Petites Remarques
"Someone had blundered." --- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Hope is an echo, it ties itself yonder, yonder." --- Carl Sandburg
"For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy kind of delight." --- W.B. Yeats
"And the rain it raineth every day..." --- William Shakespeare
"Coming to this:
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart or saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain." --- Mark Strand
31 May 2003
Ah, Untalkative Bunny is so adorable. So cute, so susceptible, so sweet. Yeah, I know this sounds horribly saccharine for a crank like me, but, well, ahem, gee, I dunno.... Just soooo keeeewwwwwwt.... Here he (she?) is saying hi to bunnies, pigeons and squirrels. Awwwhhhhhh.....
Now everyone stop laughing at me.... *hides face* I mean it, stop laughing at me! *slouches foetally into a corner* I'll never live this down, will I?
Now everyone stop laughing at me.... *hides face* I mean it, stop laughing at me! *slouches foetally into a corner* I'll never live this down, will I?
This is truly gross-- and it sounds like something out of "Not Another Teen Movie." Two things: one, found this link with the aid of Dave Barry's blog, and he wryly added that the Terror Alert level should be raised to "Brown"; and two, the most disturbing line in the article is that "It smelt like almonds." *Shudder*
For the phonically clever (and those who read French), see if you can figure out the under-logic of these pieces. Think Guillaume Chaquespierre.
A.
Freine ce romance qu'un trime haine, laine demi yeux hier ce.
Ail comme tout beret six are note tout pres cime
De Yves; elle dattes mene d'ou livres safre; te seme
De gourdes, hisse oeuf tines tertre vite, d'air Beaune ce.
B.
Tout pille or, note, tout pille, date hisse de caisse tiens!
Ou est d'air tisse n'eau bleue Inde mainte? Tous ouverts
De silence, Anne d'arrose offerte rageuse forte jaune
Or; tout teck ame sagene, c'est ta si oeuf trou bel ce.
Anne bailleur pose en gaine d'aime.
C.
Noue -- y ce devine! Terre oeuf ourdit, ce corne teinte
M'aide clore rieuse; sous mer baille, dise sonne oeuf choc.
...
Ah os! Ah os! Maille qui ne d'homme fourra os.
D.
Si ce rot yole trop neuf quine ce, dix ceps terre d'aieul.
essert touffe ma geste et de'cide oeuf masse.
Des auteur est daine de mies par a d'ail ce
Dise fort tresse bile te; baille ne'e ch`ere foreur salve
A gaine; ce tine vais Jean anes de hante oeuf ou or.
E.
O mise tresses mailles ne! Ou air are yu rot mine
Ose de' Inde hier yeux trou louve; ce Comines
Datte canne scie ne que beau taillant l'eau
Tripes n'eau feutre prete' ce oui tine
Dieu n'est Seine dine Louvre ce mie tine.
Effare'e ou ail ce mince, sans dot nos.
F.
Chat l'ail comme paires six touez sous mer ce the'.
Saoul hate mort; l'oeuf lianes mort theme paraitre,
Rouf oins doux cheque; ce dart lion boudes oeuf mais
Anne sous mer; ce liasse atoll touche or tous de's.
G.
Orle de veule sasse tais-je
Ane hors le domaine inoui mene; mire lit plait heuse
The' have, d'air excite, sain d'air entraine; cesse
Anne! O`u on Menin hisse taille me plait ce mene y pate ce.
H.
Et toi, ce Louvre un dise lasse.
Vite he' Inde eau, Inde he' -- non, ni nos!
Date or de gril ne corne fil ce dite pas ce.
En d'aspirine taille me, de eau ne l'y prise terrine taille me.
Ou haine boeuf ce doux zinc est digne, digne dine.
Souhaite Louvre ce l'oeuf d'aspirine.
I.
Tue moraux, Anne, tue moraux, Anne, tue moraux!
Crepes syntheses petit pese, frondez tous de's.
Tuteur lasse si la belle offre cor dettes, theme
Anne d'or lourd; yeuse te de' seve, l'ail t'aide foule ce.
Ce ouais! Tout d'usite' dettes; haute, haute, prive
Cannes d'elles.
J.
De quoi lite'e oeuf merci; hisse note se traine de
Hie trop pere, tasse de gene, telle reine forme e'vent.
Ah bon! Ce plaise be'nite, et tisse toise; blesse te
E'tat blesse theme date, gui vesce intime, dattes teck ce.
K.
Ou on ce Maure un tout de Brie je dire freine ce, ou on ce Maure
Orgue l'ose d'ou or loupe, oui ce urine cliche dettes
Hie ne pisse terre; ce noeud tine sobre comme ce main,
A ce modiste cette ile naissante hue milite'e.
Pardon the absence of accents. The answers can be found here. Don't peek too early.... ;-)
Prick Up Your Ears! A Challenge...
For the phonically clever (and those who read French), see if you can figure out the under-logic of these pieces. Think Guillaume Chaquespierre.
A.
Freine ce romance qu'un trime haine, laine demi yeux hier ce.
Ail comme tout beret six are note tout pres cime
De Yves; elle dattes mene d'ou livres safre; te seme
De gourdes, hisse oeuf tines tertre vite, d'air Beaune ce.
B.
Tout pille or, note, tout pille, date hisse de caisse tiens!
Ou est d'air tisse n'eau bleue Inde mainte? Tous ouverts
De silence, Anne d'arrose offerte rageuse forte jaune
Or; tout teck ame sagene, c'est ta si oeuf trou bel ce.
Anne bailleur pose en gaine d'aime.
C.
Noue -- y ce devine! Terre oeuf ourdit, ce corne teinte
M'aide clore rieuse; sous mer baille, dise sonne oeuf choc.
...
Ah os! Ah os! Maille qui ne d'homme fourra os.
D.
Si ce rot yole trop neuf quine ce, dix ceps terre d'aieul.
essert touffe ma geste et de'cide oeuf masse.
Des auteur est daine de mies par a d'ail ce
Dise fort tresse bile te; baille ne'e ch`ere foreur salve
A gaine; ce tine vais Jean anes de hante oeuf ou or.
E.
O mise tresses mailles ne! Ou air are yu rot mine
Ose de' Inde hier yeux trou louve; ce Comines
Datte canne scie ne que beau taillant l'eau
Tripes n'eau feutre prete' ce oui tine
Dieu n'est Seine dine Louvre ce mie tine.
Effare'e ou ail ce mince, sans dot nos.
F.
Chat l'ail comme paires six touez sous mer ce the'.
Saoul hate mort; l'oeuf lianes mort theme paraitre,
Rouf oins doux cheque; ce dart lion boudes oeuf mais
Anne sous mer; ce liasse atoll touche or tous de's.
G.
Orle de veule sasse tais-je
Ane hors le domaine inoui mene; mire lit plait heuse
The' have, d'air excite, sain d'air entraine; cesse
Anne! O`u on Menin hisse taille me plait ce mene y pate ce.
H.
Et toi, ce Louvre un dise lasse.
Vite he' Inde eau, Inde he' -- non, ni nos!
Date or de gril ne corne fil ce dite pas ce.
En d'aspirine taille me, de eau ne l'y prise terrine taille me.
Ou haine boeuf ce doux zinc est digne, digne dine.
Souhaite Louvre ce l'oeuf d'aspirine.
I.
Tue moraux, Anne, tue moraux, Anne, tue moraux!
Crepes syntheses petit pese, frondez tous de's.
Tuteur lasse si la belle offre cor dettes, theme
Anne d'or lourd; yeuse te de' seve, l'ail t'aide foule ce.
Ce ouais! Tout d'usite' dettes; haute, haute, prive
Cannes d'elles.
J.
De quoi lite'e oeuf merci; hisse note se traine de
Hie trop pere, tasse de gene, telle reine forme e'vent.
Ah bon! Ce plaise be'nite, et tisse toise; blesse te
E'tat blesse theme date, gui vesce intime, dattes teck ce.
K.
Ou on ce Maure un tout de Brie je dire freine ce, ou on ce Maure
Orgue l'ose d'ou or loupe, oui ce urine cliche dettes
Hie ne pisse terre; ce noeud tine sobre comme ce main,
A ce modiste cette ile naissante hue milite'e.
Pardon the absence of accents. The answers can be found here. Don't peek too early.... ;-)
30 May 2003
Oh yes..... There is finally a DVD edition of Akira Kurosawa's magnificent Ran coming out, following a brief theatrical rerelease in select markets. For those that haven't seen it, Ran is a masterpiece, Kurosawa's stunning revision of King Lear that stands to my mind as the finest interpretation of the tale EVER. Here is metacritic's selection of rerelease reviews, though there are probably countless more reviews out there. The film is now almost twenty years old, but it looks like a film entirely outside of time; there aren't many films of which one can say such a thing. Absolutely brilliant. Anyone wishing to offer a donation to the Dr J foundation is encourage to.... nudge, nudge, wink, wink.....
Post-script: Just realized the damned thing is three years old.... Man, am I behind the times.... *sigh*
Post-script: Just realized the damned thing is three years old.... Man, am I behind the times.... *sigh*
Snubs
James Joyce was accosted by an admirer that asked to 'kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses." Joyce's reply: "You may not. It did other things too."
English poet-dramatist John Dryden often took refuge in his books, which apparently prompted his wife Lady Elizabeth to say, "I wish I were a book, and then I should have more of your company." Dryden, with characteristic wit, replied: "Pray my dear, if you do become a book, let it be an almanack, for then I may change you every year."
An exchange between Charles Lamb and William Wordsworth, one in which Lamb actually got the upper hand. Wordsworth apparently intoned, "I believe I could write like Shakespeare if I had mind to it." "Yes," Sir Charles concurred, "nothing wanting but the mind."
An anonymous acquaintance of Samuel Johnson defended his work by saying, "Well, Doctor, I have to live." Dr Johnson responded: "I do not see the least necessity for that."
This is an old classic, an exchange between Winston Churchill and Bessie Braddock. Braddock encountered Churchill after an extravagant dinner, and uttered with shock, "Winston, you're drunk." Countered Churchill: "And Bessie, you are ugly, but tomorrow morning I shall be sober." Ah, Winston, always endearing yourself to women members of parliament....
Hilaire Belloc was shocked by G. K. Chesterton's refusal to respond publically to George Bernard Shaw's criticisms of him in the press. Chesterton eventually explained: "My dear Belloc, I have answered him. To a man of Shaw's wit, silence is the one unbearable repartee."
Beethoven, pre-deafness, sat in on the performance of a new opera by a young composer. Ludwig's assessment? To the young composer he apparently said, "I like your opera very much. In fact I think I shall set it to music one day."
A young man apparently boasted to John Wilkes Booth, "I was born at mid-day on the first of January. Is that not strange?" Wilkes returned: "Not at all. You could only have been conceived on the first of April."
Some self-righteous ass-wipe apparently told Dorothy Parker that he couldn't bear fools. Parker responded in turn, "How odd. Your mother could, apparently."
Groucho, Groucho, Groucho.... An exceptionally obese woman apparently said in Groucho's presence, "Oh, how I just adore nature!" The poor woman didn't have a chance: "That's loyalty, after what nature has done to you."
A male heckler tried to taunted Agnes Macphail, the Canadian suffragette, shouting, "Don't you wish you were a man?" Macphail answered, "Yes, don't you?"
Ernest Thesiger, the great character actor, was apparently very bored at a party, and took to a room where he discovered an equally bored looking man standing by the fire. Thesiger essayed to introduce himself: "Hello. My name's Ernest. I'm an actor." The young man returned, supposedly quite modestly, "Hello, my name's George. I'm a king."
Katharine Hepburn thought she'd make a preliminary attack on Spencer Tracy: "I'm afraid I'm a little too tall for you, Mr. Tracy." Spence rightly remarked, "Don't worry about that, Miss Hepburn. I'll soon cut you down to size."
Groucho again.... A woman at a party insisted she'd met him before, to which the moustachioed one replied, "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."
"Oh! I thought I was giving him so much!
And he to me-- and the giving and the taking
Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation
Or what was good for the persons we had been
But for the new person, us. If I could feel
As I did then, even now it would seem right.
And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made us of each other
Each for his purpose. That's horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
Then one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams."
---- Celia Coplestone, prior to her crucifixion, in T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (2.2).
And yes, LJH, TSE may have been a misogynist, but I refuse to make Celia's death part & parcel of some cheap feminist argument. For once I find myself dangerously in agreement with Raymond Williams.
