Bill's Notes

Got an elkhound lying on the deck to the left of me, and a greyhound lying on the deck to the right. They look like passed out frat boys on a Spring Break morning.

4. Mulligan's Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino. This is a grad school quality parody that got out of control. Sorrentino takes a big brain dump with other people's characters, in the effort to make some sort of point. Mostly, I think it's to demonstrate Sorrentino's wit. It's a little funny, but not my kind of funny. Still, I laughed out loud when one character wondered what would A La Recherche du Temps Perdu would've been like if Proust had smelled a Yankee doodle. See? Not that funny.

Feel free to say hi in the comment box. Don't say you weren't asked. Because I just did.

And welcome!

For jury duty, my number wasn't called. No jury duty for me. Outstanding news!

(I've got two deadlines next week. This simplifies my life.)

... tendentious. I admit it. And a little partisan. More than a little unfair. I was venting.

Funny thing is, I still have a strong affinity for the former ideals of the Democratic Party, that is, the ideals of New Deal and the New Frontier. When the Dems were a party of strong national defense, of helping everyone have equal opportunities to succeed, of fighting against real discrimination and of putting the fear of God into the rich, that was one thing.

But that's not the current Democratic Party, and hasn't been for nearly 30 years. It's not enough to have your heart in the right place. You have to learn from your mistakes. You have to know when you've extended your logic far enough. You have to know when you've won (or lost) a battle and it's time to move on. And most of all, you can't forget the fear of God.

So all but three Democratic Senators voted to prevent a vote on the FMA yesterday. Go figure. So, what's the record for Democrats?

Slavery. Secession. Segregation. Anti-Reconstruction. Jim Crow. Lynchings. The KKK. Blundering into WWI after saying they wouldn't. Screwing up the post-World War I settlement, setting the stage for WWII. Extending the Great Depression by trying socialism.

Then, something good: Winning WWII.

Then, screwing up the WWII post-war settlement at Yalta, leaving Eastern Europe to fall to communism and setting the stage for the Cold War.

Then, something good: Fighting off the communists in Korea. Oh, then screwing up and getting the Chinese involved. Settling for a tie.

Then, let's see: Bay of Pigs. Cuban Missile Crisis, and lying about how it was resolved. Blundering into Vietnam. Creating a massive expansion of the federal government, which created a new underclass and horrible welfare dependency. LBJ's corruption.

Then, after Nixon manages to salvage Vietnam, cutting off funding for South Vietnam (1974 Senate vote, the most shameful in the post-Civil War period.)

Double-digit inflation. Double digit interest rates. Double digit unemployment. Feckless responses to challenges. The "malaise" speech.

Demagoguing when Reagan actually straightened out the Cold War and the economy, and slowed government expansion. Fighting tooth and nail to prevent the good that was being done, in the name of a flawed idealism that was proven not to work.

Then, abortion. Perjury. Feckless responses to terrorism in the Clinton period. Actually trying to steal a presidential election in 2000!

Democrats. The party of perjury, electoral fraud and fetal murder. If you're willing to lie, cheat and kill, then I suppose confusing sodomy with intercourse is small change.

Cobb and Nykola are discussing the worst books they've ever read. Here's some of my initial choices:

1. Rabbit, Run by John Updike. Easily the worst prose ever. Most pretentious rendering of sex. As bad as Eyes Wide Shut and about as ponderous. And get this — the story is pretty good. But the prose: "His sea of seed buckles and sobs into a still chamber." Worst. English. Sentence. Ever. And if you find the original version, you've got a picture of twerpish John Updike pretentiously puffing a smoke. IMHO, Updike grew up and became a great writer. But I have no idea how he got published again after this monstrosity. Maybe it was daring for the time.

2. Plus, by Joseph McElroy. A brain is placed in orbit in outer space in a satellite. He think thoughts like "travel light" which is considered extremely humorous (see, the brain doesn't even bring his body with him. Heh). The brain eventually grows limbs. This takes 180 pages and that's all that happens. Meanwhile, the prose does things like "experiments" with "textual density," which is another way of saying you don't know what the hell is going on. Little Plus isn't all that interesting a character, anyway. When the author when he visited at our college, I told Mr. McElroy (a gentleman) that the book pissed me off, and I didn't know what point he was after. He nodded politely.

3. Blood & Guts in High School and Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker. Warmed-over Jean Genet and William Burroughs, from a feminist perspective. Not all bad. It has its moments, but they are few and far between. Empire loses points for sympathetic, even admiring, portraits of terrorists. Blood & Guts loses points for including Persian grammar lessons. (Or was it Turkish?)

Spelling lesson related to the news events in Manila.

The Philippines.
Filipinos.
Filipino.
Filipina.
Pinoy (Filipino in Tagalog)
Pinay (Filipina in Tagalog)

Filipinos in the Manila area call themselves Pinoy or Pinay, depending on gender. Tagalog is pronounced tuh-gol-lug, soft accent on the middle syllable. The islands were named for Prince Philip of Spain, note the one l. When the named the islands, they kept the name 'Philip' as is and then added a -pines to in. Philippines. One L. Two Ps.

Please act accordingly.

