Wearing your heart on your sleeve

People who wear their heart on their sleeve express their emotions freely and openly, for all to see.

The above definition comes from here. The definition is fairly simple, covering any emotion. That includes any expression of impotent hate, envy, glee. A mix of emotions that, when expressed frequently and on any occasion (or even in absence of such), lends the person a specific aura. Here is an example of such person:















And here is a sample of that complex (nah, just dirty) mix of emotions:

The Roman Empire is falling. That, in a phrase, is what the Baker report says. The legions cannot impose their rule on Mesopotamia. Just as Crassus lost his legions' banners in the deserts of Syria-Iraq, so has George W Bush.

(Do you hear the heavy panting behind the words?)

And more and more in the same vein, take a shufti if you want to waste your time. On this occasion Independent decided not to charge its customary quid (should I be made gleeful by the insulting attitude of this cesspool to its star?). Probably even the omnivores get queasy sometimes... Anyway, there is nothing to fisk in that one - the heart is definitely on the author's sleeve and it is small, dirty and shriveled.

Yes, Frisky, like any empire, US of A shall fall at some point in time. Yes, and like any empire, this one makes mistakes and sometimes fails in its endeavors. But, unlike any empire before, this one is a great republic that has gone through several sharp bends, getting not much worse for wear. And it will certainly outlive you* and your pitiful efforts to bite its knees. Made the more difficult by your minuscule size, reducing these efforts to mere toenail gnawing.

So do not wait for the fall anytime soon. Go to a nice Beirut coffee shop, have a few drinks and a nargileh to relax - all that tension makes you jumpy. Chill out, you may blow a gasket otherwise.

(*) Especially if John Malkovich gets to you eventually, as he plans.

Update: I must share with you this comment made on Yourish.com:

That man is an unadulterated dunderhead. To beat him to death with his own idiotic, undereducated, inappropriate analogy, I would note that the Roman Empire survived some 500 years after the death of Crassus, and that’s if you don’t count their Byzantine successors, heirs, and assigns, who actually carried the eagles of the Imperium for another 1000 years.

Furthermore, Rome actually conquered Mesopotamia some 150 years later. So much for the significance of Crassus’ (or Crassus’s, if you are a fan of Strunk and White) defeat.

In the game of Empire, frontier skirmishes simply don’t count.

(I was always falling asleep during my history lessons, so many thanks to HT). In any case, it seems that if Fisk's analogy is anything to go by, we are looking at least at another 500 years of that specific empire. Definitely should see Fisk off.

Cross-posted on Yourish.com

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