ApatheticLiberalDepressingPostModernEvangelicalRedNeckTechnoApocalypse

If you would like something a little more serious, check out this brief history of marriage. The author even rationally explains nagging: "Women are more likely to bring up marital issues for discussion because they have more to gain from changing the traditional dynamics of marriage."

read this & quit complaining, dan

It's getting hot enough for air conditioning here, and I've been in a fairly decent mood lately, so there hasn't been much to write about. I did manage to finish Don Quixote. Last weekend was mostly two bike rides, which meant that I spent Monday barely able to stand up. Only I figured out the connection to the bike rides long after the fact: I was thinking that it was Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, since the tick bites are still with me.

If you're looking for a sign that things are going to hell, I've ordered an iPod mini. Yet another way to ignore other people. I might put Linux on it.

And finally, what I've really been doing the last week or two: the Battle for Wesnoth. A little like "Heroes of Might and Magic" -- I'm sure you Brown House guys will love it! [Hmm: a fantasy game, open-source, and compiled for Win, OS X, and lots of the Linux flavors -- how do you say "draws geeks like moths to flame"?]

dirty word of the day

clyster (klis'ter), n. Med. An enema. [From L < Gk. klyster, variant of klyzein, to rinse out]. "There is also a secret author of no little credit who relates, that the Knight of the Sun, being taken in a trap in a certain castle, was hurried to a deep dungeon, where, after they had bound him hand and foot, they forcibly gave him a clyster of snow-water and sand, which would probably have cost him his life, had he not been assisted in that distress by a wise magician, his particular friend." (Don Quixote)

Yes, I'm reading Don Quixote for the second and a halfth time. As you can tell, it's a great book! That passage (word, actually) reminded me of a get-rich-quick scheme I heard of (from the horse's mouth, too) to provide exotic, flavored, drive-through enemas to Hollywood celebrities. (Maybe he'll partner with Starbucks...and he'd hardly have to change the name! As for the logo, he could just flip the mermaid upside-down.) [Note to Neb: no, this was not really my idea, even if it is twisted enough to be.]

Those interested in church history, history of Christianity, and / or sociology of religion ought to take a gander at a book I just finished, Philip Jenkin's The Next Christendom. Lots of good demographic-based evidence which will enable you to predict that American Episcopalians and Catholics will only grow angrier in the coming years. (Hint: the 'average Christian' (statistically speaking) does not live in the Northern Hemisphere.) For people like myself who have grown up paying attention to international events, there are lots of nice little connections between religious and political events that media coverage is ignorant of, doesn't have time for, or glosses over. I'm now better informed about Korean politics (South and North) & the entire continent of Africa.

I'd also recommend Andrew Walls The Missionary Movement in Christian History which, as the title implies, takes a wider approach. His 'big idea' is to view Christianity as relatively brief periods of transmission followed by centuries of inculturation (or gestation). [Warning: dangerous quantities of history ahead!] I.e. the Germanic tribes in Northern Europe were first evangelized by the English monk Boniface around AD 750 (a generation before Charlemagne), but culturally, Christianity did not come to maturity in a specifically German way, expressed through specifically German forms, and adapted to the German mind, until, oh, just after lunchtime on 31 October 1517. (Fill in the blank: On this day Martin Luther ___.) In Wall's view, revivals and reformations occur primarily after the content of Christian message has been 'digested' by, and partaken itself, of the 'host' culture. And then this new form of Christianity prompts the next missionary movement. Kinda makes sense of that 'Old Testament' / 'New Testament' thing, doesn't it?

misanthrope

'Personally, I don't find it credible that Pride and Prejudice was written by anyone, at any age.'

Currently I'm in week 2 of God-knows-how-many weeks of working dawn to (almost) dusk, but all I want to do is get up late, make coffee, and settle down to read novels. In front of a fan if necessary. If I didn't hate working so much that I get an adrenaline rush when work is over, I might quit; but I think I'm addicted to this whole random meaningless grubbing about in exchange for cash. Plus I can't think of any jobs that involve less contact with the public than my current position as assistant troglodyte for sweat and sawdust. Anyone know of a list of careers fit for misanthropes? Ooh, that phrase suggests a profitable line of informational guides to various subjects! Such as Politics for Misanthropes, Online Computer Gaming for Misanthropes, Theoretical Physics for Misanthropes (assuming Nate is willing to help out my imprint), Cannibalism for Misanthropes, and of course the ever-popular Large Pointy Objects and Real-World Relationships for Misanthropes. Send me your manuscript ideas and I'll try to fling a few bucks your way, cause I'm a nice guy.

nunc dimittis

Today I saw the fish car to end all fish cars: appropriately vanity-plated "1[one]SCHOOL", the bumper held the whole group of fish swimming right to left, led by the "Jesus" fish, of course. In his wake were "Darwin", "IXOYE", "Buddha", "Love", and several others. You'll never believe which college's name was displayed in the back window. But indeed, it was the Rev. Jerry Falwell's brainchild, the place where Tinky-Winky was first outed as a flaming gay impresario -- Liberty University! Talk about a reminder to yours truly about stereotypes.

he's sooooo hott!

There's an upcoming lit conference on Brad Pitt! I loove Brad Pitt! He's an awesome actor. 12 Monkeys, Fight Club, & Snatch are some of my favorite movies. Recently, I'll admit, he's had some duds: Troy wasn't that great; but I'll probably go catch Mr. and Mrs. Smith when it comes to the cheap theater, and not just to see Angelina with no pants on. It's not his body; it's his skill at

[d]epicting masculine American whiteness in various states of crisis, his characters generally enact complex postmodern agencies; they are never wholly coherent, they are often self-destructive, and they generally rely on a certain amount of play --Êbetween stability and instability, between life and death, between autonomy and alter-dependency, between control and abandon. Simultaneously reifying and challenging hegemonic codes of race, class, gender, and regional or national identity, his characters explore the complex and changing postmodern cultural landscape.

otter mink ferret ermine stoat weasel muskrat sable ticks

The three-day camping trip in the Big South Fork is over. I bought a map, and we picked up enough local wildlife (it's tick season!) so we have to go back to return them.

