There's something disconnecting about setting down to write this entry, my morning coffee at the ready, a cigarette slowly burning beyond it, as a very old re-run of (oy vey...) Kung Fu: The Legend Continues airs in the background, complete with fellow Canuckistanis Gordon Pinsent and a then-very young Neve Campbell sporting the worst Australian accents since Meryl Streep claimed a dingo ate her baby. Maybe I should Irish that coffee.
There's an interesting piece at The Chronicle about Herman Melville and the suggestion that Melville considered other endings for his magnum opus, Moby-Dick. It's worth a read, not just for its content, but for the silly puns manifest throughout: that there is "a new wave" of Melville scholars, for example, and that eventually "Melville's reputation was washed up" (emphases added). Reminds me of one of the most unfortunate passages from that novel, a passage that suggests that if Freud had not been born we'd have had to invent him:
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
"The very milk and sperm of kindness" is only slightly less creepy than the image of men squeezing themselves into each other, though the echo of Lady Macbeth reminds me all-too-cringefully of her instruction to "screw your courage to the sticking place." Shuddddddddderrrrrr....
And speaking of the stuff of gentle globules, there are rumours spraying about.... and being denied and denied. This blog will uncharacteristically refrain from comment.
For those of you, by the way, that missed Jon Stewart's coverage of this weekend's vice-presidential ballast-shifting, you can check out the video here. He he, let us cherish our social acerbities, even as this blog shrinks ever-so-politely from observing the various remarks it could make about the most powerful Dick in the world misfiring into a good friend's face. (Birdkkake, anyone?) No, this blog's far too mannerly to suggest something so crude.... Oh, this wanton clarkes be nyse all way....
All that said, damn am I glad that I didn't Irish that coffee. Welcome to the wonderful world of disturbing imagery....
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