It’s 2:00 am on a Thursday night. Everyone in the house is up. The only open beer is the half-full glass sitting near my computer–left over from dinner. No one else is drinking. The Wii is off, and no one’s using the main computer. The lights–and fireplace–are on. Aside from Bovard’s headphones, it’s completely quiet.
Someone looks up, and laughs feebly.
“It must be dead week.”
In fact, it is. It’s Thursday night of dead week.
—
Edit: (6:04 am … three of us are still going strong)
I just changed this sentence from:
The meat of Cannon’s biography, however, is the myriad telling details…
to:
The substance of Cannon’s biography, however, is the myriad telling details…
on the basis of an ideological objection.
“The meat of something” is an normalizing and loaded phrase. It equates meat with substance, which in turn equates meat with being important, essential, something without which a book/argument/idea is incomplete. Suggesting that a meal without meat is incomplete. Which I don’t buy.
In fact, it’s equivalent, I believe, to the phrase “the good part of,” implying that meat is good. I don’t contend that meat is bad, but I object to attaching a positive moral connotation to something that, when mass produced, does untold damage to the environment and, when mass consumed, does untold damage to one’s arteries and waistline!
