More on the Neighbors
I've been sick. My daughter had it for 2 weeks, and as she shows signs of recovery I'm now coming down with it.
And so I'm sleeping in the middle of the afternoon when there's a "broom...BRRRROOM.. BRRRROOOOM" noise outside, construction, and I get up and look out the front window and the neighbors have begun to assemble a basketball hoop. It's one of the upright ones, and he has a his wife and her sister helping them, they're banging the pipes together on the sidewalk.
He doesn't know what he's doing. When he worked he was a tradesman. But he's not working now and he's brought the same expertise to bear on assembling this basketball hoop.
Plastic, cardboard, all strewn over the front lawn. Wal Mart again. The dumpster, (it was supposed to be gone, I asked him, yeah, he had no explanations) is full, he'll need another one to fit in the packaging for this.
I sit on the front steps to watch. He's pulled a picket off of the fence and is using it to cushion the pipes from the sidewalk, up on a ladder with a hammer banging on it while his sister-in-law holds the pipes together and he bangs with the hammer.
I have a bad feeling about this. There's no place around here they can play basketball. Our yard is grass and dumpster, not concrete, and I can imagine them setting this up in front of my office window, using the sidewalk to dribble and shoot, errant balls coming through the office window....
After another hour or two they give up. The hoop, unassembled, is brought to the back door, they leave it in front of it with their jumbo orange bags filled with beercans, Domino's Pizza boxes, 12 packs of Dr. Pepper. There's a recycling bin and trash area in the back, they haven't figured out how to use it. They leave the plastic wrapping drifting about the yard, the upturned fence picket with nails sticking through in the middle of the front sidewalk. I'm resolved not to clean up after them, my boy and I the weekend previous cleaned up the yard, picked up their cigarette butts, beer cans,and rubbish, I don't want to make it a habit. The fence picket is dangerous though.
I lasted 3 days. The plastic and cardboard were still blowing over the yard, the fence picket with rusty nails poking through still in the middle of the sidewalk. They step over it as they go to get groceries. Against all my better judgement I pick it up - not, I tell myself, for them, but for the other neighbors, the residents of the neighborhood, who must be looking upon all of this with the same skepticism that I am.
I want to talk to them, explain to them what's acceptable, but they wouldn't get it. Wouldn't get it at all. And so it goes.
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The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
by Umberto Eco
I like Umberto Eco. And I liked this. Good book.
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- Category: Books
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Edited and Introduced by Mark Roskill
Now this is a great book. Here, in 1 volume, are the collected letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo.
That said, it's not perfect. It's a 1963 paperback with black and white plates of his work. Van Gogh is sold short in full color prints, there's no point to black and white prints at all. But it's an old book, so you can't really expect better. It's been edited, which is a bad thing, and there are notes to certain letters advising that certain of Vincent's observations to Theo are left out as being irrelevant. While I appreciate this is probably true, I'd prefer to judge that for myself. There are notes as well that reference other letters Van Gogh wrote to Gauguin on the back of his letters to Theo, but not reproduced. This is a bit of a tease. There are notes as to sketches that Van Gogh sent to Theo along with his letters, or drawings on the page, but these again are not reproduced. And it would be good to see Theo's responses to Van Gogh's letters, to form perhaps a better idea of their correspondence.
So in short, there's no criticizing Van Gogh, but the editing could be better done. Things I'd look for were I to buy this again:
- More notes as to the paintings and what became of them (He describes quite vividly what he's working on in the letters, but only some of them are footnoted. Many of his works went missing as well, and it would be curious to know what's survived and what's missing, as well as where the surviving works are currently.)
- Something that attempted to reproduce the drawings that accompanied his letters
- Letter from Theo, as well as surviving letters from Vincent to Gauguin, etc.
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I'm not a Homo!
I'm on the bus, in front of me is a thirty-something Bob-Dylanish guy, in the seat in front of him is a teenager in those silky basketball shorts. The teenager gets up to leave, the waistband of his shorts is entirely around his knees. Not sort-of around his knees, or hanging low on the ass, no, his shorts are around his knees. His underwear, red boxers with a cartoon print, are entirely pulled up his ass. He reaches behind to tug them up, can't find them, has to quickly squat and haul them up, but only a bit, to his thighs.
When he's off the bus I lean forward to the Bob-Dylanish guy and say "If you wanna be cooler than that your going to have to take your trousers right off when you go to get off the bus...."
He turns and looks at me. "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"
So I repeat it, finding it hard to believe he didn't notice the little show in front of him.
"I wasn't staring at his ass, you know man....I'm not a Homo!!"
It's a bit of a non-sequitor, really. I have only 2 observations which he wouldn't understand.
1) Anyone who denies being a "homo", without having been accused or propositioned, is probably a homo.
2) Anyone who uses the phrase "Homo" is definitely a homo.
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