“The Little Wretches Are Out Of Temper”

Not the cats.  The cats are in temper.  Thank Bast for that.

No.  I’m talking about words.  Words!  Those “little wretches.”

I don’t know about you.  I have become absolute-zero intolerant of the shitstorm of words that surrounds us these days.  Words that take the truth by the throat and strangle the life out of it.  Words that cover up the truth with an oriental rug of byzantine blather, under which is swept a veritable suffocation of dust-ball gorillas.

Bugs Is Fed Up.

I just love to peel back a corner of that rug and peer underneath.  I like listening to “On The Media.”  This week’s podcast was a real humdinger.

Are you a fan of the First Amendment?  Freedom of speech?  Open society? Just listen here.

Is Edward Snowden a traitor? hero? both?  Should a single internet-child-porn consumer be charged millions of dollars, to pay for the suffering of the abused child whose misery was broadcast to who-knows-how-many other wretched consumers? whose individual responsibility might be apportioned in twenty-dollar increments?  Should one other person with a very big chip on her shoulder – who, incidentally and incredibly, apparently views herself as a purveyor of truth and light – be allowed scot-free to create websites maligning a First-Amendment lawyer? and then offer to take down the sites in exchange for money (which fits pretty neatly into the definition of extortion as I understand it)? and  then drag the lawyer’s three-year-old daughter into the  fray?  Should the use of the word “Nazi” be criminalized in Israel, to prevent the trivialization of that massive spasm of murderousness, except, that is, the word could be used in certain circumstances, except that makes the whole thing about impossible to enforce, and except that the proscribed word would have to be used in that enforcement-tussle? thereby defeating the whole enterprise?

“Words fail me!”  So was named a BBC series in the late 1930’s – as, by the way, that epic spasm of Nazi murderousness was just getting underway.  Virginia Woolf was recorded speaking in that series.  There she called words “irreclaimable vagabonds.” She saw that any attempts to corral them by law would be “worse than useless.”  She noticed that the “little wretches” have a tendency to be put “out of temper; disobliging; disobedient; dumb.”

Listen to the only recording of her extraordinarily plummy delivery here and follow along with the complete transcript here.

So, Virginia.  What shall we do, when overwhelmed by the dust-ball blather?

What??

Why – grab ahold of a cat.

Take a tip from a cat.

Shake a paw.

Good For What Ails Ya.