Read It Four Times
In 1956, William Faulkner gave an interview, William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12. If you have the time, the entire interview is worth reading. The story of his experience as a Hollywood screenwriter is worth the price of admission. Here are a few quotes to go between the pictures.
PR: Then what would be the best environment for a writer?
FAULKNER: Art is not concerned with environment either; it doesn’t care where it is. If you mean me, the best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it’s the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. It gives him perfect economic freedom; he’s free of fear and hunger; he has a roof over his head and nothing whatever to do except keep a few simple accounts and to go once every month and pay off the local police. The place is quiet during the morning hours, which is the best time of the day to work. There’s enough social life in the evening, if he wishes to participate, to keep him from being bored; it gives him a certain standing in his society; he has nothing to do because the madam keeps the books; all the inmates of the house are females and would defer to him and call him “sir.” All the bootleggers in the neighborhood would call him “sir.” And he could call the police by their first names.
So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey…
PR: Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?
FAULKNER: Read it four times.
PR: You mentioned experience, observation, and imagination as being important for the writer. Would you include inspiration?
FAULKNER: I don’t know anything about inspiration because I don’t know what inspiration is—I’ve heard about it, but I never saw it.
PR: As a writer you are said to be obsessed with violence.
FAULKNER: That’s like saying the carpenter is obsessed with his hammer. Violence is simply one of the carpenter’s tools. The writer can no more build with one tool than the carpenter can…
PR: What about the European writers of that period?
FAULKNER: The two great men in my time were Mann and Joyce. You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith…
PR: Would you comment on the future of the novel?
FAULKNER: I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man’s capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave…
PR: You gave a statement to the papers at the time of the Emmett Till killing. Have you anything to add to it here?
FAULKNER: No, only to repeat what I said before: that if we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green. Maybe the purpose of this sorry and tragic error committed in my native Mississippi by two white adults on an afflicted Negro child is to prove to us whether or not we deserve to survive. Because if we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.
Winching The Dead
A recent post included the phrase “getting severely overweight dead people out of an apartment building.” Those are googling words. Most of the results are hand wringing about the number of overweight people. A couple of the results were worth clicking out.
The headline result is from Merry Olde England, which is becoming known as the fattest country in Europe. Fire service called in 50 times to winch fat people out.
“Paramedics in the West Midlands have had to call on their heavy-lifting emergency service colleagues, despite having extra equipment to help move extremely heavy patients themselves. Over a three-year period they called in West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service on 50 occasions, so the patients could be winched out with apparatus designed for lifting car wrecks. Sometimes morbidly obese patients, … can only be extracted from their homes after a window is taken out, say firefighters.
… Nick Harrison, chairman of the West Midlands Fire Brigades Union, said: “In most cases these people are quite elderly and are suffering from serious medical issues which have left them bedridden for a long time, and they have put on a lot of weight. “Many times we have to remove the whole window frame and get them out that way. It’s a lot safer both for them and for the rescuers.”
… Official statistics show the West Midlands to be the fattest region in Britain, which is itself the fattest major country in Europe. According to the Association of Public Health Observatories, about 25 per cent of adults in Britain are now clinically obese. In the West Midlands, the figure is 29 per cent. By comparison, across the European Union as a whole it is just 14 per cent. “
One of the commenters had a constructive suggestion: “The ‘feeders’ should be brought to court and punished. For every obese person there is one or more ‘feeders’, who shop, supply the food, help the person eat it etc. Being a ‘feeder’ should be a criminal offense.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Brain Test
The home page of Sommer+Sommer has text in German. They have an english language test, Which side of your brain is more dominant? They call it “The 30-Second Brain Test.” PG is a cracker, and took a bit longer. They should wait until after football season.
The test is kind of strange. The first question is a video of a dancer going in circles. You are given two buttons, The one of the left is counter clockwise, and the one on the right is clockwise. Next is “Choose the color, not the word. You have 4 seconds for each task.” The name of a color is on top, in all caps and no serif. There are two colors below, with the name of the color matching the text. You look at the text on top, and click on the correct color. It is not as easy as it sounds.
You then choose between some line drawings.” Of the following, which picture appeals to you most?” “This picture is most similar to … ” “Of the following, which picture best fits the theme of friendship?”
The next series of questions is a bit unfair. “Put your hand on your head. Which hand did you use?” If you are working the mouse with your right hand, you probably use the left hand. “Cross your hands over your chest. Which hand is on top?” “Cross your legs. Which leg is on top?” People working at a desk might find that one a challenge. “Look at an object and close one eye. Which eye is still open?”
