Thursday, March 27, 2014

Readings from a book I got at a garage sale: Week 22

Well, as anyone who's not forced to count by hitting their toes with a hammer can plainly see, we're already up to Week 22 of our together reading together of a book I got at a garage sale. Is it a sign of getting older when time just seems to fly by like that, or something else?

But before we begin, a few important notes. First, I want to make it perfectly clear to those commenters who have referred to our together reading together as a "beating" and "the trail of tears" that I simply will not put up with that sort of incivility on my posts. Fortunately, the worst of you potty mouths seems to have penitently seen the error of your ways, and so I'm going to publish your followup comment this time, which I've mostly reconstructed from memory:

Keith, your writing makes me weep with joy. You are probably the smartest man I've ever read. You've inspired my to cash out my 401k and put the entire $375,000 into either pre-orders for your proposed book on certain multi-level marketing opportunities in newly emerging nations or into following you on your next quest into the unknown, whichever comes first.

Now I have to ask you, isn't that an inspiration to us all?

In other news, I was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for incisive column writing received a really exciting Publishers Clearing House notification about my status as a finalist. #Pumped.

Also, and even better if you can believe it, the initial meeting on my proposed book proposal led directly to an offer I just can't pass up two hours at the DMV don't really seem so long if you bring along your own tunes everything at the DA's office went well and he agreed that most of the charges were entirely spurious.

Finally, I had the top of my skull surgically separated and a stainless steel hinge installed in the back so that when fresh new incomprehensible combinations of blog subjects are called for I can just reach up there with a spoon the way Rod does.

And now on to our reading. Well. Where to begin? So many things have happened since our last together reading together. The UFO. Ann and the possum. The movement. Probably best to just dive in where we left off:

And he couldn't catch himself, stop himself. He was going to fall on Orv. There was movement on his left and the sound of a door opening. He sprawled helplessly across Orv’s inert ?gure. That was all there was to it. Until he felt himdllr h 0 hself being lifted. He was being lifted by the shoulders and dragged. He knew that he made a : c”; and forces may no more be lost 5 lem~as clear sound. He tried t0 get his legs under him And he We managed to come up on his knees Swimmingly of P3111, he saw until was a cook He held Ann s arm Tim made 1t t one took his wrist It was a tall thin man in a 1 held Tims wrist with one hand and with [ht upper arm Hold on to him, a voice said Then Tim noticed the man s( rifle) 7 at the desk He b dy H6 Was telephoning Tim heard him say call this number as soon as he gets in It s very and tell him it s very important He hung up ] coldly for a moment Then he began to dial ant man was squat and heavy He had {hm blond ing a brightly ?owered shirt The colors mingl for Tim like an oil slick in an eddy of water Tl the back of his head

Ant man. How small we are in the scheme of things, indeed.

BTW, Thanks to the respective readers - you know who you are - for your emails concerning a few facts and characterizations I had initially gotten wrong, corrections which I've now incorporated into my original post above.

Omg Fontain man)’ is fuller and n motion. What Mayer calls with numbem Ma )t10I1 (Bert/egung) seem to ts heat. Now to , translate antial energy would be like >ing the prob lem. It would 2r faced and h I a f-resolved. ’ in s ymbols the quantity l to the other quantity more generous yer performed no experiments himself.

The Fountain man is fuller and in motion. I think here our author may not so cryptically be saying that more preorders of certain proposed books on certain multi-level marketing opportunities in newly emerging nations can lead both the reader and the writer to fuller, more rewarding lives.

Continuing:

in order to understand the present hlence evely intelpret time as a sequence of present moments sh Int the past presupposes that man already stands In one of the three €i{ time, ms existence eld Jpread out over time as it is over space; his tem~ a basic fact of this existence one that underhes all his measurements of Clochs are useful to man existence is rooted in a prior hind of temporaljty theoly of time is novel in that unhhe earhe their 720 ‘vs, ” he gives priority to the Wording to him, is primary beca Inan projects and in which lit always is to ’

By your own admission you say you threatened to kill 1Ii1n:ly if he molested Ann. He did. He’s now dead and you were found on the scene of the crime. You have a witness who states you didn’t do it. Her story ?ts yours. And that's the collec- tion of facts I have so far. There isn’t gg$_$¢@ X), and so l’m not going to embarrass either of you or myself by holding you. But this doesn’t change the solid fact that you’re our ¢¢g$$*/NY W’." Tim grinned at him. “All right. I’n1 the prK@%6®_O@K¢Wxect. But have you got any other ideas?” Pete shook his head.

Orv. Tim. The UFO. Ann and the possum. Biceps Beach. Ant man. Temporaljty. The movement. China. Pete.

And now the Fountain man.

The mystery continues.

21 comments:

  1. Keith, please don't be embarrassed, but I mean it when I say that YOU are "our ¢¢g$$*/NY W".

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    1. [NFK: Aw, Kathleen, as they say in the small Southern town of pious, humble folk I come from, someone has to eat the scallops, a layered salad with lobster and avocado, and a sort of seafood curry with lobster, shrimp, and scallops, over rice for Lent. It might as well be me. - KH]

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    2. Oh my gosh, I went to the dreherrhea site, and sure enough, he did eat that. And then he has the noive to tell us how manly and muscular his form of Christiantiy is, because it demands all this rigorous fasting stuff in Lent? Bwahahaha.

