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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Five "Whole Truths" We Will Never Learn

I see lists, I click on lists, I waste time on lists... so why not waste time writing one and at least get some word exercise out of it...

1) The JFK Assassination
- There is no doubt that Kennedy had lots of enemies and an awful lot of people stood to benefit from his death. But does that mean there was a conspiracy? I don't think we will ever know.

2)What was Greek Fire?
- For hundreds of years, a substance some have described as "ancient napalm" was the greatest fear of a sailor going into battle. But the secret of making it disappeared. Some modern substances have similar properties, but there just isn't any way to learn what the original was. We may actually have the same thing today and just not realize it.

3)Did Shakespeare write everything Shakespeare wrote?
- I am not one of those people that have theories about this or that member of the royal family, nor do I think Kit Marlowe or Ben Johnson took Will's name. But this was at the beginning of theater as an art form and the plays we have are primarily transcripts of performances. How much changed during rehearsal? Didn't actors ad lib, even then? It's fun to wonder who would claim what if we could speak to the members of his acting company.

4) Babe Ruth's Called Shot
- A former Supreme Court Justice swore Ruth called it. The pitcher that threw the pitch says if he had, that pitch would have been in his ear. There are home movies, but the angle and quality makes it impossible to tell if he is gesturing at right-center field or the Cub's dugout. Ruth played the "you tell me" card for years before half-assedly saying that he did call it. And this was not a man given to doing things halfway.

5)Why can't Will Belegon finish a new novel? - Okay, maybe this truth we can learn. Or maybe not. But it probably has something to do with writing blog posts instead of fiction....Twitter may be implicated... and video games are definitely part of the problem.

1 comment:

Jude Mason said...

Will, I just popped in, yes, I can procrastinate with the best of them, and wondered if you'd gotten any further along with that novel?

Going back to mine, ugh!

Hugs