Posterous, WTF? (There was a problem with upload of file...413)
FB Doug Meet
Search This Blog
@mrjyn
June 16, 2012
Reading level for site:whatgetsmehot › Advanced
Results by reading level for site:whatgetsmehot › Advanced
Results by reading level for site:whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com OR site:visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com - View results for all reading levels
| Basic | 70% | |
| Intermediate | 29% | |
| Advanced | < 1% |
Search Results
-
Pornochanchada, Alfred Binet (Sexual Fetishism) Levi Strauss (Blue ...
whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com/.../wordlist-...Mar 4, 2010 [[posterous-content:pid___1]] "The following anecdote, will clarify the distinction we made between the ...
[[posterous-content:pid___2]][[posterous-content:pid___3]][[posterous-content:pid___4]] -
Penis Erection Development RSS: Male human by degree of rigidity ...[[posterous-content:pid___5]]
whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com/.../penis-erection-development-rss-male...May 15, 2010 – Penis Erection Development RSS: Male human by degree of rigidity - commons.wikimedia.org. via Erection Development Penis, male human, ... -
(#video) X-Ray Film Database for Speech Research "It's ten below ...
whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com/.../video-x-ray-film-database-for-speec...Feb 24, 2010 – The X-Ray Film Database is a collaborative project by Dr. Kevin Munhall of Queen's University and Drs. Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson and Yoh'ichi ... -
'Hee Haw Honey' Results of this query will be available at webcorp ...
whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com/.../hee-haw-honey-results-of-this-query...Mar 4, 2010 – The bride is not good for Elvis fanatic. Linda Thompson does irrepressible that even those who married Bruce Jenner Olympic firetrap. -
Sploded Adult eBabes | What Gets Me Hot
whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com/2011/02/sploded-adult-ebabes.htmlFeb 19, 2011 – NM ADULT CINEMA V2#6 LENORA BRUCE SUE NERO NUDES HOT. Price:$5.95 Time left: 29d 14h 49m. ** PLEASE DESCRIBE THIS ...
Tantek Çelik is a computer scientist of Turkish-American descent
Tantek Çelik is a computer scientist of Turkish-American descent[citation needed] and was the Chief Technologist at Technorati[citation needed]. He is one of the principal editors of several CSS Specifications. 
He gained a following[citation needed] during his time at Microsoft (1997–2004),[citation needed] where he worked on the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer.[3] Between 1998 and 2003 he managed a team of software developers that designed and implemented the Tasman rendering engine for Internet Explorer for Mac version 5[citation needed]. During his time at Microsoft he also served as their alternate representative (1998–2000) and later their representative (2001–2004) to a number of working groups at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)[citation needed], due to this work he is credited on a number of recommendations relating to XHTML[4] and Cascading Style Sheets.[5] While working for Microsoft he also developed the "box model hack" that is used by web designers to work around the Internet Explorer box model bug[citation needed].
Before working at Microsoft he worked in a variety of software engineer roles at Sun Microsystems, Oracle Corporation and Apple Computer[citation needed]. During his four years at Apple Computer (1992–1996), he spent most of his time on the OpenDoc project, first as a senior software developer and then as a technical lead[citation needed]. In 1996 he left Apple to form a software development and consulting company specialising in OpenDoc development, 6prime, with another OpenDoc technical lead Eric Soldan, however in 1997 Aladdin Systems purchased 6prime's main product REV releasing it as Flashback[citation needed].
At Technorati, he led the adoption of better standards support (including microformats) throughout the company, including their website's front page[citation needed]. He was also involved with the special Election 2004 section of the website, including writing the initial version[citation needed]. He serves as a founder at the Global Multimedia Protocols Group and has Bachelor's and Masters degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.[3][6][7][8]
He is the older brother of the actress Aysan Çelik[citation needed].
References
- ^ Bos, Bert; Tantek Çelik, Ian Hickson, Håkon Wium Lie (19 July 2007). "Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification". W3C Technical Reports and Publications. World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2008-12-28.
- ^ "W3C Technical Reports and Publications - view by editor". W3C Technical Reports and Publications. World Wide Web Consortium. 13 July 2009. Retrieved 2009-07-13.
- ^ a b "Tantek Çelik, WaSP Emeritus". Web Standards Project. Retrieved 2009-07-13.
- ^ HTML Working Group. "XHTML 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition)". W3C. Retrieved 2007-02-06.
- ^ Hakon Wium Lie; Bert Bos. "Cascading Style Sheets, level 1". W3C. Retrieved 2007-02-06.
- ^ "Stanford Computer Science Masters Alumni". Retrieved 2009-07-13.
- ^ "Tantek Celik - Chief Technologist, Technorati". Retrieved 2009-07-13.[dead link]
- ^ "Tantek Çelik, A List Apart Speaker". Retrieved 2009-07-13.
External links
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tantek Çelik |
Google +1: Tantek Çelik owns all my blogs
Jun 5, 2012
Here's a distilled/how-to version for your evaluation and feedback:http://tantek.com/2012/156/b1/focus-enabling-design-distilled
Doug Maet10:06 PM Edit
please take care of this!
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: 22 November 2009
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2009_11_26_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
Dec 2, 2009 – http://whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com/2009/12/monkeys-sam-bob-george-ride-collies.html ...
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: 09 September 2007
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2007_09_09_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
Sep 11, 2007 – Take Me Home And Make Me Like It Free Again The Singer Not The Song Take Me Home And Make Me Like It Summertime Blues Can't Seem ...
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: 08 May 2011
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2011_05_08_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
May 14, 2011 – *:first-child, blockquote.posterous_medium_quote > *:first-child { margin-top : 10px !important ; } blockquote.posterous_short_quote:before, ...
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: 01 February 2009
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2009_02_04_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
Feb 10, 2009 – Japanese jeweller Tanaka Ginza unveiled the 24 carat gold dolls which weigh 2 kilogrammes each. The dolls, representing the Emperor and ...
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: Nov 20, 2008
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2008_11_20_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
Nov 20, 2008 – A rare all-star jam on Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes" with Elvis and his band on a video in synch. Features Johnny Rivers, Charlie Daniels, ...
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2009_11_26_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
Dec 2, 2009 – http://whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com/2009/12/monkeys-sam-bob-george-ride-collies.html ...
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: 09 September 2007
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2007_09_09_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
Sep 11, 2007 – Take Me Home And Make Me Like It Free Again The Singer Not The Song Take Me Home And Make Me Like It Summertime Blues Can't Seem ...
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: 08 May 2011
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2011_05_08_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
May 14, 2011 – *:first-child, blockquote.posterous_medium_quote > *:first-child { margin-top : 10px !important ; } blockquote.posterous_short_quote:before, ...
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: 01 February 2009
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2009_02_04_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
Feb 10, 2009 – Japanese jeweller Tanaka Ginza unveiled the 24 carat gold dolls which weigh 2 kilogrammes each. The dolls, representing the Emperor and ...
See Ya at What Gets Me Hot: Nov 20, 2008
visualguidanceltd.blogspot.com/2008_11_20_archive.html
by Tantek Çelik
Nov 20, 2008 – A rare all-star jam on Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes" with Elvis and his band on a video in synch. Features Johnny Rivers, Charlie Daniels, ...
Top Ten: major boobs and sodas
Top Ten
Ended the shower, I came into chamber still naked.
We were in bed reading ... I carried around and approached her face.
I stared at me with malicious air and lifting it burst into and kissed my bullets.
It's short enough for kisses--within instants they became the small licking and it stimulated me all over--erections arrived exuberant!
She made into her mouth and started moving slowly ... feeling language wheeled around the chapel and I could do nothing but to enjoy!
Whilst I continued unbuttoned the bra and I started, pal ... major boobs and sodas.
I have agreed that would be my shift, I have paving and I removed the panties.
Was already wet and I went immediately to the clitoris, taking in my mouth and licking it good.
One loud groan made me understand the thing she loved and thus I went on ... move my tongue slowly from the ground up and reaching until the Clitus ...
