Netflix, what what.

We haven't the heart to do a full-on review this go-round, so let us simply say that The Madness of King George is most excellent, yes yes. Take care, sir, that you should see it, sir, and do be of good cheer in approaching it.

All well, then. Hey hey!

It's Howdy Doody Time

(Stop that.)

The movie review is split into two sections because Netflix have opened a new office in Little Rock, and while they have such oddities as The Seventh Seal and The Prisoner (Disc 1), they didn't have a copy of Carry on Dick, which will arrive Friday from Northern Rhodesia. On with the shew!

Det Sjunde inseglet
Released: 1957
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Inga Gill

A knight returning from the crusades meets Death along the shores of Norway. Challenging the Oldest Friend to a game of Chess, the knight wagers that if he should win, Death will leave him alone, but if he should loose, the knight and all his friends should come immediately with death. The story procedes from there through a world confused by and wracked with Plague, a dark and frightening mondus medium ævum full of human misery and great faces. A blacksmith is involved. Eventually (as of course he should) the knight looses, but not before he makes sure that his actor-friends (named, completely at random, "Mary" and "Joseph") escape Death's notice. Rightfully a classic, especially in the way Death is portrayed and constantly returns.

The Prisoner (Disc 1)
Episodes: "The Arrival" and "The Chimes of Big Ben" (Alt)
Airdates: 1 October 1967; 8 October 1967
Director: Don Chaffey (both episodes)
Starring: Patrick McGoohan, Angelo Muscat, Peter Swanwick, Michael Miller, Christopher Benjamin, Leo McKern

From Six of One:
"Patrick McGoohan plays a man who resigns from a top secret position and is abducted from his London home. He finds himself in a beautiful village where everything is bright and cheerful - the people, their clothes, the buildings, the flowers. But despite this rosey exterior, the village serves a sinister purpose. People are forcibly brought there in order to have their valuable knowledge protected or extracted. Village residents are assigned a number - the Prisoner is Number Six. Chief interrogator and administrator is Number Two, but he isn't the boss - an unseen Number One is the boss."

In these episodes, we are introduced to Number Six, The Villiage, the Number Two system, and Number Six's continued need to escape his prison. We are also led to believe that The Village is in the Baltic, despite its realtively quiet seas and calm weather.

Overall, it's been pretty interesting so far. Continuity errors, especially between exterior and close-up shots, are rampant, and the sound is occasionally off, giving it the quality of a William Shatner monologue. ("Oh, come off it, Number Six, surely you can't escape from The Village.") The stories are pretty interesting, if mildly familiar, and I look forward to more of the show.

And that's it. Goodbye for now. Keep your teeth clean.

Lemming, Lemming, Lemming of the BDA. . .

Prime Minister's Question Time

Yes, that's right, Netflix are back. This week, I bring you Brazil, Un long dimanche de fiançailles, and Scent of a Woman

Brazil
Released: 1985
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Jonathon Price, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Kim Griest

After a mistake leads to the false arrest (and subsequent death under torture) of an innocent man, a lone, daydreaming bureaucrat in this Retro-futuristic, Chinese-bardo society takes it upon himself to right the wrong. In the process he meets the literal girl of his dreams, and is mistaken for a terrorist by his own government.

This is the kind of world we're headed for, frankly, although without the strange influence of Gilliam's mind. The biggest message of this movie (oddly shared by Scent of a Woman seems to be one of personal integrity. By hiding behind a mountain of paperwork and self-contradictory rules, anyone can avoid having to own up to their own actions--or shortcomings. Jack Lint (Michael Palin) is the best example: as a government torturer (echoing his "Mad Barber" scenes from Monty Python's Flying Circus), his sanity depends on the ability to separate work and family, and whose family seemingly exists solely to provide balance. Without the ability to say "only doing my job," he might have to face up to what his job actually is. However, he, like the rest of this society, is easily distracted by petty details and crass consumerism (e.g. "Consumers for Christ" an excellent little banner that probably hangs in Dubya's closet somewhere).

Oddly, some have said that this is an update or pastiche of Orwell's Nineteen Eight-four, but I don't see it. Not all stories about faceless bureaucracies have to point back to that increasingly outdated book. If you want something to compare it to, try Ted Rall's 2024.

