Well, today is my 3rd Bloggiversary. Three years of blogging. This current posting is #1,381. But who's counting! I love it. Blogging, I mean. I shall not stop. I’ve gained some super-duper friends in the blogging community, and I have learned so much from you all. Thank you for tuning in here, at Bookpuddle, friends.
And on to the breaking news of the world… Roger Waters has lost his flying pig!
For those of you who are not yet aware of my musical tastes, Roger Waters [of Pink Floyd fame] is perhaps my favorite artist of all time. Well, along with Eric Clapton. The two flying pig photos on this blog posting are ones I took myself, at a Waters concert! Apparently, this legendary pig somehow broke from his moorings just a couple of nights ago, at an outdoor concert at the Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival, in southern California. Just floated away, while the band played on! A $10,000 reward was offered for the recovery.
Oh, I am behind the times. Just got home and found out…. THE PIG HAS BEEN FOUND. In tatters. Read about it HERE!
Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. -- Umberto Eco –
Quite a picture isn’t it? Adam looking into the night sky on the first day of his existence, contemplating the beauty of thousands of stars, despite the fact that the nearest star other than the sun is more than four light-years away. The Creator, clearly, didn’t want him to have to wait four years to enjoy that first nighttime star, so he made all of the intervening photons at once. -- Kenneth R. Miller, in Finding Darwin’s God. p.79. –
I am reading a fascinating [the above named] book right now, subtitled: A Scientist’s Search For Common Ground Between God and Evolution. Is there “common ground”? Well, the author [a professor of biology at Brown University] and yours truly, Cipriano [a gap-toothed imbecile in a Penthouse Apartment] tend to agree that the answer is YES, there is “common ground.” But what are the context and implications of the quotation, above?
Well, in Chapter 3, Miller is discussing the scientific problems involved in assuming that the Earth is anywhere from between 6,000 to 10,000 years old, as thoroughgoing Creationists [those who reject all aspects of evolutionary theory] are forced to do. A literal chronological interpretation of the Biblical account of creation would lead to a kind of ipso facto conclusion that the earth has only experienced somewhere between six and ten millenniums.
I love how Miller ends a previous chapter: It is high time that we grew up and left the Garden. We are indeed Eden’s children, yet it is time to place Genesis alongside the geocentric myth in the basket of stories that once, in a world of intellectual naivete, made helpful sense. As we walk through the gates, aware of the dazzling richness of the genuine biological world, there might even be a smile on the Creator’s face – that at long last His creatures have learned enough to understand His world as it truly is.
I encourage you to click on the book's image. Terrific reading!
If you knew this, it would be a miracle. No. An impossibility. How could you remember the rusty chains Of the swing that held you aloft when I pushed Your entire history upward, squeaking. Higher and higher and higher and higher until Giggles turned to a delighted terror, and the complete Apparatus itself threatened some sort of collapse as it Bounced and skidded and thudded about in the sand and You very nearly wrapped around the upper bar for a second Revolution. No. Even I find it difficult to recall. But it is there. How could I expect you to remember the time I swung you ‘round the carousel until east was west and North was south and my hand, catching on one of the bars Flung me whole into the Earth? You, your wobbly tooth wobbling. Laughing like the end of the world, and your mother falling over, Holding her belly and pointing? My dirt-filled eyes checking to see you unkilled by centrifugal forces… Finding you safe, kissing your sweet face, engulfed with one thought, You are my daughter?
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And, because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how our failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. -- R.D. Laing –
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason. --Dag Hammarskjold –
I read a great book called Flawless: The Ten Most Common Character Flaws and What You Can Do About Them, by Dr. Louis Tartaglia. We all have character flaws, it is an unavoidable fact. One of my own is the fact that I tend to be too aware of my character flaws! But seriously, we all have idiosyncracies that hinder us at times, and sometimes downright debilitate us! Not only do these flaws make our own lives disappointing, but they make those around us wish that we were not around them! Dr. Tartaglia shows us that these flaws tend to travel in clusters. They spin out of control and perpetuate themselves... "You only need to get one flaw going and the others automatically join. When they are all working in combination you are out of control. When they are out of YOUR control, your life becomes unmanageable."
