Splash du Jour: Friday

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.
-- Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried --

Have a great Friday!
*****

They Don't Make 'Em Like That Anymore

I like a very wide variety of music. 
From AC/DC to Dvorak. 
It all depends on my mood, and I have many moods. A wide variety of moods.
After a really trying [difficult] work day I stopped at a Starbucks and read my book for a while, and then got in my car for the ride home. I flipped the dial on my radio and landed on our local country FM station. Instantly the chorus of a song caught my attention and I appreciated the honesty and clarity of the voice. It was truly beautiful, and what the guy was singing about made me think of my own father, now passed away. So I turned the volume up and even started singing along, even though I had never heard the tune in my life before. I made a note of the refrain, which was "they don't make 'em like that anymore" -- so I could look it up on Youtube when I got home. I found it, just as I was retrieving my phone messages from the day. There was one from my sister, about some "news" -- so I quickly called her.
Turns out one of our family's dearest friends died just yesterday. Good ol' Pastor Ness -- a man I had worked with many times when I myself was in the Christian ministry, decades ago in another lifetime. 
His 88 years on earth were spent loving God as sincerely as I think anyone could ever humanly accomplish. At the time she was telling me about this, the song from Youtube was already playing quietly on my computer. The guy was singing, "There's something 'bout that generation. These days I think we need 'em… more than we ever did before. But they don't make 'em like that anymore."
I'll admit, country music [in general] can be guilty of a penchant for hearkening back to a sort of idealizing of the past, usually with a steel-guitar twangin' away at your pancreas. But, that aside, I can't help but think there is a lot of truth to the general gist of the song. And the guy's voice is just incredible. His name is Jason Blaine and he's CANADIAN!
Just like ME!
Whether or not you're a fan of country music at all, I place the song here for you to have a listen yourself. It's as "country" as a big ol' wheat field with a tractor in the distance. Maybe it will touch you in a similar way to how it has touched me, this cold Thursday night in November.

  

Splash du Jour: Thursday

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
-- Gustav Mahler --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

-- Letterman's Top 10 --
Top 10 Signs You're A Lame Spy
 

10. You fear heights, loud noises, air travel, and enclosed spaces.
9. You insist on wearing a cape.
8. By day, you work at a hardware store; 
by night, you work another shift at the hardware store.
7. Everyone knows you can't swim.
6. Your only gadget: Cufflinks that shoot smaller cufflinks.
5. E-mail address is spyguy26@cia.gov.
4. 10 p.m., enter foreign country. 10:05 p.m., executed for espionage.
3. Insist on being paid in hugs.
2. Ex-girlfriends call you "003 1/2".
1. Only have a learner's permit to kill.

Have a great Wednesday!

*****

No Good Irish Writers? Say What?

Here is a pic of the last two books I read.
Coraline is terrific, I highly recommend it.
I just finished the John Banville one tonight and I loved it. The totally neat thing about The Infinities is that it is primarily narrated by the Greek god Hermes. And he's a real hoot. With this book Banville has taken the omniscient narrator thing to a unique level, with Hermes as mouthpiece. Here, several "gods" [like Zeus and Pan] descend and alter the lives of the Godley family, the patriarch of which is dying.
Adam Godley, a famous mathematical genius on a par with Einstein, has suffered a stroke [while defecating] one day.
Hey! It happens! It's nearly happened to me a time or two, in those same circumstances.
Anyhoo -- the family gathers at the ancestral manor to re-connect and await the imminent demise of Adam. But the gods have much to say about the proceedings. And do. 
Some of the stuff they do is pretty wild, actually. Just ask the pretty daughter-in law Helen, she'll tell ya!
Banville is a genius and I love this the best of the four books by him I have now devoured.

