oh, garcia marquez, how i will miss you!

listen, folks, i admitted in the previous post that i'm on drugs -- the good, legal kind.  covered by my blessèd obamacare-ACA-presidentially-approved health insurance policy, for which, you wacked-out wingnuts, i pay good money.

well, not good money.  just money.

anyway.  [the best of segues]

here follows the provenance of this post, and you SHOULD know by now my obsession with provenance:

at least a bazillion people a day tramp through marlinspike hall (read the damn **ABOUT::THIS::BLOG** section over on the right side of the freaking page, would 'ya?), and wayyyyy too many of the folks come with a pass stamped "looking for information about that asswipe Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa."

what's more?  our docents, docentesses, and the struggling underclass of the most recent priestly novitiate from next door (they earn coin to make desperate calls home) are overwhelmed with the number of theta and lisping Spanish-speakers (we report them all as likely nazis to Tête de Hergé Homeland Security) inquiring after vargas llosa.  just click the underline, light blue shaded (or is it purple?) text of his name in the preceding paragraph and you can read about him to your hearts' content. or HERE, click HERE!  at Wikipedia!

track in the gritty clay of our land, smear smooshed greeny asphodels around our pompeian mosaic floors, we don't mind the cleaning... it's of the mindset ruling your sneakers that we think whilst scrubbing away the dregs of nature with toothbrushes and tubes of Sensodyne! [don't you dare touch that sentence.]

why, o why, are we not receiving pilgrim upon pilgrim seeking after our magical collection of Gabriel Garcia Marquez arty-facts?

where did all this people clearly RAISED IN A BARN come from?  okay, okay, i know, they're likely of german descent, but we don't paint tar all over the sensitive skins of an entire people around here! that's not the marlinspike hall way!

oh, garcia marquez, how i will miss you! 

i need a new fentanyl patch.  and a percocet.

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vargas: SF= steepest part of a slope

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Gabriel García Márquez: Discurso por el recibimiento del Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1982 --

© 2013 L. Ryan

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Vargas Llosa

The Nobel, he won. 

Hmm.

Not a fan, not a fan at all. 

Nary a bit.

But it's an Occasion and I'm nothing if not a Celebrant.  So while everyone is tippy-toeing around this decision, undoubtedly mentioning Garcia Marquez within their first two paragraphs, let's commemorate an entirely different event -- one that really did bring the two together, whirligigs, 34 years or so, ago.

For extra credit, who'd win in The Hulk v Vargas Llosa?
Okay, that was too easy...

For an honorary doctorate, then:  100 words on Vargas Llosa and deceit.  (Show your work.)


Vargas Llosa is teaching at Princeton this semester, How to write novels, or something like that.
In a feat of swell timing, he has a book coming out in November.

Feud sensation! Why Vargas Llosa thumped Márquez!Now it can be told: the amazing truth behind the Latin American literary giants' legendary ding-dong.


It is 31 years since Mario Vargas Llosa punched Gabriel García Márquez in the face. It happened like this. "Mario!" exclaimed Márquez happily on seeing his old literary chum after a film premiere in Mexico City. He marched towards the Peruvian, arms outstretched as if for an embrace. "How dare you come and greet me after what you did to Patricia in Barcelona!" Vargas Llosa reportedly shouted and decked the Colombian with a right hook. Mexican writers ran around looking for steaks to put on the Colombian's eye. Patricia, it turns out, was Mario's wife.

The two men have reportedly never spoken since. So began one of the greatest rows in literary history, right up there with the Gore Vidal-Truman Capote feud (in which Vidal suggested Capote had "raised lying into an art - a minor art". Capote retorted: "Of course, I'm always sad about Gore. Very sad that he has to breathe every day.")

But the details of what Mario said to Gabriel in Mexico City that emerged earlier this week beg more questions than they answer. What happened in Barcelona? What did Gabriel do to Patricia? Did Patricia like it? And what about the mystery Swedish woman? How does she fit into the story? Why didn't Márquez duck in Mexico City? How could Gabriel not know Mario was angry? Why didn't Gabriel hit Mario back? After all, Peruvian novelists punch like girls, don't they? [Read the rest of this Nobel-Announcement-Day-Worthy piece, HERE...]