Un long dimanche de fiançailles
Released: 2004
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Marion Cotillard, Dominique Pinon

After The Great War tears two lovers apart, Mathilde refuses to believe that her fiancee is dead, and searches for him by every means possible, finally unravelling the story of his disappearance and seeming death.

An excellent movie, with a lot of action and romance, sure to please both sides of the dating equation. Jeunet, who also directed Les fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, brings a lot of the same style (and a bit of the same story) to this piece, which doesn't detract at all from the buildup of the story.

Scent of a Woman
Released: 1992
Directed by: Martin Brest
Starring: Al Pacino, Chris O'Donnell, James Rebhorn

Charlie Simms, a prep-school boy in increasing amounts of trouble, takes a job watching over Lt. Colonel Frank Slade, a 'Nam Vet, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Slade takes Simms to New York, where he plans to have a grand old time before "blowing his brains out". They fight over this, Slade has a good time, and eventually the two even help each other out of their rough situations, everybody feels good, and a rainbow pegasus flies out of my ass.

Yes, it's predictable, but it's also pretty good. Pacino gets a lot of great lines: Donna: That's amazing.
Slade: I'm in the amazing business.

Slade: I know exactly where your body is. What I'm looking for is some indication of a brain. Too much football without a helmet? Hah! Lyndon's line on Gerry Ford. Deputy debriefer, Paris, peace talks, '68. Snagged a silver star and a silver bar. Threw me into G-2.
Simms: G-2?
Slade: Intelligence. Of which you have none.

Slade: The day we stop lookin', Charlie, is the day we die.

Overall, it's a bit like watching a combination of the Old Man and every Nam Vet I know: edgy, smooth, and wise all at once. I suppose that's what kept me from being upset by the predictability of it all.

Tune in next week for Carry on Dick, The Seventh Seal, and the first disc of The Prisoner. Same Pravda-time, Same Pravda-channel. Cheerio!

Umberto Eco Time

(suddenly it's all The Name of the Rose in here.)

From the (shoddily edited) Northwest Arkansas News for 17 July 2005:
Although in her June 22 email she said she wanted to "purge" the school libraries of sexually explicit materials, Taylor has an idea for a compromise.

Place the explicit and objectionable books in a restricted area, and parents who do not mind their children accessing these materials can sign a permission sheet allowing them to do so, "Why are educators so incensed at the fact that parents want to have authority over what their children read?" she said.

Why do parents feel the need to control every single idea that their child is exposed to? Maybe it's a good thing in a free society for kids to come across ideas that their parents haven't approved yet. Maybe that's what keeps the society going--kids who put ideas together in totally novel ways, because that one new idea is so radically different from the ideas the child has been exposed to before.

People who are afraid of ideas have not been taught to think for themselves, nor will they teach their children to think for themselves.

And as to the specifics of this case, I say to this woman: what if a child who is questioning their own sexuality--for children do have them, especially those children in school--seeks information in the library to help them understand their feelings? When a child reaches this age, they should not be required to seek only the counsel of their parents in such matters, but those of society as well, and the place many of us still do this is the library. How would it be if, on a casual Tuesday, some confused child came into the library seeking understanding, and the librarian said, "I cannot give it to you because it is evil" when it most certainly is not?

Finally, if these books are removed from the school library but not the public library, what do you think this woman's next target will be?

If I can come down from this high horse language for a minute, I think this woman has some serious issues with Toni Morrison, and though Morrison is not one of my favorite authors, her novels do address very important themes that should not be withheld from children.

*Bullshit Alert* The concept of a library has long been the target of the totaltarianist movement: who after all would support a place where ideas can be freely got and discussed but dirty commie hippie liberals, and other kinds of Euro-centric scum. You know, all this liberalism started in Europe anyway, what with them Greeks and their homosexuals.
*Bullshit Over*

Okay, back to reading Order of the Phoenix before Half-Blood Prince gets here from Canada in a week.

Stop laughing.

To see what condition my condition is in

=====

Netflix time! This week: The Big Lebowski (1998), Casino Royale (1967), and The Merchant of Venice (2004).

The Big Lebowski
Joel and Ethan Cohen - (1998)
Starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro.

