Everything I Tell you is Hearsay

my child is full of intellectual curiosity. she likes to know how stuff works, why things happen, and when dinner is going to be. and i have made it my policy to always be honest with her. sometimes this results in my saying

i am not comfortable talking about this with you, so i’m afraid i have nothing to say

but last week i dodged a bullet of gargantuan proportions which then managed to hit someone else full force. poor Gramma…. respecting the wishes of myself and her son, she tackled a topic i would have been squirmy, but resigned to address myself.

you see, hodie was surfing around the internets on Gramma’s unfiltered internet connection and, well, she saw some things. and these things prompted the following series of questions (as recounted by Gramma)

the underlying story isn’t that interesting, i suppose. every so often one mistakes something that isn’t love for it, and a plate glass window for an open doorway.

in both cases, these have been painful mistakes.

magnolia is one of my very favorite movies ever. i unwisely lent my copy to some reprobate neighbor of mine about 5 years ago and thus hadn’t seen it in about that long. but sunday i spent most of the morning in bed watching it. and i remembered anew why i love it so very much.

it isn’t just because it helps me remember a more innocent time when watching tom cruise’s palpable intensity only moved me rather than creeping me out. nor only because jason robards delivers such a touching performance and i always wished he was my grampa ever since seeing “Max Dugan Returns” as a small child. the entire cast of this film moves together in a nuanced and tender way that exposes such loveliness and tragedy all at once.

i somehow forgot how many little tics i picked up from this movie. the scene where the little boy raps to Officer Jim about the identity of the murderer is classic:

i’ll help you solve the case, gotta get paid though, gotta get paid

i say this constantly. and of course, we all know i subscribe to the Seduce and Destroy credo

RESPECT THE COCK! AND TAME THE CUNT!

likewise, when Frank TJ Mackey gets cornered in a lie by the reporter and clams up on her, she asks him what he’s doing, his reply:

i’m quietly judging you

classic scorching derision!!

and not only this, but Magnolia contains what is, for me, the singlemost moving and beautiful scene in any film i have ever watched; each cast member sings a line or two from Aimee Mann’s hauntingly lovely song “Wise Up” and it does not matter if they can, or if they are even conscious but only that they are all bound together in this moment of vulnerability and wonder.

there was some unbridled crying in front of my cohort during this part of the movie. apparently my relentless sentimentality is no secret to anybody.

then i went to breakfast and had spicy potatoes and a screwdriver. it was a very nice sunday indeed.

By Kurt Vonnegut

rather a standard, i came late to reading this novel. having enjoyed other offerings of Vonnegut, i was fairly well prepared for a bantering tone, even about what was an admittedly grim subject.

but rather than focusing solely on the tragedy at Dresden, Vonnegut makes a study of a man outside of time and place who is inexorably drawn back to that scene in time and mind. rather than living through it once, and relating the experience in a linear narrative, our Billy Pilgrim is cast about seemingly at random, to live and relive the moments of his life.

part parable, part memoir,  part science fiction farce, this novel does embody the classic Vonnegut voice.

Dial Press Trade Paperback (1999), Paperback, 288 pages

i do not really actually believe in physics. i mean, i assume that, like religion, since so many people seem to adhere to it, that there must be some level of cosmic underlying truth there despite my inability to see or understand it even in the face of multiple classes and tutors*.

and yet, even with my utter inability to grasp even the most fundamental concepts related to physics, i DO listen to a LOT of NPR**and as a result of this, i have heard quite a bit recently about the Large Hadron Collider and what the scientists there are hoping to achieve and discover. also about the sort of ridiculous but impossible to entirely dismiss crackpot theories about what might happen when and if the LHC actually manages to accomplish what it was created for. Namely, to collide some protons and see what happens. or something.***

all of that has led some people to make some fairly amusing LHC related humor based on the idea that it might:

• accidentally ’splode the universe when a WHOLE NOTHER UNIVERSE gets created
• spontaneously manifest a little baby black hole into which we are all gonna get sucked
• reach BACK IN TIME and meddle with its OWN ability to succeed. also maybe change election results
• absolve humanity of the need to continue existing, thereby justifying all sorts of outrageous behavior
• result in some crackpot scientists/religious types getting way more media attention than they deserve****

and yet, though i barely understand any of this, i have still had a few good laughs on the subject. maybe you will too.

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

and if by some chance you are interested in a legitimate explaination of what the LHC is really about you can go HERE and read something written by some very nice and no doubt erudite Britisher on the subject.

*i fault my monocular condition for this. i had a neurologist tell me it was no wonder i couldn’t understand physics since i completely lack depth perception and thus am a spatial-reasoning-retard.

** my friend david finds my intimate familiarity with the OPB radio line-up a source of some amusement. he will frequently turn to me at random moments and say “what’s on NPR right now?” or conversely “what will be on at 7pm on sunday?” and chuckle slightly when i am pretty much always able to immediately respond.

***member? not so much with the science here.

**** that one, it happened.

I say damn. i say GOD DAMN. its true.

except that you should go see Juno. Seriously. This was the sweetest, most hilarious, and lovely movie I have seen in forever. Plus Michael Cera rocks so hard it is hard to believe.