Short Shots

Working for a “Living”

            Being an employee is a heavy burden.  You never realize quite how heavy the burden is until you put it behind you. 

Strength Conditioning

            You’re only as strong as the last thing you say no to.

Cause of Death

            All “cause of death” information seems vaguely interesting in a statistical sense.  That is, by compiling all the data, we learn something about the things that snuff out lives on this planet—and that’s good to know.  The phrase takes on a vastly different color, however, when we hear from a doctor what is likely to be our own “cause of death.”

“Success”

         On occasion, everyone becomes vulnerable to the temptations of management and / or politics; however, only the true egomaniac succumbs.

 The Meaning of Life 

         A man’s biological imperative is to produce sperm.  It’s what he does, 24/7, all his life. 

  A woman’s biological imperative is to coax it out of him.

Virtue

  The only middle-class virtue more highly over-rated than good table manners is punctuality.

 The Single Most Over-rated Novel in American Literary History

   It’s The Great Gatsby, the celebrated 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  It’s the story of Jay Gatsby’s compulsion to reconstruct an adolescent crush that didn’t work out for him.  This is not praiseworthy behavior.  It’s delusional--and typical of the almost-always empty-headed Fitzgerald.  

Put It Another Way

 "Fitzgerald has been given a gift for expression without

very many ideas to express."  

Edmund Wilson, The Shores of Light, 1952

The chief irony in Fitzgerald studies is that his trashy magazine stories may turn out to be his most lasting contribution to American literature because those are the ones with the most obvious local color and the ones that have the most detailed pictures of Jazz Age life and manners among one class of people.  His so-called mature work in Gatsby is so immature as to be embarrassing.  It's one thing to praise Fitzgerald for his very real talent at painting a scene and describing characters, but don't make this shallowest of adolescent writers into a thinker for God's sake.  Hold on to your common sense and good judgment.

May 2011

It's pathetic these days to see so many big-bellied, middle-aged men wearing faded Bruce Springsteen tee shirts. 

More on Rock and Roll

Rock music is a tonic for the adolescent soul and an embarrassment to the adult. 

Corollary:  The only rock music an adult can bear is the music of his own adolescence—and what he is after is the past, not music appreciation.

Happiness

Happiness should be the byproduct of a well-spent life, not the goal.