Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility

Oh, so you say you CAN handle the kind of stuff McNeil and I talk about? All right. I'll give you the straight skinny, and then you'll be sorry. So McNeil sends an email: "Reading The Apocryphon of John and it's blowing my mind. BOOOOOM. In a way it makes the vicissitudes (!!look at my big word there!!) of the OT God a little easier to understand. I said a little. And I'm talking bout the Monad, y'all...which is what people really should be worshipping, I guess." All right! So it looks like McNeil is starting a cult and trying to get me to worship "The Monad." So I'm like, hey, I think I have that book around here somewhere. But I look all around and I can't find it. BUT THEN! I remember an anthology called THE GNOSTIC BIBLE, which is on a shelf behind glass, and I have to move my blood pressure machine to get to it, and I can barely be bothered to make the effort. Finally, I drag my old carcass over there and take it down and I'm like, hey! And I email McNeil: "one of the sections is called The Secret Book of John, which seems to correspond to the book you're talking about. For example, it mentions 'The One,' which a footnote explains is 'The Monad.' And so on. So let's get busy, Apocryphon style!" And there was some other stuff McNeil brought up about A.I., but let's not get into that right now. We have enough problems! Oh yeah, and McNeil had given me an assignment, which was to study "the passage about halfway through, maybe, where man is created. There is a long long list of people who worked on the project - and how they felt about it afterward." I still haven't done that. Sorry! So McNeil follows up with "There should be a place we meet and discuss the Apocryphon - a place like Omaha or Des Moines - and in a pergola near a nature preserve or something so it seems spiritual and also inexpensive. We could wear hats like they do in Masters of Atlantis." And I shoot back my own suggestion: Yankton, South Dakota! McNeil goes "At that pizza place you're obsessed with - but only if they can provide us with a SCIF." And I don't know what the hell a SCIF is and McNeil has to explain it to me. But about this pizza place... see, for my 60th birthday, I thought McNeil and I could meet at a pizza place I knew about through one tweet, back when twitter existed. The way I remember it now, this place had a pizza with crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on it, which was named (the pizza was) after Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Because you know how much they loved crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on a pizza! I even looked up local forms of entertainment and I think I found several casinos in the area. Alas, that plan came to nothing. A lot of things came to nothing that year. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Hey! Speaking of religion, I see that the announcement is up at Square Books: I'll be "in conversation" with Tom Franklin about his new novel DEVILWOOD in February! So I can finally tell you... remember when I said I was reading a manuscript with owl balls in it but it doesn't mean what you think it means? Well, that book with the owl balls in it is DEVILWOOD, as can finally be revealed. Owl balls!

The Short Version

You know, several days ago, McNeil and I had a pretty good thread going about James Franciscus, and in my heart I was like, "Oh, there's a rich vein of 'bloggable' material here." Then I was like, "Well, I better find a photo of James Franciscus, because no one knows who he is." Then I was like, "Gee, how am I going to explain what McNeil and I are talking about?" Then I realized that once I began explaining James Franciscus, I would have to explain a lot more things, and pretty soon I'd be explaining the universe. And then I got depressed. The short version is that McNeil got some information about a James Franciscus movie from one of his old books, but when he consulted the "internet" about it, he discovered that THERE IS NOT EVEN A SINGLE ALLUSION TO THIS MOVIE ANYWHERE ON THE "INTERNET." And then McNeil blamed Elon Musk for creating this new reality we live in, in which the James Franciscus movie McNeil wants to see has been erased from what we laughingly call "existence." We laughingly call it that! Laughingly! Anyway, the main thing is you know three things about me: I have a "daytime" book I read during the day. I have a "nighttime" book I read at night. And I have proven that every book has an owl in it. Therefore, it should come as no shock that yesterday during the day I found an owl in my daytime book and during the night I found an owl in my nighttime book. But let's dig deeper! Just like a burrowing owl! My daytime book is a Million Dollar Book Club selection by J. Hoberman, all about the avant-garde art scene in New York in the 1960s. In a footnote, I noticed a place called "The Night Owl Cafe." And I was like, "You can't hide from me in a footnote, owl!" So, at night, I'm reading... well, remember when I was reading that James Ellroy book while I took my blood pressure? And I chose it because it had a reliable-looking and charming spine? But I didn't really care for the words on the pages of the book itself? Anyway, I was in Square Books the other day and I bought the sequel (see also). So the narrator calls Richard Nixon a "foul owl on the prowl." A few pages later, someone calls our narrator a "night owl." And that reminded me of how James Ellroy seems to love the phrase "night owl." And who can blame him? I will conclude with the astonishing fact that in yesterday's reading, both my nighttime book and my daytime book namechecked the film THE CRY OF JAZZ (see also). All of which reminds me, Dr. Theresa says I'm supposed to take my blood pressure today.

