Too Fun too Resist

May 16, 2012

What a horrible day today was. Small wonder I'm writing a novel fueled by hate. I've got plenty of it, hate, and it's practically rocket fuel. In fact, I feel it now, hate, and I'm just itching to light the candle. That's right, keep bringing the hate, and we'll see where we end up.

One bright spot, or I should say two. No one's ever written of it, I think. Faulkner touches on it when Darl contemplates the sound it makes on the roof. Mine has to do with smell and memory. First the memory part.

A tiger has gotten married, that's what a sunshower signifies. Bright, dazzling, and miraculous, those are the words which apply. If you've ever been lucky enough to experience it (I'm sure most of you have), remember those words, or think of your own. Don't plagiarize, 'cause I'll know. See how easily we revert to life's shit. In fact shit makes up 90 % of life. No wonder misery is our common lot. Don't deny it. Don't put up a brave face 'cause that's the decent thing to do. You'll end up fooling yourself and then where will you be? Might as well be miserable and get it over with.

The dust in the air dampens and settles to the ground. This only happens on overcast days when something triggers a gentle rain. Could it be: Souls alike sharing a glance, lamenting their mutually exclusive fates? Or am I romantic ass? No, the reason why it rains is because...(your cue Andy Parker)...he's not cooperating. As I was saying, there's a certain smell in the air when it rains like this, the smell of earth and loam. Melancholy. My fate.

Self-motivation 101

_Underworld_by Don DeLillo

According to Harold Bloom, Underworld is along with Blood Meridian and one other novel, Gravity's Rainbow (?) The Recognitions (?), one of the three greatest of America's post WW II (?) novels. (I'm not sure of the exact categorization...At any rate, one of America's three most highly regarded.) So I had to read it, and my initial reaction is, "I don't know about that..."

I'm not a particular fan of fictionalizing real people; DeLillo fictionalizes J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Lenny Bruce, and maybe one or two others. (I had to read quickly as the 800 plus page-novel was a library loan.) Of those real, famous people, the depiction of Lenny Bruce kept me absorbed, which is to say that the other depictions didn't.

The main character is Nick Shay (if memory serves), a boy who grows up without a father in Bronx, New York, falls in love with a woman about 20 years his senior, kills a man for which he is incarcerated (as a juvenile delinquent), and who, in spite of all, manages to make something of himself, getting married to a woman more or less his age, siring a daughter, and landing a lucrative, stable job in the toxic waste disposal industry. And that's about all I recall of the novel, and I'm not even sure if those recollections of mine are all that accurate. As I said, "I don't know about that...Harold Bloom's assertion that Underworld is one of the three greatest of America's post WW II novels."

Image Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/books/don-delillos-underworld-still-holds-power.html

Golf is back...

...as far as the casual fan is concerned. (Tiger wins the 2012 Arnold Palmer Invitational.)

Image Source: http://galleries.pgatour.com/gallery/tiger-woods-golfer-gallery#image=0azk4yXfcr6E8&view=filmstrip

Trivia of the Day

The Christ in Jesus Christ is actually a title meaning The Anointed One. Thus Christ Jesus is more logical in terms of its sequence.

Calabria, population 2 million,  is the toe of Italy's boot.

More 80s Classics

RIP Dmitri Nabokov (1934-2012)

Image source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/books/dmitri-nabokov-steward-of-his-fathers-literary-legacy-dies-at-77.html?_r=1&hpw

Dmitri Nabokov, son of the great novelist Vladimir Nabokov, died Wednesday in Vevey, Switzerland. He was 77 years old.

During his life, Dmitri Nabokov was "a bon vivant, a professional opera singer, a race car driver and a mountain climber," to quote the New York Times. He also never married, leaving no immediate survivors.

And A Star Is Born

  Image source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sports/basketball/the-knicks-jeremy-lin-keeps-his-cool-as-heads-spin-around-him.html?_r=1&hp

Harvard graduate and late roster addition Jeremy Lin, scores 38 points to lead the Knicks over Kobe Bryant's Lakers, culminating a week of spectacular play during which he averaged 25 points and 8 assists which in turn led to three Knicks' victories.

What Was Vegas Thinking?

                                                    Image source: http://www.nytimes.com/
To be honest, I thought the Pats had this game won with about 4 minutes left. But Eli comes through again. What a season he's had. The stuff of legends.

Trivia of the Day

In 1890, two Americans Allen and Sachtleben, having just graduated from college, decided to bicycle around the world. Three years later they returned home, having bicycled 15,000 miles, much of those miles spent bicycling between Constantinople (present day Istanbul, Turkey) to Peking (present day Beijing, China). Oh to be young again.

 Image source: http://news.thethomasallenproject.com/2010/10/william-sachtleben-and-thomas-allen.html

Wowie Zowie!

Final score Men's 2012 Australian Open Tennis Championship:

Novak Djokovic  5 6 6 6 7

Rafael Nadal     7 4 2 7 5

That's like a 15 round heavyweight boxing match decided by a split decision. Epic. Glad I forced myself to get up at 3:30 a.m. to see this one, which, by the way, ended at around 9:30 a.m.(Djokovic wins.)

Yet Another 80s Classic

Another 80s Classic

And some would say THE 80s classic, and I would agree.

An 80s Classic

Trivia of The Day

According to wolframalpha.com, the longest English word is

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

The word denotes a  lung disease of sorts. For its correct pronunciation link to

 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Trivia of The Day

Did you know that the plastic coating at the end of a shoelace has its own word? Believe it or not it's called an aglet or a tog.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

The G-men Win!

Could it be a repeat of Super Bowl XLII? I think so. The Giants defense will neutralize Brady. Final score 31-24 Giants.

Not A Total Loss

Just about fell asleep while reading Cormac McCarthy's Suttree today, but there were a couple of good moments:

He crossed the cold buckled linoleum with puckered feet and stood naked by the window and watched the Monday morning traffic in the streets below. [the puckered feet--that's superb]

Wednesday noon he [Suttree] appeared at Comer's in a pair of alligator shoes and wearing a camelhair overcoat. A pair of beltless gabardine slacks with little zippers at the sides and a winecolored shirt with a crafty placket requiring no buttons.

"Fishing business has picked up a bit, has it?" he [Stud] said.

"Fishy business, more likely," Sexton said....

To Sleep or Not to Sleep

Trying stay up late as I can these days as Australian Open tennis is on air from 7 p.m. to the wee hours of the morning (4-5 a.m.). Luckily for my sanity, sleep is getting the better of me.  

Greetings OF 260ers....

And welcome.

In the days to come, I'll try to make make this blog if not more interesting, then at least comment worthy.

I promise.

A Revision

Initially, on account of Coetzee's gloomy outlook,  I expressed my aversion to Youth, a volume of J.M. Coetzee's autobiographical fiction, of which there are three; but in hindsight, seeing as how the reader can't and shouldn't expect the writer to be anything less than 100 percent faithful to his emotional reality (how can we blame a writer for what he feels?) I can't help but be wholly impressed with Youth. Which is to say, it may not be long before I've read the whole of Coetzee's oeuvre, Youth being my first Coetzee.