Revisiting Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

"Now that you mention it, let's see. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and the each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much; Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late. Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty. . . . Toi, apocryphe lecteur, mon semblable, mon frére. It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos. Soon the poor man is seeing things: Help, there are locusts all over my bed, make those trumpets stop, where's all this blood coming from? The others say he's drunk, or maybe it's arteriosclerosis. . . . Who knows, maybe it really happened that way."

Bad Dream

A pale Indian man is standing outside. He's standing just outside the back door. He's close to the back door, but he doesn't touch it. He's pale like he's sick and he's sweating and there are deep bags under his eyes and he's so very pale and he's standing just outside the backdoor. He's staring, but he's not looking. He's close, but he's not touching. And now, he's tapping on the glass. He's sweating and pale and just outside the back door and I pull the curtain aside and I see him and I'm shocked and you are too and the Indian man doesn't respond and he's moist with sweat, but not wet with it and I yell at him, though the glass of the door. I shout and scream and gesture and he doesn't respond and I see in his hand a small plastic cup of urine and I see a bead of sweat drip down his face from the crown of his balding head. I shriek at him and I stamp my feet and he doesn't move and his glass of urine is getting darker and fuller and it's overflowing over his pale knuckles and he's still standing and he's still staring through his wet eyelashes and he's starting to cry and so am I and it's raining.

And I go out and I scream at him and I stamp my feet and I start to kick him in the backs of his knees and in his ankles and he stumbles passively to the side before he goes down and there's urine pooling on the back porch and I'm kicking him harder and harder and he won't respond and I'm screaming at him and he's lying there, unprotected and uninterested, tears are running down his face, but he's not crying. I am. And urine is everywhere and I keep kicking him and I keep yelling at him and he never responds and it feels like I never wake up.

Until I do, sobbing.

And in the News...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 — Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.

The surge in contributions came from a Who’s Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon, starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports.

"The idea that John Rockefeller could be bought is kind of ridiculous," said Matt Bennett, vice president for Third Way, a moderate Democratic policy group that has supported immunity for the phone carriers.

"That these companies are going to focus their lobbying efforts where their business interests are is no revelation," Mr. Bennett said. "That’s the standard Washington way of doing business. But you’re not going to buy a Rockefeller."

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/washington/23nsa.html

I like there isn't much about integrity here. I like that you cannot buy a Rockefeller because, well, you can't afford to buy a Rockefeller. It's not that Rockefellers don't take bribes, it's more that there isn't enough money to bribe them. It'd be like donating coal to Congressman Newcastle or donating stupid to, to, uh, stupid people.

Bless America, God!
No, seriously; do it, or we'll kill you again.

What Will Be, Will Be

Aunt Trudy's organic baklava in a box is not very good. It lacks the moisture essential to a good piece of baklava. That moisture is a sticky little something I like to call honey. We're not romantically involved, I assure you. I call it honey because that is its name. I have an Aunt Honey also. She's very nice, but won't return my calls. She is not essential to a good piece of baklava. The baklava was suitably flaky, but without moisture, it was like eating a huge lump of scabs. Scabs. With a wad of ground nuts at the center.
C-

Jones Soda Company has made many mistakes. Their root beer is the worst I have tasted. They discontinued my once-favorite beverage, the Pineapple-Upside Down Soda. They also make limited edition seasonal sodas that taste like certain seasonal foods, like turkey, regurgitated and carbonated. Today, a coworker was kind(?!) enough to give me an eight-ounce can of Jones Candy Corn soda. In eight ounces, Candy Corn soda packs a whopping thirty-two grams of sugar and ton of yellow dye. At first taste, it is merely palettable. At second, it is barely so. At third, it is nearly so. And so it goes. After eight ounces, I can happily say I will never drink that fluorescent, effervescent, putrescent shit ever again. I can say, with great certainty, that Jones has successfully canned and marketed the urine of diabetics.
D+

Jessica and I continued our tour of Chicago by wine. We've sampled Kenwood, Ravenswood, and Blackstone Cabernet Sauvignons. We will steer clear, however, of anything named Calumet Heights. Those we've tried have all been more or less delicious. I know nothing about wine except whether it tastes good or not at a particular moment and these were all basically good while I was drinking them, I guess. I'm not afraid to say that they beat the hell out of Candy Corn Soda. Also, I must note that none of these wines have any connection to Chicago aside from the fact that they were purchased and consumed there, and that the wineries each bear the name of a Chicago street and/or neighborhood. That's all that motivates us to buy them and that's all that motivates us to drink them.
A trio of ambivalent A-'s

Buffalo burgers are delicious. Native Americans knew what was going on. I would eat a buffalo right now, if I saw one. I would probably like to eat a bear, too. And an ostrich.
A

Also, I kind of like listening to Sophia Loren singing. I just NetFlixed Houseboat (1958). I am sure my roommates will be thrilled.

Que sera sera...
whatever will be, will be...
the future's not ours to see...
Que sera sera...