This oral relationship has lasted a dozen minutes and then by movement of her catchment I realized I was for coming ...
I have accelerated the rhythm and it was silent and intensive climax ...
At this point I could restrain myself the most, I crashed above the the stomach and lapping the tits and .. I threaded bottom.
Did a wail, had not expected ... felt a bag wrap my cock.
I have immediately took a fast rate and heard the intense pleasure of army mind .... the movements of her womb were nearly hypnotics.
I kept long as I felt they had attained the threshold.
I mined and approached to the breasts ... you can imagine the ending?
Only The Good Parts: Top Ten Amateur Ex-Girlfriend Sex Videos
One of the greatest boons of having a girlfriend is that fantastic sex is always within arm’s reach. One of the greatest things about having an ex-girlfriend is watching your hardcore fuckfests and getting yourself off with an arm’s reach — all without a bit of emotional baggage!
Ripe For The Bonin’: Top Ten Amateur Pregnant Sex Videos
The Thinking Man’s BJ: Top Ten Amateur Chicks In Glasses Blowjob Videos
We know that chicks in glasses being smarter is a myth, but this particular group of bespectacled babes lends some truth to that postulation. Each wields tongue, hands and fingertips deftly along the head, down the shaft, and around the balls — we feel we are in the presence of true BJ masters.
Bone Like No One’s Watching: Top Ten Amateur Public Sex Videos
We’ve all been caught with the urge to fuck a companion’s brains out right there on the spot. The more demure of us jump in a cab or car, touching and fondling all the way home. Others among us, however, heed the call of the wild (even in man-made environs) the moment it strikes.
Threesome’s The Charm: Top Ten Amateur Three-Way Sex Videos
The more the merrier, right? Except perhaps when it comes to bathroom lines or sharing pizza. But when it comes to the sweet world of knockin’ boots, three’s never a crowd. So grab your partner and your bestie, because it’s time to do-si-do.
Make Way For The WILFs: Top Ten Amateur Wife Sex Videos
Thou shall not covet another man’s (or woman’s) wife. Hmm. But when these wives are sucking, fucking, gushing, and presenting their fine pussies and asses, well, we’ve got some mighty strong cravings indeed.
In The Driver’s Seat: Top Ten Amateur POV Sex Videos
Naturally we’re fans of a fabulous bone from any angle, but there’s something extra titillating about being atop the peak of fuck mountain. Really it makes for a stunning panorama — the slippery luster of cock-craving pussies, the first hand view of a rock-hard dick thrusting its way inside. Every part is highlighted in its full, fucking sensational glory.
Who’s The Hottest Of Them All: Top Ten Amateur Mirror Sex Videos
If there’s anything better than boning someone sexy, it’s watching yourself bone that sexy piece. Thanks to our centuries-old friend the mirror, people have been able to get off on themselves getting off with ease.
Lie Back And Close Your Eyes: Top Ten Amateur Missionary Sex Videos
It’s likely the first position we turned to when exploring the world of sex for the first time. It’s a position that’s gotten us coming through the ages, and will carry us forward for centuries more. Like a pea coat or little black dress, missionary never goes out of style.
We Heart Heavy Metal: Top Ten Amateur Pierced Sex Videos
Although we love all parts of the naked body, genitals are generally our very favorite. They deserve to be adorned and embellished and laden with jewels, celebrating all they do for us. Then they deserve to be smashed together in a metallic symphony of joy.
Rise To The Occasion: Top Ten Amateur Standing Sex Videos
Did you know 91% of all sexual encounters* occur in a horizontal position? Though any sex is good sex, there are some gallant fuckers among us who choose to swim against that current — and we salute you. So now, let us take things off the bed and up against the wall.
Playing Where The Sun Don’t Shine: Top Ten Amateur Ass-Eating Videos
Let’s take a trip to ‘the dark side’. After all, for guys it offers the lovely-feeling prostate that sends shivers up and down a boner’s spine. For ladies — a whole new arena of enthralling sensations.
