LOREN EISELEYIs there now, that I might have missed,
Some literary naturalist
Writes half so wisely
As Loren Eiseley?
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Eiseleyan Clerihew
LOREN EISELEYIs there now, that I might have missed,
Some literary naturalist
Writes half so wisely
As Loren Eiseley?
Daily Dose
From The Will to Power, by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter KaufmannVIRGIN NIETZSCHE
"And self-admiration is healthy! Self-admiration protects against colds. Has a pretty woman who knew herself to be well dressed ever caught cold? Never! I am even assuming that she was barely dressed."
From 807 (Summer-Fall 1888)
Monday, January 30, 2012
A Preliminary Notion
I have a friend who loves fish. Sensible people do, of course; fried, baked, smoked, etc. My friend loves them live, fish, little ones mostly, pretty ones. When he watches them they mesmerize him and make him content. His fish are all beautiful, bright, fast and slow. I do like listening to my friend, a poet, when he's on about his fish, or fish in general. He works, don't you know, my friend, in an aquarium. He has aquariums -- less grand than those at work, of course, but lovely -- all at one end of his apartment. Going to a big aquarium here when he visited us, was genuinely fun.
Anyway, I started recording some poems about fish, and the sea, and the shore, to post here, mostly for my friend to find. I sent him a connection to one of these, "To Fish," by Leigh Hunt. It's a funny little poem, all flutey horror at the ugliness of fish, the dullness of their lives, their lack of conversation. Most amusing, I thought. Friend seemed to like it fine.
I mentioned I might, or that I should, illustrate the poem, maybe make a little book out of that poem, with pictures of some wonderfully ugly fish, with which Nature seems to have amused herself aplenty.
My friend's been most encouraging.
I've never drawn fish, really. I've doodled one or two before, to amuse said friend I suppose, but when I tried to make them as pretty as my friend's fish, well... The key might be in drawing just the ugly ones, which I like better and which might better suit my small talent for jokes. Here's a first then, just to try my hand, push the pencil around a little and see what comes of it. I like it well enough.
We'll see. I've never thought before to make just such a little book from just such a comic little poem. We'll see.
Daily Dose
From Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Childrens' Literature, by Leonard S, MarcusMARY MAPES DODGE, ED.
"It was a question of balance, of taste, and above all art. 'Harsh, cruel facts -- if they must come, and sometimes it is important that they should -- must march boldly, say what they have to say, and go.'"
From Chapter 2, Wonder in the Wake of War
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Daily Dose
From The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World, by Jaroslav Hašek, translated by Cecil ParrottJUST LIKE
"It's just like war. First we defeat our enemy, then we pursue him on and on and in the end we can't run fast enough to get away from him."
From 3, Švejk's Adventure in Királyhida
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Daily Dose
From Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, by Susan OrleanNO
"No actors, including extras, that appeared on The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin were allowed to work on Lassie. When a reporter for the Los Angeles Times asked if the Hooker brothers, the show's regular stuntmen, ever worked with Lassie, Lee snapped, 'The Hooker boys are under strict contract to be bitten exclusively by Rin Tin Tin.'"
From Chapter 15
Friday, January 27, 2012
Daily Dose
From When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David SedarisTHE ALLURE
"The allure of art had always been that my parents knew nothing about it."
From Adult Figures Charging Toward Concrete Toadstool
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Daily Dose
From Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah VowellTHERE IS
"There's a big difference between asking foreign troops' help in getting a few sore losers to stop throwing people out of windows and using foreign troops to facilitate a coup d'état."
From page 176
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Daily Dose
From Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope and Several of His FriendsON TRANSLATING HOMER
"Tis no comfortable prospect to be reflecting, that so long a siege as that of Troy lies upon my hands, and the campagne above half over before I have made any progress."