Someone with my name resides in Boulder, Colorado. He drives a white Jeep. He works at The Livable Home Store with Julia, Amy, and Judy. He's also friends with a decorator named Beth, who, in turn, has a friend named Kathleen. Kathleen needs a man. Julia found a dog once. Amy had an accident of some kind back in September. Jeff sometimes moonlights as a tutor of elementary school students. Julia is married to a fellow named Nelson. They all fucking love mojitos and they all probably have coffee table books and digital bathroom scales that are made of glass and maybe one even collects paperweights or snow globes. Maybe.

I have many of their email addresses and phone numbers. I also have the name of one of Jeff's students and his parents.

Can you hazard a guess why?

Because, my friends, none of his friends know his fucking email address. They know mine.

I'll spare you the replies I've sent them all, but I assure you they were unsuitably harsh.

Giving Up

Sometimes I don't mind getting sick because in my soul of souls I feel like I feel like I ought to feel because, goddamnit, I'm sick sick sick sick in my soul and not in the quiet way that lies abed and not in the gentle and graceful way that people die on those rare occasions in the movies when they die gracefully and fall gravely into their graves. My sickness has mucous and snot and it hacks and throbs in a filmy phlegmy way without drama. And it's deep deep deep deep and the fourth is always unintuitive; it's off-balance and contrived, but who the fuck are you to tell me what's contrived and what isn't? Where's the superiority of the natural and what’s wrong with my cement trees and concrete mountains, my pools of motor oil and my semen-streaked stars? Where does it say that I can't build a scabby sand castle of my own to lie in and hack up ectoplasm?— the thick scum that people are born from and borne through, the first viscous shit that we crawled out of in the long ago times before my grandparents were small, smaller than they are now, even? Where the fuck does it say I can’t sleep in this filth?

I can’t sleep in this filth.

And where does it say I can't be a fascist? And where does it say people should have free speech? And who the fuck says I have get married and who are you to tell me that Alexander Calder is an artist? Damn art and expression and all the futile screaming into the wind, all that Sisyphean empty torment. And, dear friend, who needs a parenthetical when you can run a sentence dead over the horizon, sweating and foamy and heaving into the fucking dirt? Not the point.

Because sometimes I don't mind getting sick when it's so clear that everyone around me is sicker and getting sicker, drowning in dread every gray-black morning and puking ashes into the filthy sink and stumbling through sandpaper days that tear at them and shred the soft skin of their cheeks and throats and breasts and leave them raw and streaked, with flesh—real flesh—peeking though the skin and weeping sacred red?

And who can stop? Who can stop when there’s so much forward momentum and creation itself is pushing you forward, urging you on toward the flat horizon and its attainable goals, tiny worthless mile markers that will show you how far you’ve come, but never how far you still have to go? I can’t stop the unending and I'll never fill the empty. The filthy will stay filthy and the wells will overrun and even if I stop crying there will be enough to drown the soggy earth and the parched people on it. And even if the words don’t make sense and they taste like sawdust in my mouth, will I keep tearing my voice with them?

I will keep tearing my voice with them.

Probably and probably not. Yes and no. Because they’ll keep flooding out, leaking out, or they’ll form sticky endless gallons inside me.

You can’t fill the empty and you can’t empty the full.

And when you’re 20 or thirty or 40 or more, and you’re standing naked and you see the leanness, the hungry something still eating you inside or outside and sucking on your essence like a Jolly Rancher. . .

The empty won’t ever fill and the full could never go empty and nothing will ever be even and it can’t ever be quite fair.

And when you’re standing without pants in the morning chill, with your socks and shoes and coat and hat strewn upon the asphalt around you, you won’t understand any more than you do fully dressed and in chains in the cage of the car.

And when you’re sick the way I’m sick, you’ll know when it’s time to give up and that giving up means going on because only the proud and the strong—and there are none left—would try to stay.

Let's go.

Television

Perhaps, my friends, I have been too hasty in my blanket condemnation of television. I've often repeated that there are only five good shows that have ever been on television: Arrested Development, M*A*S*H, Jeopardy!, Antique Roadshow, and Sports Night. Since that time (last week), I have been forced to recant that remark. Television is a vast wasteland, true, but there are pockets of brilliance hidden in plain sight.

There is House. House is a fine show. Fine. There are lots of seizures in the first season, but that's all right. Who doesn't love a good frothy seizure?

There is The Wire, and Weeds, and Dexter.

There are probably others. The point is, I was wrong, but only a little wrong. Californication is an all right show. I've seen a couple episodes of Six Feet Under and they were okay. I've watched more than a few episodes of Friends. I've seen Sex & the City and the Drew Carey Show. I've seen Seinfeld and Cheers.

Television is a vast cesspool of feces.
DESTROY YOUR TELEVISION.

Except Antique Roadshow.

Continuing to Live by Philip Larkin

Continuing to live—that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries—
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.

This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise—
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it's chess.

And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.

And what's the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,

On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.