Super Size Us: Top Ten Amateur Big Tit Sex Videos
A field of wildflowers, a rushing mountain stream, a West Coast sunset, a pair of massive, bouncing breasts — all of these are things of beauty, which make us pause in quiet reflection.
Journey To The Center Of The Puss: Top Ten Amateur Fingering Videos
Ah, the pussy. It has long remained a place of mystery; an enigma many have pondered but few have mastered. It is a thing of slippery wet wonder, fascination, and beauty.
Ride ‘Em Hard & Put ‘Em Back Wet: Top Ten Amateur Cowgirl Sex Videos
We imagine for a dude, cowgirl might be the position of all positions. You get full boob views and grabbability, all while seeing your cock sliding in and out of a bouncing babe.
This Summer I Went Swimming: Top Ten Amateur Pool Sex Videos
With the sun sparkling warm on glistening waters, warm, glistening parts just a slip of fabric away… the pool makes a perfect place to bone your hearts out.
You’re Not Going Anywhere: Top Ten Amateur Bondage Sex Videos
Ah, the gateway to kink. A little light BDSM can open the floodgates to a wild whitewater world of miscreant sexual escapades… So hop on your rafts, ’cause we’re goin’ in!
And I’ll Fuck If I Want To: Top Ten Amateur Birthday Sex Videos
Birthday parties. Birthday presents. Birthday suits. Birthday sex. Fuck clowns and toys, adult birthdays are where it’s at. Especially considering the best gift one can get is absolutely free.
Where The Cups Runneth Over: Top Ten Amateur Tit-Fucking Videos
You’re here; we’re here — it’s pretty safe to say we all love us some tits. From there, we don’t think it’s too far a stretch to assume we’d all love to plunge our figurative (or literal) dicks into a particularly bounteous pair if given the chance. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s live out our fantasies.
Please Pass The Pussy: Top Ten Amateur Table Sex Videos
Whether it be the place you set your coffee and the morning paper, lay out an elaborate spread for a friendly dinner party, or set your bare ass on to get bent over and neatly fucked from behind, tables are a person’s best friend.
Ex-Girlfriend bucketfuls
One of the greatest boons of having a girlfriend is that fantastic sex is always within arm’s reach.
One of the greatest things about having an ex-girlfriend is watching hardcore bucketfuls and getting yourself off with an arm’s reach — all without a bit of emotional baggage!
There’s no nagging about leaving clothes all over the floor, no asking if she looks fat, no requests to be taken to the newest Kate Hudson room at the box office.
About one of the greatest blessings of the friend girl is ever-splendid sex at your fingertips. Any one of the coolest things as to who watches a bucket ex-friend of the hard core and obtain by themselves through the scope of an arm everything - completely non-emotional baggage! There are not quarreling products, left garments about the whole soil, do not request whether you like dense, making hits on the final B Kate Hudson Bay on the website.
Sur un des plus grands bienfaits de l'ami d'une fille, c'est le sexe magnifique toujours à portée de main. Une des choses les plus cool de savoir qui regarde un seaux ex-ami du noyau dur et obtenir par eux-mêmes par la portée d'un bras de tout - tout à fait sans un bagage émotionnel! Il n'y a pas chicaner les produits ont quitté les vêtements sur le sol tout entier, ne vous demandez pas si vous semble épaisse faire des hits sur la dernière Breakfast Kate Hudson sur le site.
One could put the video on mute if so desired, and just extract the best parts of ex-girlfriend ad infinitude. 
And then maybe get yourself a new gal… 
·Above: Mi **-Novelia Colombia / My colombian ex-girlfriend!! (YouTube.com)
Previously: Top Ten Video Archive
Ex girlfriend blowjob (YouTube.com)
Getting Ready to Fuck my Ex-Girlfriend Part 2 (tube.com)
ex-girlfriend gets fucked from behind… (YouTube.com)
Ex-Girlfriend Swallows My Load (tube.com)
Ex girlfriend ass fucking (YouTube.com)
Wife and our ** Girlfriend 2 (YouTube.com)
My Ex-Girlfriend Part 2: Fuck and Mugshot (tube.com)
ex girlfriend taking a facial (yuvutu.com)
Ex girlfriend loved to squirt (yuvutu.com)
Of one of the largest benefactions of the a girl friend is magnificent sex always close at hand. One of the most coolest things about who looks out an ex-friend hard core pails and getting in themselves by an arm's reach - everything entirely without some emotionally baggage! There are not cavil the products have left apparel across the entire ground, do not wonder if you appears thick make any hits to the latest Kate Hudson Breakfast at the venue.