From Letter LX, to Mr. Addison, and dated Jan. 30, 1713-4
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Fat Horace & My Big Print Pope
Recently, I had Homer, our bookstore's Espresso Book Machine, make me some Horace. (How much fun was that? Just me? Really? Fine. I amuse myself.) Frankly, I don't now remember what brought me to Horace, but I had decided, by the Gods, I needed some more. I had a not unsatisfactory newish book of modern poets translating some of the Odes. More interesting as an exercise and as an anthology than as a translation of Horace. I also had access to the truly hideous prose Horace currently available in the Loeb Library -- horrible, literal, mingy little book. And finally, I had, foolishly, a little Latin Horace with just a key etc., that I ridiculously thought I might be able to read with translations and a dictionary to hand and so on. (Scratch that last ambition, by the bye. Not going to happen. Maybe in retirement, I should live so long and the bookstore not ever go under.) So specifically what I wanted was the Odes and Epistles, more than the Satires, in English other than new. What I really wanted was Horace by way of Dr. Johnson's favorite Classics scholar, Richard Bentley. (I ended up reprinting and reading some scholarly essays , and a fat, two volume life of the prickly Dr. Bentley of Cambridge into the bargain -- go figure -- but that for another time.) After a thorough scan of the database, the nearest Horace I found in English was a fat little thing, primarily translated by one Philip Francis, D. D., but a few diverse other hands in as well, and including all of Bentley's notes. The EBM reprint promised to be a substantial, if smallish object in two volumes, measuring no more than six and a half by four and a half, but with close to 600 pages.
After printing the Bentley essays and James Henry Monk's biography of same in two biggish books, Homer made me my Horace, but split him into two volumes, just not presumably into the two volumes as originally divided. In fact, Volume One ended up having more than three quarters of the total text and Volume Two came in looking like a supplemental pamphlet of maybe two hundred. Very weird. Moreover, Volume Two actually starts, quite arbitrarily, in the middle of something already in the first volume of the Google Book; twenty some pages reprinted in common between them. So strange. "The Art of Poetry" , and the long Appendix of "Translations of various odes, etc., by Ben Jonson, etc.," that last et cetera including Pope and Dryden and even, yes, our Dr. Bentley, constituting nearly whole of the brief second volume.
No, I don't imagine anyone finds all this remotely as interesting as I do. (Can't tell you this is going to pick up any time soon, to be honest, but thanks for soldiering on with me, friend.) Don't trouble about Horace, or Bentley, or any of that just this minute though. Why, I ask, would the EBM database produce such a strangely split thing? If it was scanned into Google Books as two volumes, surely they did not originally look like this, with roughly twenty five pages in common and the break in the middle of a poem?!
Anyway, I've been enjoying my Horace, in all his many shapes and sizes. Most immediately accessible and familiar Latin poet bar none, for me at least, even if embarrassingly only in translation. Total cost of my Horace project of reprints on the EBM at the bookstore to date? Five, no, six volumes, and a total of less than fifty bucks.
I'm telling you, this machine has honestly changed my reading life. Think about it. I'm in my third decade of working and hanging out in good bookstores. I've had access, all these years, to just about every kind of book; new and used, scholarly and pop, expensive and clearanced. Still. Never before, on little more than a whim of curiosity -- the very best kind of whim if one must suffer them, I find -- I can now pursue not just one Horace but many, and from him to his best English editor, notes know to Johnson, and some of the best translations, in and out of print, ever. Can you imagine collecting these books, even if they could be found at affordable prices?
And that brings me to my most recent acquisition by means of the mighty machine. Much the best thing I've done with the EBM has been to reprint great and classic letters. Horace here again, but also Cowper, and Thomas Gray, Miss Edgeworth, etc. One writer I've wanted but been frustrated in finding among the available Google Books has been Alexander Pope. Now, why, I would ask the mysterious spirits of American publishing? Pope's letters are in every list of great English letters. So why not reprinted? That, I can't answer. I can say that I have hesitated to have printed for me the one edition I found listed because, in looking at the available preview of the contents, I found that the book Google scanned was an edition so old as to have those damned long Ss, you know, the ones that read to contemporary eyes as a lower case f. Read two rather rare editions of Bacon when I couldn't find them printed any other way, back when, and just managed. (Can't read so much as a modern label on a ketchup-bottle while reading such old books, that's my advice, because any modern text and the eye immediately reverts to reading more normally. Most annoying.) I kept hoping to find something of Pope's letters in a more modern edition, but no. So, just this week I finally broke down and ordered the Pope with long Ss.
