Addiction Wisdom: Fool for a Cigarette
Where there's a smoke is far.
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 7:38 AM
6 comments
Gypsy Scholar
Brainstorming about history, politics, literature, religion, and other topics from a 'gypsy' scholar on a wagon hitched to a star.
Monday, April 26, 2021
About Me
- Name: Horace Jeffery Hodges
- Location: Seoul, South Korea
I am a retired professor. I last taught at Ewha Womans University, mostly composition, research writing, and cultural issues, but also the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history. My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism. I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested. I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries. Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."
6 Comments:
Ah, the country accent! How it plays havoc with word lengths! Take an arguably two-syllable word like "fire" (fah-yer—same logic as "higher" being two syllables) and turn it into the monosyllabic fahr. Or take a one-syllable word like "pets" and turn it into the disyllabic pay-yettes.
When you take a two-syllable word like fah-yer and turn it into the monosyllabic fahr, you are playing with "fire."
Jeffery Hodges
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Well... it's certainly true that I have to be mindful of who my audience is when I do my impression of a hillbilly accent. Playing with fire, indeed!
No problem, you did it well. I think of you as half hillbilly, anyway. I was alluding to Jim Morrison on playing with fire.
Jeffery Hodges
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Sorry. I know little to nothing about Jim Morrison, although I vaguely recall that Oliver Stone's version of Morrison's life includes a scene in which Morrison has been told not to rhyme "fire" with "higher" in "Light My Fire" because of the druggie connotations. In the preview trailer I saw (I never watched the movie), Val Kilmer, as Jim Morrison, rebelliously sings out "...take you HIGHER" at the moment he's supposed to censor himself.
You know... I'm now thinking I should've gotten that reference. D'oh.
As for being half hillbilly... well, I did live out in the sticks for almost three years. How much o' that rubbed off, ah cain't say.
Ha—and I see I've managed to misremember the lyric:
"Girl, we couldn't get much higher"
Well! There it is.
(I have a feeling I've shared this link before. Forgive me. I'm old and I repeat myself. I also repeat myself because I'm old.)
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