 | For RB and RK comes this review of a promising new volume about the original-- and significantly larger-- Doctor J, alas sans orange peels. See also this article from the author of the same book from The Guardian. Ah, words, words, words.... By the way, when THE HELL did this blog reach 20,000 hits?!?! This poor blog really has fallen from my scope of priorities lately....  |  |
11 April 2005
Bitterness and Frolic and a Harmless Drudge
Dung And Verbal Death
Never, ever suggest that this blog would worry about bringing a blush to a young person's cheek: check out this discussion of Podsnappery in relation to the recent publication of Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit. To which this blog would like to add, with a rascal's gleam in its non-existent eye, that a little intellectual impishness is usually just what the Not-So-Good Doctor ordered. 
For those interested, there's a new interview with Professor Frankfurt right here. Check it out.
And, as to Professor Kimball's rather trite assumptions about the word "bullshit," please allow this blog to direct you to this poem. As Mel Brooks is once famously reported as saying, "Some people say I'm vulgar, but I say that's...." Well, I guess you can figure out what the last word there should be.
For those interested, there's a new interview with Professor Frankfurt right here. Check it out.
And, as to Professor Kimball's rather trite assumptions about the word "bullshit," please allow this blog to direct you to this poem. As Mel Brooks is once famously reported as saying, "Some people say I'm vulgar, but I say that's...." Well, I guess you can figure out what the last word there should be.
Right Up Your Alley (or, E Pluribus Anus)
Gene Weingarten's latest column on the odd collusions of high finance is a bit of mischief not to be missed. Delightful, particularly for those of you concerned with "slower-growing units."The key quote, by the way, is the first sentence: "From time to time I get mail accusing me of being shallow and/or juvenile." Hallelujah, brother. This blog knows your pain....
05 April 2005
Gettin' Figgy With It, or Germanic Idol
It looks like there's new clay for the old ceremony.... This blog will make ABSOLUTELY no snide comments about any of this clay achin'.
04 April 2005
Every Breath You Take
They'll be watching you.... ***shudder***
(I guess I should have warned you about clicking on that link, but I wanted all of you to want to vomit as much as I did when I read it. Hell, I still want to vomit, and violent, botchelistic disgust, like misery, loooooves company.)
(I guess I should have warned you about clicking on that link, but I wanted all of you to want to vomit as much as I did when I read it. Hell, I still want to vomit, and violent, botchelistic disgust, like misery, loooooves company.)
Round The Prickly Jer
Well, it has been a while since I added anything to this blog, and I've been receiving emails from people wondering if the Not-So-Doctor was indeed still alive and well (but obviously not living in Paris). Yes, yes, I'm alive and well, though sometimes it seems only barely, my exhaustion factor intensified by a persistently blasé sense of laziness. Writing anything more than a sentence or two has seemed as daunting as a moral imperative, and mercifully this unpaid sinecure that this blog provides allows me to disregard moral imperatives now and then. I know, alas, that much of the rest of today will be spent getting caught up on various emails that have accumulated in the past little bit, so I'll have to face those imperatives soon enough with almost catholic discipline. I'm not sure whether I should grumble or shrug. Perhaps both. A day ahead of endless grugging-- yes, that sounds about right. I guess I'll have to pay my dues in Canada.
That last line, by the way (as some of you may have noticed from the new head quotes adjacent to Sir Alec), is an old line of Van Morrison's -- first from "These Dreams of You" from Moondance, and later from the title track of Morrison's Hard Nose The Highway, the latter an album I've been listening to again for the first time in some years. Hard Nose is one of Van's lesser albums, but it does feature the title track, the wistful "Wild Children," and the wonderfully evocative arrangement of the Scottish traditional "Purple Heather," another one of those songs in which The Man ends up scatting against a complement of strings as only he can. (The original traditional is sometimes called "Wild Mountain Thyme" or "Will You Go, Lassie.") The song is quite stunning, though I have to confess I never really thought about it before. It makes me wonder if there are situational ironies at work in the firmament, as so many things keep pointing of late to heathers, thistles, and hawthorns. Ah, such diabolical prickery. ("It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks?") Ah, through the sharp hawthorn.... (Yes, poor Jer's a-cold. Bless thy five wits.) One tarries to wonder if the universe is chuckling at its own rather nifty sense of humour. Probably. In fact, more than surely. Hardy har har....
