Reports of my death…blah blah blah

"Pay no attention to the EEG behind the curtain."

I’m hoping to use my response to a recent comment on an old blog post (I know, they’re all old here) as a springboard to reinvigorate my latterly distinctly unbloggy ways. Down with dormancy!

 

Watch this space.

I’m nearly certain I’m going to resume blogging soon. The tides are lapping at the shore.

 

Suffixation

I recently read a strange and disturbing little book. I tend to be attracted to strange and disturbing books, little or othersized. This one, however, I’m not entirely sure about. It’s called Senselessness, and it’s written by Horacio Castellanos Moya. How could I resist a 142-page novella with glowing blurbs from Roberto Bolaño (author of the widely acclaimed 2666) and Russell Banks, the former evoking Buster Keaton and the latter referencing Franz Kafka? Here’s the synopsis from the flyleaf (yes, this paperback edition has an actual flyleaf! It’s akin to finding a triangular vent window on a new car!):

An alcoholic, atheist, sex-obsessed writer finds himself employed by the Catholic Church (an institution he loathes) to edit the testimonies of the survivors of slaughtered Indian villages. The writer’s job is to tidy up the 1,100 page report: “that was what my work was all about, cleaning up and giving a manicure to the Catholic hands that were piously getting ready to squeeze the balls of the military tiger.” Mesmerized by the eerie poetry of the Indians’ phrases, the increasingly agitated and frightened writer is endangered twice over: by the spell exerted over his somewhat tenuous sanity by the strangely beautiful heart-rending voices, and by real danger. The Church is hunting the military, but the military is still in charge of the country, and our booze-soaked writer is soon among the hunted – or is he paranoid? Or is he paranoid and one of the hunted?

 

“Everyone goes South, every now and then”

(original from MediaMatters.org)

It’s kind of cute how Fox has these little ‘oopses’ every now and again, especially when it’s suspiciously convenient (although laughably obvious) to their agenda. Many have pointed out the network’s recent ‘inadvertent’ party affiliation misidentification of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford after his return from extramartial affairs in Argentina and I don’t have much to add.

You see, I’m just using his prodigality as an excuse for a quick filler post and another fun, apropos song to share. Today’s multimedia tie-in is…

“Mi Confesión” Gotan Project from the 2006 album Lunático Gotan Project is a Paris-based, Argentina-influenced, tango-electronica group which collaborates with many different musicians and singers. On this track they enlist the aid of Buenos Aires-based rappers Koxmoz. It’s fun.

 

It’s a Small World After All

First thing, I assure you that I will not be including audio of that cloying song from the Disneyland/world/place/spot ride. The one that everyone loves to hate. I do hope that something appropriate occurs to me by the time I finish the post, because I’m really enjoying adding the audio tie-ins.

This isn’t exactly groundbreaking material in the on-line universe (I first encountered the phenomenon last November), but it’s been infesting my thoughts lately, so I may as well write about it.

from AnarBi's flickr photostream

 

Orphanalia

I am sooo tired of seeing that damn flapstick package every time I check the blog, so I’m finally posting something to displace it. Have had a patch of blogger’s block lately, unable to get any entries up here for various reasons.

My solution? Display the aborted posts succinctly and explain why they weren’t used.

 

Only … in … America (part 1 of ∞)

These are, I do not jest, categorized by the Jimmy Dean company as “Flapsticks.” It’s just so many kinds of wrong.

 

Can-Can, Die-Die!

Natawurly, proprietress of the CurlyWurlyGurly blog, has issued a challenge to her regular readers. Come to think of it, I guess it’s open to her irregular readers too, which means that I’m obligated to participate. This from the woman who precociously in grade school informed the teacher that “I [didn’t] have my homework because the dog ate my conscience.”  (Fifth grade, I kid you not.)  In a nutshell (preferably a filbert loaded with nutella), the challenge is thus:

“The WORST candy in the history of mankind has to be  ______ .”

courtesy Posteritati

I won’t lie. I thought about alternate, “clever” ways to subvert the challenge. I thought of the 1968 movie Candy adapted from Terry Southern’s novel; it was a flop even though its pedigree was enviable (inspired by Volatire’s Candide, screenplay by Buck Henry, starring Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, John Astin (Gomez Addams, swoon), John Huston, James Coburn, Ringo Starr, Charles Aznavour, Richard Burton, and, uhm, former Miss Teen Sweden Ewa Aulin). Despite its flopdom, it was nowhere close to being the worst anything in the history of anything. I thought of Dutch smooth-jazz saxophone goddess Candy Dulfer. I thought of Andy-Warhol’s-Factory-Regular Candy Darling. I thought of CNN correspondent Candy Crowley. And many others. Whatever their flaws, none are so horribly afflicted so as to be even remotely considered to be the worst anything in the history of mankind. So I was doomed to play it straight.

Another blogger immediately responded with circus peanuts, which might have been my choice were it not for the fact that circus peanuts are completely inedible and not fit for consumption, human or otherwise. Ha! They are obviously not candy but some bizarre souveneirs that someone decided are supposed to be eaten. The great P.T. Barnum, circusman extraordinaire, did say that “there’s a sucker born every minute.”  My theory is that circus peanuts are designer packing peanuts.

 

The Business of Puns

I first want to point out that there’s a reason the title of this post isn’t “Punny Business.” That reason is that it would be a dreadful title. Some people, however, have neither the restraint nor the better judgement to leave puns in their accustomed milieu: the passing comment or the punchline of a soon-forgotten joke.

As I, and no doubt countless others, have mentioned previously, puns are roundly and routinely criticized as the lowest form of humor; some even speculate that uncontrollable pun-making is a legitimate psychological condition, a disease. I hold no such vendetta with them, but caution that there is a time and a place for puns, as well as a time and a place not for puns.

 

I’ll tell you what I really really want…

I wouldn’t describe myself as a particularly spiritual person, but by the other side of the same token I would neither call myself overly materialistic. With this disclaimer in hand and just as quickly out of my hand, in the company of pigs in pokes and cats out of bags, I want to share a deep, dark secret with you, my devoted, beloved, Dear Reader(s).

Sometimes, in my lowest hours, I know, I just know, gripped in the surety of despair, that possessing a certain item will bring limitless  joy to my poor, impoverished existence. More often than not, the item is the same thing, recurring in my visions and haunting my adumbrant days. What could this most fabulous of objects (apologies to Time Bandits) be, you ask? Some splendiferous jewel? A sportscar so sexy one needs to reenact childbirth in reverse just to get inside it? A housecat who can clean her own litterbox,  run the coffee machine and make fabu martinis? No, none of those.