Stuff

[lydy]

First, a couple of little things. I can now put pillow into a pillow case in record time. One of the weird bits of my job is I have to make beds in the morning. Me, I stopped making bed 17 or 18 years ago. I got up one morning and thought, "I'm going to be an adult. I'm going to make my bed. Maybe I'll make my bed every day. Yes, I'm going to be a grown-up." So, I made my bed. And my cat, Ember, looked at me like I'd lost my frickin' mind. She then lowered her head, and with her nose, pushed all the carefully made bedclothes to the foot of the bed. When she'd finished with that, she kneaded the pile for a few minutes, turned around three times, and settled down to lie on the heap of unmade bed, and gave me such a look...I haven't made my own bed since. (Actually true story. No lie.) So, when I got a job that required me to make beds in the morning, it was, well, a bit weird. I've always been bad at pillowcases in particular. But these days, I'm good. I'm fast. I impress myself. It's the little things that make life worth living don't you think? I can also coil up cables. The trick is to rotate the cable while you coil it. You kind of roll it in your fingers while you coil it up. I can't describe it very well, sorry. But, it is a skill I've learned. Bed making and cable coiling, two vital skills they didn't teach me in school.

I have also learned tonight that you make fun of "Hamlet" at your peril. I watched a stand-up comedian whose show was called "Words, Words, Words." Admittedly, it's a "Hamelet" quote. But, really, I was attracted by the Words concept. So, his name was something like Bo Burnham, and he was ok. Occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, mostly ok, sometimes boring. But then he got to doing the soliloquy "Too, too solid flesh" and I found myself going, "Wow, that's good. That's really good." Ok, I've heard it a lot of times before. I've lost track of how many times I've seen "Hamlet". But, well, it's really good. And he finished it with a flip sort of, "Yeah, well, whatever," and all I could think was, "Um, dude, you fucked up." I mean, he tried to make fun of it, but I was still bowled over by how good the thing he was trying to make fun of was, and it totally didn't work. So sad.

So, really, you'd think I'd learn my lesson. But, deeply bored at six in the morning, I tried an MST3K version of "Hamlet." It was a badly acted, cut-to-hell, German, dubbed version of "Hamlet." But I kept on getting caught up in the play. Even badly hacked, it was, well, "Hamlet." I should confess, I'm a bit of a philistine. I think that Hamlet was a spoiled brat who should have fucking pissed or got off the pot. His whinging about, not really knowing what to do, does not impress me as much as I wish it did. But the play still has some of the most amazing poetry ever. And Hamlet, jerk though I think he is, still, manages to enthrall me. Maybe Shakespeare really is that good. Comediennes just fail to impress, next to the grand iambic pentameter, or something.

So, that's my night. Failure to make fun of Hamlet, and looking forward to making beds tomorrow morning. Ah, yes, the life of an employed person. Ok, not an entirely un-weird life, but it's mine, and I'm rather fond of it.

Comments

[quadong.livejournal.com]

Love the bed story. I've never ever had a habit of making my bed. I think my mother makes her bed, but she must have decided there was no chance of civilizing me at that level and so didn't try to pass it along.

[guppiecat]

"Green Eggs and Hamlet" did a good job, I think: "I would not could not kill the king. I could not poison anything."

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

It also scans very nicely to "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Green Eggs and Hamlet is brilliant. I adore it. I'm also fond of any number of other satiric takes on Hamlet. The thing they all have in common, though, is that they don't use the original words. Hamlet is actually easy to make fun of, and it's grand fun. But the actual text...is overpowering. It kind of blows away any attempt to trivialize it. At least, that is my experience so far.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

So you coil "over/under" rather than "figure 8"?

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

It's good to hear from you. I miss you.

MKK

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have never seen "Hamlet." Never read it, don't know the story. I am sure bits of it would be familiar, but what familiar bits are from "Hamlet" I could not say.

K.

[pameladean]

That is so true about Hamlet! You know that Martin Carthy song that summarizes the entire play? It's great, and funny, but at the end, he sings, "If you think that was boring, you should read the bloody play," and I just mentally give him the finger. Sometimes I don't even want to listen to the song because I know that stupid last line is coming. They just don't know where to stop.

P.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining about the bed. Some people listen to the voices in their heads, others interpret their pet cats' expressions.