted with you and listened to me. So, great year. And in the humble beginnings of October, it got even better. Sure made me glad I don't keep this weblog in Norwegian.

I hope next year will be as good. Or possibly even better. I've signed up for some courses in Latin on top of my full-time studying history, so academically, it's suicide, but I'm hoping it will be a good year even so. This far, it's looking pretty promising.

To all of you out there reading this, happy new year. I wish you all the best. And thank you for all you've done for me in the old one. ^^ Keep flyin', people. I implore you. As does Mal.

Oh, and if any one of you tries making jokes on how late this post is, there will be fatal beatings administered.