“This liberal doxy must be impaled upon the member of a particularly large stallion,” Ignatius mumbled furiously (p. 185).
Gary Becker
Greg Mankiw, the WP, TIME, UChicago and WSJ report the passing of Gary Becker. Here is his Nobel page and his Wiki page. I had tried to make contact with him some two years ago to no avail.
Varieties of extended emotions
EPISTEME 11:2
Best Soul Food
Willie Mae’s Scotch House and Dooky Chase’s feature. I’ve been lucky to have eaten at Sylvia’s Restaurant, Gladys Knight’s Chicken & Waffles and Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.
Certified
Percy referenced in Why It Feels Good When Your City Hits the Big Screen
Walker Percy may be right. The attraction towards certification is often a function of a deficiency in ourselves. We feel unvalidated and we appropriate the decision of a location scout in order to fill that void.
Robert Plant @ Jazz Fest
As usual an excellent report by Keith Spera.
He prefers to chart his own course down roads less traveled, specifically the back-country trails that lead to forgotten corners of Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and ramshackle bars in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood. Thus, on Saturday, he and the Space Shifters exhumed a meditation by high-lonesome Kentucky folk singer Roscoe Holcomb and bluesman Bukka White’s grim “Fixin’ to Die.”
Not that Plant is above circling back around to familiar haunts. But when he raids the Zeppelin catalog, it is to mine it for fresh material. “It’s great to keep changing it and turning it around,” he said. “Here’s one of them songs.”
By “them songs,” he meant, of course, a nugget culled from one of rock’s great canons. A ringing acoustic guitar and mandolin ushered in a faithful “Going to California,” recast as “going to Louisiana” for Jazz Fest.
A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 58
“It seems to me that you would be generous enough to give some sort of discount to your own employees,” Ignatius said importantly after an audit of the day’s receipts showed that, upon subtracting the cost of the hot dogs he had eaten, his take-home pay for the day was exactly a dollar and twenty-five cents. “After all, I am becoming your best customer.”
Ignatius flapped off to the trolley in a dark mood and rode uptown belching Paradise gas so violently that, although the car was crowded, on one would sit next to him.
Ignatius looked at the scratches he had received in trying to persuade the cat to remain in the bun compartment.
“I had a rather apocalyptic battle with a starving prostitute,” Ignatius belched. “Had it not been for my superior brawn, she would have sacked my wagon. Finally she limped away from the fray, her glad rags askew.”
“Ignatius!” Mrs. Reilly cried tragically. “Every day it seems you getting worst and worst. What’s happening to you?”
Mrs. Reilly looked at her son slyly and asked, “Ignatius, you sure you not a communiss?”
“Oh, my God!” Ignatius bellowed. “Every day I am subjected to a McCarthyite witchhunt in this crumbling building. No! I told you before. I am not a fellow traveller. What in the world has put that into your head?”
“I read someplace in the paper where they got plenty communiss at college.”
“Well, fortunately I didn’t meet them. Had they crossed my path, they would have been beaten to within an inch of their lives. Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life” (pp. 182-184).
Catholicism and literature
As a Catholic, I recognize that life is a story of continuous revision, of failure and unexpected grace, and of dogged hope. I am comfortable with the white space of ambiguity and mystery. I have faith, not certainty . . .
Nick Ripatrazone (H/T to The Dish’s Matt Sitman).
manwithoutqualities 