Better late than never

This blog has been up and running for nearly four years (come March). In all that time, I've gone off on various jags about Dante, Homer, mythology, philosophy, etc., aside from all the links and comments about current events.

But, while Shakespeare has shown up here quite a few times, he hasn't gotten any extended attention. I'm not sure how that happened given my love for the Bard and his sheer greatness, but I intend to remedy it right away.

For the next stretch, I intend to give him a bit of his due, with a special focus on Hamlet, my personal favorite and a character Harold Bloom referred to as "the intellectual's Christ." I don't know about that and I'm no literary critic, thank the gods, but like the guy said I know what I like.

For starters, I like the tragedies better than the comedies (the way to tell them apart, by the way, is whether there is a wedding or a bunch of dead bodies at the end). I'm not sure why this is, but I even find the funny parts of them to be more amusing than those of the comedies. I think one reason Hamlet works for me is its dark humor.

More on that to come.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, a screenwriter is attempting to combine Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona with The Big Lebowski. This could be a sign of the apocalypse. But...I'm calmer than you are.

EUROPE, the new USSR according to conservative fantasies, isn't exactly an economic backwater.

RECESSION PROOF? One business that seems to be doing OK in hard times is dog walking, according to this NPR story. It occurs to me that if I paid someone to do it, I'd be contributing to GDP.

ANOTHER SIGN OF THE TIMES from the same source: in the wake of the recession, the number of unclaimed bodies has increased because survivors can't pay for funeral expenses.

GOING TO SEA. Early humans may have done it way sooner than previously thought.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED