Thursday, June 12, 2014

Thursday's Thoughts

Found on Craigslist. Nobody was more surprised than the owner that no one had jumped on it after a month plus with the advertised price of  5,000 dollars. Your unsolicited car guy advice for the day: Being old and previously identified as a sports car does not make a car valuable kids.

  • Frequently I have a dream where I ride with an old friend to drop my kids off at a baseball game in Decatur. The car she is driving is an old, huge tuna boat of a car which she bought from an elderly family member. It has 278,000 miles on it. We leave the kids there even though they're way too young to do so and tell them to go to Allsup's for a Coke when they're finished and we will pick them up there. When I go back the're not there and I inevitably wake up in a panic- so literally terrified I'm confused as to where I'm at and can't breathe.
  • The Raven- what I'm reading. There is no telling how many times I have read it through the years- hundreds I suppose.
  • I would like for EAP to know people are still reading his work over a hundred years after his death. He was one of the first Americans to attempt to make a living on writing alone. It is rare I meet somebody who knows he was a West Point Cadet. In fact, his first book was funded by subscriptions from his fellow Pointers. At age 27 he married his 13 year old cousin. She was playing the piano when a blood vessel burst in her throat. The loss of her figures in a lot of his work. He was found on the street wearing clothes that didn't belong to him. He died at 5:00 in the morning.

    Clark Gardens
  • During Theodore Roosevelt's exploration of the River Of Doubt one of the crew drowned in some rapids. They named a nearby falls after him. The impromptu inscription read," In these rapids died poor Simplicio."
  • Poor Simplicio
  • When self serve gas stations became more prevalent in the 1960s people didn't know how to pump their own gas so clerks would often have to show people how to put gasoline in their cars.
  • Rosie Odonnel or Roseanne Barr? Are you kidding me?! Roseanne of course.
    Here, I demonstrate how to rock- with GH Bass Bremmers.
  • The release of Bowe Bergdahl doesn't mean his case was one of the US negotiating with terrorists as he was a prisoner of war and he was exchanged for other prisoners of war- and nope, it doesn't matter how he was captured.
  • During a long ago relationship I strayed. The vile temptress had a name starting with J. After the fence was somewhat mended I was listening to a version of Jolene. Woman formerly known as woman told me to turn it off. I thought she said turn it up so I obliged. She walked in and unplugged the computer. Funny. Here is a favorite version of Jolene by the modern day troubadour- the inimitable Jack White.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm always impressed with Poe when I go back and read his stuff. For as much as he's known as sort of the granddaddy of horror, there's a real humanity in his writing.

When I compare it to, say, Lovecraft, the difference is remarkable. Poe is three-dimensional.

Like with twain, his stuff doesn't date.

el chupacabra said...

Sweet Kate- Yep, it seems like every time I pick up his work it is a rediscovery. Ineveitably I give an anthology away when somebody is curious about him then a find another copy at Goodwill or Half Price and the process starts over...

an Donalbane said...

Whither the cask d'Amontillado, Montresor?

In pace requiescat, Fortunato!

el chupacabra said...

Hey Don. Oddly, I have not read the Cask- I'll rectify that the next time I stumble across a collected works or look it up on Teh Gutenberg Project

an Donalbane said...

It's a pretty quick read - possibly on account of being a short story. I've read it many times, but for research purposes, accessed it online when writing my comment. A review I read basically did nothing more than retell the literal story - not particularly helpful.

I think EAP's point was to explore the dynamic of evil that can lurk in humans, as well as to tell a cautionary tale about human nature, showing how greed & pride can be leveraged by an adversary to cause one's demise.