A Farewell to Mindscum

“We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun | A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ’at Annie tells about, | An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you | Ef you | Don’t | Watch | Out!”—James Whitcomb Riley

It’s two in the morning here in Portland, Oregon, and I just woke up—okay, it was maybe an hour ago—from a dream about my leaving college and facing the real world. “Yeah, I’m a graduate,” I said in the dream, “like Dustin Hoffman. Or maybe Paul Simon. I can’t remember.”

In point of fact the only thing the college in my dreams had in common with Pitzer (or Pomona or Scripps or The School of Theology at Claremont) was that it was in southern California. None of the professors were anybody real, nor the students, nor the buildings. The cavernous basement where the Electronic Music Class was held, for example, was totally unlike the upstairs studio where it actually happened. They were all like characters in a play or movie, larger than life, meant to represent something, maybe. Color. Background. Something or other.

On waking up I realized that it wasn’t College that I was saying farewell to, but Life—Life in all its manifold color, joy, and wonder. I wish I could get my mind off that subject. I’m older than I was, but I’m still reasonably healthy and active and my mind still functions. Not as well as it did before I got Covid, but it’s still there.

Yeah, okay, this is a Bleak Moment, as I’ve called them since I was a teenager, after a title of a Wolcott Gibbs parody. (The piece parodied S. N. Behrman, whom I know best as the author of a book about parodist Max Beerbohm.) I wake up in the middle of the “night” (my sleep-period, whatever the time of day) with a sense of emptiness or doom, and wonder what the hell I’m doing here anyway.

I’d rather write than stare bleakly into a nonexistent future, so that’s what I’m doing here. It gives me a sense of purpose. It’s all illusion, but illusions are what get you through life, so I’ll cling to them as long as necessary to get to the goal of it all.

The day before yesterday a large black cat came out of nowhere to attack “our” dog while we were taking him for a walk. We ended up going to a vet because my roommate—the dog’s actual human—was worrying about rabies, which is actually unlikely as fuck, but I went along with it because, well, that cat was acting damn strangely, whatever the cause. One of my other roommates thinks he might have taken our dog for a coyote—we do have coyotes here—I’ve seen them—but the whole thing was a Bleak Moment of a different kind. Yesterday we made a trip to get the dog vaccinated against rabies, on the advice of the vet.

I have nothing to say.

And I’m not saying it very well.

And silently darkness reechoes.

Half-year Resolve

I

 don’t want to write about politics. It’s not a topic I enjoy, but it is a topic I can’t get away from. Right now, what with the Dopey Don and his gang of goons hacking the nation apart and selling off chunks at bargain-basement prices it feels irrelevant to write about the historical puzzles and acts of contemporary lunacy that actually interest me—rather like writing a nice letter home about the interesting people I’ve met on the Lusitania while ignoring those pesky U-Boats.

But I am getting old. The friends of my youth have died in the fullness of their years without anybody remarking how they were taken from us too soon, and I do have things I want to get done before I shuffle off to oblivion. So, in this spirit, I am going to start writing again about things that actually interest me, and write about the ongoing international disaster only when the spirit actually moves me.

Since nobody reads what I write anyway, as a rule, take these meanderings as notes to myself. I hope (intend is too strong a word) to get started on some planned multi-part pieces on canon (looking at Conan, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, the Beatles, and the New Testament for grist); on fake history (I have material on some of the works Goodspeed called “Modern Apocrypha” I haven’t seen gathered together at any rate, as well as stuff related to Empedocles, Jesus, Paul of Tarsus, Edward de Vere, and others); on The Gospel According to Mark (I’m really hoping to get my online informal commentary launched before hell freezes over); on the history of English-language parody (I’ve got half-jelled pieces on Swift’s “Meditation on a Broom-stick,” J.K.S.’s “The Last Ride Together,” and Kingsmill’s retelling of Othello as a Jeeves and Wooster story); and I have some Vinyl Memories about records like Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (1964), That's The Way It's Gonna Be (1965), Moldy Goldies (1966), “Horror Asparagus Stories” (1967), Touch (1969), The Naked Carmen (1970), Atom Heart Mother (1970), Short Circuits (1970), Good-Bye Pop (1976), Boulez Conducts Zappa (1984), and others.