Besides, as someone who knows what it means to be unlovable, Celia is the one character who cuts to the emotional bones in TCP: Sir Henry tidies things up, but he never slices.
I wish so badly I could have seen Sir Alec play Sir Henry when he did. I have an audio recording, but that is just not the same. *shrug*
And he to me-- and the giving and the taking
Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation
Or what was good for the persons we had been
But for the new person, us. If I could feel
As I did then, even now it would seem right.
And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made us of each other
Each for his purpose. That's horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
Then one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams."
---- Celia Coplestone, prior to her crucifixion, in T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (2.2).
And yes, LJH, TSE may have been a misogynist, but I refuse to make Celia's death part & parcel of some cheap feminist argument. For once I find myself dangerously in agreement with Raymond Williams.
Besides, as someone who knows what it means to be unlovable, Celia is the one character who cuts to the emotional bones in TCP: Sir Henry tidies things up, but he never slices.
I wish so badly I could have seen Sir Alec play Sir Henry when he did. I have an audio recording, but that is just not the same. *shrug*
29 May 2003
Oh my lord.... We all needed to make Homer Canadian....
This is a sign of someone with way too much time on his hands, and a child's view of the Bible.
This is a sign of someone with way too much time on his hands, and a child's view of the Bible.
28 May 2003
"Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness." --- Bertrand Russell, origin uncertain
"I learned Jacob Marley's lesson, to make humanity my business. Now, after a long period of over-extension, I declare myself bankrupt." --- QKM, origin unknown
"I learned Jacob Marley's lesson, to make humanity my business. Now, after a long period of over-extension, I declare myself bankrupt." --- QKM, origin unknown
I did what had to be done today.... A long, horrible day.
It's about damned time other people started doing things on my terms instead of me on theirs. With all the delicate dancing I've done around everyone else's eggshells, it's time for some reciprocation. This is partially spleen; mostly it's just fact.
"The whole world is about three drinks behind." --- Humphrey Bogart
It's about damned time other people started doing things on my terms instead of me on theirs. With all the delicate dancing I've done around everyone else's eggshells, it's time for some reciprocation. This is partially spleen; mostly it's just fact.
"The whole world is about three drinks behind." --- Humphrey Bogart
27 May 2003
For the lazy: Classic books in a minute.
Apparently parental units are going to US tomorrow. Unfortunately, I'm not greeting this with the joy I wish I were. Sometimes one can be deafened by the sound of one's own mind.
Some quotes, all from Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Simplex munditiis. --- Horace. The passion for it and the desire to behold it-- discovering more and more these may be fatal flaws on my part. I'm not sure, though, which is worse: being oblivious to this fact or being aware of it and still being subject to it.
Bah humbug.
Apparently parental units are going to US tomorrow. Unfortunately, I'm not greeting this with the joy I wish I were. Sometimes one can be deafened by the sound of one's own mind.
Some quotes, all from Edna St. Vincent Millay:
"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over."
"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell."
"Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it."
Simplex munditiis. --- Horace. The passion for it and the desire to behold it-- discovering more and more these may be fatal flaws on my part. I'm not sure, though, which is worse: being oblivious to this fact or being aware of it and still being subject to it.
Bah humbug.
It is easy to understand what I'm saying,
but it seems like nobody does.
It is easy to live by my teachings,
but it seems like nobody wants to.
What I say and do is nothing new.
Understand that or you'll never understand me.
Although I am so rarely understood,
it doesn't diminish the value of what I have.
The Wise may look poor on the outside,
because they keep their riches in their hearts.
-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Chapter 70, tr. Timothy Freke
but it seems like nobody does.
It is easy to live by my teachings,
but it seems like nobody wants to.
What I say and do is nothing new.
Understand that or you'll never understand me.
Although I am so rarely understood,
it doesn't diminish the value of what I have.
The Wise may look poor on the outside,
because they keep their riches in their hearts.
-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Chapter 70, tr. Timothy Freke
What About Now?
There`s gonna be a change of season
Indian Summer look around and it`s gone
Why you wanna save the best for last
We grow up so slowly, and grow old so fast
We don`t talk about forever
We just catch it while we can
And if I grab on to the moment
Don`t let it slip away out of my hand
What about now?
What about now
Forget about tomorrow
It`s too far away
What about now, what about now
Close your eyes, don`t talk of yesterday
It`s too far away, too far away
It`s too far away
What about now?
I`m coming out of the shadows
I`m getting of of this one way street
Blue memories, they just gather dust
Leave them in the rain, they turn into rust
Did you see the march to freedom?
Did you ever see Savannah moon
In the middle of the night?
All the other people walking in a line,
I said to the man, "Is it my time?"
What about now?
What about now
Forget about tomorrow, it`s too far away
What about now, what about now
Just close your eyes, don`t talk of yesterday
It`s too far away, too far away
It`s too far away
What about now?
In the walk of a lifetime
When you know it`s the right time
(Bring it to me darlin`)
I can`t wait, I can`t wait
Until the ship comes in
I can`t wait, I can`t wait
Starting up all over again
The errors of a wise man
Make the rules for a fool
What about now?
Forget about tomorrow
It`s too far away, it`s too far away
What about now
Don`t talk of yesterday
It`s too far away, it`s too far away
It`s all about now right now
Don`t break the spell, don`t break the spell
Don`t break the spell, don`t break the spell
It`s all about now right now, now right now, here right now
It`s all about now
All over by tomorrow
Don`t break the spell, don't break the spell....
--- Robbie Robertson, from the gorgeous album Storyville. The lyrics don't look right as text, though. Beautiful song.
There`s gonna be a change of season
Indian Summer look around and it`s gone
Why you wanna save the best for last
We grow up so slowly, and grow old so fast
We don`t talk about forever
We just catch it while we can
And if I grab on to the moment
Don`t let it slip away out of my hand
What about now?
What about now
Forget about tomorrow
It`s too far away
What about now, what about now
Close your eyes, don`t talk of yesterday
It`s too far away, too far away
It`s too far away
What about now?
I`m coming out of the shadows
I`m getting of of this one way street
Blue memories, they just gather dust
Leave them in the rain, they turn into rust
Did you see the march to freedom?
Did you ever see Savannah moon
In the middle of the night?
All the other people walking in a line,
I said to the man, "Is it my time?"
What about now?
What about now
Forget about tomorrow, it`s too far away
What about now, what about now
Just close your eyes, don`t talk of yesterday
It`s too far away, too far away
It`s too far away
What about now?
In the walk of a lifetime
When you know it`s the right time
(Bring it to me darlin`)
I can`t wait, I can`t wait
Until the ship comes in
I can`t wait, I can`t wait
Starting up all over again
The errors of a wise man
Make the rules for a fool
What about now?
Forget about tomorrow
It`s too far away, it`s too far away
What about now
Don`t talk of yesterday
It`s too far away, it`s too far away
It`s all about now right now
Don`t break the spell, don`t break the spell
Don`t break the spell, don`t break the spell
It`s all about now right now, now right now, here right now
It`s all about now
All over by tomorrow
Don`t break the spell, don't break the spell....
--- Robbie Robertson, from the gorgeous album Storyville. The lyrics don't look right as text, though. Beautiful song.
Ten Reasons Why Email Is Like The Male Reproductive Organ
10. Those who have it would be devastated if it were ever cut off.
9. Those who have it think that those who don't are somehow inferior.
8. Those who don't have it may agree that it's neat, but think it's not worth the fuss that those who have it make about it.
7. Many of those who don't have it would like to try it (e-mail envy).
6. It's more fun when it's up, but this makes it hard to get any real work done.
5. In the distant past, its only purpose was to transmit information vital to the survival of the species. Some people still think that's the only thing it should be used for, but most folks today use it for fun most of the time.
4. If you don't apply the appropriate measures, it can spread viruses.
3. If you use it too much, you'll find it becomes more and more difficult to think coherently.
2. We attach an importance to it that is far greater than its actual size and influence warrant.
1. If you're not careful what you do with it, it can get you into a lot of trouble.
10. Those who have it would be devastated if it were ever cut off.
9. Those who have it think that those who don't are somehow inferior.
8. Those who don't have it may agree that it's neat, but think it's not worth the fuss that those who have it make about it.
7. Many of those who don't have it would like to try it (e-mail envy).
6. It's more fun when it's up, but this makes it hard to get any real work done.
5. In the distant past, its only purpose was to transmit information vital to the survival of the species. Some people still think that's the only thing it should be used for, but most folks today use it for fun most of the time.
4. If you don't apply the appropriate measures, it can spread viruses.
3. If you use it too much, you'll find it becomes more and more difficult to think coherently.
2. We attach an importance to it that is far greater than its actual size and influence warrant.
1. If you're not careful what you do with it, it can get you into a lot of trouble.
Mistranslations
In a hotel in Athens:
"Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 A.M. daily."
In a Paris hotel elevator:
"Please leave your values at the front desk."
In a Japanese hotel:
"You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid."
In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery:
"You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists, and writers are buried daily except Thursday."
On the menu of a Swiss restaurant:
"Our wines leave you nothing to hope for."
Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop:
"Ladies may have a fit upstairs."
In a Bangkok dry cleaner's:
"Drop your trousers here for best results."
In a Rhodes tailor shop:
"Order your summers suit. Because is big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation."
Similarly, from the Soviet Weekly:
"There will be a Moscow Exhibition of Arts by 15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors. These were executed over the past two years."
In a Rome laundry:
"Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time."
In a Copenhagen airline ticket office:
"We take your bags and send them in all directions."
On the door of a Moscow hotel room:
"If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it."
In the office of a Roman doctor:
"Specialist in women and other diseases."
In an Acapulco hotel:
"The manager has personally passed all the water served here."
In a Tokyo shop:
"Our nylons cost more than common, but you'll find they are best in the long run."
Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:
"English well talking."
"Here speeching American."
Sign in a hotel corridor in Istanbul:
"Please to evacuate in hall especially which is accompanied by rude noises."
In a Tokyo bar:
Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.
At a Budapest zoo:
Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.
In a Swiss mountain inn:
Special today -- no ice cream.
Detour sign in Kyushi, Japan:
Stop: Drive Sideways.
On the faucet in a Finnish washroom:
To stop the drip, turn cock to right.
In the window of a Swedish furrier:
Fur coats made for ladies from their own skin.
In a Czechoslovakian tourist agency:
Take one of our horse-driven city tours -- we guarantee no miscarriages.
In a Vienna hotel:
In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the hotel porter.
Panasonic developed a complete Japanese Web browser, and to make the system user-friendly, licensed the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker as the "Internet guide." Panasonic eventually planned on a world version of the product. The day before the ads were to be released, Panasonic decided to delay the product launch indefinately. The reason: an American staff member at the internal product launch explained to the stunned and embarrassed Japanese what the ad's slogan, "Touch Woody - The Internet Pecker", might mean to English speakers.
In a hotel in Athens:
"Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 A.M. daily."
In a Paris hotel elevator:
"Please leave your values at the front desk."
In a Japanese hotel:
"You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid."
In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery:
"You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists, and writers are buried daily except Thursday."
On the menu of a Swiss restaurant:
"Our wines leave you nothing to hope for."
Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop:
"Ladies may have a fit upstairs."
In a Bangkok dry cleaner's:
"Drop your trousers here for best results."
In a Rhodes tailor shop:
"Order your summers suit. Because is big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation."
Similarly, from the Soviet Weekly:
"There will be a Moscow Exhibition of Arts by 15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors. These were executed over the past two years."
In a Rome laundry:
"Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time."
In a Copenhagen airline ticket office:
"We take your bags and send them in all directions."
On the door of a Moscow hotel room:
"If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it."
In the office of a Roman doctor:
"Specialist in women and other diseases."
In an Acapulco hotel:
"The manager has personally passed all the water served here."
In a Tokyo shop:
"Our nylons cost more than common, but you'll find they are best in the long run."
Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:
"English well talking."
"Here speeching American."
Sign in a hotel corridor in Istanbul:
"Please to evacuate in hall especially which is accompanied by rude noises."
In a Tokyo bar:
Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.
At a Budapest zoo:
Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.
In a Swiss mountain inn:
Special today -- no ice cream.
Detour sign in Kyushi, Japan:
Stop: Drive Sideways.
On the faucet in a Finnish washroom:
To stop the drip, turn cock to right.
In the window of a Swedish furrier:
Fur coats made for ladies from their own skin.
