A few of you might remember that when this blog started, it was a way of tracking my progress through Gravity's Rainbow. Now, of course, I've given up on the fever dream that I would ever finish that godforsaken book. The Pynchon Project (TM), as it was called, is dead. But I do still enjoy this (h/t Josh at The Comics Curmudgeon):
Yes, that's Sally Forth of the Sunday funnies, and, yes, those are the opening words of Gravity's Rainbow. I'm a little baffled by the whole thing. There's a certain disconnect between WWII-era London, asiege and under attack by buzz-bombs, and bunch of wholesome teens partaking in America's favorite pastime. But, sure, okay. You go, Sally.
News from the Pynchon Project (TM) first.
I have, after consulting two people I live with, both of them German majors in college for four years, tried to get a couple passages from Gravity's Rainbow translated.
This has been met with mixed results. Here's what I've got so far.
Page 101:
Bringt doch der Wanderer auch vom Hange des Bergrands nicht eine Hand voll
Erde ins Tal, die alle upsagliche, sondern ein erworbens Wort, reines, den
gelben und blaun Enzian.
Bring froth the wanderer from [some place] not with a handful of dirt [...] blue
and gold Enzian.
In dulci jubilo
Nun singet und seid froh!
Unsers Herzens Wonne
Leit in praesipio,
Leuchtet vor die Sonne
Matris in gremio.
Alpha es et O.
With Sweet Rejoycing
sing and be happy!
Our hearts [something]
[something] manger [I think...]
[something] in the sun.
[something] mother's lap
Alpha and Omega.
Gravity's Rainbow, selections from pages 60, 61, and 71:
These changes on the text "You never did the Kenosha Kid" are occupying Slothrop's mind...
- Thomas Pynchon [italics mine]
[2]
Old veteran hoofer: Bet you never did the "Kenosha," kid!
[2.1]
O.V.H.: Bet you never did the "Kenosha Kid."
[3]
Superior (haughtily): You! never did the Kenosha Kid think for one instant that you...
[3.1]
Superior (incredulously): You? Never! Did the Kenosha Kid think for one instant that you . . . ?
[4]
the meek voice of little Tyrone Slothrop, celebrated over after in tradition and song, ventured to filter upward to the Kid's attention: "You never did 'the,' Kenosha Kid!"
[5]
Maybe you did fool the Philadelphia, rag the Rochester, josh the Joliet. But you never did the Kenosha kid.
[6]
Oh-oh. Wait. What's this, Slothrop? You never did the Kenosha kid. Snap to, Slothrop.
[7]
Slothrop: Where is he? Why didn't he show? Who are you?
Voice: The Kid got busted. And you know me, Slothrop. Remember? I'm Never.
Slothrop (peering): You, Never? (A pause.) Did the Kenosha Kid?
On the suggestion of my friend A___, I've been checking out the blog ENERGYDRINKSBLOG!?!1/?11 [sic]. There is, as you can imagine from the title a lot of YELLING. This is understandable as the writer is apparently hopped up on energy drinks at all THE TIME. He seems to have trouble controlling THE VOLUME OF HIS TEXT. At any rate, there is a lot of useful information about energy drinks, the best kinds, the ones that make your breath smell, etc. As for me, I'll stick to coffee. I guess it's comforting to know that someone is willing to subject themselves to every form of energy drink under the sun and is thus able to provide useful information like this:
the effects of energydrinks and over-the-counter painkillers multiply each other: my mood was SO GOOD and my feet felt like i was wearing new balance 991's with hiking socks, hopping around and not really minding the chair compressing my spine. also i skipped dinner which felt great because the advils really heightened the usual appetite-suppressing effects of the edrinks!
so if you're ever in any sort of pain or you get down on yrself, maybe because you look in the mirror and all you see is a big fatbody or you just got a shit haircut, drink energydrinks and heedlessly eat advils until you feel great. IT'S NOT DRUGS IF YR PARENTS WOULD/DID BUY IT FOR YOU. or also if you hear about how 35 lbs of weight loss = 1 inch of penis growth and you wanna lose some of that jelly, this combo will work too. [I'm just going to put a big old "sic" after this entire quote]
In all honesty, I found this blog amusing to the point that I will be a repeat visitor, and, it did make me strongly consider actually buying energy drinks and OTC painkillers. Somehow, I don't think my sponsor would approve (ha. ha.)... I'm not going to blogroll this one, simply note that I've visited it, enjoyed it, and move on.
Over at This Has Happened Before, part two of the awesome pictures from yesterday are up (I wrote about this, here), plus he said nice things about me, here, and believe you me, I'm a huge sucker for that. Once again I won't scoop his pictures, even though I want to; you'll just have to head over and check them out yourselves.
I'd like to come back and say something else about the crazed energy drink review site. It makes me want to slam them until I'm fucked up on caffeine. Not so healthy, but it speaks well of the site.
Lastly, I'd like to say that this is the third day in a row that I've spilled hot coffee one myself. That is all.
Gravity's Rainbow page 56:
What if Mexico's whole generation turned out like this? Will Postwar be nothing but "events," newly created one moment to the next? no links? Is it the end of history?
Next, I'd like to note the addition of a couple of things in the blog roll. First, in the intrest of reciprocity, and 'rolling cool blogs, check out It Has Happened Before. He's hamming out good art postings left and right; I won't try to scoop his site and post them here, but I will say that this post has some pretty amazing pictures.
