I went to bed last night–and I was not drunk last night by the way–and realized it was Gadot. The Godot pun likely would have worked nonetheless, but ah, I myself have to groan at my poor attempts at humor. I have always liked puns, and I read they are usually a sign of psychological health, so I will admit I do throw them out there a lot. Most of the time they go over people’s heads. It’s not something most people are waiting or looking for, so they exist mainly for my pleasure, but do also kind of serve as a test to see who’s awake. I will occasionally watch a slow light dawn in people’s faces as they realize what I did. My attempts at wit are sometimes rewarded with a smile.
On a related topic, and serving once again to demonstrate that there is no topic I cannot politicize–something which drives my children crazy–I wanted to mention that I watched the film adaptation of Tristram Shandy the other day with Steve Coogan. I have nearly read this novel several times, but never quite gotten around to it.
Part of my learning difficulty, as I contemplate it a bit, is that everything I do, I do a bit obsessively. When I read a book, I obsess about it. On the positive side, I tend to have excellent recall of books I read many years ago. I remember a very high percentage of what I read, and try to only read important books, so that is useful.
The down side is that whatever film or book I am currently consuming gets seared into my brain’s retina. I see this now, although I have never said this, or perhaps even felt this consciously, although I have always known that any movie I watch will play in my mind and in my sleep for days, and so too do fictional novels. I will often dream about the characters I am reading about, feel their conflicts, feel their pain.
So, making a circuitous route around what is a very simple premise–as I tend to do, but which is apparently richly warranted in this particular case–I read that Tristram Shandy is both the “first postmodern novel”, and a, on its own account, “Cock and Bull Story”. Logically, why not make this a persistent and obvious connection for ALL Postmodernism?
Why could we not call the willful pursuit of incoherence of thought and language for its own sake what it is: BULLSHIT? It might be entertaining bullshit, a sort of faux intellectual Ludetic system, but endless recursive circles will never make a line.
And the HABIT of consuming and enjoying the consumption of bullshit can only act as fertilizer for imbecility, uselessness, and–where that person chooses to still form strong opinions about the physical world and how it works–harmful.