GRABBINGSAND

You have to be always drunk.
That’s all there is to it–it’s the only way.

So as not to feel the horrible burden of time
that breaks your back and bends you to the earth,
you have to be continually drunk.

But on what?
Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish.
But be drunk…

– be drunk, charles baudelaire (1821-1867)

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day. (…)

‘O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’

– as i walked out one evening, w. h. auden (1907-1973)

three-hundred and sixty-five days. another year older, a new one about to begin. so let’s take a look at 2002’s resolutions and see just how i did:

1. i will eat no more fast food.
done. i didn’t darken the door or visit the drive-thru of any krystal, burger king, steak & shake or hardees. within two months of making that resolution, i lost around fifteen pounds! however, i did have to go to mcdonalds in oxford while visiting the nephews. when dealing with seven-year-olds, the happy meal factor is non-negotiable. it’s even non-negotiable when dealing with adults, as two of my travelling companions dragged me to the mickey d’s in piccadilly square later in that same trip. some people will do anything for monsters, inc toys…

2. i will get to work on time.
kept for the most part, but since i switched jobs twice in the past year, i am not sure how important this actually was. just a warning kids: the IT field is an ugly and unpredictable thing.

3. i will start to save enough money to make the shift from renter to owner.
this is a work in progress, though i am in much better financial shape now than i was only a year ago. monthly expenses are not too painful and i am actually saving more than i am spending.

4. i will develop a program of exercise and stick to it.
never developed and never stuck. i just seem to be too busy with work or theatre or otherwise, so it just doesn’t seem to make sense to waste time running in place…

so how did you do? i will post some new resolutions for the new year next year (tomorrow).

i’ve uploaded some photos from last week’s visit to hilton head island. now, you might think that the winter is a strange time to head to the beach… and you’d be right. but the holiday was grand, the weather was cooperative, the nephews were fascinating and some of the images are rather stunning.

especially the sunsets. you have to love a good fiery sunset.

you would have to be living under a rock to miss today’s top headline. and we’ve got all kinds of pundits from the far left to the wayout right, some of them are hailing the arrival of our new clone-savvy overlords and many more are decrying it as the end of human dignity as we know it. others are seeing even further implications on a biblical scale. i heard most of these fine opinions on morning talk-radio, the buzz and chatter keeping me awake on the long drive home from north carolina. the clones have no souls, some say.

they gots no souls and you know what you got when you got a bunch o’ clones who ain’t gots no souls? you gots a band of soul-less heathens, roaming the streets and ravaging with no fear of the afterlife, that’s whats you gots!

thank you, but i think george romero has nothing to fear. if this baby is a clone, so be it. it’s a clone. they’ve created a being using genetic material from one human and one human alone. good for it. i hope they were lucky and got it right the first time (which is highly unlikely under the best conditions) and the poor child doesn’t suffer from the chronic arthritis and multiple other troubles that plagued her predecessor, dolly the sheep. but i have my serious doubts. clonaid’s own website does little to sway me from my skepticism. i mean, the company is run by a guy named ral. nevermind that he’s french or that he is the leader of a sex-cult or that he thinks he is jesus christ’s literal brother or even that one of clonaid’s earlier candidates was a descendant of a famous transylvania count, but that name… jeez. that’s just a bit too close to jor-el for my taste, so he loses points off the bat for lack of creativity. and what’s with the top-knot haircut? he looks like a certain asian superfriend.

so if you ask me, the only clones we need to fear are the ones being produced over at the skywalker ranch… now them clones are scary.

and to all, a good morning.

you don’t talk about ring club.

The mountain we’re standing on won’t be here in ten minutes. You take a 98 percent concentration of a fuming portion of a dark lord’s power and add it to molten gold. Then, pour the gold into a mold in the shape of a ring. Take it out of the mold and remove the sprues in a closed environment, and you have a ring of power.

I know this because Frodo knows this.

sound familiar? this and many other brilliant (and some not-so-brilliant) acts of extemporaneous parody are happening over at the straight dope message board. the inspiration: what if someone else had written lord of the rings?

as for me, i’m just too dang tired to be all that creative right now.

and i don’t like star wars.

those are freddie mercury’s words, lifted from bicycle race by queen. i always used to wonder about that line, or half of it anyway. i mean, how could anybody not like star wars? it was simply the greatest film of my kidhood, hands down. nothing even came close to it. so freddie must’ve had bad taste in movies. that must’ve been it, right?

but now… now i’m starting to agree. maybe there was something like foresight in those lyrics, because while i still admire the film i first saw in 1977, the franchise itself is beginning to really bother me. and i am pretty sure i am not alone in this. star wars was great, even before it had “a new hope” tacked onto the title and way before it sprouted “episode four” from it’s name. then we had the empire strikes back, which further indoctrinated my generation into the ways of the jedi. and when return of the jedi came along, we enjoyed it as much as we could, even though the collaboration with henson seemed a bit strange and strained, necessitating all of those woodland teddybears who didn’t speak a lick of english. but hey, boba fett was back and so was han, luke confronted the emperor, vader redeemed himself and leia wore that gold slave costume that became the foundation for so many male adolescent fantasies since.

