A Necessarily Long Excerpt from I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal

"The very same day, news came that the Emperor of Ethiopia had brought his own cooks with him, and that they were going to prepare an Ethiopian specialty right here in our hotel, because we had the gold cutlery just like the Emperor of Ethiopia. The day before the banquet the cooks and their interpreter arrived, shiny and black, complaining of the cold. Our cooks were to be their assistants, but our chief cook felt insulted and took off his apron and left in a huff. The Ethiopian cooks began by making several hundred hard-boiled eggs. Laughing and grinning, they then brought in twenty turkeys and put them in our ovens to roast, then mixed dressing in enormous bowls, using thirty baskets of rolls and fistfuls of spices, and they brought a cartload of parsley, which our cooks chopped up for them. We were all dying to see that these black fellows would concoct...We were shocked when they had two antelopes brought in from the zoo, already gutted, and they quickly skinned them and roasted them in the biggest roasting pans we had, with huge chunks of butter and a bagful of their spices, and we had to open all the windows because of their fumes. Then they put the stuffing in the half-roasted turkeys, and the turkeys into the antelopes, and hundreds of hard-boiled eggs to fill the empty spaces, and they roasted everything together. But no one, not even the boss, was prepared for what happened next. The Ethiopian cooks had a live camel brought to the hotel and they wanted to slaughter it on the spot...They tied up the camel, who was bleating, Noooo,noooo, as if to say, Don't cut my throat, but one of the cooks cut his throat anyway, with a kosher knife, and there was blood all over the courtyard, and then they hauled the camel up by his hind legs with a block and tackle and took out his heart and lungs and liver and things. Then they had three wagonloads of wood delivered, and while the fire depatment stood by with their hoses ready the cooks quickly made a huge fire, let it burn down until only the glowing coals remained, then barbequed the camel on a spit supported by tripods. When the camel was almost done, they put into it the two antelopes with the stuffed turkeys inside them, and fish as well, and lined the cavity with hard-boiled eggs, and kept pouring on spices, and...our own cooks were...slowly turning the stuffed camel over the glowing coals and basting it with bundles of mint leaves dipped in beer...Two assistants brought two huge cutting boards into the middle of the dining room, fastened them together with clamps, set the camel down on this enormous table, and brought in the knives and sliced the camel in half with broad strokes, then cut each half in half again. A stupendous aroma spread through the room. In every slice there was a piece of camel and antelope, and inside the antelope a slice of turkey, and inside the turkey some fish and stuffing and little circles of hard-boiled eggs...we served the roast camel. It must have been wonderful because all the guests fell silent and the only sound came from the clinking of all those golden knives and forks. Then something happened that neither I nor anyone else...had ever seen before. First, a government counselor, a well-known epicure, was so enraptured with the barbecued camel that he stood up and yelled with an expression of bliss on his face. But it tasted so delicious that not even that yell was enough, so he did what looked like a gymnastics routine, then started pounding his chest, then ate another piece of meat dipped in the sauce. The black cooks stood there...their eyes on the Emperor, but the Emperor must have seen this kind of thing before because he just smiled...Finally, the counselor couldn't contain himself any longer and ran out of the hotel shouting and dancing and cheering and beating his chest, and then he ran back in again and there was a song in his voice and a dance of thanksgiving in his legs."

Saraband

Jessica and I watched Saraband this evening. That is all I can safely say. I know that I watched it. I could, in theory, describe the plot. I might even be able to critique various performances. I am in no position, however, to give you any idea what the film is really about. I also could not tell you if that sweet Swedish girl was having a weird (read: sexual) relationship with her father or if the Swedes are merely "like that". In fact, there are more things that I cannot tell you about the movie than things I can tell you, so I will commence telling you all of the things that I cannot tell you.







I am going to launder my khakis now.

Tomorrow, Jessica and I will sup on SmartChicken.

Richard Cory by Edward Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I am not sure that I don't prefer Simon and Garfunkel.

An Unpleasant Way to Die

Zeno of Citium, the father of Stoicism, died around 264 BC. Laërtius reports about his death: "As he left the school, he tripped, fell and broke a toe. Hitting the ground with his hand, he cited words of Niobe: "I am coming, why do you call me thus?". Since the stoic sage is expected to do always what is appropriate and Zeno was very old at the time, he felt it appropriate to die and consequently strangled himself.
(from Wikipedia)

In more recent news, I have discovered last.fm Internet Radio. For some weeks, I have been at odds with music. I still listen to it, but without the acute interest and pleasure that I am accustomed to experiencing. I thought that I was just bored with certain genres so I downloaded some Mogwai, some Maria Callas, some Edith Piaff, and some Buckwheat Zydeco; I found no relief and no pleasure. I briefly found myself entranced by La Marseillaise, but there are only so many times you can listen to such a stirring song without joining the French Foreign Legion. So that is what I have done.
Goodbye.


