grimy bathroom floors
further insulted by cats
need tile grout coating

I just found out that a kid from my high school died last year. Our school only had 300 students spread from 5th to 12th grade, and it was easy to know everyone who went there. John David was a freshman when I was a senior, and we had known each other for a couple of years before I graduated. Although I did everything I could when I left high school to distance myself from my school and my home, I would have been happy to see John David again. He was the kind of guy I'd like to have had as a little brother -- wicked smart, funny, humorously subversive and more than a little goofy. Every time I thought about him, I smiled, thinking that he must be doing something fiendishly clever now that he was out of school.

The obituary was opaque about the cause of death. And whatever it was, I'm still pissed -- whether it was a traffic accident or the demons of his mind, I'm still pissed that I won't get a chance to meet the man he must have become. I'm pissed that no one else will get to meet him either.

After a long absence exacerbated by a heavy work load and potentially troublesome internet connections in Xinjiang, sparkandmercury has reported the happy news that Urumchi (also rendered) has a fine tex mex restaurant, run by (naturally) some folks from Austin.

in case you too have temporarily forgotten the exact location of Urumchi (temporarily of course!), here is a basic regional map, courtesy of wikipedia


I, on the other hand, am leaving tomorrow for the more pedestrian destination:


where with any luck, huleguand I can enjoy views such as this one (courtesy again of wikipedia):

 

Hmmm, my office mate/ de facto boss is screaming "you smart-ass bitch" to someone in the interweb, soooooooooooo I better go.

It's a bit of a relief to hear some funny news about the morass in Iraq - featuring badgers even!

On a similar note, I could have sworn that the announcer on NPR this morning was talking about "rocksteady group" over and over again...only to find out that she was saying "Iraq study group". How disappointing. But that's regional variation for you (or listener related idiocy).

My mom has found a new media darling for her celebrity boyfriend -- None other than Mr. Werner Herzog, himself (ca. 1980)





Well, I guess it's better than her thing for Winston Churchill.

Continuing with the German theme, in response to a question asked by a good friend travelling through town, I have found the answer. He asked me to confirm which Nazi leader was reputed to have said "When I think of culture, I reach for my revolver." I suppose I walked into that arena on my own by admitting that I was reading Richard Evans' excellent series of books on the Third Reich (I highly recommend, by the way). We both guessed Goebbels, but I promised to check it out.

That night, I came upon the following passage in Evans' first book The Coming of the Third Reich. Evans is discussing the cultural revolution that HItler began implementing during the year 1933, and particularly a Nazi playwright (Hanns Johst) and his play Schlageter:

"But the play quickly became famous for a reason that had nothing to do with the Nazi glitz and razzmatazz of its premiere. Thanks to all the publicity it gained, it was widely felt to symbolize the Nazi attitude to culture. People noted, either from going to see the play or from reading about it in the press, that one of the main characters, Friedrich Thiemann, played by Veit Harlan, rejected all intellectual and cultural ideas and concepts, arguing in a number of scenes with the student Schlageter that they should be replaced by blood, race and sacrifice for the good of the nation. In the course of one such argument, Thiemann declared: 'When I hear "culture", I release the safety catch of my Browning!" To many cultured Germans, this seemed to sum up the Nazis' attitude to the arts, and the phrase quickly went the rounds, becoming wholly detached from its original context. It was soon attributed to various leading Nazis, but above all to Hermann Göring, and simplified in the process to the catchier, wholly apocryphal, but oft-repeated statement: 'When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun!'"

Catchier, indeed! And Nazi glitz even! And to think I gave Mission of Burma so much credit for that....

yes, yes, I live. After considerable prodding by the fawning masses, I have returned. This entry will be brief, but I will provide a quick overview of the intervening months. Since the dismal february entry last posted here, I have moved back to birmingham, lost the beautiful cat that graces this page, caught up on many movies and books, and started a decent gig at, of all things, a commercial real estate brokerage.

I'll be getting my computer at work tomorrow, and will no doubt be able to post the article i read on the remains of 2 meter high penguins found on the chilean coast last week.

In the meantime, i'm going to watch some more of Rome. "All is permitted!"