I Hate Everything

I keep seeing this commercial where some curly-haired jackass bites into a giant freaking hamburger on a pretzel bun and then he is magically transported to a "pub" because this giant freaking hamburger on a pretzel bun is just like being in a "pub." And I sit there thinking, is that what people eat in pubs? A giant freaking hamburger on a pretzel bun? That looks like it has a lot of gross stuff crammed onto it? And then I think, what is a pub? I've been in a couple of pubs but they were in Scotland, so does that count? And I just asked Dr. Theresa, hey, says I, remember that place that called itself a pub that was on our street in Atlanta? And both of us remembered it and could even picture it, but we couldn't remember the name. But so what? Is it a pub just because you call it a pub? Anyway, I hate everything.

Names

I told you how everyone in OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH has a nickname. Over halfway through volume three, we meet a guy called "the Ugly Son-in-Law." This guy is so ugly... and it sounds like I'm about to tell a Rodney Dangerfield joke, but it's just part of the plot... he's so ugly his wife dies from looking at him! Speaking of names, I saw the rapper-turned-actor Ludacris in a vitamin commercial. Ludacris tries drinking an unpleasant smoothie, but he just can't do it! In disgust, he exclaims, "Man, when did health get so LUDICROUS?" I view this as lazy writing. Sorry, writer of the Ludacris vitamin commercial! Anyway, Ludacris puts aside the terrible smoothie and happily takes his vitamin. So he should have used the homonym (if that's the correct term) for his own name as a positive thing. It should have been saved for the end of the commercial, when he's happy. He should have swallowed his pleasant vitamin and said, "Man, health just got LUDICROUS!" Like it's a good thing. I am seeing some problems with this approach. I do not envy you, vitamin writer! It may interest you to know that I saw two different Ludacris commercials for two different products back-to-back! Immediately before the vitamin commercial, Ludacris and the race car driver Danica Patrick were trying to talk me into getting some kind of insurance (?) that pays for your auto repairs. They were like, "Who's going to pay for your next car repair? YOU?" They meant it in an encouraging way, in that it wouldn't have to be me if I just paid a small monthly fee for their service instead. But the tone struck me as "Who's going to pay for your next car repair? YOU? Don't make me laugh! Look at yourself! You couldn't pay for a stick of gum!" You may ask where I encountered back-to-back Ludacris ads. Why, on the old people channel, of course. The old people channel is what I call the channel that shows things old people might like, for example, the sitcom HAZEL, which is about a wisecracking maid who helps rich, often withered, white people get everything they desire. My relationship with HAZEL is complex. I guess I talk about it a lot. In recognition, Ace Atkins bought me a HAZEL coffee mug I drink from at least three days a week. Most other days I drink from a souvenir mug from the Smoke House that Ace brought back from a trip to Los Angeles. And when both of those are unanvailable, I drink from a giant mug that informs me I am a "diamond in a rhinestone world." Ace got me that one too. Maybe that's what he really thinks! Anyway, Ace buys most of my clothes and personal kitchen accessories.

