Reading Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

I've spent the past couple of months reading the majority of Fitzgerald's early short stories, as published in the Library of America editions. They're fine, they're witty and sometimes slightly moving ("The Lees of Happiness").

RE the novels: The debut (This Side) is a smart young man showing off, with nothing at all to say except spouting text in reaction to his current circumstances and beliefs. I'm only about a third of the way thru "Beautiful and Damned," and so far it's kind of the same: A young man very similar to the protagonist of "This Side" is now in love and attempting to define his beloved via his stilted societal opinions of what's "clean" or not. Perhaps "Damned" will improve before its end, but right now, it's a tedious trek through what's supposed to be "cool" with the 1920 hipsters (or whatever they or "cool" were called then). Fitzgerald is, of course, an astute observer of social scenes. Yeah, and so am I. At this point, during his second novel, I'm beginning to see why Zelda (the subject of this second novel) is so annoyed by his constant analyzing of her. The character based on her at one point actually says that she despises intellectual boys who try to analyze her. Which is exactly what Fitzgerald was---an intellectual boy trying to analyze. Aside from Zelda's protests, there are other protests on record from friends objecting to Fitzgerald's trying to analyze them in the middle of a good time...

Another feature of both novels: Fitzgerald is disgusted whenever his rich-boy character has to take the subway or otherwise be among the "common working people." He goes on about it: They smell disgusting, they look disgusting, their inner lives must be disgusting; the women are particularly disgusting---once married, they must all be fat and harridans, keeping their men from achieving anything. You kind of forget this nastiness while reading Fitzgerald, because he writes so well in between. But, in truth: Note the sense of "Evil" that his protagonist experiences in "This Side." A weird episode that goes on for several pages after Amory Blaine has merely gone with a friend to a girl's apartment and had some drinks. He suddenly starts hallucinating that The Devil Himself is among them, then that The Devil is chasing him through alleys. And when The Devil reveals himself, it's the face of a recently dead friend... It's a goose-bump-raising episode in the book, and one that impressed me upon reading...Amory is clearly having a psychotic break, and I was impressed with this honesty of the first-time author and curious to see what would happen... But when, by the second book, the same "sense of evil" (sex) keeps being named, it becomes a bit stupid and ridiculous.

Reincarnation

There's no guarantee.
I always have this picture in my mind: The horse in a train-car being transported to the slaughter-house. But, whoops, because he was loaded incorrectly, he now accidentally has a leg sticking out of the slats of the car. As if his fate weren't bad enough... What do the slaughter-house humans do since they don't feel like unloading and re-loading all of the horses? They saw off his leg. THEY SAW OFF HIS LEG. To me, this is the ultimate example of Evil and of just how bad things can be.

Don't trust in reincarnation. Because this is exactly what you might end up with.

George Washington University Pro-Terrorist Campus Light Show

BlogSpot now won't allow me to add any photos to my posts. I've been posting here for 15 years; guess this might be my last post.

RE the title: On October 24, George Washington University allowed radical Marxists to beam pro-Hamas terrorist messages against the wall of their campus library. There was no reaction from the campus leadership. (Why is such overt anti-Semitism OK? Especially after the radical Muslim group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and murdered thousands of Israelis. I'm shocked that anyone on any campus or in any country is sticking up for the terrorists. Do you not know the history of this piece of land? It's been disputed for over 2000 years.)

Bay City Rollers: Inside a Broken Dream (1977)

The first album I ever bought was "Dedication" in 1976, my third was "It's a Game" (1977).
I was 12 and 13 then. (OK, in between first and third came Shaun Cassidy's debut album.)
In an 8th-grade class that asked for our favorite poetry, I wrote out the words to "Inside a Broken Dream" from the "It's a Game" album, written by BCR's Eric Faulkner:

Turn the pages of a broken dream
Smiling faces, have they ever seen
Empty hallways, will they ever end?
The fool again
Masquerading in a hyper dream
Fading shadows talk of their machine
Through the haze another cigarette
So much to say and to forget

CHORUS
Inside a broken dream I cry
Is love the reason why?
Inside an empty room I stare
At love that is not there

Life begins with your head in the dark
The chord of life reveals the final spark
Takes you nowhere then nowhere takes you back again...