Jeff Bridges plays Jeff Lebowski, aka "The Dude", an aging pothead in LA who likes White Russians, surfing, and bowling. Things go wrong when he's mistaken for the other Jeff Lebowski, a rich man with no legs and a striking resemblance to Dick Cheney. Extortionists, intent on getting money from the other Lebowski, piss on the Dude's rug. He goes to the Big Lebowski to get compensated for his rug, only to get drawn into the kidnapping of the Big Lebowski's trophy wife.

This is a really excellent movie, for a variety of reasons. One is the pastiche of Film Noir (which seems to be a running thing with the Cohens, e.g. Fargo, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Big Lebowski). Another is the trippy way they frame scenes, especially the "Bowling Flashback" (which I'm pretty sure is the only time you actually see Jeff Bridges' eyes in the entire film). Although I couldn't tell you why, this movie is really funny, and is definitely going in the collection.

Casino Royale
John Huston, Val Guest, Kenneth Hughes, Joseph McGrath, and Robert Parrish - (1967)
Starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Terence Cooper, John Huston, Orson Welles, and Deborah Kerr

There's no plot. I mean, there are so many different plots that it's hard to tell. Only one is based on the Ian Fleming novel of the same name. While this is a send-up of the 007 genre -- something I'm all for, as my recent Matt Helm and Our Man Flint viewings have shown -- it goes too far. Any film that starts to parody itself has also lost track of what it's supposed to be making fun of, and has thus begun to collapse. I liked bits of it, mostly dialogue ("Are you Richard Burton?" "No, I'm Peter Sellers." "Then you, sir, are the greatest man who ever lived.") and Deborah Kerr's Scots accent just about did it for me. Other than that, it's too silly, and doesn't even have the redeeming camp value of other British comedies (e.g. Passport to Pimlico or the Carry On series).

The Merchant of Venice
Michael Collins - (2004)
Starring Joseph Finnes, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, Lynn Collins

One of Speare's more troubling plays, The Merchant of Venice is a kind of half-comic, half tragic farce. Bassanio of Venice (Joseph Finnes) has fallen on hard times, but has a solution: if he can just marry the heiress Portia (Lynn Collins), she'll solve all his troubles. However, he needs three thousand ducats to make his suit, and so turns to Antonio (Jeremy Irons), the Merchant of the title. Antonio, however, has everything tied up in shipping, and thus can't give Bassanio the money—but he does have connections with Shylock (Al Pacino), a Jewish moneylender. Shylock, however, is not fond of Antonio, and so writes a compact stating that if Antonio be forfeit, he shall pay with a single pound of his own flesh.

The acting was spot-on, and much of the dialogue was intact (as was Titus, but not, say, Richard III). I suppose the only thing that bothers me about the play is the play itself, and in this day and age, I suppose it should. Though the director goes to pains in order to make Shylock more sympathetic, his case against Antonio is not entirely clear; does he also blame the merchant for the loss of his daughter? Has this loss—not a clear connection to begin with—driven him insane? Why does he suddenly convert, when moments before he was willing to let the Duke take his life? It doesn't hang, and maybe that's the point: if Shakespeare had let Shylock remain resolute to the end, then he may well have seen fit to kill him onstage, too, and incite the groundlings to further violence. Not, of course, that there were officially Jews in England in the early 17th century. It's a mess, though, and a really tough thing to stage, though that doesn't excuse Pacino's occasional hackneyed recitation of his lines. Watch out for Gareth Keenan as Leonardo, and Jason Sidor—er, Joseph Finnes as Bassanio.

Misfirings, or Cleaning up my scribblings file

=====
Because the novel is fundamentally bourgeious, set up to espouse the value of that class, any novel which purports to present values counter to those is flawed--and any novel that presents fully and accurately the values of, say, the Roman elite, the Carolingian empire, Zulu tribes, Marxism, or the Queché, is not a novel. Such a work is also therefore speculative fiction, because it experiements with the underpinnings of modern "accepted" literature.

********

Entering a completely virtual world where everything is under the control of the individual could well result in a world where no-one is connected at all, where isolation is the norm, and where the basic definition of human is "one who creates" But is it enough to be the creator? Might we not move on? If so, what happens to the created?

********

Everything is ritual. Going to the store is a ritual. Going to the movies is a ritual. Everything has to be done in its order, its place, its time. We are creatures of habit, the habit of stereotype and performance.

********

The second-person singular pronoun is the rhetorical equivalent of grabbing someone by the lapels of their coat and shouting in their face. It's too agressive.

