make things so simple
things are simple as a rule
not always she said

From the exchange:

“There’s something awfully consoling about you,” said Flora. “You make things so simple.”

“Things are simple as a rule,” said the big game hunter.

“Not always,” said Flora.

As it appears in Agatha Christie’s whodunit The murder of Roger Ackroyd (United States: Grosset & Dunlap,1926.) which you can read here.

I am not a much of a mystery reader.

Most of the time my suspension of disbelief comes crashing down with a loud OH COME ON followed by the thump of me tossing the book to one side.

I don’t do that anymore because I don’t toss my kindle.

I watched a lot of that old Columbo TV series with Peter Falk and I enjoyed watching the crime and then watching Lt. Columbo find the clues we saw the murderer leave behind but still when in one episode the killer lit several cigarettes and left them on the ashtray as a false clue as to the timing of the crime, the first thing Lt. Columbo when he arrived on the scene was the check the filters of the cigarettes to see if they showed evidence of being smoked … boy howdy, but I yelled, OH COME ON.

As an aside, one of the more poignant things I have read lately was a short statement about Peter Falk. He died after a term with Alzheimer’s. In that statement, there was this short line that stated something along the lines that ‘for the last 3 years of his life, Peter Falk had no recollection of playing the role of Lt. Columbo.’

But I digress.

The other day I was watching one of my favorite movies, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (the one with Charles Laughton where they have some single camera shots that last 3 to 5 minutes without a cut or break in the dialogue) which you can watch right now online through this goofy app/website named TUBI – the free version has commercials, sometimes very long commercials but I am old and I don’t mind, and I wanted to try and track down some dialogue and as the movie is based on a play that is based on a book by the same name by Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, and I ended up on her wikipedia page.

According to wikipedia, In 2013, the 600 members of the Crime Writers’ Association chose The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as “the best whodunit … ever written”. Critic Sutherland Scott stated, “If Agatha Christie had made no other contribution to the literature of detective fiction she would still deserve our grateful thanks” for writing this novel.

Now I do not know who was in the Crime Writers’ Association and if this was based on a multiple choice ballot or vote of hands or voice vote or what have you, but there it is.

We will accept that the Crime Writer’s Association was a group of note but I do wonder.

I think of what Jim Harrison once said, when he said, that just once, he would like win an award that he had heard about it before he was told he had won it.

Still, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted best crime novel ever.

I thought that made The Murder of Roger Ackroyd worth a read or at least an attempt to read.

I am halfway through and it is holding my interest but I can put it down to, say, watch a few minutes of TV or something but I am plugging on.

So far, Dame Aggie has made things so simple.

And things are simple, as a rule.

But … not always.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

To be continued …

no two countries with
McDonald’s will go to war
with each other

Thomas Friedman believed countries that were tightly woven into an economic network would forgo starting wars, for fear of losing access to the humming network.

Friedman lightheartedly expressed this in 1996 as the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention: no two countries with McDonald’s will go to war with each other.

And he wasn’t far off.

Although there have been a handful of conflicts between McDonald’s-having countries, an individual’s chance of dying in a war between states has diminished remarkably since the cold war.

According to wikipedia, Friedman supported that observation, as a theory, by stating that when a country has reached an economic development where it has a middle class strong enough to support a McDonald’s network, it would become a “McDonald’s country”, and will not be interested in fighting wars anymore.

I always thought it was about the hamburgers.

When I was a kid, Mickey D’s burgers were 15 cents so for an hours worth of work at $1.25 an hour, you could get 7 to 8 hamburgers.

Today in South Carolina, minimum wage is $7.25 and the burgers are $1 and you can get 7 hamburgers.

I leave it to you to make up your mind.

then ate flavors so
direct every annoyance
just melted away

when you are eating
something like that, then there
are no bad tables

Adapted from the restaurant review, Claud, a Basement Dining Room With Much Higher Aims, by Pete Wells who wrote:

Then I ate. The flavors were so direct, the point of each dish so lucid, that every minor annoyance melted away.

The dish listed on the menu as “Red shrimp, garlic, olive oil” turned out to be a version of Spanish gambas al ajillo that cooked itself. The shrimp had been raw moments earlier, and they hissed in the hot oil that came halfway to the lip of a small cast-iron skillet as their creamy pink flesh turned to bright coral. Once they were gone, I had pieces of good sourdough to dip into the oil, which now tasted of the garlic clove and dried chile that had been shimmying in there all along. When you’re eating something like that, there are no bad tables. And “something like that” applies to almost everything Claud serves.

I want to write:

Then I read. The words were so direct that the flavors were so direct, the point of each dish so lucid, that every minor annoyance melted away.

The words described a dish listed on the menu as “Red shrimp, garlic, olive oil” turned out to be a version of Spanish gambas al ajillo that cooked itself.

The words described shrimp had been raw moments earlier, and they hissed in the hot oil that came halfway to the lip of a small cast-iron skillet as their creamy pink flesh turned to bright coral.

Once the words were gone, I had pieces of good sourdough in my brain to dip into the oil, which now tasted of the garlic clove and dried chile that had been shimmying in there all along in my thoughts.

When you’re reading something like that, there are no bad tables.

And “something like that” applies to almost everything Claud serves as described by Mr. Wells.

Mr. Hemingway wrote something once along the lines that if you could write in such a way that what you wrote about became a part of the conscious memory of the reader, then you were, indeed, a writer.

Most likely I will never eat at Claud.

But I can recall the dish on the menu named Red shrimp, garlic, olive oil as if I ate there yesterday.