What I was not prepared for was the size of the volume the machine made. This thing is crazy big. Just look at it! In fact, the format is so large, that the covers won't even come all the way out to the edge of the pages. Cardboard's not long enough! Never in the dozens of books I've had printed to date have I ever seen the like. Biggest book off the EBM ever. I've been assured, formated any bigger and the thing would not have printed at all. Damn.
Above is the title page, just to give you some idea of the charm of these old things, even just as paperback reprints. Very nice. The size of the thing, though! But wait! I'm sure that this formatting is just some kind of data entry error at Google Books, or the EBM company or what have you. Looking at the inside of the book, there is no way this book was ever this big before. Everything about the layout and font, to my eye, suggests something, if anything so small as to be inexpensive enough for students, back in the day, consequently, so small as to be quite hard on older eyes lie mine, even with my powerful new split-level prescription. So, unlike the weird, but ultimately unimportant and arbitrary split in volumes one and two of the Horace in translation -- or my Laurel and Hardy Reprint as I've come affectionately to think of them -- this unexpectedly Big Print Pope, turns out to be a flat out blessing.
Remember the S that looks like an f? Turns out that that annoyance is actually made a bit easier if the words are freakin' HUGE. Who knew? So, here we have it, my first large print book to go with my new Phil Silvers bifocals.
And it really is worth it, whatever the format in which I finally found these letters. First time I open the book to actually read a letter, rather than to just goggle at in the ungainly thing, and I read the following:
"Now I talk of my dog, that I may not treat of a worse subject which my spleen tempts me to, I will give you some account of him; a thing not wholly unprecedented, since Montagne (to whom I am but a dog in comparison) has done the same thing of his cat."
And off we go in a truly delightful fashion. True, what I am actually reading looks more like, "... that I may not treat of a worfe fubject which my fpleen tempts me to..." -- how loopy is that to start? -- but still, grand good fun. (No, "fun," not "sun". You get used to it, for the most part, honest.)
Pope got in trouble for fixing up and editing his letters before publication. Critics thought that dishonest, I guess. Horace too sometimes is chided for writing what amounted to public letters to private, real persons and friends, but come now, do we care? I'm not reading either gentleman in order to write a paper. Both gentlemen are very good company, I find, even in translation, and or funny print. And both can are now mine -- and can be yours! -- for less than the price of a large lunch.
All hail Homer, says I, and good, ol' fat Horace, and wee Alexander Pope, the monkey, finally made large!
Daily Dose
From Horace, Volume Two, Appendix, translation by John EvelynLYDIA
"Lydia, I conjure you, say,
Why hate you so to make away
Poor Sybaria with love?
Why hates he now the open air?
Why heat, and clouds of dust to bear,
Does he no more approve?"
From Ode VIII, To Lydia
Monday, January 23, 2012
Daily Dose
From The Complete Poems, by Thomas HardyHE SEES
"He sees the world as a boisterous place
Where all things bear a laughing face,
And humorous scenes go hourly on,
Does John."
From John and Jane
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Daily Dose
From Great Expectations, by Charles DickensPOCKETS
"Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most excellent practical advice, and for having a clear and sound perception of things and a highly judicious mind, I had some notion in my heartache of begging him to accept my confidence. But, happening to look up at Mrs. Pocket as she sat reading her book of dignities after prescribing Bed as a sovereign remedy for baby, I thought — Well — No, I wouldn’t."
From Chapter 33
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Daily Dose
From The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Samuel PutnamNO
"'There is no road so smooth,' said Sancho, 'that it does not have some hole or rut to make you stumble.'"
From Chapter XIII, In which is continued the adventure of the Knight of the Wood, together with the shrewd, highly original, and amicable conversation that took place between the two squires.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Daily Dose
From The Issa Valley, by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Louis IribarneOUR WORDS
"The more we can show by our words that we are in control of our demise, the surer we are it will never come to pass."
