May 08, 2008

Apologia pro crappa sua

It occurred to me late last night that this blog would have been much more interesting had I started it 15 or even 10 years ago ... stuff could really anger me then, and I could bitch about it endlessly. Now, my response to most irritating stimuli (which is to say, most stimuli) is more along the lines of "Ehhh, what do you expect?" Lewis Black shtole my shtick years ago, and I don't even want it back.

Hey, I even watched the news this morning to find something to rant about, and ... nothing. The wardrobe of the woman who presents the weather on our local news station inspires me to alternating terror and pity in ever-decreasing oscillations ... but is it news?

This is what we used smugly to refer to as a cliched epiphany. I mean, I know I'm not saying anything about reflective--not to say self-absorbed--middle age that hasn't been said better elsewhere (for instance, in the song below).



Still, when I read an email from long ago (not that long ago ... I mean, there was email, and some of us can remember a time when there wasn't) in which I used this passage in my .sig--

..the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars... --Kerouac


--all I can think now is "Actually, I kind of can't stand being around people like that." The last line is good though.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you kidding? David Byrne fused with the Muppets? It's like it was made just for me.

Rosemary said...

It's really weird that you would post *that* video today, Jim, when that song just passed through my mind this morning. I remembered Murray Beja quoting it during some grad-school orientation spiel, and thinking at the time what a dweeb he was, trying to look cool by quoting the Talking Heads. Now it occurs to me that he probably understood the meaning of that song way better than I did then, and now I'm the damned middle-aged dweeb.

And yeah, I wanna slap some of those "burning candle" passionate idealists around myself sometimes. But as most of them are my students, it's apparently illegal.