June 14, 2012
The Traci Lords Story: X-Rated Ambition
http://post.ly/4vpMF Traci Lords Story (X-Rated Ambition)
04/12/12 First referral from related video -- Ginger Lynn with John Holmes and Harry Reems 739
B
03/24/12 First referral from related video -- Al Bundy with traci lords 939
C
03/20/12 First referral from related video -- Traci Lords on The Late Show 1988 Part 1 1,768
D
03/12/12 First referral from related video -- Traci Lords best movies 2,473
E
02/10/12 First referral from related video 2,046
F
02/10/12 First referral from related video -- Rachel Ashley and Traci Lords 1985 912
G
01/24/12 First view from a mobile device 7,874
H
01/23/12 First referral from Google search -- traci lords 2,038
I
01/22/12 First referral from YouTube search -- traci lords 1,617
311
1.8%
weblio.jp
180
1.0%
ask.com
24
0.1%
search.aol.com
13
0.1%
facebook.com
11
0.1%
search.babylon.com
9
0.1%
search-results.com
9
0.1%
isearch.avg.com
8
0.0%
search.yahoo.com
6
0.0%
search.conduit.com
6
0.0%
search.mywebsearch.com
5
0.0%
search.searchcompletion.com
4
0.0%
search.nifty.com
3
0.0%
search.sweetim.com
3
0.0%
mashpedia.com
2
0.0%
findamo.com
2
0.0%
search.bt.com
2
0.0%
i-mysearch.com
2
0.0%
bing.com
2
0.0%
celebrity4you.com
2
0.0%
mitrasites.com
2
0.0%
videoscop.com
2
0.0%
startsiden.no
1
0.0%
charter.net
1
0.0%
sfr.fr
"Traci Lords" "Traci Lord" "Tracy Lords" "Tracy Lord" "The Traci Lords Story" "Traci Lords best movies" Story X-Rated "X-Rated Ambition" Traci Lords Rated Ambition 16 minor "those young girls" "what gets me hot!" "tom byron" kuzma porn industry documentary bbc mrjyn
June 12, 2012
June 10, 2012
so much wastepaper
Among Mutinous Helium Bursts Around Saturn: Barry Hannah's dangerous syntax.
Plus I hated English composition, where you had to correct your phrases. They cast me out like so much wastepaper.
—Barry Hannah, “Coming Close to Donna”
Despite the fact that he’s published eight novels and four story collections (his first novel, GERONIMO REX, was a National Book Award nominee and his last collection, HIGH LONESOME, a Pulitzer Prize finalist), Barry Hannah remains a cult figure: You’ve either never heard of him, or you can rattle off long passages of his prose and work up a sweat debating whether or not he’s a successor to Faulkner. (For the record, Hannah has rejected the label.) You may even be able to cite the make and model of his newest motorcycle. On his Facebook page—yes, he has one, though apparently Hannah himself isn’t the one updating the site (he still writes longhand)—you can learn that Jason in Cheyenne, Wyoming, has a belt buckle carved in the shape of the author’s visage. Jason says he’s invincible when he wears it.
Unable to swim, he had maneuvered to fall off an old-timers’ party yacht in the Hudson River. His departure was not remarked by the revelers. They motored on toward the Atlantic and he bobbed around in the wash. He couldn’t swim. But he did. He learned how. Before he knew it, he was making time and nearing the dock where a small Italian liner sat dead still, white, three stories high. Nobody was around when he pulled up on a stray rope on the wharf and walked erect to the street, where cars were flashing. Day after tomorrow was his seventieth birthday. What a past, he said. I’ve survived. Further, I’m horny and vindictive. Does the fire never stop?