I was walking through the office at work with the book in hand today and told a certain person, "Hey, you should really read this book, it's terrific!" And he replied, "Nope. I won't read any Irish author because none of them are any good. Except maybe James Joyce."
And in one of those sadly recurring verbal moments when I suffer a brief aneurism [or maybe it was a stroke] I failed to come up with a good response for this racist statement.
But after thinking about it, I realized there are tons of great Irish authors I love.
Like Colm Toibin, William Trevor, Oscar Wilde, and if poetry counts, what about Yeats! 
And two Irish-Canadian writers come to mind -- Emma Donoghue and Brian Moore.
I think it's wrong to condemn any country in the world as having no good authors at work in it. 
Because there are great writers everywhere.
Maybe even especially in Ireland. Or like... CANADA!  
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Gotta hand it to this guy, he may not be exactly "romantic" but he's definitely creative!
I think I'm going to use his method of marriage proposal next time I get engaged!



Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Granny Godley was dying of a damaged heart and grimly turned over each new day like a playing card from a steadily diminishing deck, anticipating of each one that it would be the ace of spades, while what had come instead was this solemn-eyed coat card, this miniature queen of diamonds, swaddled and uncannily still and always looking at something far off to the side that only she it seemed could see, clutching in her white-knuckled fist the wilting flower of the future.
-- John Banville, The Infinities --
Have a great Monday!
*****

Where Were You on Nov.22nd, 1963?

Tonight I did my regular stint at Starbucks in the Chapters bookstore after work. Finished reading Coraline [loved it!] and started reading The Infinities by John Banville. And drank copious amounts of coffee.
I also did a good deed.
A couple next to me left the place, and about a half hour later I noticed the woman had forgotten her purse slung on the back of her chair. So I carried it up to the Starbucks people and they put it aside, pending her return for it. About another half hour later I saw them retrieving it, the woman all aflutter. Ahh, another anonymous good deed by Mr. Bookpuddle.  I'm a regular Haley Joel Osment -- "pay it forward" and all that jazz. Little do they know I took all her credit cards.
Just kidding.
Then I browsed books in the Neil Gaiman section [he seems to have a lot of real interesting ones in the Fantasy genre of the store] and soon found myself among a display of Stephen King's 2011 novel entitled 11/22/63.
I leafed through it and read a bit of the book club discussion ideas at the back.
The first one was a question. "Where were you the day JFK was shot?"
Hmmm… and so I wondered where I was at that time, in 11/22/63.
And it really took me down memory lane.
Because on that day, I was in an amniotic sac. Thankfully, it was my mother's.
And I was fixin' to get out of there.
12 days later I was born into the world.
When I think of 11/22/63 though, I always think that it was also a day when two literary greats did the reverse of what I was about to accomplish by being born.
They died.
C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley.
So it was an infamous day in many respects beyond the catastrophe of the assassination. 
The political world lost a great man, and the literary world lost two masters of the craft.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

 Have a great Friday!

*****

I've Been a'Whaling...

Well, just a brief word here because I've had a very tiring day at work. But I thought I'd drop by to say I finally finished reading Moby-Dick.
Wow, it was quite the book, definitely not for the casual-type reader out there, you've got to be fairly committed.
It's not until the last 40 pages or so [of nearly 600] that they even meet up with Moby!
But when they do -- all hell breaks loose, as it were.
Melville's description of the multiple battles are really unforgettable and worth the wait, in my opinion. It's really a terrific journey.
I think, looking back, what I loved the most was how Melville endowed Moby-Dick [the whale himself] with a sort of cognizance lacking in all the other encounters. Other whales seem to be taken by surprise, but not Moby -- Captain Ahab, in his insane vengeance has been on a one-track course regarding this one whale. He's been dreaming of payback time for the beast -- as Moby had previously left town with Ahab's leg. But, in the end it's been Moby all the while -- waiting for Ahab to reappear.
I'm not providing a review here, since most of you have probably read this book at one point in your life -- perhaps you were even forced to do so, in college. 
I came at it late in the game, and of my own free will.
Now I am sort of "cleansing my palette" with some lighter fare.
A little YA thing by Neil Gaiman, called Coraline.
And it's excellent excellent. Spooky. Scary. Delightfully weird.
So far, no whales -- but a lot of talking mice and rats and cats.
Cheers!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Don't ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read.
-- Neil Gaiman --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

PRESIDENT Obama.
Pointing somewhere, in and around, Utah maybe?
Thank you, America, for restoring my Canadian faith in, I don't know…
brains?
Have a great Wednesday!