My uncle, brother & I left Knoxville (current anti-litter slogan: "Don't Throw Down / on K-Town!" Saturday morning, had a low-cholesterol breakfast at Golden Girls restaurant (pancakes, two eggs, bacon AND sausage, and hash browns), and were up to BSF and on the trail just after 10. While the trail signs and maps disagree on the distances, we figured we hiked 10.7 miles that first day, 23-24 total. The mountain laurel was blooming white and pink, and it was a nice warm day. We only saw one black snake over three feet long. We got to our campsite, almost inaccessibly hidden a hundred feet upstream from a small bridge.

Day two was hotter and muggier, even though we started hiking earlier. For part of the way we had to walk on horse trails, jumping between hoofprint holes and hoping not to hit the muddy spots. And then the flies drawn to the muck and sweat and smell. And, strangely, the butterflies, which seem to worship horse manure.

But finally we reached what my uncle calls the most beautiful campsite in the Eastern United States: a level, well-shaded glen ten feet above Laurel Fork Creek, which is at that point a waterfall feeding a deep pool. We had dropped our packs and skittered down to cool in the water, when we saw a chocolate-brown furry critter swimming adroitly across the pool. If it noticed us, it gave no indication nor alarm, but slid up one rock, behind another, and so disappeared up the far bank into the forest. Having never seen such a cute little whatever it was, of course we had to name it, so we narrowed it down to the choices above.

And since it was an otter mink ferret ermine stoat weasel muskrat or sable but not a snake, we had to go swimming naked in said cold pool. Alass - but there were none.

The final morning's hiking went from excellent to awful, first with several stream-crossings and then lots of horse trails (which meant six-inch dust, this time). I saw two dogs running down the path towards me, but before they got near, they darted off down towards the stream and out of sight. No more snakes, though I was hoping to see something poisonous. I guess copperheads only show up when you don't expect them. Let that be a lesson to us all.

Back at the Visitors' Center, we chatted up the ranger on duty to (a) complain about horses mucking up foot-only trails (b) ask if anyone was missing 2 dogs, and (c) fill out a "Bear Sighting Report", the bear in this case being our (determined, in consultation with the RoD) mink, to keep bureaucratic biologists happy further up the food chain. While others were busy removing toe-jam, I took the time to prospect for verbal gems among the myriad photocopied rules and warnings and regulations, themselves descendants of photocopies. "It is illegal to ride a horse while drinking alcohol." Amen.

megalomaniac

Useless and dangerous: I never thought of correlating poetry and tyranny. I sense a new life goal once I pick out a small third world country. Like Canada.

[Update for 7 June: As I am precariously balanced on a wobbly ladder above a concrete basement floor, my brain decided to point out that if poets can be the unacknowledged legislators of the world, they sure as hell can be the world's tyrants. And depending on your opinions of Shelley and other Romantic poets, you may one and the same. But what I want to know is why my brain takes vertigo as an opportunity to engage in irrelevant digression. It would be nice to put it to Simeon Stylites, that pillar of ascetic discipline.]

but it does

Last week's stitches have been pulled out by Dr Hassell - I almost went after them myself to stop the little knots rubbing my skin, but I'm a wimp. Plus I got to see everyone at the clinic again (all three of the evening staff), and I found that I'd lost 5 pounds during the week. Not too surprising, since until yesterday I hadn't had more than one real meal a day. I think it's the heat. Or one of the perks of having an accident / sickness. Or just not wanting to eat.

Tomorrow morning I head off into the semi-wilderness for an extended weekend of hiking, protein, and sugary drinks. Mosquitoes are similarly awaiting their weekend. [If I were a fly on the wall, I think I'd hang out at Starbucks.] However, I had to sell my soul to the devil in order to get Monday off work; now I'll be working next Saturday. Only plus side is that things are meant to be very busy, which means overtime.

And on the subject of what my scar looks like, I swear it does look like that. In miniature. I never expected to have one permanently on my face. Maybe it will end up less swollen and go away.

victory, and random books

The Second World War is over. Lots of people died and Poland got screwed on both ends. Before I return to V.S. Naipaul's travel writing (of the highest quality), I should mention that my earlier comment on WWII and LoTR was on the money. [As if I'd say it wasn't on the money!] So, Dr Jacobs, if you're reading, the answer to your question "Why don't literary critics study LoTR as 20th century English Literature" would be something like this: LoTR isn't just literature in the experimental fiction with lots-of-metaphors sense, but literature as skillfully recounted history (see also Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago). A serious criticism of LoTR must take in the history of the 20th Century, which, when you've been on the Derrida diet, has too many facts.

I wonder if, given a couple thousand years, Tolkien's account might survive as the distillation of the World Wars, as Homer's Iliad was of Troy? And maybe there's a sci-fi story to be written here (with debt to Asimov's story about time-traveling Shakespeare, and A Canticle For Liebowitz.)

While on the topic of lit crit, there's a book called A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander which is an absolute joy to read. And the book itself is cute: it's the just-bigger-than-palm size that all good books aspire to, and it has beautiful little illustrations - sketches, woodcuts, paintings - perfectly integrated into the text. What does it have to do with literature? It's a handbook of architectural archetypes, and guide to constructing those archetypal patterns. Or you could call it a self-help book for spatial elements. I'm not sure that sold anyone on the book, so let me steal & embellish a story from it, which illustrates the pattern 'Zen View'.

