A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans, with an Account of the Author's Being Taken Captive was without question one of the most boring and inexorably uninteresting pieces of literature I have ever forced myself to read. I would go so far as to claim the The Prince was a more engaging piece of literature.
The first chapter was passably readable and looked as though we were going to be treated to an interesting narrative of the journey of a bonded man into a strange land. However Joseph quickly did away with these hops and jumped to the heart of his writing, Tedium Incarnate. Let me give you an example:
"The Algerines, in the month of April, have three several camps go forth: one to the east, one to the west, one to the south, of which the first is the greatest and consists of about an hundred tents, each tent containing twenty men. The western camp consists of about seventy or eighty [of] the like tents, and the southern camp but of fifteen. Each of these divisions hath a bey, or general, who gives so many thousand pieces of eight monthly for his place to the dey, or governor of Algier, and moreover defrays the whole coast and charges of the camp and is to make due provision of bread, butter, oil, and also wheat to make burgu, and likewise flesh for them twice a week, and barley for the horses. It is to be observed that every tent have their allowance, which allowance is far more than they can dispense withal, and therefore they have the liberty to take what they think will serve them and rest in money, which they divide among themselves."
fun!
So, moving to the author; he managed to go to great lengths to insult the Algerians while relentlessly reminding the reader that they seem to be more devoted to their false god than the average Briton was to his. He is inconsistent through out the book on several issues including marriage and divorce practices, claiming that only a virgin woman could be married then mentioning that divorce and remarriage was common. He was by and large somewhat balanced in his recounting of his experience if not painfully precise. I have no question that historians surely find this an excellently engaging piece but I found it questionably more exciting than my book for Classical Mechanics.
Overall I was left sure that he is neurotically Christian and holds a severe grudge against the Islamic faith and a general derogation for the Islamic Faith.
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Now playing: Denali - Do Something
via FoxyTunes
Monday, September 17, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
A brief note on Polyphonic Spree
I believe they alone have the power to use such cheesy lyrics and not sound completely lame for instance:
Don’t fall in love, with diamond rings or tragedy
will somehow find its way, in all that you hold true.
Keep them amazed, with your mild devotion to majesty
in some ill quoted phase, in all that you hold true.
What would ya do
if it all came up to you and
love had a new place to play?
What would ya do
if it all came up to you and
love had a new place to play,
today?
Holding on,
holding on sunshine.
Keep the light on in your soul.
Holding on,
holding on sunshine
all day.
Keep the light on in your soul.
On your own.
On your own.
The rest is good.
What would ya
do if it all came up to you and
love had a new place to play?
What would ya do
if it all came up to you and
love had a new place to play,
today?
See those superstars,
tidal waves of broken cars
again, I’ll be flying high.
What would ya do (what would you say)
if it all came up to you and (all came up)
love had a new place to play,
today?
Don’t fall in love, with diamond rings or tragedy
will somehow find its way, in all that you hold true.
Keep them amazed, with your mild devotion to majesty
in some ill quoted phase, in all that you hold true.
What would ya do
if it all came up to you and
love had a new place to play?
What would ya do
if it all came up to you and
love had a new place to play,
today?
Holding on,
holding on sunshine.
Keep the light on in your soul.
Holding on,
holding on sunshine
all day.
Keep the light on in your soul.
On your own.
On your own.
The rest is good.
What would ya
do if it all came up to you and
love had a new place to play?
What would ya do
if it all came up to you and
love had a new place to play,
today?
See those superstars,
tidal waves of broken cars
again, I’ll be flying high.
What would ya do (what would you say)
if it all came up to you and (all came up)
love had a new place to play,
today?
Considering two assholes.
The course about which this blog was started was made had a flurry of assigned readings but two of them stick out in my mind as have peculiar similarities while being absolutely divergent when all is said and done.
William Biddulph and Sir Henry Blount are both without question assholes. This term carries a generally negative connotation. I however don't parley with such boring opinions, to quote one of my best friends "Some of my best friends are assholes." This is not to presume all assholes are pleasant or bearable and it is perhaps worth clarifying the term. An asshole, as best I can tell, is someone who has a large ego. The dividing line between whether these people are in the end pleasant tends to fall upon how aware they are of their ego.
