Sunday, Ruddy Sunday, or The Old, Grey Jer, He Ain't What He Used To Be

We warmed the glass slightly at a candle, filled it a third high, swirled the wine round, nursed it in our hands, held it to the light, breathed it, sipped it, filled our mouths with it, and rolled it over the tongue, ringing it on the palate like a coin on a counter, titlted our heads back and let it trickle down the throat....

...

'Ought we to be drunk every night?' Sebastian asked one morning.
'Yes, I think so.'
'I think so too.'
      --- from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited

      After Goodness-Only-Knows how many consecutive hours of answering emails and commenting on essay drafts and so on and so forth-- and my back now as brutally buggered as Ned Beatty's butt in Deliverance-- I can finally utter those five little words I've been aching to say for days: "Wolf Blass, take me away!"  

      Right?   I think so too.   And I'm shiraz hell not coming back until my Bacchus better. Power grapez, my friends, power grapes.

Waiting For Godet

      Sorry, folks, not much of an update here, as I have too much to do in the way of preparing for this week's classes, but I found this quiz and had to post it here.   My result is only partially surprising.

What Religion Do You Fit In With? You fit in with: Agnosticism Your ideals mostly resemble those of an Agnostic. You are fairly ambivalent towards any religion or spiritual connection. You lead a very busy life and find that religion and spirituality are unnecessary to your life. 0% scientific. 20% reason-oriented.

A bit ironic I should find this after last week, when I was prompted to describe myself not as Agnostic but as an Ennuist. Boredom, the PoMo logos: In the beginning was the Meh (Jer 1:1).   Ah, enlightenment, don't know what it is....

      POST-SCRIPT:   I'm rather distubringly reminded that there was a time when some people-- buckle up your seat belts, people, hilarious turbulence is coming-- regularly described me as a mystic.   Yes, a mystic.   Oy vey.   Ah, the shame, the humiliation.   I was so much dumber then, I'm smarter than that now....

Hey, Where Did He Go (Days When The Rains Came)

      I can almost hear the Van Morrison refrain: Do you remember when / we used to blog?   Sha la la lalalala....   Oh, my brown-paged URL....

      Yes, blogging really has not been a priority lately.   Priority?   Natch, not even a passing interest.   Even this entry, I confess, is rooted more in sating concern than in writing for any sort of intellectual or communicative purpose.   So very little seems to generate anything more than a shrugging response from me that maintaining even a kind of facile pose of interest borders on pointlessness.   I hardly care that in that last sentence I mixed enough metaphors to warrant puréeing just for consistency.   I'm developing the same passion for writing that one assumes Julia Child had for bioethics and the history of cardboard.   Well, writing and just about everything else.   Is it possible to raise being blas&ecute; to an art form?   Methinks I am a prophet uninspir'd....   (Call it seeing through a glass, Gauntly.)  

      Anyway, a few brief notes on things. There's a piece from the Aussie paper The Age to which I'd turn your attention, because it makes an argument I'd make if I didn't feel I'd already made it over and over again; give it a gander.   Also, I understand there's a massive project to render the classics of the ages through contemporary eyes, a project I'd think more of it did not decide to Atwoodize Homer.   (That sound you're hearing in the background is the Not-So-Good Doctor stabbing himself repeatedly in the brain with a corkscrew.)   Check out the Grope and Flail's review of the preliminary editions here while I lament the predictability of it all (and collect the bloody remnants of my mind from my keyboard and attempt to stuff them back inside my cranium).  

      There's also a very funny review of the HBO series Weeds on the CBC's website that's worth a read, particularly for its hilarious opening paragraph.   Weeds, for those of you that have not seen it yet, is one of the better shows on the air right now, thanks to solid writing and more especially the wonderful Mary-Louise Parker, one of the best actresses working in the States right now.   Sexy, charming, and gifted with some of the most expressive eyes in Hollywood, she's one of the few actresses who can mingle daftness with caginess in perfect proportion, which makes her perfectly unpredictable, distinctly mannered without being manneristic.   She also has a slightly flaky air about her that makes her endearing-- in part, I confess, because she reminds me of the kinds of quirky femininity for which I've all-too-many times been, and remain, a sucker, damn it.   (Yeah, I know, I know, that's why I'm always getting myself in trouble....   Insert shrugging, grumbling and eye-rolling here.)   Anyway, give Weeds a viewing if you haven't yet already: it's what Desperate Housewives could be if it hadn't opted toward pretense and lurid contrivance.   Oh, and if it wasn't so manifestly stupid.

      In other matters, last week's classes on Lycidas went as well as I could have expected, though I am going to try to steal another half-week for it.   This will half-delay the planned Marvell (the Mower poems), which in turn will half-delay the beginning of Adam Bede, which I have not taught in a very long time.   That I will have to reread Eliot will no doubt please Zelda, who-- by the way!-- is about, with her hubby (the Had Matter??), to celebrate her first wedding anniversary tomorrow.   This blog would note that this normally means all signs of post-nuptial cuteness must cease, else incurring much-deserved mockery, so the true stuff of marriage (misery, dissatisfaction, china-hurling fury) can finally begin.   But as this blog is feeling uncharacteristically generous, it'll let their terrible cuteness continue unridiculed until it becomes truly unbearable.   Happy anniversary, you two, and many happy returns.

      With that, I'll finally end this entry, thinking with some temptation that writing all this may mean I can go another several days without having guiltily to write anything here.   Pehaps, perhaps?   Perchance to dream.

This Is Just To Say

      No, no-- I am not going to indulge in a pastiche of Williams' famous poem, tempted as I might be to do so.   No, this is just a short entry to allay (pre-emptively) some of the concerns about the Not-So-Good Doctor's apparent return to oblivion-- or obliviousness, whichever seems more appropriate.   The Doc's innate lethargy, combined with the frustration dealing with allergies, is making even the simple task of blogging inordinately difficult, to say nothing of trying.   When I'm not sneezing, I'm rubbing my eyes with a ferocity more appropriate to a recently-wisened Oedipus.   I guess it goes without saying that-- insert anticipatory groan here-- the Jocasta's on me.

      Anyway, today the Doc ventures up to Tokyoronto where he will, among other things, attempt to teach John Milton's Lycidas for the first time.   My charges, I suspect, will be suitably intimidated by the poem, and I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever gets accomplished today will only be an initial step into the deep.   I can my students echoes already mourning.   Wish me-- or, more appropriately, them-- luck.

      Now, off to earn my minor pittance.   Until later. Cheers and best, everyone.

Break, Break, Break

      (Points to those of you that understand the title's origin.)

      I should apologize to those of you that have been worrying about the Not-So-Good Doc, but I would also like to assure everyone that I am adequate and alive but just otherwise blasé about blogging or emailing. Occasionally I intrude, and I go silent; this is just me. This should also be nothing new to my regular readers, the Doc being as miserable and cantankerous as he is prone to be, and so silence is the better part of discretion. The Dawk, after all, is no Harold Pinter. His only art of silence is genuine silence. It compensates, he hopes, for the times he rambles like Al Gore at a press conference.

      With that, I should take the opportunity to note the passing of Wayne Booth, one of the few guys in Lit Crit still worth reading. Sad we lost him.

      Especially when there are guys when just can't get rid of. Especially, especially, when it makes the Doctor dangle a preposition in such a way. We will continue to blame Burgess Meredith for such stuff, just because we can't. Grumpy Old Bastards have to stick together. Especially in spirit.