Email from McNeil. He sent me an idea he had for a movie, and ended, on another subject, "Also, you have not blogged in a long time. Let's get on it." Maybe he hasn't heard I don't "blog" anymore... though to be fair, I have gone around telling everyone I'm "blogging" again in our time of national crisis. Anyway, I'm reading a book called THE LOST ART OF SCRIPTURE by Karen Armstrong. Now I'm on the part about ancient China! And I read this: "a choir of blind musicians sang an ode." There was a footnote appended to this phrase, and I was glad, because I was wondering about those blind musicians! "Why are the musicians blind?" I wondered. So I checked out the footnote. Here is the entire content of the footnote: "In ancient China, musicians were usually blind." That's it! And, well, I thought, "That's a frustrating footnote!" I felt the content of the footnote betrayed the promise of the footnote as as a medium. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized why it was there. You might read the passage and assume, as I did, that blind musicians were required for the particular ode under discussion. No, the footnote explains, they were blind just because if you hired a musician in ancient China, you were likely to get a blind musician. Huh! As long as I am here, I should tell you that I just saw Tom Selleck selling reverse mortgages on TV. He said that my retirement plan is "kind of wobbly, like this three-legged stool." Then he wobbled the stool he was sitting on and looked upset. "I've got a better idea!" he said. I changed channels. But as I flipped from channel to channel, I started to wonder if the plot of the commercial would pay off. I knew that Tom Selleck had a great way to augment my retirement plan, but I wondered if he would slip a coaster under the short leg of the stool or something. I prayed I wasn't too late to find out! I turned back just in time. Tom Selleck sat down with a grunt of pleasure in a velvet easy chair. "Now this isn't a three-legged stool," he said. "It's a reverse mortgage chair." Ha ha! That's what he called it. A "reverse mortgage chair." I am no doubt slightly paraphrasing some of the commercial copy, but not that part.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Footnote
Email from McNeil. He sent me an idea he had for a movie, and ended, on another subject, "Also, you have not blogged in a long time. Let's get on it." Maybe he hasn't heard I don't "blog" anymore... though to be fair, I have gone around telling everyone I'm "blogging" again in our time of national crisis. Anyway, I'm reading a book called THE LOST ART OF SCRIPTURE by Karen Armstrong. Now I'm on the part about ancient China! And I read this: "a choir of blind musicians sang an ode." There was a footnote appended to this phrase, and I was glad, because I was wondering about those blind musicians! "Why are the musicians blind?" I wondered. So I checked out the footnote. Here is the entire content of the footnote: "In ancient China, musicians were usually blind." That's it! And, well, I thought, "That's a frustrating footnote!" I felt the content of the footnote betrayed the promise of the footnote as as a medium. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized why it was there. You might read the passage and assume, as I did, that blind musicians were required for the particular ode under discussion. No, the footnote explains, they were blind just because if you hired a musician in ancient China, you were likely to get a blind musician. Huh! As long as I am here, I should tell you that I just saw Tom Selleck selling reverse mortgages on TV. He said that my retirement plan is "kind of wobbly, like this three-legged stool." Then he wobbled the stool he was sitting on and looked upset. "I've got a better idea!" he said. I changed channels. But as I flipped from channel to channel, I started to wonder if the plot of the commercial would pay off. I knew that Tom Selleck had a great way to augment my retirement plan, but I wondered if he would slip a coaster under the short leg of the stool or something. I prayed I wasn't too late to find out! I turned back just in time. Tom Selleck sat down with a grunt of pleasure in a velvet easy chair. "Now this isn't a three-legged stool," he said. "It's a reverse mortgage chair." Ha ha! That's what he called it. A "reverse mortgage chair." I am no doubt slightly paraphrasing some of the commercial copy, but not that part.
