When I was young the family would visit relatives in Arizona in the Spring. Since my father was a school teacher, it was natural to spend a week over the Easter Holiday communing with cactus, irrigation, and burning creosote. But one year we went to Phoenix for some sort of convention and it was in the heat of the summer. Back then few people had air conditioning and had to rely on water coolers to take the edge off the heat.
Continue reading “The Hot List”Tag: Portland
The Letter Z
A favorite phrase of Il Douchebag, which he often applies without any reasonable signification, is “like a dog.” While watching the fascist horror arising in Portland, Oregon, and wondering about where the kidnapped protestors might be taken for further interrogation and bodily harm, I was reminded of Franz Kafka’s The Trial. The link occurs in the final lines of Kafka’s great novel:
Where was the judge he’d never seen? Where was the high court he’d never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one man were right at K.’s throat, while the other thrust the knife into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing sight K. saw how the men drew near his face, leaning cheek-to-cheek to observe the verdict. “Like a dog!” he said; it seemed as though the shame was to outlive him.
A Celebration of Reading 