Ars longa est

Ars longa est; vita brevis est." A Latin expression roughly meaning "art is long; life is short."

I wrote you another book. You can order it at Amazon.com

E.B. White, from his essay, "Here is New York," 1948

DISHWATER SHOTS

A week or so ago, I introduced two words that should not be put together:

LITTERBOX HARVEST

Now, I've come up with two more words that don't go together:

DISHWATER SHOTS

"Paunchy Mimes"

Here are some titles for bands, movies, plays, or books that will never be used, featuring "Paunchy Mimes."

1. Paunchy Mimes
2. Valley of The Paunchy Mimes
3. Attack of The Paunchy Mimes
4. Waiting Room Filled With Paunchy Mimes
5. Hairless Paunchy Mimes
6. Shirtless Paunchy Mimes
7. Pantless Paunchy Mimes
8. Rest Stop of Paunchy Mimes
9. I Was Saliva-Swabbed at The Police Checkpoint of Paunchy Mimes
10. Home Alone With Drunken Paunchy Mimes
11. Paunchy Mimes Al Qaeda Shark Attack
12. Paunchy Mimes Vaccine

THE MEANING OF LIFE (close enough anyway)

There is none, but there is a close, close approximation.

On this, the end of the world (?) {December 21, 2012} I am writing that yesterday, the day before the end of the world, I watched Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" (1983).

I have watched this movie many time throughout my 46 years, because I am that way.  I think it is hilarious, and I have always thought, that at the end of the movie, they summed it up in an offhand way with this quote, which I had memorized for along time, being a Monty Python fan.  It goes like this:

M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations. 

And for years, I thought this was a great summary of some good advice, but it isn't, of course the MEANING OF LIFE, as the movie title suggests, but just some sound advice, and it's funny because it is basically saying, "there isn't any meaning of life, just be nice."

But last night, watching the movie again, I finally found, after close to thirty years of loving this movie, the true nugget of the film.  It happens in a board meeting of otherwise douchebag executives.  One of them starts off asking about "item six" on the agenda.

Exec #1: Item six on the agenda: "The Meaning of Life" Now uh, Harry, you've had some thoughts on this.

Exec #2: Yeah, I've had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One: People aren't wearing enough hats. Two: . . . this "soul" does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia. 

Exec #3: What was that about hats again?

This is the entire crux of the movie, and I have been missing it for thirty years.

Now this isn't the "meaning of life" as there is no intrinsic "meaning of life" but it is so close, it bears discussion . . .  { there's more, but this is a book excerpt from the book I'm working on.}

here's the clip:

#78 I'LL CONTINUE PILING WORDS

Would that I could bring you here,
Saturday afternoon,
To listen to the neighbor's air
Conditioning the moon.

The distant highway murmurs
It's uninteresting way,
And a starling and a robin
Take turns bathing anyway.

I could get a pizza
Or a soda
Or some beers
But I'll sit here typing bullshit
Until something good appears.

I'll continue piling words on
Until plots and stories happen
And I'll do this while Pandora
Streams me Bach and Eric Clapton

A thousand unread words
Will filter out from whence they came
And the characters will follow
And I'll give each of them a name.

There is Benner,
He's a psycho,
There is Amy,
She's his date.
There goes Collin,
He's a homeless man
Who will pontificate.

There will be a
Wild kerfuffle
In a house
Without a phone
Even though the page
is crowded
Every writer writes alone.

#79 THEY TELL US WHAT TO THINK

There are photogenic, sonorous people with cameras and microphones, and they tell us what to think.
They claim to tell us what is happening, but they tell us what to think.
They might be on the Left, and they might be on the Right, but they tell us what to think.
 They tell us what to buy and wear and drink and they tell us what to think.
Right and the Left work together to tell us what to think.
 If we think for ourselves we are told we are wrong and they tell us what to think.
They "inform" us by forming us and they tell us what to think.
 The news is not the news because they tell us what to think.
 By tone of voice and innuendo and background music they hide that they are telling us what to think while they tell us what to think.

In school they tell us what to think. In church they tell us what to think.
At work they tell us what to think.
On the campaign trail and in office they tell us what to think.
Rebellious groups are still groups and they tell us what to think.
In press releases and written statements they tell us what to think.
 In history books and police reports they tell us what to think.
Our families and friends tell us what to think.
 Commercials tell us we shrink and slink and stink and they tell us what to eat and drink and think.
Everywhere you turn people tell us what to think.

Preparations for the New Year #1

Deep beneath the Denver International Airport, the corpse of Dick Clark is wheeled out of the cryogenic chamber to the center of a pentangle drawn on the floor of the re-animation chamber. Five red candles are lit. Eerie, unearthly chanting is piped in through unseen speakers in the ceiling. In a room nearby, being prepped for a series unorthodox blood transfusions, is an anxious Ryan Seacrest.

Reading A Writer's Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham.