William Biddulph seems in the long run to be a very small man with an ego so large as to not be seen around. His writing is only a step above an annoying friend explainign what tea they had this morning. Whereas Blount clearly casts himself as not only observant and able to give real analysis but was able to crucify his ego and leave it on the hill while he quietly and humbly through the populace of his writing then returned to said ego to write what he had seen. so onto the respective journals.
Biddulph under the guise of some unknown friend who had collected his "friend's" letters insisted on printing. This is of course the first betrayal of the pretense and pompous nature of our deal English man. He then opens his chapter by listing every great philosopher who ever traveled so as to try to associate him with greatness. He then after a bit more wandering finds his way to explaining his journey in which he goes about the task of berating anything that does not seem overtly English; the poor were inevitably simple and ignorant, the rich indulgent and base. He in several cases take an opportunity to go into great detail about the food he ate, the precise number of trees he saw and another number of numbingly inane details. He concludes in condemning the faith of Islam and speak to the sentiment that the Christian church was overjoyed to project, a land of barbaric people living in sinful ways.
In Blount we find a recount flavored strong by a man who I would suppose was an atheist of some devotion. At the least he is very observant and not afraid to speak against the state, culture, or religion of others and I would suspect his own. His introduction is marvelously clear and direct and yet somehow almost elegant. He details his hopes to go to a truly foreign and prosperous land. He then proceeds to analyze from a rather detached and pleasantly rationale perspective the culture and operation of the Ottoman Empire. Some might claim that he berates the Ottomans when he talks about their religion but since I am personally an atheist I see in it more an analysis and perhaps respect of how effectively the religion was at creating a civil society and willing army. When reading this journal it is hard to not feel like you are reading a guide on how to build an empire.
And so we have two men who are very outspoken, harsh, and direct but the line between being an admirable jackass and a boring git separates them. Biddulph would be the sort of man I could casually knock off the deck of a boat in mid-sea and Blount was the sort that I would dive in to rescue.
----------------
Now playing: The Polyphonic Spree - Section 14 (Two Thousand Places)
via FoxyTunes
William Biddulph and Sir Henry Blount are both without question assholes. This term carries a generally negative connotation. I however don't parley with such boring opinions, to quote one of my best friends "Some of my best friends are assholes." This is not to presume all assholes are pleasant or bearable and it is perhaps worth clarifying the term. An asshole, as best I can tell, is someone who has a large ego. The dividing line between whether these people are in the end pleasant tends to fall upon how aware they are of their ego.
William Biddulph seems in the long run to be a very small man with an ego so large as to not be seen around. His writing is only a step above an annoying friend explainign what tea they had this morning. Whereas Blount clearly casts himself as not only observant and able to give real analysis but was able to crucify his ego and leave it on the hill while he quietly and humbly through the populace of his writing then returned to said ego to write what he had seen. so onto the respective journals.
Biddulph under the guise of some unknown friend who had collected his "friend's" letters insisted on printing. This is of course the first betrayal of the pretense and pompous nature of our deal English man. He then opens his chapter by listing every great philosopher who ever traveled so as to try to associate him with greatness. He then after a bit more wandering finds his way to explaining his journey in which he goes about the task of berating anything that does not seem overtly English; the poor were inevitably simple and ignorant, the rich indulgent and base. He in several cases take an opportunity to go into great detail about the food he ate, the precise number of trees he saw and another number of numbingly inane details. He concludes in condemning the faith of Islam and speak to the sentiment that the Christian church was overjoyed to project, a land of barbaric people living in sinful ways.
In Blount we find a recount flavored strong by a man who I would suppose was an atheist of some devotion. At the least he is very observant and not afraid to speak against the state, culture, or religion of others and I would suspect his own. His introduction is marvelously clear and direct and yet somehow almost elegant. He details his hopes to go to a truly foreign and prosperous land. He then proceeds to analyze from a rather detached and pleasantly rationale perspective the culture and operation of the Ottoman Empire. Some might claim that he berates the Ottomans when he talks about their religion but since I am personally an atheist I see in it more an analysis and perhaps respect of how effectively the religion was at creating a civil society and willing army. When reading this journal it is hard to not feel like you are reading a guide on how to build an empire.
And so we have two men who are very outspoken, harsh, and direct but the line between being an admirable jackass and a boring git separates them. Biddulph would be the sort of man I could casually knock off the deck of a boat in mid-sea and Blount was the sort that I would dive in to rescue.
----------------
Now playing: The Polyphonic Spree - Section 14 (Two Thousand Places)
via FoxyTunes
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
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