Running for NE Assembly

[Insula Dei]

It's official, I'm running.

Labor Party, please endorse me.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I'll tolerate you.

[Adam Griffin]

It's official, I'm running.

Labor Party, please endorse me.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

He's a Tweedist. We're a bit too right-wing for him.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

In exchange for a first preference, of course.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

You have my endorsement.

If elected, you better be active.

[Insula Dei]

What will you do if you are elected, belgiansocialist?

That's a rather broad question, isn't it? I suppose the best synopsis is this: I'll be a consistent vote on the left of the Assembly, a consistent voice for a social and strong North-East.

I welcome any questions on specific issues, obviously.

[Insula Dei]

1. More funding for education and healthcare, paid for by a Capital Gains Tax. Recalibrate the Income Tax to cut taxes completely for people making under 49,999 per year, while raising rates for higher brackets. Remove the Northeast Healthy Skin Act and the associated tax on tanning.

2. I'm inclined to oppose the waste of money that the CRA would in my opinion be. I'd be open to persuasion/compromise on that account, though.

3. Drop Tuition rates significantly, raise teachers' wages, get rid of standardized testing entirely. Make Education our no. 1 priority.

[Insula Dei]

The CJO adressed ecstatic crowds in Baltimore, MD, last night.

Dear Friends, and fellow Northeasterners,

I’m here to start off my campaign, to write the first sentence of a beautiful story with you. Now, a great deal can be said about the opening sentence in literature. There’s a quite well-known lecture on the opening sentence by the great Dutch Writer WF Hermans. It’s not a very good lecture, mind you. More of a catalogue of not completely failed examples of the genre than a critical survey.  It still has the merit of pointing our attention to the single greatest opening sentence in Dutch Literature, the first line of Nescio’s De Uitvreter  (a good translation might be The Loafer): ‘With the exception of that man who thought that the Sarpahtistraat in Amsterdam was the most beautiful place in Europe, I have never known another person as remarkable as the Loafer.’ A perfect example of the genre, evoking a world stretching out behind those words, reverberating with a host of unspecified details.

This is what constitutes to my mind the strength of a good opening sentence: it says more than it appears to do, much like a Joseph Conrad novel. One could in that context point to perhaps the most celebrated opening line in 20th Century English Language literature, from Anthony Burgess’ Earthly Powers: ‘It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.’ I’d have to disagree, however, Burgess’ sentence is nothing but an exercise in outrageousness; a laudable project in itself, but not what grants an opening sentence a special, deeper dimension. It falls short because it is too self-conscious, too obviously nothing but a joke.

It now also occurs to me that the most famous opening sentence in all of Dutch literature is not Nescio’s (and he did have some other good ones ‘Boys we were, but nice boys’ is positively famous), but the superficially uninteresting: ‘I’m a trader in coffee and I live in the Lauriergracht, No. 37’ Here we are presented with what we will come to see as a quite comprehensive description of Batavus Droogstoppel, one of the three narrators in Multatuli’s Max Havelaar. The sentence may not appear very informative at first, but as the novel progresses it gains meaning. It’s the sort of opening sentence that rewards re-reading.

We now have two characteristics of the good opening sentence: it hints at something not said, and it does so in a way that at the same time conveys information about what will be said a bit further on. If we add the obvious demand of  tension, of economy, than we wind up with a template for the truly great opening sentence, the ‘Call me Ishmael’ type of opener. It’s fair to say that all that came before, was but a run-up to the point I’d like to make: that I know of no other opening sentence in all of world literature that can stand besides Céline’s little pearl of perfection in Mort à Credit: ‘Nous voici encore seuls’. Four words, yet impossible to translate without sacrificing 90% or more of what makes this such an arresting opening. ‘Here we are, still alone’? No, that won’t do. That won’t do at all.

There’s a final type of opening sentence that needs addressing: the general truth. ‘All happy families are alike,…’, or its ironic pendant Austen’s ‘truth universally acknowledged’. This is the opening sentence that is the most overrated, in my opinion. Universal truths rarely transcend the level of the amusing quip, the easy inversion, or, worst of all, the truism. They are quotable, yes, but they’re also a bad habit.