Here are some notes, written on green graph paper.  It makes a great list of things I know nothing about:

Le Cid; Gogol; Lermontov; Turgenev; Chekov; Byron, Shelly, Walter Scott; Thackery; The Revisor; Congreve; Wycherley; School for Scandal; Kotzebue's Kleinstadter; She stoops to Conquer; G.B. Shaw; Ruritania; Katzenjammer; Sacher Masoch; The Hounds of Heaven; Oblomovism; Eugene Sue; flipperty-gibbet; Julien Sorel; El Greco; Resurection by Tolstoi; Octave Feuillet or Cherbuliez; Flaubert; Maupassant; Concourts; Huysmans; Princess Mathilde; Herzen; Bakunin; the reign of Alexander II; Uvar Ivanovitch Stahov; On the Eve; A House of Gentlefolk; Anthony Trollope; demagogues; compte rendu; Balzac; Jane Eyre; The Waverley Novels; peroration; Saint-Just; Bolsheviks; Charles Frohman; The Roman Empire of Heliogabalus; Polynesian Garden of the Hesperides; the book Main Street; epigrammatic; mythomaniac; Le Cousin Pons; sycophancy; turbid 

stuff written on graph paper

1. Saturnine countenance
2. Alexandre Tharoud, Erik Satie: Avent Dernieres

Scotty wore a red shirt

Scotty wore a red shirt. He beamed down to the surface. He survived. You will survive too. You are not an extra, you are a recurring character.

words I wrote down while reading THE SECRET HISTORY

Here are some words (and a sentence) I wrote down while reading The Secret History, by Dona Tartt:

Lycidas
The Phaedo
ebullient
celadon
Persephone
"Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothing" (nahil sub sol novum)

words

loafers, fortify, rimbaud, malthus,Knossos, Gregory of Tours, steelwort, P G Wodehouse

would-be grammer nerd.

I don't normally take part in grammar nerdishness, but this is too good to pass up:

Yesterday, on NPR, I was in the car driving with my daughter, listening to a story about "Don't Ask Don't Tell", and the story ended like this:

In one of his recent tweets today, Choi said he missed three verbal and five math questions on the skills test. He passed. But his future and the future of thousands of would-be gay service members remains unclear.

Now, I instantly said, "wait a minute, don't they mean, 'gay would-be service members?' "

The phrase "would-be gay service members" indicated that there are service members who are currently straight who are hoping to be gay. I'm sure that's not what they meant.

Instead they should have said, "gay would-be service members."

Anywhoo, the text of the program is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130704683 the backward wordage is in the last paragraph.

I am Dan the Prophet, and here is my message:

I'm in the coffee shop again, and again there's somebody within earshot talking about "fasting" and "bible study" and all this hocus pocus bullshit. The guy isn't annoying, he seems intelligent, he's sitting with a young woman and her child, and they're talking about a bunch of religious stuff. What a waste. What a total waste. What the hell could they possibly have to "study" about regarding kindness toward other people? How much study does that take? Here's a college class: "Don't be a dick."

That's it. The entire bible could be written on one page:

"Don't be a dick."

That's it. How is there an entire industry, colleges and books and CDs and churches based on constantly trying to remind people to be decent to each other? How much time does it take to figure that out?

How many trees have died for bibles, pamphlets, booklets, hymnals, tracts, worksheets and posters telling people to basically act with kindness toward one another?

The couple is talking about using a highlighter to "go through the booklet" to figure out the "teaching" involved in whatever hooba-jooba they're talking about.

Here's a religion:

"Don't be an asshole."

These four words will be the Old Testament.

Here's the New Testament:

"Be Nice."

Okay, bind that in leather and distribute it to the masses. It should be translated into every language.

I am Dan the Prophet, and here is my message:

"Don't be a douchbag!"
"Cut each other a break once in awhile!"

And yes, I've broken my own rule about a million times. I'm not perfect.

How hard is that to figure out? Every time I come here there are people are talking about the ins and outs of being kind to one another. It's not a science. How much time does it take to learn how to act decently with one another? You need some guy the sky looking over your shoulder to know better than to cheat and steal? You need something carved into stone in order to realize that killing is wrong?

I see the upside to going to church. Lots of people to spend time with. A support group. If it wasn't for the religious part, I'd probably go myself (as long as could skip the really long lecture part). But to be surrounded by people who believe all this crazy shit is too much.

And they only believe it because their PARENTS probably believed it, or their friends believe it. It's a crazy groupthink that is hard to get away from. It's a cult so gigantic that there is no one out there to deprogram all these cultists. It isn't that bad of a thing, I guess, but I wish there was a comparable thing except without the hocus pocus.

(Don't get me wrong, this young couple is not annoying like the paster-loud-cell-phone-talker yesterday. That guy was a total douchbag. At least these two people have discovered their inside voices. I am NOT annoyed by these two people).

#27 THE WORDS IN MY HEAD AT 6:15AM, TUESDAY, MARCH 3 2009

~

When shall I grasp these fleeting rings of gold
That flit about the chambers of my mind?

