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!

or at least people with a similar level of dorkitude to my own.

Anyone interested in doing a study for a cultural anthropology/linguistics article on pirate perceptions?

better to side with the dork you know....

This photo nicely summarizes my weekend.... (many thanks to hulegu and his flickr site)






Plant lovers, fear not! These kitties got their come-uppance (yuk yuk yuk!) as I discovered this morning upon finding a pile of green stringy puke in my kitchen this morning. Sadly, the plant has gotten quite a haircut, and looks quite scraggly at the moment.

Here's the shortlist for the 2006 booker prize.

My fiction (and fictional) boyfriend David Mitchell narrowly missed inclusion this year. Am I pissed on his behalf? Certainly! BlackSwanGreen is completely different from all of his previous books, and I think he pulled it off brilliantly. I know of no other contemporary author who moves so fluidly from style to style. His previous books had a strong element of the surreal (which many reviewers loved to characterize as sci-fi), and BSG followed a more traditional Modern first person fictional style. But Mitchell is not just a stylist or an architect -- his stories (particularly BSG) are potent. As I see it, the problem with being labelled "sci-fi", "experimental", or "avant-garde", is that traditional fiction lovers run screaming. I've certainly been guilty of that kind of prejudice. And perhaps that's because too many fiction lovers have been burned by the Modernists and the Postmodernists like John Barth and Don DeLillo. I can appreciate the literary qualities of these folks, but they do come off as rather cold. And with that bias in mind, fictionanistas see the so-called "sci-fi" david mitchell and immediately resist.


BUT WAIT! Then why did he get on the list with his surreal books and not with his traditional one? I have a theory. He was their token surrealist. And then when he showed some further dimension, they left him high and dry! ok, no, not really. Actually, the books they did pick look fairly intriguing, particularly Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men. I remember picking it up in Blackwell's when I was in London. Given my prohibition on buying hardbacks (especially those under 200 pages!), I resisted, but I'll be stalking the acquisitions department at my local library very soon. I mean, have any of you had the opportunity to read any fiction by Libyans or Libyan emigres? Me either.

From the Booker website:
"In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
Viking, £12.99

On a white hot day in Tripoli in the summer of 1979 nine year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother. His father is away on business - but Suleiman is sure he has just seen him, standing across the street in a pair of dark glasses. But why isn’t he waving? And why doesn’t he come over when he knows Suleiman’s mother is falling apart? Whispers and fears intensify around Suleiman and he begins to wonder whether his father has disappeared for good.

Hisham Matar was born in New York in November 1970 and spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo before moving back to Britain. He studied architecture at Goldsmith’s College and in 1990, when he was a student, his father - a Libyan dissident living in Cairo - was kidnapped, taken back to Tripoli, imprisoned and tortured and there has been no word since 1995. In the Country of Men is his first novel. Matar has lived in London since 1986."


Yes, I do have a life and reports from that life will continue as soon as I am properly employed.

London was delightful, and "Walthamstan" was the slightly less than wholesome immigrant neighborhood that I recalled from my last trip. I'll be posting some photos in a couple of days after I finish moving...


I read this piece by Martin Amis this morning imagining the last days of Mohammed Atta. I'm not sure what i think about it.

While in London, I bought more books than I should have (typical). During the first week I was there, I started and finished a novel recommended by my dear friend Sonja : We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. I've never read a book that so accurately described the mixed andcomplicated feelings brought up by potential motherhood. What if you don't like your child? What if your child hates you? Is it a personal moral failure for a woman to not love her child? Why does society insist on passing judgement on every aspect of your parenting? Often, it seems as if young people are told that children will change their lives, they will fall in love with their child, and that it's a necessary and essential part of being human. The first is certainly true, but well-meaning relatives and friends are glossing over the pain and hurt that children cause. Shriver describes a worst-case scenario to be sure, but it certainly wouldn't hurt people to consider the less wonderful aspects of child-rearing. Perhaps this could only be done in fictional form considering our society's ostensible idolatry of the pregnant mother, while often providing no real societal support for these same mothers.

sigh.


Anyway, I have an interview this morning and must away!

So, hey, crazy about these wacky foreign affairs!

Good thing I didn't have to fly today. and not take my chapstick on board. too liquidy. or maybe too gel-y.

Oh, hey, and I'm really glad I'm not going to London next week, when the terrorism suspects were planning on carrying out these attacks.

Right, and I'm really glad they weren't targeting my airline of choice.

And, yeah, I'm glad I won't be staying in Walthamstow, one of the main neighborhoods subject to raids this morning.


On the positive side, I think sales of these will go through the roof. I had at least three conversations about these today. Buy now.

There is a direct relationship between the amount of work I have to do and the number of blog entries I make...well, actually, it may be logarithmic.

At any rate, while poking around the Guardian books section, I found this article about Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon....one of the many books I refuse to commit to at this precise moment.

One more reason to watch Homicide (at least the early seasons) - a chance to see the lost Baldwin in an excellent role. After you've had a few drinks, try to name all four Baldwin brothers. It's not as easy as you'd think.





très creepy.

conservation assessment awaits. hygrometers everywhere cheer.

