Saints and Sinners

I know its hard to imagine that I do not have a soft heart. It's pretty sceptical usually. So I was pretty surprised when I was watching Saint Ralph and couldn't stop sobbing. It was kind of amazing to me. I just chuckle in movies that are funny and I might have a tear if it's sad. But I was sobbing as this young man was running. I'm so glad Adrian didn't come into the room. The thing is, I really liked this young man. He was goofy, but not too; totally devoted to his mother; horny as hell; willing to believe when it suited his needs. What's not to like?

I've been finishing books in the last week. Comrade J was about a Russian defector set in the last decade. Fairly interesting. Most interesting was how abused the UN plan of regulating Iraqi oil sales to keep Saddam in line. Right. Everyone made money but US. I guess that's because it was our money. Stupid.

I've mentioned The Adventure of English before. I enjoyed this one. It seemed to fit in with all the other books I've been reading. It ends with the US and Britain taking responsibility for English being the language of money and international politics. Some of it made me think about Ramesh and his desire to have his son speak English. India, at one time, was trying to wean itself off English as the language of commerce and government. Hindi became the official language, although not everyone in India speaks that language. The author says that the people of India have a great facility with language. He doesn't say this, but they have to speak a lot of languages. There are too many languages spoken in a even a small space for one language to be enough. I guess if you stay in one village and farm or raise sheep you don't need to know more than one. But all my friends there speak several.

I finally made it to the bookclub. The best part was that the wife of my old boss, Bill, was there. She's Jaine. She mentioned during the discussion that she is reading The History of French. I had just been listening to The Adventure of English on the way over. The information in both those books gave insight into Pillars of Earth. Strange.