Carrying on with the recurring theme of Is It Possible That It’s Really This Hot?, we go now to Norway, lovely Norway, land of good design, natural air conditioning in August, symbolist screaming, gabbling Heddas, and oh yes, have I mentioned it’s probably not ninety degrees there right now?
Another short one for another short day, and the beauty here should be evident: how lovely it would be if our physical presences existed as waves of sound, if physical injury were a momentary blip of discord, if your emotional duress a note hit flat, if inner harmony was literal. Yea, that’s the stuff.
On occasion, another excruciatingly bleak day will end with a moderately edifying insignia etched onto your nightcap, and on those occasions, you want nothing more than to return home to tranquility and a nice short harmless podcast. And sometimes, sometimes even on those occasions, your environs just won’t comply.
Too. Hot. To. Type. But I leave you a nice. Long. One.
Triviatum: This from a college short story anthology, with notations, footnotes, the works. There’s one worth noting– when the doctor reveals his Christian name, ‘Trifon,’ we see footnote #10, which reads:
I don’t know much about where you are, but where I am, I can tell you a thing or two about the heat right now. The thing being: it’s hot. Mighty hot. The sort of hot where you pile your hair up off your neck and sit in your skivs and wish you possessed a Homer Simpson gracelessness that might allow you to put a floatie, a few cans of beer, and a thousand ice cubes in your bathtub.
If anybody ever asks you if you’re a happy prince or a sparrow, you should be prepared with an answer: I tell you now, you never know when it might be asked of you. And it might. To prepare you for such a day is today’s podcast, and in helping you answer this question, it should now be obvious which I am.
In reality, we also are fallen folks, and, so far as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority. But enough of this. It is all as old as the hills–so old that it is a shame to speak of it. Very old indeed–yes, that’s what it is!
Ahh, Maksim Gorky, Maxim Gorky, Maksim Gor’kii, Maxim Gorkii, Maksim Gorki, he’ll always be Aleksei Peshkov to me.
For those not out barbecuing or picnicking or watching cosmic collisions or stealing carbide:
Happy 49th Podcast!
The 49th is, of course, a notable one: it’s our last perfect square until 64, and even then, both digits won’t also be perfect squares. And, of course, it’s the last podcast of our extended youth together; next time I post, we shall be plainly geriatric.
Is there anything, and I mean anything, italics and all, better than a good fortuitous bookend to a good podcast? Not only does this story have one of the best first lines of all stories (“It was the middle of August and Myers was between lives,” that’s right, shaazam!), but the 9:54 bus, usually a harbinger of noisome bus distraction to many a clear podcast, passes just at the last line, in perfect atmospheric equanimity.