Short Kicks: Je suis occupé

Not much time for blogging as work has me flat out like a lizard drinking, having launched CricketFan as the first addition to the FanSports Network (which had previously only consisted of FanFooty) and shortly to officially add FanLeague. Time for some short kicks!

- The Charlie Hebdo story has been done to death elsewhere. I had a blog post brewing in my mind which would have mentioned the word "arsehole" about 250 times, because my opinion is that the fact that some Islamist arseholes blew some French arseholes away for being arseholes has drawn a predictable response from libertarian arseholes in their seemingly unstoppable campaign to Let Arseholes Be Arseholes should not mean that non-arseholes should give in to any of the arsehole-aligned factions. I was also going to draw some allusions between the childishness of Charlie Hebdo and the English tradition of Private Eye and Viz of publishing obscenity as a kind of white privilege - back in the 1960s they might have been fighting a real battle against power and privilege, but by now that sort of thing is just kicking down. That post will never be written now, as I haven't the time. I'm sure you're all sad about that.

- What is Henry Ergas doing writing about Islamism? He's an economist of some renown (or some previous renown). His competency is not acting like every other hack political commentator. I know Krugman freelances a lot in his columns, but at least he maintains some semblance of aloofness from the culture wars.

- Saw the third Hobbit movie. Was disappointed that the film rather squibbed on the fate of the gold. There was an opportunity for a Pikettyesque narrative about the 99% rising up against the elite to bust open the trove of hoarded wealth and kickstart a new era of prosperity with some good old-fashioned redistribution. Instead, we were treated to a string of sequences of the mayor's sidekick Alfrid acting all craven and covetous, over and over, as an impossibly crude parody of the bourgeoisie. It was a middling attempt at lowbrow humour, a classless dig at the middle classes of Middle Earth.