Metro Pulse! I Love You!

I have just been enjoying the crap out of Knoxville’s Metro Pulse lately. Check out this story about Karen Dalton, which manages to talk about Dalton in historical context, compare her with other artists, and give you a hint of what makes her special (and limits her legacy) as an artist without the normal “Oh, there’s this girl. She’s wacky/strange/beautiful and her singing is surprising/heartfelt/eccentric. Did I tell you all about her hair/eyes/bedroom yet?” crap.

Well, This Is Sad

Richard Floyd and David Fowler are confused about why their violent, vile bigoted rhetoric is being met with hostility. Fowler actually says, “The unfortunate thing in our culture is that we’re getting to the point where oftentimes we can’t say anything without it becoming uncivil and getting off the merits of the discussion.”

Fowler, everything you say is uncivil and little of it has any merit.

It’s high time everyone just treated you like this was so, rather than playing nice hoping that you’d treat them nicely in return.

Honestly, it’s Floyd and Fowler who make you realize just how revolutionary something like “Treat others as you’d like to be treated” is. These dumb jackasses are literally braying in alarm that they’re actually being treated how they treat everyone else.

Did they think that Jesus just issued that dictate for fun?

Hint: No.

It’s basically a law of human nature that people will treat you how they see you can be treated. And one of the ways they learn how you think you can be treated is to see how you treat others. Run around talking shit about everyone you think you’re better than and eventually the people who think they’re better than you are going to talk some shit about you.

 

Crouching Mama, Hidden Daddy

Those of you who were around yesterday may remember that I linked to the past, which is creepy. Well, our very own Beth found such a creepy picture of her own ancestors. The hidden parent is pretty well hidden at first. But once you spot the fingers, it doesn’t take long to make out the top of a head and a shoe.

What the fuck? Did they just sit around being all “Well, we don’t have tv. What can we do to entertain ourselves? Let’s creep the fuck out of the future!” and, seriously, why are we not sitting around thinking of ways to creep out the future?

One Last Bit about Twain and Napoleon

He’s full of shit, right? He must have known all along that Napoleon was gone–a town that took up that much mental space for him on a river that took up that much mental space for him.

But the thing I find incredible is that, while Life on the Mississippi is supposed to be an autobiography of sorts, he’s doing novel-type shit with the book.

I mean, all along the way he has repeatedly mentioned Napoleon, repeatedly mentioned how people easily reroute the river in ways that dick other people over, and repeatedly developed these themes of loss and change. So, no, he doesn’t have to spell out what happened to Napoleon (though it’s possible his initial readers would have been more familiar with it than I was), but he tells you, over and over, before he tells you that the town is gone.

It’s a remarkable bit of writing, carried out over the course of almost three hundred pages. I’m curious about what’s going to happen in the back half of the book.

I am just enjoying the shit out of it. Possibly more than I’ve enjoyed a book in a long time.