a playlist, a strange word, and a thought-provoking phrase

[asakiyume]

Playlist for a ghost story that is just about finished:

Doc Watson: And Am I Born to Die (Idumea)

Tim Eriksen: Hicks' Farewell

Hadestown: Wait for Me

Hadestown: Why We Build the Wall

Alan Lomax Collection, Prison Songs Vol 1: Tangle Eye Blues

Elvis Perkins: I'll Be Arriving

Elvis Perkins: Chains, Chains, Chains

Julee Glaub: When Sorrows Encompass Me Round

The Decemberists: Rox in the Box

The Decemberists: This Is Why We Fight

(The Decemberists songs aren't yet available, but sovay showed me that you could listen to the whole album here)

I decided I had to take the plunge and actually finish some of the many, many things I've started reading. They are all things I desperately want to read, but if you have enough things you desperately want to read, you can end up dreading reading, because they all demand your attention, and if you're reading one, you're slighting another--and so it's easier just not to read at all. In my case, anyway. This doesn't seem to be a problem for people on my friends list, who are all prodigious readers.

In any case, to that end, I'm closing in on the last few pages of King Spruce, which I've decided I quite like, and not just because it sometimes makes me laugh when it surely doesn't intend to, as with the concept of.... the man-promise:

"Brother Dwight! Brother Dwight!" she half sobbed. "Oh, Brother Dwight, I didn't know--I didn't realize--I didn't understand, or I would have held you back until you had torn these two arms from my shoulders. I prayed for you and watched for you. They buy their logs with blood up there. but it shall not be with your blood, Dwight. I have hated father all these days. He knew what you were going back to, and didn't stop you!"

"It was all my own affair, little girl," Wade returned, gently--"my duty, to which I was bound by fair man-promise."

Not just man-promise, but fair man-promise! Let us now pause for a moment to contemplate foul man-promise.

...

Didn't that send a shiver up your spine?

Speaking of thought-provoking phrases, we had the news on the other day, and the ninja girl remarked, "I really hate the phrase 'grow the economy.'"

"Yeah," I said, "It kind of makes you think of grow lights and illicit cultivation. Like, 'The energy consumption was suspicious, and when the DEA investigated, they found a bumper crop of economy being grown in the basement. A spokesperson estimated that that much economy would probably fetch half a million dollars on the open market.'"

Comments

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

I found out that if you have a medical card in Nevada, you can legally grow marijuana but it's not legal to purchase seeds. Sort of a chicken-and-egg thing.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm never going to trust state laws on growing marijuana. So long as it's still illegal as far as the federal government is concerned, it seems like a risky proposition.

[larryhammer]

A spokesperson estimated that that much economy would probably fetch half a million dollars on the open market.

Heeeeee.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And that's after you subtract expenses--like those grow lights!

That's a good playlist!

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

When the foulmen come around, they will try to trick or threaten a promise out of you, and any promise you make to them, if you set your mind to do it, you will, and you will die in the doing. But if you go back on a foulman promise, you will burn forty years, from the inside out.

"Grow the enconomy" is a hateful phrase. The economy has no intrinsic value, and no independent life, but that phrase makes like it does.

Re: That's a good playlist!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(Glad you like the playlist)

You have extracted maximum terror from the notion of foul man-promise/foulman promise.

You will know the lands in which people fear the foulmen: they cut out their own tongues to keep from pledging anything to, or even speaking to, the foulmen.

Re: That's a good playlist!

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Ooh. That's good, too.
Can I write this?

Re: That's a good playlist!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I insist upon it!

Re: That's a good playlist!

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

It's a... erm. I'll ...um... give it a try?

Re: That's a good playlist!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Go for it, please!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I'm in the middle of a few books too. One, rather sadly, didn't live up to initial promise, so I think that has been abandoned, but there are at least two more that somehow got gazumped in the reading queue and I started other things before finishing them.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love that word "gazumped"! I learned it from my in-laws in reference to real estate (when someone buys the house you hoped to buy), and it works perfectly for when a book shoulders its way in front of others in the queue.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

New verb alert! *pause to repeat a few times, hopping around in delight*

Love that image of growing the economy under black lights . . .

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

"Gazumped" has a certain fun quality that "man-promise" just ... doesn't.

Growing the economy: he was arrested with half a kilo of economy on his person...

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

*snerk*

[larryhammer]

It does bring new meaning to the phrase "economy-sized package".

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Tea-spat!

[skogkatt.livejournal.com]

But carrying economy is only a misdemeanor and subject to a fine in this state, or so I had understood. He must have been carrying a LOT of it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Good point! Maybe this was a different sort of economy. The sort you cook or the sort you extract from flower pods.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you were familiar with the word. I did hesitate for a moment before using it because I suspected it was a Britishism, but it did convey exactly what has been happening in my book queue. :)

[barry-king.livejournal.com]

I love your playlists. For me, they're like visiting another country.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

One thing I really, really love about being online is finding new music, thanks to meeting up with so many different people.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that playlist. It lead me on a merry music spree on YouTube.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hee! So glad. Let me know if one particularly strikes your fancy (or if there's one you can't find on YouTube)

[behindpyramids.livejournal.com]

I feel like the economy is this gray blob of squish and growing it makes me go eeewwww. um, I mean in terms of hearing the phrase.

"but if you have enough things you desperately want to read, you can end up dreading reading, because they all demand your attention, and if you're reading one, you're slighting another--and so it's easier just not to read at all."

yeah! I feel this way about my online reading. I'm always behind and there's always so much to catch up on. In some ways books feel less real to me and come with less pressure.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I have at least two people's book manuscripts, plus a number of people's newly published books, which I haven't finished yet. That feels terrible... but no use just hanging around feeling terrible; I have to get cracking.

I note, though, that I still haven't **actually** concluded even King Spruce, let alone these other things....

[skogkatt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always have this problem, too. And I'm supposedly in two book groups. It's too much reading! And I feel guilty and then I just read the internet. But then I ignore LJ for a day or two and I get guilty about that, so I avoid it, too! It's vicious, this circle. I have two novel manuscripts that really must be read this month. They ought to gazump in front of everything else, I suppose. Am I using gazump right?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

We'd have to get heleninwales or wakanomori to say for sure, but my sense of gazumping is that it's not something there's an "ought" about. In the case you describe, you feel obliged to read the manuscripts (not to say that they're not great! but what's driving you is a sense of obligation--or at least, that's how I'm reading what you're saying?) Whereas, gazumping is when something barges its way in front. So like, if a book came out that you were absolutely DYING to read, and you dropped LJ, dropped all your other reading obligations, and dropped your book groups, *that* would be gazumping. --at least, that's my impression, but as I say, I'm not a native speaker in this case!