They learn, as many others will in time, that an argument with Nick Berg involves one usually in defeat, at best a numbingly perplexing draw. This was not because of the majestic nature of his predicates, the beauty of his axioms and dialectic genius. It was attrition that did it. He could coin an opening sentence with enough subordinate clauses to make Henry James weep with envy. He was a Hereward, a General Giap, an Erwin Rommel of negotiation. He would lead you into swamps of grammatical circumlocution, jungles of multi-layered analysis, deserts of parenthetical vast eternity. Ten minutes into a disagreement with Nick Berg, and you did not feel as if you were losing the argument, you felt as if you were losing the will to live.
—The Golden Age Of Censorship, by Paul Hoffman
Yellow Pearl: What is...fun?
Connie: You know, when you do something you want to do, just because it feels good.
Yellow Pearl: ...I don't think we do that here.
Connie: You know, when you do something you want to do, just because it feels good.
Yellow Pearl: ...I don't think we do that here.
At least the Labour leadership election offers a reassuring oasis of boredom. The candidates have few redeeming features, or features of any kind. They work most successfully not as politicians, but as a sort of broad-ranging challenge to satire. Yvette Cooper has a broken, downbeat delivery that could make Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah sound like a cancer diagnosis. Andy Burnham sounds like he wishes that there were speedbumps in Mario Kart. They both give interviews with the halting, guarded intonation of a hostage. Liz Kendall at least has the alarming air of an Apprentice candidate, and surely that show’s unique dynamic – where you can be fired without actually having a job – meshes neatly with the party’s increasingly colourful views on workers’ rights.
A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
"Oh, I appreciate Harriet, all right, I think she's marvellous. Never before was so much written about so little in such detail."
— Henry Halfpenny, Twice Round the Daffodils