Today, over 45 years later, I still think this song is good, am still moved by it. And I still listen to the Bay City Rollers at least once a month or so. (Shaun... maybe once a year!)

Bay City Rollers: Saturday Night (Midnight Special)

Bay City Rollers: Bye, Bye, Baby (Top of the Pops)

Bay City Rollers: It's a Game

Bay City Rollers: Dance, Dance, Dance (1977)

From the "It's a Game" album.

Read up on the 2000-year history. Give 'em hell, Netanyahu.

So sorry you have to get permission from Biden to act.

George Jones: You Gotta Be My Baby (1957)

Who's the dummy announcer? GJ isn't "5 feet" tall.

George Jones: Choices (1999)

Pro-Hamas Demonstrators Hold Rally In NYC's Times Square

The protesters aren't "pro-Palestinian," they're "pro-Hamas"---the terrorist organization that just murdered over 1000 Israeli babies and grandmothers and teens for no reason. And now, academics and students worldwide, including in the US, are marching because the Israelis are, justly, striking back.

 

Seeing all of the massive pro-Hamas rallies on US college campuses and in Times Square today made me wonder:  Where are all of the Jewish people in the US? Why aren't you out there countering the explicit Hamas call for the utter obliteration of the Jewish state? Jewish people in the US are normally quite liberal and expressive of their opinions---that is, in the context of calm times and opinion pieces in left-wing media. But when the chips are down, and your socialist kids are at socialist colleges that are now agreeing with the radical Hamas/Marxist claim for the destruction of Israel---why the fuck aren't you all out there on the streets countering the Muslim Marxists? Is it that you formerly agreed with them---until they came for you? And now you're not quite sure what to do re your previous abstract beliefs in the face of nasty reality? Talk to some Jews circa WWII; or some Jews who lived through the Yom Kippur war. Let 'em school you on the reality of actual anti-Semitism. 

 

The danger isn't the random yokel in small-town Alabama. The danger lies in the very heart of the urban centers and academia that you thought you were so safe in. Little did you know that, post-WWII, with its liberal immigration policy that let you in, the US would also, a few years later, also be letting in radical Muslim immigrants that hated you. What are you going to do about the overt Muslim hate today? What did you do about the similar hate from Germans when you lived in that country in the middle of the last century? When the overt discrimination started there, most middle-class Jews assumed they were "assimilated enough" and didn't do anything. Similarly, I didn't see many Jewish people countering the overtly anti-Israel pro-terrorist street rallies in cities and college campuses all over the world---too assimilated into academia to protest when academia has gone awry?

 

For god's sake: Stand up for yourselves! History is repeating itself right in front of your eyes---don't let it happen again! You are absolutely NOT "safe" just because you've cloaked yourself in the popular Marxism of the left-wing state that you're currently living in. Not when the US has allowed as many radical Muslims as Jews into the country.

 

Learn from the actual Israelis, who have made a country and lives for themselves based on hard-core principles and history: The land was Judea long before any Muslim conquered it in the 1400s. Stop being self-hating Jews; stop being post-2016 Marxist apologists; start standing up again for rationality and sanity. And when you see those radical Marxists in the streets calling for the annihilation of Israel... FIGHT THEM.

Scary?

At my last job (4 years ago), I had a 3 x 2 ft small poster of this face on my office wall. A female co-worker registered a complaint with HR against me/it because she didn't like the poster and could see it whenever she walked past my office---he looked like a "mean drunk" and that bothered her whenever she passed.

 

I'm sure that George Jones was, indeed, a mean drunk. But my picture of him in my office was certainly not a tribute to "mean drunks" but rather to the man and his music. (Plus I just liked how his face looked. And I can have whatever pictures I want up in my own office. Oh, and I'm not responsible for your own specific childhood traumas.)

