In the last ditch singing

Behind us, on the TV, Oprah says, "She got shot in the face and nearly died."  We laugh uproariously. It's Thanksgiving! Earlier we caught a glimpse of the Macy's Day parade and there was a bald James Taylor singing "America."  Boy, were we sorry we weren't in New York City!  Our sister's girlfriend's dad told a story: He was camping.  It was freezing cold.  In the middle of the night he had to get up and run to the outhouse.  He sat down, did his business, tried to get up.  His ass was frozen to the seat.  "I had a red ring around my ass for a week!"  You know what we can't handle?  Oprah's voice!  She's still going on behind us, and every time she opens her mouth the world's a better place!  Her every syllable is a springboard for universal improvement! Every life  she touches is enriched and fortified with the vitamins of goodness!  Without exception! Our brother went to the fourth game of the World Series and told us this story:  A guy in the stands is dressed like a hot dog.  He stands up at one point and, referring to rivals Tampa Bay screams, "I hate Tampa!  My mother's from Tampa and I hate my mother!!"  With this he sits back down.  Seconds later, the crowd in the rows above him starts chanting, "We hate your mother too!  We hate your mother too!!"  Have you ever heard such an outpouring of sympathy for a man pretending to be a hot dog?  No!  Only in Philadelphia!  Now the people on Oprah are crying out of sheer gratitude.  Blessed! They're blessed!  We're all blessed!  We're reading a biography of the hateful but hilarious Louis-Ferdinand Celine.  The German novelist Ernst Junger described him thus: "He has the gaze of a maniac, inward turning, that shines as if from the depths of a pit." Celine! Our Oprah! No "We're all blessed"twaddle here!  Even the Nazis, whom with he tangentially aligned himself, couldn't stomach his nausea for humanity.  An official in the Nazi propaganda arm urged his higher ups to have nothing to do with Celine, saying "He has questioned and dragged through the mud almost everything of positive value in human existence."  When barbarians are disgusted by your nihilism, you're getting somewhere! You know what?  Right now, at this moment, we're glad to be alive.  Yes!  It's true!  Life is a nightmare for so many, the world's a playground for the bloodthirsty and the vile.  And yet.  So perverse is human nature, and so utterly contrarion the human spirit, that even we sometimes feel the urge, as D. Thomas wrote, to sing in our chains like the sea!

Comments

[Steve]

Down here we get Oprah reruns at 10PM...you know, just in case you missed part, or need to barf or something!
Happy Thanksgiving Mike!

[Martijn]

As always, your blog manages to light the farts of my morning blues (and I'm a morning person mind you!) causing laughter and fireworks. Who else could mix up in one glass both Oprah and Celine? I shall leave Oprah alone for now, 'cause when I open up thát hatch in my mind we'll all gonna need lead underwear.

Celine... a couple of years ago I read "Journey to the end of the Night" and I thought it was The Best Book Ever. The strange thing is that some time later I wanted to read it again and I couldn't finish it: I grew actually bored with the second part (in Africa). Maybe just a mood thing, I don't know. Not that it matters, but what does is that for maybe two years I have "Death on Credit" (I know it has a different title in America but I'm too lazy to look it up: "Mor à Credit") lying on my bed side table but I don't feel like reading it in fear of a new disappointment, a new anti-climax. But hey, I can't read Dr. Seuss for all of my life, maybe one of these days I'll pick it up.

I'm now reading August Strindberg's "Inferno" which is terribly good. Strindberg is just as much an anti-social as Celine -- maybe even more, for as you know "you can say what you want about the Nazi's but at least they had an ethos" -- but at the same time a romantic hypochondriac and absinth fiend. And his writing style is so incredibly... I’m lost for words. Strindberg rocks!

[Johhny Smoke]

Your knack for laying down the non sequiturs marvel me. It all seems to make sense at the end.

I think everyone's had a relative who's sat on a cold outhouse seat only to have overstayed the recommended sitting time in sub-zero temps.

The Tampa story was too funny. Poor guy.

[Brenda Love]

Sometimes I just stop everything and ask myself "what would Oprah do?"

[Unremitting Failure]

Brenda Love, that's just too funny. Martijn, we just read "Mort à Credit") (it's called Death on the Installment Plan here) and it's great. Especially when you get to his crazy scientist boss. I avoided his ... stuff for decades. I've also avoided rereading Journey for just the reason you mention. It's so sad to be bored by a book you once loved. It's the reason I don't go back to Jack Kerouac.

Thanks Mr. Smoke!

[mordantmouth]

Love this sort of stream o' consciousness/non sequitor rant - now you're cooking with gas!

Tampa/Philly story sounds like a analyst' s dream - that's why I love this town where the vitrol runs freely in the streets like unwatched welfare children after 11pm.