monk222 | Mar. 29th, 2012

Mar. 29th, 2012

A provocative lament on how sexual energy is always there and seldom nice. The primal animal stirs within. Hungry.

( Rape Themes )

“I would trade the book of Revelation for Hamlet any day.”

-- Bernard Brandon Scott at The Institute on Religion and Democracy

The more provocative argument in the article is that Jesus was illiterate, but I thought the Hamlet bit was a catchy sentence. Though, I think Revelation is a pretty fun book. As for the literacy of Jesus, well, I guess that could depend on whether you think Jesus is God or not. The thought that God cannot read is rather amusing. I don't feel like getting into it myself. Like I said, I just liked that quote.

“If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.”

-- Noam Chomsky

Hey, I'm trying my best.

The three old chums meet. Hamlet pretends that he has some trouble distinguishing Rosencrantz from Guldenstern, but this is an inside joke, playing off the general difficulty people have telling one from the other, as though they are twins.

My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz!

Hamlet, if only for a precious moment, loses his dour mood and his dark meditations, finding himself suddenly thrown back on the joy of old friends and good times, recalling the mood when the world was young and innocent, or when he was anyway. The three roughhouse and pummel each other. After this “puppyish brawl” Hamlet resumes the dialogue:

Good lads, how do ye both?

Which kicks off a bit of ribald drollery:

ROSENCRANTZ

As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN

Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune's cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET

Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ

Neither, my lord.

HAMLET

Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of
her favours?

GUILDENSTERN

'Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET

In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she
is a strumpet. What's the news?

ROSENCRANTZ

None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

This friendly frolic strikes a sour note for Hamlet, calling him back to the threatening reality that he lives in under Claudius’s treacherous court. Hamlet catches a whiff of something foul. Polonius is a fishmonger, and it seems that Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are fishy friends. The world’s grown honest, indeed!

HAMLET

Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
Let me question more in particular: what have you,
my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN

Prison, my lord!

HAMLET

Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ

Then is the world one.

HAMLET

A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ

We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET

Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison.

Texas must be an even worse confine, but in any case, Hamlet now sees that he and his friends are not on the same side, that they are more Claudius’s men now rather than his friends.

Rosencrantz, while trying to maintain an air of friendly whimsy, probes Hamlet further, trying to pluck his mystery and “receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance.” And the jousting is not so puppyish anymore.

ROSENCRANTZ

Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too
narrow for your mind.

HAMLET

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN

Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET

A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ

Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a
quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

[Is this the friends’ way of trying to gently nudge Hamlet away from any frustrated ambition that he may have for the crown?]

HAMLET

Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and
outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we
to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

Hamlet is no shadow, though he is feeling marginalized and vulnerable in his position, unsure and lost as to how to exact vengeance and justice, even as Claudius is obviously pressing in on him. Hamlet begins to stalk off, and we will cut from the action here.

LiLo if off probation.

_ _ _

Lindsay Lohan is a semi-free woman, after Judge Stephanie Sautner just declared, "She did it!" -- she successfully completed her probation requirements.

The judge took Lindsay off probation altogether in what her honor called "the endless" 2007 DUI case. If Lindsay had not completed the terms of her probation, Judge Sautner could have sentenced her to 270 days in the pokey. When the judge terminated probation, Lindsay cracked a big smile and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

As for the necklace heist case, Judge Sautner said Lindsay completed community service at the morgue, therapy and the shoplifter's course -- so her formal probation is now informal probation, and all Lindsay has to do is OBEY ALL LAWS for the next 2 1/2 years. Sautner said, "I know it's kinda hard when people are following you all over the place ... but that's the life you chose."

Judge Sautner gave Lindsay some good advice, "Stop nightclubbing and focus on your work."

In the end, Lindsay and her lawyer, Shawn Holley, thanked the Judge. Lindsay said to the judge, "What you've done has really opened a lot of doors for me."

-- ONTD

_ _ _

I would not be surprised if Lindsay will remain free from criminal entanglements, as such is arguably her right by virtue of her race and class. But does anyone believe she is going to be a good girl from now on? Heh, well, I know I hope not.

An interesting book excerpt that I found at the Literary Quotes community. I can see myself reading the novel. Maybe.

_ _ _

I hadn't felt such disgust for a boy since the early days, when they'd tease girls on the playground, kicking us and throwing gravel and raising their voices in high screechy mockery. "They do that because they like you," all the adults said, grinning like pumpkins. We believed them, back then. Back then we thought it was true, and we were drawn toward all that meanness because it meant we were special, let them kick us, let them like us. We liked them back. But now it was turning out that our first instincts were right. Boys weren't mean because they like you; it was because they were mean."

-- "The Basic Eight", by Daniel Handler

I came across a book review for Barbara Eden's autobiography, titled "Jeannie Out of the Bottle", which came out last year. She is the "I Dream of Jeannie" girl. That hint may not help a lot. The show goes a looong way back. But I remember it fondly. She was as hot as TV was allowed to get back then, way back in the early pre-Internet age, when we still scribbled on cave walls, and no one had ever heard of a thong bikini.

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