Dr. Seuss's Wife

Helen Palmer Geisel, the wife of the famous Dr. Seuss, had a bad run through a series of illnesses, including cancer. Dr. Seuss began a relationship with another woman, which broke Helen down even further. Distraught, she decided on an overdose of barbiturates.

This is her suicide note:

Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, 'failure, failure, failure...' I love you so much ... I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed ... Sometimes think of the fun we had all thru the years ...

I just found this out today an needed to share the despair it made blossom inside me.

Although, as I am happy and in love, the very existence of that dedication and passion for someone can be seen as a celebration of the human spirit - if you ignore the horror of the situation. :/

Jane Austin Gets a Solid Makeover: Zombies and Seamonsters

When I was finishing college, my English degree required a single author class. And the only thing available (unless I wanted to wait around) was Jane Austin. I read all 6 of her novels. And daily, it was like wiping all the crumbs and dirt and animal hair off the dinner table after a month of holiday parties, cleaning the grit between the leaves, and licking it all off a mildew-y paper towel that was on fire. Every day.

So I'm glad to see these two items. Enjoy them. And if you haven't read JA, don't. Ever.

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies



Sense & Sensibility & Seamonsters

Gertrude Stein

After checking out Randal's Jabbering Wacky, I was reminded of a piece I put together a while back. Enjoy.


Gertrude Stein

Gertrude intrude rude Stein beer
A rose is a rose is a rose
Sounds pretty, doesn’t it?
Sounds pretty, aren’t they?
Sounds like stein. Pretty. Much. Many.
Sheds light: dark or bright?

She said her
repetition was necessity
Repetition is necessary
repetition, Mississippi
Over and over a clover Red Rover

A rose had never been so red she said
Bent red read twice after pretty
So read, so heady
Beddy ruddy ready
Not clover, but a mushroom like Alice
Told toad stool road read
Bedspreads quilt patchwork farms

A rose is read, gets pretty well, gets dead
Steins aren’t pretty, drink to death
The rap-rap-rap repetition wraps my head
Mississippi bent pretty, talk to us

“Okay, so what’s the question?” so she said
on her deathbed, what’s the question?
Red the rose? Are you ready?
Over and over heading the rose road sheds
Dead not dead is toasting is roasting
it hurts, my head.

Lorem Ipsum, Catullus, Bukowski

The traditional filler text of graphic designers and web developers does have meaning. Love it.

Neither is there anyone who loves grief itself since it is grief and thus wants to obtain it

What the fuck was Cicero talking about?

I prefer Catullus:

Advice: to himself

Sad Catullus, stop playing the fool,
and let what you know leads you to ruin, end.
Once, bright days shone for you,
when you came often drawn to the girl
loved as no other will be loved by you.
Then there were many pleasures with her,
that you wished, and the girl not unwilling,
truly the bright days shone for you.
And now she no longer wants you: and you
weak man, be unwilling to chase what flees,
or live in misery: be strong-minded, stand firm.
Goodbye girl, now Catullus is firm,
he doesn’t search for you, won’t ask unwillingly.
But you’ll grieve, when nobody asks.
Woe to you, wicked girl, what life’s left for you?
Who’ll submit to you now? Who’ll see your beauty?
Who now will you love? Whose will they say you’ll be?
Who will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?
But you, Catullus, be resolved to be firm.

...which leads me to Bukowski:

one thirty-six a.m.

I laugh sometimes when I think about
say
Céline at a typewriter
or Dostoevsky...
or Hamsun...
ordinary men with feet, ears, eyes,
ordinary men with hair on their heads
sitting there typing words
while having difficulties with life
while being puzzled almost to madness.

Dostoevsky gets up
he leaves the machine to piss,
comes back
drinks a glass of milk and thinks about
the casino and
the roulette wheel.

Céline stops, gets up, walks to the
window, looks out, thinks, my last patient
died today, I won't have to make any more
visits there.
when I saw him last
he paid his doctor bill;
it's those who don't pay their bills,
they live on and on.
Céline walks back, sits down at the
machine
is still for a good two minutes
then begins to type.

Hamsun stands over his machine thinking,
I wonder if they are going to believe
all these things I write?
he sits down, begins to type.
he doesn't know what a writer's block
is:
he's a prolific son-of-a-bitch
damn near as magnificent as
the sun.
he types away.

and I laugh
not out loud
but all up and down these walls, these
dirty yellow and blue walls
my white cat asleep on the
table
hiding his eyes from the
light.

he's not alone tonight
and neither am
I.

We're gonna need a bigger beer.

What I'm Reading Now - Perdido Street Station

One of my close friends told me, 5 or 6 years ago, that I needed to read Perdido Street Station. 4 years ago, he hunted down China Miéville, from whom he purchased a copy, who wrote on the title page:

To [Ricky],

For God's sake, man,
listen to your friend,

Imploringly,
China Miéville

If only I'd known.

    What are you doing here, so far from home? thought Isaac with wonder. Look at the color of you: you're from the desert! You must have come miles and miles, from the Cymek. What the spit are you doing here, you impressive fucker?
    He almost shook his head with awe at the great predator before he cleared his throat and spoke.
    "Can I help you?"

Tasty, in all it's flavors. I should've done this long ago.

36 pages, and I can't wait for the next 10 minutes of free time.

China: Amen.

McCain as The Christ Figure

From ajc:

Georgia Republican Party chairwoman Sue Everhart said Saturday that the party's presumed presidential nominee has a lot in common with Jesus Christ.

"John McCain is kind of like Jesus Christ on the cross," Everhart said as she began the second day of the state GOP convention. "He never denounced God, either."

Everhart was praising McCain for never denouncing the United States while he was being tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

"I'm not trying to compare John McCain to Jesus Christ, I'm looking at the pain that was there," she said.

He's no Billy Budd (full Melville text). That's for sure.

Yeats' Version of The End

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats, January 1919

Truer now than then? Or is it always supposed to feel that way?

A Scientist's Fetish, an Author's Gaffe

Bad Ass Jeremy Irons as Über-Morlock

I usually don't focus on the author of a particular piece that I reference, but this bit from the Daily Mail by Niall Firth entitled "Human race will 'split into two different species'" is a two-fer:

The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.

100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.

The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000.
...
These humans will be between 6ft and 7ft tall and they will live up to 120 years.
...
Men will have symmetrical facial features, deeper voices and bigger penises, according to Curry in a report commissioned for men's satellite TV channel Bravo.

Women will all have glossy hair, smooth hairless skin, large eyes and pert breasts, according to Curry.

This part's too easy. While this unoriginal idea may have some fortitude, I'd rock to the side of the razor where the good theorist is fantasizing about approaching his anime-fetish fantasy girlfriend with more height, a deeper voice, and a whole lot more man-meat than he's carrying around right now; and they'd live happily until the ripe old age of 120. It's like how an artist's face subtly emerges from the portraits he or she paints.

But the bigger stinker in the article went thusly:

Dr Curry's theory may strike a chord with readers who have read H G Wells' classic novel The Time Machine, in particular his descriptions of the Eloi and the Morlock races.

In the 1895 book, the human race has evolved into two distinct species, the highly intelligent and wealthy Eloi and the frightening, animalistic Morlock who are destined to work underground to keep the Eloi happy.

Niall Firth, if you're going to make a referential analogy based on a classic piece of English Literature, read the damn book.

The Eloi were not intelligent nor wealthy - while they had possibly evolved from wealthy classes of the past, they had long ago become complacent and lost their curiosity, height, and most sexual distinction between male and female. They were little more than humanoid sheep which were kept happy and abundant by the Morlocks, but only to serve as their food.

Piss poor literature references really burn my biscuits. If it wasn't for the fetish theorist, the entire article would have been most unpleasant.

Beckett for Babies