A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Jon Stewart Is the Smartest Man on TV

Abscess Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Home! Of course, I hadn't been here long before the garbage disposal jammed and the sink backed up. I took it on myself, in a bit of hubris, to repair things and only made them worse -- I tightened an O-coupling too much and wrecked it. So I had to call the plumber and pay for my hubris.

After three months away, things have changed around the house. That is, nothing is where I left it. Which for a mild (?) obsessive-compulsive like me is disturbing. Nevertheless, after my first outpatient IV session today, I vow to come home and rest.