Elsewhere, in MediaMinster, those who say nothing badly attract readers and comments in their thousands; here, it has become like a war grave, tended by a loyal few, comments on average not reaching double figures. There is a Sufi saying: I wrote you a hundred letters and received not one reply; this, of course, is a message in itself.
I have stayed too long at the fair, blogging a dead horse.
I have stayed too long at the fair, blogging a dead horse.
To those, formerly and currently, who have forged, beaten, shaped, embellished and polished these commentaries with me I touch my heart and say as-salamu alaykum.
54 comments:
Jings. You'll be missed Mr I. By me if nobody else.
Thanks for all the great posts.
I hope you get the hell out of Dodge to SW France (was it)? before it gets any worse hereabouts.
Fair thee well Mr Smith and thank you x
I mean fare of course
Bugger.
Apologies for lurking like some daylight-afeared troll, Mr Ishmael, you were always read and appreciated.
However you choose to spend your time, my best wishes to you.
It's been a priviledge, Mr Smith. Wandering around here sort of brought to mind a Bill Hicks comedy gig, where, for 20 minutes nobody laughed as it was almost too funny.
All the very best and heartfelt thanks. You shall be missed.
Wa alaykumu s-salam, Mr Smith.
This is terrible news. Your work should be for yourself. The vent for releasing on those who deserve your unique opprobrium. Well received and far more than you can know.
I hope you change your mind but if not very best wishes. You will be so sadly missed, you curmudgeonly old fart!
I hope you reconsider.
Just wanted to say that your eulogy to Buster was immensely helpful to me under similar circumstances.
For that one I cannot thank you enough.
And for many, many more, thank you.
Bad news indeed! Yours was the first link I clicked on every day. I'm sure your irrepresible style will emerge in some corner of the ether. Bon voyage, and thank you.
Just as a terribly minor point of order.
I wander about bloggy land quite a bit and over the 7 odd years that i've been reading your brilliant satire i've only hat tipped or linked to you, maybe 5 times - not very many anyway, fuck all.
That wasn't because I didn't think this blog the 1st port of call most days and something which responses took a while to think about and compose - it was because it kinda felt a bit lucky to be here, like a favourite library and to publicise would not have necessarily been what you would have wanted - almost rude.
I dunno - i'm not sure popularity is all it's geared up for. Colonel von Fawkes offered a platform for perhaps most of us to be introduced but times have moved on. The Capitalists @ Work boys keep it up on a very fucking poor audience if you want my opinion - these guys are giving gold but double digit comments are just 4 of us talking to each other. (and everyone does link to them which kinda destroys point 1 - hmm!)
There's sporadic blogging, there's Evensongs, there's Blog Dog and there's also just writing for yer mates.
If it's starting to piss you off man, then quit. But if it's because of the lack of audience, i'm pretty fucking coco that can be sorted in about a week.
None of my business, anyway, really but...
Recently, at a war grave, the few moments there, in gratitude and sorrow, placed aside many moments elsewhere.
Thank you, Mr Ish, Thank you for the raging.
Endorse what Mr Dick The Prick says above. Quality not quantity.
I do not like to lose your light when there is such a lot of darkness - and it is gathering.
But it is summer and it is very important to live as much as possible so I have been out visiting the Open Gardens. One small suburban plot squeezed in an alpine house the size of a phone box, rose arches and a miniature railway with tiny stations all round the edge. The children were enchanted with the fairy train chugging out between the rose bushes.
It is fragile, silly magic, but it makes me smile. I do not have a dog, but it comforts me to know that there is a blogdog out there, snuffling along the hedge.
Where I have not commented I have always read because it is always worth reading. I wish you well.
Reconsider!
Yours is far too rare a gift to be kept locked away on some barren isle. That few dare to write here is only a measure of the natural hesitation to put down words beside those of so skilled a craftsman. No word ever strikes a false note: not because you stay within the registers of easy consonance, as so many do, but even as you pursue a rich, chromatic line only a true artist can make sound both profoundly right and profoundly surprising. There to be any competition for your energies but writing is a crime, against those with the ear to learn from your voice, the only people worth caring about. They may not be many, they will not be of your generation, maybe not even of mine, but they are your inheritors and you ought not to dispossess them so casually.
You must, as I have said before, write a book; I do not believe you lack the skill to organise your thoughts so -- every post here has a finely wrought architecture, on every scale -- and neither is so effortless a talent plausibly limited to reflecting on the news of today. You do not need my judgment on this, though I can speak with as much authority as anyone, even if I appear here only as a digital ghost.
The unavoidable occasional absence of a very powerful searchlight on the worlds misfits will be as nothing compared to a voluntary cessation of your output of common sense.
Thank you for all your past musings and may great nature look after you.
I beg you to reconsider Mr Ishmael. Your bog is a beacon of sanity and humanity in a world saturated with MediaMinster shit.