In a Czechoslovakian tourist agency:
Take one of our horse-driven city tours -- we guarantee no miscarriages.
In a Vienna hotel:
In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the hotel porter.
Panasonic developed a complete Japanese Web browser, and to make the system user-friendly, licensed the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker as the "Internet guide." Panasonic eventually planned on a world version of the product. The day before the ads were to be released, Panasonic decided to delay the product launch indefinately. The reason: an American staff member at the internal product launch explained to the stunned and embarrassed Japanese what the ad's slogan, "Touch Woody - The Internet Pecker", might mean to English speakers.
The 19 Rules for good Riting
Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
Just between you and I, case is important.
Verbs has to agree with their subject.
Watch out for irregular verbs which has cropped up into our language.
Don't use no double negatives.
A writer mustn't shift your point of view.
When dangling, don't use participles.
Join clauses good like a conjunction should.
And don't use conjunctions to start sentences.
Don't use a run-on sentence you got to punctuate it.
About sentence fragments.
In letters themes reports articles and stuff like that we use commas to keep strings apart.
Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
Its important to use apostrophe's right.
Don't abbrev.
Check to see if you any words out.
In my opinion I think that the author when he is writing should not get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words which he does not really need.
Then, of course, there's that old one: Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
Just between you and I, case is important.
Verbs has to agree with their subject.
Watch out for irregular verbs which has cropped up into our language.
Don't use no double negatives.
A writer mustn't shift your point of view.
When dangling, don't use participles.
Join clauses good like a conjunction should.
And don't use conjunctions to start sentences.
Don't use a run-on sentence you got to punctuate it.
About sentence fragments.
In letters themes reports articles and stuff like that we use commas to keep strings apart.
Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
Its important to use apostrophe's right.
Don't abbrev.
Check to see if you any words out.
In my opinion I think that the author when he is writing should not get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words which he does not really need.
Then, of course, there's that old one: Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
Some Loose Notes and Links
First off: Happy Birthday, Christie. Best wishes. And belated birthday wishes to Anne, who I once again forgot... Sorry Anne. :-(
The National Post printed a very funny discussion about the Buffy finale that's worth a read. Though I disagree with their response to the episode, there are some damned good bits that reflect a little too baldly how so many of us indeed sat and watched the show. I particularly like this bit about the Slayer-ing of every damned girl on the planet: "Joss is definitely going to be invited to guest host The View." LOL. I also like this article from the National Review Online which is the first article I've seen which was less than impressed with the series' ending. It's very well-written.
For the truly obsessed, check out Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. Some articles to be found: “'Killing us Softly'? A Feminist Search for the 'Real' Buffy"; "T. S. Eliot Comes to Television: Buffy's 'Restless'"; and "Love, Death, Curses and Reverses (in F minor): Music, Gender, and Identity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel." Reading through some of these articles is sometimes interesting, but more often than not it serves more to remind me how lame the academy has become. There's a lot desperate stretching going on, to say nothing of idiosyncratic jargonizing. Worse, most of the writers have very little flare for writing. The article on Buffy and Eliot, for example, has precious little to do with Eliot and suffers from stilted, ponderous writing. Check this sample of an introduction (which took three writers!) that is eye-rollingly bad:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer investigates the means of its production as a television series. It examines the meaning of viewership, or what, in Buffyspeak, we should call being a watcher. Buffy parodies television language and mass-media iconography to seek out an affective politics for its medium, refusing anaesthetic passivity in favour of culturally astute self-consciousness. The program invites viewers to negotiate the tension between access and restriction; at issue are the structure and dissemination of information itself. Buffy offers a critique of the social and the cultural — of the content of the on-screen world, of television as a genre, and of the American socius — and of the processes by which those bodies of cultural and social knowledge are shaped. Two correspondent modes of viewer response are interrogated and challenged in Buffy: identification and mediatization. Its viewers consider how watching television fosters passivity, in audience identification with characters and events — how we learn the thrill of looking at things happen, rather than making them happen.
Oy, oy, oy. We're treated later to the claim that "We also witness an abrogation of agency in viewing: we are mediatized, willingly relieved of our immediate rights as social or cultural actors." Oh dear Lord. Mediatized. Spare me. Alas, this site is very typical of the stuff that goes on in the academy these days. In the words of King Lear, "Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!"
26 May 2003
An old poetic effort.... Probably circa 1995 or 96.
Sheet Music
Last night we made rock 'n' roll
perfect
voice
Blogspot has been bloody ridiculous lately, with tons of problems ranging from non-loading pages to slow transmissions to non-functioning refreshings. If anyone's been having problems reading or accessing this site, let me know. Sometimes, I've discovered, this can be remedied by rentering the address here with the "www" location at the beginning. Let me know if anyone else is having persistent problems.
"I'm as impure as the driven, yellow snow." -- Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I sometimes wonder if could write love poetry again. There was a time I did-- years ago, seeming more like eons ago-- and though I can't say any of it particularly good, it came from a part of me that I'm not sure still exists. To write good love poetry, it seems, one has to have a kind of purity that most of us tend to lose, which I think I may have lost some time ago. Purity, perhaps, or innocence, or something to that effect-- a purity that people like WCWilliams, cummings, Millay and Dickinson had but which most of us do not. I do not think Eliot, for example, could have written good love poetry if he tried. Stevens could have. Hardy probably could have but didn't. Coleridge, never. I'm debating whether or not to dredge some old stuff and look at it again-- since I spent much of last night rereading my MA thesis, another work of juvenalia-- to see if that part of me that could write that stuff still exists. Writing love poetry is very different than loving, or even writing about love per se; what that quality is I'm not sure, but once can tell when that quality is present or absent. I wonder if I have it, but I have to admit I'm a tad wary of finding out the answer. Some questions are dangerous.....
I sometimes wonder if could write love poetry again. There was a time I did-- years ago, seeming more like eons ago-- and though I can't say any of it particularly good, it came from a part of me that I'm not sure still exists. To write good love poetry, it seems, one has to have a kind of purity that most of us tend to lose, which I think I may have lost some time ago. Purity, perhaps, or innocence, or something to that effect-- a purity that people like WCWilliams, cummings, Millay and Dickinson had but which most of us do not. I do not think Eliot, for example, could have written good love poetry if he tried. Stevens could have. Hardy probably could have but didn't. Coleridge, never. I'm debating whether or not to dredge some old stuff and look at it again-- since I spent much of last night rereading my MA thesis, another work of juvenalia-- to see if that part of me that could write that stuff still exists. Writing love poetry is very different than loving, or even writing about love per se; what that quality is I'm not sure, but once can tell when that quality is present or absent. I wonder if I have it, but I have to admit I'm a tad wary of finding out the answer. Some questions are dangerous.....
25 May 2003
Some Random Things: Wisdom From The Strangest Places
"Not try. Only do or do not. There is no try." --- Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back
"All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door." -- old adage, source unknown
"If you do not trust / you will not find what is trustworthy." -- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, tr. Timothy Freke
"Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that's dynamic and expressive-- that's what's good for you if you're at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life-- live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, Loss, Loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition."
-- Tennessee Williams in an essay normally called "The Catastrophe of Success," originally published in The New York Times 30 November 1947
"You've got to kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight." -- Bruce Cockburn, "Lovers in a Dangerous Time"
"Now there's a beautiful river
In the valley ahead
There 'neath the oak's bough
Soon we will be wed
Should we lose each other
In the shadow of the evening trees
I'll wait for you
And should I fall behind
Wait for me
Darlin I'll wait for you
And should I fall behind
Wait for me..." --- Bruce Springsteen, "If I Should Fall Behind"
"Optimists belittle nothing.
Cynics belittle everything.
Midgets simply belittle." -- old adage, origin unknown
...Stuff to keep in mind... And a short addendum: I've heard through the grapevine that I've received a another generous vote on ratemyprofessors.ca (why a TA is on there..., but never mind), and (whuda thunk it) another chili pepper. I'm now 50% hot. LOL. If the donator of that rating and the very kind comments thereto is reading this (and I suspect you are), thank you.
From Graham Greene's The Comedians, the epilogic letter from Doctor Magiot: "Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate. I know you and love you well, and I am writing this letter with some care because it may be the last chance I have communicating with you. It may never reach you, but I am sending it by what I believe to be a safe hand-- though there is no guarantee of that in the wild world we live in now (I do not mean my poor insignificant Haiti). I implore you-- a knock on the door may not allow me to finish this sentence, so take it as the last request of a dying man-- if you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?"
24 May 2003
A *HUGE* Update today (by my standards, anyway) --- Hilarity abounds....
You Are Different and That's Bad
The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables
Dad's New Wife Timothy
Fun Four-letter Words to Know and Share
Hammers, Screwdrivers and Scissors: An I-Can-Do-it Book
The Kids Guide To Hitchhiking
Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her {a personal fave}
Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
All Dogs Go to Hell
The Little Sissy Who Snitched
Some Kittens Can Fly
That's It, I'm Putting You Up for Adoption
Grandpa Gets a Casket
The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator
Garfield Gets Feline Leukemia
The Pop-up Book of Human Anatomy
Strangers Have the Best Candy
Whining, Kicking and Crying to Get Your Way
You Were an Accident
Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will
Pop! Goes the Hamster.... And Other Great Microwave Games
The Man in the Moon is Actually Satan
Your Nightmares Are Real
Where Would You Like to be Buried?
Eggs, Toilet Paper and Your School
Why Can't Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
Places Where Mommy and Daddy Hide Neat Things
Daddy Drinks Because You Cry {Another favourite: Dr. J has a cruel streak today}
101 Things You Should Put up Your Nose and in YourEar
Fighting Solves Everything
Wrong Plus Wrong Equals Right
Dave Barry has a hilarious column about that device responsible for so many, ahem, columns. I personally love this line:
This image is for Christie who will no doubt enjoy it on two levels. ;-) Same with this one and this one.
I don't know why I find this picture funny, but damn it, I do. Maybe because Dad used to have motorcycles, and I can very much imagine him sporting this shirt.
Similarly, don't ask me how I stumbled on this site, but it *is* funny. It also leads me to think I'm in possession of a top-of-the line model.... ;-) Question, though: if fructose sugar is the chief ingredient, why is it as salty as I'm told it is? Further question: considering how much 'driving' is done manually, isn't a manual ironic? One has to reconsider the meaning of the word 'troubleshooting.'
Now, over the years I've heard some doozy excuses for missing classes, but these take the cake. My personal favourites are #s 10, 12, 16, 18, 31, 47, 81 and 95. The page includes links to tons of other excuses for work, school, and not having sex.
Do you know your Star Wars name? Check this link out if you don't. Apparently, I am Jersh Ham, Pra of Codeine.
The Top 15 "Star Wars" Euphemisms for Masturbation
Shooting Womprats in Beggar's Canyon
Grooming the Wookie
Making the Kessel Run
Polishing Vader's Helmet
Evacuating Tatooine
Unsheathing the Meatsaber
Releasing the Special Edition
Jumping to Delight Speed
Communicating with Red Leader One
Lightsaber Practice with Captain Solo
Tinkering With the R2 Unit
Manually Targeting the Rebel Base
Performing the Jedi Hand Trick
Scratching Yoda Behind the Ears
Test Firing the Death Star
and a few addenda from Dr. J: Mauling the Darth, Obi-Wanking Your Kenobi and Going Hooooo-Pah.
I had to laugh at this. Apparently, if your name begins with J,
Me sayz nussing. I wonder what the ladies I've been involved with over the years would say about this.... ROFLMAO.... Added note: was told this morning that apparently I am (or was) "fuckable." No one is laughing at this harder more than I am, I assure you. ;-) Alas, the photos that prompted the comment were at least six years old, but it still made me nearly spit rye and Pepsi out my nose. Thanks Wendy, aka the Yodabitionist, who has just done wonders for Australo-Canadian relations.... I feel nurtured deep within. *huge grin*
Remember Deep Thoughts? If not, check this out. Don't read too far down, though; they start hilariously but end up, like SNL itself over the years, increasingly lame and stupid.
Random Quote: "Could you not use two syllable words? You're confusing our American friend." --- Clive Anderson
Another Random Quote: World's Worst TV Show: "And now it's time for another episode of Saliva Darts!" --- Tony Slattery
Modernhumorist.com has some funny stuff, but I like the situation of poems if written by authors who wrote poems that were anagrams of their names. Here is Eliot, Dickinson and WCWilliams. Here is Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas. And here is Blake, Nash and ee cummings. He he he. Here's one of my own:
Leonard Cohen
Hard Once Lone
I watched her there, peeling oranges
And contemplating doorhinges,
Her face the figure of distraction,
Longing for satisfaction. I could not rise
With that sorrow in her eyes,
I could not corrupt her with my lies
And bring myself between her thighs.
