Over the last couple days I watched a great deal of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
In the second day, I was gratified to see that, even as the Dems hectored her about the ACA and racism, they spoke in in such a way as to suggest they fully expected her confirmation to go through.
Of course it isn’t over until it’s … you know. I fully expect the Party of Death will come up with some machination to delay her confirmation.
Meanwhile, I was thinking about a cocktail in honor of the confirmation of Judge Amy to the SCOTUS. How about this?
Stare Decisis
– 4 ounces of Everclear
– Elixir Vegetal de la Grande-Chartreuse (69%)
– liquid nitrogenAdd splash of Elixir Vegetal de la Grande-Chartreuse to 4 ounces of Everclear. Chill with liquid nitrogen. Serve neat, with a legal twist, in a Nick & Nora glass resting on a legal pad inscribed with “stare decisis”.
Drink with an icy stare.
Perhaps you have your own ideas.
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For a second I thought you were going to suggest taking a drink every time somebody said “stare decisis.”
Leave it to you, I never heard of “Nick and Nora” glasses. How fun! Right about now we need to go back to the days of the Thin Man, to recall what a sane culture looked like. Thank God for old movies. Your idea is a good one, very stylish.
Sounds good. Chartreuse is my official birthday drink as my birthday is October 6, the feast of St, Bruno founder of the Carthusian order.
I am concerned that the Democrats will dig up a disgruntled student of hers who will make a false accusation about some sexual pecadillo which will be enough to require a meaningless investigation that will delay the confirmation past the election. This was hinted at in the questioning by that obnoxious Hawaiian senator. But it would be so obviously false given the nature of her character I’m not sure that even they would stoop so low.
Potio potens! Concussa, non conmixta.
Dashiell Hammett, before writing The Thin Man (verily, God smiled upon his people when William Powell and Myrna Loy were cast in The Thin Man movie) wrote The Maltese Falcon, which has this memorable drinking quote:
“I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much, it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does”.
Fill your Nick and Nora glasses with gin, sit back and relax, and enjoy the following hard-boiled novel, though the author may owe more to F. Scott Fitzgerald than to Dashiell Hammett.
Part I
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed.
Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.
Part II
A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.
At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly. Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?
And so the ranch was saved.
The End
– Snoopy
I’ve been informed that Snoopy wrote a longer version of “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.”
Subtract the last two sentences above: “The ranch was saved” and “The End.” After “…escaped from the pirates?” the action continues…
The intern frowned.
“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch was saved.
The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the coffee shop. He had learned about medicine, but more importantly, he had learned something about life.
The End
A novel requires a literary critic. Unfortunately, the New Criterion and the Imaginative Conservative aren’t picking up their phones. Slackers.
Here’s critic Ronald B. Richardson:
Snoopy’s story can be considered a novel although it is shorter than most short stories, thanks to the author’s attempts to present what György Lukács calls the potential of “Great epics” to “give form to the extensive totality of life.” It was a Dark and Stormy Night has atmosphere, mystery, violence, family drama, pirates, class struggle, a coming-of-age story, a change of seasons, pathos, medical intrigue, a unification of separate story threads, a love story, a kidnapping, an escape, and a happy ending.
The longer version adds a stampede, a fist fight, and a thoughtful, philosophical ending with the young intern in a cafe musing about what he learned. What had he learned about life? That life is a somewhat random knot of characters, events, and genres?
I will leave it up to you to decide on the meaning of Snoopy’s famous novel, but the fact that the intern learned something about life does show us that Snoopy is attempting to capture a “totality of life,” a goal many great novelists attempted, including Leo Tolstoy, who had to write huge tomes to give such an epic view of the world.
Unfortunately, a buddy asked me for literary criticism of “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.”
Ok. *pours another Black Rifle Coffee*
Any interpretation of Snoopy’s debut novel must contend with the Sitz im Liben. For as Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.”
With colorful and rapid brush strokes, Snoopy paints an Impressionist portrait of the world. Snoopy forces the reader to confront a world spinning rapidly out of control: of maritime peril, of bovine fisticuffs, of no one wanting to buy a da*n flower.
Truly, our fallen nature is on full display in Snoopy’s novel. Like Job, we lament our fate, as if doomed to forever wander the world like a sailor in a Joseph Conrad novel. Then, in a cafe, which is clearly Chartres Cathedral, the protagonist, sustaining himself with baguette and soy-free latte, revels in the realization that God will not punish him but rather his ridiculous friends.