The Adventures of Marco Polo in Baton Rouge

I saw the Tony Blair news conference from the G8 Summit and was moved by his poise, mixed with the sense of loss and despair and hurt for his people. It was refreshing to see a politician talk in this way.

My prayers go out to the 40 dead, 700 injured, Great Britain, the Queen, and to the PM.

Regarding my Jessica Simpson dream that I talked about yesterday, I complained that my wife was not the reason for turning away Jessica Simpson. I was complaining to my subconscious, and how often does he listen to me? Never. I am never able to consciously make my subconcious do what I the ego want it to do. But last night I dreamed of my wife. Perhaps it was being away from home, the separation, whatever. But is was almost a duplicate of the Jessica Simpson dream. How about that?

Well, the alarm is going off, telling me to wrap up and go to work. Auf Wiedersehen.

I finally finished reading it last night. Of course, I knew how it would end because I had read it before. Binx marries Kate and finds salvation, of a sorts, from the malaise of the modern world, or the post-civil war South. Whatever. My first thought on finishing was what did Binx do with his life after this? The The Moviegoer ends when Binx is 30 years old. Did he live happily ever after, telling Kate what to do? I think not, but he did not fade into oblivion, or did he? Perhaps Percy tells us in his later books, but I do not have the inclination, just yet, to pursue it.

If I do, I can start with Lancelot. I have two copies, a first edition and a signed second edition. Too bad I didn't get a signed first edition. But as I was buying the copy of the first edition, my sister was getting me a signed copy. She lived near Covington, where Percy lived and his daughter had a book shop. Perhaps she still does. I will try to research it when I have time.

Now, the reading of The Moviegoer will be linked to the London bombings and the airplane ride to Houston. I learned about the bombings as I waited to board the plane, and then I read the part in the book about Binx and Kate's trip to Chicago. There are enough similarities to keep me going for hours, but let's say that they are linked together in my mind, in my experience.

And isn't personal experience what my blog is all about?

The Moviegoer is done, long live Eudora Welty, the next on my list of Southern readings.

It is before 6 AM and I find myself alone in a hotel room outside Houston. I am here on business, but I went to sleep early, which means I woke up early. So, here I am making an entry into my blog.

I had the television on "CSI" and left it on "Without a Trace" for background noise as I tried to finish reading The Moviegoer. As is the usual, I fell asleep, and awoke maybe 1.5 hours later to the hummingbird guy on "David Letterman". Maybe it was the twilight state I was in, but I have not laughed so much in a while. In the broadcast orginally shown on May 24, the hummingbird guy has on a helmet with 3 hummingbird feeders attached. He is attempting to attract hummingbirds, so he is sitting in the middle of the yard. The best part is when Dave is asking him something, and the hummingbird girl, seemingly still, moves his head enough to start the feeders to slightly, rhythmically oscillating. Of course, it cracked Letterman up. If you missed it you missed a classic.

I guess I could say this was a repetition for me. The other experience I had was not of laughter but of disorientation, when as a twenty-year-old I awoke to David Bowie singing "Space Oddity" on The Midnight Special. It was the first time I ever saw David Bowie, and he was made up as Ziggy Stardust. It took a minute to become re-oriented. At first, I wasn't sure that I was not in the middle of a nightmare.

So, Binx, what I have I done with my life in the intervening 30 years? I will try to answer that in my book report, since I finished reading The Moviegoer immediately after this, now that I was awake.

While on the hummingbird thread, one of my favorite songs is "Hummingbird" by Wilco. The lyrics act as a bridge between the hummingbird guy and The Moviegoer, just in case the Bowie-hummingbird guy repetition was not enough.

Wilco - Hummingbird Lyrics

His goal in life was to be an echo 
Riding alone, town after town, toll after toll 
A fixed bayonet through the great southwest to forget her 

She appears in his dreams 
But in his car and in his arms 
A dream can mean anything 
A cheap sunset on a television set can upset her 
But he never could 

Remember to remember me 
Standing still in your past 
Floating fast like a hummingbird 

His goal in life was to be an echo 
The type of sound that floats around and then back down 
Like a feather 
But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans 
No one could hear him 
Or anything 

So he slept on a mountain 
In a sleeping bag underneath the stars 
He would lie awake and count them 
And the gray fountain spray of the great Milky Way 
Would never let him 
Die alone 

Remember to remember me 
Standing still in your past 
Floating fast like a hummingbird 

Remember to remember me 
Standing still in your past 
Floating fast like a hummingbird 

A hummingbird 
A hummingbird

I have been in a very good mood lately. Perhaps writing about road rage (honest, in my case, it is no better than road irritation. I tend toward hyperbole, if you haven't noticed.), makes me less likely to hold it in when I see something on the road. But in the case I saw this morning, I had to wonder. It had nothing to do with me, but it was so bad that I have to report it to you today.

I turned onto Sherwood Forest Blvd from South Harrell's Ferry. I get in line in the left lane behind a line of cars stopped for a red light. In front of me is a Jeep. We will call him MUM187. In front of him is a car. We will call her 123HPB. She looks like she might be from Mississippi. We're stopped. We're about vehicles number 5, 6, and 7 in line; so, we are easily going to make it through the light when it turns green. It won't even be close. So, what does MUM187 do? When the light turns green and the line of traffic begins to move, he squeals his tires, whips into the right lane, passes 123HPB, and then cuts immediately in front of her, and then enters the turn lane (less than a block has gone by), only to stop until the arrow comes on. Again, all of us easily make it onto the interstate. I am wondering why this fool did this, and to her credit 123HPB stayed calm. No gestures. No honking of horn. No blinking of lights. No tailgaiting once we were in motion. I had to laugh, though, because I could easily see how if the MUM187 had done this to the wrong person, like a pickup driver, that this could have been a full-blown road rage incident. I did not laugh at this, but I remembered a commercial from the night before, where this old guy (probably my age) was giving a testimonial for an ambulance chaser. He said that he had been a victim of road rage, and that so-and-so had fought for him in court and had gotten him all that he wanted. So, this is a good reason for why people like MUM187 do these crazy things in their vehicles. They, too, want to be victims of road rage and sue the people that they pissed off. At last, it makes sense.

Other sightings:

MUY450 - I liked the license number, very (muy) much.

LVT196 - The driver wore a ponytail to work. What more do I need to say?