So, basically, twice the stuff I would normally have... whatever, it's another 11 blogs for a month, it's a party, so first up.
I got the car over night for work on saturday or sunday, okay, according to my notebook this was sunday. Anyways, I was listening to the radio and this song that I don't know if I've ever heard before comes on, and I wanted to post the lyrics. And yes, I do realize, pretty much all the time.
The Flaming Lips - Do You Realize
Do You Realize, that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize, we're floating in space
Do You Realize, that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize, that everyone you know someday will die
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Do You Realize, Oh Oh Oh
Do You Realize, that everyone, you know,
Someday, will die
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Do You Realize, that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize
***
Yeah, so onto something that's the exact opposite of songs about our mortality: the newspaper strip Mother Goose and Grimm. Generally, it's kind of lifeless, gag wise and artwise- EXCEPT! when Grimm makes this expression.
(and as for the strip in question... I know I haven't given you much context to get the job he's trying out for... I think it was for a piloting gig? I didn't really get it, and didn't really care to work on figuring it out- I just saw his expression and went "YES!" and tore it out of the paper.)
***
To Have and Have Not is a weird jumble of a book. It starts out very exciting, with a drive by shooting that happens on, I don't know, page 5, and I thought that was pretty cool.
Then we went to a boat and talked about fishing some more (Hemingway and his fishing) but even that was relatively exciting, what with a giant fish nearly pulling a newbie fisherman off the boat.
But the jumble comes from the narration and focus. It starts first person with Harry Morgan, then goes third person but still with Morgan as the lead figure, then the last third of the book has a heavy focus on Richard Gordon, philandering, mostly successful writer. And then there's a brief chapter at the end where we look at the occupants of several yachts, boat by boat, before resting on this one woman who is cheating on her husband with a guy that she knows would only cheat on her if she married him, and it doesn't matter because both men are too drunk to satisfy her, and then we get a Hemingway style sex scene of her masturbating in such a way that I'm sure a great many people would read this and think "what's happening? why is she telling herself she loves herself? Is she crazy?"
No reader. No she is not.
It's the back teaser blurb that's getting me: "Harry Morgan's) adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair."
That doesn't happen.
Yes, his (spoiler alert) dying body is driven through the rich yachtsmen dock or whatever. Does that REALLY count? And everyone else in the book was poor. Morgan met with two rich people in this book. The human smuggler that he then killed for the sake of personal security, and the tourist (I think that's Richard Gordon, but I may have mixed him up with another character) whose wife Morgan called a whore.
Harry Morgan was not a nice protagonist. But, credit where it's due, he took all those chances for the sake of his family, and his lasts thoughts were of his wife... well, okay, not counting his final words almost 40 pages before the end of the book, which I take to be the conclusion of this story:
""Don't fool yourself,... Like trying to pass cars on the tops of hills. On that road in Cuba. On any road. Anywhere. Just like that. I mean how things are. The way that they been going. For a while yes sure all right. Maybe with luck. A man."...
"A man," Harry Morgan said, looking at them both. "One man alone ain't got. No man alone now." He stopped. "No matter how(,) a man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance."
He shut his eyes. It had taken him a long time to get it out and it had taken him all of his life to learn it."
I added a comma up there for clarity's sake, but you could probably figure out the meaning on your own.
Harry Morgan's tale is of one man who takes everything upon himself. His first mate is a useless rummy. He can't trust the smuggler who hired him to keep his mouth shut, so he's got to kill him. He won't give it up when he's shot up and on the run from the law, and it costs him his arm. He won't tell his friend the bar tender about his dangerous last mission, because he knows the bar tender would object (rightly so, it WAS too dangerous). He could have even tried to pursuade the cooler heads amongst the bank robbers he was ferrying away to protect him from their violent and murderous comrade Roberto- instead of trying to kill them all (very literally) single handed.
All in all, I'd rather have edited this thing down to three separate short stories. Maybe more, it's all in how you divide it.
I started reading "For Whom The Bell Tolls" and THAT'S the one with the "no man is an island" quote at the beginning. I had mixed it up with To Have and Have Not, seeing as it's sort of the photo-negative thought to Morgan's attempts to be an island.
And once again, I've been here way too long. 6:42 in the morning, I've got 11 hours before I've gotta be out the door and on the way to the movies. Hmm, earlier if I want to get a haircut (my side burns are WAY too curly.)
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