*****

Early Valentines From Robert

Some of you may recall that I have somewhat chronicled a bit of the details surrounding my Overall Horticultural Ignorance, a while back.
I love plants, but I really don't know that much about them.
I once bought a plant from my local grocery store. 
It was like -- years ago.
I had no intention of buying a plant at the time. 
I was in the store with a fairly basic itinerary and agenda:
Find the hamburger section, and buy some.
But this silly plant caught my eye and so I took him home, naming him Robert Plant before we even got in the elevator together.
I placed him in a certain corner of my kitchen area, where he immediately began climbing the walls. He attaches little sucker things on to the wall [real neat] and just… climbs. 
But after a while I began sensing that he needed more pot.
[Robert Plant needs more pot, go figure! I should have known this from the get-go!]
So I went to Walmart and bought him some dirt and pot.
Since then he's been on a real high. A new lease on life. And I just took this new picture of his upper leaves. Whether there is any rational basis for what I am about to say, or not -- I don't care.
I'm going to interpret the distinct shape of these new leaves as an early Valentine message from my dear roommate, Robert.
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

There is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it.
-- Christopher Hitchens --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!

*****

On Writing: A Trifecta Writing Challenge

It's been a while since I took a shot at the ol' Trifecta Writing Challenge, but this weekend's prompt made me immediately think of the following response.
So here goes.
First, the prompt itself, and then my 33 words.

For this weekend's challenge, in honor of all of the writers throwing rationality (and perhaps sanity) to the wind and writing til their fingers bleed, we're asking for exactly 33 words about why we write.

When it comes down to it, there can be only one valid  reason to write. It is something that happens -- literally enters a fully prepared brain -- the moment that reading is not enough.

Be sure to visit Trifecta by clicking on the Trifectasaurus banner above.
Read the other entries. Play along. It's fun.
*****

A Nice Bookhaul: A Saturday Snapshot

I'm still wiping the drool off a few of these volumes I nabbed for a pittance, at my favourite annual used booksale. [Click to enlarge photo, you'll actually see some saliva...]
This stack should keep me busy in 2013.
"Wait a minute, though!" [This, in chorus, from several other stacks of books I have not read yet.]
Good point.
I keep buying. I keep reading, too, but I can't keep up, not even nearly, to what I WANT to read.
So look at this fine stack of lovelies. And there are several more that I picked up also, but I can't show them here because they are meant to be a gift for someone who will see them, if I show them. 
And that will ruin the surprise factor.
Suffice it to say that this, and a few more, cost me only $38.00.
What a steal. Have any of you read any of these? If so….. help me prioritize.
Tell me which should be moved to the top of the list, [or maybe avoided altogether] in my Bookpuddle intentions.
Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books. 
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

 Have a great Friday!

