Mission Accomplished - Where's My Aircraft Carrier?

 I feel like I've been run through the gauntlet and landed on this Thursday morning. I need to do laundry and get groceries and just take care of some of my business. I meant to rise early, I did not. 

But I did finish with “Road Tripping.” Unless someone says differently.

I do not know which one has worn me out the most – washing dishes or “Road Tripping.”

I dropped the more explicit autobiographical parts. I woke yesterday morning and was thinking how I could sell this story and I realized I wanted to drop that. Maybe I am being a chickenshit. II went ahead and created a version with the explicit parts excised.

I also tightened up a little of the Hartz dialog and part of the argument in V. They are tied together.

Still at 110 pages.

 

I spent most of Monday taking care of my business with food stamps. I had to wait until my shoes dried out from work the night before. CC offered to drive me around, but turned out I took the bus. I left here two hours late, around 11. I went down to DIY to get documentation of my having left their employment. I also asked if they had anything part-time. I do not like the new job was told I needed 32 hours a week, and I am not getting that. From there I walked back to Cowan Road to catch the #12 bus. That I rode around to 8th Street. I had thought to catch the bus directly to the food stamps office, but decided it being a fairly nice day to walk over. The bus out to YOC comes every hour, I did not want to wait. Business done there, I think successfully, I then walked over to the Payless on Tillotson. From there I caught the YOC bus, rode back out and then down town.

 

I overheard an interesting conversation between another rider and the driver. The rider I estimated to be in his mid to late thirties. He declared the Republicans had talked about inflation and were doing nothing about it. That caught my attention. What kept it was his talking about how we should send in the Seals and take out Putin. This led to him discussing World War Two, which he thought had happened in the Fifties. The bus driver corrected him on this. The rider also declared M*A*S*H* was set during WWII. The rest of the drive, he sang the praises of Smallville.

I called KH, told him about this. My friend agreed this was a sign of Indiana's educational system.

 It was around 2 pm when I got back here. Tired, I napped like an old fart.

After waking up and eating dinner, I went to work on “Road Tripping.” I think I hit some of my email. I also watched Perry Mason; I liked it. (In the morning, I watched The Blacklist on the laptop; it is holding up.)

I spent all day Tuesday working on “Road Tripping.” I thought I had it done. I think I had to make a trip to McClure's on Tuesday.

Wednesday, I made the 7:45 bus for downtown and connected with the 8:30 bus to the jail. I did my signing thing. Then I read a little of Aristotle's Politics. I got sleepy, so I went outside. Then the wind was just cold enough, just hard enough, to keep me from any more reading. I caught the 10 AM bus downtown. I had bought my lunch along with me, so I ate it at the station, and read a little more of Aristotle while waiting for the 11:15 Northwest Plaza bus. I wanted to be early.

Being vulgar, I need to admit being still a little hungry. I had also been keen for fish and chips for some time now. So, I stopped at Long John Silvers. Two pieces for five dollars and some. They were not worth the price.

I stopped at Mac's some time this past week. Saturday? Yes, it had to be. Also, not worth the price for a hamburger.

 

I left work the driest I have, so far. Still, my feet were more than a little damp. I missed the 4:19 bus. I hung around outside Northwest Plaza, my back stiffening and my feet chilling. I decided to catch the #3 bus on the outbound, so I walked down the street to Royale. While I was waiting, I noticed someone had smacked into a postal driver. If I had stayed put, I would have seen more of it. The coop had arrived when we came back around. 

 

Nothing much was done last night. I arrived around 5:30. had clam chowder for dinner. Too tired to deal with re-writing “Road Tripping.” Too tired to work on this post. I did a little reading, then gave up around 9. 

I need to check on the CPAP machine, it has been a problem the past two nights. I need to see if I can replace the mask now. It was also chilly last night. I balked at the alarms. 

When I did get up, I made tracks for McClure's. I must have looked like a madmen on the loose. By 9, I was working on “Road Tripping.”

Now, I will get my laundry together. Reality sets in!

 

I left for Payless around 11:30 and got back here around 1:30 pm.

After lunch, I worked my way through the email and put in two job applications and made my calls. I talked to the insurance, and need to see or call my doctor on Monday. I think they are closed tomorrow. I spoke with the lawyer about Dad's trust. Getting closer to a filing.

Here is a headline I never expected to see: JOHN MELLENCAMP, PAINTER, or to hear this said about his painting:

John reminds me of what I remember of my father as a painter. There is a vortex of time and space, an alternate dimension, that artists disappear into, are allowed into, when they are truly creating. When they are making something that didn’t exist until they did it. This is so different from capturing what something or someone looks like, which is a skill but not creation. Real art, something that can take your breath away, a painting for instance that you saw 60 years ago but remember as clearly as if it was hanging on your wall, is as close to being God as a person can get.

And it’s an exquisite agony, a fraction of a second of being allowed to be God but then being kicked out, back into the street with the rest of the mortals streaming through the gray twilight of evening, their thoughts wrapped up in their simple, enduring, and perpetual purposes, unaware of the special few who, for the softest moment, kissed immortality.

