Friday Morning

The wintry weather seems to be clearing up, and we are given this morning a taste of spring. On my walk, I am surprised to see a cat lying in the grass nearby. The grass is tall, almost a foot. Nice camouflage. Unfortunately, it is also probably a great way for fleas and ticks to find a warm, fat host.

Lunch

Pop left with one of his Valentine’s packages. So, I get something too on this holiday: a clean shot at the kitchen to make my barbecue chicken. Good! I am starving, and I really wanted something more than a TV dinner.

I wish I could bake up some biscuits, instead of just having plain bread with the meal. The chicken takes up much of the oven. There is enough space to do all that I want, but it would take some experimentation to be sure that I can get everything right and nicely cooked, and all done in a timely fashion. I don’t want to take chances on messing up my big lunch.

The 266th Vicar of Jesus Christ [10]

Our final excerpt from Binelli's essay on Pope Francis. As with the beginning, the scene is at a public square for a general public audience. It is a good closing, with that note of mystery and promise in the man.

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Jack

I overhear Pop on the phone talking to Kay, asking her to come early, because Pop has to give up his car to Jack and Jill. It is unusual. It has been a long time since they have taken the car. I cannot help wondering if Jack just has some special plans for Valelntine's Friday night.

A Perfect Day

I let Coco out. I imagine she must be wondering why she stayed in the house this afternoon, and the choice was all hers, after all. Weather doesn’t come more perfect than this. A breeze just barely rings the chimes. It is 83 degrees, which can be a bit warm, but these are the cool breezes of early spring. It is heavenly.

French Burnt Peanuts

Pop comes into the big room. He says, “Look what Kay found. At H.E.B.!” He hands me a bag of good-sized packages containing French Burnt Peanuts, which have come back on my menu. Pop has only been able to find the vending-machine type of packages, which also strike me as in inferior candy. These look very good. I feel a little nervous, because it feels like this is purposely done as a kindness to me, but I have no real kindness to give back. She even shouts from the kitchen, “Hi, Monk!” I shout back “Hi!” in what I mean to be a warm and friendly tone, but I am not coming out of my shell.

Reading Life

“Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life. And so on and on. You have only to teach literature to realize that most young readers are poor noticers. I know from my own old books, wantonly annotated twenty years ago when I was a student, that I routinely underlined for approval details and images and metaphors that strike me now as commonplace, while serenely missing things that now seem wonderful. We grow, as readers, and twenty-year-olds are relative virgins. They have not read enough literature to be taught by it how to read it.”

-- James Wood, “How Fiction Works”

The Roughies

I finally got to see “Young and Abused” in my life, the movie that had been a long time rolling around among my memories and wishes ever since I saw the ad on our first porn videos at Yokota, when I was what? Fourteen years old? I gave up on it a long time ago, during the Bay Horse years, when even the massive Excalibur Videos could not recall it. I figured it was a lost movie, an obscure print long forgotten.

And what can I say about it? It was not very hot. Still, I actually feel glad for being able to satisfy my curiosity on that score. And the next movie I saw was pretty hot, “Savage Lust”, about a couple of guys who sneak up on a couple of beach babes and force from them a little fun in the sun. It was more intense, the talk dirtier, the girls’ protests more realistic-seeming. And fully uncensored, by the way. It trips me out that this is available on Amazon.

I do not think of this as a busted purchase, even though fifty dollars is a lot of money, at least for someone running on pocket change. It is a month’s worth of moolah for me. Moreover, it remains true that I can get better rape scenes online for free, even if just about all of them are in Japanese or Russian.

Nevertheless, these are great DVDs to grace the collection of any porn lover. These are among the first roughies to make it to a general audience, from the 1970s, the golden age of porn, or as they phrase it on the box art, the "sick 1970s". I am actually interested in buying another set or two of these oldies, but I would have to build up another healthy stash of cash. I do not want to fall behind on book money.