A monk lived on a high mountain. From the top of the mountain, one could see other peaks rimmed with clouds, and, far below, the shimmering sea. But the path to his dwelling, and his entire house, had a high wall which prevented travelers from looking out. An apprentice who had climbed to the monk's dwelling was distraught by this and said, 'Why do you hide the beauty of this mountain?' The monk merely invited the apprentice into his house, and as they crossed a small courtyard the apprentice saw, through a crack in the wall, the fabled view, and it overwhelmed him. 'Oh', said the apprentice, 'It is too much to look upon!' 'Were it always in my sight' said the monk, 'Nor would I ever see it.'

In conclusion, that's why I like hiking. And other things, like chocolate and coffee. Oh, wait, that's not the point of the story at all, is it? More like the opposite, I fear. But you'll have to figure that out yourself.

woozy

I tried driving to work about an hour ago but the combination of swollen eye and strong antibiotic was not very agreeable. I thought I was just closing my eyes to regroup every few seconds, but in practice it was more like winking at the road and then going back to sleep.

After the pain and agony of stitches, I suppose I ought to make some snide comment about giving birth, but I won't. That's left as an exercise for the reader. Instead, today's post is all about safety, as in this story. But why did the reporter seek comment from the NRA? Will Charleton and the Uzi-toting gang now moved into defending the right to bear cutlery drawers? Possible future headlines: "The Cutler-y Wars", "Cutlery's Last Stand".

revenge of the stitch

Considering that my other scar, would, if it were still a gaping wound, be legally consuming alcohol in the usual copious amounts, it shouldn't be too surprising that a new set of stitches has arisen on my face. (Insert "Darth Maul" joke here.) Some points of difference between Knoxville, 2005, and Pakistan, 1984: I did not spend my time screaming at the top of my lungs; no one had to hold me down during the injection of local anesthetic; nor was this doctor wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt. Oh, and I drove myself to the doctor this time, too.

Now before you start thinking what a manly man I am / was this time around, let me mention that I boldly carried out my usual habit of almost fainting in the combined presence of my blood, a hospital exam room, and ready needles. This bodily willingness to wimp out at the sight of least danger - not from scars, nosebleeds, or gashes to the head, understand, but from fingerpricks administered by Trained Medical Professionals - is really why I don't give blood: all that stuff I say about 'Oh, I can't give blood because I recently visited a third world country where it's customary for people have cholera for dessert' is just cover. I say almost fainting, because as I'm about to black out the nurse or doctor always gives me this piercing look and then orders me to Lie Down Now On This Table.

After sewing me back together, the doctor amused me with a small catalogue of things to be glad for [1 - an inch lower or to the left and I'd have lost my eye - 2 - the stitches ought to fit right in with my eyebrows - 3 - this blood running down your face shows you've got good circulation] I opted for some humor, too. "Where'd that pair of scissors go, Kathy?" Dr. Hassell asked the nurse. "I hope you didn't leave them inside me" I said. Then as the doctor was telling me about how I should be immediately concerned at any loss of vision and all that, I decided to see if I could still cross my eyes. I stopped that fast: he was giving me the look again. Now I know that eye-crossing is the first sign of fainting! I think the nurse was slightly amused.

Oh, I guess I should explain how I got a freely-bleeding head wound in the first place, right?

the possum song

I just heard this song [1.3MB]on WDVX today, and it's a riot! They go through a recipe catalog at the end: possum pie, possum a la mode, possum slushy, possum kebab, etc... but you don't get to hear those verses on the clip. I can't find the lyrics online, but did find another streamed copy of the song that's a little longer.

Ulyanov and I

I forgot to mention that, while in high school, I was a devout proto-Communist. By that I mean that in the course of studying modern Russian history, I developed a great fascination with one Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov, aka Lenin, and in myriad essays tried to defend the course of his actions leading to the October Revolution in 1918. So I defended Lenin's establishment of Soviet brutality on the grounds that it was inevitable and therefore necessary. History, I thought, had little to do with morality (a sentiment I think I picked up from Tolstoy's War and Peace); death plays both sides. What matters is that the individual life be compelling. And certainly Lenin's was dramatic. Elder brother killed after abortive attempt to assassinate Tsar; imprisonment in Siberia; exile in Europe; sealed-train passage through wartime Germany to Russia (so his Communist Revolution could undermine the war); power over Russia six months later; civil war; entombed on Red Square. Mustn't the intriguing life be a life well-lived?

So I thought at the time. But I read further, and somewhere between Elie Wiesel's Night and Jane Hamilton-Merritt's Tragic Mountains (about plight of the Hmong people during the Vietnam War), it became clear to me that the 20th century was the epoch of holocaust. An entire century of genocides. Try getting that dry, sick feeling of guilt in the back of your throat, not for one betrayal, but for a hundred years'.

What do you say to your small and inadequate longing to atone for these things? It's not enough to keep telling the stories; the books and movies and lives -- Maus, The Killing Fields, Primo Levi -- only make it worse. I was reminded of my powerless conscience last week by this telling of Iris Chang's life, and death. It didn't have any good answers, either.

a revolution in handwashing & the defense of Nagaland

It's about time I wrote something about the Second World War, seeing as I'm nearly done with volume five. This story is not particularly Second World War-ish, but instructive nonetheless. In early 1943, I think, or maybe late 1942, Churchill visited Stalin in the Kremlin (which he reached via Gibraltar, Cairo and Tehran, due to Aeroflot and BA having suspended direct service due to a flight attendant strike. Just kidding! There was a war going on in Europe at the time, for those of you who didn't study history, Neb.) Anyhow, he was given the use of State Dacha Number Seven for the time he was in Moscow, and reports that not only was the guesthouse fully electrified, but it had no stoppers in the washroom sinks, and only a single tap. (I'm paraphrasing here, having returned volume four already.) The hot and cold waters were perfectly mixed above the tap, and he washed his hands in the flowing stream rather than in the basin. And, Churchill continues, I have since, in modest scale, adopted this somewhat extravagant scheme of washing directly from the flowing tap when at my home.