I also added MPLSart in the interest of maintaining my Murderopolis pride, despite now living in Saint Paul, promoting local art, and loving the site. It is, in many ways, a cross between Last Night's Party and an actual art site, but I can excuse the shameless hipster navel-gazing because (1) it isn't soft-core porn, (2) they post about good art, too, and (3) hipster navel-gazing is far more interesting when I actually know some of the people involved.
First, news from the Pynchon Project. Page 47:
They turn southward. Lights on the dash glow warmly. Searchlights rake the raining sky. The slender machine shivers over the roads. Jessica drifts toward sleep, the leather seat creaking as she curls about. Windscreen wipers brush the rain in a rhythmic bright warp. It is past two, and time for home.
While on the subject of Pynchon, here's a nice post on It Has Happened Before (the sub-head of the website, for those of you unfamiliar with the first page of Gravity's Rainbow, is "But There Is Nothing To Compare It To Now") about Zak Smith
I had coffee last night with an old acquaintance of mine from High School. I haven't seen her in over two years. It was wonderful to talk with her, and I found the conversation more engaging than I expected. She talked at length about her new-found passion for modern (or, as she said, contemporary) dance. Since I've been doing yoga and pilates with A___--a skilled dancer--this idea of dancing has already been on my mind. I've gotten more flexible since doing yoga (from not being able to touch my toes to putting my hands flat on the ground), and my slowly-developing core strength has made it passable for me to move a little bit after doing pilates--an epic improvement considering my post-pilates near-incontinence and uncontrollable quivering mere weeks ago. I want to do something with these new, underdeveloped skills. I want to dance. I have to stew on this a bit and remember that I make shit for money and have no idea when I'll be making more.
So everyone knows, when at Caffetto (Lyndale & 22nd), I ran three separate groups of people I knew and hadn't seen in a while, two of them who went to high school with me and K___ (my platonic coffee date). Either this is a strange coincidence, or I know the hipster nodes better than I thought I did. Unfortunately, this is probably the beginning of the end for Caffetto, I have little doubt that, soon enough, the hipsters will be gone, replaced by suburban kids with Sum 41 tee-shirts. Alas. To be honest though, I'm not sure which are worse. Can't we just go back to the days of Caffetto as the small, neighborhood coffee joint?
Fuck it. I might as well live it up while I can. I'll grab L___'s red vest, put some gel in my hair, and pack Gravity's Rainbow and see if I can get hit on.
That is page 39 of Gravity's Rainbow. I'm on page 49: "They were in love, fuck the war."
I haven't had my coffee yet, and as I'm working a temporary office job at S___ C___ P___, I won't be getting coffee until my lunch break. If this seems counter-intuitive to you, I would tell you that, yes, it is. For reasons passing understanding, there is no coffee in this office. There is only Coke and bottled water. I can feel the film on my teeth as they rot away into a lunar landscape: craters of cavities, canals of rot. In conclusion, not only am I tired and grumpy (no coffee) but worried about the state of my teeth, what with the chain-smoking, early-morning Coke drinking, regular coffee binging, using my roommate's odd-smelling toothpaste (I'm out), and poor hygiene in general and all.
On another note, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are going to pose nude for a photo shoot, undoubtedly to try to deal with people like this:
I don't think one single person who believed Tom Cruise was gay prior to his courtship, engagement, marriage, and subsequent childbirth of Katie (not necessarily in that order) has since changed his or her mind.
Just thought you should know.
(This from SAWF News, via Radar Online)My friend A___--the same one's whose Pilates prowess has pushed my abs into a quivering, gelatinous mess--has challenged me to build a model schooner. She doubted my origami abilities, and, as one who has built an entire city (a model one, obviously) out of paper, I took a bit umbrage with this. Here is my model, which, as I've been discovering, may be a bit too ambitious--par for the course, really:
I fear I may have set off on another hopelessly complex task. I've completed the base and foremast so far, but am having a little trouble with the double jib.
Pictures forthcoming.
From Wikipedia.
I'm trying to read Gravity's Rainbow. Again. By way of checking in, I give you this quote from page 26:
"It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thousand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. This smoke is more that the day's breath, more than dark strength--it is an imperial presence that lives and moves. People were crossing the streets and squares, going everywhere. Busses were grinding off, hundreds of them, down the long concrete viaducts smeared with years' pitiless use and no pleasure, into
haze-gray, grease-black, read lead and pale aluminum, between scrap heaps that towered high as blocks of flats, down side-shoving curves into roads clogged with Army convoys, other tall busses and canvas lorries, bicycles and cars, everyone here with different destinations and beginnings, all flowing, hitching now and them, over it all the enormous gas ruin of the sun among the smokestacks, the barrage balloons, power lines and chimneys brown as aging
indoor wood, brown growing deeper, approaching black through an instant--perhaps the true turn of the sunset--that is wine to you, wine and comfort."
I want to have a house with chickens that run free. Like in a third-world country. Is this possible? I'm sure it violates some health code or other. But, honestly, how cool would that be?
On another note, I've--once again--started reading Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. This will be attempt four or five, I can't remember. But, this time, I have another tool at my disposal. Zak Smith, a young, American artist did a piece currently on view and The Walker Art Center (where I work, incidentally). He did one drawing for each page of the book. An epic undertaking, considering that Gravity's Rainbow is beyond complex and is a rather difficult read (okay, a really, really difficult read). I bought the book of his drawings and am making myself stop after each page and look at his interpretations. This prevents my normal problem with Pynchon, where I lose myself in his cul-de-sac prose and end up reading an entire chapter and at the end thinking, "when the hell did he start having sex with a one-limbed prostitute," or "when did he start talking about black Nazis?"
Check it out here.
