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- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!apple!goofy!mumbo.apple.com!gallant.apple.com!mcmelmon.apple.com!user
- From: mattm@apple.com (Matthew Melmon)
- Newsgroups: soc.motss
- Subject: Flits in the Rye
- Message-ID: <mattm-301292141351@mcmelmon.apple.com>
- Date: 30 Dec 92 22:39:09 GMT
- Sender: news@gallant.apple.com
- Followup-To: soc.motss
- Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
- Lines: 51
-
- It kills me, it really does, how goddam smart everyone here is.
- Really. Sometimes I wish I could be so goddam smart. I really
- do. It kills me. It really does. Anyway, it being Christmas
- and all, I had a lot of free time. It being Christmas, and all.
- So I thought I'd try and catch up, at least a little, with all
- the really smart people around here. And really, there are
- so goddam many of them. Really goddam smart, too. It kills me.
- So what I did was take down all these books I had up on my
- shelf, just gathering dust and all, like books up on shelves do.
- It kills me, sometimes, when I go over to someone's house and I
- see a lot of books up on their shelf covered with dust. You
- just _know_ nobody reads them when they're covered with dust.
- Really. So I read them. Not books by anyone really smart people
- read. I mean, really goddam smart people always seem to be
- reading authors no-one else has heard of. I mean, if you were
- goddam smart, then would you read a book that everyone else is
- reading? No. You'd read a book no-one else was reading, otherwise
- you couldn't show everyone how goddam smart you were.
-
- Well, I don't have any books by authors no-one has heard of, so
- I guess I can't be too goddam smart. Oh, they were good books
- and all. Some Poe. Some Fitzgerald, F. Scott. I really like
- the _Last Tycoon_, but it kills me. I mean, just when you get all
- interested in the story, it ends. Just like that. I mean,
- F. Scott had a heart attack and all when he was writing it, so
- it's not really his fault. But it still kills me. I mean, I
- get so goddam interested and then it just ends. But without
- an ending. You know what I mean? At least _Alas Babylon_ has
- an ending. You know what I mean? I read a bunch of New Yorker
- articles by Dorothy Parker - and there are some really goddam
- smart people here who really like Dorothy Parker a lot, so
- maybe Parker is better than Fitzgerald and maybe reading her
- will make me a little smarter msyelf. Which is fine by me,
- since Dorothy Parker kills me. She really does.
-
- Anyway, another book I read was that one with a funny red cover
- by J.D. Salinger. He kills me, too. So goddam smart. Really,
- he is. Anyway, towards the end, he uses this word for homosexual
- that I hadn't heard before. Flit. A really funny word. It
- kills me. Flit. "Joe Blow's a flit?" There's a line in there
- like that. There really is. Anyway, I knew "flit" meant
- faggot because he used it with Lesbian. Flits and Lesbians.
- Only "flit" wasn't usually capitalized, and Lesbian always
- was. That killed me. It really did. Why should Lesbian be
- capitalized? I suppose natives of Lesbos should be called Lesbians,
- but regular old flit women, should they be called Lesbians or
- just lesbians?
-
- And where do those damn ducks go in winter?
-
- *X*
-