Thank you, and God Bless Atlasia!

[bore]

The CJO adressed ecstatic crowds in Baltimore, MD, last night.

Dear Friends, and fellow Northeasterners,

I’m here to start off my campaign, to write the first sentence of a beautiful story with you. Now, a great deal can be said about the opening sentence in literature. There’s a quite well-known lecture on the opening sentence by the great Dutch Writer WF Hermans. It’s not a very good lecture, mind you. More of a catalogue of not completely failed examples of the genre than a critical survey.  It still has the merit of pointing our attention to the single greatest opening sentence in Dutch Literature, the first line of Nescio’s De Uitvreter  (a good translation might be The Loafer): ‘With the exception of that man who thought that the Sarpahtistraat in Amsterdam was the most beautiful place in Europe, I have never known another person as remarkable as the Loafer.’ A perfect example of the genre, evoking a world stretching out behind those words, reverberating with a host of unspecified details.

This is what constitutes to my mind the strength of a good opening sentence: it says more than it appears to do, much like a Joseph Conrad novel. One could in that context point to perhaps the most celebrated opening line in 20th Century English Language literature, from Anthony Burgess’ Earthly Powers: ‘It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.’ I’d have to disagree, however, Burgess’ sentence is nothing but an exercise in outrageousness; a laudable project in itself, but not what grants an opening sentence a special, deeper dimension. It falls short because it is too self-conscious, too obviously nothing but a joke.

It now also occurs to me that the most famous opening sentence in all of Dutch literature is not Nescio’s (and he did have some other good ones ‘Boys we were, but nice boys’ is positively famous), but the superficially uninteresting: ‘I’m a trader in coffee and I live in the Lauriergracht, No. 37’ Here we are presented with what we will come to see as a quite comprehensive description of Batavus Droogstoppel, one of the three narrators in Multatuli’s Max Havelaar. The sentence may not appear very informative at first, but as the novel progresses it gains meaning. It’s the sort of opening sentence that rewards re-reading.

We now have two characteristics of the good opening sentence: it hints at something not said, and it does so in a way that at the same time conveys information about what will be said a bit further on. If we add the obvious demand of  tension, of economy, than we wind up with a template for the truly great opening sentence, the ‘Call me Ishmael’ type of opener. It’s fair to say that all that came before, was but a run-up to the point I’d like to make: that I know of no other opening sentence in all of world literature that can stand besides Céline’s little pearl of perfection in Mort à Credit: ‘Nous voici encore seuls’. Four words, yet impossible to translate without sacrificing 90% or more of what makes this such an arresting opening. ‘Here we are, still alone’? No, that won’t do. That won’t do at all.

There’s a final type of opening sentence that needs addressing: the general truth. ‘All happy families are alike,…’, or its ironic pendant Austen’s ‘truth universally acknowledged’. This is the opening sentence that is the most overrated, in my opinion. Universal truths rarely transcend the level of the amusing quip, the easy inversion, or, worst of all, the truism. They are quotable, yes, but they’re also a bad habit.

Thank you, and God Bless Atlasia!

Endorsed.

[Napoleon]

Maryland is the Mideast.

[Insula Dei]

Maryland is the Mideast.

My campaign is a grassroots movement that is not limited to the Northeast. I have an active campaign office in Djakarta, Indonesia, too.

[Lincoln Republican]

But since you are running for a seat in the Northeast Assembly, I should think you would be campaigning here in the Northeast to crowds of Northeastearners, whose votes you are seeking.

[Simfan34]

We see the irrelevant ramblings of a known seditionist to people who shan't be his constituents, if he was expressing irrendentism this might be marginally better. Northeasterners need someone to stand up for them and represent them, not someone who is part of grandiose, self-serving transcendentalist movements that are about fuzzy cosmopolitan "ideas" and "concepts" and not actual solutions.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

But since you are running for a seat in the Northeast Assembly, I should think you would be campaigning here in the Northeast to crowds of Northeastearners, whose votes you are seeking.

The Mideast is such a great region that it's perfectly understandable that Insula Dei would take this opportunity to visit.  I mean let's be honest, who wouldn't