South Mountain National Battlefield

The Battle of South Mountain was a series of engagements that took place just before the Union's costly victory at Antietam to the west a few days later.  It's a nice little park but maybe not the best example of a walking battlefield.  (Try Antietam!)  It also overlaps with the Appalachian Trail.

Marty Supreme: Wut I Thunk (Spoilers)

Timothy Chalamet is great as a 1950's ping-pong hustler who dreams of something greater.  The script doesn't do him favors though, as this thing is way too long.  Tyler the Creator is also great in support.  The thing this ping-pong movie needed though?  More ping-pong and fewer shootings and stabbings.  It really didn't need a body-count in general.

Three wooden, not foam, paddles out of five!

"words that bloom forth like flowers"

"They arrive unperceived at first, and the children

 Rush toward them, but the joy is too bright, too blinding, 

And man shies away, even a demigod hardly knows

 What to call them, they who approach him with gifts.

But great is the courage they bring, their joys fill

 His heart, he hardly knows what to make of this wealth;

He fiddles around and he wastes it, almost thinking the unholy holy,

 That which he kindly and foolishly touches with his blessing hand.

The heavenly bear this as much as they can; but they

 Themselves then come in truth, and men grow accustomed to joy

And the day and beholding those manifest, the faces of those

 Who were named long ago the One and the All, and who

Filled the silent breasts deeply with contentment so free,

 And were first and alone to satisfy every desire.

Thus is man; when the wealth is there, and a god himself

 Provides him with gifts, he won't see it and remains unaware.

First he must bear it; now, though, he names what is dearest,

 Now he needs words, words that bloom forth like flowers."

Friedrich Hölderlin, Bread and Wine stanza 5, trans. Nick Hoff

Maryland Diners: Hub City Diner, Hagerstown Maryland

About 30 minutes west of Frederick is its young cousin, Hagerstown.  And here we are at the Hub City Diner!

.

I liked it, but it's funky.  Both funky-good and funky-off putting.  But for sheer value it's not bad.  The clientele definitely veers to the elderly, and it's hard not to notice the three-story hospice right next door.  But how's the food?

Merry Christmas!

After a wonderful traditional Christmas Eve dinner with family, I hit up Big Chef for some Christmas Day shrimp egg foo-young.  Not too shabby!

"very loud music"

 "'I want a very large steak," she said to Les Goodwin in a restaurant on Melrose at eight o'clock that night. 'And before the very large steak I want three drinks. And after the steak I want to go somewhere with very loud music.'

'Like where.'

'I don't know where. You ought to know where. You know a lot of places with loud music.'

'What's the matter with you.'

'I am just very very very tired of listening to you all.'"

-- Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

Christmas Fucking Spirit!

And a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and all!  All year I was thinking of ways to get this blog back to some kind of normal routine beyond cat pictures and literary quotations.  Then again, I really like cat pictures and literary quotations so maybe change isn't required.

Work has been kind of miserable, actually, and I'm once again interviewing for new jobs.  My current gig started off really strong but the usual suspects (highly toxic management) spoiled the fun, or at least the sense of making a real contribution.

As for 2026 well, I'm thinking of moving.  Maryland is pleasant but (at the risk of sounding like an adult) the taxes are killing me, and I want to live near a beach.  I'm considering options south of Virginia but north of Georgia.  I want to get into bicycling again.  I want to revisit some writing I did when I was living in Bellingham taking care of my Dad, two years gone now.  I want to go out more but not to bars -- maybe a bicycle gang that roves around town hitting up used bookstores.

I'll spend Christmas Eve with my sister and her family and then Christmas Day -- maybe a hike, maybe a drive to one of the few remaining Civil War battlefields in my area that I haven't visited.

But wherever you find yourself, I hope you enjoy a few days with loved ones or by yourself -- who's counting?

"I won the good behavior prize every year I was there."

"'When I came out of the bathroom twenty-five minutes later she was sitting at the secretary, smoking a cigarette and studying a memoranda book that had been in a side pocket of my gladstone bag.

'I guess these are the expenses you've charged up on other cases,' she said without looking up. 'I'm damned if I can see why you can't be more liberal with me. Look, here's a six-hundred-dollar item marked Inf. That's information you bought from somebody, isn't it? And here's a hundred and fifty below it--Top --whatever that is. And here's another day when you spent nearly a thousand dollars.'

'They must be telephone numbers,' I said, taking the book from her. 'Where were you raised? Fanning my baggage!'

'I was raised in a convent,' she told me. 'I won the good behavior prize every year I was there. I thought little girls who put extra spoons of sugar in their chocolate went to hell for gluttony. I didn't even know there was such a thing as profanity until I was eighteen. The first time I heard any I damned near fainted.' She spit on the rug in front of her, tilted her chair back, put her crossed feet on my bed, and asked: 'What do you think of that?'

I pushed her feet off the bed and said:

'I was raised in a water-front saloon. Keep your saliva off my floor or I'll toss you out on your neck.'"

-- Dashiel Hammett, Red Harvest

Exotic Tunes

Wonderbooks always has something.

"a yawning, neutral god with a relish for disinfectants"

"'It's true enough," said Crowther-Mason. 'The concept of sin seems to be dead. It's been expelled from the Garden. Freud and Marx hold up their flaming swords. But surely it's a good thing?'

'It's an atrocious thing,' said the Vicar. 'It's killed both kinds of good living. It's removed a dimension from our lives. We've all lost that incense-laden thrill we used to get from the exciting knowledge that, if you pulled up the floor-boards, you would find a deliciously bottomless pit. What have we instead? Right and wrong, with their interchangeable wardrobes, and the police-courts, temples of a yawning, neutral god with a relish for disinfectants.' With a pleasant smile he raised his brandy to his lips, as with a relish for it, as in a silent toast to sin. But he spluttered with shock, and all gasped with surprise, as the French-windows were shiveringly pushed open and Ambrose entered, nearly dead on his feet, paper-faced, trembling with terror, saying:

'Give me a drink, for God's sake.'"

-- Anthony Burgess, The Eve of Saint Venus

"time rushes by drying up or rotting"

"These memories made me think how the words 'That person has changed' are completely useless in some cases; it finally occurred to me that to expect someone to always be a certain way or consistently do a certain thing can be a huge burden on them.

When life becomes something one just lives through, when the demands of survival take up all of our time and effort, leaving no strength for any other demands, and when time rushes by drying up or rotting whatever we have had to neglect, expecting someone to carry on being the same is truly too much of a burden."

-- Baek Sae-hee, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Deokbokki