So what's the big deal about all that? Well, it's a good illustration that "the past is a foreign country", to quote somebody or other. I was prepared for Churchill's amazement at the total electrification of his accommodations (after all, Lenin said, in 1922, "Soviet Power equals Communism plus the electrification of the entire country"); but to learn that only sixty years ago the Prime Minister of Great Britain washed his hands in running water for the first time -- and considered it luxury -- floored me. (I suppose I should ask my grandparents about these matters, eh? Here I go forgetting how spoiled I am.) Whether you choose look upon this as a pivotal moment in the history of plumbing, or as yet another sad episode in the rape of the earth, or as testament to humanity's increasing knowledge of hygiene, or simply as the Soviets showing off to foreign dignitaries (and think of how many bugs were in the walls) -- in the end, it's a very mundane moment. But what would Pontius Pilate and Lady Macbeth have done with running water? It's obvious now, but I'd never thought of this before: they couldn't wash blood down the sink.

And I'll end this edition of Historical Curiosities by pointing out the crucial importance of Nagaland in the defense of India against the Japanese attack. Imphal, Dimapur, and Kohima are names that you may have heard Zingrin mention; had they not been well defended, we might never have heard from Zingrin at all. So here's to history, which teaches us (at least) that lots of things could be different, but aren't, for reasons we have a hard time comprehending. History: it's kinda like astrophysics. But the math is easier.

planning to quit already

This is probably a bad place to say this (ie publicly) but I think I would like to hike the Appalachian trail. I mean the entire thing - all 2160 miles of it. Which is less than 3000, so it's not that bad if you look at it that way. If I get new hiking boots, a small tent, stove, and something to purify water. Donations accepted from those who wish to rid society of my negligible influence. If you want to help, though, come along. I'll let you carry my pack. Oh, and we're starting from Maine, because fewer people do it in that direction. But mainly (pun intended) because it's too late to start from Georgia. Not because I have an instinctual pull to the south; no, I don't find Rhett Butler sexy in the least. Some of them NASCAR drivers, now... maybe I DO give a damn. They even have all their teeth!

I'm thinking of ways I can retract that bold statement (not about NASCAR drivers; the "I think I would like to hike the AT") without appearing too cowardly. Although, perversely enough, I'd be MORE inclined to hike the whole thing if someone else wanted to come - just to make you suffer. That's me: full of love for other people.

which witch is which?

'In which' comes from Winnie the Pooh, whose sticky, unlicked fingerprints, I just realized, are all over the honey-pot of my life.

"We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."
"Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."

I'm going camping this weekend - well, fake camping, anyhow, which probably means more food than exercise, but that's okay, too. So if you're in southwestern VA (Damascus area), and hungry, give us a call.

everybody's favorite mormon

If you haven't read Ender's Game, consider putting it on the list. It's intelligent science fiction, by which I mean science fiction which explores the human, rather than the technological, side of the future. And that doesn't mean novels about dating in outer space, either; Card coined (I believe) the term 'xenocide' - the total destruction of an alien species. And has 10-year-olds doing the killing. We aren't in 'Star Trek' any more. I'm currently reading OSC's Speaker for the Dead, the (first) sequel to Ender's Game; so far so good. And even more mysterious than Ender's Game; because, 3000 years in the future, the Catholic Church is still a powerful and vibrant universal organization, while on another Nordic planet Calvinism still holds sway, at least among those who haven't completed their university educations.

Tangent: the destruction of trees is a common theme in the fantasy genre. A familiar example will be from Tolkien, of course; but Lewis, also, in The Last Battle, has the apocalypse begin with the Calormene Lumber Corporation deforesting Lantern Waste. And, more recently, in the last book of Stephen Lawhead's "Song of Albion" series, the brutal intrusion of the present day into ancient England is performed by bulldozers, backhoes, and the requisite apparatus for a strip-mining operation. Now, it does not take much effort to place all three of these writers in the Christian tradition; so what might that tell us about the underlying structures and allegiances of the fantasy genre?

Anyhow, back to OSC. I'm wondering how his being LDS (aka Mormon) affects his fiction. Two ideas, which are more like feelers: first, the change in setting from "this world" or a a specific world ("Narnia", "Middle Earth" etc) to multiple planets / worlds, each with their own quirks and customs. While multiple worlds may be a staple of science fiction the genre, how does OSC's science fiction differ from other sci-fi writers who have no dedication to the belief that Jesus and the Lost Tribes of Israel were part of the American continent's pre-European history, as portrayed in the Book of Mormon. And secondly, heroes, and idea of heroism itself, come under considerable stress in OSC's books. Here's what little light the official LDS Christology might shed on this issue (judging from the pic, JC may have been Frankenstein's lumberjack brother). Note that the brief statement does NOT explicitly say that Christ is God. Well, you may say, it comes close, using phrases like 'Son of God', which is a Biblical phrase meaning 'God'. But that's my point. Now, the LDS position on Christ is almost identical to the American view of Christ (and not just because it's been 'fine-tuned' to be broadly acceptable in this culture); Americans in general are very quick to speak of JC as moral exemplar while shying away from the notion that he is God. So, as the pictures on mormon.org illustrate (check them out), we get 'cute and cuddly' without the bracing reality of 'God and judge'. For you history / theology buffs, this is the heresy of Arianism. [Subtangent: Good heresies don't die or fade away; they stay in style. Not very historical of them to keep popping up in the present, now, is it?] What happens to your fiction when your locus of authority, if you have one, or even if it is hidden in the narrator's /author's point of view, doesn't have any backbone? So, as an LDS, or not, how do you say xenocide is evil? And mean it? (I may be 80 years behind the times here, but that doesn't mean it's an invalid question.)