*****

Two Words in Ukrainian

This morning I awoke, as usual, so tired that it was an agony to get out of bed and go to work. But I did it, I got out of bed.
Had a shower, made a breakfast, packed my lunch, filled my coffee mug, and got in the elevator for the descent to my car. Yawning all the way!
When the doors opened at the parking garage level, I sort of let out a great gasp of tiredness. A sort of audible grand-moan of inner fatigue escaped me.
The door to the custodian's office was open and there sat Maria.
She is a sweet sweet lady who takes care of our place, and does a fantastic job of it. Maria heard me and laughed and said, in her broken English, "Ohhh, how you are today?"
Maria is from the Ukraine. Like, as in, recently from the Ukraine.
And I myself am 100% Ukrainian, but have never been there. I know just a wee smattering of the Ukrainian language [I have a more thorough grasp of all the best swear words] and as I passed her office, where she was taking a break, I said to her, "Hochesh spateh," which, being interpreted, roughly means, "I need sleep."
Please forgive me, all other actual Ukrainians out there who may know the better phonetically-correct English spelling of this phrase. It's a bit of a tongue-twister.
What was so remarkable though, was her response. I thought she was going to fall right off her chair. She was so surprised… someone speaking to her in Ukrainian!
Her hands went up to her face and her eyes got all big and bright -- in a word, she was tickled pink! 
And she kept laughing and repeating what I had said to her, as I wished her a good day [in English] and kept walking out to my car.
I recount this little vignette just to illustrate how you can so quickly shed such joy in an immigrant's life by saying just a few words to them in their native tongue. I made her feel happy, and I myself also felt a lot better. Without this little boost, I may have turned around and got back in the elevator, pressed 14, and went back to my bed.
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the time of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.
-- Herman Meliville, Moby-Dick --

I agree entirely, shame on you pate-de-foie gras eaters!
But hmmm… I wonder what Melville thinks of my hamburger addiction!

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.
-- Bram Stoker, Dracula --

Have a great Wednesday and a monstrous HALLOWEEN!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday!

Most Americans who read at all read junk... I think it is a fair generalization to say that European readers of fiction like novels to be challenging, to be demanding; nor do they follow trends or fashions in reading taste in the lemminglike manner of many readers in the United States.
-- John Irving --
Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday!

Letterman's Top 10
Top 10 Signs You Know Nothing About Foreign Policy

 



10. You think "Benghazi" is that bald guy who played Gandhi.
9. Always refer to the United Nations as "The UN."
8. Promise that on day 1, you'll stand up to General Tso.
7. You praise Madagascar's hilarious talking animals.
6. You think "Arab Spring" is a brand of soap.
5. Refer to every world leader as "what's his name."
4. You think the G-8 is a hot boy band.
3. Speak to people from other countries with generic "foreign guy" accent.
2. Know Gadhafi was killed, but still worry about Qaddafi, Khadafi, and Khadafy.
1. Made it your mission to prevent Iran from enriching geraniums.

Have a great Monday!
*****

Chapter 85: Wherein Whales Need Air

I hope that my obsession with the tale of Moby-Dick is not becoming boring to my readers while it's becoming all the more fascinating to me.
I mentioned before how this great book is interwoven with what are essentially intercalary chapters about whales. And I just read a real doozy of one.
Chapter 85, entitled The Fountain. Here, Melville discusses the mechanics of a whale's respiratory system. It answered a question I've had all the way through, which is this:
Why is it that when a whale surfaces and senses danger, it doesn't just dive down again and basically get away from its attackers?
The reason is, because it can't. It needs air. Whales are mammals, and have lungs -- not gills, like normal fish. But the issue of escape goes beyond this fact, because by the time a large whale finally surfaces, it does not need merely one breath of air. It takes upwards of seventy such breaths to fully replenish the reservoirs of air within its body. In other words, the whale is really out of breath when it surfaces, and requires several minutes in contact with the… upper world. It intends to stay below the surface for up to 90 minutes, feeding, and doing other whale-things.
Hence, that first jet of exhaled moisture from its spiracle [or blowhole] is a dead giveaway! It might as well be a horizon-disturbing sea-wide advertisement saying COME KILL ME!
The bastardly whalers see this, and move in quickly.
The initial thrust of the first harpoon accelerates the heart rate, requiring even more oxygen in the already depleted reserves. He's in trouble, and "sounding" or diving deep is no longer an option. It never was in the first place, but now that you have this hunk of steel piercing through you, a deep dive means death by drowning.
The battle is engaged, and with the repeated slashings of the whalers, death will now come to the poor beast through a quick combination of loss of blood and lack of oxygen.
Again, reading all of this brutality [I'm sorry] it makes me cheer for Moby.
Let me end with some fun. 
If my endless whale-lore is possibly boring you, here is a video-clip of a breaching whale that I find utterly fascinating. If I was in that boat, I'm afraid I may have quickly lost some moisture from at least one [or more] of my own mammalian orifices!
*****