The "flaws" he examines in this book are very... commonplace. If you honestly ask yourself the 19 questions he places at the beginning of each chapter (why 19? I don't know), you will SURELY find yourself saying "Wow, hey, I do that all the time!" Or, conversely, you will say, "No, I have a lot of problems, but this is not one of them." Make a list. Take notes. It's terribly interesting what you find out about yourself as you read this book. And it's so educationally beneficial and satisfying to place other people in those places that don't apply to you. "Oh, I know someone that is SO EXACTLY LIKE THAT!" etc. etc. Just think! You can photocopy those chapters and send them out as anonymous letters!
The chapters conclude with good practical pointers on how to overcome flawed behavior patterns. The author is witty and has definitely been around the block a few times in his observations about human behavior. Flawless did not strike me as being notably PROFOUND though... it was just a lot of well-organized common sense, and toward the end it was starting to bore me. But it is always good to be reminded of the importance of common sense, and this book is worth the time.
This August I will be the MC at my niece’s wedding. AUGUST! I am so honored that she asked me. ← I’m already planning for the thing. Four months in advance! I take these gigs seriously! For one thing, if I get into rehab soon enough, I am hoping to be totally off crack by then! But besides the drug problem, I just want to be worthy of the invitation, you know what I mean? I want to really make people laugh. On that day, I want to be totally pissed... I mean poised, and prepared. Plus, I want to hug a lot of young bridesmaids. I have been an MC at several weddings in the past, so I sort of know the ropes. People ask me to do it because I love an audience. [Plus, I’m on crack.]
But here I am tonight, putting together a string of great jokes and fictitious stories, re-writing the lyrics to famous songs that I am going to perform… and I am struck by an overwhelming realization. When it comes to really joking around about the perils of getting married, we tend to focus on the GROOM! Without realizing it, I find that about 98% of my jokes are directed at the groom! Brides! Who jokes about a bride? What kind of an MC is going to make fun of the bride?
No. It is the MEN we focus on! It is the MEN that are going to have to change the most, after the nuptials! This…. this is funny!
But the bride? My God, the bride is already perfect! And she will get even more perfect after the wedding! Let someone argue with that fact! I sure as hell am not going to step into that brood of vipers! It’s always the man that we poke fun at… as though he has ‘nary a clue of what he is getting himself into, here. Because let’s face it. He doesn’t. No man does.
At least this is what I am, once again, counting on, as I weigh my HWJR. Husband ← → Wife Joke Ratio. My freshly re-written version of Terri Clark’s When Boy Meets Girl is ENTIRELY directed at the fact that the groom’s first day of marriage is going to be the first day of the end of his friggin’ life. And I’m counting on people to laugh at this!
Can you imagine if I poked similar fun at my lovely niece, who is going to be sitting there like a wonderfully anthropomorphized Bambi?
I’d have all of these seven-foot tall groomsmen [not one of them over the age of 25] immediately plotting my assassination, while I innocently hover over the hors d’ouvres table like the veritable sandwich-vulture that I am…… “OK, when I kick him in the ‘nads and he doubles over, Mario here will throw the gunnysack over him while Chris brings the car around…..” Know what I mean?
If I crack jokes about my niece, Amy, there will be instant smatterings of dissent, at each table…. “Who the hell is this guy, anyway?” “Don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.” “I deny him, thrice.” “Should we shoot him now, or wait a bit?” “All I know is that he sure is not from MY side of the family!” [← And this last comment is from my MOTHER!]
Know what I mean? No, no, my friends. I have a good four months here to gather an ever-increasing pile of jokes about the groom. The groom!
What is amazing and inspiring about books is. . . their very physicality, the sheer thinginess of them, the fact that you can hold a book in your hands, thump a couple of knuckles on the cover, riffle through the pages. You can use books as doorstops or paperweights or place mats.. . -- Julia Keller, from her Sunday Chicago Tribune magazine article "This is a book. Perhaps you remember it?" --
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. -- Robert Frost --
Well, here it is Saturday again. And on Saturdays, a sort of ritual has seemed to spontaneously develop. The ritual is this → I’ve been posting some of my original poems. Now, whether or not this ritual is loved or hated by readers, I have not yet been able to discern a consensus one way or the other! I’ve received minimal comment or reaction! So, today I thought I would try something a little different. I will be posting a video-clip of one of my favorite poems of all time, the immortal free-verse Woman [a.k.a. Whoaaaaa-man!] as written and performed by none other than Mike Myers, portraying the character Charlie Mackenzie in one of the best movies in the history of cinema…. So I Married An Axe-Murderer. In my opinion, this scene is Academy Award material. Not to mention, it’s a textbook example of what the great poet Robert Frost called, “playing tennis with the net down.”
