merely mimicking

merely mimicking
Damn the man: He ateses my salad. I left some salad in the fridge and was going for it for breakfast. But no. It's gone. Gone. Well fine then, says I, I'll just have some toast and make crumbs all over the place. And eggs. And hot chocolate. Now I feel better... ah, revenge is sweet. I've been thinking of getting my own place and it set me to thinking. For one thing, it'd be cheaper to stay here and Rob wants me to stay since it'll help his rent out too. On the other hand, I always feel pressured to be neat and clean and not make much mess here. And the kitchen side of things is ridiculous: theres a two-burner hot plate and that's pretty well it. I'm really keen on working on my culinary skills and I just can't even begin to do anything about that here. Without so much as a proper stove or counter space, how can a girl learn to cook? But, it's way cheaper to stay here... few hundred bucks and I'm cleared for a place to stay, while some other place: well, it'd be at least three hundred even sharing with Rikki, plus phone and utilities and heat and all that good stuff. I just don't know!

No Country For Old Men
So I discovered a man named Cormac McCarthy the other day. It was a book left in a room by one of the occupants, and I took it home with me and read it. Here is the opening:
The deputy left Chigurh standing in the corner of the office with his hands cuffed behind him while he sat in the swivelchair and took off his hat and put his feet up and called Lamar on the mobile.

Just walked in the door. Sheriff he had some sort of thing on him like one of them oxygen tanks for emphysema or whatever. Then he had a hose that run down the inside of his sleeve and went to one of them stunguns like they use at the slaughterhouse. Yessir. Well that's what it looks like. You can see it when you get in. Yessir. I got it covered. Yessir.

When he stod up out of the chair he swung the keys off his belt and opened the locked desk drawer to get the keys to the jail. He was slightly bent over when Chigurh squatted and scooted his manacled hands beneath him to the back of his knees. In the same motion he sat and rocked backward and passed the chain under his feet and then stood instantly and effortlessly. If it looked like a thing he'd practiced many times it was. He dropped his cuffed hands over the deputy's head and leaped into the air and slammed both knees against the back of the deputy's neck and hauled back on the chain.

They went to the floor. The deputy was trying to get his hands inside the chain but he could not. Chigurh lay there pulling back on the bracelets with his knees between his arms and his face averted. The deputy was flailing wildly and he'd begun to walk sideways over the floor in a circle, kicking over the wastebasket, kicking the chair across the room. He kicked shut the door and he wrapped the throwrug in a wad about them. He was gurgling and bleeding from the mouth. He was strangling on his own blood. Chirgurh only hauled the harder. The nickelplated cuffs bit to the bone. The deputy's right carotid artery burst and a jet of blood shot across the room and hit the wall and ran down it. The deputy's legs slowed and then stopped. He lay jerking. Then he stopped moving altogether. Chigurh lay breathing quietly, holding him. When he got up he took the keys from the deputy's belt and released himself and put the deputy's revolver in the waistband of his trousers and went into the bathroom.
Now tell me that man is not an amazing writer! I love his style...

Wild Montana Skies
John Denver and Emmylou Harris sang a duet called "Wild Montana Skies." The chorus goes like this:
Oh Montana, give this child a homeGive him the love of a good family and a woman of his ownGive him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyesGive him the wild wind for a brother and the wild Montana skies
The song itself is great---but I keep stumbling over the second line of the chorus: 'Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own.' Somehow I balk at the way in which the distinction 'good family' seems to refect upon the child. The way I read it, it seems to be indicating that the good family is simply an extension of the man. And the 'woman of his own'.... well, I think many a woman would resist the concept of belonging to a man, let along being given to someone, like property. Anyhow. I still like the song, I still listen to it, but damnit I cringe everytime he sings 'and a woman of his own'.