********

       The Debate on Homosexuality continues:
       "What does Jesus say?"
       "Well in Leviticus--"
       "What does Jesus say?"
       "Well, St. Paul--"
       "What does JESUS say?"
       "Well, there's this bit in the beatitudes about adultery--"
       "Is that homosexuality?"
       "Well,no, but--"
       "Does he say anything or not?"
       "Um..."
       "Oh piss off."

********

"So that's it? I've made my contribution to the gene pool, and now I'm no longer needed? Sort of a 'Wham, bam, thank you m'am' to Mother Earth?"

"I can't belive you just said 'wham, bam, thank you m'am'."

********

Part of being a teenager means discovering irony, which—unless you're British and doing it properly—most people will drop when they're about twenty-five or so. For the rest of us, there's a quick move into sarcasm—unless you're American, in which case you were doing that already—followed by the development of odd hair, myopic vision corrected by black-framed glasses, and a "pop sensibilty" (whatever that is).

********

I must be getting old: self-conscious irony is no longer sexy. Actually, most forms of sarcasm aren't that sexy, either, although it is nice to hear banter. I'm not only turning into my parents, I'm turning into my parents circa Red & Kitty Forman. Not that that's a bad thing, right?

********
A craving for breakfast foods can indicate serious levels of bordennia morbidis, which is a disease akin to the virus that causes lethargy (sarcopsychos princeps). You should see your pop culture specialist or neighborhood quack dealer right away. In the meantime, 4 out of 5 sober doctors recommend lunch; the fifth recommends martinis, and therefore doesn't count.

********

There should be a statute of limitations on how long after a relationship withers one is still allowed to contact the members of that relationship, e.g. "Oh, well, I'd love to stay and chat, but frankly it's been five years since I saw you last so this friendship's gone off. Sorry." or "After the break-up, the party of the second part is allowed to call the party of the first part until six months do pass."

********
And finally, for Opa:

From the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Mythical Beasts, 11th edition (2003); Oxford: OUP. Volume 7, page 832:

OUSKEHOBIN (var. oskahoben, owskehobbin, pl. -öben or -obens.) Any variety of the Family Mark-trollar, Genus Michegandiae. The ouskehobin is usually mottled tan or brown, about .5 - 1m tall, with thin, almost fairy-like extremities extending often the length of their bodies, forming their main survival camouflage as saplings or branches; their faces, like most trollar, are knobby and wide, and their bodies vary from squat to twig-thin. They have a knowledge level of three (somewhere between two and eight years old) and generally feed off of roots and berries. As with most trollar, they are usually nocturnal, although some vareities seem to be able to survive in daylight under the forest canopy. Their range, geographically speaking, is no farther south than the Ohio and no farther west than the Twin Cities; although some were sighted in the Ozarks, and there were reports of a few in the forests of Osaka, Japan, these remain unconfirmed.
During the early 20th century, it was belived that these creatures were descendants of the long-thought extinct Ent race; subsequent interviews with Redsage Treeshaker and Ironskin the Fair (Genivive Michelsson, She Spoke to Trees, U Chicago 1973) revealed that the Ents had not produced offspring for seven thousand years, and had no memory of the Ouskehöben race.
Following the genetic survey of Bill O'Woolfe, the troll-ancestor of the Ouskehöben appears to have been brought to the New World with the Icelanders in the early 11th century (Keitel Blackhair, "Voyage to Markland", ch. 39; cf. "The Saga of Hronbiter the Odd", ch 17). Few survived the crossing, and those that did quickly interbred themselves to near-extinction before the arrival of the Cornish and Swedish Knockers (1789-?1820), with whom the weakened markland-trollar crossbred to produce the Ouskehobin. The current population is stable, although rarely seen.
Attempts at preservation, including a captivity-breeding programme outside of Stockholm and an attempted transplant to Finland, have yet proved unsuccessful due to the particular energy of the forests of the Upper Midwest. They cannot survive outside of forests without special care.
Status: Endangered but stable.
Warning: DANGEROUS. Owing to their almost-pixie like nature, Ouskehöben are very mischievous, often to the point of extreme danger. These trollar still posses "iron skin" and will not die easily; their "fun and games" can often be quite deadly.