It took me several reads to understand that Quarles Green had attempted suicide. Had the paragraph simply begun, “He had maneuvered to fall off an old-timers’ party yacht,” I might have suspected as much. The “unable to swim” clause disoriented me; who, unable to swim, maneuvers to fall? And in one paragraph, Hannah has an attempted suicide, a near-drowning, a self-rescue, and now the survivor, roaming the streets, concupiscent. Miraculously, the dude remains clothed. (Not to worry—a few sentences later we learn that Green’s housekeeper performs her duties in the buff, while Green rolls around in a wheelchair, pretending to be crippled so that his penchant for derriere-sniffing won’t “disgust her from the room.”)
When he played, I heard the sweetness, I heard the horn which finally brought human talk into the realm of music. It could sound like the mutterings of a field nigger and then it could get up into inhumanly careless beauty, it could get among mutinous helium bursts around Saturn.
Despite the conspicuous use of the N-word (Hannah’s characters rarely shy from such racist language, a grim dose of realism given their physical/cultural landscape), here was the image I needed to describe precisely what Hannah’s stories accomplished: a re-invented language that soars off the page (mutinous helium bursts/music) while not detracting from the story on the page (field mutterings/talk). Generations of prose writers—Gertrude Stein and Donald Barthelme among them, according to Ford—have “banged themselves and their sentences against conventional and intransigent American prose syntax…with often unsustained results—failing most often to express the matter at hand.” Ford mentions only a few who succeed in forging a fresh idiom while keep-ing a rigorous eye on the “matter at hand”: Faulkner, Alice Munro, and Raymond Carver.
But what makes style style? How, on a micro level, does Hannah work his spell? I’m aware he’s breaking rules—but which “rules”? Are there rules? And how is Hannah able to do so without disrupting the “continuous dream”? Faced with Hannah’s grammatical mutiny, the question isn’t Gardner’s “How come they let him get away with a thing like that?” but, “How does he do a thing like that?”
Consider the following illustrations, where the syntactically “expected” versions precede Hannah’s:
Expected: “The croakers swam underwater in a burlap sack tied to a piling.”Hannah: “The croakers swam in a burlap sack tied to a piling and underwater.” —“A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis”Expected: “His supposed sweetheart was in a stall, all naked and tied with rope underneath a bull.”Hannah: “In a stall was his supposed sweetheart, tied underneath a bull with rope, all naked.” —“Quo Vadis, Smut?”Expected: “But she was red in the face and nearly weeping.”Hannah: “But she was red and nearly weeping in the face.” —“Carriba”Expected: “In fact, her only public poem was the one Cornelius had chosen and carved, in quotation marks, on her gravestone.”Hannah: “In fact her only public poem was the one Cornelius had chosen for her gravestone in quotation marks.” —“Snerd and Niggero”Expected: “She and the architect were having some fancy drinks together at a beach lounge when his ex-wife from New Hampshire showed up naked and screaming with a single-shotgun gun.”Hannah: “…when his ex-wife from New Hampshire showed up naked with a single-shotgun gun that was used in the Franco-Prussian War—it was a quaint piece hanging on the wall in their house when he was at Dartmouth—and screaming.” —“Love Too Long”
Given Hannah’s sui generis idiom, we simply get carried along with the music and lyrics, after some initial confusion. Whatever the hell he’s doing, he’s doing it very effectively. In fact, he is re-calibrating American syntax. And with regenerative effect: Notice the lulling, almost deadening cadence of the “expected” versions. Hannah’s poetic language requires an intensity of concentration that forbids palliative reading.
We WERE very fond of Mrs. Neap’s place—even though it WAS near the railroad. It WAS a rambling inn of the old days, with its five bathrooms and balcony over the dining room. We HAD BEEN HARBORING there for a couple of weeks and thought we WERE GETTING on well enough. But then she COMES downstairs one morning holding a swab, and she TELLS me, looking at the rest of them asleep on the couches and rug: “This is enough. Get out by this afternoon.”
