Game of Thrones is over?

Huh, imagine that.

Winter of Discontent

More than any year previous - or perhaps unlike any year previous, I have been annoyed, burdened, depressed, and plain turned off by the Christmas preemptives. I have always been able to let it go and chalk it up to the world's sort of naive festive way of anticipating Christmas. It has never been from the standpoint of a snob, or "taking it in stride", but simply seeing the positive in it, and really I have never had to make an effort. I like the charm as much as anyone.

I'm not one to boast about how I put up decorations on Christmas Eve (I typically decorate around Gaudete), and while I give a spontaneous dearth-like sigh at the first lights going up at the start of November, I have never gone into the fray as it were. But I can't do it any more. By that I mean I don't have the strength any longer to deny or fend off the weight of depression that hits me, as when for instance someone wishes me a merry Christmas in the first week of December. You just kind of want to go under a rock and die. One of the stupid ironies of the conservative campaign to get corporations to say "Merry Christmas" to their customers is the banalizing of what a Christmas greeting ought to be. Really, I would actually be happier if someone in the time of Advent, which is not Christmas time, just cheerily said to me, "Season's Greetings!" Exactly.

I want Advent. I've always loved Advent, and have always wanted it be slowed down to the slowest possible capacity. And I don't like the warm purple Advent candles; I like the cold purple Advent candles.

I simply want to have the quiet presence of Jesus born in my heart - in the deep stillness. From that everything flows.

And those images of immigrant children and families in cages...how can one justify that?

'Eat earth! Dig deep!

Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking!'

The best apple I have ever eaten

Or the best apple I ever ate.

Both sentences are legitimate and perfectly viable English grammar. The only arguable part is the word "ever". For it may not be "ever". We need to cut back on "ever". (Just like we need to cut back on "beyond".) Only if I died tomorrow would the sentence be true with "ever", for tomorrow - and tomorrow, and tomorrow - I could, and hope to, eat an apple yet that will take the title "best".

For there are many apples, and many apples I have not eaten or ate (I love how you southerners say ate instead of eaten - it's perfectly excellent grammar). I'm just a newbie when it comes to knowing the tastes and textures of the vast array of apples. And further, apples do not differ from each other in the way that - say, mangoes differ from each other. Certain apples can take on such a distinctive profile as to induce this commonly known phrase among pomologists: "If you were to eat this blindfolded, you would not know that it was an apple." For this reason you would not be far amiss to say that apples are the most universal fruit.

The two apples in the picture are not, and yet are, the apple I am referring to when I say, "The best apple I have ever eaten." For those are apples from the tree from which I had the best apple I ever ate, but neither of them are the apple. That picture was taken 2015. The best apple I ever ate was one from the same tree only last year, 2017.

I do not know the variety of this apple tree. It grows by a horse trail. The two apples in my hand were picked, and just under ripe. No matter. When they are not quite peaked in ripeness they are intense. Have one and your mouth goes raw. Have two and your stomach lining is in a questionable state. Of course I ate both, one after the other, for they are complex - intensely sweet and intensely...sour? I don't like using the word sour in this case, because sour too often refers to something that has spoiled, like sour milk. Anyways, the rawnesss of both mouth and stomach didn't last long - it's no matter to me. Many wimps today with overly domesticated palettes would not be able to get past one bite.

But when they ripen to full peak - now that is what I'm getting at here. The best apple I ever ate had fallen from the tree. It was lying by the trail in dusty grass, just a few feet away from a pile of horse dung. I wiped the dust off the best I could on my shirt and took a bite.

I wouldn't know how to describe it. Champagne? But I'm not a fan of champagne. I don't know. It was amazing. Just in case you might be thinking, "Ah, Paul, the apple was starting to ferment" - no, it wasn't. It was perfectly ripe, nowhere near overripe. The burst of sharp intensity, the warmth of it - not just the warmth of the apple basking in the sun, but the warmth of the flavour. It was a taste that completely filled the mouth, exuberant, superabundant.

The knowledge that we have of apples according to what we get from the supermarkets is impoverished, to say the least.

Just like our notion of heaven.

Excellent translation

If you want literal:





It's actually a very well written exchange between the two, precisely because it is comprised entirely of classic Latin sayings. The inferences run deep and sharp.

In fact, the colloquial translation, while generally excellent, doesn't really communicate the fast-paced piling on that is occurring - especially when Doc Holliday says "Requiescat in pace".

Ringo opens an idea of an insult, while Holliday closes each of Ringo's insults on themselves.

Very good writing.