"You Must Learn How to Smile as You Kill if You Want to be Like the Folks on the Hill"

Twitter Sonnet #83

Radishes hold a lot of good substance.
I'm exhausted from maintaining stasis.
Lobster suits might get you into the dance.
Perhaps every boat must have its Eustace.
Walnuts are more intricate than cashews.
The public demands vinegar on leaves.
Holy book pages vary by issues.
Red targets are attractive arrow thieves.
The bacteria empire sells guns.
Secret countries walking across tundra.
Ice sheaves blanket lobotomised new suns.
Fading ellipses precede Cassandra.
A lord's obnoxious in a peasant mask.
Frightened, lazy hearts have nothing to ask.

I think I'm feeling better than yesterday. I don't even know anymore. Part of me's starting to think the antibiotics are having no effect on whatever's wrong with me, that symptoms are coming and going on their own and the antibiotics are adding a garnish of soreness and fatigue.

Watching Double Indemnity last night, I thought about what a beautiful statement it is on human nature. In Roger Ebert's review of the new Werner Herzog Bad Lieutenant, the critic compares the directors of the two Bad Lieutenant movies by saying, "It's not what a movie is about but how it's about it. Ferrara regards his lieutenant without mercy. Herzog can be as forgiving as God." Similarly, Double Indemnity is a movie told from the point of view of a guy would be a villain in pre-film noir crime films. Here, he has all our sympathy. There' no-one we really hate in the film, yet we don't think for a moment that what Walter and Phyllis do is excusable. Phyllis is a cynical survivalist, and Walter is too weak to resist his own ingenuity.

It occurs to me this is one of the greatest things about art, that it lets us see ourselves in people we might reflexively regard as worthless when reduced to a headline or a bump in the night.

I'm going to try taking it as easy as possible to-day. I might go to Tim's, mainly because I'm tired of being stuck here by myself. I'll probably stop and get some hot apple cider (the soft, American kind, Brian). I need to find more hot drinks to fill the void left by coffee and tea this time of year. I'm tempted to try eggnog, except I remember it being pretty disgusting every other time I've tried it.