(It's worth noting that Hard Nose also features the second strangest cover version the Belfast Cowboy ever did, his rendition of Joe Raposo's "Bein' Green," otherwise known as Kermit the Frog's theme song. The strangest, for the record, is a song Morrison only did in concerts, truly bizarre and funny, and barn-burning, versions of -- wait for it -- "Send In The Clowns." Van singing Sondheim is like me singing Barry Manilow: unimaginable to the point of heresy. Ribbit.)
(Hmmm, this post may set new records for the greatest concentration of parentheses in a single entry. That probably says something about the state of my mind right now. Hey, it ain't easy bein' linear. Ribbit.)
You'd think that after a week and change sans blogging the Not-So-Good Doc might have more profound things to say than he actually does. Grug. The past week has been shot through with oddities rather than conducements to focussed thought, though I'm by no means certain my brain is even functioning anymore. Oddities? Yes, oddities. The other night I was compared again-- for the SEVENTH time in three weeks-- to, of all people, Jeremy Irons, with whom I think I share as much resemblance as I do a garlic pickle, but there we go. The shared name may be prompting these associations in part, but the frequency of them has me wondering if I'm beginning to look like Claus von Bulow. ("You have no idea....") And, yes, yes, I know how many of you are just busting at the seams to make a Humbert Humbert crack, to which I can only pre-emptively grug. But it would figure that I'm now being all-too-regularly compared to a man 25 years my senior. And people wonder why I feel old.
Oh, grug grug grug.... (So rudely forced.) I should have so much more to say, given the eventfulness of recent weeks, but I fear I'm Schivoed and Poped out, and I'm as sick of my own voice, cyber and actual, as I'm sure most of my recently-released students are. But for those of you that have been patiently waiting for some proof of the Not-So-Good Doctor's life, hopefully this little stream of unconsciousness ramble will suffice as evidence after a fashion. The week promises marking and a lot of ironing (Ironsing?) out of Things, the normal lot come April. Ugh. We'll see if I can resuscitate this blog in the next bit. Maybe. Why then maybe Ile fit you. Jeronymo's mad agine. Indeed.
And, one more thing: Ribbit.
ADDENDUM: In a word: Crap.
This blog officially stands bemusedly corrected. I may have to rethink that garlic pickle thing.
That last line, by the way (as some of you may have noticed from the new head quotes adjacent to Sir Alec), is an old line of Van Morrison's -- first from "These Dreams of You" from Moondance, and later from the title track of Morrison's Hard Nose The Highway, the latter an album I've been listening to again for the first time in some years. Hard Nose is one of Van's lesser albums, but it does feature the title track, the wistful "Wild Children," and the wonderfully evocative arrangement of the Scottish traditional "Purple Heather," another one of those songs in which The Man ends up scatting against a complement of strings as only he can. (The original traditional is sometimes called "Wild Mountain Thyme" or "Will You Go, Lassie.") The song is quite stunning, though I have to confess I never really thought about it before. It makes me wonder if there are situational ironies at work in the firmament, as so many things keep pointing of late to heathers, thistles, and hawthorns. Ah, such diabolical prickery. ("It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks?") Ah, through the sharp hawthorn.... (Yes, poor Jer's a-cold. Bless thy five wits.) One tarries to wonder if the universe is chuckling at its own rather nifty sense of humour. Probably. In fact, more than surely. Hardy har har....
(It's worth noting that Hard Nose also features the second strangest cover version the Belfast Cowboy ever did, his rendition of Joe Raposo's "Bein' Green," otherwise known as Kermit the Frog's theme song. The strangest, for the record, is a song Morrison only did in concerts, truly bizarre and funny, and barn-burning, versions of -- wait for it -- "Send In The Clowns." Van singing Sondheim is like me singing Barry Manilow: unimaginable to the point of heresy. Ribbit.)
(Hmmm, this post may set new records for the greatest concentration of parentheses in a single entry. That probably says something about the state of my mind right now. Hey, it ain't easy bein' linear. Ribbit.)
