the beginning in the middle

I wish I could just wrinkle my nose and furrow my brow, just so, acutely as I do, and make it go away. Famine in Niger that goes unnoticed, any thought of HER, and the legacy of fear in her wake in my life.
This is written not to memorialize my love and pain for HER. That would be to succumb to it, and that can no longer be tolerated. This is written to write HER out, drive HER away from the gates like the ragged horde before my vanquishing knights—words. It is not so simple as that, you may be certain. And yet, it has to be. It has to be spelled out, in black ink, on ruled white paper, in certain terms that leave no room for maneuver: NO MORE.

"Aren't you a friend of Van Buren Denby?"

I don't like fawning in literature, let's be clear. This is causing a huge rift between myself and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He likes to fawn, in a way that I've seen Hemingway do also. I'm 50 pages into Tender is the Night, and already I'm conceiving a very strong antipathy towards the way Fitzie sentimentalizes a character named, absurdly, 'Dick Diver'. Has there every been anyone in the history of Western civilization named Dick Diver? No. It's a stupid name, unrealistic to the point of distracting me from the story. Fitzgerald is good with the lyric stuff; maybe he should have been a poet. His fascination with every aspect of Dick Diver verges on obsession.

Dick Diver this, Dick Diver that, Dick Diver is the only American man in Paris with repose [apparently this means he doesn't touch his face at restaurants; who cares?], Dick Diver is great at parties, Dick Diver is a fascinating dinner companion but runs away if you try to monopolize his attentions, Rosemary fell in love with Dick Diver the moment she saw him, Dick Diver's children were educated in France, Dick Diver, Dick Diver, etc. etc. (Have I said Dick Diver too much? Let me say it again, Dick Diver. Now you know my pain). Really far more than I need to know about this character at this point in the novel, and an embarrassing amount of affection shown for him by the author. Hasn't he heard of understatement? And did he know that the name of this character would torture me? He seems more than happy to repeat the name again and again, as if he knew it would get under readers' skin. It's starting to feel like work to read this for my book club, which is unfortunate. I'm committed to finishing it, but I wouldn't mind reading something I'd enjoy.

time yet for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions

The Skype does not make me feel totally at home. Something off-putting about it. It's a hybrid. There's the disconnectedness of not being with the person physically, just like a phone conversation, combined with the responsibility in a personal interaction of maintaining some control over your facial expressions and reacting properly in some way to the other person's comments. It's almost the worst of both worlds. It does sort of alleviate that thing of trying to not talk over someone on a long-distance call where you have to pause and see if the other person's going to speak. It's much easier when you can see if they're going to speak. And of course it's nice to see someone's face whom you haven't seen in a long time. It was lovely just now to see A over the Skype line, precisely to see her reactions to what I was saying, which is exactly why I'm saying I'm opposed, because people can see my reactions. I'm not saying it's not magic, because there is clearly black magic involved in Skype, I'm just saying I'm not totally comfortable with someone else seeing my face during a long-distance conversation. Usually when I'm on the phone I pace back and forth, look in the mirror, generally am not presentable to others, because I know no one can see me. This is different, you feel as though you have to "prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet".

The whole thing brings to mind the part in Infinite Jest where Wallace discusses the invention of video-phone technology and how people eventually decided they didn't want other people seeing them, and created lens caps for their video-phones with tableaus on them meant to deceive the person on the other end of the line. It's interesting how prescient that seems now.

a thought or two for the evening

There's not enough time in the world to do everything. There's not enough time to floss every day, read books, magazines, and the vast internet, work out, eat healthy, clean the house, visit with all your acquaintances regularly, and take day trips around New England.

There are a million different forces pulling us in all sorts of disparate directions every minute. The best I can do is to work hard and be myself. Some things I won't get to, and I have to make myself believe that that's all right, or I will explode from the worry that I forgot something, or that I'm missing some essential part of my life. It's OK! You can't be all things to all people all the time. It's enough to be yourself.

More sad than angry, really

The thoughts going through my head of a Sunday morning:

Why do people go looking for trouble so much? There must be something in you that knows that if you bring a knife out to a bar and you're going to be doing some drinking, the odds are pretty good that you might end up using it. And where does that get you? Where? There's something so base and idiotic about the enormous pride that humans have. So what, you protected your reputation? You're going to stab someone to prove how tough you are?

How can this ever leave anyone better off? Someone gets stabbed, and you keep your reputation for being tough. And where has that ever gotten you? Back in a bar, getting in a fight, and stabbing someone

To uphold your reputation.

Which meant nothing to begin with.

It destroys me, the lengths that people go to to prove how tough they are, how they're 'hard'. What's better, you back down and let it go, or you pull out your knife and stab someone? You're going to jail, they're going to the hospital at best, dead at worst. Where does that leave us? What did you gain? It burns me up to even think about this, because I can't understand the mentality of these people. And I have to live here, I have to try to mind my own business, I have to stay off my street when the bars are closing, I have to watch out so I don't get pulled into your fights, your trouble, your stupid pride. And yes, I chose to live here. I don't have to live on Harvard Ave, where there are 10 bars in a mile radius. But you don't have to bring a weapon to the bar with you. You don't have to pick a fight. You don't have to be here! If you're going to the Kells on a Saturday night, you're probably a certain type of person who knows that fight might break out, and welcomes that possibility. But goodness gracious, you don't have to stab someone to prove how tough you are. Leave my neighborhood alone, for the love of God.