Finally, why is it that the lesbian couples go grocery shopping together on Sunday mornings? Or am I trying to make a general case from anecdotal information, and this Sunday was in fact statistically normal? For that matter, how do we know that the standard distribution is statistically normal, and not some freak quantum effect? Email submissions accepted.

more randomness

Listening to the newest Alison Krauss CD, Lonely Runs Both Ways, is a good lonely. I used to think Loreena McKennitt (who I can't find on CD - maybe I have a song of hers on tape somewhere) and Norah Jones were the best I'd ever heard. But I simply defy any of you people out there (all three of you) to name a female singer, classical or not, with a better voice than Alison's (Note that even her name is spelled perfectly! No superfluous 'l's, no yuppie 'y's!). If such a goddess exists, and she's single, well, then life might not be so bad after all.

Question: What might Tolkien owe to Churchill?
Winnie's 6-book history of the Second World War published 1948. Tolkien's 6-book history (yes, that's '6-book'; check your table of contents) of the War of the Ring published 1954. I just started Book 1 of Churchill's history, The Gathering Storm, but this sentence caught my eye: "Early in the year 1923, Mr. Bonar Law resigned the Premiership and retired to die of his fell affliction." Don't tell me - "his fell affliction" - that didn't come out straight out of the word-hoard of LoTR. Or rather, the other way around. At any rate, I'll keep you posted as to how much Tolkien cribbed from the WC; I'm only on page 21. But who could help plagiarizing a work that begins thus: "Theme of the Volume - How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm"? "Unwisdom" - there's another Tolkien-like archaism!

Sorry, didn't mean to get all Harold Bloomish in that last para. just interested in placing LoTR in the context of the 20th century ever since Dr Jacobs pointed out that it is THE blind spot for critics of 20th century English lit, despite some intriguing parallels to everycritic's favorite novel, Joyce's Ulysses. Which is really an epic (like LoTR) by a Catholic (ditto) whose revolutionary literary technique involves the fastidious recreation of a bye-gone world (yep again), which in turn requires precise internal consistency and the capacity for unending self-reference (oh yeah!). Btw, both 'Winston' and 'Churchill' are names for smokes.

random things on my mind

I suppose that I, of all people, should not be surprised that this has happened, given the upcoming movies. But I am amazed at whom they found to write it.

After reading Robert Graves' more-or-less historical fictional autobiography (in two parts) of Tiberius Claudius (10 BC - AD 54, Emperor 41-54 AD), I'm angry at Augustine for not giving a heads-up. Now in the City of God there are lots of good Augustinian rants against the corruption and wickedness of Rome, but I carelessly nodded assent without grasping that things were SO FUCKING BAD. Or maybe I intentionally disregarded his warnings and read on anyways because I'm fascinated by Other People's Wickedness. Because it's interesting. (If you must know, email me or phone, and I'll give you a catalogue of the vices.) Suffice it to say that Jane Tompkins' dictum "Genocide matters, and it starts at home" could have been said of the whole lot of the Caesars. (Ms. Tompkins, btw, is Stanley Fish's wife, although she didn't say the quoted remark about him, at least not directly.) The question I have left is: is one a better evil person who kills off his family with the same impunity as his friends and enemies? Those textbook megalomaniacal genocidal maniacs Hitler and Stalin were little soft on the domestic front by comparison to Augustus Caesar's wife Livia. And from another point of view, these books give the lie to anyone who wants to 'demolish' Darwinism by showing that the world has gotten progressively more evil. Ah, the blessings of history.

Furthermore, I will not go for bike rides after suppers consisting of pizza and alcohol.

why country music is evil

It boils down to one simple fact: You can't use a phrase in a country song unless it is already a cliche. As evidence, I offer this song by local K-Town boy Kenny Chesney (who is currently pursuing his authentic country life in the Virgin Islands); and yes, it's worse in performance than it looks in print. Not responsible for damage to your verbal faculties.

If you thought that was bad, come join me at work some day and hang out on a jobsite with burly construction types who will ONLY listen to country on the radio. Today's song selection (consisting of the same 10 songs as yesterday) was so irritating, I was praying for Enya. Even (it was a moment of weakness) for James Taylor. Michael T would be laughing at me now for having dared give him grief.

Now, if I cared, I guess I should compare this song to some of the great CCM classics. It's no accident that both industries are located in Nashville. Of course, if you believe it, then it's holy. So my next sarcastic writing project will be to recast the Apostle's Creed into atrociously cliched English. Hopefully impossible.

p.s. [In the interest of fair disclosure, I should point out that this page is NOT valid HTML 4.01 Transitional because of my persnickety dating habits. Well, really because all my previous post id tags begin with a number. But until I come across a good coding reason why they shouldn't be that way, they'll remain numbers. The CSS, by the way, is fine. Thanks for asking.]

bad elf, good elf

From Simon Singh's latest true-science thriller, Big Bang, the quote that explains everything. "Hale" is Chicago-born telescope builder George Hale, who constructed the many telescopes of Mount Wilson Observatory:

The project seemed doomed to failure, and during periods of extreme pressure Hale would hallucinate and receive visitations from a green elf, who soon became the only person he would confide in about his plans for the telescope. The elf was usually sympathetic, but occasionally it would taunt him. ...

