Archives for August 2015

Puppies and Thrones…, or, the Periwigs of Gomorrah Strike Back

August 31, 2015 by JOB at 7:55 am

I have not read much science fiction* since my high school days but this post would be the second where I draw the reader’s attention to yet another Catholic science fiction writer – John Wright. (Here’s my first post on this topic). Has Catholic science fiction been making a quiet comeback? Percy dabbled; Miller plunged – is there something particular Catholic about science fiction?

Here, by the way, is a slew of reports on the controversy – note the pair of headlines: “Diversity wins as Sad Puppies lose at the Hugo awards” and “‘No Awards’ sweeps the Hugo Awards following controversy”. TRANSLATION: “No one wins – everyone wins.” Captain Beatty would be so proud.

* I still read Ray Bradbury on a somewhat regular basis, but I’ll argue another day why I don’t primarily consider him a science fiction writer (no more than, say, Twain, was primarily a Southern writer or Shakespeare primarily a playwright).

Leave a Comment Filed Under: (r)evolution, bookish, Catholicish writers, fiction, JOB, one or more of the seven deadly, political jumbo-mumbo, Things to discuss with Walker Percy over drinks Tagged With: left and Wright

Mack in Spokane

August 29, 2015 by Rufus McCain at 3:17 pm

Warning: there’s some f-bombs and such … but my hometown Spokane downtown looks pretty funny-fine here. And the production turnaround time is impressive — we saw them filming this downtown just a month ago or so. The video is epic. Lots to see, including a moose head motorbike and Ken Griffey, Jr. in multiple cameos.

Managed to catch Macklemore himself for a photo op with a Potter daughter, yo:

Holland and Mack

6 Comments Filed Under: Dylanesque music bits, quite possibly funny, wine and/or women and/or song, you, YouTubular

Two Short Poems about Animal Husbandry

August 25, 2015 by Quin Finnegan at 10:07 pm

A Sacred Moment of Love
Sometimes it must be now:
the moment when, er, a bull
approaches his beloved cow—
it isn’t always so venerable.

The Bored Lover Seeks Novelty
The mares seemed so last year,
so the stud mused, “That zedonk
on the far side of the pasture
has one hell of a badonkadonk.”

4 Comments Filed Under: animalia, bloggerel verse, caution, finnegan, today in porn

Bernadette

August 21, 2015 by JOB at 2:40 pm

My second oldest daughter, looking like
A wide-eyed pubescent Joan Didion,
Might stare for a minute or two and take
Her measure in a mirror, not in vain

But, fearing any other referent,
To wait and see if mind can correspond
With will, observe the fierce intransigent
Expression staring back, and note the bland

Details parading back and forth behind
Her thoughts – Homer’s catalog of ships
Revised as fashion plates and redefined
As strutting models where flashbulbs eclipse

The Aegean dawn igniting in her eyes…
So candid-cool, so psychological,
Her pert reserve, a warning to the wise –
She’s pretty, sane, sixteen, no sort of fool:

One hand, its fingers splayed (sans cigarette)
In limp salute, the other curls around
Her girlish hips. She cocks her head to set
Her ear a few degrees beyond each sound

It detonates: a rapt applause confused
With surf’s tumult – the torch song’s eclipse
Of battle armor rattling in the dust –
The singing rigging of a thousand ships.

6 Comments Filed Under: JOB, JOB's poetry Tagged With: Dopplegangers and such

One Short Poem about Two Lions of 20th Century English Literature

August 19, 2015 by Quin Finnegan at 8:38 am

A Lark
That was a quite a conquest,
the poor author of that aubade
about waking in the dark,
believing he’d go to prison.
And did not. That’s not so bad.

1 Comment Filed Under: bloggerel verse, bookish, dead poets, Death, finnegan, Larkin, Life, litterachur, quite possibly funny, today in porn

Two Short Poems about Handheld Devices

August 11, 2015 by Quin Finnegan at 11:26 pm

Communicator Coverage in the 23rd Century
After flipping it open, Captain Kirk
heard nothing but static after the chirk.

Meditating on his New Google Phone
Funny, how much some fellow’s Nexus
phone posture resembles omphaloskepsis.

Leave a Comment Filed Under: bloggerel verse, Coming Soon, Diversion, finnegan, what's on tv

From the YouTube Music Video Archives: Selections from Guntram, opus 25 by Richard Strauss

August 7, 2015 by Quin Finnegan at 1:40 pm

The most abstract idea conceivable is the sensuous in its elemental originality. But through which medium can it be presented? Only through music. Kierkegaard, Either/Or

Contrary to what one might gather from this endless Festschrift for Richard Strauss, his life wasn’t simply a succession of triumphs, and his biggest public failure may well have been his first opera, Guntram.

The first video is the overture conducted by Carl Schuricht, and yes, there may be a trace of Wagner, but so what? I actually like it more than many of the Wagner overtures, maybe because I know it’s Strauss, but maybe also because it gets where it needs to go much more quickly than the interminable phrasing in so many of the Wagner pieces. It makes sense in terms of young Strauss’ development as a composer, and you’ll hear melodies in the overture that would fit pretty well in the tone poems he was composing at about the same time——the tone poems that are recognized as the masterpieces by critics who aren’t generally agin music of the period.

So why isn’t Guntram appreciated more? It probably has a lot to do with the libretto written by Strauss himself. A triangular Wagnerian-style story of love and redemption about the minstrel Guntram, the evil Duke Robert and his saintly wife Freihild.

Here is Wolfgang Windgassen singing “Ich schaue ein glanzvoll prunkendes Fest”:

And Leontyne Price singing “Fass’ Ich Sie Bang”:

And if you can’t wait for the end, here also is the finale, performed by the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana conducted by Gustav Kuhn, Alan Woodrow singing.

Leave a Comment Filed Under: breaking into song, Diversion, finnegan, non-Dylanesque music bits, Things to discuss with Walker Percy over drinks, wine and/or women and/or song, YouTubular

Walter Isaacson on Walker Percy’s Theory of Hurricanes

August 5, 2015 by Quin Finnegan at 1:35 pm

In yesterday’s issue:

Walker Percy had a theory about hurricanes. “Though science taught that good environments were better than bad environments, it appeared to him that the opposite was the case,” he wrote of Will Barrett, the semi-autobiographical title character of his second novel, “The Last Gentleman.” “Take hurricanes, for example, certainly a bad environment if ever there was one. It was his impression that not just he but other people felt better in hurricanes.”

Percy was a medical doctor who didn’t practice and a Catholic who did, which equipped him to embark on a search for how we mortals fit into the cosmos. Our reaction to hurricanes was a clue, he believed, which is why leading up to the 10th anniversary of Katrina, it’s worth taking note not only of his classic first novel, “The Moviegoer,” but also of his theory of hurricanes as developed in “The Last Gentleman,” “Lancelot” and some of his essays.

Percy lived on the Bogue Falaya, a lazy, bayou-like river across Lake Pontchartrain from my hometown, New Orleans. He was a kindly gentleman whose face knew despair but whose eyes often smiled. With his wry philosophical depth and lightly worn grace, he was acutely aware of his alienation from the everyday world, but he could be an engaged companion when sitting on his porch sipping bourbon or holding court with aspiring writers at a lakefront seafood joint named Bechac’s. “My ideal is Thomas More, an English Catholic . . . who wore his faith with grace, merriment and a certain wryness,” he once said. That describes Percy well.

Indeed it does. Thank you, Walter

But will it also be true of earthquakes, when the really big one comes?