Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton

Neil Gaiman remembers three of the Mythopoeic guys.

You see, while I loved Tolkien and while I wished to have written his book, I had no desire at all to write like him. Tolkien’s words and sentences seemed like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm. Chesterton was the complete opposite. I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.

"Cure"

About 40 years ago, a light went on over my head. Some shrink was talking about "curing homosexuals," and I finally thought to ask the next question: of what?

I have just been reminded of those quaint old precivilized days, by an article on how snorting oxytocin* can make people more outgoing. It concluded, "More research will clearly be needed before people would be prescribed oxytocin for introversion." Cure me of what?

*Thanx to The Agitator, Radley Balko, who offered the helpful reminder "That’s tocin, not contin"

Display

Gina Barreca on displaying diplomas. The only one I have visible is the Doctor of Divinity degree I purchased for $25 from the Universal Life Church.

Thanx to Chronicle

State of the Union

womzilla suggested that I add Charles P. Pierce to my blog list. Excellent idea. Here's a post about what a good thing it was that the DFHs in the park infiltrated the State of the Union speech. And I love his imagery:

I have no illusions about what last night's speech was. It was a campaign speech, full of plans and promises that don't have a sick wife's chance with Newt Gingrich of ever being passed into law.