Will I do any of these things? I don’t want to tempt the gods by making rash promises, but I’d like to get at least some of this material out in a form where that rare person who actually is interested in the topics I like to ramble through can access it, so I’m going to make an effort. At least, I’m going to think about trying to make some kind of effort in that direction.

Just take it as understood that I am concerned, nay appalled, at America’s current obsession with destroying itself and its future, with the rise of criminal thugs to power (think Erdoğan, Duterte, and Kim Jong-un as well as Vlad the Appalling and his little friend the Dopey Don), and with the wanton destruction of this fragile liferaft we call home. But I can’t do jack about these particular long-gone goblins looming ahead, and I can give anybody who is interested the benefits of my insights (valuable or not) about subjects that interest me. So—at least for this moment—that’s what I intend to do.

And good luck, everybody. Hope to see you all on the other side of the Catastrophe.

Another Day Without Blogging

It’s overcast and the yuccas are blooming out front, and for whatever reason I’m feeling groggy and out of it. I slept most of the day. Sunday night my nephew and I made a night-excursion out to buy groceries thanks to a small but sudden influx of money; we headed out on the last train Sunday night, bought groceries, and returned on the first train Monday morning. Thanks to a variety of mostly uninteresting setbacks (getting out at the wrong stop, for one, and running into some kind of malfunction with the store’s card-reading system, for another) our time was largely eaten up with trivia, so the four-hour gap between trains was as nothing, and we got home safe and sound with our kill. The internet facilitated trip planning, and cell phone technology meant that we could get help lugging our supplies back to camp. And without light rail we would have been back in the dark ages of strange interconnecting busses. Life in the twenty-first century, I guess.

Holding Entry

Okay, I blew this entry. So instead, here's a picture of my great-grandfather using his homemade barber chair at his barbershop in Steamboat Springs, nearly a century ago now. With any luck blogging will resume shortly.

Out of Time and Ideas

I am out of time to write anything here today, and frankly out of ideas. It’s been a busy day, what with venturing downtown again to get my glasses (this time with success) and engaging in several other activities—which shall be nameless here, alas. Perhaps I will meet with more success tomorrow.

Today's Placeholder Post

Things are a bit fuzzy around the edges today; I had a bad attack of vertigo (or something like it) last night; I couldn't walk and kept falling over. It was probably pretty funny to watch, but not so much from my perspective. Then today I've had innumerable interruptions; the result is that I have a couple of posts started but nothing finished, and little work done. Maybe I will be able to accomplish something tomorrow.

A little uninterrupted time would be nice.

And I've got a couple of new books from the library I want to examine; maybe they'll give me something to write about.

Onward.

Another Placeholder Entry

It's Monday here, which according to the old rhyme (well, it's not that old, as my nephew Brandon made it up a couple of years ago) means we should be having moose, but we're actually falling back on Saturday's menu, and going for soup. In theory we should have three or four different soups and/or stews going soon, but in practice time has been eaten up with racing to the store for ingredients and getting out the good serving implements in honor of upcoming Thanksgiving. Anyway, the upshot is that I don't have a blog entry ready for the day—not the one on Edward III I've been trying to get out, nor the follow-up on the Halloween book-burning, which somehow got eaten by the internet while I was trying to work on it. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

Passing Notes

Okay, I'm still here, still alive, still breathing, still connected with the web world. As far as I know this is going to be another placeholder entry, something to try to keep the blog alive while I scurry about looking for acorns, or something equally productive.

Well, let's see... My family has returned from visiting my mother (their grandmother) at the coast; my niece is in a foul mood, but as far as I can tell from talking with my mother things went well there, and they got her yard in good shape and the new wall on the house painted, so I'm putting it down to exhaustion.

I'd hoped to have something more solid to include, but I will note a couple of recent blog entries I've read with enjoyment. John J. McKay (archy) has a fascinating piece entitled "Zombies of the mammoth steppes" involving an interesting piece of fake history: the 1846 discovery of a complete mammoth specimen—a discovery that never happened. Although some of the details seem to be a bit fuzzy, the story originated in an 1859 children's book by Philipp Körber, entitled Kosmos für die Jugend. The discovery soon made its way into the scientific literature, and "By the end of the century, some of the details were so well established that they had could stand up against newer, and more correct, data." While certain details of the story were especially appealing to crackpots (see for example its use here at Creationscience.com), legitimate scientists also have continued to cite the nonexistent discovery. McKay attributes this to three elements:

First, the original story was well told, filled with many plausible details, and included the solutions to some outstanding mysteries about mammoths. Probably because of the verisimilitude and answers, the story was adopted and retold in considerable detail by some very influential scientists. Their credibility led to many retellings in both the popular and scientific press. Finally, debunkings of the story have been weak, made by not credible writers, or located in hard to find places.