The Old Tree: A Saturday Snapshot

Sometimes I feel old.
But then I visit Cathedral Grove, on Vancouver Island, and see trees that are approaching their milllennium-th birthday!
Even though I once lived there, Vancouver Island remains one of my favorite vacation destinations. 
On my last trip, in July of 2012, I re-visited the old tree.
This beauty behind me [not the horizontal one] is over 800 years old.
Had already sucked water out of the ground for three centuries before Christopher Columbus drifted by to tell the Indians they'd been "discovered".
It is a venerable beast.
76 metres tall and 9 metres round.
It makes the Leaning Tower of Pisa look like..... a pizza.
I deliberately made this image black and white, because, as we all know -- 800 years ago, color images did not exist. Years ago, I wrote a poem about it.
Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

I can assure you Ernest Hemingway was wrong when he said modern American literature began with Huckleberry Finn. It begins with Moby-Dick, the book that swallowed European civilization whole.
-- E. L. Doctorow, Ungraspable Phantom: Essays on Moby-Dick --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Moby @ Midpoint...

Well, dear friends and fellow non-whalers, I am just past the midpoint of Moby-Dick.
The crew of the Pequod have just slain their first whale.
At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air, and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!
This poor whale was nameless, but you just know that Moby is lurking, and will soon give Ahab and the boys a run for their money.
You know, I am a total pacifist when it comes to animals, and hunting in general. 
I'm definitely not a vegan, but Good Lord, there's got to be more humane ways of killing beasties than this….. harpooning business!
But enough about my sympathies.
This is a great book. I'm seeing why so many people have loved the thing.
My own edition [shown above] has, at the back of it, an afterword-style essay by Howard Mumford Jones, and he says "People who think Moby-Dick is a novel are wrong."
He calls it a "journey" book -- equating it to others like the Odyssey, Tom Jones, Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote, and The Voyage of the Beagle, etc.
It requires a reader to have somewhat of a desire to actually get on board, to a certain extent. We all know that it is a BIG book, but beyond the sheer size of the thing is the never-ending digressions of the author into the very nuts and bolts of whaling in general. Entire chapters devoted to how rope ought to be properly coiled, and detailed descriptions of the machinery involved in basic whale slaughtering.
There are chapters on the whale as depicted in art through the ages. But just as you fear you may be getting bogged down in the lore of it all, Melville does return to the activities of the crew and the current voyage -- where the near-insane Captain Ahab has only one thing on his mind as he clomps around on his fake leg -- KILL MOBY!
Herman Melville, through his narrator Ishmael, constantly laments the fact that so little is known [at the time] of the exact nature of whales. For instance, in a chapter on the different sizes of whales, the great blue whale is not even mentioned --so little was known about it. This was an age of umm… severe lack of underwater photography, among other non-advances in scientific discovery and awareness! Nowadays we know so much more about the precious nature of these majestic creatures, and I'm always cognizant of this, as I read this old book.
I'm so glad that we do not have to rely on whales to supply our need for lamplight and candles.
I've never seen any movie version of Moby-Dick, and so I don't actually know how the thing ends -- but the conclusion of Jones's essay does make me want to find out. He says… "Ahab seeks to impose his will upon the inscrutability of the universe. In such a contest the universe will always win…"
I find myself wanting Moby-Dick to swim away with an "Up yours!" smirk on his face at the end of it all.
Why did people like… whale so much, back then? 
Didn't they know that you can just go to the store and buy already packaged hamburger?
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really fanatic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick --


Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

 Have a great Wednesday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

 "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage is that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Me & Sara Gruen: A Saturday Snapshot