When merchants count imaginary coins,
The host does tremble for its daily bread.

I punch the keys that do not open doors,
While Senators doth babble into air.

While rich men beg for other people's gold
And panels flat do entertain the host.

When will I grasp these fleeting words of truth,
That rattle round my long deficient mind?

When can I bind these fleeting dreams in ink,
And set them to a much beguiling rhyme?

When schools begat the unillumined host,
That twitter tiny thoughts into the air.

When alchemists do waste their precious gifts
On vanities and multi-headed births.

When will I grasp these fleeting thoughts that fly
About my mind that cannot hold a theme?

A mind that has one million tiny glints
Of genius that add up to nothing more
Than tiny lines that flicker on a screen
These tiny lines that will remain unseen
The only thing I know is "wear sunscreen".

When will I grasp these ravings by the arm,
And put them down on paper, safe from harm?

~

On Canceling My WoW Account At 3 Something in The Morning

I woke up at three this morning thinking about one thing. Not the economic catastro-fnck in which we're all about to wallow. Not the book I'm supposed to be writing. No. I woke up thinking about how I was going to kill Baron Rivendare in Stratholme. When you wake up at three in the morning, and the first thing you think about is a role-playing game, even one as awesome as World of Warcraft, it's time to disable the account. (For awhile)

At the age of forty-two(1) I should be doing something besides slaying imaginary monsters, shouldn't I? Writing! Writing! I tell myself. The only overhead involved in writing is time, paper, and thought. Those come pretty cheap, even these days, yet I can't bring myself to commit to writing anything "kick-ass". I can't commit to jack-squat. It is this intrinsic laziness on my part, this absolute procrastination, this ridonkulous nerdic half-assedness that keeps you, dear reader, denied the pure genius that I, Dan Manning, might excrete from my brain-wrinkles if only motivated to do so.

That is the reason that I, Dan Manning, have cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription. The world needs greatness right now. This week, Barack Obama hit his head on the side of an airplane while waving to the press. I've cancelled the President's Weekly Radio Address from my iTunes, and I never actually listened to any. It's been what? three weeks since he took office? Turns out he is not the Messiah; he's just another guy in a suit.

The world needs a hero, and I, being the narcissist that I am, have come to the conclusion that out of the six-billion people(2) on this earth , I am the hero that this great nation, nay, the undeserving world itself, needs.

How many of us heroes have been distracted by Bread and Circuses? How many of us have given up reading only to watch another episode of "Mythbusters"? (Or "Destroyed in Seconds", "Southpark", or "Spongebob Squarepants") How many of us geniuses, thinkers, philosophers and scientists have watched one too many episodes of (INSERT FAVORITE TELIVISION SHOW HERE). Those half-hours can't be retrieved. That time is truly wasted. Our journey between cradle to grave is finite. Time does not wait for the dreamer, the idle, or the American Idol voter. Time does not give the Beanie-Babies collector a second chance. Those focused on hate, triviality, NASCAR, "This American Life" or Facebook have chosen to invest that time, that precious, unique, non-refundable block of time without reflecting on what they have lost: time.

What am I trying to say here? Oh yes. My World of Warcraft subscription. It drops off at 4:09 PM Thursday. Mark that down folks, that is the day the world gains a new Shakespeare. That is the moment a genius will embark on a story so heartbreaking, so inspired and true, so infused with the very universal essence of life itself, that all wars, hatred, prejudice, racism, strife and awkward silence will be lifted from this weary world.

Or I'll watch more television. Not sure which.
-----------------------------------------------------
(1)42 being the answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything according to Deep Thought. It only took the supercomputer, created by the hyperintelligent pan-dimentional beings, 1.5 million years to figure out

(2)many of them more educated; many of them more motivated, determined, and focused; some of them better looking; many with a lower BMI; many who rely less on Wikipedia and spell check; many with lower voices, less wrinkles, better haircuts; many more modest, talented, and loving; many more deserving; more caring and empathetic

Fun Fact!

The first sentence of the Declaration of Independence is 71 words long:

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Infinite Jest: a really, really long book I gave up on @ pg. 36 out of 1079

I TRIED reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, but I guess I'm too stOOpid. The sentences, in my humble opinion, were train-wrecks. The paragraphs went on for pages. By page 36 (out of 1079) I had no idea what the going on.

Here is a book where the author doesn't seem to want to get to the point.

Not sure if it is on purpose or if he's was long-winded by nature (or if he was high on acid the entire time). Don't get me wrong, the guy was a friggin' genius. Reading two pages of this book makes that clear. But reading two pages of this monster can also put you in a coma, not from boredom, but from word-overload. How about some white-space? Maybe this is the wrong book to pick up first, but I am not wading into this morass; I'll never get out again.

But his write-up, "Consider the Lobster" for "Gourmet" magazine is excellent.

I did get one awesome quote (there are many, many more in the book I'm sure): "unpleasant-fact specialist" referring to someone who is a downer.