Marx, Engels, Grimm, and Grimm

While trudging through a flimsy used copy of Grimm fairy tales that I got in Amsterdam a million years ago, it occurred to me the brothers were almost contemporaries of Marx and Engels. It looks like more of a scholar than myself will have to do the requisite digging in some musty Bohemian archive, but I'm tempted:

A dialectical materialist analysis of the celebrated folktales, jotted down in some tattered notebook by a sleepless Marx? A lively correspondence, a debate, about their political significance in mid-19th century Germany? Some fan mail from a young and eager Engels, stowed away and ignored in some publisher's ancient archives? A chance meeting on the streets of Hamburg?? A COUPLE OF BEERS??? A HEATED POLITICAL DEBATE AND FALLING OUT, ALL IN OLD NORSE?????

Tell me there's something out there. Look!



You guys should totally hang out!

"What?" and "New Mexico blog life"

What? I have a blog. Welcome back everyone, if you were surprised to see "Spaniel for Two" blast to the top of Wiley's blog list and burst into your eyes, where have you been? You knew one day it would rise again like Lazarus defeating the Phoenix.

This concludes Part I.

Yesterday was my going away party, so many people showed up! It was good of you all to tell Wiley you were there to celebrate his graduation, since the party was at his house. Thanks Wiley!

Psych, congratulations Doctor Wiley, you climbed the veriest peak of academe like Ratatoskr the squirrel gaining the highest branches of the world tree Yggdrasil, to spread what nutshelled messages over Midgard as will only be known when the final sun sets on the eve of Ragnarok.

I'll see you at band practice.

And then I have to go to New Mexico, where as though burying my old Mid Atlantic self I will plant my one surviving cactus and cultivate many more, like the prickly new selves I'll invent to parcel out my sanity like the rationed desert water supply. Needless to say, I'm stoked.

Tentacular love

Tentacular love:
just an octopus and his
octoprostitute.

Child of God

by Cormac (born Charles) McCarthy. One of the best books I've ever picked up and put down. A gift from Sterling no less. What I did was I threw something at my stack of books and it hit Child of God so I read it. He's so nonchalant when he reveals the horrible things that have been going on throughout the book that you basically just take it in stride and even laugh at some of them. An experience.

Fine, snow

Today's weather: wintry with a chance of blogging.

It's been a month. What have I been doing? Very important things. Did I miss anything? Nope. Howard Zinn died. Haiti something something. Book club proceeds apace. Each in its turn.

Very important things

The restaurant whose dishes I tend to closed for most of January, so I slept a good deal, drank some, helped Beth move to New Mexico, went broke, and went back to work where my dishes were waiting. Eric told me about a book by Robert Heinlein in which a fellow named Job travels between universes getting work washing dishes. An inspiration to me.

Let me clarify that generally when you wash dishes you are washing dirty dishes. Rarely do you wash clean dishes.

Howard Zinn died

He was definitely really old. I suspect the government had to kill him when they realized he was going to reveal how it used secret geo-weaponry to cause the earthquake in Haiti.

Haiti something something

Not that I believe that. As with most conspiracy theories, the truth is all the more horrid. 200,000 are dead in Haiti and the US has decided that's a good excuse to occupy the country. Hey guys, you're monsters.

Book club

Not done yet! I guess it's only been two months since we started reading The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. That's fine. Nobel award winner, mustachioed adulterer, cranky old man.

I've been reading his letters to the editor, essays, and the like. On the one hand, he seems to hate cars and fear that racial violence will reflect poorly on his beloved Mississippi. On the other, he supports the civil rights movement and went on the record opposing Franco during the Spanish Civil War. And his stories are pretty neat.

Dirty dishes, don't despair

Oh dirty dishes, don't despair,
I love you with my heart and hair.
If I may inquire,
What is your desire:
A wash and scrub?
Some bleach, some love?
How it's ever so rare
to find a platter that cares,
Oh no dirty dishes, don't despair.

Sound, y Fury

Finished this famous novel. Once I was in a book club that met regularly to discuss this work but internal strife and intrigue tore it apart. If the bickering and backstabbing - literal backstabbing - hadn't brought about its downfall, it would have collapsed on its own contradictions. No I don't mourn the passing of the book club. I don't mourn Elizabeth's untimely passing, even though I held her in my arms as the blood left her heart through the stab wound in her back and watched the light leave her eyes. Did she whisper my name as she died? I like to think that she did but actually she said, "I feel jes like a squinch owl inside." It sure was a weird book club.

Best of 2010

Everyone got their laughs putting up Top 10's - or 16's - for 2009. I couldn't help but notice (a) that they were composed entirely of music albums and (b) that they dwelled on the past. Here's to the future!

5. New haircut. I got a new haircut. I'm going to look awesome this year.

4. New places. Might move.

3. New friends. Ha! Just joking. You guys rule.

2. New Guilty Pleasures. Album. Drops soon, right Wiley?

1. New socks. Holy shit I need new socks. Please tell me I get to have new socks this year.

2010 sure is looking bright! I resolve not to piss most of it away. If I can help it.