Sorry for the lack of episodes lately. It’s just that life has carried on in its terribly ordinary way, the wheels of time and space turning on well-oiled axes with nary a squeak.
Of note, perhaps, is that my pants are falling down. Either they have stretched or I have shrunk. While I don’t feel any healthier, and can see no diffference in the mirror, is seems unlikely that all my pants got larger at the same time.
One reason I’ve not had much to say is that I spent more time than I should have in the last week playing a computer game. This is the sort of brain-eating activity that leaves one without an original thought to call one’s own. I finished the game today, and I have no plan to order any of the sequels. Not because it wasn’t fun, mind you, quite the opposite.
Now I am in the Little Cafe, and there is a birthday party goinf on. Birthday girl is very pretty, adn is dancing on the bar as I type this.(pardon the typos, but for authenticity, i will leave this as I firty tuyped iu while watching her dance.) She is particularly happy because her ex-boyfriend showed up for the party, and they are not ex anymore. I am happy because she is very, very, good at shaking her moneymaker. Perhaps they were reconciled before tonight, but I don’t think so. The breathlessly hopeful look on her face when he arrived, the careful way they acted until they fell into their old familiar habits, the disappointment of the other males present, all spoke of this being a birthday she will long remember. For me, in my corner, part of the universe has gone back to being the way it belongs.
And so the world moves on, quietly, calmly (with the exception of the dancing on the bar), and there is little for this correspondent to report.
You got addicted to a game? *snort* and aren’t ordering the sequels. Now I want to know which one! I spent a few winters in Michigan gaming RPG style. I subcumbed to sequels because of the lovely weather in Michigan mid January.
Yes, I know that axles are the well-oiled things, but I preferred the sound of axes (rhymes with “hacks bees”) in that opening sentence.
I prefer not to think of it as addiction so much as temporarily exclusively enthusiastic. Neverwinter Nights is the game, and I found it most enjoyable. There is a Massively Multiplayer online version, but I don’t play well with others.
You say that like it’s a bad thing? Not a joiner myself. I always worry when folks try to talk me into anything social. Dont they realize it’s just fodder for my art???
dear esteemed blogger
yes it has been slow rather
but nay, I do not lay
these ebbings on your table
one must take to taskal
your readers, those rascals
where is MOH, the fuego, CA?
where be Keith or Brian or John H?
Squirrely Joe, Funkmaster, the Jerk?
It is time to put them to work
to this round table, or alas
morte d’ MRHBI
I just read Of Mice and Men for the first time. I think this Steinbeck kid might go places.
I read it because Brad had it assigned in his Freshman English class, so the book was handy. Why was I never assigned any Steinbeck at LAHS? The only book assignement I remember from 9th grade was Once and Future King, and I don’t recall any from 10th Grade (or was Mrs Terry 10th grade?). I don’t think we hit either Steinbeck or Hemmingway in AP English 12. Any other LAHSer remember being gypped out of Steinbeck and Hemmingway?
I believe I read “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” in AP 12. Don’t recall reading Steinbeck in any year, though.
We read Steinbeck even way out in the sticks of south (the state downriver from New Mexico, which in turn, is allegedly one of the 50 U.S. states). But, I think all of my Hemingway, including the short happy life, was read on my own time. And, Sci-Fi was a genre almost completely untouched in school, except for a bit of Ray Bradbury.
But these days mostly I’m reading stuff from North Sails and the like.
Keith
We read the Once and Future king in 10th grade. (Our 1st year at LAHS, 9th grade was a Pueblo). We also read Julius Caesar (Don’t your remember “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” that we all had to memorize.) I don’t remeber anything else that we read.
I remember reading The Sun Also Rises which checked the Hemingway box.
The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick were in there, too, although obviously by other writers.
A couple of years ago, I read the Grapes of Wrath. I’m guessing that the final scene had too much sexual content (Keith is sure to read it now) for the LAHS review board in the early 80s.
BillBB and Keith are spot on – us peasants in non-AP read Julius a bit, and Once and Future King. I recall that of the OAFK we only had to read the FIRST book/segment/whatever; not the entire work. My sis was in AP and I think she developed a life long love of the Great Gatsby there. I remember hieing off to NMSU with an unearned sense of arrogance about how smart LAHSers were, we of the city-o-highest-number-PhDs; only to have my math skills pale next to the Albuquerque-iers who walked literary and history circles around me.
It is very serendipitous that Keith broached this subject, because I just borrowed Moby Dick from my MIL, I’ve only started, but it is some fine readin. And to make Jerry feel better – the “publishers” notes in the front of the book (ya know – those pages you would never read if it was a high school assignment) say that when Moby was first published it died. Melville’s fans wanted more of his adventure type south seas stuff – Typee, Omoo, etc. And MD did not become the American Literary classic it is until a resurgence in the 1920s.
Anyhoo, great subject. What else are people readin?
Once and Future King: yes, we were only assigned the first book of four. I loved it so much however, that I read the entire book, plus Morte d’Arthur as well. The first such assigned book that really moved me, it was why I *got* Monty Python and the Holy Grail so much more than my contemporaries.