Crazy White Man

I watched Dead Man today. It's really interesting, and I may have to watch it again to really get some of it. Full plot over at Wikipedia (click above).

I also have a pretty good thing going with Glendale apartments. I filled out an application and gave them a deposit. The only shaky part is that I'm buying out a guy's lease, and he's moving in with his girlfriend, but when I met them both today they seemed okay, so hopefully all will be well. Barring cupidial intervention or the discovery of a criminal record as yet unknown to me, I should be moving on the 25th of July. I don't want to jinx it too much, and I certainly won't feel okay until I'm standing in the middle of the apartment with all my stuff in it, but things look to be possibly heading in the direction of being okay.

Now to discover the Leading German Medieval Literature Journal.

Frühling für Hitler und Deutchland!

=====

For those of you who don't live in my head (and I'm pretty sure that's most of you), the USPS decided that my order to forward mail to my parents after the first of July meant "as soon as possible." As a result, I lost two days of mail, and had it start up just in time to get a letter saying the University wants my building gone (that's another story--and a hell of a weekend of waiting for 8:00 on Monday). The upshot of the mail bit was that it started on a day when Netflix was due. So after many long days of me wondering just where in the hell my Netflix DVDs went, I got them today: Richard III (1995); The Producers (1968); and Dead Man (1995). The last will have to wait, since it's late right now and I do have school tomorrow, but the other two were pretty interesting.

Richard III stars Ian McKellen as the title incarnation of pure evil, and it damn well shows. In fact the movie is almost entirely McKellen and his Dr. Evil smirk, so much so that when the play ends (spoiler) with his plunging to firey death, it... ends. Right there. No "and Henry Bollinbroke became King of All England and Order was Restored in time for Catholocism to fall and Capitalism to Rise." In fact, though it's been a while since I've read the play, I'm pretty sure there were other speaking parts. Don't get me wrong--it was great acting, great sets, great idea (hm, Fascist 30's Britain = the late 15th century), it just didn't work out well, and was so tied up with R3 that a lot of the usual 'Speare story got lost. As a reviewer at Netflix said:

This is an "alternate history" version of the play, a lavishly realized fascistic England in the '30s. I don't see that this aspect of the film really "says" much about either element: Shakespeare's vision of calculated and self-conscious villainy, or the director's vision of Nazi Germany. It's elaborate but insubstantial window dressing which will delight some (i.e., me) and distress or annoy others. [T]his is streamlined Shakespeare, with a substantially reduced word count, which is likely to be distressing to some viewers and indeed troubles me.

The Producers was also pretty good, except that it felt rushed toward the end. Otherwise, though, it felt, well, exactly like a late-sixties camp comedy, complete with drag, drawn out musical numbers, and random fetishistic scopophilia.

A Max Byalastock production.

Bonus: Latin Ramblings

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Quaestio: An amor labor est.
     Majus: Labor omnia vincit (Vergil Gerogics 1.145).
          Labor > omnia.
     Majus: Omnia vincit amor (Ovid, Amores)
          Amor > omnia.
     Minus: Labor non est omnia. (Aristotle)
     Minus: Amor non est omnia. (Aristotle)
     ERGO: Amor est labor; labor est amor.
     Quod eras demonstrandum.
Quaestio: Quod labori est amor?

Omnis Mulieres sunt semper nuptiis; si non, sunt non boni cognoscendi.
All women are married; if they ain't, they ain't worth knowin'.
-- Samuel Johnson (on a tuesday afternoon, well into his cups)

Mulieres mirant quomodo viros irrumatores esse. Vir omnis qui irrumator est ob solis. Solicitia torquat; solicitia ob eros pertorquat.
Women wonder why it is that men are bastards. Every man who is a bastard is so because he is lonely. Lonliness twists; lonliness on account of eros twists the hardest.
-- Charles Bukowski (on a tuesday afternoon, well into his meds)

Quod est libertas, ut peramatus est?
What is liberty, to be so loved?

The Vinyl Kings: A Little Trip

(CD Review originally posted at: CD Baby).
=====

One of the things that's so interesting about the Beatles is that they spanned a wide variety of music in their relatively brief musical career, and continued to do so well after their breakup ("... and Wings" notwithstanding—sorry Paul). This is important to keep in mind when approaching The Vinyl Kings, a band whose biggest sell is that they sound like the Beatles—and they do, all too well. A Little Trip, their first album, is jam-packed with the kind of songs that make us dig out the old LPs, pointy boots, and the marching band jackets, and like Rob Fleming in High Fidelity, listen to the music that belongs to us, that will "make me feel something, (but) they won't make me feel anything bad."