From Chapter 50
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Daily Dose
From A Dissertation Upon Roast Pork and Other Essays, by Charles LambAND TO ME
"I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of believing me, were I to tell them what tobacco has been to me, the drudging service which I have paid, the slavery which I have vowed to it."
From Confessions of a Drunkard
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Quick Review
No stars. Of all the bad recent books on Mary lamb, and her inseparable brother, Charles, this was easily the most disappointing. Ackroyd has become the premier literary hack of his generation; churning out books, fiction and not, of such embarrassing insufficiency, both as narrative and history, as to reduce all other profligates to pikers. Ackroyd's formula is now basically a first person Wiki -- with less fact checking. This hurried little number recycles every ugly psychological supposition and is only a novel in the sense of not requiring specific acknowledgement of the second and third rate theorists from whom these ideas were nicked. And did I mention? not really even much to do with the Lambs. An embarrassing effort, even by Ackroyd's increasingly lax standards.
Daily Dose
From The Prince, by Niccolò MachiavelliOTHERWISE
"Things can not be otherwise, since men will always do badly by you unless they are forced to be virtuous."
From XXIII, How flatterers must be shunned
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Quick Review
A didactic and surprisingly clumsy lesson in embarrassingly familiar 20th Century American history, and equally creaky narrative techniques. This is the unpublished novel your Social Studies teacher kept in his home office, on hard-discs.
Quick Review
No stars, poor soul. As adorable and funny as The Nerdist, Chris Hardwick is on TV and his podcast, turns out his self help book is about as funny as a self help book. (There are exercises, people. Actual, physical workouts.) Back to just collecting semi-nude screen-captures of my favorite nerd-meat. Sigh.
Daily Dose
From The Inner Life, by Thomas à KempisA SINGLE VOICE
"A book is but a single voice, but is not equally profitable to all who read it."
From Chapter 43, A Warning against Vain and Worldly Learning
Monday, January 16, 2012
Daily Dose
From The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated by Maxwell Staniforth#14
"Everything is banal in experience, fleeting in duration, sordid in content; in all respects the same today as generations now dead and buried have found it to be."
From Book Nine
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Daily Dose
From On Natural Selection, by Charles DarwinAS
"As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications."
From Natural Selection, Summary of Chapter
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Quick Review
There is no greater living practitioner of the creepy nasty than Oates. A marvelous collection of disturbing stories, all grounded in a weird and wistful nostalgia -- maybe? -- for an American landscape still open to at least the possibility of escape. No getting away from the horror here.
Daily Dose
From My Lady Nicotine, by J. M. BarrieRALEIGH
"When Raleigh, in honour of whom England should have changed its name, introduced tobacco into this country, the glorious Elizabethan age began."
From Chapter XIII, The Grandest Scene in History
Friday, January 13, 2012
Daily Dose
From An Apology for Idlers, by Robert Louis StevensonOUT OF THE WIND
"The pleasure to be out of the wind, and to keep it in memory all the time, and hug oneself upon the shelter."
From On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Daily Dose
From The Winter's Tale, by William ShakespeareYET
"Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean..."
From Polixenes, Act IV, Scene IV
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Mindful Clerihew
THICH NHAT HANHNow, don't you fawn
On Thích Nhất Hạnh.
One must not trouble the sage,
As he's already engaged.
Quick Review
As always, the coolest chick in the psych ward, the Kennedy dinner party, or poolside with Liz. I pretend I know Carrie Fisher because she is just that much fun.
Daily Dose
From Bye and Bye: Selected Poems, by Charles WrightTHE MORE
"The more we talked, the more our tongues tied."
From The Narrow Road to the Distant City
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Daily Dose
From Better Dead, by J. M. BarrieGENIUS
"Genius was written on his brow. He may have written it himself, but it was there."
From Chapter II
Monday, January 9, 2012
Daily Dose
From Bye and Bye: Selected Poems, by Charles WrightDEATH
"Death is the mother of nothing.