Such is the terror of her perfect zone,
That again I will only be hard once lone.
She twirls her hair, adrift in her peignoir,
Remembering some other faits de gloire,
Remembering the countless names and faces
That traced her graces, that better knew
The tremorous things abler lovers do.
His desire will come when she is gone,
When he does not feel so put upon
To deliver her that sacred moan.
His pleasure his, he will be hard once lone.
Meh. One tries.... RK, If you read this, this is probably my first and only attempt at nonestets. (It should be apparent why.) I couldn't be bothered to go whole hog and try to keep to the rhyme scheme of a Spenserian stanza.
And yes, there does appear to be a recurring theme this morning....
Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.
--- Robin Williams
There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?
--- Jay Leno {a rare instance of Leno being funny...}
When the sun comes up, I have morals again.
--- Elayne Boosler
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.
--- George Carlin
Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house.
--- Johnny Carson {I miss Johnny sooo much...}
See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time!!!!!
--- Robin Williams
I'm always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identified by their dental records. What I can't understand is, if they don't know who you are, how do they know who your dentist is?
--- Paul Merton.
There is one thing I would break up over and that is if she caught me with another woman. I wouldn't stand for that.
--- Steve Martin.
First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.
--- George Burns.
If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?
--- Steven Wright. [Brilliant!!! I love Steven Wright's other classic, "I'm studying evolution. It's going REEEEEEEAL SLOOOOOW."}
I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet.
--- Rodney Dangerfield.
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money costs less.
--- Brendon Francis. {No kidding...}
Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.
--- George Carlin.
I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.
--- Charles Schultz.
Sometimes I need what only you can provide - Your absence.
--- Ashleigh Brilliant.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
--- Steven Wright. {For the life of me, I can't think of one...]
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'
--- Quentin Crisp.
If you ever see me getting beaten by the police, put down the video camera and come help me.
--- Bobcat Goldthwait.
Television has brought back murder into the home -- where it belongs.
--- Alfred Hitchcock.
When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
--- Peter O'Toole. {I love this one...}
They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.
--- Garrison Kiellor
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
--- Socrates.
It was God who made me so beautiful. If I weren't, then I'd be a teacher.
--- Supermodel Linda Evangelista.
They couldn't hit an elephant from this dist...
---The last words of US General John Sedgwick.
Dubya always makes me appreciate Jean Chretien....
Taken from The Complete Bushisms compiled by Jacob Weisberg
Titles for Failed Children's Books
You Are Different and That's Bad
The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables
Dad's New Wife Timothy
Fun Four-letter Words to Know and Share
Hammers, Screwdrivers and Scissors: An I-Can-Do-it Book
The Kids Guide To Hitchhiking
Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her {a personal fave}
Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
All Dogs Go to Hell
The Little Sissy Who Snitched
Some Kittens Can Fly
That's It, I'm Putting You Up for Adoption
Grandpa Gets a Casket
The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator
Garfield Gets Feline Leukemia
The Pop-up Book of Human Anatomy
Strangers Have the Best Candy
Whining, Kicking and Crying to Get Your Way
You Were an Accident
Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will
Pop! Goes the Hamster.... And Other Great Microwave Games
The Man in the Moon is Actually Satan
Your Nightmares Are Real
Where Would You Like to be Buried?
Eggs, Toilet Paper and Your School
Why Can't Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
Places Where Mommy and Daddy Hide Neat Things
Daddy Drinks Because You Cry {Another favourite: Dr. J has a cruel streak today}
101 Things You Should Put up Your Nose and in YourEar
Fighting Solves Everything
Wrong Plus Wrong Equals Right
Random Links
Dave Barry has a hilarious column about that device responsible for so many, ahem, columns. I personally love this line:
"If you're a parent, there are few experiences more embarrassing than when you report a missing child to the police, and the officer asks you where you last saw little Tiffany, and you have to answer: 'She was entering a giant colon.'"Indeed, I hate it when that happens...
This image is for Christie who will no doubt enjoy it on two levels. ;-) Same with this one and this one.
I don't know why I find this picture funny, but damn it, I do. Maybe because Dad used to have motorcycles, and I can very much imagine him sporting this shirt.
Similarly, don't ask me how I stumbled on this site, but it *is* funny. It also leads me to think I'm in possession of a top-of-the line model.... ;-) Question, though: if fructose sugar is the chief ingredient, why is it as salty as I'm told it is? Further question: considering how much 'driving' is done manually, isn't a manual ironic? One has to reconsider the meaning of the word 'troubleshooting.'
Now, over the years I've heard some doozy excuses for missing classes, but these take the cake. My personal favourites are #s 10, 12, 16, 18, 31, 47, 81 and 95. The page includes links to tons of other excuses for work, school, and not having sex.
Do you know your Star Wars name? Check this link out if you don't. Apparently, I am Jersh Ham, Pra of Codeine.
The Top 15 "Star Wars" Euphemisms for Masturbation
Shooting Womprats in Beggar's Canyon
Grooming the Wookie
Making the Kessel Run
Polishing Vader's Helmet
Evacuating Tatooine
Unsheathing the Meatsaber
Releasing the Special Edition
Jumping to Delight Speed
Communicating with Red Leader One
Lightsaber Practice with Captain Solo
Tinkering With the R2 Unit
Manually Targeting the Rebel Base
Performing the Jedi Hand Trick
Scratching Yoda Behind the Ears
Test Firing the Death Star
and a few addenda from Dr. J: Mauling the Darth, Obi-Wanking Your Kenobi and Going Hooooo-Pah.
I had to laugh at this. Apparently, if your name begins with J,
You are blessed with a great deal of physical energy. When used for a good cause there is nothing to stop you, except maybe that they aren't always used for the good. (You could have danced all night.) You respond to the thrill of the chase and the challenge of the mating game. You can carry on great romances in your head. At heart you are a roamer and need to set out on your own every so often. You will carry on long-distance relationships with ease. You are idealistic and need to believe in love. You have a need to be nurtured deep within.
Me sayz nussing. I wonder what the ladies I've been involved with over the years would say about this.... ROFLMAO.... Added note: was told this morning that apparently I am (or was) "fuckable." No one is laughing at this harder more than I am, I assure you. ;-) Alas, the photos that prompted the comment were at least six years old, but it still made me nearly spit rye and Pepsi out my nose. Thanks Wendy, aka the Yodabitionist, who has just done wonders for Australo-Canadian relations.... I feel nurtured deep within. *huge grin*
Remember Deep Thoughts? If not, check this out. Don't read too far down, though; they start hilariously but end up, like SNL itself over the years, increasingly lame and stupid.
Random Quote: "Could you not use two syllable words? You're confusing our American friend." --- Clive Anderson
Another Random Quote: World's Worst TV Show: "And now it's time for another episode of Saliva Darts!" --- Tony Slattery
Modernhumorist.com has some funny stuff, but I like the situation of poems if written by authors who wrote poems that were anagrams of their names. Here is Eliot, Dickinson and WCWilliams. Here is Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas. And here is Blake, Nash and ee cummings. He he he. Here's one of my own:
Leonard Cohen
Hard Once Lone
I watched her there, peeling oranges
And contemplating doorhinges,
Her face the figure of distraction,
Longing for satisfaction. I could not rise
With that sorrow in her eyes,
I could not corrupt her with my lies
And bring myself between her thighs.
Such is the terror of her perfect zone,
That again I will only be hard once lone.
She twirls her hair, adrift in her peignoir,
Remembering some other faits de gloire,
Remembering the countless names and faces
That traced her graces, that better knew
The tremorous things abler lovers do.
His desire will come when she is gone,
When he does not feel so put upon
To deliver her that sacred moan.
His pleasure his, he will be hard once lone.
Meh. One tries.... RK, If you read this, this is probably my first and only attempt at nonestets. (It should be apparent why.) I couldn't be bothered to go whole hog and try to keep to the rhyme scheme of a Spenserian stanza.
And yes, there does appear to be a recurring theme this morning....
Some Great Quotes From Famous People
Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.
--- Robin Williams
There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?
--- Jay Leno {a rare instance of Leno being funny...}
When the sun comes up, I have morals again.
--- Elayne Boosler
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.
--- George Carlin
Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house.
--- Johnny Carson {I miss Johnny sooo much...}
See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time!!!!!
--- Robin Williams
I'm always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identified by their dental records. What I can't understand is, if they don't know who you are, how do they know who your dentist is?
--- Paul Merton.
There is one thing I would break up over and that is if she caught me with another woman. I wouldn't stand for that.
--- Steve Martin.
First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.
--- George Burns.
If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?
--- Steven Wright. [Brilliant!!! I love Steven Wright's other classic, "I'm studying evolution. It's going REEEEEEEAL SLOOOOOW."}
I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet.
--- Rodney Dangerfield.
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money costs less.
--- Brendon Francis. {No kidding...}
Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.
--- George Carlin.
I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.
--- Charles Schultz.
Sometimes I need what only you can provide - Your absence.
--- Ashleigh Brilliant.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
--- Steven Wright. {For the life of me, I can't think of one...]
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'
--- Quentin Crisp.
If you ever see me getting beaten by the police, put down the video camera and come help me.
--- Bobcat Goldthwait.
Television has brought back murder into the home -- where it belongs.
--- Alfred Hitchcock.
When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
--- Peter O'Toole. {I love this one...}
They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.
--- Garrison Kiellor
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
--- Socrates.
It was God who made me so beautiful. If I weren't, then I'd be a teacher.
--- Supermodel Linda Evangelista.
They couldn't hit an elephant from this dist...
---The last words of US General John Sedgwick.
And a Selection of Bushisms
Dubya always makes me appreciate Jean Chretien....
Taken from The Complete Bushisms compiled by Jacob Weisberg
"It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature.'' Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 2000
"I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying to convince those college students to accept my tenants. And I reject any labeling me because I happened to go to the university."—Today, Feb. 23, 2000
"I understand small business growth. I was one."—New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000 "The senator has got to understand if he's going to have—he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road."—To reporters in Florence, S.C., Feb. 17, 2000
"Really proud of it. A great campaign. And I'm really pleased with the organization and the thousands of South Carolinians that worked on my behalf. And I'm very gracious and humbled."—To Cokie Roberts, This Week, Feb. 20, 2000
"I don't want to win? If that were the case why the heck am I on the bus 16 hours a day, shaking thousands of hands, giving hundreds of speeches, getting pillared in the press and cartoons and still staying on message to win?"—Newsweek, Feb. 28, 2000
"I thought how proud I am to be standing up beside my dad. Never did it occur to me that he would become the gist for cartoonists."—ibid.
"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign."—Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
"How do you know if you don't measure if you have a system that simply suckles kids through?"—Explaining the need for educational accountability in Beaufort, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
"We ought to make the pie higher."—South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000
"I do not agree with this notion that somehow if I go to try to attract votes and to lead people toward a better tomorrow somehow I get subscribed to some—some doctrine gets subscribed to me."—Meet The Press, Feb. 13, 2000
"I've changed my style somewhat, as you know. I'm less—I pontificate less, although it may be hard to tell it from this show. And I'm more interacting with people."—ibid
"I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth."—Nashua, N.H., as quoted by Gail Collins in the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2000
"The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case."—Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?"—Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000
"This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve."—Speaking during "Perseverance Month" at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2000
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000
"What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position.''—Quoted by Molly Ivins, the San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 21, 2000 (Thanks to Toni L. Gould.)
"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were," he said. "It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."—Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000
"The administration I'll bring is a group of men and women who are focused on what's best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house."—Des Moines Register debate, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2000
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses."—At a South Carolina oyster roast, as quoted in the Financial Times, Jan. 14, 2000
"We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked yourself."—ibid.
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
"Gov. Bush will not stand for the subsidation of failure."—ibid.
"There needs to be debates, like we're going through. There needs to be town-hall meetings. There needs to be travel. This is a huge country."—Larry King Live, Dec. 16, 1999
"I read the newspaper."—In answer to a question about his reading habits, New Hampshire Republican Debate, Dec. 2, 1999
"I think it's important for those of us in a position of responsibility to be firm in sharing our experiences, to understand that the babies out of wedlock is a very difficult chore for mom and baby alike. ... I believe we ought to say there is a different alternative than the culture that is proposed by people like Miss Wolf in society. ... And, you know, hopefully, condoms will work, but it hasn't worked."—Meet the Press, Nov. 21, 1999
"The students at Yale came from all different backgrounds and all parts of the country. Within months, I knew many of them."—From A Charge To Keep, by George W. Bush, published November 1999
"It is incredibly presumptive for somebody who has not yet earned his party's nomination to start speculating about vice presidents."—Keene, N.H., Oct. 22, 1999, quoted in the New Republic, Nov. 15, 1999
"The important question is, How many hands have I shaked?"—Answering a question about why he hasn't spent more time in New Hampshire, in the New York Times, Oct. 23, 1999
"I don't remember debates. I don't think we spent a lot of time debating it. Maybe we did, but I don't remember."—On discussions of the Vietnam War when he was an undergraduate at Yale, Washington Post, July 27, 1999
"The only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned first-hand from your foreign minister, who came to Texas."—To a Slovak journalist as quoted by Knight Ridder News Service, June 22, 1999. Bush's meeting was with Janez Drnovsek, the prime minister of Slovenia.
"If the East Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll have a statement."—Quoted by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, June 16, 1999
"Keep good relations with the Grecians."—Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999
"Kosovians can move back in."—CNN Inside Politics, April 9, 1999
"It was just inebriating what Midland was all about then."—From a 1994 interview, as quoted in First Son, by Bill Minutaglio
22 May 2003
20 May 2003
Ah, another day.... Thinking about Bob Dylan this morning, trying to figure out whether he's a poet or not. There was a time-- in a younger incarnation-- I'd have answered that affirmatively without reservation, but I'm not so sure anymore. Sure, Leonard Cohen is a poet, but Dylan's a tougher call; at the very least, though, he's better than most writers of 'verse' today. He has (from "My Back Pages") one of favourite pair of lines-- "I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now" -- and there are some songs that are as good as any poems written since 1950 ("Like A Rolling Stone," "It's All Over Now Baby Blue," to name just two). Regardless, he's a genius, even if he tends toward colloquial sentimentality more often than he needs.
Must dig up my Dylan collection, such as it is. Something in me always prefers the cynical Dylan to the romantic Dylan; the romantic Cohen or the romantic Van Morrison are far more palletable. Ah, more later-- I'm gonna change my way of thinking...
"I'm walking down that long, lonseome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated my unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right."
-- "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" from The Freewhelin' Bob Dylan
Must dig up my Dylan collection, such as it is. Something in me always prefers the cynical Dylan to the romantic Dylan; the romantic Cohen or the romantic Van Morrison are far more palletable. Ah, more later-- I'm gonna change my way of thinking...
19 May 2003
I absolutely had to post this link. It goes directly into the "me sayz nussing" file. I wonder what is more pathetic, though, that which is criticized or the people who take up a web site to decry it.
"Men are but Children of a larger growth,
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs." --- Dollabella in John Dryden's All For Love (4.1.43-44)
Spent much of tonight reading from Christopher Ricks' Essays in Appreciation(1998), which is -- to my general surprise-- more in tune with my of thinking than I had anticipated. In many Ricks is a mixed bag: his editions of Eliot (Inventions of the March Hare) and Tennyson (simply called Tennyson) are annotated to the point of copious excess, and his study of Eliot (T. S. Eliot and Prejudice) provides some fine insights while occasionally tumbling toward dross. Essays is very interesting-- even if, very often, his purported topic falls by the wayside like a snake's skin-- and exceptionally erudite, and more often than not one gets the sense of a broad range of reading asserting itself in somewhat kaleidoscope forms. I particularly like some of his remarks on the academic juncture between theory and 'practical criticism' (a term Ricks finds as euphemistic as I do), and I would like many of my colleagues to consider them without defensiveness. I like these lines, for example:
The Hartman text to which Ricks refers, by the way, is Criticism In The Wilderness. Much of the criticism I read that is of the past 35 years tends to think itself 'enlightened' as it quibbles endlessly about philosophy, history, materialism, and the importance of theory. I remember about five years ago being told by a professor that I wore my distaste for theory like 'a badge of honour, and in part she was right; she was, I think, wrong though to assume this a failing or a limitation on my part, and I think in many ways Geoffrey Hartman a living proof of this error, as he began an intelligent and insightful critic only to become righteously converted to theory (deconstruction in particular) and, as a result, little more than a prattler of the same old ideas and the same old issues. The academy is glutted with theorists rather than thinkers, people who have come to accept certain ways of thinking as natural laws (e.g., every text is informed by ideology, and is therefore a statement of ideology), and who spend their careers in effect reproducing so-called proof of such laws. Part of this, I suspect, has something to do with a desperate attempt to prove that literary studies has a specific social function, a role to play in the broader determinations of human thought and how hums think (and with this, it becomes insipid self-justification). Another part of this, though, is a general reluctance to accord literature itself much power-- instead, the notion of theory-driven studies empowers the critic and effectively allows the critic to stand with a kind of superiority over literature which very often becomes a kind of condescension in the analysis. Further, literature ceases to be a subject of study as it becomes instead little more than a platform for supposedly 'higher' levels of thinking-- what Hartman might call 'graduate' and 'postgraduate' thinking. Ultimately all of this tends toward hornswoggle, towards self-legitimizing and evasive "but but but-ing" that attempts to categorize and to characterize rather than to contemplate and to study. As Ricks says, the gap between scholars and writers, and scholars and amateurs (and so on), is widened, and deliberately widened, with theory as its crowbar. To discuss literature in terms of its properties and principles is merely "propaedeutic," which means, basically, introductory or preliminary; it is 'naive,' a good start, but green and immature. Horse-shit.
One of my critical mentors remains Northrop Frye, who once quite rightly remarked that literary theory that cannot be explained and made useful at the kindergarten level is ultimately useless. To speak as critics like Hartman do-- and to think as he so often does-- is to lock oneself in the ivory tower and to pretend with a kind of Freudian super-authority that one knows 'what is really going on' when, in fact, one is every bit as muddled in one's thinking as anybody else. Theory becomes a crutch, a shot to the alcoholic, a fix for the addict. That crutch or shot or fix becomes a means of verifying and asserting one's supposed critical importance, or one's so-called intellectual sophistication. It becomes the dais seperating the professor from his/her students, even if, all the while, the professor lectures that the readers are as responsible in the creation of the text as the author is. It's a profoundly democratizing gesture, but it is merely gesture because it in fact implies and necessitates a prescribed way of thinking about literature that is more social-scientific (and therefore verifiable) than humanistic, more paradigmatic than individual. As such, recent critical theory takes more from other fields-- like philosophy, history, gender studies, cultural studies, anthropology, poltical and social thought-- than it does from fields that are distinctly and a priori literary or rhetorical (musical, dramatic, verbal). It seeks a language of its own, a jargon that includes such verbal dandies as 'discourse,' 'construction,' 'diaspora,' 'regendering,' 'marginilization,' and 'politicization.' I'm not, of course, against such words per se but their application in recent criticism is roughly equivalent to academic braggadoccio. And when I see them in scholarly print, or hear them invoked in supposedly intelligent discussion, I'm provoked to realize that the gong has been struck and the discussants in question should remove themselves from the stage before Chuck Barris has to drag them off. It ultimately becomes about sloppy and lazy thinking guised as high-mindedness, and the perpetrators of it become rather like Malvolio, yellow stockings and cross-garters replaced with convenient lingo and easy answers. But their language and their answers are not accessible to kindergartners-- they depend on an accepted world view that children have yet to adopt, and which they hopefully will not have to adopt. Theory, it seems to me, is only as valuable as its immediate applicability, and the recent tendencies to assume the be-all-and-end-all-ness of theory are as misguided as the tendencies of religio-fundamentalists who cling to the Scriptures without placing the words of those Scriptures into context, even if, for example, "an eye for an eye" stands in contradiction to turning the other cheek. It becomes the easy answer, readily supplied-- an interpretive god out of the machine. And this fundamentally ires me because critical thought becomes taciturn and tautological, and critical responsibility becomes minimal. The critic/scholar/thinker abandons the basics-- including the so-called 'undergraduate' desire to interrogate-- and tends toward 'advancements' of a conceptual revolution (post-1968, or so it's often dated) that are basically little more than 'graduate' tendencies to determine and to fix.
When I think of the truly important scholars/critics of literature, I think of the people who confronted what they studied with individual character, and with individual honesty-- T.S. Eliot, Samuel Johnson, John Dryden, Matthew Arnold, G. Wilson Knight, Northrop Frye, William Empson, Frank Kermode, Hugh Kenner, R. P. Blackmur. Each had their bailywicks, each had their problems. Each developed what one might call theories. (I'm sorry I name no women, but even many of the better female critics, like Julia Kristeva, are very uncomfortable adherent to awkward paradigms and assumptions; I could add Virginia Woolf, perhaps, but her criticism is often stilted and obtuse.) But none of them belonged to schools, even if for some of the above schools followed in their names. And I have to find it indicative, or at least suggestive, that many of our major surviving critics-- Kermode, Harold Bloom, Frank Lentricchia-- have taken to elegizing or eulogizing the study of literature. One of Bloom's best gestures is his declaration in The Western Canon that he is a Marxist critic, following Groucho rather than Karl in the notion "whatever it is, I'm against it." He wouldn't belong to any club that would have him as a member. (Bloom probably recoils at the fact that he and Eliot shared a fondness for the moustachioed one). Our 'schools' devote themselves almost monastically to a series of precepts which almost invariably cloud them from responding 'honestly,' and indeed the 'honest response' to literature (and the world) is seen as cliched and naive Platonism. It is not.
I, for one, will remember occasional insights and turns of phrase (and analysis) far better and far longer than most of rancid theoria now current; I will better remember criticism that is imaginative and lucid than I will jargonistic fol-de-rol. And, what's more I will pass on these ideas and thoughts to others, whether they know it or not, because they influence my own way(s) of thinking about literature and often the world. After all, what use is criticism if it is impractical?
"Men are but Children of a larger growth,
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs." --- Dollabella in John Dryden's All For Love (4.1.43-44)
Rickety Rak (Don't Talk Back)
Spent much of tonight reading from Christopher Ricks' Essays in Appreciation(1998), which is -- to my general surprise-- more in tune with my of thinking than I had anticipated. In many Ricks is a mixed bag: his editions of Eliot (Inventions of the March Hare) and Tennyson (simply called Tennyson) are annotated to the point of copious excess, and his study of Eliot (T. S. Eliot and Prejudice) provides some fine insights while occasionally tumbling toward dross. Essays is very interesting-- even if, very often, his purported topic falls by the wayside like a snake's skin-- and exceptionally erudite, and more often than not one gets the sense of a broad range of reading asserting itself in somewhat kaleidoscope forms. I particularly like some of his remarks on the academic juncture between theory and 'practical criticism' (a term Ricks finds as euphemistic as I do), and I would like many of my colleagues to consider them without defensiveness. I like these lines, for example:
Theory, in its professionalized and systematic intellectuality, widens the gap between critics and non-professional readers; between critics and writers; between critics and scholars; and -- smaller of scale but professionally germane-- between graduates and undergraduates. [Geoffrey] Hartman, for whom the only alternative to theory is 'practical criticism,' says roundly that 'practical criticism is more of a pedagogical and popaedeutic than mature activity' (the words 'propaedeutic' itself being intended to couw the young and immature); he speaks them of 'the mind of the novice,' and of 'the danger in whis undergraduate or undeveloped form of practical criticism.' I share none of the beliefs which underlie such a way of speaking, such an estimate of practical criticism in any of its forms, or of undergraduates, or of the alternatives as Hartman conceives them. But I am sure that Hartman is right to depict theory, or advanced thought as they like to think of it, as intrinsically inimical to undergraduate teaching. ("Literary Principles As Against Theory" 331-332)
The Hartman text to which Ricks refers, by the way, is Criticism In The Wilderness. Much of the criticism I read that is of the past 35 years tends to think itself 'enlightened' as it quibbles endlessly about philosophy, history, materialism, and the importance of theory. I remember about five years ago being told by a professor that I wore my distaste for theory like 'a badge of honour, and in part she was right; she was, I think, wrong though to assume this a failing or a limitation on my part, and I think in many ways Geoffrey Hartman a living proof of this error, as he began an intelligent and insightful critic only to become righteously converted to theory (deconstruction in particular) and, as a result, little more than a prattler of the same old ideas and the same old issues. The academy is glutted with theorists rather than thinkers, people who have come to accept certain ways of thinking as natural laws (e.g., every text is informed by ideology, and is therefore a statement of ideology), and who spend their careers in effect reproducing so-called proof of such laws. Part of this, I suspect, has something to do with a desperate attempt to prove that literary studies has a specific social function, a role to play in the broader determinations of human thought and how hums think (and with this, it becomes insipid self-justification). Another part of this, though, is a general reluctance to accord literature itself much power-- instead, the notion of theory-driven studies empowers the critic and effectively allows the critic to stand with a kind of superiority over literature which very often becomes a kind of condescension in the analysis. Further, literature ceases to be a subject of study as it becomes instead little more than a platform for supposedly 'higher' levels of thinking-- what Hartman might call 'graduate' and 'postgraduate' thinking. Ultimately all of this tends toward hornswoggle, towards self-legitimizing and evasive "but but but-ing" that attempts to categorize and to characterize rather than to contemplate and to study. As Ricks says, the gap between scholars and writers, and scholars and amateurs (and so on), is widened, and deliberately widened, with theory as its crowbar. To discuss literature in terms of its properties and principles is merely "propaedeutic," which means, basically, introductory or preliminary; it is 'naive,' a good start, but green and immature. Horse-shit.
One of my critical mentors remains Northrop Frye, who once quite rightly remarked that literary theory that cannot be explained and made useful at the kindergarten level is ultimately useless. To speak as critics like Hartman do-- and to think as he so often does-- is to lock oneself in the ivory tower and to pretend with a kind of Freudian super-authority that one knows 'what is really going on' when, in fact, one is every bit as muddled in one's thinking as anybody else. Theory becomes a crutch, a shot to the alcoholic, a fix for the addict. That crutch or shot or fix becomes a means of verifying and asserting one's supposed critical importance, or one's so-called intellectual sophistication. It becomes the dais seperating the professor from his/her students, even if, all the while, the professor lectures that the readers are as responsible in the creation of the text as the author is. It's a profoundly democratizing gesture, but it is merely gesture because it in fact implies and necessitates a prescribed way of thinking about literature that is more social-scientific (and therefore verifiable) than humanistic, more paradigmatic than individual. As such, recent critical theory takes more from other fields-- like philosophy, history, gender studies, cultural studies, anthropology, poltical and social thought-- than it does from fields that are distinctly and a priori literary or rhetorical (musical, dramatic, verbal). It seeks a language of its own, a jargon that includes such verbal dandies as 'discourse,' 'construction,' 'diaspora,' 'regendering,' 'marginilization,' and 'politicization.' I'm not, of course, against such words per se but their application in recent criticism is roughly equivalent to academic braggadoccio. And when I see them in scholarly print, or hear them invoked in supposedly intelligent discussion, I'm provoked to realize that the gong has been struck and the discussants in question should remove themselves from the stage before Chuck Barris has to drag them off. It ultimately becomes about sloppy and lazy thinking guised as high-mindedness, and the perpetrators of it become rather like Malvolio, yellow stockings and cross-garters replaced with convenient lingo and easy answers. But their language and their answers are not accessible to kindergartners-- they depend on an accepted world view that children have yet to adopt, and which they hopefully will not have to adopt. Theory, it seems to me, is only as valuable as its immediate applicability, and the recent tendencies to assume the be-all-and-end-all-ness of theory are as misguided as the tendencies of religio-fundamentalists who cling to the Scriptures without placing the words of those Scriptures into context, even if, for example, "an eye for an eye" stands in contradiction to turning the other cheek. It becomes the easy answer, readily supplied-- an interpretive god out of the machine. And this fundamentally ires me because critical thought becomes taciturn and tautological, and critical responsibility becomes minimal. The critic/scholar/thinker abandons the basics-- including the so-called 'undergraduate' desire to interrogate-- and tends toward 'advancements' of a conceptual revolution (post-1968, or so it's often dated) that are basically little more than 'graduate' tendencies to determine and to fix.
When I think of the truly important scholars/critics of literature, I think of the people who confronted what they studied with individual character, and with individual honesty-- T.S. Eliot, Samuel Johnson, John Dryden, Matthew Arnold, G. Wilson Knight, Northrop Frye, William Empson, Frank Kermode, Hugh Kenner, R. P. Blackmur. Each had their bailywicks, each had their problems. Each developed what one might call theories. (I'm sorry I name no women, but even many of the better female critics, like Julia Kristeva, are very uncomfortable adherent to awkward paradigms and assumptions; I could add Virginia Woolf, perhaps, but her criticism is often stilted and obtuse.) But none of them belonged to schools, even if for some of the above schools followed in their names. And I have to find it indicative, or at least suggestive, that many of our major surviving critics-- Kermode, Harold Bloom, Frank Lentricchia-- have taken to elegizing or eulogizing the study of literature. One of Bloom's best gestures is his declaration in The Western Canon that he is a Marxist critic, following Groucho rather than Karl in the notion "whatever it is, I'm against it." He wouldn't belong to any club that would have him as a member. (Bloom probably recoils at the fact that he and Eliot shared a fondness for the moustachioed one). Our 'schools' devote themselves almost monastically to a series of precepts which almost invariably cloud them from responding 'honestly,' and indeed the 'honest response' to literature (and the world) is seen as cliched and naive Platonism. It is not.
I, for one, will remember occasional insights and turns of phrase (and analysis) far better and far longer than most of rancid theoria now current; I will better remember criticism that is imaginative and lucid than I will jargonistic fol-de-rol. And, what's more I will pass on these ideas and thoughts to others, whether they know it or not, because they influence my own way(s) of thinking about literature and often the world. After all, what use is criticism if it is impractical?
16 May 2003
Weird 'Facts'
I'd read these before, but never had a copy of them; thanks to Dave Ublanksy for forwarding them to me. I don't about some of these 'facts,' but at least a *lot* of them are true. Very funny. Thanks Dave.
You did, didn't you? I'm sure you did.
I'd read these before, but never had a copy of them; thanks to Dave Ublanksy for forwarding them to me. I don't about some of these 'facts,' but at least a *lot* of them are true. Very funny. Thanks Dave.
*Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
*Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
*The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
*No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
*Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
*You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
*Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.
*The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
*The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
*A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
*American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.
*Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
*Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
*The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
*Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
*The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.
*Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
*Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
*All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
*Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
*Pearls melt in vinegar.
*Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
*The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
*It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
*A duck's quack doesn't echo and no one knows why.
*The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
*Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second was William Jefferson Clinton.
*Turtles can breathe through their butts.
*Butterflies taste with their feet.
*In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.
*On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
*On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
*Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
*Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
*Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
*Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
*It's physically impossible for you to lick your elbow.
*The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
*A snail can sleep for three years.
*No word in the English language rhymes with "MONTH."
*Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
*Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. SCARY!!!
*The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
*All polar bears are left handed.
*In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
*An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
*TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
*"Go," is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
*If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall. Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
*A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
*The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
*Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
*Almost everyone who reads this email will try to lick their elbow.
*Don't forget to pass these weird facts on to everyone you know.
They will get a kick out of it !!
PS... So, did you try to lick your elbow????
You did, didn't you? I'm sure you did.
15 May 2003
It's bibliography and proposal time.... I don't even want to guess how many pages the biblio will ultimately be, but I'm finally getting down to the task. Hell, cataloguing the relevant stuff that I *own* will take up enough bloody time-- and enough pages. Why the hell did I decide to do a Ph.D. again? Anne, if you're reading this, are we psychotic or what? Seriously, kiddo, I want an answer. ;-)
Sigh.... And sometime in the next bit I ought to start putting together sample syllabi for courses I could (conceivably) teach. This is something they encourage idiot Ph.D. candidates to do in preparation for appointment interviews. I started working through a rough list of possible courses, and I think the last tally was around 30 courses. Mind you, some I probably wouldn't be allowed to teach except in the case of a major departmental deficiency (i.e., some things are technically outside of my specializations, even though I could teach the material very easily, and in some cases already have). It's been a running thing lurking in the deep, dark, terrifying recesses of my mind for a while-- the thought of course design-- but a recent speculation in a discussion with a former student has the thought moving more to the front burner, especially as I tend toward cleaning up my own loose ends. Designing courses, for me anyway, is a lot more fun than doing dissertation work, partly because it allows the freedom to organize matters in a much looser form, but also because I've found myself preferring the act of discussion more than the act of punditry; like a comedian, I've discovered I work better with an audience, so I don't tire of the sound of my own voice and so I can riff spontaneously rather than predictably or necessarily.
Yes, you read properly-- Dr J tires of the sound of his own voice, despite what this blog might imply. *smirk* Damn, I can just imagine the remarks I'll hear to that... *rolls eyes* Alas, to the biblio...
Sigh.... And sometime in the next bit I ought to start putting together sample syllabi for courses I could (conceivably) teach. This is something they encourage idiot Ph.D. candidates to do in preparation for appointment interviews. I started working through a rough list of possible courses, and I think the last tally was around 30 courses. Mind you, some I probably wouldn't be allowed to teach except in the case of a major departmental deficiency (i.e., some things are technically outside of my specializations, even though I could teach the material very easily, and in some cases already have). It's been a running thing lurking in the deep, dark, terrifying recesses of my mind for a while-- the thought of course design-- but a recent speculation in a discussion with a former student has the thought moving more to the front burner, especially as I tend toward cleaning up my own loose ends. Designing courses, for me anyway, is a lot more fun than doing dissertation work, partly because it allows the freedom to organize matters in a much looser form, but also because I've found myself preferring the act of discussion more than the act of punditry; like a comedian, I've discovered I work better with an audience, so I don't tire of the sound of my own voice and so I can riff spontaneously rather than predictably or necessarily.
Yes, you read properly-- Dr J tires of the sound of his own voice, despite what this blog might imply. *smirk* Damn, I can just imagine the remarks I'll hear to that... *rolls eyes* Alas, to the biblio...
14 May 2003
I HATE ABC
Leave it to fucking ABC to destroy one of my favourite shows, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which has now been all but cancelled. First they ruin the British format. Then they make it a pure sitcom with three out of four regular improvisors, including making the infernally bad Wayne Brady a regular. Then they hire Hollywood comedy hacks to write 'gags' and 'games' that effectively destroy the entire concept of improvisation. Then they insist on censoring even the *slightest* thing. Then they insist on mining tapings till the cows come home. Then they move it around -- and remove it from-- the schedule willy-nilly, only to have their 'replacement' material do equally badly and prove fundamentally more embarassing (e.g. Are You Hot?). When it was a UK show, it kept building an audience over its (count 'em) TEN seasons. In half that time ABC drove the show into the ground. I hate ABC, and that corporate mentality that systematically reduces everything to ridiculous formulae of what 'will be a hit.' Yes, I'm pissed. Not that Whose Line had been in top form lately, but the show could have been handled so much better-- if they'd only damned well let the Brits run it as they had. ARRRGH.
Dr J is now very, very cranky.
Colin Mochrie, in memoriam-- "I'll be your lightning rod of hate!"
Leave it to fucking ABC to destroy one of my favourite shows, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which has now been all but cancelled. First they ruin the British format. Then they make it a pure sitcom with three out of four regular improvisors, including making the infernally bad Wayne Brady a regular. Then they hire Hollywood comedy hacks to write 'gags' and 'games' that effectively destroy the entire concept of improvisation. Then they insist on censoring even the *slightest* thing. Then they insist on mining tapings till the cows come home. Then they move it around -- and remove it from-- the schedule willy-nilly, only to have their 'replacement' material do equally badly and prove fundamentally more embarassing (e.g. Are You Hot?). When it was a UK show, it kept building an audience over its (count 'em) TEN seasons. In half that time ABC drove the show into the ground. I hate ABC, and that corporate mentality that systematically reduces everything to ridiculous formulae of what 'will be a hit.' Yes, I'm pissed. Not that Whose Line had been in top form lately, but the show could have been handled so much better-- if they'd only damned well let the Brits run it as they had. ARRRGH.
Dr J is now very, very cranky.
Colin Mochrie, in memoriam-- "I'll be your lightning rod of hate!"
Had to post this-- a text-only version of Where's Waldo that will no doubt amuse and delight. With thanks to DB.
Here's yet another link for Anne-- alas, possible answers for our eternal question. ;-) Maybe they should have to pass a quiz first. To my female readers: note that the quiz is called the "I'm Not Bitter Quiz," which should qualify a lot. Or so I hope. If not, I'm hiding under my desk hoping the blunt objects you're throwing don't end up concussing me. ;-) In repentance, I offer this for the ladies from Dave Barry, on How Guys Think. One pauses to wonder if there's any correspondence or connection between the woman named at the end of the article and a much-loved professor of English and current Associate Dean of Arts.... ;-) Couldn't be.
Found this for any of you surfers pereptually on the go. How sad do you have to be? Or how much sadder is it that it may really have been considered seriously? See here.
Here's yet another link for Anne-- alas, possible answers for our eternal question. ;-) Maybe they should have to pass a quiz first. To my female readers: note that the quiz is called the "I'm Not Bitter Quiz," which should qualify a lot. Or so I hope. If not, I'm hiding under my desk hoping the blunt objects you're throwing don't end up concussing me. ;-) In repentance, I offer this for the ladies from Dave Barry, on How Guys Think. One pauses to wonder if there's any correspondence or connection between the woman named at the end of the article and a much-loved professor of English and current Associate Dean of Arts.... ;-) Couldn't be.
Found this for any of you surfers pereptually on the go. How sad do you have to be? Or how much sadder is it that it may really have been considered seriously? See here.
She Moved Through The Fair
My young love said to me,
My mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you
For your lack of kind.
She stepped away from me
And this she did say,
"It will not be long love
Till our wedding day."
She stepped away from me
And she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here
And move there.
And she went her way homeward
With one star awake,
As the swan in the evening
Moved over the lake.
Last night she came to me,
My young love came in.
So softly she entered,
That her feet made no din.
And she came close beside me
And this she did say,
"It will not be long love
Till our wedding day."
This is an old Irish traditional song, but I adore its lyrical simplicity, and there is a genuinely haunting version of it by Van Morrison and the Chieftains on their collaboration Irish Heartbeat (1988). It occurred to me this morning that I'd not listened to this song in a couple of years, and the ethereal closing coda (with Van half-whispering half-singing 'It will not be long It will not be long It will not be long...") is one of the finest exercises in phrasal repetition that I know. The entire album, by the way, is beautiful -- if you like Irish music, it should go without saying-- with sprightly versions of "Marie's Wedding" and "I'll Tell Me Ma," and a fine setting of the poet Patrick Kavanagh's "Raglan Road." The only unfortunate thing is that the album is less than 40 minutes long. :-(
You know it's going to be a weird day when I end up quoting Nietszche.... ;-)
My young love said to me,
My mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you
For your lack of kind.
She stepped away from me
And this she did say,
"It will not be long love
Till our wedding day."
She stepped away from me
And she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here
And move there.
And she went her way homeward
With one star awake,
As the swan in the evening
Moved over the lake.
Last night she came to me,
My young love came in.
So softly she entered,
That her feet made no din.
And she came close beside me
And this she did say,
"It will not be long love
Till our wedding day."
This is an old Irish traditional song, but I adore its lyrical simplicity, and there is a genuinely haunting version of it by Van Morrison and the Chieftains on their collaboration Irish Heartbeat (1988). It occurred to me this morning that I'd not listened to this song in a couple of years, and the ethereal closing coda (with Van half-whispering half-singing 'It will not be long It will not be long It will not be long...") is one of the finest exercises in phrasal repetition that I know. The entire album, by the way, is beautiful -- if you like Irish music, it should go without saying-- with sprightly versions of "Marie's Wedding" and "I'll Tell Me Ma," and a fine setting of the poet Patrick Kavanagh's "Raglan Road." The only unfortunate thing is that the album is less than 40 minutes long. :-(
"In music the passions enjoy themselves."
--- Friedrich Nietszche, Epigrams and Interludes
You know it's going to be a weird day when I end up quoting Nietszche.... ;-)
Buffy: The Slouch Continues, Or How I Learned To Stop Bothering and Learned To Love The Devolution
Precious time is slippin' away
You know you're only king for a day
It doesn't matter to which God you pray
Precious time is slippin' away
--- Van Morrison
Ah yes, the penultimate episode ("End of Days") aired tonight, and though it was at least better than the moronic, manipulative game of sexual musical chairs we were treated to last week, it succeeded in further convincing me that the show has trapped itself in a corner and cannot get itself out without trite conventions and patently silly situations. Season 7 set itself up to deal with a lot of issues and a lot of characters (part of the problem: *way* too many characters), and with only 60 minutes remaining in the entire series, it now seems impossible-- barring some kind of miracle-- that there will be any sort of satisfying resolutions. Some general remarks:
Buffy: What ever happened to dealing with the reason for the First Evil's sudden desire to destroy the slayer line? After so much emphasis was put on the fact that the Slayer herself was the problem, we've not had it addressed in a LONNNNG time, and this penultimate episode didn't make a single gesture toward realizing it. And if the spoilers I've heard about the final episode prove true, all of that will have been a giant time-wasting Macguffin and I will be mighty pissed. Worse, the emphasis with Buffy herself has been on her romantic relationships (blech! enough already, or at least take it past the Dawson's Creek level of self-agonizing banality) and on her role as a general (okay, but even the other characters were tiring of her preachiness). There's one remaining possibility, which would go contrary to the spoilers I've heard, which is that Buffy herself becomes connected to the First Evil. Dramaturgically, this seems to me where it should have gone, but it seems like the Mutant Enemy team lost their nerve at the last. So we have a Buffy who's now less interesting than she was in Season One.
Angel: Blah. So trite, so hackneyed. A crappy entrance, and obviously there only for unity and to appease the legions of teenie-boppers still praying for a Buffy-Angel reunion. Also, his appearance is yet another deus ex machina gesture to get the show out of a nasty situation. But this use of the 'god out of the machine' rang hollow, utterly hollow; for a better version of this, see Giles' magnificent return at the end of Season Six with the classic line, "I'd like to test that theory."
Xander, Willow: They've been about as relevant as a tampon is to me. Xander gets to make a speech now and again, Willow gets to feel all tingly again and keep threatening us that she could go bad at any moment. But all of this is to no avail, and the characters are as paper thin as the walls in a Virginia Woolf novel.
Caleb: "Gee, aren't I menacing?" Well, no; the irony is that Buffy already faced a much more difficult challenge in Glory. "But we can give him all these crazy, wacky David Koresh aspects that will send chills down everyone's spines." No, it's stereotypical writing, and the show has never reconciled his supposed religiousity with his conscious embrace of evil. Next week, he'll get back up from the floor-- you know he's not dead yet.... Yawn.....
Faith: Nice to see her back, but what was the fucking point? It hasn't added anything to the story, and only succeeded really in serving as a satiation of those of us who wanted to see her again. She's been thrown to the crowd like a bone, and her whole sub-plot with leading the Slayerettes was little more than exercise in demonstrating how heavy the world weighs on poor Buffy's shoulders and that's why she's such a great heroine. *rolls eyes* Have the Mutant Enemy team forgotten that Faith is more than just a hottie? (Whew-- indeed, a hawt hawt hawt hawt hawttie, but I digress.)
Slayerettes: Pointless, time-wasting characters, mostly cannon fodder and bitch-bitch-bitchers-- except, of course, for Kennedy who's there to be a snot and to give teenage boys their fantasies of lesbians going at it. At least Chao-Ahn provides a few moments of comic relief.
Andrew: Yes, he's been developed, and he's become quite funny. But did keeping him around really add anything?
Dawn: Has there been a point at all to having her around?
Anya: How could they make such horribly little use of Anya, who has proven very often over her development to be either the much-needed splash of cold water for the others (as in "The Body") or the sorely-needed Falstaff to prick through the pretentious rhetoric of some of the characters, especially Buffy? Looks like she's meat to the dogs next week; after the corny conversation between she and Andrew tonight (wherein he anticipates his own death and her survival), you know who's going to die (probably saving the other). Cornball. It's been criminal what they've done to Anya this season.
Wood: Except to make yet another triangle of romance and revenge, has he really served any purpose? Oh, he had to supply the shadow device-- which ultimately proved useless. Really, he was put in here so the writers could feed more into the history of Spike.
Spike: Overdose, overdose, overdose. James Marsters has done what he could, but did we need to have him essentially be the bad-boy British version of Angel? Look for him to make the ultimate sacrifice next week. *Weep weep weep* *Puke puke puke* This is unfortunate because they could have done much more-- and much better-- with him in these final episodes.
The First Evil: This started as a great 'character'-- and in some episodes (like "Lessons" and "Conversations with Dead People") its polymorphous nature, oracular ambiguity, and subtle menace were terrific. (The last few moments of "Lessons" at the beginning of the season were brilliant.) But over the past several episodes the First Evil has been about as threatening as Mr. Snuffleupagus. The FE can see and know everything and exists everywhere, but doesn't know if the Bringers sweat? The FE has its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere, and yet cannot keep tabs on the plans and machinations of the Scoobies? Bah. This should have been played out much more adeptly; the FE could have been the Biggest of the Big Bads. Instead it's become a caricature.
And my nominee for most wasted character of the season:
Giles: A great character, utterly wasted. The whole is he evil, is he not evil question was a total waste of time, and since then he's been little more than a cipher. Unless there's a hell of a surprise coming next week, there really was no point in bringing him back, even if it's always nice to see Anthony Stewart Head back on the show.
And think of all the red-herrings we've had teased before us but which so far have proven irrelevant: Beljoxa's Eye, Joyce's warnings, the Shadow Men, the slaughter of the Watcher's Council, the question of the First Slayer, the threat from D'Hoffryn, Willow's magic use, the uncertainty surrounding Giles' life and death, the demonic connections of being the Slayer, the declaration from the FE that this was "about power," the ramifications of the existence of two Slayers and two souled vampires, they've all been underdeveloped, handled fliply, or played as tricks of plot. And then tonight we have two new tricks out of the bag brought out as easy answers to the series' crises. Unless Joss Whedon has one helluva trick up his sleeve for next week (which IS possible, but highly unlikely), most of this season is gearing up to look like a giant waste of potential, and indeed a phenomenal waste of time. Maybe the Buffy crew needs to remember the words of Shakespeare's Richard II, "I wasted time, and now time doth waste me."
And, by the way, my title lied: I haven't learned to love the devolution. So much for the saying making things true. Joss, it's all up to you. Precious time is slipping away.... But a pair of warnings. If you put all of this is Buffy's mind from inside a mental institution, I'll hunt you down and gut you. This show deserves more than a Dallas-type ending. If it goes all "Spike sacrifices himself to save the world because of his truly eternal love for Buffy," I will hunt you down, tie all six of your extant appendages to Andalusian horses, and then I'll set the beasts asunder before dancing an Irish jig on the cankerous chunks of carcass that remain.
I kid, of course.
I can't do an Irish jig.
Precious time is slippin' away
You know you're only king for a day
It doesn't matter to which God you pray
Precious time is slippin' away
--- Van Morrison
Ah yes, the penultimate episode ("End of Days") aired tonight, and though it was at least better than the moronic, manipulative game of sexual musical chairs we were treated to last week, it succeeded in further convincing me that the show has trapped itself in a corner and cannot get itself out without trite conventions and patently silly situations. Season 7 set itself up to deal with a lot of issues and a lot of characters (part of the problem: *way* too many characters), and with only 60 minutes remaining in the entire series, it now seems impossible-- barring some kind of miracle-- that there will be any sort of satisfying resolutions. Some general remarks:
Buffy: What ever happened to dealing with the reason for the First Evil's sudden desire to destroy the slayer line? After so much emphasis was put on the fact that the Slayer herself was the problem, we've not had it addressed in a LONNNNG time, and this penultimate episode didn't make a single gesture toward realizing it. And if the spoilers I've heard about the final episode prove true, all of that will have been a giant time-wasting Macguffin and I will be mighty pissed. Worse, the emphasis with Buffy herself has been on her romantic relationships (blech! enough already, or at least take it past the Dawson's Creek level of self-agonizing banality) and on her role as a general (okay, but even the other characters were tiring of her preachiness). There's one remaining possibility, which would go contrary to the spoilers I've heard, which is that Buffy herself becomes connected to the First Evil. Dramaturgically, this seems to me where it should have gone, but it seems like the Mutant Enemy team lost their nerve at the last. So we have a Buffy who's now less interesting than she was in Season One.
Angel: Blah. So trite, so hackneyed. A crappy entrance, and obviously there only for unity and to appease the legions of teenie-boppers still praying for a Buffy-Angel reunion. Also, his appearance is yet another deus ex machina gesture to get the show out of a nasty situation. But this use of the 'god out of the machine' rang hollow, utterly hollow; for a better version of this, see Giles' magnificent return at the end of Season Six with the classic line, "I'd like to test that theory."
Xander, Willow: They've been about as relevant as a tampon is to me. Xander gets to make a speech now and again, Willow gets to feel all tingly again and keep threatening us that she could go bad at any moment. But all of this is to no avail, and the characters are as paper thin as the walls in a Virginia Woolf novel.
Caleb: "Gee, aren't I menacing?" Well, no; the irony is that Buffy already faced a much more difficult challenge in Glory. "But we can give him all these crazy, wacky David Koresh aspects that will send chills down everyone's spines." No, it's stereotypical writing, and the show has never reconciled his supposed religiousity with his conscious embrace of evil. Next week, he'll get back up from the floor-- you know he's not dead yet.... Yawn.....
Faith: Nice to see her back, but what was the fucking point? It hasn't added anything to the story, and only succeeded really in serving as a satiation of those of us who wanted to see her again. She's been thrown to the crowd like a bone, and her whole sub-plot with leading the Slayerettes was little more than exercise in demonstrating how heavy the world weighs on poor Buffy's shoulders and that's why she's such a great heroine. *rolls eyes* Have the Mutant Enemy team forgotten that Faith is more than just a hottie? (Whew-- indeed, a hawt hawt hawt hawt hawttie, but I digress.)
Slayerettes: Pointless, time-wasting characters, mostly cannon fodder and bitch-bitch-bitchers-- except, of course, for Kennedy who's there to be a snot and to give teenage boys their fantasies of lesbians going at it. At least Chao-Ahn provides a few moments of comic relief.
Andrew: Yes, he's been developed, and he's become quite funny. But did keeping him around really add anything?
Dawn: Has there been a point at all to having her around?
Anya: How could they make such horribly little use of Anya, who has proven very often over her development to be either the much-needed splash of cold water for the others (as in "The Body") or the sorely-needed Falstaff to prick through the pretentious rhetoric of some of the characters, especially Buffy? Looks like she's meat to the dogs next week; after the corny conversation between she and Andrew tonight (wherein he anticipates his own death and her survival), you know who's going to die (probably saving the other). Cornball. It's been criminal what they've done to Anya this season.
Wood: Except to make yet another triangle of romance and revenge, has he really served any purpose? Oh, he had to supply the shadow device-- which ultimately proved useless. Really, he was put in here so the writers could feed more into the history of Spike.
Spike: Overdose, overdose, overdose. James Marsters has done what he could, but did we need to have him essentially be the bad-boy British version of Angel? Look for him to make the ultimate sacrifice next week. *Weep weep weep* *Puke puke puke* This is unfortunate because they could have done much more-- and much better-- with him in these final episodes.
The First Evil: This started as a great 'character'-- and in some episodes (like "Lessons" and "Conversations with Dead People") its polymorphous nature, oracular ambiguity, and subtle menace were terrific. (The last few moments of "Lessons" at the beginning of the season were brilliant.) But over the past several episodes the First Evil has been about as threatening as Mr. Snuffleupagus. The FE can see and know everything and exists everywhere, but doesn't know if the Bringers sweat? The FE has its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere, and yet cannot keep tabs on the plans and machinations of the Scoobies? Bah. This should have been played out much more adeptly; the FE could have been the Biggest of the Big Bads. Instead it's become a caricature.
And my nominee for most wasted character of the season:
Giles: A great character, utterly wasted. The whole is he evil, is he not evil question was a total waste of time, and since then he's been little more than a cipher. Unless there's a hell of a surprise coming next week, there really was no point in bringing him back, even if it's always nice to see Anthony Stewart Head back on the show.
And think of all the red-herrings we've had teased before us but which so far have proven irrelevant: Beljoxa's Eye, Joyce's warnings, the Shadow Men, the slaughter of the Watcher's Council, the question of the First Slayer, the threat from D'Hoffryn, Willow's magic use, the uncertainty surrounding Giles' life and death, the demonic connections of being the Slayer, the declaration from the FE that this was "about power," the ramifications of the existence of two Slayers and two souled vampires, they've all been underdeveloped, handled fliply, or played as tricks of plot. And then tonight we have two new tricks out of the bag brought out as easy answers to the series' crises. Unless Joss Whedon has one helluva trick up his sleeve for next week (which IS possible, but highly unlikely), most of this season is gearing up to look like a giant waste of potential, and indeed a phenomenal waste of time. Maybe the Buffy crew needs to remember the words of Shakespeare's Richard II, "I wasted time, and now time doth waste me."
And, by the way, my title lied: I haven't learned to love the devolution. So much for the saying making things true. Joss, it's all up to you. Precious time is slipping away.... But a pair of warnings. If you put all of this is Buffy's mind from inside a mental institution, I'll hunt you down and gut you. This show deserves more than a Dallas-type ending. If it goes all "Spike sacrifices himself to save the world because of his truly eternal love for Buffy," I will hunt you down, tie all six of your extant appendages to Andalusian horses, and then I'll set the beasts asunder before dancing an Irish jig on the cankerous chunks of carcass that remain.
I kid, of course.
I can't do an Irish jig.
13 May 2003
Here's a poem from John Donne, perfect for this time of day-- even if Donne's 'scene' is very different than my own at the moment.
BTW, a great resource for the literary-minded is right here, including a great set of links to net material. When I say literary-minded, I should say "poetry minded"; I still have a hard time thinking of the prose-minded as literary-minded per se. Yes, I'm being very flip again.
Any of you who have heard my impression of T.S. Eliot reading James Brown's greatest hits (and it is very hard to believe that bit is now *seven* years old) may have thought I was doing a gross disservice to the man. Though I can never *completely* hear what I sound like when I do, I suspect I'm actually being kinder to Eliot than he ever was to himself. If you doubt me, check out this record of Eliot reading his "La Figlia Che Piange" and tell me I'm wrong. NOTE: Requires Real Player, that infernal piece of spyware.
Breake of Day
Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.
Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honor so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.
Must business thee from hence remove?
O, that's the worst disease of love.
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.
BTW, a great resource for the literary-minded is right here, including a great set of links to net material. When I say literary-minded, I should say "poetry minded"; I still have a hard time thinking of the prose-minded as literary-minded per se. Yes, I'm being very flip again.
Any of you who have heard my impression of T.S. Eliot reading James Brown's greatest hits (and it is very hard to believe that bit is now *seven* years old) may have thought I was doing a gross disservice to the man. Though I can never *completely* hear what I sound like when I do, I suspect I'm actually being kinder to Eliot than he ever was to himself. If you doubt me, check out this record of Eliot reading his "La Figlia Che Piange" and tell me I'm wrong. NOTE: Requires Real Player, that infernal piece of spyware.
Had to post this link for Christie and other vampire afficionados. Reminds me of those John Carradine movies of the early 70s. I will refrain, for once, from making my characteristic puns and dirty jokes.... And yes, I can hear the gasps of surprise out there. ;-)
A New Addition
In what may yet prove a foolhardy move, I've added a new function to this blog-- the capacity to comment on individual posts. Chances are this function won't see much use, but it's now there for anyone who wishes to use it. BTW, although the comment screen allows you to enter an email address connected to your name, you are by no means required to do so; thankfully there will remain at least some semblance of privacy. And yes, I reserve the right to edit, delete, or otherwise block anyone who abuses the comment function, though I'm confident I shouldn't have to do any such thing as this is a private site and it should really only be people I know reading it or ostensibly responding to it.
All in all, I'm surprised how easily the installation process went. I may get the hang of this yet. ;-) I'd like to say this the result of genius on my part, but it's surely the result of a serendipitous discovery. Serendipity, by the way, is best defined as looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer's daughter. Cheers and best to all. --- J.
In what may yet prove a foolhardy move, I've added a new function to this blog-- the capacity to comment on individual posts. Chances are this function won't see much use, but it's now there for anyone who wishes to use it. BTW, although the comment screen allows you to enter an email address connected to your name, you are by no means required to do so; thankfully there will remain at least some semblance of privacy. And yes, I reserve the right to edit, delete, or otherwise block anyone who abuses the comment function, though I'm confident I shouldn't have to do any such thing as this is a private site and it should really only be people I know reading it or ostensibly responding to it.
All in all, I'm surprised how easily the installation process went. I may get the hang of this yet. ;-) I'd like to say this the result of genius on my part, but it's surely the result of a serendipitous discovery. Serendipity, by the way, is best defined as looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer's daughter. Cheers and best to all. --- J.
10 May 2003
Anne, I did threaten to put them out there.... Click here to see what one of my oldest friends thinks of me-- even if it says more about her than me, I think. ;-) So there, Anne.
09 May 2003
I strongly encourage everyone to bone up on their recent history with Dave Barry's nose-blowingly funny recap of 2002. Ah Dave....
And thanks CSM for supplying this link, though I'm stealing it from her rather unceremoniously.... ;-) For those who love Dr Seuss, and dare question US foreign policy, check this out.
And thanks CSM for supplying this link, though I'm stealing it from her rather unceremoniously.... ;-) For those who love Dr Seuss, and dare question US foreign policy, check this out.
"When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they don't really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not yet be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size."
--- Grandfather in William Faulkner's THE REIVERS: A REMINISCENCE
08 May 2003
"We live in an age of apologies. Apologies, false or true, are expected from the descendants of empire builders, slave owners and persecutors of heretics, and from men who, in our eyes, just got it all wrong. So, with the age of 85 coming up shortly, I want to make an apology. It appears I must apologise for being male, white, and European."
Those wacky Texan judges.... Wonder if their ruling had anything to do with something ensconced their asses....
You know, some things are better fresh than frozen. But one has to wonder what the hell is, ahem, up with frigid things in the news lately. I'm detecting a trend.... Either that, or some people truly have no lives.
I truly wonder what these people would do in case of a strike. I'm suddenly thinking our union less preposterous than it was. Only, however, less preposterous.
Until later.....
--- Sir Alec Guinness
Those wacky Texan judges.... Wonder if their ruling had anything to do with something ensconced their asses....
You know, some things are better fresh than frozen. But one has to wonder what the hell is, ahem, up with frigid things in the news lately. I'm detecting a trend.... Either that, or some people truly have no lives.
I truly wonder what these people would do in case of a strike. I'm suddenly thinking our union less preposterous than it was. Only, however, less preposterous.
Until later.....
07 May 2003
Buffy: The Final Slouches
In a review of the horrible, horrible film North, Roger Ebert wrote: "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensiblilty that anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it." I've held that review as an example of criticism at its most clearly frustrated, agonized, and spiteful. I've admired its clarity while all along thinking 'nothing could possibly be that bad.' I've held that such invective is normally the result of extenuating circumstances which otherwise must coloured the critical perspective. I no longer think any of those things. Thanks to Rebecca Kern Kirshner, writer of last night's episode ("Touched") of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I find myself not only understanding Ebert's sentiments but echoing in them. Buffy, for its ups and downs, has been a good solid show for six seasons, and even the first portion of season seven was solid. But after a series of increasingly idiotic episodes, wherein serious issues of plot and character have been handled with the deftness of a two-year-old petting a dog, I can declare that the show has reached its nadir. I hated hated hated hated hated-- and dare I usurp Ebert by adding one more?-- HATED this episode. I've now all but given up on a graceful or even decent ending to an otherwise solid series. This was an episode so bad that, despite it's tell-tale odour and brownish colour, I'd be reluctant to compliment by calling it shit-- especially when half of its constitution is premised on yesterday's dinner, the equally self-identifying remnants of half-digested corn. Is this getting gross? Well, that should tell you something. Did I mention I hated this episode? This is cynical, thoughtless, empty writing, and I'm not sure who I'm more pissed at-- Kirshner for authoring this trite, obnoxious, and fly-attracting sample of television, or Joss Whedon for allowing a third-rate writer of the show's worst episodes to write a key episode in the series' final five. I'm not disappointed-- I'm angry. Such potential utterly wasted. I could itemize my reasons for thinking this, but I'm reluctant to waste my energy any more than I already have. This is a bloody fucking shame; this could have been a dynamite close to the series. Even the Mayor was disappointing. G'night Buffy-- you're on the way out, not with a bang but with a whimper. You're slouching toward oblivion, waiting to be unborn.
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