One of the "not credible" debunkers was Henry Hoyle Howorth, a champion of the Flood and an opponent of the concept of ice ages, who wrote in The Mammoth and the Flood:

It is very strange that if genuine no accounts of this discovery should have reached the ears of Baer or Brandt, Schmidt or Schrenck, who none of them mention it, and that it should be first heard of in a popular book for boys in 1862. Until some proof to the contrary is forthcoming, I shall treat this tale as a mere romance constructed out of what we know about the Mammoth from other sources as an amusing story for boys.

Not that Howorth was the only one; still, given his biases, he didn't help matters much. Anyway, the piece is a great follow-up to McKay's earlier Mammoth on Ice (also very much worth reading, if you haven't seen it already).

On a completely different note this piece (h/t James McGrath) took me back a good many years to Dr. James M. Robinson's class in Q when the subject of the western non-interpolations came up—why, I don't remember. (The western non-interpolations are a group of passages, mainly in Luke, that don't appear in the western text, but do appear in most new testament manuscripts.) Most of the class was unfamiliar with the term, and Dr. Robinson pointed out that it wasn't exactly a neutral term for the group, as it basically presupposed that these passages had been interpolated into the Alexandrian (and Byzantine?) texts, and that the Western text preserved the original readings. If I'm remembering correctly Dr. Robinson felt they should be considered on a case-by-case basis, rather than making sweeping pronouncements—though I would point out that getting his own views on anything was always tricky. He was great at clarifying the positions of other scholars, and at showing what the consequences of those views might be; he was amazing at picking up suggestions thrown out in class and presenting how they might fit in with the larger body of knowledge; getting him to pronounce on what he thought was another matter altogether.

Anyway, to get back to the matter at hand, James D. Tabor muses over the restoration of these passages to certain modern translations, based largely on the testimony of P75, which, though an early representative of the Alexandrian text, is still, when all is said and done, just another representative of the Alexandrian text. There may well be good reasons to restore these passages to the text of Luke, but in the end the matter should not rest exclusively on the age of a particular exemplar of a text.

Recovering the original text of any ancient document requires a number of related approaches, and one is clearly the careful dating of the sequence of manuscript witnesses and variants. But the “older” is surely not the more original, and judgments of content and substance must finally prevail. I remain convinced, after all these years, that my initial judgment that Wescott and Hort’s position on the Western non-interpolations was self-evident remains the case.

Personally I've veered on that topic over the years, but the secondary nature of some of these passages (at least) seems manifest, whether supported by textual evidence or no. I mean, is it really likely that the original author of Luke-Acts would have had Jesus twice rise up into the sky (Lk 24:51 and Acts 1:9)? I mean, I can understand if he did why some scribe might remove the first reference in the interest of harmonization, but isn't it easier by far to suppose that some scribe added it to the end of Luke after Luke's separation from Acts? I mean, come on people, just because it was ancient times doesn't mean that everybody was batshit insane.

Anyway, James D. Tabor's piece is both interesting and relevant and is well worth reading. I enjoyed it, anyway.

Things Continue

Okay, I'm going to be honest here (not that I'm usually dishonest here)—I don't know when I'm going to get back to making regular entries here again. Things are hectic around me, and I may be moving on soon—or not. I feel the need for a break, and I want to get back to something resembling normal for me. I'm trying to get back to having a laptop—writing at my desk is never that comfortable, to be honest. I need new glasses; I can't see with the ones I've got without zooming in so far the text barely fits on the screen. And I've got to seriously reduce the amount of stuff in my life to something a bit more portable. I've lost the bulk of my library, so that's taken care of—though not in a good way. I've lost an unknown portion of my files, including works in progress (my Dubious Documents project for one) and many notes I need in order to write these things. I've been trying to limp on, but it isn't working, and I'm more or less reaching the end of my rope.