You'd think that after a week and change sans blogging the Not-So-Good Doc might have more profound things to say than he actually does. Grug. The past week has been shot through with oddities rather than conducements to focussed thought, though I'm by no means certain my brain is even functioning anymore. Oddities? Yes, oddities. The other night I was compared again-- for the SEVENTH time in three weeks-- to, of all people, Jeremy Irons, with whom I think I share as much resemblance as I do a garlic pickle, but there we go. The shared name may be prompting these associations in part, but the frequency of them has me wondering if I'm beginning to look like Claus von Bulow. ("You have no idea....") And, yes, yes, I know how many of you are just busting at the seams to make a Humbert Humbert crack, to which I can only pre-emptively grug. But it would figure that I'm now being all-too-regularly compared to a man 25 years my senior. And people wonder why I feel old.
Oh, grug grug grug.... (So rudely forced.) I should have so much more to say, given the eventfulness of recent weeks, but I fear I'm Schivoed and Poped out, and I'm as sick of my own voice, cyber and actual, as I'm sure most of my recently-released students are. But for those of you that have been patiently waiting for some proof of the Not-So-Good Doctor's life, hopefully this little stream of unconsciousness ramble will suffice as evidence after a fashion. The week promises marking and a lot of ironing (Ironsing?) out of Things, the normal lot come April. Ugh. We'll see if I can resuscitate this blog in the next bit. Maybe. Why then maybe Ile fit you. Jeronymo's mad agine. Indeed.
And, one more thing: Ribbit.
ADDENDUM: In a word: Crap.
This blog officially stands bemusedly corrected. I may have to rethink that garlic pickle thing.
25 March 2005
Pallors of Reading Gaol
Found this meme on Grapez, and figured I'd throw out my own answers, such as they are. Feel free to posit your own answers in the comments.
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?So, there we are. Probably terribly predictable, these answers of mine, but c'est la vie.
Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
No, not really. Or, perhaps, yes, always. Wasn't every woman I've ever had a crush a fictional character to one degree or another?
The last book you bought is:
Actually, bought several recently, including new (to me) hardback editions of the poems of John Donne, Robert Herrick and W.H. Auden, and several other collections, including an old Riverside anthology of Dryden.
The last book you read:
In its entirety? Northrop Frye's The Well-Tempered Critic, which I'd not read in probably seven years. Before that, Mark Strand's volumes Blizzard of One and Dark Harbor, and before that Cees Nooteboom's The Following Story. Oh, and somewhere in there, Eliot's The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry and The Sacred Wood.
What are you currently reading?
Blogs, blogs, blogs-- mainly student ones. Alexander Welsh's Reflections On The Hero As Quixote, another one of my recent acquisitions. And bits of pieces of too many things to name here. (Such is the perenially-distracted life.)
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
The Poetry and Prose of Wallace Stevens
The Riverside Shakespeare
Don Quixote
The Poems of Thomas Hardy
a collection of New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles
As to three people:
If you think I'm answering this question, you're bat-shit bonkers.... Besides, I've read Sartre: maybe having those others on that island might make it into a perfect Hell, with an extra person as brimstone on the fire. In the interim, let's simply say that if forced my candidates would be judged on intelligence, kindness, nubility, and double-jointedness. And, perhaps, whether or not she could sing beyond the genius of the sea.
24 March 2005
A Kind Of Update
Oh, it has been a manic little bit, so much upturned and recomposed like dust in a hurricane. Frankly, I'm tadding toward exhaustion, so much so that I defy any of you to correct me for inventing the word "tad" as a verb. (Bah, shrumbug.) That I'm for the moment exhausted shouldn't indicate anything more than pure physical fatigue. I've gone from -- as they say in automotive clich´ -- zero to sixty in the past few weeks, though perhaps a sprinting metaphor would be more appropriate. Argh, I'm not as young as I used to be. ("Mistah Shawp, he dead. / Penny for the old guy.")
So, yes: I'm exhausted, this poor blog has been left to sit like Miss Haversham's wedding cake, and I'm feeling in certain ways like I've gained two years in three weeks. This is (surprisingly) not entirely a bad thing. I've had in recent weeks the delightful opportunities to teach-- among others-- Tom Eliot, Wally Stevens, Marko Strand, Shameless Heaney, and Bobby Browning. I've been reminded, in a situation that perhaps might have been more consternation than anything, of how positive and receptive some students can be, to say nothing of gracious; such ones, mercifully, mitigate what might otherwise seem Quixotic gestures and impulses, and so one holds Rocinante's reins tightly and charges on. My naturally-pessimistic side wonders if I might be serving to free the galley slaves only to have them stone me, but, in the end, it matters little. Sticks and stones, sticks and stones. (Everybody must get.... --- oh, never mind.)
