100 Fact's

Lists of one hundred facts are always fascinating, right? For instance, here are some juicy morsels from Landismom's List:

23. I love gardening, but hate weeding.

...zzz...

27. I watch too much TV.

Now, Fist Fans, if you feel your head nodding down, lolling, and about to crash down upon your computer, down into a boredom-induced doze, down into one hundred years of blank, dreamless sleep - don't worry. I have a Landismom Fact that will certainly wake you up. A Fact that will make your eyes pop out from your head, and steam parp through your ears - if you're anything like me, that is.

Ready?

46. I've read Joyce's Ulysses twice, but never Finnegan's Wake.

What, not even the title?

Harry Hope and the Prisoner of the Tower

Harry, at Harry's Hope Saloon, apart from being blessed with the ability to express strange and unidentifiable noises phonetically, has been blessed to come across this "quite accidently." It seems he more deeply appreciates it than others, by comparison, in fact. I do hope he had a lovely Fourth of July.

Poor Harry - fearless war hero and braveheart, true American - feels misrepresented by the Freedom Tower. He believes the name to be embarrassing. Perhaps he'd prefer the name Free'dom To'wer, as, after all, one of his favorite novels is Finnegan's Wake. Time to awake Harry Hope.

Le Finnegan au Francais

This French blog casually poses the question,

27. Les divinateurs consultés par Saddam Husayn sont capables :
◊ d’expliquer comment Lance Armstrong a gagné 777 tours de France en buvant de l’eau plate
◊ d’expliquer où crèche le tigre helvète
◊ de réciter Finnegan’s Wake de James Joyce à l’envers et en hindi (Vincent d’ ?)

According to Google, that little teaser translates as,

27. The divinateurs consulted by Saddam Husayn are able:
◊ to explain how Lance Armstrong gained 777 turns of France by drinking plain water?
◊ to explain where crib the tiger helvète?
◊ to recite Finnegan's Wake of James Joyce to back and in hindi (Vincent of?)

It's quite possible this computerized translation lacks a little of the Gallic finesse of the original. Allow me to poeticize a la poing, pour le flavour Français:

27. Some crud about Saddam:
◊ some crap about cycling
◊ tigers explain card games in hell
◊ I do not understand the name of the book I'm smugly making reference to, please Fist out my foolish French eyes in vengance, my superior Brit neighbour from over the water

(The final choice is the correct answer, btw.)

(Vincent of?)

Over-reactive Fists

"So what," some say, "that the internet is stuffed full of fools pretending to have understood a book which they in fact don't, just in order for them to show off? Why not just leave them to their lameness?"

Their questions come to me like a plague of apostrophies, black shapes burying my eyes under a darkness of the deepest existential despair. So what, indeed. Why the hours of research, I ask myself. Why all the googling. Why the reading and the rooting. Why the sweaty, sleepless nights, staring into an earth of ignorance through my laptop screen. Why the naming, and shaming, and blaming?

Other questions come too, buried here in the blackness, echoing around this lonely cave of correctness - of titular truth - that I occupy alone, all alone. Who chose I, Fist, as Unapologetic Master of the Mutant Apostrophe? Is it the Shade of Joyce that speaks through me? Or Madness - the ghost of his schitzo daughter - wrecking her revenge upon one the few literarti of this ignorance-infested world?

And, yet,

clutching a copy of the Koran, he said that "the law compels me to chop off the head of anyone who insults Allah and the prophet"

I find that I, Fist, am no deliverer of death, just like the apostrofisteds, and so spare them a link from this post, just this time, in an offering of peace.

The Return of the Fist

When your city has been blown to smithereens, it gives you a new and deeper perspective on life and the importance of apostrophe's. Two weeks ago, for example, I might have told Matty, who spends his time upon this war-torn earth writing bitter whinings about celebrity photos, this:

"Matty, your profile lists one of your favourite books as Finnegan's Wake. However, that book doesn't exist. James Joyce in fact wrote a book called Finnegans Wake, you terrible fool. Please correct your error then jump in front of a bus."

Now my message is much more humane, and considered.

"Matty, I thank the fates and stars and gods that you are alive, and weren't blown to smithereens along with half of this war-torn world recently. For now you still have time upon this earth to do precious work. I mean, to correct the apostrophe you've added to Finnegans Wake in your profile. After that, may I suggest you tour London on the buses for a month or so, just to see see what happens?"

In other other news

He "had a machete in one hand, but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard’s mouth."

Who did? Daniel M’Mburugu, a 73 year old peasant farmer Kenyan, reports MSNBC news, when he killed the leopard that was attacking him.

Are you think what I'm thinking? That one less leopard is one less leopard coat of spots, with its messy mass of punctuation marks that make no sense?

Still in other news

How perverse. The little Scotty dog is, once again, same as any day, made happy by a tennis ball. Once again it curves above the park, till his squat legs catch it up, for him to return, wearing it like a yellow comedy nose. The ripped-red of half a bus, a wall dotted with blood - just distant shapes in black and white. Or, some other time and place, the rubble of a broken building - just a new space to sniff and pee. How perverse, that today, like me, he does not care for a mistaken apostrophe.

Time instead for my sister's birthday party. Enjoy your weekend.