A relative came up from Florida and dropped by for a visit. Heard a lot of anecdotes. Banal, pointless, detailed anecdotes, told with a bombastic enthusiasm inappropriate to the subject matter.

OK, you think I can't shut up? Let's just say it didn't start with me. One story after another. Aaarrgggh! She told a 10-minute story about her car breaking down. The dramatic core of the story was she was assisted by a man who had tattooes and only a few teeth. Yes, I thought, there are indeed tattooed people who are better at caring for those in need than dental hygiene.

This story (one of many) was told through hysterical laughter, and accompanied by wild gestures, and finished with the fervent expectation that this story is funny and interesting to you. And painful disappointment when you just looked puzzled back.

The relative also is constitutionally unable to ride in the car without talking constantly. There is a stream of consciousness commentary that just assaults the senses. Every road side must be read aloud and commented upon. Every change in scenary must be mentioned. Every exit discussed. Endless inane questions must be asked.

"Oh, look, there's a Dunkin Donuts. Do you like Dunkin Donuts? I really miss going to Dunkin Donuts. We used to go to Dunkin Donuts a lot. Didn't you used to go to Dunkin Donuts a lot? Oh, look, this exit is for Pottstown. Is Pottstown near here? Do you still go to Pottstown a lot? Did you say you go to Dunkin Donuts a lot?"

She just sits there with this default setting of saying out loud every thought that comes into her mind, over and over again. You have LITTLE CHOICE but to start a conversation just to stop the inanities. Every story has a banal moral that is screamingly obvious to the casual observer. There is no detail too small to relate. Nothing that passes by is too unimportant to discuss. And every story must be histrionically rendered with enthusiasm usually reserved for telling something, I don't know, funny. Or insightful. Or interesting.

Criminy. Three days and I'm utterly exhausted....

Whew! There, I feel a bit better.

Jebus. And my ex-girlfriend called me yappy. At least I can summarize an anecdote.

In this letter to an Episcopal bishop in Hawaii, the letter writer gives a terrific explanation of the New Testament's understanding of the Old Testament law.

One thing same-sex rite proponents in the Episcopal Church have argued is something along the lines of, "If you listen to the laws on homosexuality in Leviticus, you better not be wearing a shirt out of two different kinds of fabrics." This refers to some of the more legalistic prohibitions in the Old Testament.

That "Leviticus doesn't matter anymore" argument of course is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of what Jesus did to the law through His incarnation, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection.

[T]he important distinction, worked out in blood and travail through the many European and English religious struggles, [is] between the RITES and CIVIL PRECEPTS of the Old Testament, and the MORAL Commandments. Our church agreed at its founding, in 1801, that the former two are not, but that the latter are, BINDING ON THE CHRISTIAN. That is to say, it is not the ancient social or political order, nor the particular forms of punishment, nor the food rituals, nor the master-slave relationships, nor any "ritual purity" precepts of the Hebrew Bible that we are to follow. But our church's founders agreed, in the Articles of Religion, that in our voluntary actions in our relation to others, we Christians are to follow the MORAL Commandments of the Hebrew Bible (Articles of Religion, VII, BCP p. 869, and in attachment to this e-mail). These articles, I believe, have never been officially rescinded.

Christ came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. His men, liked David's, plucked grain, and He Himself healed, on the Sabbath. This was His open disregard of certain CIVIL PRECEPTS, namely, what to do or not to do, on a certain day of the week. Christ saved an adulteress from a stoning: but he told her to "go and sin no more." He shamed the judges into withholding an awful, though scriptural, punishment. But He did not tell her that her MORAL sin was no more a sin! Yes, he disregarded the CIVIL PRECEPT that an adulteress should be stoned, yes he disregarded many of the cleanliness RITES, and associated with the unrighteous, but he drove the MORAL understanding of life to a deeper level: lusting in our heart is already adultery!

As usual, Industrial Blog is furiously up to date with the news and is ignoring it. Yes, much trouble in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, the world still contains many people who take civilization for granted and who would enslave you in a second in the name of some higher cause. Yes, things are tough all over.

But what has drawn me out of my blogging slumber is this outrage. The author compiles a list of overrated books, which is not the outrage. The outrage is she includes The Great Gatsby.

Gatsby is the central literary critique of the American Dream, and serves as a brilliant warning against the kinds of base longings to which our country all too often falls prey. Fitzgerald had seen the longings, and the corruption, and the social climbing, and the shallowness, and the power games, and the stubborn complacency of the rich ... and had seen how the image of the rich had become a beacon for folks such as Gatsby ... who couldn't, in the end, overcome his humble upbringings.

Gatsby tried to go too far, too fast, and ended up not only reaping what he had sown, but paying for the sins of a member of the very club that was excluding him, and he hada tried so hard (and made so many compromises) to join. In the end, the only people there for Gatsby is his decent midwestern father (an affirmation hidden in there?) and Nick Carraway himself. If you think about it, Bill Clinton's rise and humiliation is similar to Gatsby's, Bill sought that beacon at the end of the dock ... Nixon, too, had sought it. So many others, destroyed by the light at the end of the dock, it's all so close, but then ...

Here's how Fitzgerald puts it. I quote directly because in the end, The Great Gatsby contains some of the greatest writing in American literature.

Here goes:

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.