It’s subtle, the way Hannah slips from a reminiscent narrative (“we were fond”) into present-tense idiom (“she tells me”).
“My God, one of them jumped off,” says Mrs. Neap. (simple present)“I saw. It was an Oriental.” (simple past)“He is wobbling on the gravel in the front of the yard.” (present progressive)
At the end, Hannah dispenses with any rules of time, allowing his first-person, present-tense, reminiscent narrator to interject this paren-thetical—which describes what is going to happen to the hunter JIM outside the bounds of the story:
(To complete his history, when we move on, after the end of all this, JIM kills a dog and is dressing him out when a landowner comes up on him and shoots him several times with a .22 automatic. JIM strangles the landowner and the two of them die in an epic of trespass.)
The information is not even narrated in the past tense—as one might expect given that JIM is dead and the narrator has lived to relay the information.
She had her dress folded back on her thighs with her gift out to Snerd, who was minutely rolling the hem onward so as to roll it even more to her globes’ bottoms. Then his rolling goes even more up her so her dress was as a rolled flag around her neck…. Mr. Snerd liked her earlobes even better than that, though, now after these long years. He has his fingers up to them and nicks and fondles them as Mrs. Niggero consumed him up to his navel to her chin, even mashing her freckles there, and sobs around his fundament. Mrs. Niggero didn’t want this at first because she was married to another man, Cornelius.
But she had been doing this eighteen years with Snerd whom she can’t not love in another way. So Snerd played with her ears and croons to her while she sobs preparing him for the inevitable though now somewhat sad primary entrance. She squeezed her eyes blind and he with resignation pushed in amidperson, a little deaf with grief and wild comfort.
What’s Hannah up to? One clue may be in the length of the affair—“she had been doing this eighteen years.” The shifts in tense, then, would capture the habitual nature of their lovemaking (we’ve been at this so long that what we’re doing now, and what we’ve done in the past, are indistinguishable). But unless you knew this was Barry Hannah, you might not give the writer the benefit of the doubt. The opening sentences still read like mistakes, until you read on and realize that Hannah is not just tinkering with, but is flagrantly overturning, the “standard” notion of how time progresses in a story. After the opening two graphs, Hannah delves into the characters, Snerd and Mr. and Mrs. Niggero. Aha—this will be a tidy little love-triangle story. Then this sentence: “When Mrs. Niggero died of an acutely quadraplegical muscular thing that roared into her almost overnight, three years later, Robert Snerd thought for a while that the formality of his public expression of grief had damaged his true sorrow.” Note: “almost overnight” (the sudden), “for a while” (the vague), and “three years later” (the extended period)—all in a single sentence.
In the next fifteen years, before Snerd died—buried promptly by his wife, who remarried avidly and with great whorish avarice a widowed doctor of their acquaintance—it was said the two men enjoyed a friendship such as had hardly been known in the whole north part of the state, and even up through Memphis.
In one sentence Hannah has summarized not just fifteen years, but also—between the dashes—the bereaved wife’s future activities, which occur well off the page. Not many writers would even attempt this.
“Between me and a bucket of paint to freshen up the front porch, you’d choose the paint and we both know it. Me and God hate you.”
She fell in a spasm. She cried out how she could be a full wife.
“Let’s go all the way,” says I.
“Anything to please you and the Lord,”says she.
Green then tells the stories of two men he shot when he was working as an “agent” (presumably during Prohibition), until Hannah reins him in with another white space and a return to third-person narration: “Like me now, said Quarles on his bike. He saw the lights of La Guardia. I’m going to make it. Again, dammit.”
The story’s third section moves from “he said” right into “says I”—this time with no white space: “If only I’d married a good pagan woman who never tired of the pleasures of the flesh, said Green” is followed, one paragraph later, by “‘What?’ I said.”
Finally, Hannah inserts both a white space and asterisks and assumes a more firmly distant third-person voice to depict Green’s heart attack and subsequent death: Green is on an airplane, listening to music on headphones, when “a terrific fist bashed him directly on the heart…. He sat there awhile and died…. The stewardess walked back to look at Quarles Green. He had a tight smug smile on him, his eyes closed, like every dead man who finally hears his tune.”