Zoological Adjustments

Well, well, well. I guess you'd think I was pretty foolish if I went out and bought the first few books of Aristotle's METAPHYSICS just so I could fact-check Thomas Aquinas when he says there's an owl in it. But that's just what I did. And hold onto your hats! There's NOT an owl in it! Here's what it says in my brand spanking new (by which I mean 1933) translation of the METAPHYSICS: "just as it is with bats' eyes in respect to daylight, so it is with our mental intelligence..." That's right! It's bats! Not owls! NOW what are you saying? I bet you're saying "Money well spent!" I troubled myself to scrounge about halfheartedly on the "internet" to find out why Aquinas says owls instead of bats. And you know, I found out a couple of things, sort of. I skimmed over a scholarly article called "Power and Limits of the Human Mind: On the Arabic Reception of the Analogy of Bats and Daylight..." Look. There's more to the subtitle but I'm getting tired of typing. It's like an email I got from McNeil this morning. He was writing about the movie DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! but had the energy to type only "Dr. ... kidding" (ellipses McNeil's). And I mocked him for it! But look at me now. Anyway, if I'm reading it correctly, this guy (his name is Amos Bertolacci) says that when translating from Greek to Latin, people began subsituting "owl" for "bat." And he explains why, but I don't think I understood it. Here, I'll quote it for you: "The interpretations of the bats’ analogy in Latin philosophy and theology have a different character from the ones considered here: Latin translators from Greek made Aristotle’s text less problematic by means of zoological adjustments, i.e. by identifying Aristotle’s bats with other night animals (night ravens or owls)." Then he goes on to say that some people even substituted eagles for bats! That's just crazy. (The latter being my conclusion, not Mr. Bertolacci's.) The article led me to another "web" site containing, in full, Thomas Aquinas's critique of Averroes's gloss on Aristotle's metaphysics, where I read with my own two eyes and my own pea-sized brain Aquinas taking Averroes to task for his bat observations... leading me to conclude (and bear in mind "I ain't no doctor with a degree" to quote Aretha Franklin) that Aquinas knew very well that they were bats in the original, not owls! All of this is to come to the shocking point: for the FIRST TIME EVER, I am going to REMOVE a book from my BIG LONG LIST OF BOOKS WITH OWLS IN THEM. So long, Aristotle. You had your chance! And you blew it. To quote Bill Boyle imitating Robert De Niro in COP LAND, "YOU BLEW IT!!!!!"

Aquinas Mania!

I'm sure you've been keeping up with the adventures of Jerky the Li'l Jerk, that rascally rapscallion who has stolen America's heart by telling people to go to hell. In that case, there is no need to remind you of Jerky's recent encounter with Thomas Aquinas. In order to compose that little masterpiece, I first fetched my "concise translation" of the SUMMA THEOLOGICA. Well, friends, that "concise translation" was a little TOO "concise"! Ha ha, what a fix. So I had to crawl around on the "internet" in search of the mot juste, as I call it. Then I started thinking, "Jack," I started thinking, "why don't you have a COMPLETE edition of the SUMMA THEOLOGICA in several volumes like a normal person?" So I tracked down just such a set. I made it to page three of the first volume, you will be impressed to hear. And that's where I read about "the weakness of our intelligence, 'which is dazzled by the clearest objects of nature; as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun.'" As you can plainly see, due to my expert rendering of the punctuation, Aquinas is quoting from something there, which appears to be, based on his note, the METAPHYSICS of Aristotle. All right! That means that not only does the SUMMA THEOLOGICA have an owl in it, it borrows that owl from another work with an owl in it, a nesting phenomenon, if you will, which we have examined before, and I would include a "hyperlink" to prove it, but I'm starting to depress myself. And you! (Please "click" on this important correction.)

Chicago Millionaire

My current "nighttime book," as I call it because I read it at night, is an Elmore Leonard western. In it, we meet a millionaire from Chicago who comes out west to show off with the fancy pair of guns he keeps in a rosewood box. He shoots "bottles, cans, pine cones at twenty paces, chimpmunks, ground squirrels, ospreys and horned owls." Don't worry, something bad happens to him. Anyway, this means that GUNSIGHTS is a book with an owl in it, a type of book I have devoted my life to cataloging, I guess. No one told me it would be like this.