Of chainsaws

It’s Prime Day, Prime Day

Gotta get down on Prime Day

Karin bought herself a chainsaw. It arrived a few hours ago and I haven’t seen her since. I wonder what she’s doing with it, out in the yard (rumble, rumble).

I finished re-reading Out of the Silent Planet. I read from this handsome omnibus edition published by Scribner.

I have two complaints about this edition.

(1) The text isn’t always transcribed correctly:

• some paragraphs aren’t indented
• terminal possessive apostrophes are written with double quote marks, as in: suns” blood

This must have been due to a “find-and-replace” error.

Earlier U.S. editions of OSP follow British convention. They use single quote marks to indicate dialog. Scribner must have decided to replace these marks with double quote marks.

Nothing wrong with that. But it seems to have been done in one fell swoop, sans proofreading.

The error mars this three-book omnibus edition and various single-book editions of OSP issued by Scribner.

I don’t expect to find this problem in Scribner’s editions of Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. Earlier U.S. editions of those books, e.g. those of Macmillan and Collier, already enclose dialog within double rather than single quote marks.

(2) My second complaint is that the omnibus lacks the first thirty pages of Perelandra.

Maybe that’s just my copy. Probably not.

I noted, previously, that the baddie, Weston, is a longtermist. He thinks that humans’ most important task – which they should try to fulfill no matter how high the cost – is to colonize other planets before their own planet becomes uninhabitable and humankind dies out.

I wonder, did Elon Musk ever read Out of the Silent Planet? Should we force all of our governmental officials to read it?

July’s poem

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Yankee Doodle went to town

A-riding on a pony

Stuck a feather in his cap

And called it macaroni

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

Father and I went down to camp

Along with Captain Gooding

And there we saw the men and boys

As thick as hasty pudding

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

And there we saw a thousand men

As rich as Squire David

And what they wasted every day

I wish it could be savèd

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

The ’lasses they eat every day

Would keep a house a winter

They have so much, that I’ll be bound

They eat when they’ve a mind to

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

And there I see a swamping gun

Large as a log of maple

Upon a deucèd little cart

A load for Father’s cattle

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

And every time they shoot it off

It takes a horn of powder

And makes a noise like Father’s gun

Only a ’nation louder

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

I went as nigh to one myself

As Siah’s under-pinning

And Father went as nigh again

I thought the deuce was in him

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

Cousin Simon grew so bold

I thought he would have cock’d it

It scar’d me so I shrink’d it off

And hung by Father’s pocket

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

And Cap’n Davis had a gun

He kind of clapt ’s hand on’t

And stuck a crooked stabbing iron

Upon the little end on’t

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

And there I see a pumpkin shell

As big as mother’s basin

And every time they touch’d it off

They scampered like the ’nation

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

I see a little barrel too

The heads were made of leather

They knock’d on it with little clubs

And call’d the folks together

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

And there was Cap’n Washington

And gentle folks about him

They say he’s grown so ’tarnal proud

He will not ride without ’em

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

He got him on his meeting clothes

Upon a slapping stallion

He sat the world along in rows

In hundreds and in millions

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

The flaming ribbons in his hat

They look’d so tearing fine, ah

I wanted dreadfully to get

To give to my Jemima

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

I see another snarl of men

A-digging graves, they told me

So ’tarnal long, so ’tarnal deep

They ’tended they should hold me

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

It scar’d me so, I hook’d it off

Nor stopp’d, as I remember

Nor turn’d about till I got home

Lock’d up in mother’s chamber

Yankee Doodle keep it up

Yankee Doodle dandy

Mind the music and the step

And with the girls be handy

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Transcribed, more or less, from Wikipedia; resembles this version, more or less.

Independence weekend

It was our most traditional July 4 in who knows how many years. The people next door fed us hot dogs, ribs, and chicken. Then they launched fireworks. The whole neighborhood put on quite a show. Samuel and Daniel twirled sparklers. Samuel dropped his, stepped on it, and burned his foot. What an ordeal that was.