I'm going to try to sell of some of my remaining collections, and maybe find homes for other material that I don't particularly want to sell. Times are tough, though, and I don't know how feasible any of that is. We'll just have to see.

Sorry about That

I've had things to deal with, both in the real word and online, and I've not been able to post here regularly. I have an online project I'm working on that I hope to launch shortly, and in the real world I have a massive house-reorganization project going on, so I'm not sure just how quickly I'll get back to this web log. Soon, if possible, but I've been saying that for days; even that last entry about the founding fathers and the first amendment was largely written ahead of time.

Writer's Blog

I can't think of anything to write about. I'm sure there are vital issues to rant about, or interesting historical footnotes to cover, or nostalgic rivers to cross. (As I'm about to attend my fortieth high school reunion, don't be surprised if there are more blasts from the past soon.) But right this moment my personal circuits are mostly overloaded by the heat. I have the lights out down here, trying to keep things as cool as possible, but it's still hotter than I find it comfortable to write in, and especially to do research in. There is air conditioning in the house, but not near my computer, so it's kind of a choice. To compute or to be comfortable, that is the question. And right now comfort is winning out.

Peace of Mind

I don't know what to say. I want to get something in, but I'm upset at the moment, and I can't think of any topic to comment on. I feel as though certain people in my life are using me as a football, or perhaps a punching bag, or better yet, a pawn in their irritating games. And I just want to get on with things, both in my online life and in the real world, without all these really stupid bits of manipulation and general screwing around.

So, anyway, right at the moment this is a sort of placeholder entry, a reminder that I'm still alive and writing, even if I don't have much to say. With any luck I will have something of more general interest soon; no promises, as I don't have any particular topic in mind, but I do need to de-stress a bit, and with that in mind, maybe I'll find something fun to write about soon.

A Brief Pause To Listen to Myself Breathe

I'm sorry about falling behind here; I have been busy, though, adding entries to my Fake History blog at Wordpress. The last series has been devoted to fake or questionable quotations attributed to the American Founders, each entry dealing with a single item. Most of these I've already taken a bash at here, but usually as part of a longer critique or diatribe. Sometimes it's nice to be able to point somebody to a place that gives specific information about a specific item; it can be tough here picking the relevant part out of the lush verbiage when in pursuit of a particular quarry.

So I'm putting together a series on common quotations, mostly fake, to make quick reference to them easier. At the moment all of them deal with the US Founding Fathers (I think) but if I keep this up (Allah willing) I should have fake quotations from other eras as well. My most recent entry (the one that kept me from writing anything much here) takes on Patrick Henry's alleged words on the Bible being worth more than any other printed book. It's not exactly fake (unlike, say, that 1782 school-bible turd salad), but it isn't exactly Henry either. It falls somewhere betwixt and between, in that nameless valley of historic curiosities lying between the pit of credulity and the summit of skepticism, in that place of wonder we call the twilight zone.

I try not to know exactly where I'm going with these blog entries, so sometimes my provisional title ill accords with the actual substance of the piece. I was just about to publish this one when on preview I saw my title and winced. My original title: "Tom Swift and His Electric (fill in blank)."

Alterations are Going on as Usual during Business

A quick note here: today (well, yesterday, now) I had no internet from 5:16 in the morning until at least 8:00 at night, at which time I quit checking. It's well after midnight now, and the internet is back, sort of, although it's very sluggish. My internet provider (half-rhymes with Bombast) has promised to send out somebody to look at things tomorrow (well, today, now), so maybe things will be back up soon.

I'm not holding my breath. Service has never been Bombast's strong point, and as an internet provider, the company sucks. If it weren't a monopoly, I would switch to somebody else. Unfortunately it is, and I'm stuck with them.

Still, maybe this time will be different. Maybe this time they will actually solve this goddamn problem, which has been a continual annoyance ever since we signed up with them. As I've indicated, I have my doubts. Upgrading to business class (their suggestion) didn't help; switching to their phone service (their suggestion; I must have been out of my mind) didn't help; I don't suppose that whatever they suggest tomorrow will make any difference either. If they suggest anything. The last time somebody came out the signal suddenly improved while the Bombast people were here, and then returned to crap once they were gone.

Anyway, maybe this entry can serve as a place-holder until the internet is back, assuming that it ever does come back.