Heartwarming Tale

Bob and Ray reunite a brother and sister after 66 or 70 years:

https://www.box.net/shared/8vgpopd2og

The World Gives You Lemonade . . . .

Frank Kermode R.I.P.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/18/sir-frank-kermode-obituary

On reading Updike's "Couples"

Updike is vaunted as a realist par excellence, a careful chronicler of our suburban mores, but what I found in these pages seemed pretty fantastical to me. Certainly it bore no resemblance to the suburbia I knew. His characters talked about Bertrand Russell, bristled at undercooked lamb, and screwed each other senseless at every possible interval. It called my own world into question.

Dan Piepenbring, at The Paris Review website:  http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/08/10/couples/

"I'll fix your head" -- Gene Tierney

"I suggest you use an ax" -- Dana Andrews

in "Where The Sidewalks Ends"

Customer Service

Exchange at the concession stand:


Customer: And two Cokes.

Worker: You want a Pepsi?

Customer: Yes.

Worker: Sorry, we don't sell Pepsi, only Coke.

Dream about a bee

In my bedroom with the door slightly ajar, was disconcerted when Kristen Wiig of Saturday Night Live fame was walking back and forth by the bedroom door, and then walked in, as I had no clothes on. 

[It surprises me to learn that Kristen Wiig is apparently a woman of my dreams, as previously I had thought her primary distinction that she was perhaps the only person you could taunt by saying "Two i's; two i's."]

She climbed on top of naked me, and we started a passionate openmouthed kiss.  Then I heard a faint buzzing, and I realized that a bee was flying around in our open mouths.  She realized it too, shortly thereafter, and we stopped kissing and let the bee fly out.   Without saying anything to each other we both seemed to realize that was the end of anything sexual between us.  I apologized for the state of the apartment and started picking up clothes.  She was impressed, though, by my ability to toss clothes in the hamper without missing.