T.S. Eliot and Polygamy all Wrapped Up Into One

During my reading I ran across the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Karen and I were discussing this piece today and according to her it's fairly well known. She said it's frequently taught in high school American literature classes and the sixteen- year- olds hate it mainly because they don't get it, as the poem is about the loss of youth, which they haven't experienced yet.

Anyway, that's not the point. Karen was playing the Sting's Brand New Day CD and I noticed a track called Ghost Story. I've heard this song before; Karen plays this CD often so I know most of these songs, but today I had an epiphany:

This song is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock.

Granted, it doesn't have the allusions, (Poor Sting-- he had people running all over town trying to figure out exactly what "that famous book by Nabokov" was in the 1980s-- stupid pop culture illiterates.) but thematically it's the friggin' same thing: loss of time, "winter" of life, regret, etc.

I mentioned it to Karen and she was quite impressed with my comparison. She even got me a copy of The Wasteland. I'm working on it as we speak.

Other exciting news:

Karen really likes that HBO series Big Love. She caught the first episode on a free HBO weekend last year. Due to the fact that Karen is so cheap, she persuaded one of her friends to record it and she watched the entire first season one day behind last year.

Anyway, evidently Big Love started again a few weeks ago, unbeknownst to Karen. On a whim she called the cable company and discovered that HBO is only an extra ten bucks a month. Within minutes we have HBO.

She says she's canceling when Big Love is over.

We'll see if Karen remembers . . .

Anyway, we're in the middle of watching Little Miss Sunshine. Great movie, you should see it.