And it burns me too, the pride that people take in this kind of thing. There were people last night, gathered at the police lines, hooping and hollering. As in, the people who got stabbed got what they deserved. As in, someone's going to the hospital, but we kept our rep! To me that's beyond the pale. People are celebrating that they've sacrificed a human life to their pride. What is wrong with us? I know this doesn't happen too often, I know that I live a safe and privileged life, but I cannot let this stand. If one person dies, in Boston, for the sake of pride, it's one too many. It's not fair to take a life for your reputation. Live and let live.

It's a question of scope, how far you're willing to go

The thing is, this is in no way the end of the world. It simply isn't. So a Republican who ran a strong campaign focused on connecting with the voters won the election against a Democrat who seemed cold and distant and may have taken her victory for granted. Stop the presses! This stuff happens every day, and you really think your world will come crashing down around you because, horror of horrors, Massachusetts elected a Republican and the Democrats only have a 59-vote majority? Please, get over it.

I'm a little bit disappointed in Massachusetts tonight, but then again, I can't help but feel this nagging sense of pride. We don't do what people want us to do. We do what we like, and forget the consequences.
Massachusetts people are pretty cynical. I don't know that Scott Brown was necessarily someone that everyone in MA could get behind, and a real feel-good story, as he was made out to be in some circles. It's more like everyone was collectively trying to stick it to the man. Everybody loves the proverbial 'Washington outsider.' Everybody hates the perceived elitist (pronounced Coakley). People in MA wanted to say, hey you thought this was a solid Democrat state? You thought Coakley could coast, you thought we would do your bidding and return another Dem to fill Kennedy's seat? Think again! We're Massachusetts, we're independent, and we'll elect a Republican just because we can!

I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying Scott Brown is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I'm just saying that's how I see it. And if any good could come out of this, I can only hope it would be that the Democrats will finally have the balls to take some action and get something done before their majority, whether it's 60 votes or 51, is gone for good.

my eardrums for a moment of peace

The question, fellow Romans, is how we could possibly endure approximately three weeks of commercial radio Christmas tunes at the workplace, supposedly a sacred place? And how can a radio station possibly sell this tired trick of attempting to go all-Christmas 24 hours a day for nearly a month straight? It is a fool's-errand. Nobody, but nobody, needs 24-hour a day Christmas songs.

And the repeats. O, the awful repeats. Mariah Carey's frighteningly exuberant All I Want for Christmas is You, in which she sounds positively tickled to be desperately pining for her significant other at Christmas time. Paul McCartney doing an interminable, and very, very dated 80's-style (it came out in 1979) holiday song, of which every other line appears to be the dread refrain "Siii-imply haaa-aaving a wonderful Christmas time."

Elvis Presley with Blue Christmas, which is fine, but no one needs to hear it more than once a day (we had it twice in four hours already yesterday), even at Christmas time. And the real problem at the root of all this holiday-themed sonic evil: today was only Monday, November 30th. What will we do for 23 more days when today was already jam-packed with repeats, played within lit'rally 4 hours of each other as if there weren't offices which through no fault of their own had been listening all the live-long day.

And besides all this, have you ever actually listened to the words of these Christmas songs? They are intolerably bad. The only thing they do is rhyme, the only thing. They are nearly devoid of meaning. We desperately need new Christmas songs (By the way, I actually enjoy the more religious Christmas songs that deal with the nativity and all, but you don't really get those on commercial stations like WODS Boston, usually a much-loved oldies station for me, transformed into a hideous holiday monster of trite, oft-repeated, cookie-cutter (how appropriate!) Christmas sentiments).

Let's run down what the Christmas songs say. All of them seem to come back to these several themes:

-Christmas is the BEST time of year. No serious person may question this.

-Snow is fun, even though it may at times be 'frightful'. Those are the times when it's a good excuse to spend more time with your beloved.

-You are always surrounded by many loved ones at Christmas. Relations with these people are blissful, always.

-It's no fun to be away from your beloved at Christmas time. You should aspire to be with them, and write a song about it if you can't.

-Sleighs

If you have any other themes, let me know, but I think those are the major ones.

Christmas seems to be so much a sham right now. A sale masquerading as a cultural institution. People whip themselves into a frenzy with Christmas music and tear themselves up over what to get for their loved ones. Just enjoy the time off, don't get stressed out about stupid stuff, and spend time with your family. Because a man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man. Just take it easy. And lay off the 24-hour Christmas songs, they will drive you nuts.

A postscript: And today, Amanda's computer at work contracted a virus from a Christmas music website and had to be sent away to the help desk. It goes to show that the age-old maxim is true: If you play fast and loose with Christmas music, you're bound to get burned.

If there were an All-Madden team for name-dropping gourmands, I tell ya, you'd be on it

Isn't Thanksgiving really about overeating, after all?

