Tennessee Williams

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When I write, everything is visual, as brilliantly as if it were on a lit stage. And I talk out the lines as I write.

When I was in Rome, my landlady thought I was demented. She told Frank [Merlo], “Oh, Mr. Williams has lost his mind! He stalks about the room talking out loud!”

Frank said, “Oh, he’s just writing.” She didn’t understand that.

-- Tennessee Wiliams at The Paris Review

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Those Western Jihadists

"I'm fed up. My iPod doesn't work any more here. I have to come back."

-- French Jihadist

It turns out that a lot of the young privileged people of the West who left to fight with the Isalmists are becoming disillusioned with that life and want to come back home. I guess revolutions sound a lot sexier on TV news reports.

The Curved TV

At least I got in my nap before they resumed their road work. What a broken day this has been. Pop's curved TV came in, which is what started to throw everything off-track. Although the ground was pretty wet from last night's rain shower, I thought it might be a good move to let them out, so that they would be out of the way when the TV came. I was thinking the delivery guys might be here for a while to set things up. This might have been a great idea, except the city or the county or the phone company, whichever, chose this day to do some massive work on the street running right alongside us - all that noise and all the beeping and rumbling. All the cats made it back, but I was worried about them, which helped to make for an anxiety-ridden noon.

The TV is up, but we cannot watch anything because they were not able to connect the Dish receiver. Dish will take care of it tomorrow. The curve is not very dramatic. If you had not told me that it was a curved TV, I might not have figured it our for a few days. The main thing is that it looks like a smaller TV to me. It comes with a big stand, but the TV itself looks smaller than our old one, though the box does say that it is 65 inches. I have the feeling, now that Pop has the TV here, he actually might be having second thoughts, and for this he sold his soul and my soul to Jack. As I have said, I think his brain has gone a little more squishy in recent months, and I am not just trying to say something mean about him.

We got a break when the deliverers agreed to take the old TV to Jack's house. Otherwise, that huge monstrosity would have been sitting in the middle of the big room probably until next week sometime. This meant opening up the door in the big room, in order to get the TV out of the house, which had been shut in behind Pop's liquor supplies, and now that we have the door open, Pop appreciate the value of being able to open it, so that we will be keeping this option. Though, the opening of the way cost me a little injury. We could not slide the window open on the screen door, since it had been at least ten years since we last messed with it - it was stuck shut. In trying to force the issue, I bent my fingernail back hard. Although it looks like I didn't even break the nail, it was enough trauma to bring out a little blood inside the nail, and it still feels a little sensitive, like maybe not everything is wholly alright. It is not a big deal, but on top of everything else, it is an annoyance that I could have gone without. My day was just completely crapped on.

The Republican South

In some states, the Republican advantage among white voters is nearly nine to one in presidential elections, a level of loyalty that rivals that of African-Americans for Democrats. What has changed is that Southern white voters are now nearly as hostile to born-and-bred Southern Democrats, like Ms. Landrieu, as they were to John Kerry or Barack Obama.

-- Nate Cohn at The New York Times

Ms. Landrieu is expected to lose her Senate seat, as the forces of White Christian Nationalism grow stronger.