The Little Things

Back in my bartending days in Athens, I was working happy hour on a hot summer day. College towns are pretty empty in the summer. You can actually get to the bar when you want to, and you can eat your meals peacefully. And cross the street without fear of a freshman in a Tahoe mowing you down.

A man came in who was actually pleasant to talk to, sometimes a rarity for a pretty bartender working the early hours of the day. That's when the horny businessmen and the career drunks come out to play. We talked books and he said I had to read Mark Twain's autobiography. He was so insistent that he brought it to me the next day while I was working.

I still have it -- at some point we were supposed to meet up and I was to give it back, but that part of the memory has disappeared. All I remember is a sunny day and being pleasantly surprised by a stranger.

I finally read the book. I felt it had to be read in sunny Southern weather, as befitting its origins in my life and also Mark Twain's general personality.

And I loved it. It was so funny and just so full of a life. Not in the way a biography is -- Mark was born, he did these things in this order and then he died. It's full of anecdotes and skips around and swoops from dark wit to poignant moments from chapter to chapter. It genuinely did make me laugh and cry. I laughed the most at the beginning. I cried when his daughter died, and then when his wife did. You could feel how bereft he was to lose them, and his descriptions of them, especially of Suzy, made me feel like I knew them -- the perfect small details and snatches of conversation that make a good portrait.

I wish he had talked more about his other daughters. But there was no way to make a whole picture of himself, I think. Just the chance to offer up handfuls of what he had in his mind at the time.

The introduction is engrossing me now. I'd never thought much about the philosophy of autobiography -- how you start, how you end, what you choose to keep, what you choose to leave out. How you tell it.

I don't want to start with my earliest memory, because it's about a failure to get to the bathroom on time.

The book: http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Mark-Twain-Perennial-Classics/dp/0060955422

Etiquette

When a boy asks you out on Facebook and you don't want to go, what is the proper response?

This was Candace's. It is much better than anything I came up with.

Hi, So-and-So. I’m awfully fabulous, and along with that comes being awfully busy. How about we meet up near my apartment, and you can buy me at least two cocktails? It’ll be super-convenient for me and super-lucky for you.

Hulking Out

Today I saw "I Love You, Man." This is the takeaway, courtesy of Wikipedia, a reliable source for such matters:

A blood choke or carotid restraint, also known as the sleeper hold, specifically refers to a chokehold that compresses one or both carotid arteries and/or the jugular veins without compressing the airway, hence causing cerebral ischemia and a temporary hypoxic condition in the brain.^[3] Regardless of who the opponent is, a well applied blood choke leads to unconsciousness in 3-5 seconds, while a poorly applied choke can take upwards of thirty seconds to render the opponent unconscious. If released, the subject usually regains consciousness in double the time the choke was applied after he had blacked out. Compared to traditional manual strangulation, properly applied blood chokes require little physical strength, and can be applied successfully by a comparatively weak person.^[4]

Not a Sunday

"Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it."

- from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson