Modern World

This is a Wolf Parade song that Spoon covered when I saw them in Chicago.

I'm not in love with the modern world
I'm not in love with the modern world
I was a torch driving the savages back to the trees

Modern world has more ways
And I don't mention it since it's changed
While the people go out and the people come home again
It's gotta last to build up your eyes
And a lifetime of red skies
And from my bed saying your haunted hissing in my bed
Modern world don't ask why
Cause modern world build things high
Now they house canyons filled with life

Modern world i'm not pleased to meet you
You just bring me down
Modern world i'm not pleased to meet you
You just bring me down
Modern world i'm not pleased to meet you
You just bring me down
Modern world i'm not pleased to meet you
You just bring me down

Lattes at 11:30

A pair of lattes I made tonight. My coffee has become quite old due to a lack of funds to buy more, but the espresso is passable in milk drinks. Caffeine is a wonderful thing.

Vending Machines

It is amazing the things in life that can make you happy. For instance, accidentally buying hot tamales instead of pop tarts at 2 in the morning, and then having the machine give you two instead of one.

In addition:

1. Ice cold Dr. Pepper

2. Popcorn with loads of butter

3. New shoes

Also, someone should explain why we don't have beef jerky vending machines in this country . . . .

Swellness

"Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on."

From "The Sun Also Rises" by Hemingway

Videotape

When I’m at the pearly gates

This’ll be on my videotape

My videotape

My videotape

When Mephistopheles is just beneath

And he’s reaching up to grab me

This is one for the good days

And I have it all here in

Red blue green

Red blue green

You are my centre when I spin away

Out of control on videotape

On videotape

On videotape

On videotape

On videotape

This is my way of saying goodbye

Because I can’t do it face to face

So I’m talking to you before . . . .

No matter what happens now

You shouldn’t be afraid

Because I know

Today has been the most perfect day

I have ever seen.

Reality

Following a list of Charlie Marlow's responsibilities while working up the river:

"When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality - the reality, I tell you - fades. The inner truth is hidden - luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight-ropes for - what is it? half-a-crown a tumble--"

From Heart of Darkness.

The Sun Also Rises

"It was very hot and bright, and the houses looked sharply white. We turned onto the Gran Via.

'Oh, Jake,' Brett said, we could have had such a damned good time together.'

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car suddenly pressing Brett against me.

'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'"

This is the ending of The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. The characters have essentially done nothing and gone nowhere by the end of the novel, and the book essentially a describes people without meaningful lives dealing with the circumstances before them (primarily by drinking a lot and going to bullfights). So, in the end, all they have is the thought that they "could have had such a damned good time together." Brett makes this statement, but Jake knows that it is just a statement and nothing more than wishful thinking.

Of course, Hemingway eventually could not deal with the circumstances before him and ended up scratching the back of his head with a shotgun. English majors have such a bright future :-)