I remember it well. I'm sure I recall it much better than she does!
When I heard that Sara Gruen was going to be in my very neighborhood I got away from work a bit early and raced on down to hear her read from her latest book, Ape House.
Sara Gruen was so lovely and gracious, and I think she is a fabulous author.
I've read her Water For Elephants, and of course, Ape House -- and look forward to reading whatever she comes up with next. Sara Gruen likes to use animals in her stories, sort of like Yann Martel does also. Interesting that both of them have managed to attract the interest of big-time movie production companies. When this photo was taken, Sara was telling us of the [then] upcoming movie adaptation of Water For Elephants, and soon, we'll be able to see what Hollywood has done with Martel's Life of Pi.
The last thing I will mention here is -- umm -- yes, I do have a complete left arm.
Even though it does seem from the angle of the shot, and the way my sleeve was rolled up, and the way I was gently massaging her back at the time  -- it does look like I've been amputated at the elbow!
I'm sure she forgets it, but I know I never will.
How she was saying just then, "Ahh, a little to the right. Lower. Oh, you've got it."

Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

Letterman's Top 10 Signs You're Obsessed With Star Trek

 




10. You're writing "Star Date 5946" on your checks.
9. Family dog + aluminum foil = space dog.
8. Built your own phaser out of a staple gun and 20 D batteries.
7. Last Halloween, you dressed up as Star Trek props designer, Irving A. Feinberg.
6. You spend a lot of lonely nights "wrestling the gorn."
5. During your Power Point presentation for company's 2nd quarter review, the word "Romulans" came up more than one would normally expect.
4. Always telling barber, "Give me a Spock."
3. You're already camped out for the 2012 Star Trek sequel.
2. When the stock market goes down, you'll assuredly yell, "KHAAAAAN!"
1. Got suspended at work for trying to mind-meld with an intern.

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
-- Bill Moyers --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wendesday

“I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?"
"That is so."
"Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way."
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
"Eh bien, I have got on very well without them."
"Got on! Got on? It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view all together. The classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success, like a modern correspondence course! It's not a man's working hours that are important--it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make. Take yourself now, you're getting on, you'll be wanting to get out of things, to take things easy--what are you going to do then with your leisure hours?”
-- Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick --
Have a great Monday!
*****

In The Lake of The Woods

I just finished a really great book.
Tim O'Brien's [1994] In The Lake of the Woods.
An oldie but a goodie!
This is the sixth book I've read by this terrific American writer, and truly, this is one of the best. I have a few yet to go before I can say I've read all of his published works, but I will definitely continue reading him.
O'Brien, a Vietnam veteran himself, often employs elements of the trauma of war in his novels. And this one is no exception.

John Wade is a Minnesota politician [and Vietnam vet… participant in the massacre at My Lai] who has just recently been trounced in a senatorial election. He and his wife Kathy retreat to a friend's cottage in a remote lake area to lick their wounds and re-think the future.
But one morning John wakes to find that his wife is gone.
Vamished. Vamoosed. And the boat is missing from the boathouse.
As you can imagine, a massive search for her is initiated, but we're talking about 600 square miles of lake here. The vast, unforgiving remoteness of Minnesota wilderness.
As expansive as that wilderness is, it pales in comparison to the depths of secrecy with which John has been living his life. Some of these secrets, unearthed by the media, become known. Others remain hidden, and John himself becomes a suspect in the disappearance of Kathy.
The set-up of this novel is so unique, I do not want to say much more about it -- but encourage you to discover it for yourself. Truly a story of open-endings, rife with the searing difficulties of love and marital relationship.
I really think the book is significant. After reading In The Lake of the Woods, I am left with a rather powerful feeling of how we can only really truly know our own self. And even then, the knowing can be blurry. Thing is, even so, no one else can know you BETTER!

