Joke? Crappy editing?
I’m reading Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, mostly because I want to watch the movie (big Coen Bros. fan here) but I want to read the book first.
It’s a fun book but it’s really not too deep. Based on my N of 1/2 a McCarthy book, James Crumley has a hell of a lot more to say and he says it with a much less affected style. I don’t like the lack of dialog quotes, the almost complete absence of speaker attribution, the dropped punctuation (McCarthy dont need no stinkin apostrophes!), the sentence fragments, the thick vernacular. Nevertheless, all of those pretentious quirks aside, NCfOM is a fun ride.
But I DIDN’T expect to find, in an otherwise humorless book,
Who must think that he thought that they thought that he thought they were very dumb. He thought about that.
Wow. Pulled me right out of the book. I can’t remember who said it, but there’s an old quote about cutting the “good bits.” I’m sure the author of that quote didn’t mean you should edit out ALL the good bits, but rather, you should cut the bits of which you are particularly, smugly proud. IMO, those two sentences qualify.
In other news: I’m a little over 25K words into my WiP. Not bad for, what? a couple of months of weekend writing? (Yeah, Tammy, I underestimated the word count when I talked to you the other night. Could have knocked me over when I checked it the next day.)
I have mixed feelings about this novel. On the one hand, I think this is some of the best stuff I’ve ever written. On the other, I’m terrified because I don’t know where it’s going. Which is kind of fun-scary in a way, too; I’m looking forward to seeing how this all works out, but I’m afraid I’ll write myself into a cul-de-sac. It’s happened before.
D.
Maybe it wasn’t one of my better jokes
. . . but this commenter takes me waaay to seriously.
This is stupid. Obviously the author doesn’t know the traits of someone who truly has steatopygia. Jennifer Lopez is not even close to having the condition (the angle from back to butocks must be 90 degrees). The correct term to describe her bottom would be “callipygia” which is a “well-shaped buttocks”. All of you are probably so used to seeing women with little or no buttocks that a slight protrusion would be steatogypia to you.
What’s at issue? Follow me below the fold.
The Speech
(Hate politics? Skip to the kitty.)
Read the full text or watch the video of Barack Obama’s speech here.
The man belted this one straight out of the park. I haven’t been this moved by a political speech since Edwards dropped out of the race — and, no, I don’t think Edwards could have given a speech like this.
As usual, other people have said it a lot better than I can. The empathy, the honesty, the intelligence, the logic of the speech floored me. What a relief from the foul winds we’ve been breathing for the last seven years — for decades, really.
Anyway, here is my inarticulate praise, which I posted at Daily Kos:
Effective, moving, logical
LOGICAL. The product of a brain not running on corn meal mush and twine with little twisty-ties holding one part to the other part and rubber bands for a power source.
I loved it.
***
Sorry about the political post. I know MOST of you don’t come here for politics. So here’s a pooty.
And because none of you want to talk politics (just guessin’), here’s my question for the evening:
How many of your grandparents were fond of spewing embarrassing racial slurs, ethnic epithets, or other random bits of nasty prejudicial slime?
I’ll kick it off. One of my grandmothers once said, “I hate those Chinese . . . ever since Pearl Harbor.”
D.
Doing our part to pull America out of the recession
Not much from me tonight, I’m afraid; we got home rather late from our weekend trip to Eureka. We spent money, lots of money (hence the title), on CostCo and PetsMart and a bookstore and restaurants etc.
But the big ticket item came today. A new car, perhaps? Down-payment on a vacation cabin? Hardly. Karen went to see a pain medicine specialist for a shot in the ass. Two shots in the ass, to be precise. She screwed herself up when she fractured her pelvis back in ’05 (it’s the 12-19-05 entry, if anyone’s reeeeally curious) and now, more than two years later, we’re still trying to make her better.
“Discouraging” barely begins to cover it.
She did the shots once before and they did nothing for her. That was with another doc, though, and this doc thinks, well, some docs got it, some don’t. Okay, I’ll buy that, but that’s not where I’m putting my hope. I’m putting my hope in the sheer perversity of the human body, its ability to react one way to Treatment A on one day, and the exact opposite way to the exact same Treatment A on another day.
Ugh. I’m tired. I doubt I’m doing a good job expressing myself. Anyway, she’s fine, thanks, but it won’t be clear for another day or two whether this was a big fat waste of time, hope, and money.
But it’s not a waste of money, is it? We’re bolstering the sagging US economy, yeah!
Back to work tomorrow so I can pay for all of this.
D.
PS: Sorry for not visiting your blogs, sorry for not even doing a great job replying to comments. I’ll do better.
Get a room!
Ye who ken dreams well, interpret me this:
It’s Sunday morning and the wife and I are having sex. Everything is fine and dandy, but then I notice the big picture window behind our bed is wide open and the neighbors in the apartments next door can see into the bedroom without any trouble at all. No one is looking, mind you, but they could. It’s bloody distracting.
It takes an extraordinary effort to close the drapes — hey, it’s an old house, everything is buggy here — but in the end I am victorious, and we resume our activities.
Seconds later, the contractor and two of his guys traipse through, on their way from one part of the house to another. I cover Karen up, shout, “Hey!” and they apologize and leave by way of the full-service gym which has suddenly appeared in the back part of our bedroom.
If you blew off Steak and BJ day, don’t fret
You can still make it up to your disappointed man.
He waited all year for this day, and what did you do? Fixed him vegie burgers and gave him a kiss on the cheek good night. Maybe you didn’t understand his crestfallen expression; maybe you didn’t realize he had abstained from caffeine and alcohol and had been eating nothing but pineapple for the last three days. Maybe you didn’t notice the two inch-and-a-half-thick rib eye steaks he’d left in the fridge along with the note, TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT!!!!! And maybe you thought it was an accident that someone had changed your homepage to this one — on Firefox, Netscape, and Internet Explorer.
You don’t even use Internet Explorer.
So, now that you see the error of your ways, you want to do something to put your relationship back on track, and you don’t think you can afford to wait until any of those other holidays. What will you do?
Simply tell him, yes, you knew all about March 14, but you figured he would much rather celebrate April 14.
Special dinner
In college, my friend Sam lived in a co-op called Ridge Project. Once each quarter, they would have something called Special Dinner. The Special part was, I gather, the lack of Tuna Jello on the menu. Sam had me over for Special Dinner once, but I don’t remember what they served. I was too effed up on Olde English 800.
Hmm. Maybe that was the special part.
For tonight, I made filet mignon wrapped in bacon, seared on a cast iron pan, dressed in mushrooms and shallots; steamed broccoli; focaccia. Dessert: classic strawberry shortcake with buttermilk biscuits, fresh strawberries, and mascarpone whipped cream.
All dinners are Special at Chez Walnut. This has nothing to do with Steak and BJ Day.
***
Admittedly, I’m violating the spirit of the holiday by preparing the steak myself. St. Fellatia would not be pleased.
***
I was trying to explain chastity belts to Jake when I found this image. Owie.
***
Ever wonder what you get when you search Flickr for Steak and BJ Day? The answer below the cut.
Note to those of you who are fond of saying “I should know better than to follow your links”: DON’T GO BELOW THE CUT.
Thirteen Pets, Part 1
When old friends call, they ask about the pets. All through med school and residency, my wife and I were notorious for our critters. Never anything too exotic, mind you — I never did get that spider monkey I wanted so much as a kid (blame Curious George) — but exotic enough that our friends never forget the menagerie.
One of the neat things about a Thirteen is that it lets you see your life through a variety of lenses. I’ve done Thirteens on food, sex, crushes, dreams, patients, you name it. I’m flabbergasted that I’ve never done one on pets. Really. ‘Cuz I’m all about animals.
Caption Contest
I’m working on a Thirteen for later this evening. In the meantime, have fun with this.
An aside: doesn’t Spitzer’s wife look like she could be Jennifer Aniston’s mom?
D.
This is funny: What I Expect From MY 5500 Dollar A Night Hooker