My first encounter with Ishmalia was Summer with Stan on Holborn`s blog. I was out of work, up at three in the morning with toothache and the Mrs Yardarm was badly ill but I will never forget the laughter; no doubt high pitched but it led me here. Yours has been a very important voice and it has led me to take a different view on many things.
Whatever your decision Mr Ishmael, all the best and much gratitude.
Damn my stupidity: that should read blog.
Best wishes my friend, but why not take a break and see what happens? You will be sadly missed if you don't resurface. You are a writer whom I hold in the highest esteem and affection and I wish you all the best. Many thanks, insufficient though they are, for all that you have done here - I believe I'm a better man because of it. Honest not invent.
-richard
If your mind is made up, Mr.I, then so be it. But your words will be sadly missed. I cannot think of another writer who has had me curled up honestly (not invent) crying with laughter one minute and then pausing for scrambled thought the next.
Thank you for the insight - and cussedness - without which my life would have been the poorer.
Smith. 6079 Smith, I. I am with Oldrightie on this matter. Your blog is worth writing even if nobody responds or, indeed, even reads it. However, I think you have many more followers than you might think. It is just that you are a hard act to follow with your eloquence and insight as others have also observed. I eagerly await your postings and you are always my first port of call in blog world. I often compose responses but usually consign them to the "too feeble" bin. You have certainly illuminated the way through some dark times and, I feel, are needed now more than ever. I truly hope you will keep "buggering on" but wish you all the best whatever you decide to do. SG
You should not quit for lack of comment. I can assure you that you have loyal readers who relish your gifted writing and your scabrous, but uniquely soothing, world view, precisely because you don't care about conventional acknowledgements or the approval of others. This is my first comment ever but I always look forward to your blog and am frustrated by any lengthy gaps between posts. Perhaps you are just tired of it and /or in physical pain and if so then I wish you peace and relief. Thanks for the exhilarating indignation and for the quieter detours into the few remaining oases as well.
Well, amen, then...& slàinte
(piss & vinegar will never taste the same)
verge//
If you knew how many replies I have drafted only to delete them without sending because they seemed so inadequate a response to each brilliant blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of ruin.
Thank you for the music.
x
Well, Mr I, that is a shame. (I think Abraham Lincoln said that btw.)
Good luck on your next adventure.
Mr I: its true what Mrs Narcolept said. You kindly invited me to submit a piece from Down Under, some time back. I have a PhD in maths, lectured at Cambridge, worked for major Corporations and Governments around the world, have published a book, and numerous articles. I tried, really hard, but couldn't match your wordsmithery and fearing comparison, binned my several attempts.
Please take a break and return refreshed.
All the best, you will be missed.
I also beg you to reconsider. I may never comment but I regularly read and always enjoy your targeted bile.
I consider your output to be a little like an exclusive club which I am privileged to be a member of.
Please carry on with your lambasting of the bastards; you go further out here than you think.
Yours, in true genuflecting admiration.
Thanks Stan and Mr Ishmael. You will be missed
I hope that you change your mind but, whether you do or not, thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas, and for dissecting and analysing with such skill the repulsive ways of the bulk of our political and media class. You've helped me keep what little vestige of sanity I think I have left. You'll be missed.
There are lots of 'writers' nowadays, not a small amount of them cannot, for the life of them, write.
You, on the other hand, really are a genuine writer, you cannot, for the life of you, not write.
It's just there, inside. Waiting to come out. It won't go away, and neither will I. I shall wait too, until your creative energies revive.
Until then, good luck and God bless you.
Vincent
I didn't always agree with you but I enjoyed your rage - you pretty much hate the same things as I do where as I am a slightly right-wing libertarian and I would place you as a slightly left-wing libertarian.
Who will hold Dr & Cilla McCann to account for their unacknowledged responsibility for the disappearance of little wossername?
Hopefully your site will remain on-line so that I can read some of your posts that I missed and can recommend the site to my friends.
If as you say, you believe the Sermon on the Mount, you will have no need of the glory of men, you will receive your reward in the delivering of the message.
2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
The world we be a darker place without your thoughts enlightening it.
My dear Mr. Ishmael,
"Do not despair - one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume - one of the thieves was damned."
I do apologise for not having written for a while.I had not realised that a lack of response to your brilliant work may have been a source of depression to you. The trouble is, as so many of your readers have commented - as your essays are so beautiful, polished and insightful, and, of, course, more than a little amusing, anything that one may add by way of a comment seems but a poor thing indeed.
Do, please, continue to delight your readership.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr Ishmael, for such entertainment and erudition.
I, too, remember your posts about Buster with great warmth. The eulogy was one of the most heartbreaking pieces of literature I have ever encountered.
"now I walk my lane and my garden, climb my stairs and walk my corridors with only ghosts at my heel, all my good boys are gone."