And now, as I pour a fresh beer into my Duvel glass, I glance at what I am going to be reading next.
Again, more water… definitely even MORE water!
Moby [frigging] Dick!
I've been wanting to read this whopper-doodle of a thing for ages, and knowing the non-speed with which I read, you can look forward to a review somewhere in 2013!
Cheers, y'all.
*****

Bible Thumper: A Saturday Snapshot

Here's me, circa 1991.
SERIOUS Bible-thumper days! 
I was just graduating from Bible College -- four years, full-time, studying The Word of The [only] God.
This was taken in some hotel room in Toronto, on my way to Graduation ceremonies, where I was chosen in a highly selective process to be the soloist fronting a 500-voice choir.
At times, I do miss being Lead Cherubim©.
Singing is my primary gifting, just before... Blogging [see 1 Corinthians ch.12].
I am very much a different person today.
At times, I do miss my idealistic days of Intense Believerism [in this shot, I was quoting some uplifting passage from The Book of Lamentations…] but overall, I am now quite happy and content in my ongoing re-connection to my actual brain.
I think the overall message of this picture is something along the lines of:
"In the latter days, people will be convinced that they have a mustache when, in reality, they just need a shave!"

Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.
-- Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Am I A Book Whore?

Usually, somewhere in and around the hindermost parts of a current novel I start sniffing out my next read. Geez! I'm sounding rather canine here!
But seriously, in the final chapters -- my mind will, from time to time, veer to what I want to read next. I'll set the book down and go and look at the other one.
I'll open it up and read a few sentences and think -- "Hmmm…. yep, sounds good."
Then I'll remember that old phrase: 
"Hey, dance with the one that brought you!"
And I'll zip on through the end of a novel, with the new one already in my backpack, ready for tomorrow. Is this what is known as "being fickle?"
All I know is that to NOT be reading a novel is not an option!
I just finished a whopper-terrific novel tonight. Strong Motion, by Jonathan Franzen, and already I've removed the dustjacket from Tim O'Brien's In The Lake of The Woods.
Where is the frigging gestation period?
I move on quickly is what I am saying.
I'm insatiable.
Do you employ some manner of micro-managed criteria in the choices you make -- or are you as book whorish as I am, here?
I mean -- this author has poured his or her GUTS out to me -- and -- I just move on!
Do you [horrors]… read two at once and just hope you are not on the phone with one while the other is knocking at your door?
[Visions of a book's father asking… "What are your intentions, son?"]
Are we supposed to wait a while before we spread the covers of another?
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday!

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
-- George Orwell, Why I Write --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

The problem I had with the Kindle when I tried it was, you know, first I had Ann Coulter, then I had Flannery O’Connor. [Laughs.] It’s the same little sheet. It makes everything seem unsubstantial. In my own twisted mind, it makes the words seem more arbitrary, less intrinsically valuable, less substantive if it can just be any words. We could just wipe the slate clean and get Laura Bush’s memoir, and then we could wipe it clean again and get Samuel Beckett. It’s part of that postmodern leveling, and I think people who really care about books feel in their hearts that there is actually a difference between Laura Bush’s memoir and Samuel Beckett. It’s not an elitist argument, it’s that somebody was trying to say something here, and in the other instance, a product has been put out there. So to that extent, I’m resistant to it, but that said, I’m happy with whatever form someone wants to read a book of mine.
-- Jonathan Franzen --

Have a great Tuesday!

How Spacey is Outer Space?

Yesterday I was quickly in and out of a bookstore and while there I leafed through Richard Dawkins's new book called The Magic of Reality. 
It has a killer subtitle -- How We Know What's Really True. 
On the cover, Philip Pullman calls it "The clearest and most beautifully written introduction to science I've ever read."
I saw something there that was so profound, and presented in such a memorably analogous fashion that I am going to paraphrase it here, for y'all. And hopefully, you will be able to always remember it, too.
Here goes -- first, picture an empty football field.
Are you there?
OK -- now go and plunk down a football in the very middle, at the 50 yard line. That football represents our sun.
Now, get this -- to illustrate the scale of…. "reality" -- walk away from the football and place a peppercorn 25 metres distant. This is the relative size and distance our Earth is from the sun. Our moon would be the size of the head of a pin, and be placed just 5 centimetres from the peppercorn.
But here's the incredible thing -- the NEAREST star to our own sun, Proxima Centauri, would be placed 6,500 kilometres distant.