Or rather, I might have joined the Foreign Legion if I hadn't found last.fm and begun using it. I apparently registered for it on March 30th, didn't download the software, and didn't give it another thought until last weekend when I listened to 100 songs by artists I hadn't necessarily even heard of. I listened to Odetta, Hubert Sumlin, R.L. Burnside and Memphis Slim. I also listened to Barbecue Bob, Sonny Terry, and a boppin' and hoppin' sort of fellow named Chan Romero who is basically Richie Valens without knowing it.

In conclusion, God bless last.fm and qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!

A Healthful Day

Today was a healthful day. It was full of activities to nurture the mind, the body, and the spirit. Today I awakened early because a young man who is early to rise has a day's worth of opportunities to enjoy. I bathed and breakfasted, enjoying Honey Nut Cheerios. I packed myself a nutritious and delicious lunch, consisting of a whole-wheat bagel with deli turkey and a slice of cheddar cheese. I accoutered myself in my working attire: grey slacks, a collared oxford cloth shirt, and shoes that may or may not be black. I also wore a pair of black socks and grey boxer-briefs. So attired, I joined Jessica at the bus stop where we met the 10 W Gold and rode it to campus. I disembarked first. Today was my first day of Introduction to International Relations, my summer school class. It merits mention, but no discussion in this blog; I am taking this class and that is all there is to it. Still, my attendance constitutes an action that is possibly healthful to the mind. Afterward, I met with Jessica and consumed my nutritive lunch--two actions which are good for the soul and body, respectively. Later, I went to work. Work isn't good for anything, but at work I consumed an iced coffee. This was entirely necessary because I awakened early to take advantage of all kinds of theoretical opportunites and desperately needed caffeine to continue in that vein. After work, Jessica and I went to the gym. I know. Totally unexpected. We exercised too. I was of the opinion that today's trip to the gym should be a sort of scouting mission, a means by which to acquaint ourselves with this new territory. Jessica, however, had other plans and in the end she ruled the day. This behavior was so damn healthful (for the body, though certainly not for the spirit) that I suspect we will be sore for days. We revived the spirit by frying up some homemade mozzarella sticks. We enjoyed them out on the balcony with some of my homme-made spaghetti sauce. (Homme-made is not a typo so much as a pun. It is good for the soul, too.) Then we repaired to Bar Giuliani where I completed my assigned International Relations reading and Jessica read the New Yorker. The New Yorker is also good for the soul. Textbooks are good for nothing. We had some gelato though, and that more than made up for the awful texts that I've been assigned.

Now we're going to watch Frasier and go to sleep. (Good for the soul.)

I hope I have a less healthful day tomorrow. This one has been a violent shock to my system and I doubt I can withstand another one any time soon.

From Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

'I don't think scapegoating is the best description,' he says cautiously. 'Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious power behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the goat's back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. it worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died, and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help. Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism. The censor was born, in the Roman sense. Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was replaced by the purge.'

Where the Poop Grows by Shel Silverstein

In today's news, Jessica totally schooled me in the world of plausible lying.
For those of you who know me, you know that this is the only activity of mine that can accurately be called a hobby. It consists of making bizarre statements with no factual basis with as much conviction and credibility as one can muster. One of my personal triumphs came last semester in my poetry class when we were discussing the hygenic basis for circumcision. A young lady remarked that the penis stays cleaner without a foreskin. And I said, "Actually, that's where the phrase 'Keep your nose clean' came from. It was a corruption of 'Keep your penis clean'."
It was a success. A success is defined by the number of people who believe it. My remark caused a silence to fall over the room. Almost everyone had taken it, but someone had the temerity and cynicism to ask, "Is that really true?"

"It might be," I answered.

With that introduction to my favorite pasttime, I must now tell you why I love Jessica. She got me. ME! I am the king of making shit up and she totally got me. We were lolling about after watching Clueless, a classic of American Cinema, and I mentioned that my mother used to read me Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky often and that it was my favorite poem as a child. It didn't have anything to do with Clueless, but that's kind of how our conversations go. Jessica, after ridiculing my predictable and apparently trite childhood fascination with Carroll's poem of sing-song violence and parental pride, said, "When I was a little girl, my favorite poem was Where the Poop Grows, by Shel Silverstein." There was a moment. There always is a moment after a plausible lie in which the liar must wait and see if the bait will be taken. There's always a pause before you know how hard your listener will bite. In those brief seconds, I considered that Jessica might be lying. I considered that she was smirking viciously. I also considered that Shel Silverstein was a weird fucking guy and that I was hardly familiar with every one of his works. I lay there, tottering on the brink of belief...

And I fell.

As I reached for my laptop and googled Where the Poop Grows by Shel Silverstein, Jessica convulsed with mirth and, between girlish snorts and charming giggles, revealed her duplicity.

Oh, if ever there was a girl for me...