Not a bolt of lightning unfortunately. Or fortunately, unless the bolt was metaphorical. I'm fairly certain that being struck by an actual bolt of lightning would not be to my liking, though one never knows now do they?
Random thoughts on news, violence and NPR:
V: Sometimes you just feel like they have to report the sensational stuff in order to get people to watch.
S: That's why I don't watch the local news. It's just one horrible report after another.
M: I know. That's why I like NPR, they are like, six thousand people died in China in an earthquake today but check out this new folk singer. And you're like, yeah, he is pretty good.
Some thoughts on television from DFW and David Lipsky:
Lipsky: My parents operated a very clear and effective NPR/PBS/New Yorker propoganda course: that TV is bad, it's a waste of time, you don't want to be someone else's audience.
Wallace: It's not bad or a waste of your time. (A conclusions I've come to as well about television. Good television does exist. Though, from here the analogy gets extended by Wallace to masturbation so be sure and jump on a trampoline while reading this next part). Any more than, you know, masturbation is bad or a waste of your time. It's a pleasurable way to spend ten minutes. But if you're doing it twenty times a day--or if your primary sexual relationship is with your own hand--then there's something wrong. I mean, it's a matter of degrees. (The analogy, though perhaps indelicate, is apt).
On Jane Eyre:
G: I don't really like any of the Brontes.
M: I didn't care for Wuthering Heights.
G: Uh, and Jane Eyre. (Rolls eyes).
M: Jane Eyre? (Note: said with a questioning lilt and tears forming in the corner of my eyes). It's like you just ran over a puppy with a semi in front of me, stopped, backed over it again, and then gave me the thumbs up.
G: You liked it?
Back to Conversation with Wallace about television, I promise, nothing else Joyceanly indelicate. I'd recommend extrapolating this conversation to any social media that seems applicable.
Wallace: I think one of the reasons I feel empty after watching a lot of TV, and one of the things that makes TV seductive, is that it gives the illusion of relationships with people. It's a way to have people in the room talking and being entertaining, but it doesn't require anything of me. I mean, I can see them, they can't see me. And I can receive entertainment and stimulation without having to give anything back but the most tangential kind of attention.(Extrapolate away here please. Feel free to try and connect the difference between interfacing with someone vs. texting them or interfacing with someone while texting vs. keeping the phone in your pocket. Ruminate about facebook) And that is very seductive.
The problem is it's also very empty. Because one of the differences about having a real person there is that number one, I've got to do some work. Like, he pays attention to me, I've got to pay attention to him. The stress level goes up. But there's also something nourishing about it, because I think as creatures, we've all go to figure out how to be together in the same room.
On Work phone Calls:
A: Can you give me the transaction number? (Pause)
A: It's the six digit number on the top left corner. (Pause)
A: It says TN. (Pause)
A: Okay, what't the title of the book?
My understanding of the answers:
M: I'd like to give you the transaction number, but I'm not sure what that means.
M: Your left or mine? Do papers now cardinal directions? Not a cardinal you say?
M: Doesn't TN stand for Tennessee? I was up there once for a conference about horses....
M: I can't give you the title, but I can work out an interpretive dance that I'm going to like, mentally commune to you about what I think this book is really about. (Pause). Just so you you know I'm dancing now. Is this helping?
Fiction (Cont)
Julie’s mascara ran down her face like the Amazon and its tributaries were bound for portions of her neck and ears. She attempted to wipe the vomit from her cheeks. “That was a hell of a shot Julie,” Jerry said, patting her back. “One in a million.” The two guys, by now, had broken their impromptu huddle and were marching back into the building in a manner that suggested impending bodily harm.
My heart beat like a rabbit in the path of a combine. I hadn’t been in a fight since the fifth grade. Steve importuned the sky to stop wasting its financial resources on cheap liquor.
Yes. I was scared. No need to turn. I can feel your empathy from right there.
Jerry plucked the bottle from Steve’s weak grasp. Steve sat up and wandered over to the iron rails and threw his arm around Julie.
We’ve got an enchanting view from that particular balcony. I’ll show it to you if all goes well. I’ll bet you hear all sorts of promises from people that they don’t keep.
“Look at all those people,” Steve said, gesturing towards miles of porch lights and dark wires. “Philistines.”
Jerry held the bottle when the knocking started. Hammering is probably a more precise way to describe the persistence with which the door was being struck—Telltale Heart type stuff. Steve, brazenly drunk, opened the sliding glass door and stumbled into the living room.
Strangely, I remember, that when the sliding glass door opened I could suddenly hear music, sad and slow. It was the type of music that makes you pause and take stock of your life, the sort of thing that guys who’ve accomplished as little as I have avoid after a certain age. My heart knocked solidly against my ribs. Steve peered into the keyhole saying, “Knock. Knock.” The response was a body flung vigorously against the door. “Ask who’s there dammit,” he said, taking a karate chop at the door.
Steve, joyously inebriated though he was, still managed to time his opening of the door inward to send the first of the guys sprawling on our carpet. Before the guy could get his bearings Steve was on him, delivering short swift kicks to his, the prone guy’s, ribs.
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