I am knee-deep in the editing of the
Tennessee Williams High School chronicles. Or more to the point, in the
rediscovery of the TWHS chronicles. I simply recall none of this, and will
testify thus in a court of law, if required to do so.
Meanwhile, at least the editing of
the Epistles is done. I thought I’d offer a taste. Each episode of Nostrum was
announced by Jules O’Shaughnessy to the ld-l listserv, and there were a couple
of standard lines. One was that we almost didn’t make it this week, and the
other was that the Nostrumite, Jules’s writing partner, was in a state of
permanent depression over…something.
***
We almost didn’t make it this week,
primarily because right before I logged on to post the new episode I was
setting up the VCR to record this week’s Voyager
(the Nostrumite has a serious thing for the character referred to in one of the
ads as “Part Borg, Part Human, All Woman”), when lo and behold, Jeopardy came
on, and one of the categories was Hittite Hodgepodge. Whoa! This was obviously
not celebrity week. So that killed an unexpected half hour. Of course, even the
fact that he knew that Ramses II was Egyptian (I mean, let’s face it, my cat
knows that), the Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over his new
job at the meat-packing plant. The good news is that at least he’s management.
The bad news is that apparently animals are herded in one door of the plant in
a literal menagerie—cows, pigs, sheep, armadillos, peccaries, you name it—and
come out the other end as hot dogs. The Mite’s job is to make sure that the
weight of the menagerie going in equals the weight of the hot dogs going out.
Usually they lose about 5% in the processing, but two days ago they gained 20%.
This is not good, and the Mite had to put in a lot of overtime trying to get to
the bottom of it, to no avail. Which meant that he wasn’t able to read as much
as he wanted of the pirated copy he received of the manuscript that purports to
be a translation of the journal of a trader who preceded Marco Polo traveling
to China (the Mite knows a couple of people in publishing, if you’re wondering
how he gets special privileges). You might have read about the controversy over
this book, where some readers have questioned if our traveler could
have truly seen what he saw, or be so
interested in affairs “de coeur,” as you might say. The translator, quite a
legitimate fellow it would appear, claims that perhaps he just made a mistake
or two in his translation, but the Nostrumite strongly feels that the reference
to heliports should have been a dead giveaway to one and all that something was
amiss.
have truly seen what he saw, or be so
interested in affairs “de coeur,” as you might say. The translator, quite a
legitimate fellow it would appear, claims that perhaps he just made a mistake
or two in his translation, but the Nostrumite strongly feels that the reference
to heliports should have been a dead giveaway to one and all that something was
amiss.
Anyhow, I recommend that you avoid
hot dogs for the next few months.
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