In Which Bitty Ponders Becoming a Hollywood Producer

In an e-mail exchange with a friend today, we were commiserating with one another about the difficulty of getting students to interact with Shakespeare.

They whine that they can't understand the language, so they can't read it.

They whine that they can't follow what's going on in film versions, so they can't watch it.

Yet the Danes/DiCaprio Romeo & Juliet of a few years back did well enough. Methinks it's all about casting.

Friend suggested that Johnny Depp, because he's popular with our crowd, should do a Shakespearean tragedy, whereupon I hit on the idea of financing it through the contributions of grateful English teachers.

I figure ten bucks from each of us should be enough to get Depp and a high-quality cast and director, as well as finance the other costs.

Yeah, there are that many of us and we're that desperate.

Honor Thy President

Driving by the day care my now-adult children once attended long, long ago, I saw a sign.

First, I should mention that "message signs" have long bugged me. I hate having signs nagging at me, telling me what to do, what to think, who to be. I once attended a warm, loving church. Then the pastor died of cancer, new people came in, and the day I knew the place had changed utterly was the day the message sign quit making announcements (Spaghetti dinner at 7 Wednesday) and started scolding me (Think it's hot here?). Yes, message signs make me break out in hives.

So, I'm driving by our former day care in this red, red state, and I see on the message sign what looks on first blush like an innocuous message:

Honor all our Presidents.

I suspect that if the owner had italicized letters, that "all" would have been in italics.

I got the sermon, Ms. Daycare.

As a person who likes to exercise the "freedoms" that our current White House resident is so fond of speechifying about, I particularly enjoy my freedom to think. So far this is not a crime. And I think that anyone who wants to receive honor must first act honorably.

My Valentine's Gift

For Valentine's Day, I got a call from Marine Son and Indian Princess.

Their baby #2 (his #3; my grandchild #5) will be making his or her appearance around my birthday in October.

I dare anyone to beat that!

(I think I need to open a Christmas club. I now know why people do that.)

A Good Day

Definition of a good day:

1. The semi-official end of the workweek (I actually work 7 days a week, and I have a meeting tomorrow, but no more classes this week).

2. Payday.

3. New episode of Lost in 2 hours, 50 minutes.

Check, check, and check.

This is officially a good day.

Crazy: A Meme

Tagged by Waveflux, I’m doing this little book meme, but I’m not sure how cool my response is. And what's a meme -- nay, what's a blog? -- if it's uncool. Nevertheless, here I go. Here are the instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book (that is at least 123 pages long).
2. Open to p. 123.
3. Go down to the 5th sentence.
4. Type in the following 3 sentences.
5. Tag five people.

The genuinely nearest book is one I love, The Pocket Muse: Endless Inspiration, by Monica Wood. However, since it is an inspirational book, many of its pages contain only a sentence or two. This is true of page 123. It has no fifth sentence, nor does it have a sixth, seventh, or eighth. It has only one. Here it is:

Write about an immigrant who refuses to be noble, humble, or dignified – from the point of view of her husband.

Cool -- and I need to get right on that -- but not really fitting the rules.

So I reached for the next nearest book, The Vintage Anthology of Contemporary American Short Stories, edited by The Genius Tobias Wolff. My offering this time is short and, well, short:

Crazy.

“Swell,” he said. “Terrific.”

It’s from a classic short story, but I won’t say which one right now. I dare the two and a half readers of this blog to throw out a guess without Googling it.

(Hints: Contemporary American Short Stories. Short, terse, sentences. Edited by Tobias Wolff, who has friends in the bid-ness.)

Without the dare, I don’t know how interesting my part of the meme is. Even with the dare…eh.

Since I’ve already flunked the meme once and eh’d it a second time, why start worrying about the rules now? I’ll just tag one person: kaat.

Four-Word Review of Lost, Season 4, So Far

More questions than answers.

(This is NOT a complaint!)

Constructed beauty

Today Tall Son sent this photo of his current job. He loves the tilt panel construction best. He wants me to see the building.

However, I see shadow, reflection, pattern, and glorious blue.

My Inner Prufrock

I didn't see this coming, although I have to sorta kinda agree with the narrative that justifies this choice -- especially about the "hopeless effort of people trying to impress other people..."

I guess I should go back and read that poem that most people despise.

You're Prufrock and Other Observations!

by T.S. Eliot

Though you are very short and often overshadowed, your voice is poetic
and lyrical. Dark and brooding, you see the world as a hopeless effort of people trying
to impress other people. Though you make reference to almost everything, you've really
heard enough about Michelangelo. You measure out your life with coffee spoons.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Hat tip to Melissa, whom I am not trying to impress. ;)