And that's all well and good, but with A Little Trip the Vinyl Kings have captured the Beatles sound in a hyper-compressed form—which is to say that it's a great disc, but the Beatles of Meet the Beatles are not exactly the same as those of Sgt. Pepper, and entirely different than those of The Beatles (aka The White Album). A Little Trip is exactly as advertised: it is a collection of Beatles-esque music that feels like someone's mix tape of personal hits. This is fine, up to a point: "Bang Bang" feels wrong, as if in the midst of the singer's tirade against the industry the Lennon mask has slipped a bit; and "Chocolate Cake" is a pastiche of both "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Savoy Truffle" that manages be more confusingly strange than both. This album has the overall feeling of demo tape, a sort of "look what we can do" to the world, and while that is no doubt the point of A Little Trip, it doesn't quite gel as an album. Nevertheless it's good to hear this kind of music again, and I look forward to hearing their next album.

Gladly would he learn, and gladly speech

=====
Well, I'm pulling this York stuff together for Quinn, and it looks to be really fun. I'm also hoping to take it to SEMA this fall--which means I should probably get that abstract sent off soon. I meet with Quinn to discuss abstracts this week, and once that's done, hopefully I'll go ahead and send the blasted thing off. Of course, I should probably also write the paper. That would be good.

I'm thinking of dusting off the conference version of Masculinites in Question and maybe sending the abstract to the Leeds Conference people. I don't have a chance in hell of getting in, but it should be fun nevertheless--and imagine if I did get in. . . . Mmm. . . Britian. If I did get in, I'd have to start buying currency NOW so it's not $500 to the pound like it will be in 2006. I need to start playing the game, though, which means kicking my way toward that House of Fame:

They gonne doun on knees falle
Before this ilke noble quene,
And seyde, 'Graunte us, lady shene,
Ech of us, of thy grace, a bone!'
And somme of hem she graunted sone,
And somme she werned wel and faire;
And somme she graunted the contraire
Of hir axing utterly.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer, The House of Fame III.1534-41

In the immediate future, however, I've also got a paper to write for Booker on Iron Council, and some kind of paper for Cohen that should also be worked on, erm, real soon. I did get an outline up for the Booker paper, but I may have to block off a week of solid research to get both of those going soon. Yay for Spring Break, in which I will rest, fix the car, visit my folks and my other folks, and not get a damn thing done.

No other real news. I'm kind of woozy still from Liam and Jessica's "Wine and Cheese Snob Party" yesterday, and I have a minor headache that may be dehydration and may be sinuses (the weather was 70*F yesterday, and is roughly 43*F today--with Snow expected by tomorrow evening). *sigh*

Blue Monk

======
So, what can I say, but it's been a long time. This weekend has been especially capitalistic. For some reason I was knocking about on (An auction site which shall remain nameless) and bid on a few Ipods, all of which were underbid from me in a span of microseconds. That set off a reaction involving those free-ipod sites (especially since they're offering the photo-Ipod now), which turn out to be all above-board and legal except that they want you to a) sign yourself up for evil junk-mail; b) want you to refer ten (count 'em--as if I had that many enemies) friends to the site, and then they have to sign themselves up for spam. I just don't want an Ipod bad enough to jeopardize my relationship with ten people.
I finished Mrs. Dalloway today (London Lit); it's a bear to read, but it's both a modernist novel and stream-of-consciousness. I'm not a fan of stream-of-consciousness novels (not that you'd believe it reading this). My own thoughts are hard enough to deal with on a daily basis; I don't need other people's thrown into the mix. I also graded a few exams and have started Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which looks to be funny. It also starts with the main character complaining about the small amount of coin in his pocket, which made me realise once again that I don't have specimins of shillings (1/-), happence (.5d), or threpence (3d), and sent me back to the auction site for the odd experience of paying money for money that's not money any mon- er, more.
I should probably get back to "work," especially since I need to figure out what I'm doing tomorrow. I leave you with this:
"Jesus MUST be Mormon--look how many brides he has!"

Good night, Mrs. Calabash--wherever you are!