Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Blue Soup

I am sitting in my dining room deciding if I should start writing or do something else entirely. Life is so short. After a day at the office and the basics of doing laundry and washing the dishes I just kind of want to chill. TV beckons. However TV leaves me with one less hour in my life with nothing gained for it. Downtime is okay, but falling into the blue soup of one hour serialized dramas isn’t.

Blue soup is a reference to one of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut. In one of the earlier books a character was kept hostage by an indigenous people who kept feeding him blue soup. The soup was some kind of narcotic that sapped the character of will power and the drive to do anything. Vonnegut always had characters that were fun.

My favorite of Vonnegut’s rotating cast was the secret agent in Mother Night who was so good at his cover job as a PR man for the Third Reich that the people who sent him weren’t sure if he wasn’t more of a detriment that an aid to the cause. Odd as they were there was truth in many of Vonnegut’s characters and truth in Vonnegut bon mots. I still think his comment that you should be careful of what you pretend to be because that is what you will become is about as true as it gets.

Having considered the options I think I will read. The Hunchback of Notre Dame calls. Finally after several weeks I figured out where I had laid the book down. TV versus a good book, well hell the book wins ever time.

1 comment:

John and Vicki Boyd said...

So WHAT was the status from 12/09? And clearly from THIS email you don't have access to the Game Show Network. My idea of heaven, while watching the interminable snow (we have about 18 inches on the ground, with more to come), is to watch as many hours as possible of re-runs of Match Game 1972.

Takes far too little to amuse we retirees. Especially when we no longer dare to watch the stock market.

Hope all is well. Please report. And I STILL need photos and info re: the "J" team. You promised.....