The only way anyone is ever going to read this is to include a daily recipe or culinary observation since Who Needs Another Opinion in New York? This place has drained all my literary aspirations because everyone you meet writes and writes and appears in all the right places.......regardless of how ultimately conformist and pedestrian they are.

Speaking of the obvious the NY Times has a long series on "class" in America...and the fact that it matters! Whizzers! Major revelation. Does anyone care? We wage slaves know we can't do anything about our state in life in our medieval society. Symposia always knew that all those people who are the company presidents are the company presidents because their fathers put them there. 99% of success is inherited, rather like good looks are.

There is a new book from Princeton University Press called Bullshit (excusez moi) that is the darling of the media half wits. They do not realize that BS is the glue that holds society together. We have to lie to keep from killing each other. Symposia is so proud, for today at least, of having a firm grasp of the obvious.

Symposia can say that unlike most royal watchers she is no social climber but definitely feels that with so-called royalty human life is "writ inordinately large", and becomes an object of fascination in a humdrum world. It actually reflects a sort of novelist's attitude.

In Virginia Woolf's review of the Queen of Roumania's autobiography she wrote of her own irrational fascination with royal animals living in cages noting that one should "take common sense for a walk through the streets of London on the Duke of Kent's wedding-day". More later from her golden pen about the subject.

At least Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits is staying in this country and of all things is going to Arkansas, where my branch of the Adamses made a mark (including first Governor Sam). Malheureusement the state has become synonymous with the Mongrel Clintons.

Well, Symposia must be the oldest blogger out there and probably the only one who has just read Flora Fraser's dense Princesses about the six daughters of crazed George III, a thoroughly ghastly human being. The book is of the card catalogue school of writing, a dizzying array of chronological facts and borrrrrrrrrrring quotes from letters.

A propos of ghastly people Baker and Meese praise John Bolton today which is shocking. We were on the receiving end of an abusive boss and had utterly no defense because he was powerful. Bolton is a salaud and should get a job at McDonald's. Period.

Generational Dissonance: a photo of famous (baby) bloggers in Times yesterday. No wonder no one understands this in the greater blogosphere. These are illiterate children for the most part, raised on electronic media. Symposia grew up without television, reading Cervantes and Flaubert at the pre-teen age these impoverished persons were watching All in the Family or some other trash.

En tout cas Sneed had a meeting with Butler Burrell which she recounts. Very funny. Like Fergie, like the Albermarles if you're broke in England you come to New York and try to make it. There are 28,000 Brits in New York here for one reason or another.

Christopher Hitchens makes judgments that are incomplete or irresponsible. (Eh bien: just another ecrivain!) Thus, as Linda Nochlin points out in the New York Times, he totally disregards the only thing that makes that old brigand Malraux worth reading-- his art criticism. God how we disliked his Eurocentrism in the 60s.

Excellent article on Blair by Tina Brown in the Sun today. Since England has to ally itself with someone it may as well be the strongest and most powerful, however misguided the Iraq policy is.

It is frightening to even think about what the Bushes had in mind with Laura's thoroughly innane skit. It was worse than corny and ranks right up there with Diana's stage routine--only Charles a lot smarter than to think it was cute. Eh bien-- a painful reminder there is a parallel universe aux Etats Unis.