Dear Poirot,

This may be of some interest. It's
about Michel Houllebecq - the french
writer:

"The man who isn't there. The man you meet at a
crossroads of great contradictory currents who
hasn't made up his mind which path to take
and who, moreover is not going to make up his mind.
He enjoys the intersection. But meanwhile he will
delight in directing and mis-directing you.
This is what gets up everybody's nose about him."

Lexi,

It's a perfect match then!

I wish I had Houellie's lack of arrogance...he plays with us because he knows we're all desperately trying to construct something to give our life meaning, but....

Life's absurd - be merry!

It is "an odd little construct", Poirot, or should I say, Countess Grantham? Which is of course facilitated by the use of nicknames and an innate need of our frontal cortex to create visualisations of language concepts.

It's sort of the reverse process of language acquisition as toddlers.

We are more likely to create a mental image or a mental sound of a poster than to create a mental smell of them. Even when their comments on the nose.

Squeers' imagining (or was it fantasising?) of 'OLO's version of a dominatrix' didn't get me pouting but instead seeing us as members of a seraglio with Houllebecq as guard and giving orders – but in a preternaturally high-pitched voice.

"Squeers' imagining (or was it fantasising?) of 'OLO's version of a dominatrix' didn't get me pouting but instead seeing us as members of a seraglio with Houllebecq as guard and giving orders – but in a preternaturally high-pitched voice."

For some reason, I find the image that this brings to mind hysterically funny.
I seriously have to get a life.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Dear Poirot,

Yes - every absurdity has a champion to
defend it.

"I think that the undecideds could go one
way or the other." (George W. Bush).

And - "Facts are funny things." (Ronald Reagan).

Dear Wm Trevor,

Thank You for the best laugh I've had all morning.
The mental image is great!

Anthonyve,

I looked at a few of your articles and you've got a nice easy-going style that does seem unlikely to offend anybody--your dialogue pieces are reminiscent of but more accessible than Joyce--whereas I tend to piss people off : )

Lexi,
I'd never heard of Houellebecq--and I'm supposed to know something about literature. It does sound like our dominatrix chose his name well.

WmTrevor,
unless Houelle's got something in common with the Chiko Roll girl, I wasn't fantasising.

Ah anonymity ... I have chiselled features like Sean Connery in his prime, but you'll have to take my word for that.