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Reading Michel Foucault’s superb essay on the uses of history: “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (pdf). I particularly liked these lines:

Rules are empty in themselves, violent and unfinalised; they are impersonal and can be bent to any purpose. The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them.

I have a theory about this. It is: that the tidal waves of passive-aggression that sweep across offices is the result of just the kind of rule perversion that Foucault describes. The rules specify that aggression is bad; so people use these rules to oppress each other. Ever so politely, of course - but, frankly, I’d prefer a punch in the face to an “I’ll let you get back to it…”

[See also: How to apologise]

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Issue 6 of Five Dials, Hamish Hamilton’s brilliant literary magazine, landed in inboxes on Friday with this time-and-space refuting missive:

You may have noticed we call ourselves a monthly, but if you’re waiting for Five Dials to appear every 30 days, well, sorry, we are a little late. But what is a month? Our definition doesn’t quite sync with that of the Gregorian calendar. We hope you are the kind of reader who would rather enjoy tardy brilliance than a magazine that shows up with dreary regularity. Who knows? You might see another another edition in around 30 days, whatever ‘30 days’ means.

The very next day, Geoff Dyer walked into the pages of the Guardian Review, removed all his clothes and beat himself with a very thorny branch. His crime? Late, by forty-five whole minutes:

This incident was so out of character, so totally inexplicable, that I spent much of a sleepless night trying to find someone or something to blame: Andrew Kelly, the trains (punctual to the minute), my parents (who had instilled in me the necessity for being reliable and punctual), my wife … But no. It was no one’s fault but mine.

… I don’t know what to think. I only know how I feel: like a broken man, like someone who no longer has a moral leg to stand on. It is horrible, and I am so sorry.

“Fuck you”, or “fuck me”? What do you prefer?

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