Her utterly idiotic complaint came to nothing, thankfully. But those were the kind of ludicrous office ladies I used to work around. On the positive side: I worked around geologists, and when I told one of them about the stupid complaint, he joked: "His face is a monument to geologic striations..."

 

George Jones: Still Doin' Time (1981)

Shaun Cassidy: "That's Rock N Roll" Live Grammy Awards (1977)

Aw, who cares if the world is burning. My 12-year-old heart was burning for Shaun in 1977, even before ever seeing his ass-shaking or knowing that "ass-shaking" was a thing that my kid-self was supposed to think was sexual instead of just plain cute.

Iranians Demonstrate In Support Of Hamas Attack On Israel

Palestine: Country or not?

The territory has been disputed and fought over for centuries. It started out as a Jewish territory. It was conquered by Muslims. Then re-conquered by Jews. Then re-conquered by Muslims. Then taken over by Brits and divided between Jews and Arabs. Then re-conquered by Israel.

So it seems that it belongs to whoever conquered it last. As per the history of the whole world.

There's not some sort of "moral" right to the land by Muslims, because the territory was first Jewish.

Basic history from Wikipedia:

As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region of Palestine has a tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. In the Bronze Age, it was inhabited by the Canaanites; the Iron Age saw the emergence of Israel and Judah, two related kingdoms inhabited by the Israelites. It has since come under the sway of various empires, including the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Revolts by the region's Jews against Hellenistic rule brought a brief period of regional independence under the Hasmonean dynasty, which ended with its gradual incorporation into the Roman Empire (later the Byzantine Empire). In the 7th century, Palestine was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, ending Byzantine rule in the region; Rashidun rule was succeeded by the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Fatimid Caliphate. Following the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been established through the Crusades, the population of Palestine became predominantly Muslim. In the 13th century, it became part of the Mamluk Sultanate, and after 1516, part of the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, it was captured by the United Kingdom as part of the Sinai and Palestine campaign. Between 1919 and 1922, the League of Nations created the Mandate for Palestine, which directed the region to be under British administration as Mandatory Palestine. Tensions between Jews and Arabs escalated into the 1947–1949 Palestine war, which ended with the territory of the former British Mandate divided between Israel vis-à-vis Jordan (in the West Bank) and Egypt (in the Gaza Strip); later developments in the Arab–Israeli conflict culminated in Israel's seizure of both territories, which has been among the core issues of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict.^[3][4][5]

BBC's biased left-wing coverage of Hamas attack on Israel

Nothing on YouTube showed the extremely biased BBC commentary, which I've been watching this afternoon and evening and which featured primarily pro-Palestinian academics and reporters who basically blamed Israel and "the far-right-wing" (BBC's words) Netanyahu for the attack on Israel generating from the Gaza Strip by the terrorist group Hamas. Israel vows immediate retaliation, rightly so. In fact, I very much look forward to it.

Of course, this stirs up all sorts of dilemmas for the US Democrats. Ha! They're torn between old-school Israel supporters like Biden and Chuck Schumer, and Marxists like AOC, et al., who support Palestine wholeheartedly. US Jews have always been long-time Dem supporters---Will they be so now, given the radical wing of the party's support for Hamas?

Whatever your view on the whole situation: The BBC, when I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, used to be known as an unbiased source. Today, it's completely left-wing, completely biased. When I first heard about the Hamas attack today, I turned to both the BBC and CNN out of habit---in years past, I'd known them to give the facts about foreign news (ONLY about foreign news---both are blatantly left-wing biased about domestic news)... CNN this time was balanced. The BBC was utterly NOT; at least 75% of their coverage and reporters said that Israel and Netanyahu must have done something to deserve the attack. Disgusting.

Basic info from the Wikipedia entry for "Gaza Strip":

Gaza was part of the Ottoman Empire before it was occupied by the United Kingdom (1918–1948), Egypt (1948–1967), and then Israel, which in 1993 granted the Palestinian Authority in Gaza limited self-governance through the Oslo Accords. Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been de facto governed by Hamas, which claims to represent the State of Palestine and the Palestinian people.

