Archive for the ‘reading’ Category

A Question or Two

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Have you ever played jacks, pick-up sticks, or flag football? Would you go into debt to pay for an operation for a cat to prolong its life six months? How about a distant relative, a cousin you haven’t seen for forty years? Have you ever ridden a horse, a cow, a dog? If I say bareback riding do you think of horses? Do you know your own IQ? Do you tell others what it is? Do you exaggerate?

Have you ever worked on a farm or delivered a newspaper? What do you think of if I say moving pipes? Have you ever received a call from a collection agency? Did you shoot birds with a bb gun when you were younger? Do you still shoot birds? When you were a child did you know anyone who hung a cat from a clothesline? How did he turn out? Was his name Jeffrey? Have you ever propelled your body through water using your limbs? Have you done it in a canal, a river? Do you even know how to swim?

Do you ever wonder where George Bush is at this exact moment? Do you care? Is Barack Obama doing a good job? Do you think Hillary would have done a better job? How about John McCain? Have you ever doused yourself in gasoline and threatened to set yourself alight? Do you ever think about what it would be like to stand on Sarah Palin’s front lawn and look at Russia? Would you buy a used car from Sean Hannity? Would you shack up with Ann Coulter? If you wouldn’t buy a used car from Sean Hannity would you buy one from Joe Liebermann or Claire McCaskill?

Do you use the phrase “begs the question” when you mean to raise the question? Do you understand the term bad faith as it applies to existentialism? Do you substitute playdough for Plato when speaking of the Greek Philosopher? If I say Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates can you place them in the proper chronological order? Are you tired of all the questions? Do you wonder what prompted this silliness, this interrogative mood?

Posted in General, Nonsense, reading | 3 Comments »

Don’t Panic

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

My son doesn’t like my Kindle. It was his suggestion that the family give it to me for my birthday, but he doesn’t like it. “It’s not the same he says, the bits and bytes are not substantial. I like the smell of the book, and how it feels in my hand,” he said. “You’ll be the ruin of the book as we know it,” he added.

I made my arguments about that bastard Gutenberg who put the monks out of business with his cold lifeless print, but my son was not persuaded. I even argued that his computer games have put board games out of business.

WoW, he said.

And this morning my wife is copying down phone numbers and addresses in an address book. “Computers fail,” she says, “the power might go out and then where would you be.”

“I’ll bet you use a ballpoint pen,” I said.

“I have no idea what that means,” she said. “Not everyone has read everything you’ve read you’ll have to explain the context if you expect me to understand.”

“It’s not something I read,” I said. “It’s something I watched, Meryl Streep, in “Doubt,” the movie we saw night before last.

She laughed.

Meryl Streep plays a nun who is like my son and wife is a fan of yesterday’s technology. A nun who is dismayed by the use of that modern contrivance, the ball point pen.

And now back to subject of my Kindle though I don’t think it’s a Kindle at all if this description from the guide is correct:

He also had a device that looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million “pages” could be summoned at a moment’s notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words DON’T PANIC printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.*

dontpanicx

It’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

*Adams,D. (1979) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (pp.26-27) New York: Harmony Books

Posted in Family, Home, Marriage, reading | No Comments »

Beside the Point

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

My backyard is not much more than a small patch of grass, a patio, a favorite chair, and a forest of scrub oak. I’m sitting, book in hand (Kindle®), reading. My constant backyard companions, the birds, are sitting on the branches that form the canopy that shades my favorite reading spot. They are keeping me company.

I hear the branches right above me rustle, and look up to see what bird has stopped to visit. Instead I see a squirrel. I believe it is the same squirrel I’ve seen before skittering under the shed, but now he is in the top of the trees looking down at me. For just a moment, I’m worried that this is his cousin—brought in from out of town to do a hit—and that I am the target. I have, after all, recently cleaned out the shed upsetting the winter store he has hidden there. He looks me over carefully and then deciding to give me a break—runs across the tree tops to the east and my neighbor’s yard.

I return to my book, Matrimony by Joshua Henkin.

Author’s often use their novels as vehicles to address their pet peeves, and that’s okay with me. I like such asides. I believe the character is being used, but not unfairly.