No one displayed much patriotism. The neighbors told me they expect violent upheaval, sooner or later. So, their mood was: It’s party time!

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today we saw my cousin Matthew and his family. They’re visiting from Montana.

Matthew works in academic support at a small university campus. He worries that his job’ll get DOGE-ed out of existence (or whatever the local equivalent of getting DOGE-ed is).

Not that things are better here: Indiana has passed legislation that’ll axe hundreds of public academic programs.

(See this Forbes report [free access to Forbes’s site is limited].

And see this list of items for the chopping-block.)

Anyway, perhaps Matthew, like me, has caught the apocalypticism bug, because he agreed to read Late Victorian Holocausts with me when the schedule permits. It’s nice when readers of this blog say they want to read things with me.

Here comes the tooth

For Abel:

Karin took Daniel to the county fair.

I was very worried. I thought he’d run away or climb out of the Ferris wheel. He didn’t.

I visited ancestors with Abel and Samuel. Samuel doesn’t like the fair.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m reading Pride and Prejudice.

I’m re-reading Lewis’s Space Trilogy (it’ll be my first time through Perelandra, actually). It’s better than I remember it. Then again, I was twelve or thirteen when I last read Out of the Silent Planet.

I’d forgotten that Weston, the baddie, is a longtermist.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A good bit from a good Substack:

LARPing as an Inkling is at least 15% of the point of the classical education movement. I say this with only love in my heart.

Samuel: “Dad, what’s LARPing?”

John-Paul: “You don’t need to know, Son.”

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 88: Insomnia

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

(John 3:19)

I should admit, I fell asleep a few times while watching Insomnia. Not that it’s ever boring; I was just tired. Stellan Skarsgård’s portrayal of an even wearier sinner is very entertaining. (The story was transplanted to Alaska five years later, in 2002, by Christopher Nolan, with Al Pacino in Skarsgård’s role; I prefer the Nordic version.)

Skarsgård is Engström, an accomplished Swedish homicide cop banished to Norway because of “improprieties” done with/to witnesses. He travels north of the Arctic Circle to investigate a young woman’s killing. He’s chronically sleepless, and the sun-pierced evenings don’t help; even so, he figures out how to lure the killer into a trap. But during the “sting” the killer wounds a policeman and escapes into a dense fog. Engström pursues and shoots, killing a colleague by mistake.

He tells the other police that the killer fired the shot. Now the killer knows that he’s a killer.

He’s forced to truce with the killer, deceive his colleagues, and pin the blame on someone else.

Forced? Why not just tell his colleagues what really happened? It was an accident, after all. But Engström can no longer think of himself as not guilty. He knows his own depravity. In the Arctic, he continues – compulsively – to engage in the kind of “impropriety” that landed him in exile. And he habitually lies to cover his tracks.

All of this takes its toll. There’s a remarkable scene in which Engström waits near a busy sidewalk. Folk stare accusatorily as they pass by. Engström withers under their view. They’re all judging him. The judgment probably is all in his head. You’d think he was the criminal, not the cop. When he meets the real criminal, he can’t help looking away, can’t help shrinking, as if he were the guilty party.

It’s like a Poe story. The doubling. The paranoia. The sinning rushed into, to relieve the misery of previous sinning.

Decent people surround Engström. Vik, his southern colleague – the man he accidentally kills – offers wry, bleak comfort, even a sort of affection, while alive; in death, he appears in Engström’s daydreams, alarming but not unfriendly. Less disturbing, almost angelic, is the friendliness of a pretty hotel clerk; Engström makes a hash of that relationship, too. The local police behave with sympathy and professionalism. One of them, tasked with looking into Vik’s shooting, treats Engström curteously even as she notes inconsistencies in his statement. Engström can’t look her in the eye.

This isn’t a subtle movie. That’s all right. Sometimes, a glaring metaphor – in this case, harsh, inescapable daylight – is what’s required.

One more metaphor: a highway tunnel, the only truly dark place in the movie. This image is more enigmatic. What does it mean when Engström sees the light at the end of this tunnel? Significance aside, is he fit to drive?