Northward Midget

Author: Quinn

  • This Book Said The Past Ain’t Through With Us

    Yesterday, I watched the second half of Magnolia, started the evening before.  I’ve watched it dozens of times, and it’s gone from “meh” to my top two favorite PT Anderson films.  There’s a quote heard throughout, and the last line for narrator Ricky Jay:

    And the book says, “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”

    In what “book” does this quote appear?  After finding a clue on an archived thread that linked to a dead page that I found through the Wayback Machine that turned out to be a fake autobiography of one of the dead site’s editorial staff– well, I found it in an essay:

    Bergen Evans: A Natural History Of Nonsense: First Chapter, First Sentence.
    Bergen Evans: The Natural History of Nonsense

    The full text of “The Natural History of Nonsense” is available from a personal page on the history of Cape Cod.  The book itself is by renowned lexicographer Bergen Evans and concerns superstition in modern times.  I think I’ll buy it.  Someday.

     

  • Water Damage Filtered Through Poe

    My kitchen ceiling flooded yesterday.  Not sure how this poesy parody came to mind, but here it is.

    Once upon a morning drizzly, while I hack-ed, gruff and grizzly,
    O’er many quaint and curious statements of programmatic lore—

    While I type-ed, buffers filling, suddenly there came a spilling,
    As of something gently dripping, dripping on my kitchen floor—

    “‘Tis rain fallen,” I muttered, “dripping on my kitchen floor—
            Only this and nothing more.”

    Ah, distinctly I remember that chill and bleak nascent October;
    As each accursed drop of water merged legion ‘pon the kitchen floor.

    Raging thus the pool to shallow; —vainly I sought towels to swallow;
    and from linen rack surcease of deluge—deluge from the upstairs Floor—

    From the queerly lun’tic dweller on the upstairs Floor—
    Nameless here for evermore.

     

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