"A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid."

"Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh."

Said Stephen King. 

Then there's this super-concise, possibly perfect aphorism: "Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." That's the playwright Racine, who should be from Wisconsin, but he was French. And though that quote feels related to King's, I think it's quite different. King is talking about works of art and how hard it might be to crank them out, as he does in great volume. Racine is talking about how any given person might view life itself.

What do you think and feel? (Multiple answers allowed.)
	Thinking and feeling -- and tragedy and comedy -- are more alike than Racine lets on.
	King is letting on that he believes himself to be a bit of a fool and a blowhard.
	The concise quote isn't about art, but it's more artful than King's blather.
	King belabors the subject of art because he's afraid he's not an artist.
	King is secretly self-promoting if you read -- for comedy -- pop horror stories.
	Racine preens. He believes himself to be the thinking man.
	Racine is a bit sadistic, laughing at the shortcomings of those who are in pain.
	King means to deflate "serious" art and elevate things that don't get enough respect.
	King's statement is more insightful than Racine's aphorism.
	Racine's aphorism is more insightful than King's statement.
	Aphorisms are not about strict truth. Don't compare them to rambling remarks.
	It's best to elevate thinking over feeling.
	It's best to listen to feelings while thinking.
	The most powerful feeling is the feeling that one is thinking without feeling.
	The option above this one is a high-quality aphorism from Althouse.
	Oh, woe!
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"8 Things Your Lawn Is Trying to Tell You."

Headline (in Popular Mechanics.

That feels like a challenge to write your own list, so here's mine:

1. "Get off me."

2. "I'm sick of this 'Get off my lawn business.' I am not your lawn. I belong to me."

3. "Why don't you go back in the house, sit down at your computer, and write a 1000-page novel called 'The Lawn' — some Stephen King type thing about a lawn that's trying to tell some guy something, gets a mind of its own, and all hell breaks loose."

4. "Alternate title: 'Mown.' Get it? Moan. I love puns. It feels so good to get mown."

5. "Grrrrr. Ass."

6. "I am the beautiful uncut hair of graves."

7. "The only reason men are alive is to take care of me."

8. "Fascist!"

"But, at the same time, there's a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, 'Well, if this is God's plan, it's very peculiar'..."

"... and you have to wonder about that guy's personality — the big guy's personality. And the thing is — I may have told you last time that I believe in God — what I'm saying now is I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts and I refuse to be pinned down to something that I said 10 or 12 years ago. I'm totally inconsistent."

Stephen King, elaborating on his choice to believe in God.

Have you seen "Room 237" — the movie about what people think about the movie "The Shining"?

It was released for streaming — watch it here — at the same time that it opened in theaters. We watched last night. It will be quite fun for you, I think, if you've seen the movie "The Shining" — even if you're not obsessed with the movie — if you're interested in the way a work of art can draw people in and open up the doors of perception. With the revered genius director Kubrick cramming visual details in every shot, a viewer's mind can run wild with theories. The viewers' response to the movie parallels the Jack Nicholson character's response to the hotel. How crazy are these people? What do those cans of Calumet Baking Powder really mean?



Was Kubrick deliberately nudging you to think that the movie is really about the genocide of the Native Americans? Start looking for the other clues. It's amazing. It's a maze. You could get lost in there.

Was Kubrick trying to drive Stephen King crazy, like by making Jack's Volkswagen Beetle yellow instead of red and then later showing a crushed red Beetle under that semi in the snow?

Kubrick does these dissolves between scenes that have some interesting superimposed images — liked the peaked hotel roof and the ladder in the lobby — and the movie has several instances of characters walking backward — Shelley Duvall retreating up the stairs and swinging a baseball bat at Jack and the little boy retracing his steps in the snow to escape — and there's the backwards writing — "redrum" — so maybe Kubrick would like us to project the movie backwards and forwards simultaneously on one screen? Think what you could learn! All the secrets!

Well, I learned that Kubrick likes symmetry and puts things smack in the middle of the screen, which increases the likelihood of interesting combinations if you project backwards over forwards, but these people who obsess about the movie think Kubrick was trying to say something important. And what a coincidence! The message is about that person's central obsession — the slaughter of the Indians, the Holocaust, sex...