There are many things from my many intersections with popular culture that I only half-remember. I annoy my friends with drunken rants about Kissyfur, I rave about the cartoon introduction to Watership Down, I catch myself saying "You can do it duffy moon!", and I insist that Vanilla Ice had another album before "Cold as Ice". Well, today, loyal readers, I have at least one answer to this tangle of memories.

If I've ever babbled to you about this Errol Flynn movie about Francois Villon called The Spider King....well, ok so it's John Barrymore, and the movie is called The Beloved Rogue.

No matter. John Barrymore will do for me.

So the weather here in the cultural capital of Indiana is so unfortunate that my services as a local friendly (if sassy) bookseller are not needed. I have tomorrow off as well. At the risk of being ungrateful, I'm not quite sure what to do with myself today. Sans car and with freezing, wet slushiness outside, I'm afraid that my day will be spent staring at my cat staring at me staring at her.

But no! There are plenty of linguistic anthropology articles to read, lasagne and polenta dishes to make, and gyms to attend. And it would probably be nice if I finished re-backing a book for my father, The Variations of Popery. It's a 19th-century book with a crappy, brittle cover. Thus far, my dad's covered the book with paper towels and taped them to the book to make a really insubstantial "protective" cover. Book conservators and technicians everywhere die a little when they hear of solutions like that. But my father has a particular and not uncommon point of view. He's not concerned with preserving the artefact, only with making it useful, essentially for his lifetime. Although those in the heritage field are trained to have a knee-jerk reaction to save everything as if it were intended to last multiple generations. Unfortunately, we're up against crappy materials (among other things.) In these cases, I give myself comfort by reminding myself that I am not a library and I am not given the opprobrium of saving the culture. Therefore, I freely buy cheap paperbacks with glee. The Bodleian library, the Smithsonian, and the library of Congress all have dedicated staff to monitor humidity levels, fix the HVAC system, and control that pesky destructive light spectrum. So, secure in this mythology, I will fix my dad's book up to utilitarian rather than cultural preservation standards.

Well, I always find that a little Scandinavian design cheers me up, so here you go (with thanks and apologies to rorstrand).

So I've allowed my job to swallow up my life for the past few months...It's not the best job, but it keeps the cats fed and I get to work with really nice folks (for the most part).

I may miss a few but I've read the following books since my last post:
Look at Me - Jennifer Egan
Absurdistan - Gary Shteyngart
Wicked - Gregory Maguire
Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer
Disgrace - J.M Coetzee
Elizabeth Costello - J.M. Coetzee
Monkeyluv - Robert Sapolsky

The Krakauer book is probably the most compelling I've read all year, though mormons (i think they may prefer mormen) make it a little too easy to entice what with their holy underwear and all. It also re-ignited my interest in Christian heresies. Perhaps it's just my persecution complex, but I feel a kinship to these folks. I too am not included in the hegemonic narrative (ha!)! Sub-altern studies forever!





In other book news, I've managed to push David Mitchell on two more people since starting work...in addition to the guy who came in looking for an xmas gift for his girlfriend and foolishly allowed me to talk him into Cloud Atlas and My Name is Red.

And thank you to Robert, the porter at Jesus College in Oxford, for insisting that I read both J.M. Coetzee and Annie Proulx. Wherever you are, I hope you've moved on from porterdom and off of that red light district of Oxford, Cowley Road.

The Guardian, has brought the happy news that Turkish novelist, Elif Shafak, has been acquitted.

"Shafak faced up to three years in jail over remarks made by a fictional character in her latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, which referred to the massacre of Armenians in the first world war as genocide. Article 301 of the Turkish penal code criminalises the "public denigration" of Turkishness, the Turkish Republic, the Grand National Assembly, the government, judiciary, military and security services in terms so broad as to be applicable to a wide range of critical opinions. More than 60 writers have been charged under the law since its introduction last year."

The book in question, The Bastard of Istanbul, will not be available in English until after Christmas of this year. Just as well, I suppose, given the number of books on my plate at the moment. But how can you not be tempted by a novelist who chooses such titles asThe Saint of Incipient Insanities and The Flea Palace?

I can hear you all snickering at me, and I don't appreciate it!