The Long Left Flank: The Hard Fought Way to the Reich 1944-1945
Jeffery Williams, 1988
Stoddart Publishing, CA, 1988
printed in US
ex libris signature on first leaf: R. F. Hank Barrick

Social media is an endlessly droll cocktail party. People hiding under their best veneer and the mercenaries swarming around them hoping to be noticed. Watch-me dancers and the idiot that thinks wearing the lampshade as a hat is funny multiplied to infinity. Histrionic reactions to things that don’t deserve attention just to make conversation. And the same vapid conversations over and over and over. People making brilliant observations they just overheard. This weasels that are just there to network. The ones there because their friends dragged them along. The ones there for FOMO. The ones petting the cat in the corner just wanting to leave. Etc., etc..

I saw a screencap of this, that I now cannot find, where someone replied with a picture of an articulated bus without any further commentary. That’s funny enough, and says everything there is to say about commuting by bus—but as a further extrapolation I now cannot stop thinking of cars as chaotic minor demons running willy-nilly over the urban hellscape.

It’s tiny bouquet season on my desk again.

Hitler: the victory that nearly was
Bruce Quarrie, 1988
David & Charles Publishers, US, 1988 Book Club edition
ex libris signature: Ralph Barrick