we should have seen it coming. return of the jedi, that should have been the big clue of what was to come. the feel was different and something we loved from the first two movies was missing or diminished. but what was it? it just seemed like lucas had lost the hunger that comes from an imagination struggling to find fruition, from a mass of new ideas that need something akin to a wrangler or lion-tamer to give them coherence. because star wars was new, incorporating a fascination with science fiction with elements of fantasy (the jedi as a knight in a fallen order), more than a little philosophy (the force as an archetypal power of the collective cosmos), and all the buckle and swash of a classic errol flynn movie.

but where is that now? you can’t even watch the movie i saw in 1977 anymore, unless you just happen an older VHS tape lying around. the “special editions” did do some fine work with the sound, even brightening and crisping the image to the put that it feels new, but it’s just not the same. i could give you a list of differences, but let’s suffice with some for-instances. in my remembered star wars, there was no cameo from jabba the hutt in the original, and his restoration from a justifiably cut scene is heinous. he looks silly, nothing like the disgusting and malevalent creature we encounter in return of the jedi. and while we’re on tatooine, didn’t han solo shoot first in the bar?

episode one. i was excited, sure. i downloaded every trailer i could find and was there at midnight for the first showing. and yes, there were definite moments where glory peaked through, but in the end, it was empty. i didn’t feel anything beyond the movie theatre experience itself. and episode two? i gave it another try. again, i was there for the midnight showing. and while i did find myself caught up and cheering for a brief moment of uber-jedi dueling, the second is even more lacking in actual substance than the first. it is sad, but my hopes for episode three have transformed into a jaded concern over whether lucas can even create a suitable puzzle-piece to connect these prequels to the originals. and if it doesn’t fit, i don’t even think his artistic integrity is intact enough for him to prevent further tampering with the original to make it fit the new.

there is a possibly-untrue story that francis ford coppola told george lucas in the late 70s that he could use the popularity of star wars to found a new religion. but if episode one and two is the new gospel, my faith is certainly waivering. and i think i can honestly say one thing at this point: when the episode iii church service is called, and all of the faithful should be there at midnight…

i won’t be there.

you might know that john ronald reuel tolkien, esteemed author of lord of the rings, was a professor of english lit and language at oxford. his gift for linguistics had landed him an earlier job with the oxford english dictionary, and he all but admitted that he wrote the tales of middle-earth primarily as a means of giving history and depth to languages he invented himself, much the way that someone else might pen a poem or scratch a sketch onto a pad. only tolkien wasn’t just doodling here, because went so far as to develop full etymologies and conjugations and rules and regulations for his various versions of elvish (there are at least five or six), dwarvish and so on. it was his gift, his hobby, his amusement, his passion. you might also know that he was good friends with another british author of fantastical works, c. s. lewis. knowing lewis’s more obviously religious books, it is not at all surprising to know that tolkien was a christian. a catholic, actually. but when you put all of that together, would you have imagined that tolkien wrote a translation of the lord’s prayer in a constructed elven tongue he called quenya? well, he did.

taremma i a han a na aire esselya aranielya na tuluva na care indmelya cemende tambe Erumande : men anta sra ilaura massamma ar men apsene caremmar sv’ emme apsenet tien i carer emmen. lame tulya sahtienna mal me etelehta ulcullo : nsie :

nsie, indeed. that’s elvish for amen, you see.

for a full translation and analysis, you can dive headlong into this essay. and hey, with all of the excitement around the movies, you might even be inclined to try your tongue at learning elvish. that’s right, being a relatively complete and documented (though constructed) language, you can learn it for your own use (which, admittedly, would be rather limited). there’s even an online course for those interested in a little more quenya conversation. and hey, it’s at least a cooler waste of time than klingon…

i’ll be awake through the hour and on into a few more. somebody has to cover the late night shift, even on an eve like this one, so perhaps the quiet of this empty-ish office will lead to an inspiration or two. in the meantime, consider the year-old words from a midnight mass led by the archbishop of westminster.

“There is a nice custom in churches in Eastern Europe whereby at the end of the Christmas Mass there is a ceremony called The Peace of God. People kiss one another on both cheeks saying, Christ is born. And the response is, Truly He is born, and the kisses are returned. Everyone in the community has kissed and been kissed. To me that symbolises how the love of God can change our hatreds to love and our weapons to kisses. Although you can kill people in crowds, you can only kiss them one by one…

Let us open our hearts tonight to receive afresh this infinite love and forgiveness. Let us rejoice tonight and be glad because there is hope in our strange, wonderful, stricken world.”

our strange, wonderful, stricken world, ever and always needing tidings of comfort and joy.