Showing posts with label The Agent Apsley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Agent Apsley. Show all posts

Sunday 16 December 2012

Apocalypse No !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


16 December

No, I didn't fail to depress the 'w' key (or manage to press the backspace by mistake), because I am the author of this heresy* (to be found at New Empress Magazine) :


The Agent Apsley December 14, 2012 at 15:51

I wonder if there is scope for a view that says one can read Heart of Darkness and find it as unremarkable as The Secret Agent, because, for all that Conrad performed the feat of writing flawless English, his English and his subject maybe aren’t that interesting after all.

Or even for the view that says that translating the former into Apocalypse Now (1979) really leaves one none the wiser, but that maybe no one dare say so with a film of such towering repute…


End-notes

* On the strength of it, I considered myself a likely founding-member of Cinematics Anonymous** (or, perhaps, Cinematica Anathema).

** At our meetings, we would introduce ourselves in this way I am The Agent Apsley, and I'm an ex-cinema-goer who couldn't see the point of Being There (1979).


Sunday 6 May 2012

Russia ahead in this blog's Top Ten

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


6 May

In terms of page-views, Russia is now well ahead of the UK [now updated on 18 May]


1,191 Russia [1,480]

866 United Kingdom [889]

579 United States [625]

116 Germany [117]

53 Brazil [55]

43 Ukraine [46]

36 Australia

32 France

27 The Netherlands

18 Japan


And page-views since The Agent began all this Unofficial Cambridge Film Festival business?

Well, 3,333 of course!



What Paul Said to Whom and Why

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


6 May

Perfect for all churches, congregations, chosen and cults - bulk ordering advised!
Paul's Epistle to the Swedish


Those who care to preorder this title (as, according to Amazon®, the word has it), can do so at
www.TheAgentApsley.co.uk/slushfund in the knowledge that, whether it is a gift for others or for themselves, they will make someone very happy.


Buy 10 copies and receive just eight - NB limited offer


If you don't know Tahiti, I'd be very glad - for a fee - to show you around...


Tuesday 3 April 2012

A hiatus

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


4 April

If there were anyone (other than The Agent) who looked at this blog most days, he or she would have noticed no new postings in a fortnight*.

Well, that has been a surprise to The Agent as well, but that is how things have fallen out - although it is also possible that some items in draft, which (despite not being public) keep their place from when started, were completed since then.

But who can rightly say? Sooner quote Ecclesiastes - which some have heretically identified as a foundation text for The Goons - and go one's way...


End-notes

* That said, there is evidence of The Agent's activities at New Empress Magazine.


Wednesday 14 March 2012

BBC accused of faking report of James May battling learner drivers (according to AOL®)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


15 March



Those in the know will be able to tell you what is really faked, as evidenced by the above photograph.

It's not that the traffic* wasn't real, but that James May has finally employed a double**.

For, as those who know him can testify, it is actually The Agent himself, allegedly at the wheel of that seeming vehicle!


End-notes

* I understand that some would feel drawn to write 'the traffic situation'...

** Likewise, some would say 'a body double'.


Saturday 18 February 2012

What do we need 'for free' for?

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


18 February

Why would I prefer something free, rather than for free?


Some examples:

(a) Free fudge here - call in for a sample!

(b) Law For Free

(c) Free Nelson Mandela!

(d) Did you get a ticket for free at the train station?

(e) Click here to try our quiz free

(f) In a quiz-free world, you could talk to your mate over a quiet pint

(g) Claim your free prize from The Agent Apsley

(h) Click here to try our free quiz

(i) Fudge for free here - call in for a sample!

(j) Book your holiday with us - children travel free!

(k) Claim your prize for free from The Agent Apsley

(l) Did you get a free ticket at the station?

(m) The best things in life are for free


I shall freely leave those examples simmering, and return when they're cooked...


Saturday 24 September 2011

A little Chaucerian muse

More views of - or at - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)



24 September

Agents Surlaw and Apsley (when the latter had tired of typing 'The Agent Apsley' in full) did a pleasing duet (I find it so), which I have just found as the product of the special Batterson page on TSG


Sleeping is no Phenomenon

Tinctures of old lead [Apsley ]
A serpent in a tree [Surlaw ]
A pair a-coupling there [Apsley ]
Concealed for all to see [Surlaw ]
Prioress out for love [Apsley ]
May day dawning [Surlaw ]
In December's wake [Apsley ]

Silence on demand [Surlaw ]
For Geoffrey in his lair [Apsley ]
Whose blossom, when it falls [Surlaw ]
Upon his silken hair, [Apsley ]
Betrays those up above [Surlaw ]
All day yawning [Apsley ]
While the tree doth shake [Surlaw ]


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Friday 9 September 2011

A tribute to times past : 'Big Custard', a multi-author work

More views of - or at (or before) - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