...Hale was still not satisfied [with the performance of his 100-inch Hooker Telescope]. Motivated by his guiding principle of 'More light!', he began work on a 200-inch (5-metre) telescope. His obsession became infamous and would later be immortalized on television in an episode of the X-Files. Mulder explains to Scully that the elf gave Hale advice on fundraising: 'Actually the idea was presented to Hale one night while he was playing billiards. An elf climbed in his window and told him to get money from the Rockefeller Foundation for a telescope.'

I promise to never mention the X-Files again, but this just makes John Nash seem normal, doesn't it? How exactly does one get an elf? I want one, before they become popular!

mks, bureaucracy and writing the date

I hate the United States because this country has chosen the wrong type of bureaucracy.

We believe that information should be subjected to mass processing rather than individual decision. We have faith that the large-scale manipulation of information produces results. This is why nothing occurs without a Social Security Number, even though it is supposedly illegal for anyone besides the Social Security Administration to require a SSN for identity purposes. We believe in mechanical efficiency at the expense of human form. The SSN is linchpin, first-fruits of such a system; it compels the behavior of the more stubborn facts; it shapes ungainly figures into a body of compliance. We believe, ultimately, that data will inherit the earth. And so we do not know how to write down the marks of time.

Some of my favorite childhood memories revolve around trips with my father to visit government offices in Pakistan. They were wholly liturgical experiences: in a ceremonial sense, necessary for our continued residence in that country, and formally, imbued with mysterious accretions from past empires and the powerful whimsy of present Caesars.

We would pass through the gates unchallenged, past guards sitting on charpais with shotguns propped between their legs, and join an undefined queue of clerks and petitioners jostling for space at a window. The sill was always worn, blackened from sweating hands. It had been clutched always like a last hope, but the hands were really just asserting the importance of their own situation.

Eventually, attrition would permit us to be called into the office. We entered a world where time itself grew old. Even the flies stood still. Haphazard desks. Sheet-metal cabinets, stacks of identical ledgers piled atop them. For a long while nothing would happen. The first movement was fans slowly turning; then light creeping in through the high bungalow windows would stumble through clouds of dust. Far beneath this aging atmosphere, near the least crowded desk, sat an empty cracked leatherish chair. The minister, or commissioner, or deputy, would not be in. An assistant would offer tea, and at that sound a man would rise from the shadows and depart. Another would undo the piled ledgers, searching for one not seen in decades. It was given us to sign our names, our numbers, our addresses and occupations. As we handed the ledgers back, he would scrutinize our entries with the concentration of a zealot searching scriptures for concealed obscenities. Then, as it seemed an appropriate time, we would produce cheap bazaar photocopies of passport pages, multiple photographs, a letter attesting to our address. These, too, were scrutinized; the words mouthed, but insufficient. "No," the assistant would say, and the babus would nod their heads in agreement, "I cannot give you the form you require; that job is for the minister alone". Thus was celebrated a mass of inability and denial, of the sort that would have been familiar to the earthly heirs of St. Peter.

In offices like these my father taught me to print my name in capital letters on government forms. To always write the name of the month between the numbered years and days. I think of these actions as a type of prayer.

Why the peculiar American fixation with reducing time to a set of similar numbers, two by two? It is a practice far more than confusing; it takes away the beauty of time, a compound beauty of numbers and names. It takes the ancient, logical progression of day to month to year and jumbles it. You may argue that 042305 is a precise numerical representation of "April 23, 2005". That it is: the translation from month-name to digit is death itself. There is nothing elegant in it. And when we pare all things to cipher what will we be able to understand?

I feel pity for Kafka; with Borges, kinship. Incidentally, I never could stand to read more than a few pages of either man's work.

show and tell

It's about time I put up some pictures from a hike I took in October 2004 with my uncle and others from Woodstock School in India's Baspa-Sangla Valley [warning: HUGE map; look for the words "Himalayan Range" in the lower left and then you'll see the Baspa River jutting southeast off the Sutlej River, and the towns of Sangla, Rakcham, and Chikul by a red star.]. I didn't take any of these photos myself, not being the click-happy camera sort; plus I view photos as a rather sterile medium compared to the memories themselves. But these are pretty good, I guess. The first page of thumbnails loads in about 1 minute over 56k; actual pictures are 100-300k â I'm betting that most people have faster connections than I do.

If self-affirmation is our national pastime (see this George Will column where he mentions that professional counselors, armed with latest techniques in grief therapy, descended upon Boston librarians after â yes, horrible, inhuman tragedy â flood damage to some books), then I must be the wad of tobacco in self-affirmation's chipmunk cheeks, adding an addictive, bitter and not least of all sarcastic flavor to compliments. I revel in turning the standard cliches of concern and affection into hyperbolic, deliciously ironic parodies. Tone of voice is such an effective weapon.

Ad-libbing faux encouragement can be a useful exercise (in case, God forbid, I should end up with a woman who expects this sort of thing on a regular basis); but there's nothing like working from a well-written script. So it was a pleasure to receive the following Guidelines to Better Encouragement from a friend, which I reprint verbatim:

"THE GOOD SIDE (Sprinkle these in conversation every few minutes ...)
"It's okay, Neb. You're so intelligent, beautiful, and powerful, that no one who rises against you shall triumph!"
"Don't worry about it. That would have confused me too." (For use if I make a mistake, i.e., pulling up to a gas pump on the wrong side, twice.)
"Your head covering is really cute."
"You are so perceptive." [Ed.: A phrase of my own, thrown out in a phone conversation, which was deemed canonical.]
"You are completely justified and logical in feeling that way."
"Wow, that was a very cogent and well-articulated point you just made."
"You've done such a great job losing weight! What big biceps you have."