[NOTE: → I have been known to also employ that final eyebrow and smirk manoeuvre after reading my own stuff aloud on stage. It’s very effective. That, and the candle.]
Tonight, I finished what I consider to be an essential book. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. A novel about a woman who lost it! As in, her mind.
Wonderfully written, even though I still do not know what a bell jar is? My research has only unearthed that the title referenced the fact that a bell jar essentially traps something to keep it on display. And supposedly, Plath used the bell jar as a metaphor to talk about the repression of women in American society. See… I did not get that last point at all. But, I seem to never see feminism when it is supposed to be there. For instance, I love Margaret Atwood. And I don’t just mean her books. I mean personally. I am sort of “in love” with her. I have met her and spoken with her on several occasions, and I have honestly found her to be so gracious and receptive, and totally… Margaretty. She leaves me somewhat... enamored. One time [lacking a book] I got her to sign a Starbucks coffee receipt, and not only did she do it, she laughed about it. Thought it was cute.
But whenever I tell people I love Margaret Atwood’s work [she is one of the very few authors I would buy without even checking for what the new book is about… I have to be selective like this when it comes to new releases, by the way, because I am horribly poor… so, Atwood shares this privilege of unconditionally getting into my wallet, along with an elite grouping of authors such as Jose Saramago, Jane Urquhart, Emma Donoghue, Ian McEwan, and Shakespeare…. the latter of which has, regretfully, if I have anything to say about it, really not released anything “new” in a while…] ← OK, that was the longest bracketed diversion in history…. so, as I was saying, whenever I tell people I am in love with Margaret Atwood, so often they say something like, “Oh, she is so feminist!”
Feminist? I am waiting for clarification. So what if she is? What would that have to do with the level of literature she is capable of producing? To not read Atwood, based on such a [false] prejudice, would be like not reading Saramago because “he is so Portuguese!” Or “old!”
Thing is…. I have read very nearly almost everything by Atwood, and I don’t even see her as a "feminist writer." In reading Atwood, I always have found that her women are pretty much as screwed up as her men are. In fact, the men are often more admirable and/or decent and/or intelligent than any of the women are. Maybe what people mean when they say that Margaret Atwood is a “feminist” is that when she talks she has a sort of nasally tone that makes you instantly realize she is about at least 217 times smarter than you are, on virtually every subject at hand?
Is that what Atwoodian “feminism” means? Just thought I would drop into town tonight, long enough to say that I do not see The Bell Jar as being a novel “about the repression of women in American society.” And mind, I got this quote from a very reputable source. Wikipedia. And we all know that there are only four gradations of Veracity in the world right? 1) Oprah. 2) God. 3) Wikipedia. 4) Human Experience.
Granted, the book was published in the same year as I was born… [1963] so maybe back then, it was some sort of social statement of… something. But I read it from a purely modern male perspective I guess, and my conclusion is that it is a wonderful novel that should not be overlooked by all of the three or four genders we have on the go, here in modern-day 2008! And finally… do any of you know Margaret Atwood’s phone number? I seem to have lost it!
← I know that all of my wonderfully astute readers have already read this fabulous book, but I just started it tonight and cannot put it down. Wow! The Bell Jar. Just a bit into it, I am wondering how it is that Sylvia Plath did not write other novels, beside this one. I guess, for one thing, she did not at all live for as long as she should have lived. Without knowing much about her self-truncated life, these first few pages have convinced me that her decision to leave Earth early is a tragedy not only to English literature, but to that planet itself, that kept right on turning on the morning of Feb.11th, 1963. Sad. Sylvia. Margaret Laurence. Anne Sexton. Virginia Woolf. Sylvia, I am on only on page 91, and I already want to read your next novel.
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