Month: September 2003

And speaking of guys who Just Don’t Get It: Harold Bloom on Stephen King (LA Times registration required, found via Neil Gaiman). I thought he was a little out-of-touch and ultimately mistaken in his criticism of Harry Potter, but I could more or less understand his position. (Maybe partly because, while I liked the book, I wasn’t in awe and haven’t rushed to read the sequels.)

But Bloom’s criticism here of King is just mean, petty, and, as Gaiman writes, “puffed-up snobbery of the worst kind.”

Well, it looks like the storm didn’t complete pass us by. I went home for lunch this afternoon only to discover that the power was out in the building. No idea how long it’s been out, and I don’t have anything in the refrigerator that will immediately spoil (I almost never buy milk or eggs), but I’m hoping the electricity comes back on before I get home again this evening. Otherwise, I’ll have to swing by Walmart for a bag of ice, hope nothing’s been defrosted so much that it can’t still be saved in my tiny plastic cooler, and probably throw out the meat I’ve been defrosting for dinner tonight.

None of this, I expect, is all that interesting to any of you. But, really, who else am I going to tell?

The last time the power went out for any length of time in my building was last Halloween. It was out for almost two days.

It’s very hard to find something when you’re not quite sure what it is.

I’ve been searching for something that someone once said about William Butler Yeats. Except I don’t remember exactly who that someone was, or what that someone said. I think it was T.S. Eliot, and I think he was writing about Yeats’ apparently bugfuck spirituality (not Eliot’s words obviously), and I think he was quoted in an article or review I read in the Sunday New York Times a couple of years ago. But that’s all I’ve got. I even remember someone else quoting it back to me a few days later. I just haven’t a clue what Eliot, if it even was Eliot, said.

And it’s starting to drive me a little insane.