George Jones: You've Still Got a Place In My Heart (1984)

George Jones: "One Woman Man"

George Jones: No Show Jones (Live)

2024 Calendar

For about a decade after I left NYC in 2010, I continued to buy "Historic New York City" calendars each year, in admiration of a beautiful/bold city and, I suppose, in hopes that I'd one day be back there... Last year was the first year post-2010 that I didn't get a NYC calendar. Primarily because the city's been run to dirt by incompetent Marxists de Blasio (2014 - 2021) and Adams (2022 to present). I'm sure NYC will make a comeback, but not with the current sloppy, left-wing, DEI leadership.

Prior to 2007, I'd usually had Van Gogh or Klimt or "vintage advertising" calendars. Because I was so cool (ahem).

In 2023, post-NYC infatuation, I bought two (stupidly, because of a calendars.com sale only if you spent over $30): "Art Nouveau" and "Celestial." The Art Nouveau was boring, and the Celestial I never even opened.

In the past week, I've been trying to figure out what to get that mirrored my current mind-set. In recent years, it was usually dumbly clear: "OMG, I love New York!" Prior to that, I was trying to reveal my "oh-so-artsy soul" with Van Gogh and Klimt. (They remain my favorite artists, but... at some point, everyone, including myself, has seen the same 20 prints over and over again---didn't need to see them in my kitchen for the next year.)

Days of searching on Amazon: Black Cat 1, Black Cat 2, Artsy Black Cats, Cats and Books, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Victorian Art, Waterhouse, Vintage Advertising, etc. etc. etc.

After looking at various cat calendars, I kind of got sick of cats! I have 5 of my own who are constantly in my face---and I didn't really need to see a cutesy "Cats Yelling" for the next 12 months! And, as beautiful as my own black cat Mini is, I also did not want to look at black cats all year. Similarly, "Waterhouse Girls" get old after two or three months, Deco/Nouveau get similarly old, as do all of the absinthe and kitchen ads.

An attempted search for "Byzantine icons" garnered only Russian-language calendars. My "Catholic saints" search was a bit too Catholic for this non-Catholic interested primarily in the beauty of the Saints and not exactly when you could or could not eat fish (seriously, there are guidances back to age 7).

In my subsequent search for "metaphysical," found only a Celtic calendar and Rumi calendar, both with modern artwork that was close to, but not quite, really spiritual.

I finally went with the Rumi (1207 - 1273). This is how I hope my upcoming year will go. Not looking at shallow city scenes or shallow 100-year-old advertising, but rather thinking about things (despite the not-so-great artwork). Says Rumi:

I died to the mineral state and became a plant,
I died to the vegetal state and reached animality,
I died to the animal state and became a man,
Then what should I fear? I have never become less from dying.
At the next charge (forward) I will die to human nature,
So that I may lift up my head and wings and soar among the angels,
And I must also jump from the river of The Angel,
Everything perishes except His Face...
I will become that which cannot come into the imagination,
Then I will become non-existent; non-existence says to me like an organ,
Truly, to Him is our return.

Paul McCartney - No More Lonely Nights (1984)

RE: Reading a Book and Sleeping in a Real Bed

Usually, I just go to sleep on my couch while watching TV. But lately, I've not been feeling energetic at all---is it ageing? not eating breakfast? being hungover (even when I hadn't had anything to drink the night before)?

So I tried a little experiment: A couple of nights ago, I turned off the TV in my living room and went to bed in my actual nice comfy bed in my bedroom (which has a TV in it, but which I didn't watch). I also did something that I used to do decades ago, pre-Internet: I read from an actual book (Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain in this case) before going to sleep.

I went to sleep thinking about what I'd just read (rather than what dummies I'd just seen on TV reality shows or Diversity/Equity/Inclusion commercials insinuating that 75% of the US population consists of black people who love sailing and marshmallow roasts). I slept the whole night through (instead of waking up every 2 to 3 hours). And I woke up feeling a bit refreshed for the first time in months!