If only every guy I'd ever dated had understood this....even a little...

"Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl's brain. We're not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It's a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm."

The article goes on to note that women form an emotional bond with men in the span of contact as short as a twenty second hug. I will never hug a new man again. Even if i meet David Mitchell. I'm sure hulegu will be thrilled to hear that.

So, for those of you interested in such things, Rory Stewart will be featured on NPR's Fresh Air today. The audio won't be ready til 3PM EST but I'm sure you can be patient.




Sort of a british-afghani Steve Buscemi, no?

Also, if anyone ever asks you to volunteer for any committee, slowly back out the door and book it.

It really is Bro-a-rriffic here. Nice enough, I guess, but really dull and unimaginative.

Soooooo, I'm moving to Bloomington. More later on that. In the meantime, may I recommend the following article that hulegu sent to me as a reflection of myself. I don't consider my book "situation" as a disease, but I guess I've been pathologized.

Also, the Times has read my mind again by featuring the Orkneys in their travel section.





I do realize that the Times writes for people who take themed, guided, and catered vacations, but still, I like looking at the pictures. There was also a lovely section in David Mitchell's Ghostwritten about a character living in the Orkneys. I took this as a sign that I was destined to go there. Not this trip to England, I guess, but I will get there.

Who could resist Skara Brae?



Finally, in case you've been desperately wondering what it is that I want to do with my life, here is an example. I've spent a great deal of the last few days justifying my decision to get an MA in Linguistics/Phonetics to my parents, so I'm afraid I have nothing to add right this second. Speaking of....saw Wordplay with the mater. Basically in the same style as Spellbound, but about nutty crossword folks....like me....and Jon Stewart...and Bill Clinton. Except that I've never timed my crossword performance. I buy little pink plastic pigs, but I don't time my crosswords. That would be nuts.

So, my tenure here in Bloomington is almost over. I wish I could say that I'll miss it more. I'll be back soon enough. This summer was not as exciting as last summer, and I'm slowly realizing that my experience in SWSEEL last summer was the exception rather than the rule. Bloomington is certainly one of those places which requires good company to enjoy. I've been lucky enough to make a couple of good friends this summer, and to enjoy a lot of pleasant banter with my many convenience store pals.

But my mind is already in london. I'll be there for two weeks (!) and I intend to conquer the city completely this time around. Although this will be my third time to visit, i have not yet felt as if i understood exactly what people enjoy about living there. My first time was too brief and totally overwhelming. My second was poorly planned....always a pitfall in such a large city. This time, however, I have a plan...or at least my own A to Zed! I don't mind breaking plans, but I have to make them first.

Anyhoo, I was disappointed with the film version of The Dancer Upstairs. John Malkovich's directorial debut took apart the structure of the book, or at least the major storytelling device in order to make it more straightforward to film (that's all I can guess anyway). My feeling is that I wouldn't have been able to follow the film at all if I hadn't read the book. Also, the film has that problem that many films set in non-english speaking settings have -- should the characters speak english with an accent? should they randomly break into the local language with subtitles? I don't have an answer, but this film had one guy who looked exactly like facinelli from Fastlane (oh, I heart fastlane). And he spoke like some kid from Jersey....and not so much like a rough-and-tumble cop from Lima, Peru.

On the other hand, because I like to be hopelessly late to every hip party, I will be renting seasons 1 and 2 of entourage as soon as I get back to austin (for that brief, cat filled week). I really wanted to hate the show, but it's really incredible -- a lot of badassedness squeezed into 24 minutes. And my newest crush is not the sleazy looking Adrian Grenier, but instead Jeremy Piven.

More books: I found a Tolstoy novel I wasn't familiar with in a Dover edition the other day - Resurrection. I had been looking for some of his short stories, or anything, really, that I could realistically finish. Looks to be good so far. Also, my inimitable book source, and old roommate and friend who is the principal fiction buyer at a major independent store, recommended Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which is due out this tuesday. It'll be hard, but I'm going to try to save it for the overseas flight. In the meantime, I'm reading the highly-lauded London by Peter Ackroyd. If I were trying to catch up on formal history, Ackroyd's ramblings would piss me off. However, London is a total mystery me, and the pigeon holes and meanderings that he offers will give me the sense of familiarity that I would like to have.

I've been fending off loneliness in Bloomington this week by playing piano again. I found some free practice rooms close to my house, and spend a couple of hours a day working on this Beethoven sonata (Op.10, no. 3) that's about at my level. Generally, I'm a pretty lousy/lazy sight reader... the less sharps or flats in the time signature, the better. D major works well in that respect. I really have to hear the music to play a piece decently. Finding a recording of these sonatas is proving harder than I expected. I can't wait to get settled somewhere so I can take lessons again. The full body physicality of playing piano relieves a lot of emotional tension. And, if you're lucky, you can do a decent interpretation of the music. Emotional, physical, and not so damn intellectual.

yar. just a couple more days.