What?...

my brain nicely twinging

Over the years, I have made certain things my own -- a private relishing and treasuring. Then my brain would palpitate pleasurably to later discover that certain remarkable writers had made those same things their own, in a deep way. Even though I'm not a remarkable writer, I feel remarkably connected. In a kind of redemptive way that is hard to explain.

So I was pleased yesterday to come across this quote by Thomas Bernhard about Demons, which has for a long time been my favorite of Dostoevsky's novels:

Never in my whole life have I read a more engrossing and elemental work, and at the time I had never read such a long one. It had the effect of a powerful drug, and for a time I was totally absorbed by it. For some time after my return home I refused to read another book, fearing that I might be plunged headlong into the deepest disappointment. For weeks I refused to read anything at all. The monstrous quality of The Demons had made me strong; it had shown me a path that I could follow and told me that I was on the right one, the one that led out. I had felt the impact of a work that was both wild and great, and I emerged from the experience like a hero. Seldom has literature produced such an overwhelming effect on me.

a cynical rant

About all those law office commercials on TV. Ostensibly to represent you and Help You Out, if you have mesothelioma or are growing alien tentacles or whatever horrible thing some industry has infected you with.

I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm just ranting based on an intuition.

I suspect that those law offices have no intention of targeting a corporate-industrial villain. Those law offices are there strictly to target you. To Rip You Off.

Whatever the large or fine print on any contract might seem to suggest. Whatever kind of smooth talk you are met with. That fine print will be an artful, semantically flexible text. That smooth talk will have been honed via psychological black-ops criteria.

Those law offices, I suspect, will not pursue any legal recourse on your behalf. You will be met with months of obfuscation. And disconcerting smiles with hyper-gleaming teeth.You will end up paying for services and stuff (subsidiary filings, tangential research) that you are, on the front end, led to believe you would not have to pay for.

The whole thing is a construct to Rip You Off.

Nothing is for your benefit. It's all set up to hoodwink you. To drain you. Nothing is what it seems. Things are afoot to suck out your juices and leave you a quivering husk.


The whole mesothelioma deal just smells. I smell it straight through the TV screen.

there is something deeply amiss...

...in my relation to reality. Since I was a kid. So I'm drawn toward this kind of thing:

there is something about this...

...that grabs me and makes existence go sideways into a wonderful literary dimension:

Thomas Bernhard excerpt 


A website.

Thomas Bernhard

Gilels & The Waldstein (part 3)

the "strangest" thing

Owing to this and that, I fell into a certain mood. Needed a far-flung distraction.

So I got out some of my old Dr. Strange comic books. I've always enjoyed those things. I was reading the letter column in an issue from 1995. It was written by a fellow in Israel. It was a nice letter, earnest and locked into the Strange universe.

So I punched his name into Google. Discovered that he is now a corporate lawyer near Tel Aviv, an associate since 2006 of an apparently big-time office handling international transactions and securities and stuff.

Dang...

How cool to think about this comic book reader -- Dr. Strange, no less! -- who is now involved with such a serious, complex, and responsible profession. I wonder if he has put the world of the Sorcerer Supreme behind him, or if he sometimes at night sneaks out his old comics to reread them. I wonder if he steps again with Stephen Strange across interdimensional portals and voids, to appear on the far side. Where the Mindless Ones are continuously shooting yellow death-beams out their blocky heads.