A few brief notes on recent Stuff:
So, yes: I'm exhausted, this poor blog has been left to sit like Miss Haversham's wedding cake, and I'm feeling in certain ways like I've gained two years in three weeks. This is (surprisingly) not entirely a bad thing. I've had in recent weeks the delightful opportunities to teach-- among others-- Tom Eliot, Wally Stevens, Marko Strand, Shameless Heaney, and Bobby Browning. I've been reminded, in a situation that perhaps might have been more consternation than anything, of how positive and receptive some students can be, to say nothing of gracious; such ones, mercifully, mitigate what might otherwise seem Quixotic gestures and impulses, and so one holds Rocinante's reins tightly and charges on. My naturally-pessimistic side wonders if I might be serving to free the galley slaves only to have them stone me, but, in the end, it matters little. Sticks and stones, sticks and stones. (Everybody must get.... --- oh, never mind.)
A few brief notes on recent Stuff:
- In following the blogs of some of my recent charges, in one form or another, and in dealing with them one-on-one, I'm delighted by how many call me, with some comfort, "Doctor J." It makes me chuckle. Sue me.
- RK, to no great surprise on my part, has helped make what could well have been a hoary experience more than tolerable. That it's a pleasure to be working with him again probably goes without saying to any of you that have followed this blog for more than a few seconds.
- Much to my own shock, I ran into a still-stunning young lass from my semi-recent past on Tuesday. Much to the surely-greater shock of certain unwitting witnesses, the Not-So-Good Doctor may have (a) accidentally demonstrated another reason why there is the "Not-So-Good" inserted in that moniker; and (b) utterly embarrassed, or simply scarred with disturbing imagery, those unfortunate witnesses with a display probably not to be expected of the Doc. (D'Oh!) Call it a case of anadiplosis. (To the witnesses: Be glad you didn't see us several years ago. I have it on good authority we were positively Revolting.)
- Wednesday seemed to prove yet again that Winter isn't going to go gently into that good fucking night, which, more than anything, is reason for despair. This Winter seems like it just will not end, and it keeps announcing itself what such subtle climatological statements that are equivalent to "Who's your daddy, who's your muthasumthin' daddy?" Grrrr.
- Blogging? Blogging? Well, sorry, this one, at least, is going to have to be left in languor a little longer. See, if anyone had volunteered to be my Guest Blogger....
- Bear with me, still. Please. We're nearer Normal than you probably think. Nearer, but not there yet.
18 March 2005
What The Thunder Said
As my friend RK would say, borrowing from the Book of Common Prayer, "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest." Mercifully, I haven't to deal much with this species of hatchling this year, but I dread to say I know the creature well. Chirp!
Base Math
And people wonder why I so disdain the McSquinty government.... Key quote: "The announcement comes as another blow to the credibility of the Liberal government." Duh!
Sorry, dear readers that have been popping by here lately to find nothing new from the Not-So-Good Doctor. March got very busy very quickly, and this poor space has suffered the brunt of my distracted attention. Soon, dear readers, soon, things will return to their banal normalcy. In the interim, I suspect Dalton (dear Dalton) is glad to have at least one of his hecklers otherwise occupied.
Sorry, dear readers that have been popping by here lately to find nothing new from the Not-So-Good Doctor. March got very busy very quickly, and this poor space has suffered the brunt of my distracted attention. Soon, dear readers, soon, things will return to their banal normalcy. In the interim, I suspect Dalton (dear Dalton) is glad to have at least one of his hecklers otherwise occupied.
12 March 2005
Those Were The Days
Rest in peace, you delighfully, deliciously grumpy old fuck. Sad, very, very sad, indeed. For those of you too young to remember him, here are a few snippets, also from The Guardian, and this obit from The Independent. See also a few stories here. I remember-- more clearly than I remember last month-- watching Dave Allen and Benny Hill on WUTV out of Buffalo at 10pm when I was much, much younger-- and when it was still possible for a man to sit in a chair with a drink and a cigarette (let alone anything else) on television. And, oh yeah, be very, very, very funny. What the man could do with a story was genius. What he regularly did with confessionals was bloody beautiful blasphemy. May flights of drunken, agnostic angels sing thee to thy rest. |  |
06 March 2005
Delay, Decay
Sorry, my ever-patient readers, for my lack of posting lately, but let's simply say things have been busy-- or, at least, busier than usual. Alas, the lack of posting isn't likely to be remedied anytime soon, or at least until Wednesday. The Not-So-Good Doc will be off to Tokyoronto ("All the expense, but none of the excitement!") to do some ritual self-humiliation, and, ideally, meeting up with some old compatriots in misbehaviour. (Those of you that know the Doc's habits can probably surmise where he will be and what he will most likely be doing.) So, in the interim -- like one of those lousy t-shirts-- this post is all you're going to be getting around here for the next bit, though with my apologies. In compensation, here's a rarity for you, an unpublished poem of Tom Eliot's called "Virginia." Not Eliot at his best, but interesting enough as one of the many doodles of his not (to my knowledge, anyway) collected. Enjoy. Until later, cheers.