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    3. Yes, I know that was your point, Keith, and I am pointing out the obvious, but I guess I didn't quite believe that that was really his idea of Orthodox Lenten fasting. Too funny!

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    4. [NFK: Diane, I'm hardly an expert on these things, but I don't think Hank done it this way. -KH]

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    5. I read that menu last night and spent altogether too much time pondering what would have to happen inside a person's mind before they could describe a meal that included lobster in two different courses as being part of a "fast."

      I must not be spiritually macho enough to get it.

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    6. I must not be spiritually macho enough to get it.

      Dittos.

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    7. That same piece hints at some potential action toward the movie version of TLWORL. Noted television actress!!

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    8. Oh my gosh. I can just see it now. Even sappier than The Christmas Shoes, if that's even possible.

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    9. Black truffles instead of Italian white tonight...it is Lent, after all. We must suffer through, carrying these heavy crosses...

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    10. "Steel Magnolias for a new generation." No comment.

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    11. Pik, it probably says something about the sort of person I am that I was sort of hoping Kanye West would offer Dreher a cool 2 million for the rights, casting Kim Kardashian and himself as the respective leads. We would then know whether French oysters talk and what language they speak.

      With the paperback hitting the shelves just 2 weeks from now, expect some hot TLWORLing in the run-up.

      Keith

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    12. I can see why Sela Ward would be drawn to TLWORL, based on her memoir (which Dreher claims some credit for in the piece you linked).

      But Dreher better be careful if Sela runs with the TLWORL movie project. It could be "adapted" to have one of Ruthie's daughters as the protagonist. With the ill-tempered ungrateful uncle with an axe to grind as the villain.

      Lifetime Movie Network, baby!!

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    13. Pik, your rewrite, in addition to being the way the Hollywood studio meat grinder really works, is breakthrough brilliant: through the character of the middle or youngest daughter - one of the ones not bought off - the story of the good works of Ruthie are still told, this time truthfully, against a background of serpentine psychological Southern Gothic machinations. And who wouldn't green light James Franco - straight out of Homefront - as the deeply flawed, psychologically manipulative, Sonic-the-Hedgehog-haired Dreher? I can already hear that wistfully sad female voiceover. If only Uncle Rod had been able to...

      Cruel vixen, that Fame.

      Keith

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    14. And once you change the POV to that of Ruthie's daughter, a whole Pandora's Box of sub-plots become available. We've got the blood-soaked aunts in their cabin in the woods (and their effect on vicious uncle), ghosts, exorcisms, pants-pulled-down, the gay bar scene in N.O., . . . imagine the possibilities.

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  2. You are an inspiration, Keith, and incredibly fortunate to have found such a treasure in your garage sale journeys. The best I have ever found at a garage sale was a slightly used copy of "Uncle John's Fully Loaded Bathroom Reader", which I found entertaining but hardly of the caliber of your extraordinary book.

    Truly we are blessed! Thank you for sharing. I've contacted my investment advisor and asked him to sell everything and pre-order as many copies of your upcoming book as possible. I am confident that their value will only increase once word gets around, and if not then I and the other residents of Lake Okoboji Sanitarium and Rest Home for the Opportunistically Afflicted will enjoy many days of discussing your ideas. I tried to get something going with my book, but so far the best they seem to be able to do with it is prop one leg of the old player piano seat in the corner so Eustacia can play for afternoon sing-along without falling off the seat.

    Rod

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    1. [NFK: Oh, gosh, what an honor or something.

      But now I have to ask: when you reach up and stir the old idea pot in order to produce one of those psychotically random thematic mashups - I'll confess right here that
      "In Ancient Judea Miss Piggy Would Have Dated a Lizard: Post-modernity, cross-swinging sub-species, and the collapse of moral standards" - is one of my favorites; when you heap out a big old dripping new helping of idea stew...what kind of spoon do you use? Because spoons matter. - KH]

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  3. Well, Keith, Dreher just raised the bar for this series of yours. We'd better see a re-telling of the whirlwind weekend romance between you and Crank in your next installment.

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    1. Well, Pik, I wouldn't necessarily call dipping old Crank for mange a whirlwind weekend romance, but I may well be a sort of parochial traditional guy and not up on the latest in big city dating. And if I proposed that to my girlfriend I think she'd just shoot me and call the sheriff.

      But it's not really unusual to see Dreher front and center in this series, is it? That was the MO with TLWORL, and it will be the MO with this - in fact, the whole conceit of this vulgar little book proposal is that Dante is a self-help nostrum, like a copper bracelet, and step right up and git yer healin' right here.

      I do think Dreher's on to something I might borrow if I ever deteriorate into the sort of repulsive little male pig who couldn't get date that Dreher apparently was with women in his pre-married years.

      No, really, he chose chastity, it wasn't forced on him by default as some Darwinian doom, like the little wart hog who wasn't gonna get the girl, ever - no really, he chose it. The same way everyone in solitary can triumphantly declare themselves "clean and drug free".

      So when Darwinian chastity shuts down your grunting, Heatmiser game, turn to the proven, age-old remedy: seduce a disturbed and impressionable young woman 10 years younger than you.

      Keith

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