10 September

Nothing to do with the Festival, but anyway : 'Big Custard'
(A very unrepresentative sample from The Spoonbill Generator's 'Hall of Fame')


Big Custard

Warm in nutritious mulch, we germinate, [E Greejius]
And of ourselves we feed; some lesser fry [Roland]
Lie dormant still, by spring's alarm untouched, [P]
From summer’s bounty barred. Why, when the years [E Greejius]
Give notice of denial, may we not [Roland]
Like locksmiths turn our newest tumblers loose [P]
Upon the lawn, and, from a brimming jug [Roland]
Drown somnolence in alcoholic cheer [P]
And deep contentment? No; for when we strive [Roland]
To summon up the moon's most hoary face [P]
In stiff remembrance, clouded with remorse [Roland]
The merest hint of which would spell the end [The Agent Apsley]
Of time's imposture, all our withered shadows [P]
Die a-borning, pent beyond the veil. [Roland]

How best conjure, by faith, such fruitful yield [E Greejius]
When all around the land lies burnt and sere [TG]
with stagnant salt-pans, dearth's memorial. [E Greejius]
We strive, but striving know that we shall fail [TG]
In such endeavours as, when disavowed, [Roland]
Will tempt the feet of those who walk the waves [P]
In saviour's guise. Yet awe, in sighs of sleep [Roland]
Will cause our eyes to widen, noses flare [TG]
Like stallions in the dawn. Hope glimmers still [KT]
Though in another's eyes; and in defeat [Roland]
Our troubled curses make the sun turn pale [P]
Though not so pale, perhaps, as heretofore [Roland]
For, strengthened now by victims' blood, it turns [P]
In orbit caustic, shadowing a tryst [Roland]
A spiteful meeting at the coven's wrath [P]
Which heralds tragedy for this sad realm [TG]

Yet even so, the lily spares no scent [Roland]
Nor stints her sensual promise of cool joys. [E Greejius]
Not she, immune to treason nor to time [Roland]
And yet, still slave to him who comes to all [TG]
Forcing rash demands upon the soil [Grayman]
He warms, with finger gold and burnished thumb. [Roland]
When, through the decaying years, our barren [E Greejius]
Limbs upbraid the heavens' dial, and when [Roland]
Our weary hearts beat slower but beat sounder, [E Greejius]
Our shining, worn escapements lose their edge [Roland]
Keeping no glowing archive for our solace. [E Greejius]

This it remains, and the remainder thus [(trad)]
Itself engenders its own residues [E Greejius]
In sallow time's bewildered almanack [Roland]
Harbouring long-lapsed trysts to no good end; [E Greejius]
And when the key is turned, when all is known [Roland]
Of fecund or of sterile, quick or dead, [E Greejius]
When swings the final door, the fatal hinge [Roland]
Whhose groans betray the ravages of rust [TG]
Too long untended, and too far behind [Roland]
The reckonings of Tophet ... Ay! What then? [E Greejius]

Roof shall abase to floor, and floor to ground [Roland]
Before the pristine actuary-magus; [E Greejius]
His propehcy but piles of ruins [The Agnet Apsley]
Despite the ivy, ineffectual buttress; [E Greejius]
Tower shall slope to turf, pile fall to pond [Roland]
Leaf cling to leaf, concealing all the paths [TG]
Earth harbours; milk shall curdle in the byre [Roland]
Wine in the butt degrade to vinegar. [E Greejius]
In desolate lament , each lovelorn bleat [Roland]
Falls fallow on the thin unheeded air. [E Greejius]

And I, whom all betrayers have abjured [Roland]
In strict adherence to their solemn curse, [The Agent Apsley]
And thee, forever wandering, possessed [Roland]
By burden's knowledge of the ghost of time [P]
Dissembled quite; how shall we, sister, fare [Roland]
Together at the edge of temperance [P]
And on the very brink of sanity? [Roland]
I tremble quite, envisaging our doom [TG]
Swept, nameless, down the brackish torrent - yet, [E Greejius]
Some stain, by us impasted on the silence [Roland]
As 'twere th'embodiment of rime, [The Agent Apsley]
Shall print us immemorial as stones [Roland]

And when, at last, Time's palsied sands have run [TG]
Their paltry course, and 'neath the final dust [Roland]
The tigers of indifference repose, [E Greejius]
The muscled threat is but disguised [Grayman]
Anew, and rises yet again, an atom's breadth [Roland]
Away from penitence, the like of which [The Agent Apsley]
Was never dreamt by cranium of yore [Roland]
Even in ghostly ecstasy. Indeed, [E Greejius]
But for the haste of man, the tears would flow [The Agent Apsley]
In all-consuming torrent, washing out [Roland]
Life's thinnest crust onto the shore [P]