Binston Birchill’s Reviews > I the Supreme > Status Update

haven't copied them. When Your Grace dictates in circular form, order of the Perpetual Dictator, I write his words down in the Perpetual Circular. When Your Grace thinks out loud, in the voice of the Supreme Man, I note his words down in the Spiral Notebook. If, that is, I am able to, Excellency, what I mean to say is if I manage to net those words that caracole out of your mouth, mounting ever more swiftly upward.

Would you do such a thing, my spiritual-minded secretary? Not I, Sire! God save and keep this loyal servant! Such things shouldn't be done helter-skelet, Patiño. When my eye itches, I look for eyewash, not a spine of coconut palm. In your case, it's your rear that itches. Don't think you can stop the itching by rubbing it on my seat. What you'll end up with is a noose round your neck.

Finiquidate

“For the moment God does not occupy my mind. The question that preoccupies it is ruling over chance. Putting my daedal digit on the die, the die in the dicebox. Getting the country out of its labyrinth.”

To write does not mean to convert the real into words but to make the power of the word real.

El Supremo’s interactions with his head clerk/amanuensis are quite fun.

“Give me your hand. Are you going to get up, Sire? Let me have your hand. A very great honor for this servant to have Your Excellency extend his hand to me. I'm not holding my hand out to you. I'm ordering you to hold yours out to me. It's not a reconciliation I'm proposing to you; simply a simulacrum of temporary identification.”

Almost all of you are servants of long standing. The majority of you,however,have not had time to study in depth these questions of our history, since all your time has necessarily been devoted to your duties.I have preferred you to be loyal functionaries rather than cultivated men.
Capable of carrying out my commands.I am not concerned with the sort of capabilities a man possesses. I require only that he be capable.

Suspicion falls on his sycophants immediately