This is a fact of life,
And exponentially sad..."
From Twilight of the Dogs
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Daily Dose
From God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem, by Darrell HammondTHEY
"Joel Osteen, who is a very gifted speaker who draws his advise from the Bible, said 'Respect your parents.' And I thought, Until they stab you."
From Chapter Seven, Blood on the Floor, New York City, 1998
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Tell
Have you ever hated a phrase? I mean with a real -- hence irrational -- hatred: the way one may hate the atonal scale, the smell of sulfur, televised political debates, or basil in sweet drinks? Everyone hates something. Makes no more sense than most of what we love. No explanation necessary. Hate the smell? Avoid bad eggs. Love Trucker porn? I know a tumblr. Get on as best you can. But then there are the things that can not be entirely avoided: mosquitoes, road construction, relatives, etc. There's bad grammar, bad French, the French, Republicans -- the world's full of the most infuriating nonsense, yes? What I find most remarkable is how much one may and probably ought to just let slide. I work eight hours a day on a retail sales-floor, sugar, I know whereof I speak. I wouldn't be there, I honestly don't think, if I didn't want to be, if I didn't enjoy it, mostly, if I didn't think I could take it. Part of my job. One of the things that as an independent bookseller I do best, have opinions of my own, but what I do mostly is listen to other people's. In fact, I do my job better when I can solicit yours, but in the absence of that, or when I'm asked directly, then yes, I can tell you what I really think.I don't, with customers, much. We want our opinions confirmed. If I can't quite bring myself to agree with you that Young Adult is a category of grown up thing, or that the best minds of our time write Science Fiction, or personally recommend something for a sixteen year old girl who hates to read, well... let's see how I can sell you a book anyway. I know how to smile, by God.
It's different with coworkers, even bosses sometimes, some bosses. Don't ask me, you don't want to know. You don't even have to ask me. I will tell you what I think. Let's be honest, I'll probably just talk and you might walk right into it.
I don't mean to be disagreeable or a boor, I really don't. I can only apologize.
So, then. Okay, you know what I hate? Let's see... I hate incompetence, my own and or other people's. Oh, yeah, and I hate indifference, mediocrity, laziness, cruelty. All very noble, I'm sure, right? You know what else I fucking hate? I fucking hate the following phrase:
"Tell us what you really think, Brad!"
Oh, fuck off.
That, while said with varying degrees of affection or offense, is what that phrase means. That's what I hear, anyway. Be quiet. Shut up. Stop talking. Don't argue with me. Leave me be. Oh, fuck off, please. It means, Brad, you are boring someone, you are being too loud, you have talked too long, you have said too much, you are being inappropriate, Brad, I am not persuaded by what you have already said.
Clearly, I have what my generation called "issues," which is yet another way of saying, Brad, please stop getting so red. We are afraid you are going to die.
That's a tell, by the way. Makes me bad a poker-player as well as complicating insincere conversation; blood-pressure I'm sure, from blush to boil in under five seconds. (Probably a bit of remembered shame and or childhood embarrassment mixed in that red face too.)
I really think the reason that phrase pisses me off no matter who says it to me, no matter how sweetly it's said, is that I'm hardly an exception to most social norms. I'm not. I don't actually tell most people what I think. No one does. In fact, it's a pretty clear symptom of a pretty severe behavioral impediment, if not flat out mental illness to say always what one thinks. Who does that?!
You may already have some notion of the kind of trouble I usually manage to avoid most days because I am not actually a complete fool. I do not for instance ever say anything to anyone about their weight unless they have clearly stated that they have in fact started running again, or the baby's due soon, or some other good news need be acknowledged. I'm fat. I'm as fat as I've ever been and hopefully as fat as I'm likely to ever get. Hopefully. It is funny, if I do say so, seeing me pick a nickel up off the floor. It is never okay, however, in case any of the idiots who have said something similar to me over the holidays should think I didn't mind, to tell me what a delightful Santa I would make for the kiddies this year! Clever you! I don't actually much mind being fat, but fuck you for saying so, you rude, unfunny, drunky, bitter old spinster, and a very Merry Christmas to you, my dear! See? I don't say that, and you keep the jolly Ol' Saint Nick shit to yourself.
