Murder in the First Degree

Look, you can’t do things like that! Now, I don't know how I can explain this to you. But, it's not only against the law, its wrong! It's not a nice thing to do. People wouldn't understand. He wouldn't understand. What I mean is...Well...This is developing into a very bad habit!

-Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace

Rebelling Against Your Parents

[Gabriel Syme's] respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tender years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism.

Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left—sanity.

-G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, 22.

King Lear and the Apostle Paul

It is in First Corinthians that Paul also writes “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,” and the echoes of those words in King Lear are so striking that it is hard to believe that they were not consciously in Shakespeare’s mind as he wrote it. Not only are the foolish wise in his play and the wise foolish, just as the weak are strong in it and the strong weak, but what seems to be nothing—a word that Lear and Cordelia, Edmund and Gloucester, and the Fool all play upon at some length—turns out to be something of surpassing importance, as it does when in answer to Lear’s “What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?” Cordelia’s “nothing” contains the whole richness and truth of her love contrasted with her sisters’ deceit. It is almost possible to think of Shakespeare as having written the entire play as a gloss on St. Paul, adding to it such other paradoxes of his own, as that it is the sane who are mad and the mad sane, just as it also the blind who see and the seeing who are blind.

-Frederick Buechner, Speak What We Feel, 137-138.

King Lear as Fairytale

The opening scene of [King Lear] has a fairytale quality about it, with the two wicked sisters and the one good one, as in Cinderella, and the richest treasure going to the one who gives the best speech as to the one who makes the right wish or opens the right casket, but it isn't long before Shakespeare turns all this on its head and the hope that they will all live happily ever after gets lost in nightmare. And yet, and yet, he seems to say, maybe life is like a fairy tale notwithstanding, if only in the sense that all disguises are stripped away in the end and all evil spells undone, so that even the Beast becomes beautiful when he discovers that Beauty loves him, and even the old king, with Beauty dead in his arms, finally becomes a human being, and the last word, like Albany's, is a word of mercy.

-Frederick Buechner, Speak What We Feel, 153-154.

Tragedy Tomorrow, Comedy Tonight

Something familiar,
Something peculiar,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Something appealing,
Something appalling,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns;
Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns!

Old situations,
New complications,
Nothing portentous or polite;
Tragedy tomorrow,
Comedy tonight!

Something convulsive,
Something repulsive,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Something aesthetic,
Something frenetic,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Nothing with gods, nothing with fate;
Weighty affairs will just have to wait!

Nothing that's formal,
Nothing that's normal,
No recitations to recite;
Open up the curtain:
Comedy Tonight!

Something erratic,
Something dramatic,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Frenzy and frolic,
Strictly symbolic,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Something familiar,
Something peculiar,
Something for everybody:
Comedy tonight!

Something that's gaudy,
Something that's bawdy--
Something for everybawdy!
Comedy tonight!

Nothing that's grim.
Nothing that's Greek.
She plays Medea later this week.

Stunning surprises!
Cunning disguises!
Hundreds of actors out of sight!
Pantaloons and tunics!
Courtesans and eunuchs!
Funerals and chases!
Baritones and basses!
Panderers!
Philanderers!
Cupidity!
Timidity!
Mistakes!
Fakes!
Rhymes!
Crimes!
Tumblers!
Grumblers!
Bumblers!
Fumblers!

No royal curse, no Trojan horse,
And a happy ending, of course!
Goodness and badness,
Man in his madness--
This time it all turns out all right!
Tragedy tomorrow,
Comedy tonight!

-Stephen Sondheim, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Pretty Good Jokes

Did you hear about the midget fortuneteller that escaped from prison? The newspaper headline read: "Small Medium at Large!"

Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

-Courtesy of Jonah Goldberg posting at The Corner

Me and Jiggs

Me and Jiggs staring at the ceiling
The stars above the radar range
Song from a station wagon laying foundations
On the shadows of overpassing planes
I'm feeling good, at seven o'clock
We're gonna drive across the county line
And find Saturday night like an orphan child
That the good days left behind

And I'm not sure we can make it stay
Sun's going down and it's another day

Me and my friends sitting in the park
Drinking beer underneath the trees
Lying on your back as the sun goes down,
You know it's perfect cause you've gotta leave
On a Saturday night in a town like this
I forget all my songs about trains
A bar with a jukebox and you on my arm
Heaven and earth are pretty much the same

And I'm not sure we can make it stay
Sun's going down and its the end of the day

Later on sitting on the porch
Talking like the night could last all night
Like we are all half crazy
And all at least half alright
Sitting on the porch singing Townes Van Zandt
Play guitar to burn off the hours
Till we climb the fences at the edge of town
And paint our names on the water towers

And I'm not sure we can make them stay
Sun's going down at the end of the day

-Josh Ritter

A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin by which I've won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by thy self, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore!
And, having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more.