[[Thank you, Stuart Jeffries!]]

WORDLE SOLUTIONS and How The Computer Ate My Blog Post

Howdy High, There, Buckaroos! Retired Educator, here.

Since the 2009 Thanksgiving Wordle Challenge was such a Total Yawn, despite my best efforts at prostitution through Tweeter, I am posting the solutions below. Actually, I am doing this because of an inability to get any real writing done. Last night, I labored over a long post on ketamine, about which I was quite proud, and it went *poof*. Out, gone, aloft in the blogosphere, more of my amorphous nonsense.

I am one of those people who rolls eyes when folks lament, long and loud, how the computer "lost" or "ate" their work. They usually further insist that they *did* save it, really!

"That there computer has a mind of its own..." Right, Grandpa.

No, computers only do what we "tell" them to do.

Or so I thought.

That ketamine coma post was really good. It had none of my normal foolishness. It toed a line now obscured by a strong and unexpected imaginary sand storm that quickly reduced visibilty to nil. You know how hard sand can be on high-end electronics.

I dotted every "i" and researched every outrageous claim, underlining what I knew to be the truth at the expense of facts that I chose simply to ignore. It rivaled the work I produced while perched on top of the rooster weathervane that, itself, was planted atop the highest point of the Ivory Tower. Now, *that* was a breathtaking act of unbalanced derring-do!

In fact, when brought nearly to fruition (around 8 pm, 7 December), the ketamine coma piece could not help but bring to mind my unparralleled study of Parisian graffiti produced in the various revolutionary spaces of May 1968.

Ever since stabbing Fred with that sharp, rusty fork yesterday evening for suggesting, perkily, that I "just" get right back to work and reproduce what the 'puter clearly deliberately disposed of... Ever since then, Fred has been wimpering and tossing out the odd and clearly unrehearsed "baaaad computer, baaaaad" in between moans and the mounting double threats of sepsis and lockjaw.

It's good to see him make an effort.

So I guess we will scrape up the money to have some Urgent Care version of a longstanding family doctor [whom our people always repay in quart jars of homemade strawberry preserves and 5 or so fresh eggs] lance what is festering on and around The Fredster.

I heard -- down on the corner -- that if we offer the Urgent Care Admissions Clerk a fresh potted-meat sandwich, we can get a complimentary vasectomy. I say "we," but I really mean "Fred."

Anyway, I appreciate your faithfulness and truly do apologize for the bizarreries of late. I realize that when one's life begins to be nothing but a stringing together of missteps and the totally unforeseen, it's perhaps time to re-evaluate things.

These deep thoughts, and others, I toss into the frigid cold of this December night, and laugh.

So here's the skinny on the Wordles:

#9: "At the little town of Vevay, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel." These are the opening lines to Henry James' Daisy Miller.

#10: The inimitable Gabriel García Márquez and his lovely One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Amaranta Úrsula returned with the angels of December, driven on a sailor's breeze, leading her husband by a silk rope tied around his neck."

#11: "One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history." From Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

#12: "Contrary to expectation, there was a touch of gaiety in the air, with total strangers willing to engage in conversation on any topic, though uppermost in everyone's mind were the scarcity of fuel and the increasingly frequent power cuts." Okay, so this one? You either knew it or you did not. I truly think the first 3 were possible to tease and reason out... Though the fact that Madame Fresca could not is perhaps ample evidence to the contrary. #12 was taken from the first chapter of Gifts by Nuruddin Farah.

There is, admittedly, a small part of me that thinks you are all Evil-Doers of the Nth Degree who simply did not desire that Fred and I should enjoy an evening alone together, and so, you played dumb and refused to win the 2009 Thanksgiving Wordle Challenge Prize of taking La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore to the Dairy Queen.

That's okay. I'll get you next time.