02 March 2005
If A Man Suddenly Gives You Flowers...
That's Compost.... Alternative answer: That's an impulsive waste of money. Er, no-- sorry, I couldn't resist. But if you're at all curious about some of the general associations that have been attached to certain flowers over the years, however arbitrarily, you might want to have a look at this curious little article from MSN. For a further list of associations, see this interesting page that should help those of you frustrated by complaints that "you don't **sniff** bring me flowers anymore." (One haws to notice that there is no flower that conveys the same meaning as the two most used words in the average heterosexual male's vocabulary, "Yes, dear.")
Oddly enough, the article associates rhododendrons with "danger," while in some cultures they're associated with "delicacy." They also have a nasty tendency to choke out other plantlife because of their leaves that -- wait for it-- are so dense that light cannot penetrate them. Hmmmm.... Like I couldn't have guessed that. Gather ye irony-buds while ye may.
At least now I know when to give yellow lillies and manchineel. Lads, you might want to stock up on your purple hyacinths.
Out, Out, Damned Spot....
Yes, ladies, it's all about "getting your carpet cleaned."
This blog hesitates to note that if the job was done well (and if it were done, when 'twas done, then 'twere well it was done briskly), there would at least one spot born of the process. Surely a dry cleaning in this situation would be most undesirable.
This Just In: ...and in related news....
This blog hesitates to note that if the job was done well (and if it were done, when 'twas done, then 'twere well it was done briskly), there would at least one spot born of the process. Surely a dry cleaning in this situation would be most undesirable.
This Just In: ...and in related news....
27 February 2005
Believe It Or Not, The Doc's Not Going To Make Even A Single 'Bermuda Triangle' Joke
Okay, this blog is now starting to get concerned: Christie -- aka "Brat," née "The Grimsby Bloggerette" -- seems to have taken an unannounced retreat (sabbatical?) from blogging, and her page has been down for almost a week. This is rather like the Not-So-Good Doctor going a month between bar visits, usually the standard period by which his bartenders officially start wondering if he has fallen off the face of the earth. So, pretty soon this blog may have to post pictures of her on the sides of milk cartons-- and, kiddo, you know I've got the pictures that I can, er, doctor to most humiliating effect, so if you're out there, let us know. Father Flanagan is absolutely beside himself with worry.He he he: triangle.... Now there's a word one can never, ever, ever, ever look at again with innocent eyes after reading The Stone Angel. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, consider yourself fortunate. Some us have been scarred for life. Right, Zozo?
Raspberry Soirée
~~Just like the kind you'd host / for a second-hand war, / They held a....~~
(And that's what it sounds like -- when doves decry.)
(And that's what it sounds like -- when doves decry.)
The Best Offense
Following this blog's recent rants about the cultures of childing and injurement, this piece on academic freedom by University of Kent sociologist Frank Ferudi deserves mention here, and to have this section in particular highlighted, asterisked to high heaven, and forwarded to those niggling about their discomforts with the ideas of others:
(And for once, I guess it's appropriate to interject, "Pardon my French" --- for more reasons than one.)
Of course words can offend. But one of the roles of a university is to challenge conventional truths - and that means academics questioning the sacred and mentioning the unmentionable. A proper university teaches its members how not to take hateful views personally, and how not to be offended by uncomfortable ideas. It also teaches its members how to deal with being offended. And it never turns to the Inquisitor or the Censor for the answer.I wonder what Voltaire would have to say about the current cultural hullaballoo. Or Sartre? Ah, je pense que je sais: "L'enfer, c'est les auteurs."
(And for once, I guess it's appropriate to interject, "Pardon my French" --- for more reasons than one.)
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