Saturday Morning

Well, with all these sweets, you knew what kind of breakfast it was going to be.

I was going to watch "Banshee" this morning, but since it's Saturday and the news-harvesting is likely to be very light today, I am saving it for lunch, the bigger meal.

I have come to favor doing my news rounds over my meals, instead of watching a movie. Doing my news-harvesting has to come to feel like more of a chore, as I no longer care very much for what is happening in the world but still feel the need to keep up. Eating my meals and checking for news items in between bites makes the task less tiresome, and I take care of two things at once. As for the movies and programs, it is rare when there is something that I really want to watch these days. "Banshee" and "True Detective" are the only sure things, my only addictions.

Ukraine

Wow, is it possible that Putin really wasn’t calling the shots at Kiev, after all? I wake up and learn that the pro-democracy protesters have chased President Yanukovych and the government from the capital and are now in control of the city.

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In Independence Square, the focal point of the protest movement, however, the mood was one of deep anger and determination, not triumph. “Get out criminal! Death to the criminal!” the crowd chanted, reaffirming what, after a week of bloody violence, has become a nonnegotiable demand for many protesters: the immediate departure of Mr. Yanukovych.

-- New York Times

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I still cannot help wondering if Putin is just playing possum for now, until the Sochi games are over, and then it will become like Czechoslovakia in 1968, with Russian tanks streaming in to teach the opposition movement what power is all about. But maybe it is a new world and it doesn’t work like that anymore? I have no idea. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Pop

Pop is regularly using his cane now. He stopped using it for a while, but the pain in his leg is too much, and it doesn't look like it's going away. In old age, I guess, things like that stop going away and stay a part of your life.

Celebrities and Stuff

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Nap

Whoa, opening the window blinds after my nap, I see the car is gone. Pop left. I must have been in deep sleep. One of those pleasant little surprises that put a smile on your day.

Reading Life

The Iliad is more intensive work for my book-blogging. It requires both active reading and blogging the text. I cannot read it when I am blogging a passage. This means I needed something to read. This actually puzzled me for a few minutes. Then the obvious dropped on me like, well, if not a ton of bricks, like a good pound of brick. I’ll just read my “Love Dogs” novel. It really sweetens the day and makes the Iliad-work more fun. My kind of problem and my kind of solution. I may even work on the Iliad longer, if only to enjoy more quality time with my novel.

Iliad (1) The Sacrifice

Odysseus leads a group of Achaeans to return Chryseis to her priestly father and appease the great archer god Apollo. This excerpt is from the sacrifice to Apollo. When I first read this scene, I was wonderfully surprised to see that a sacrifice was essentially just a great barbecue, scattering my preconceptions that it was something more bestial and satanic.

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His prayer went up and Phoebus Apollo heard him.
And soon as the men prayed and flung the barley,
first they lifted back the heads of the victims,
slit their throats, skinned them and carved away
the meat from the thighbones and wrapped them in fat,
a double fold sliced clean and topped with strips of flesh.
And the old man burned these over dried split wood
and over the quarters poured over glistening wine
while young men at his side held five-tined forks.
Once they had burned the bones and tasted the organs
they cut the rest into pieces, pierced them with spits,
roasted them to a turn and pulled them off the fire.
The work done, the feast laid out, they ate well
and no man’s hunger lacked a share of the banquet.
When they had put aside desire for food and drink,
the young men brimmed the mixing bowls with wine
and tipping first drops for the god in every cup
they poured full rounds for all. And all day long
they appeased the god with song, raising a ringing hymn
to the distant archer god who drives away the plague,
those young Achaean warriors singing out his power,
and Apollo listened, his great heart warm with joy.

-- The Iliad of Homer (Tr. Fagles, et al)

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Weather

Stepping outside to see if Pop needs any help unloading the car, I am surprised that it feels like rain, and the clouds are heavily overcast. However, there is nothing in the forecast, and I will follow that and let the cats run free. But I am braced for a rude surprise.

"The Roughies"

I finished the last of the so-called “Roughies”. One movie on the last disk had some heart, titled “Come Deadly”. Although it had a rapist that must have attacked close to a half-dozen chickies, they had to be the lamest rape scenes on video. So, I paid fifty bucks just to settle my curiosity about some very old movies.

I really should stick to literature. But that itch. There is that damn itch. I can never quite scratch it. Yet, one must try. It keeps itching and itching, always burning. It can seem a little like the quest for God. It can feel like there must be something real there, but there is never anything there. You are like a dog whipping around in circles furiously, trying to catch your own tail. There is only you with your raw appetite, always hungry, and often desperate.