Catching up -- I have been having Covid. Yes, it happened, to my wife and me. So trendy, I know.
Here is my impression of that virus: it made all the things that were already wrong with me a little worse. Now that I'm back to being myself, ehh, okay. Who expects being themself (note trendy plural-singular) to be a thrill? If you do, that's how you get depressed I think.
But if you're a writer you do have the crazy expectation that people will actually register word for word, for better or worse, what you wrote.
Here, let's get today's thematic limericks out of the way:
A factory owner named Cyrus,
Whose workers said, "What can he do, fire us?"
Fired 'em.
Hey he hired 'em.
He died of a terrible virus.
On the other hand:
The kids will all tell you that Ira'll
Be the one of them all to go viral.
"Ah well you know,"
He says, "Then I'll go
Down in a fabulous spiral?"
First order of business:
My apologies if I influenced anybody to devote themselves (note plural-singular) to the series "The Old Man." I loved the first episode, and it gave me a chance to tell about my half-a-century-ago interaction with Jeff Bridges. But "The Old Man" got old fast. Even Bridges, whom I still love, was reduced to alllll...most chewing on his (hairy) lip.
Dude! And the international intrigue element dissolved into a very-last-second buddy-rom.com pat on the shoulder.
That's off my chest.
Second order of business:
My sister, Susan, e-mailed me about a supposed quote from E. B. White:
"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult."
This did not sound right to either of us. I looked into it. Remarkably, I found that people cited this as their most cherished bit of E. B. White, who wrote a whole lot of wonderful stuff that, okay, could border on too-too E.B.-sy -- but always redeemed itself with starch. E. B. White never sounded that sappy.
I Googled and Googled hard.
On Goodreads, a generally literate website, 222 people liked that very quote from E. B. White. But of course he didn't write it. Or say it. The New York Times of July 11, 1969, published a short profile of White by Israel Shenker. Q&A-based, but you can tell, from the tone and the parentheses, that the very reticent, voice-controlling White had agreed (he had a book out) to respond to Shenker's questions in writing. Whatever the question was, here was White's response:
"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. That makes it hard to plan the day."
There. E. B. White being himself.
Come on, readers!
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