You want to know what I think of Roland Barthes? Really? Young man, why would you care what I think about semiotics? I'm sure you're up for the challenge, and better you than me, ha ha, and may I show you anything else?
I'm sure we do have the latest Ann Coulter, right over here. I'm sure you're right, she is very popular, sir, though not perhaps so much this side of the mountains, ha ha, and may I help you find anything else?
That's the job.
I suppose it does tell on me, all these years, being helpful without actual collusion in hundreds, hell, thousands of blatantly bad choices. The good ones compensate for nearly all of it, but not all. Conversation, the real kind, even just good natured chat, with staff, with familiars from the neighborhood, with friends and loyal, trusted customers, that helps enormously. All the more reason then to hate that hateful phrase.
"Tell us what you really..."
Why wouldn't I? Why shouldn't you? We're among friends. Lord knows there's no one on the sales floor at this hour to be offended, now the Holidays are over. Ain't nobody here but us chickens, dearie. Should I not now say that no one over the age of twenty five has read a word by Roland Barthes for at least the past twenty five years, unless he or she happened to be teaching Roland Barthes? Do we not all agree that that horrid, smelly little man who always asks for the latest Ann Coulter has never actually bought the latest Ann Coulter, or any other book from the bookstore, ever? Do we not all agree that he only comes in to complain that we haven't enough of Ann Coulter's new book on display, and that he only does this because some asshole on the radio mentioned that that asshole Ann Coulter has a new book, and check it out because the liberal media won't. I don't think any of us actually hate that smelly little man, at least not the way decent people should feel perfectly fine about hating that asshole Ann Coulter, but I know we are all tired to death of him. Mustn't say so? Mustn't say asshole? Mustn't what again?
Right now there is something to do with the public position of a dear friend, a position already subject to some criticism, about which I've made the very firm decision not to say a word, at least to the party involved, even if I should be asked. My opinion, good or bad, would contribute nothing to whatever the ongoing discussion may prove to be, and I feel not the slightest obligation as a friend, a citizen and or a de facto homeowner (house is in the husband's name) to say a damned thing on the subject. Discretion, that is the watchword for me. I have decided on discretion. (Fuck you, I can too be discreet, you don't know.)
Does this mean I do not have an opinion? It does not. Might I tell you privately what that is? I may, and you may not even have asked me. I didn't say I intended to remain entirely neutral. I do not accept Buddhist detachment as an option. I just don't want hurt feelings.
That one exception in mind, and some other subject comes up -- or I change my mind -- and it is indeed on. And why shouldn't it be? Should I not tell? But why should it "spoil" Downton Abbey for you to know there's not an original word in it, not a single scene but it's been patched up from elsewhere? I love that show! We're thrilled it's come back! What? Everything must be unspoiled to be good? Yours, my dear, is such an anachronistically virginal muse! For me at least, art needn't be new, and Downton Abbey needn't be art to be fabulously well done.
Let's have it all out, I say. Right here, among friends tell it all, as it is, as I see it and so on. (Or honestly, at this point, quite alone here at my desk, typing into the much neglected void -- neglected by me I mean -- what can it matter what I say about anything so untouchable as Downton Abbey?)
A brief, the briefest of hints then at all that might be unsaid:
No, I do not have a top ten books for 2011 because frankly I thought 2011 an especially shitty year, and not just for books, but not excluding books either. Yes, I could if pressed or paid probably cobble together some such list, but honestly, what good would it do to mention Pogo and some poetry with no better context than this? And no, I didn't like the new book by X. Gloomy, toothless man...
Oh hell, you get the idea.
Don't say it. Just... don't ever say it again. It's insupportable, it really is. Disagree. Don't. Have an opinion. Tell. Don't tell. Leave me be. Play or walk away.
I will not apologize for not being indifferent. Or -- or! -- for not being jolly. I'm fat, you want jolly? Watch me try to pick up this nickel up off the floor.