July 22
Friday, Jul. 22, 2016 - 19:24

You know how I've been drifting lately - aimlessly, sadly, piteously - but no more! Someone left a paperback copy of Gone with the Wind in our bathroom lending library at work this week! So I took it! Goddamn this is exactly what I needed! A mass market paperback! 1968! I've actually been sitting outside and reading in the evenings, which is something I've always dreamed of doing but have never been able to do. Because I never had a paperback copy of Gone with the Wind!

I've read Gone with the Wind before but it was a dumb old classic hardbound version and I was a teenager, so you can imagine how it went. This time around I am quite impressed by the writing and the level of detail. Margaret Mitchell didn't have the internet, how did she research all this crap? Agghh, my adult-ADHD-addled brain is barfing at the thought of all the work she had to do. Yeah I could have done it when I was 17 but these days, ehh, too much work.

The book starts out with some very anti-intellectual characters, the Tarleton twins and Scarlett O'Hara. The Tarletons were getting drunk and shooting each other and getting kicked out of universities and were very proud and defensive of that lifestyle. Scarlett famously has a tiny waist but at the start of the book she is 16 years old. She's not a full-grown adult! Of course she's tiny. I grew two more inches after I was 16. Look at high school football players - they aren't fully grown yet! They're little kids! Sixteen-year-olds are only 16 years old!

Anyway, so, anti-intellectualism isn't new at all.

I went home at lunch and was looking in the garden for some lettuce for my BLT and guess what I found! Beans! Wow! I also found lettuce, hidden under the beans. Will plant more beans so the puppy and his roommate can have some when they get back - these are good beans.

I've written and deleted things here, tedious things. I've been writing this entry all week in fact.

I'm going camping all next week. The weather should be perfect! I plan to get super dirty and stinky and tan, and I will paint my toenails gold.