There are photos of his paintings, so give a look at the article. I think Mellancamp is far more important than just “Jack and Diane” – he has not stopped pushing himself, experimenting with his music even if it leads him away from the Top 40.

 The Temz Review rejected “True Love Ways Gone Astray”:

Thank you for sharing your writing with us! We received a very large volume of submissions and can only accept a small number; unfortunately, we have not selected your work. We wish you well as you continue writing.

Best,

Aaron Schneider

And oops, I missed a submission of “Passerby” after it was accepted:

Thank you for submitting to Random Sample Review. We're grateful for your patience as we read through the many submissions we received for Issue 8; our hope was to get in touch with everyone far sooner than this, but extended illness and real life concerns meant our little literary magazine took some delays. We're so grateful that you trusted your work with us and gave us the chance to read your wonderful words.

With that said, we must pass on your submission at this time, but we hope you'll consider Random Sample Review again in the future. We will be opening for our next issue in the coming months and are taking steps to ensure that we can communicate with our authors in a more timely manner. 

We wish you the best of luck in placing your pieces elsewhere. Take care of yourself and thank you for trusting us with your words.

Sincerely,

Editors of Random Sample Review

And so did “Best of Intentions”:

Thank you for sharing your work with us. We often have to turn down well-crafted writing, and while "Best of Intentions" isn't quite right for our current needs, we appreciate the time and effort which goes into every submission we consider. Thank you for sending your work.

We're all writers too at Sequestrum and appreciate how hard this process can be. So we want to say thanks for trusting us with your work. As a token of respect, feel free to take advantage of 75% off our usual subscription price. That's not something we advertise, but it's something we try and offer writers when possible. As a potential contributor, subscribing means more than just access to great literature: It's the best way to get an idea of our current editorial focus; as an added bonus, subscribers can make free general submissions (limit one pending at a time). Please feel no obligation. If Sequestrum is a home for literature you enjoy, we'd love to have you.

To fulfill a discounted subscription, use the coupon code "LitWriter" on any checkout page (https://www.sequestrum.org/checkout). For more subscription options, visit our "subscribe" page.

Thanks again for sharing your work, and best of luck.

Sincerely,
Sequestrum

I did not get my laundry done today. Nor did I get the blog caught up. Nor did I call Social Security. Things for tomorrow.

Some reading from this week:

•  The Ballad of Cary Grant's Suit in North by Northwest
• Paul Newman’s Reflection on Noir: The 25th Anniversary of Twilight 
• HOME REVIEWS Ingesting Mercury and the Noble Lie: On Anthony Barbieri-Low’s “The Many Lives of the First Emperor of China” and Shadi Bartsch’s “Plato Goes to China” 

The second book under review, The Many Lives of the First Emperor of China (2022) by Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, provides a different approach. It addresses a similar phenomenon of classical influence on contemporary politics and culture and, in doing so, touches in part on precisely the rich cross-cultural and cross-temporal engagements alluded to above. Where Plato Goes to China focuses on the reception of Greek philosophy by a small group of contemporary Chinese writers, Many Lives attempts an ambitious documentation of the First Emperor of China as a cultural, political, and legal icon across time, who (like Plato) appears as a figure onto whom diverse and contradictory arguments can be projected. He is portrayed in early written works and myths, but also in sculpture, film, comic books, and video games. He is represented in multiple and sometimes conflicting guises: as a symbol of Chinese national unity, or as a propagator of unparalleled suffering in his attempt to “burn books and bury scholars”; as a murdering, unhinged tyrant, or as a compassionate philosopher-king who propagated unified and transparent standards of rule; as evidence of the inherent unsustainability of political oppression, or of the inevitability of violence for progressing the movement of history.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger calls antisemites losers who will die miserably 
• Murder, He Wrote Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy 
• A Brief History of All the Women Who Have Won the Nobel Prize 

Stuff From Last Sunday That Got Overlooked:

Looking for a link to Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, I found this in The Guardian: The riotous history of The Playboy of the Western World:

Ireland in 1907 saw itself as ready for self-rule and it expected its artists to promote the image of a steady, sober, self-reliant people. Instead, with The Playboy of the Western World, Synge gave them a play in which a village loon splits his father's head open with a spade, runs away, tells people he "killed his da" and is promptly installed as a hero by excitable women and drunken men. Worse still, this drama was staged not in some backstreet art-house, but at the Abbey, Ireland's national theatre, one of whose mission statements was to show that Ireland was not the home of buffoonery but of an ancient idealism.

Ah, Synge wrote a great play.

I also found, as a by-blow to another search, was Frappes and Fiction, a blog mixing tech and book reviews. Looks cool.

Musical accompaniment from WMBR's Backwoods.

And Stuff from March 6:

• In Bulldozing Israeli Democracy, Benjamin Netanyahu Could Become the BDS Movement’s Greatest Ally

• What I Learned from Emily Post's 'Etiquette' (1922)

• The Lie Detector Was Never Very Good at Telling the Truth

• When 80 Famous Writers Published Their First (And Last) Books

Some items from tonight: 

• Back, Scoundrels: Eating the Rich on Film

• 17 Words With No English Equivalent 
  

 And now I say good-night.

 

 

sch 10:48 pm