Here is an exchange between Julian and Mia.

But before she could answer him, he had moved from philosophy to English usage. He was listing the idioms he used to get wrong. He’d said “no holes barred” instead of “no holds barred” and “deep-seeded” instead of “deep-seated.” “It’s ‘home in on,’” he said, “not ‘hone in on.’ Like a homing pigeon.” Why, he wanted to know, was it “the whole nine yards” and not “the whole ten yards”? It took ten yards to get a first down. Or “have your cake and eat it, too.” It was no trick, he said, to have your cake and eat it. The real trick was in reverse, to eat your cake and still have it. That was what the idiom should have been: “to eat your cake and have it, too.” “Or ‘long in the tooth,’” Mia said. “What does that mean?” “Old.” “But why? Do our teeth get longer as we age? Are we destined to become beavers?”

(Matrimony Kindle Edition, Location 675-681)

But that is “beside the point,” not “besides the point.” When I look up again, the squirrel is four feet away, on a low branch, and staring at me. I try to engage him in conversation, but he finds nothing I say worthy of a response. He turns, and then looks back as if he is giving me one more chance. He waits a moment longer, and then scampers up the tree, and from there along Canopy Boulevard to the west.

Posted in Moments, reading | No Comments »

The Lightbulb

Monday, May 23rd, 2005

The light didn’t come on. I falsely assumed the bulb had burnt out. I got another bulb; a replacement for the one I thought faulty. I removed the bulb and shook it, no telltale rattle. I replaced it anyway, setting the other aside. I didn’t put it away, I set it aside.

The new bulb didn’t work either; it had never been the problem I checked the combinations of on-off switches, both the pull down chain near the bulb, and the switch on the cord. I didn’t want to consider the possibility that it was unplugged. Who would have unplugged it and why? Another possibility occurred to me, the wall-switch the one that controls the wall plug. I switched it to the opposite position, and went through the series of switches again, two switches, both on, both off, one on one off, one off one on, four possibilities and only one solution. The initial problem was even more complicated. The wall switch, the bulb, the pull down chain, the cord switch, and the wall plug. I made some assumptions. I took a shortcut, and it paid off. Five switches, all of which had to be properly set. A combination of five things taken two at a time. Thirty-two possibilities, thirty-one lead to darkness one to light, but like I said I made some assumptions and it paid off.

The next day, the new bulb is illuminating my reading area, I’m trying to read, but my wife is chatting. She’s in the hall closet searching for paint. “I have hundreds of different colors, and never the right one” she says. I’m trying to read, and her chatter is annoying me. “Someone needs to replace the bulb in the hallway,” she says. I know she expects me to respond, but I’m reading, and I’m already annoyed. I can see the bulb I removed the day before. I’m not looking at it, but I know it’s there, not where it belongs, but near me on the shelf. It looks out of place. I left it there because I was too lazy to put it away. I know she will speak again. Can’t she see I’m reading, am I being unreasonable. There is no way to stop her so I set the book on the table and stand up. I take a step to my left retrieving the bulb from its place, I take another step and lean over the gate, the gate that keeps the dog out of the living room. “HERE,” I say, handing her the bulb. She’s surprised, she shakes it. “It’s good,” I say, offering no further explanation, hoping to cut the conversation short. “Where did you get it,” she says. She knows I didn’t get it from the closet where we keep the bulbs. Exasperated I say, “I pulled it out of my ass.” “You pulled it out of your ass” she says. “That’s right I pulled it out of my ass.” I sit back down, retrieve my book and begin to read.

Meanwhile, she has removed the cut glass shade to replace the bulb. “The shade is dirty,” she says, “look at this.” “Can’t you see I’m reading and that your talking distracts me,” I say. I immediately regret my harsh tone, but say nothing that will delay me getting back to my book. I finish the chapter. I can’t read anymore; there is tension in the air. I pick up my book and enter the room where she’s now painting. I lean over and kiss her on the cheek. She looks up, smiles and says, “hey can’t you see I’m painting.”

Posted in Home, Marriage, reading | No Comments »