Note the distancing elements: the matter-of-fact depiction of Green’s demise, with nothing of Green’s interior life revealed; the introduc-tion of the stewardess’s point of view (“[She] wanted to know the tune the old white-haired boy was grooving on”); and, in this final sec-tion, the narrator calls Green for the first time by both his first and last names.
“Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt,” the final story in AIRSHIPS, also begins in third person: “Mother Rooney of Titpea Street…crept home from the Jitney Jungle in the falling afternoon of October 1965.” We learn it’s a “falling” afternoon in more ways than one when she takes a fall in her dilapidated and “perilously drooping” home, which slants backward over a kudzu-covered cliff. Mother Rooney begins to slide toward the back stairwell—until the pin on the large brooch she’s wearing impales her chest, catches the wood floorboards, and stops her. “How wonderful of the brooch to act like a brake, Mother Rooney thought.”
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin?—we hear the pulse and rhythm of the sex act itself in the repetition of “come to the” with caesuras in between. Likewise, in prose, a shifting narrative stance can work, but only if it is linked to the content of the narrative itself. Without this link, poetry and prose would be reduced to mere acrobatics. Not so with Hannah. In “Green Gets It,” the narrative “quarrel” works precisely because Green is, by nature, a belligerent, quarrelsome fellow. (Look no further than the first sentence of his suicide note: “My Beloved Daughter, Thanks to you for being one of the few who never blamed me for your petty, cheerless and malign personality.”) The constant slipping between first-, second-, and third-person voices in “Mother Rooney” works because everything within the narrative is already shifting. The house is sliding off the cliff; Mother Rooney slips on the floor, slips in and out of consciousness. Form informs character; character informs form.
In a November 2008 article, Wells Tower admits the “syntactic rigor and strange music of [Hannah’s] fiction occasionally get him classified as a difficult or, less appropriately, a postmodern writer, and are probably why Oprah Winfrey hasn’t called him yet.” Yet Hannah has rejected the term “postmodern” as anything other than a historical marker: “I don’t know what post-anything means. Postmodern is a historical term referring to the period after World War II.”
What gives rise to them? In Richard Ford’s words, fiction that fails to focus on the matter at hand. With Hannah’s storytelling, we ultimately reach the question: Is there a human heart beating here? Are we moved to a deeper under-standing of, and empathy for, the human condition? Or is the allure of Hannah’s fiction simply its linguistic high-wire act? In answer, an Old Testament metaphor. In Ezekiel 37, the prophet has a vision of a valley filled with disordered piles of dry bones. The Lord asks him, “Can these bones live?” While Ezekiel watches, there is “a rattling sound” and the bones come together: “I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.” Until the reconstructed humans receive breath from the divine, they are nothing but constructs—clever, indeed miraculous, tricks, but constructs nonetheless. These forms become human only when they receive breath from the Artist who introduced them.And here is where empirical literary analysis hits a wall. Perhaps one can say only that: Hannah’s characters, pushed to the extremes of human depravity and weakness, somehow wind up communicating a single message: All of life is sacred. How else to account for the numinous quality of Hannah’s fiction, his breathing of life into the “bones” on the page? There is nothing untouched by the divine; there is, as Hannah has said, “a little of the divine in all of us.” Hannah’s prose defies simple categorization. Like music, “it’s ineffable. It is the highest thing you can reach for. It is beyond good and evil; that’s why I don’t like to attach morality or philosophy to the deepest things I feel. They’re just beyond it.”
In “Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet,” Bobby Smith is tormented by the atrocities he witnessed in Vietnam. At the story’s end, Bobby, now back in his hometown, attends a golf tournament. When Whitelaw, the favorite, loses, Bobby observes the despondency of the crowd and utters what is a fitting response to anyone who might decry the merits of Hannah’s literary achievement:
Fools! Fools! I thought. Love it! Love the loss as well as the gain. Go home and dig it. Nobody was killed. We saw victory and defeat, and they were both wonderful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)