"THE BAD SIDE (DON'T say these ...)
"I can't really tell you've lost weight. Besides, Jordana still weighs less than you."
"[Someone else] looks really hott! SHE must have lost a lot of weight."
"Graduate school will be better this time -- you're older and more mature now."
"You're too emotionally unstable to communicate with others."

I couldn't say it any better! Does that make sense?!

this is not about graham greene

Because I don't have any coherent thoughts about him or his novels or their agenda yet, beyond feelings of betrayal and encouragement.

A little housekeeping, then, to pass the time. First, I'll mention that I have an index card containing various helpful and harmful phrases which I am enjoined to use (or never to use) in conversation with her (yes, that pronoun does not have an antecedent), or other women. This is similar to the scrap of paper I used to have (and perhaps still do) that lays out a hierarchy of descriptors for female beauty. This, too, was produced for my edification by a committee of women. That I should twice be given these lexicons or phrase-books to the female mind is a mystery upon which I fear I am unworthy to comment.

On the news front, one word: Oxyrhinchus. "And while we're on the subject of the Gospel of Thomas," as I said to her last night (this pronoun does have an antecedent, if only the previous 'her')â, doctrinal content aside, what the canonical gospels, and the canonical books as a whole, have going for them is readability. Basic narrative structure is essential for a literary work (which is what Scripture is--put me in Dr. Ryken's camp on this one, damn the NIV, and no KJV-only hate mail, please!), especially one that is authored to be read orally, and in community. For as I said to Elaine Pagels (but only in a dream), the closest analogue to the Gospel of Thomas in 20th century literature are Wittgenstein's writings, mere collections of philosophical aphorisms. (Think Nietzche with less angst, much shorter paragraphs, a rigidly-followed numbering scheme, and no syphilis. Or Pascal's PensÃ©es, a book I am proud to have stolen, without animating wit and sustained argument.) ItâGoT or Wittâhas no intrinsic chronological order, and therefore no abiding chronological significance; it is disembodied, and therefore Gnostic; it is monological, and therefore lacks the immediacy and realism of polyphonic, face-to-face, novel-like confrontations that imbues good literature with power. And then I woke up and thought, "Ooh, I should put that in my blog." And I guess, if you count parentheses as schizophrenic interruptions, this paragraph passes, barely.

books you might like

Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series, comprising 20 books, and I have just learned, the three chapters of book 21 which O'Brian was writing when he died. Maybe not when he died, but he'd completed three chapters, and then he died before writing more, okay? Anyhow, if you saw the movie (starring Russell Crowe--swoon, swoon; be still, my heart), and liked it, and you can imagine fifty times the excitement, maybe this is for you. If you want richly-rendered characters, naval life, humor, Napoleonic history, music, natural science, religion, medicine, and battles, all between one cover, maybe this is for you. If you like Jane Austen, but wonder what she would have written if she had been a guy, maybe this is for you. And if you hate all of the above with deep, abiding passion, especially Jane Austen, but are slightly interested in the historical development of English prose style, then it won't come as a surprise to you that Mr. O'Brian was Irish, and surely it can't hurt you too much to just glance at the opening paragraph of the first book, that you may place him in historical context, and obtain a brief savour of his prose, for which offense you may more effectively later castigate him.

car fish continued

In my last post on this subject, I suggested that bad driving and fish don't mix. I should like to add that, while I am generally annoyed by those who yell at me from their cars, when I am bike riding, such phrases of choice ranging from congenial "Get off the road"s to the standard unprintables (such as can be found in the average television police drama), having a fish on the back of your car causes me to take your oracular counsel much more seriously. I promise I shall restrain my responses to one finger.

Next week: fish on SUVs; or "Did that Explorer just plow through Pike's Place Market and then roll into the lake?"

churchill's picket

Part the First

In the summer of 1999, my family took a week's vacation and traveled the Swat Valley for a second time. East of Afghanistan lies the corduroy succession of the Chitral, Swat, Indus, Kaghan, Jhelum, and Kashmir valleys, a series of barely habitable slopes between the recurrent pleats of north-south mountain ridges. The mountains rise at most 15,000 feet, which in Himalayan terms is an after-thought; but throughout recorded history, they have sufficed to keep their valleys from functioning as all but the most temporary of frontiers.

Two days from Rawalpindi brought us to Kalam, the head of the valley, where the Swat River forks, or forms, depending on your preference for current. One branch heads northwest to God knows where, and the other is followed northeast by a road, which dusty track traverses innumerable switchbacks, the occasional forward glacier, lakes where the trout fishing is reputedly divine and emerges eventually and doubtless exhausted in the backwaters of the Gilgit Valley. If you want to go back the way you came, Kalam is as far as you get.

a house for mr biswas

I apologize for the paucity of this review. It is my tendency to dwell in detail on the books I loath [for the record, they are Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, a gloomy compendium of progressively deepening disappointments approximately the length of the next Harry Potter book; the same author's short story "Death in Venice", identical in theme to TMM, with the sole consolation that it is shorter, but which would by right be called a novella if it only possessed that quality called 'plot', the absence of which caused me to pronounce Herr Mann's entire oeuvre anathema; and the "Left Behind" crap, which belong to that great literary tradition of works such as "Die Hard 3 - With A Vengeance", William Shatner Star Trek novels, "Twister", and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Though, in fairness, they attempt to disguise their heritage with better dialogue, believable plots, and hotter characters. Back to the sentence at hand:] while those books I would marry in a heartbeat are savoured, plucked of their sweet sadness, and then returned to the library book drop. How easy it is to remain single. It must have something to do with the shorter gestation period.