Julius C: Thanks, Bill, for the memory: our assignment was to memorize any speech from the play, and being the ornery cuss that I was (notice past tense), I chose to do Brutus’ speech because I knew everyone else would do Marc Anthony’s. Or because of its greater sexual content, I don’t remember.
Yep, only the first part of OAFK was required; in MY 10th-grade class, Antony’s speech was required and we weren’t given a choice.
I remember doing Moby Dick, The Sun Also Rises, and one other Hemingway (I forget which one) in AP 12th. I do remember reading Steinbeck for some class (I don’t remember which grade) — non-fiction, however: Travels with Charley.
Carol Anne,
Thanks for sparking my memory — there were two Hemingways in AP 12: “The Sun Also Rises” and “The Short Happy Life…”. “Moby Dick” was spoon-fed to us in particular detail, as it was known there would be a MD essay on the AP test.
And then there was Oedipus Rex, also in AP 12. Tiresias has just recently made a new appearance here lately.
Which Hemingway short story has the famous nada prayer: “Our nada who art in nada…”? I read that in some class or another but it might have been at New Mexico Tech. That story really worked for me.
I should go back and read Moby Dick again. (Don’t tell the czechs that a whale is not a fish; the word for whale, velryba, literally means “bigfish”.) I remember liking the language but back then that sort of thing was just not as important.
I did reread The Sun Also Rises a while back, and dang, but that’s a good story. Not long after I was talking to a friend who had just read the book as a reading club pick and she said that no one in the club had liked it much. I was surprised, but then perhaps a story of two people who are trapped on a path of destruction and know it but carry on anyway because it’s who they are even though they hate themselves for it might not be for everyone.
Also, the song “The Sun also Sweats” by Spinal Tap is destined to be a classic. (Apparently the n with an umlaut over it falls completely outside of unicode, making it impossible for me to spell the name of the band correctly here.)
Jerry likes girls with a big bottom. Some trivia masters have memorized all the drummers who met untimely demises whilst drummin for ST. I’ve met people who named their computers after them. Great movie. This is Spinal Tap A+; Best in Show B; Blowin in the Wind or whatever it’s named, F for boring.
Before I started Moby Dick I finished up the new biography of Oppenheimer, American Prometheus. It is excellent. The original author must have had serious writer’s block, cuz he collected research for something like 20 years, before he broke down and acquired a co-author. The biggest thing I take away from Oppie’s story is that if you are important, and the people you advise (post-war, Truman and Eisenhower Admins) don’t listen to you – fuckin resign. The american people never knew how bad early nuke policy was being bungled, and Oppie kept pluggin away in secret hoping for a breakthrough. If he resigned, it would have sprayed sunshine on the mess. It makes me want to go back and revisit the news of the couple o’ ambassadors who resigned at beginning of Iraq. Admirable. I will not resign from my important job reading this blog – I want to see what the rumblings from secret labs have up its sleeve.
Jerry,
A Clean, Well-lighted Place is the story with the Nada passage. I read it just two nights ago when John’s reminder of Francis Macomber made me spend two hours with my Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemmingway. It is fascinating that that story resonated with you long ago, since its subject matter is remarkably close to one of your favorite blog subjects: sitting in a bar observing people. However, in Hemmingway’s case, it was about being old and growing old, and about how being in a clean, well lighted place (a cafe) was better than going home to a dark and lonely home waiting to die.
I now do indeed remember Francis Macomber from AP 12. A ripping good yarn, especially enjoyable after just re-reading The Most Dangerous Game (again another assignment of Brad’s for Freshman English). I think of The Most Dangerous Game as the second most assigned short story in education, although it isn’t nearly as good as Francis Macomber.
CA:
I was looking forward to your contribution to this thread, although I thought it rude to call you out directly (and I knew you couldn’t resist).
I dont’ recall reading TSAR, but then I didn’t recall Francis Macomber until I started rereading it. So perhaps I’ll reread TSAR (although now it will have to wait until after Jesse’s American Prometheus). But I can’t imagine AP 12 without a Hemmingway novel, and I do recall spending time “comparing and contrasting” Hemmingway and Faulkner.
Speaking of Oedipus Rex, you may enjoy the following:
Three weeks ago there was a company contest to design a company tshirt for a charity event. The charity is San Diego Elder Help and the event that Intuit helps sponsor is their fun run/walk. This year’s theme is “Walk of Ages.”
I read all this in a company email, and being the product of LAHS that I am (literary bent, no artistic skills), I immediately saw the design for the tshirt: “Walk of Ages” = the Riddle of the Sphinx. So I whipped up a design with (of course) a baby, a man, and an old man with a cane, and the riddle of the Sphinx written around the circumference. A thing of intellectual beauty, to be sure, and quite doable after a graphic artist cleaned it up for the tshirt.
Well, needless to say, I didn’t win, and when I pitched my idea to anybody (anybody) at work they had never heard of the riddle of the sphinx.
Life of the LAHS grad can be quite discouraging at times among the great unwashed masses.