Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Weird Endings 3/13/13

So today I was talking with my friend Aja about the funny lines in Guys and Dolls. The one she finds the strangest was:

"sue me, sue me, shoot bullets through me. I love you." 

The song of course being from the song "Sue Me". This immediately got my juices flowing about strange lines in various things. While I was at Conserve there was this assignment that Jeff had us do to practice speaking in front of people. It was a dramatized reading. I chose Harry Potter, the scene where he fights the Hungarian Horntail in the Triwizard Tournament, and Dexter chose this poem:


Attack of the Crab Monsters

Even from the beach I could sense it---
lack of welcome, lack of abiding life,
like something in the air, a certain
lack of sound.  Yesterday
there was a mountain out there.
Now it's gone.  And look

at this radio, each tube neatly
sliced in half.  Blow the place up!
That was my advice.
But after the storm and the earthquake,
after the tactic of the exploding plane
and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked

like fate and I wanted to say, "Don't you see?
So what if you're a famous biochemist!
Lost with all hands is an old story."
Sure, we're on the edge
of an important breakthrough, everyone
hearing voices, everyone falling

into caves, and you're out
wandering through the jungle
in the middle of the night in your negligée.
Yes, we're way out there
on the edge of science, while the rest
of the island continues to disappear until

nothing's left except this
cliff in the middle of the ocean,
and you, in your bathing suit,
crouched behind the scuba tanks.
I'd like to tell you
not to be afraid, but I've lost

my voice. I'm not used to all these
legs, these claws, these feelers.
It's the old story, predictable
as fallout---the re-arrangement of molecules.
And everyone is surprised
and no one understands

why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you.

I actually don't really understand the poem that well, but the last stanza would have to be one of my favorite endings!

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