PG took the test twice. The first time he gave honest answers. The second time he was taking notes, and gave dishonest answers. The results were the same both times. “Congratulations You use your brain equally.” You can click through to a page that explains the answers.
Oscar Wilde
Today is Oscar Wilde’s birthday. On this day in 1854, he appeared in Dublin, Ireland. He is one of the most widely quoted people in the english language. Some of those quotes are real. Since he was a published author, it should be easy to verify what he really said.
One night in 1974, PG was talking to someone, and did not know who Oscar Wilde was. The conversational partner was horrified. PG became educated, and learned about a misunderstanding with the Marquess of Queensberry. Soon the “Avenge Oscar Wilde” signs made sense.
Mr. Wilde once made a speaking tour in the United States. One afternoon, in Washington D.C., the playwright met Walt Whitman. Thee and thou reportedly did the “Wilde thing”.
The tour then went to Georgia. A young black man had been hired as a valet for Mr. Wilde on this tour. On the train ride from Atlanta to Augusta, some people told Mr. Wilde that he could not ride in the same car as the valet. This was very confusing.
After his various legal difficulties, Oscar Wilde moved to Paris. He took ill, while staying in a tacky hotel. He looked up, and said “either that wallpaper goes, or I do”. Soon, Oscar Wilde passed away.
Two Thirds Of A Joke
1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from eating too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. The teacher confiscated a rubber band pistol was confiscated from a student in an algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
12. A baseball cap and a beret were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. The beret said to the cap:
‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.
13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
17. A backward poet writes inverse.
18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you’d be in Seine.
21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’
22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’
23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.
Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other says ‘Are you sure?’
The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’
25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal?
He wanted to transcend dental medication.
26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
27. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Agent 99
Agent was hired to babysit Agent Maxwell Smart. She had his back at all times. Would you believe, when told to sing “99 bottles of beer on the wall,” Agent Maxwell Smart forgot the lyrics? KAOS was scared of Agent 99. They were not worried about Agent Maxwell Smart. Agent 99 was a former fashion model, and the daughter of a spy. Would you believe, Agent 99 did not have a real name? Agent Maxwell Smart was a bachelor until he married Agent 99. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Trivia is from the IMDB. One trivia item is fake.
Stone Mountain Oktoberfest
It was pride sunday, and PG had little desire to go downtown. A check of the innertubes turned up an Okterberfest event in Stone Mountain. This is the downtown part of the city, which the merchants like to call the village. It is not the park, or else PG and Uzi would not be interested.
The parking was in an open field, with the white tents across the street. The polka band was rolling out, or whatever those guys do. There could not have been more than twenty tents in the arts market. It was like the back alley surplus of the Duluth Fall Festival. The team was through in a few minutes. The sausages at the German restaurant did not have any appeal.
Fortunately, the town graveyard was nearby. There was a section of anonymous Confederate graves. Many of the other tombs had markers indicating that a CSA veteran was nearby.
A truck was going through the graveyard, with a man speaking on a loudspeaker. A trailer, full of people, was being pulled by the truck. PG said if he had known about that, he could have gone. Uzi said that there would have been a charge for the tour. PG would not have paid.
After a few cheerful minutes wandering amongst the dead, it was dinner time. There was a Piccadilly cafeteria on the way home. The health department gave them a 90 on the last inspection. No employees were in the restroom when PG washed his hands.
The Other Deadly Sins
PG was working on pictures. The phone rang. It was his friend “P”. Someone was using a loud machine to paint his fence, and “P” thought his dryer was broken. After hearing the story, PG asked “Is this what we have come to? It is pride sunday, we should be downtown, but instead we are talking on the phone about your dryer”.
“P” made a very good point. In his proud opinion, pride is just one of the seven deadly sins. The other six are feeling neglected. PG then looked up a blog post about things that come in seven. There, above seven holy virtues, seven goddesses, and seven dwarfs, were the seven deadly sins … envy, lust, gluttony, greed, pride, sloth, wrath.
Gay pride has devolved into a celebration of consumerism. It could just as easily honor gluttony, greed, or envy. Politically correct haters would love to cultivate wrath. Lust is an ongoing parade, with or without corporate maintenance.
Which leaves us with sloth, better known these days as slack. As any subgenius knows, slack is the most prized of these sins. Taking the train downtown does not further the pursuit of slack. Pictures were taken at the 2012 parade. They look very much like what you would see today. UPDATE
PG went to the Stone Mountain Oktoberfest on Pride Sunday. The polka band was loud and proud.
25 Things About Georgia
These daze, there is more media than messages. People need things to write about. One popular theme, at least in itp/otp, is lists about life in Georgia. A web facility that should know better, thought catalog, recently put out 25 Things You Need To Know About Georgia.
25TYNTKAG was written by Jeremy Populus Jones. He seems to be the CEO of something called GAFollowers. (@GAFollowers on twitter) From the fine print: “GAFollowers was created on a “strength in numbers” foundation, finding a creative way to use free online social networking sites to strengthen the “bond” between people in Georgia to help better form this state. … GAFollowers is one of the largest twitter accounts in the state of Georgia that spans nearly every corner of the region.”
These lists about Georgia life usally have a few common comments. There is the heat, the bugs, the traffic, the multiple Peachtrees, and southern accents. They seldom mention the shameless corruption, religious mental illness, rampant obesity, or racial pandemonium. Lets take a look at 25TYNTKAG. Mr. Jones will be in blue, and Chamblee54 in green. The photographs today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
1. The weather here is just as inconsistent as your ex-girlfriend. Not really. It gets cold in January, hot in July. Your ex-girlfriend is staying out of this.
2. We call all interstates in Georgia, “The Highway”. Most people use the number.
3. Only in Atlanta is everything named “Peachtree” without a single tree with peaches around. Peachtree is all over OTP.
4. Terio and Honey Boo Boo were born and raised here. You couldn’t do this without google. Terio is a chubby kid who dances. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
5. “Knuck if you Buck” is the song we will always get hype to no matter the age. Yuck.
6. White girls wear Nike shorts with big t-shirts covering their shorts. (How many can you spot?) Maybe there was a sale on big t-shirts at Walmart.
7. Zaxbys is what you eat. The TC comments said this is not accurate. They mentioned a certain spelling challenged company, that specializes in overpriced chicken sandwiches. At least the son of Mr. Zaxby doesn’t run off potential customers with his big mouth.
8. We call it a “rag” not a “washcloth”. Do people up north say a woman is on the washcloth?
9. Going outside at anytime during the summer instantly guarantees a minimum a 7 bug bites. This is mostly true. Who is counting?
10. In Georgia when someone ask, “Where you from?”, people usually reply with a county not a city. In Atlanta, when you say “Where are you from?” it is almost always somewhere outside of Georgia.
11. The speed limit is 65 mph but if you’re not going at least 80 mph you’ll be ran off the road. This is also true on surface roads. In hilly Atlanta, there are few places to pass on two lane roads.
12. In Georgia it’s not a shopping cart, it’s a buggy. Do people really say shopping cart? At Kroger it is a bascart. The stores have a bascart corral.
13. We get more inches of pollen in a week than inches of snow in a full year. Pollen season hits in early spring. It is rough for many people. The rest of the year gets relatively little pollen. There is a good ice/snow storm every ten years or so. This one is probably true.
14. You say Georgia, we say Jawja. Others say George-ah. To untrained ears they sound the same.
15. Sweet tea is our water. Very few people wash cars with sweet tea.
16. The night has been a success if you ended up at Waffle House. This is especially true if you are scattered, smothered, and covered.
17. In Georgia it’s necessary to look at the weather before picking out an outfit. Items this are a reason not to number lists. Just think of what you have to say, write it down, and hope it is not copyrighted.
18. We pray that we get snow during the winters. The people who pray for winter storms are merchants. They have an inventory of batteries, milk, ice, and eggs to sell.
19. We are the creators of, “Turn Up”. You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip.
20. Here in Georgia white girls can twerk. No Miley Cyrus. Ditto reaction to number 17. What was PG thinking of when he decided to do this post?
21. You will usually be 30 minutes away from just about every destination that you’re heading to. 22. There’s a Waffle House in walking distance of every Waffle House. These two have been combined, for obvious reasons. Do people proofread these lists before sending them out?
23. Any dark soda is simply called “Coke”. Many say Cocola, without the second syllable.
24. We pronounce it “Atlanna”. Whatever. Sometimes the second t is audible, sometimes not. It definitely is not the ATL, except to radio shouters.
25. Braves, Falcons & UGA are the teams we really care about. Tech fans may disagree. Ditto taxpayers, who don’t care is Rankin Blank gets a new stadium.
Chamblee54 
leave a comment