That just boggles my mind.
I mean, think of it, that would be the nearest star to us, of all the millions of visible stars in our night sky. Proxima Centauri is a mere 4.2 light years away from our sun. But the furthest star that we currently know about [V12, in the galaxy NGC4203] is 10.4 million light years away, [hmmm… how much is that in football fields?]… and estimated to be 10 million times brighter than our own sun.
I look forward to the launch of the James Webb infrared telescope, which will make the Hubble seem like a regular pair of binoculars. We will be seeing pretty much infinitely further than we have ever seen before, or as some scientists are referring to it, "the very beginnings of time itself."
Cheers!
*****

Money Mirrors Reality: A Saturday Snapshot

For this weekend's Saturday Snapshot, I am utilizing Alyce's  "post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken" proviso.
This shot was taken by my adventurous nephew, Chris.
He spent several years living in Japan and other parts of Asia. He did all that living-out-of-a-backpack, sleeping-in-hostels, and grow-a-beard-to-rival-Moses stuff that youth are so wont to do.
During one of his arduous intrepid hikes, he found himself at a spot that is exactly represented on a certain denomination of Japanese currency.
Please forgive my forgetting of the name of this place, I think it was Mount Rawfish or Lake Jumping-Sushi or something like that…. see the background there in the left side of the bill?
My first thought was, "Wow. 1,000 yen! How many hamburgers can I buy with that?"
A few months ago, this same nephew Chris and his girlfriend Ashley introduced me to the wonders of Thai food at an authentic Thai restaurant in Victoria, B.C., where he now lives.
Thank you Chris, for proving to me that there are foods that surpass even the glories of dead cow between two slabs of bread!

And, as always, thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

It was as if, in nuclear terms, the configuration of forces had changed and he was no longer an oppositely charged particle attracted to her from a great distance but a particle with like charge, a proton repelled by this other proton until they were right next to each other and the strong nuclear force came into its own and bound them together.
-- From Strong Motion, by Jonathan Franzen --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

The singular power of literature lies not in its capacity for accurate representation of mass commonalities, but its ability to illuminate the individual life in a way that expands our understanding of some previously unseen or unarticulated aspect of existence.
-- Nicole Krauss --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

“...but don't tell me I'm not sensitive to beauty. That's my Achilles' heel, and don't you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset and I'm limp, by God...”
-- J.D. Salinger, Franny & Zooey --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Arguing with Carlyle

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.
-- Thomas Carlyle – 
Just a few words here about the above Carlyle quote...
I want to go on record as saying that I DO NOT BELIEVE IN IT.
Which is to say, I think, with all due respect, that Mr. Carlyle is wrong. 
I “believe” that debating and arguing are, in fact, more important than believing, if “believing” precludes reasonable debate.
Any “belief” that is not open to the possibility of the displacement of that belief, in the light of better information, is worse than willful bias or prejudice. It is preemptive IGNORANCE.
See more of my thoughts on this topic -- HERE 
I discussed this last night with someone over a coffee, at Starbucks. They said:
"But Carlyle is not saying that it is right or even advantageous. He merely says that a man DOES this...that this is how Man lives. . . and there is no denying this, is there?"

Point taken!
And a very good point it is. Halfway through my day today I actually thought the same thing, about the original quote. I don't know enough about Carlyle to know if he himself believed this way, or if he was just making a statement as to HOW MAN IS! How people ARE! 
So, in case I have offended any members of the raging Thomas Carlyle Fan-Club© out there [and seriously, I have heard that they are a rowdy beer-swilling bunch of ne'er-do-wells!]... umm, I jotted the following down today.
Forget Thomas Carlyle now, this is MY personal statement: 
Our lives can only remain genuine and authentic to the extent that our beliefs are subject to a state of ongoing scrutiny, doubt, and intelligent debate.
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count—leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries.
-- Italo Calvino, Why Read The Classics? --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

I don't hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the grammar of human problems, and the writers I've mentioned with the essence.
-- Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version --

Have a great Monday!
*****