Episode XXXIV: Signifying Nothing

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow,
A poor player who
struts and frets his hour
upon the stage,
And there is heard no more;
A tale told by an idiot--
Full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Doing the radio show here at midnight the night of May 1st or morning of May 2nd (however you want to look at it). That's east coast time.

journal excerpts:

3.25 Went diving last night with a few people from a couple different countries. We each had a glow stick on our tank and carried a flashlight. When I held the flashlight beam against my chest and waved my hand in front of my face little neon green sparks of phosphorescence lit up. This dive was even better than Bully Hayes's sunken 19th century pirate ship.

4.1 From "Leaving for Kenosha" by Richard Ford, fiction from The New Yorker, March 3, 2008...

"No," said Louise. "I was thinking about going to Italy or maybe China. And going alone. And not coming back. And never seeing anybody that I know today ever again."
"Would that include me?" Walter said.
"And Mother, too, probably," Louise said, and gave him a look of cold implacable certainty. A look that saw the future.
... He would make no more efforts to answer Louise's childish questions about Italy and China. No words were really the right words to answer with. In a day he'd forget all this. This was a smart child--Louise--but not smart beyond her years. She would forget many things, too.

Walter is a bastard. F*** him, Louise. China must be beautiful.

From the issue a week later, from Patricia Marx's article "Tech Stuff"...

Phones now have names like Heat, Chocolate, Rumor, BlackJack, Shine, Tilt, Pearl, and Wing, all of which sound like prophylactics, for what reason I do not know. Nor do I know how much you will pay for your phone, because that figure is determined by a God who plays dice with the price wheel and various calling plans. Whatever you pay, though, is guaranteed to be more than you would have yesterday or will tomorrow, and much more than people in other Zip Codes pay.

All the more reason not to get one.

4.2 Adam Gopnick on magic: "Magic is imagination working together with dexterity to persuade experience how limited its experience really is, the heart working with the fingers to remind the head how little it knows."

4.12 M., M., R., G., and I sat on the beach last night, drinking wine, talking about anything. We noticed some phosphorescence in the wet sand and I picked up a hunk of sand and had a speck of neon blue in my palm.

4.13 Just got off the phone with M. She received some crushing news from her family in the States. When she told me I felt every feeling of any kind leave my body. Just felt hollow.

4.21 People shouldn't make promises they can't keep.