As a red-blooded American, I was worried, as anyone would be, that I wouldn't be able to overeat to my heart's content in Canada.

I was wrong. There was more than enough food, and I ate more than enough of it. And it was great. It always is. Am I supposed to apologize for eating too much? It was delicious. I'm sorry that there are people who don't have enough to eat. I would like to help them. But at Thanksgiving, you stuff yourself. It's what's done. I can't turn the tide back from the shore, and I can't help but eat too much at Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving. Feel free to stuff yourself. And give some thanks.

Thanks.

Hast Thou Considered The Tetra

Apparently Larry King jokes never get old

Except that they already are

Because Larry King is old

Which is the whole focus of the neverending torrent of jokes about him

Yeah, I get it, he's old. Enough

My thoughts betray me

It strikes me that having the letter x twice in a name where it only belongs once betrays a lack of class. People who add the second x by choice are telegraphing their urgent need to get your attention. If they can't get your attention because of their talent, why not try a gimmick like adding a ridiculous second x to a name? If I see the second x, I assume low-rent, low-class.

Alexx Woods

Bubba Sparxxx

Alexxis Tyler

The only exception is Jimmie Foxx, who was a solid hitter, and who clearly didn't choose to add the second x.

je blog donc je suis? (not an original idea)

I'm disillusioned about blogging. It seems like everyone has a blog these days. It also seems, however, that no one reads anyone's blog. How many blogs have you seen with entries going back for months, with nary a comment to be seen, nary a speck of evidence that anyone but the writer has ever seen any of the words committed to the (web) page? And yet you probably know the feeling, because you probably have your own blog that nobody reads.

This blog is not an exception, by the way, I'm sure there are maybe 7 people who have ever read this blog. And really, why should they bother? I'm bringing very little to the table. I might be saying things that no one has ever said before, but does that really matter, considering who I am? I'm not anyone in particular. I don't have a reputation, I don't have power or influence. I'm nobody, for the purpose of this debate that I am having with no one on my blog that is not read.

And how many times can I write the somewhat ugly neologism 'blog' in this blog post? Are you counting, non-existent reader? You don't even exist, but I'm asking you what you think of this blog, which to me seems to be mostly just taking up valuable bandwidth. I think this is the problem with blogs. There are so many words being written, then immediately published. Snap your fingers and you're a writer. It's way too easy to get a blog, to have a blog, to suddenly feel at least a little bit self-important because you can publish your words at will, theoretically to a worldwide audience. But it's all for naught if no one reads it. The meaning of these very words that I write at this moment varies directly with the amount of appreciation that they garner. Have you considered this?

Insubstantial reader, are you considering your place, and mine, in the "blogosphere" (one of the uglier neologisms, right up there with "tweet", and thank goodness blogosphere is still not acknowledged by spell-check)? Do you wonder if you are anything but an grain of sand in the unfathomable blogiverse? Do you feel comforted by my asking questions of no one, questions that won't, and possibly can't, be answered?

I hate rhetorical questions.

T-No (I'm angry)

I'm watching "The T.O. Show" on VH1.

It's awful.

It seems to be set up a lot like "The Hills", including all the shots looking down streets in LA with indistinguishable music playing between scenes. Aaargh, the music. The people who put this show together really seem to be trying to copy all of the worst parts of the Hills and none of the best. There are more little cut up bits of songs in this show than Sullivans in a Boston phone book. They add little or nothing to the show. There are plenty of pretty obviously scripted lines read by TO and his friends, and let me tell you, they aren't very good actors. I think the reason people like the Hills is that they've seen it before. They have some sense of who the characters are, and they enjoy ridiculing the people on the show for their bad decisions and ludicrous behavior. The T.O. Show has none of this familarity. It's just another badly produced reality show in a long, long, long line of badly produced reality shows that I couldn't care less about, but networks still feel obligated to produce because they cater to the basest and most moronic, and therefore the broadest swathes of our society. This show brings absolutely nothing to the table. They'll get a spike of curious viewers the first two weeks maybe and then nobody will watch because there is nothing remotely interesting about this show. I don't care about TO, he's not a compelling figure, the popular fascination with him makes no sense. And while I'm here, has anyone noticed that MTV doesn't show music videos anymore? Does that make any sense? All they have now is freaking marathons of "16 and Pregnant", one of the most despicable TV shows of all time, and a subject to be delved into at another time. The direction our culture is headed makes me steaming mad. We're getting stupider! The media we use to distract ourselves is getting dumbed down. I am not pleased, and I am not amused.

The dark little secret of the show is that there's nothing particularly interesting about the life of Terrell Owens. He's actually quite tame from the looks of things. The producers of the show try to create tension by having him act the party animal while his female friends try desperately to keep him from having fun, but there's absolutely nothing compelling about what ensues. The problem is, I don't know anything about Owens as a person and I couldn't care less about him or what he does. He's not strange, he has few distinguishing characteristics, he almost never says anything revelatory or surprising. After watching the show, I know maybe one thing about him that I didn't know before, that he likes to shop. Oh, wait, don't let me forget, he also appears to have no discernable personality traits!

Do yourself a favor and don't watch the show.