Please reconsider, if possible...
Best wishes,
Johnny.
I came I saw I wept.
Every day I read you.
Your wordsmithery is unmatched in the blogosphere as far as my eye can see. Stuff couldn't be put better the way you write it.
Truly
P.S.
I completely forgot: best regards to Mrs Ishmael for her support and, of course, to Harris, the new blog-dog.
Johnny.
Chapeau.
Fuck. I am one of the guilty parasites who check this site daily but never contribute in return. I live halfway around the world and don't even know who you're talking about much of the time, but I read for the writing. The attitude, wit, intelligence and single-minded purpose of it has become like a narcotic - when can I get the next fix, that surge of outrage, that intravenous detonation of humour and passion? Maybe, like myself, many felt that attempting to respond to your work would be equal to touching up the Mona Lisa with a Vivid marker, or trying to trade licks with Richard Thompson. I don't know. But thank you for what you and Stan have done for me as a person, citizen and writer. The archives are there for when my kids are a bit older. Take care and regards to Mrs I.
No-o-o-o-o
No, no, no, no, no.
Some misunderstanding, here.
A pissed-off moment that has led the readership into thinking that you are going to pack this writing lark in; and everyone is now rending the bosom and ullulating.
It is simply unimaginable that there will be no Ishmael. It was bad enough losing Stan, but for Ish to ride off into the sunset - well, that's the outside of enough. Or do you have another character lurking in the wings? An avatar even more sublimely hilarious than Stan, bitterly sardonic than Ishmael? Just post the address and we'll all follow - as ever.
In sixty years' reading and twenty plus years' surfing yours is the best satire I've read, including Juvenal.
Thanks.
Bob
even if your fate is never to be read until the serendipitous future forensic investigation of one of your frustratedly discarded floppy-discs which has determinedly buried itself at the bottom of one of the world's deepest ever landfill sites and by some fairy-tale fluke is then read by an as-yet-unborn spaced-out four-eyed hippy cyber-archaeologist looking for juicy pieces of rare vintage pre-historic porn one slow news-day after a heavy liquid lunch at some dreary juncture during an extremely dull decade in the 25th millennium, i believe it is still your duty both to yourself and to the integrity of the human historical record to carry-on writing, sir.
Understand; you're probably not coming back, a bit too much Isaiah 34:14 for one chap to blog about non-stop without it getting you down. Fare thee well, you Homo sapiens.
-richard
Might I also add my name to the "please reconsider" list? I'm not sure I've ever posted here, for the simple reason I don't believe I can add anything worthy of being published alongside your angry prose. My immediate feeling is to shout and damn you for closing the shutters on my most potent literary fix, but against this feeling, I know I need to thank you for years of your work that I have gained from, but never offered anything in return…
So thank you Mr Ishmael, and please please don't shut the blog for re-reading!
Can I also add to the growing list of 'please reconsider'.
You will be sorely missed.
I'll keep checking just in case.
Meanwhile, keep safe, all the very best, Mick.
I don't comment because I have nothing to add.I wait for each new post & they never disappoint.
What everybody else said. I suspect/hope you have more readers than you realise, although it occurs to me you probably have reader stats - I wouldn't know, not running a blog myself.
Without doubt the next 24 hours will determine the general election campaign - Ukip are probly gonna come 2nd but competition for 2nd place is brutal. There's a vignette in the Mail about Jeremy Thorpe getting booted out of his Missuses house and it's beautifuully clinical - quote from son that 'ofcourse when mother pegged it he was gonna get evicted' and the show moves on! Almost sweet if we didn't know the backstory.
Elections eh? Who'd have 'em?
I suppose I never really forgave you for your fatherly protection of the uber-arsehole tdg on the occasion I trimmed his sail back in 2009. But the last time I commented here (I can't remember when that was), you responded by defending politicians ... it became instantly clear that I was no longer welcome. Well, I see tdg's put his pennyworth in, above, demanding that you write a book. My guess is that you have no intention of engaging in that vulgar and superfluous chore but what the fuck do I know, eh? Time to gather a few last rosebuds, Mr Ishmael, and I do not begrudge you them.
Wot ThomasBHall said...
Might I also add my name to the "please reconsider" list? I'm not sure I've ever posted here, for the simple reason I don't believe I can add anything worthy of being published alongside your angry prose.
Don't do it!
I read everything you write but have commented only once over the years..
That's because I'm in tune with most of what you say and there seems little point in telling you that.
There are hundreds like me.
I came across your writings quite recently. I'm sorry I only caught the tail end.
As you can see from the comments you have many lurkers like me.
Good luck for the future amongst all this madness.
I do hope you reconsider giving up the fight - there are so many things happening at the moment on which I would like to hear your opinions.
sorry, should have read:
""and finishing off...err...iraq..."
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