-John Donne

Morning

Bathroom Humor

I reached my peak as a bathroom humorist in The 2000-Pound Goldfish. The goldfish has been flushed down the toilet, into the sewer, where it comes to weigh two thousand pounds and has slurped five or six people to death. The soldiers are marching into the sewer to kill Bubbles, and Warren gets the idea that if everyone in the city flushed their toilets at, say, ten o'clock, the floodgates would open and Bubbles would be swept out to sea “where she could live the rest of her life in peace and harmony.” This is the section I read aloud to kids, and at this point, some intellectual type raises his hand and says, “Mrs. Byers, goldfish can't live in salt water.” I say, “Listen, I'm the boss of this book, and if I want Bubbles to live in salt water, Bubbles will live in salt water.”

There follows a seven-page countdown in which the announcer is entreating listeners to flush their toilets. “It's five minutes to ten. If you have more than one bathroom, get a neighbor to come flush with you.” “It’s four minutes to ten, open your windows, yell ‘Flush!’ to the people in the streets below.” It takes two pages to get everyone in their bathrooms, and the final countdown is “Five-four-three-two-one-FLUSH!” and if I read this correctly, I never have to actually say the word flush, because the entire school will make the sound of a toilet flushing. It may not sound thrilling to you to hear two hundred kids flushing like toilets, but it has never failed to move me.

-Betsy Byars, "Taking Humor Seriously," The Zena Sutherland Lectures, 216-217.

Childish Things

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-C. S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," 34.

Awakening

Here we are now with the falling sky and the rain,
We're awakening
Here we are now with the desperate youth in pain,
We're awakening
Maybe it's called ambition, but you've been talking in your sleep
About a dream
We're awakening

-Switchfoot

Weekend Highs

1. Stargazing with Emily, Oliver, Sami, and Weez - shooting stars and moth attacks
2. FINISHING the Fairmont slideshow (always an epic struggle)
3. Final Fairmont debrief, report back, and picnic
4. Gaping at fabulous clouds and later, another beautiful starry sky - and almost driving off the road as a result
5. Arts Fellowship
6. Driving with Sam
7. New music - Jon Foreman, Ingrid Michaelson

Fairmont Highs

1. French braids
2. Bunkbed debriefs with Leta
3. Prayer chair with Sami
4. Sharing blue licorice and matzo
5. Dear Yous
6. Purple car!
7. Weez's smelly note
8. The Falcon, Blue Denver, Whimsy, Pilgrim Tribute Cruiser, and Blitzen
9. Driving Harrison, Joe, Caleb, and Tim
10. "Waiting for the A Train" with Oliver
11. Albuquerque
12. Snow
13. Seeing Carol and Pat off
14. Polly
15. Sunset on the way home from Dairy Cream Corner
16. Pizza Hut doxology
17. Avon and Edward
18. Are you getting enough water?
19. John Lyoch
20. Chelsea's shirt
21. Car Talk
22. No Dippin Dots!
23. Spaghetti lunch
24. Uncles and nephews
25. Pink Tux to the Prom
26. Oh deer!

Discovering England

I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas...There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again?...What could be more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?

-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 9-10.

A Magic Castle

“The tables and chairs,” said Avon, “are just the way I like them. Even the pictures on the wall are to my fancy. Oh, Edward, someone has gone to a great deal of trouble...”

Suddenly, Avon felt very happy. “Just think,” he said, “to go on a long trip, to comes so far from where you live, and then—then to come upon a magic castle which has all the comforts of home. Oh, Edward, this has been the most exciting adventure of all. I believe I am happy at last.”

-Avi, The End of the Beginning, 128, 131.

Lost Causes

You don't throw away a whole life just 'cause it's banged up a little.

-Seabiscuit (quoted by Charles Garland, preaching in Fairmont, WV on 7/25/2008)

Visiting Paris

The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guide book. You've got to throw yourself in, eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers—or is that just me? Stop asking questions. Go and do it!

-Doctor Who (quoted by Charles Garland, preaching in Fairmont, WV on 7/24/2008)

Edification/Demolition

Every time you meet another human being you have the opportunity. It’s a chance at holiness. For you will do one of two things, then. Either you will build him up, or you will tear him down. Either you will acknowledge that he is, or you will make him sorry that he is—sorry, at least, that he is there, in front of you. You will create, or you will destroy. And the things you dignify or deny are God’s own property. They are made, each one of them, in his own image.

There are no useless, minor meetings. There are no dead-end jobs. There are no pointless lives. Swallow your sorrows, forget your grievances, and all the hurt your poor life has sustained. Turn your face truly to the human before you and let her, for one pure moment, shine. Think her important, and then she will suspect that she is fashioned of God.

How do you say Hello? Or do you say Hello?

How do you greet the strangers? Or do you greet them?

Are you so proud as to burden your customer, your client, your neighbor, your child with your tribulation? Even by attitude? Even by crabbiness, anger, or gloom?

Demolition!

Or do you look them in the eye and grant them peace?

-Walter Wangerin, Ragman, and Other Cries of Faith, 129-130.

Stories are Light

Do you remember when Despereaux was in the dungeon, cupped in Gregory the jailer’s hand, whispering a story in the old man’s ear?

I would like it very much if you thought of me as a mouse telling you a story, this story, with the whole of my heart, whispering it in your ear in order to save myself from the darkness, and to save you from the darkness, too.

“Stories are light,” Gregory the jailer told Despereaux.

Reader, I hope you have found some light here.

-Katie DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux, Coda.