A House For Mr Biswas is eminently marriageable if, for that very reason, shadowed by the spinster's aura. Quietly piercing, its comic foolishness appropriately turn painful. By its brooding patience, split with sudden flashes of wit and lyric despair, it reminds me of Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Perhaps this is a strange companion for an English novel, of an author whose eye for all facets of society and ear to the mannerisms of every character are compared to Dickens. I suppose Dickens makes an apt comparison -- with one crucial qualification. Naipaul is Dickens without hope. Without the faith that, however stymied by the traps of crooked wo/men, earnest innocence shall overcome injustice. In attitude, Biswas echoes the hollow abundance and perpetual scheming, of Vanity Fair. a continuation of that journalistic, energetic Victorian prose style into a thoroughly pessimistic age.

A few words, then, about V.S. Naipaul. A 'POI', as abbreviated in Indian newspapers, 'Person of Indian Origin'; that is, a member of the Indian diaspora, born in Trinidad in 1932, which place conferred upon him a keen eye for discerning the ranging of social status among a melange of cultures, who went to England after WWII for university education, and then into print. He has attained, in part for his dark, contemptuous series of books on India (beginning with An Area of Darkness), a reputation as an embittered man, old before his time; a misanthrope, even, dying unforgiven. The Clint Eastwood character of twentieth-century Indian writers, perhaps. One who has walked among the dark, unpleasant emotions: chronicler of shame, and disgust. Not without humor for their ironies; not without a pursed, fading smile at life's small triumphs, claimed, celebrated, magnified, oblivious to, or despite, their impotence.

what happened at work

Some days the smallest things pacify. I spent parts of the afternoon crawling belly-down between floors. Balancing on joists creased my knees; they still smart. There were nails caught on clothes, pin-sharp breaths of dust and insulation, another patch of ceiling to avoid falling through. But it was pleasant and soothing to turn out the light, or to close my eyes, and gradually learn to feel for solid things. To pry intent from scattered footsteps, and from muffled taps, activity. Once in a while it is good going blind, to remember the things you have forgotten to see.

People with Fish on their cars

As we were the second car back in the turn lane just about to turn into the supermarket, some idiot, roaring from behind in a black Honda Accord (ie not mine), and taking advantage of the fact that the light had just changed and we were starting to move, decided to "merge" in front of us so he could get there first. Not very classy, but hey, the guy had a baseball cap on and the girlfriend beside him, so how much more preppy (aka stupid) can you get?

But I digress. Anyhow, said shiny black Honda was sporting a Jesus fish on the back. I noticed that said fish was on backwards, as it was swimming to the right. It wasn't a Jesus fish with actual words inside it, such as "Jesus", "IXOYE", or "Darwin", which presumably means that our preppy idiot driver was intending to demonstrate his faith through actions, not words. That must explain why he didn't park his car in a parking spot but left it sitting by the door next to the end of row of properly parked cars, right where his nice little fish could project its scaly rear end and thereby demonstrate his love for his fellow human beings.

Christ may have risen, but Satan's still got game.

CSS, or I'm Picky

Well, I got some css classes going and paragraph spacing and some of that jazz, and then I re-discovered a blog mockup that I'd done sometime last year still hanging around my computer, albeit in a remote and unfrequented directory. And it looks pretty cool, although maybe only in this mac-only browser I use. But I'll be stealing some of the tricks I used on that, for sure, because they are pretty cool. Dropped capitals. Slicker font. Etc.

My First Real Post

I need to work on making another .css file specifically for this page. No fancy new colors or anything -- well, maybe for the headlines I'll go with my standard "link" green. but the rest of it is going to be standard, depressing black and grey.

Oh, and for the record I think I'm through with using Cocoa-based ftp programs. Terminal 'ftp' command [yeah, Unix] is find and dandy for this. Cause I can just hit the 'up' arrow after every new sentence and repeat the last command, which in this case uploads this file again. So this is almost real-time. Which, given my coding skills, is really cool. Down with PHP and MySQL and othertime-and-space-consuming blog "solutions"! Everything's text at the file-level. If you want meta-data, make your own!

Speaking of file sizes, why am I not surprised that in the latest screenshot of Longhorn (the next iteration of Windows) [see /. for 26March2005 the SMALLEST MS Office document visible in a list of 20-odd files is 65kb? That's over 66,560 characters. Great short stories have been written in less space! I still use Word for my personal journal, because I have some tables and other 'fancy' formatting in that. I used to use Word all the time. Word 6.0 for Windows was a good program. Pity they f****d it up moving to Win 95. Feature creep and ever-expanding file sizes. So when I switched to a Powerbook G3/500 and found that the latest version of Word for Mac had a baseline file size of 24kb -- meaning that totally BLANK documents would still take up 24kb of disk space -- [correction: make that 28kb!] {I decided to get out of the Microsoft proprietary format rut. Well, that AND Word informing me that while it could read all my previous Word 6.0 documents just fine, it could no longer save them as Word 6.0 documents. No, they had to balloon into Word X documents, which looked the same, and printed the same, but were twice the size. And would be obsolete in five years, too.

So for new documents, give me a plain text editor, rich text format [that's RTF, not RTFM, which is a similar philosophy concerning bloated information, but different]. Sorry, but I'm not an emacs or vi convert; I like my wysiwyg, too. But text is nice. If I want something printed just so, I'll cut-n-paste into Word. Maybe.

what I wrote

march - june 2005 archives

and some enterprising grad student will do a dissertation on it